by R. Cooper
He remembered Arden’s hands in his hair and exhaled shakily. “What is there to feel pushed about?” he asked as blankly as he could. He had learned from them, after all.
Mil swore under his breath.
Mattin clung to what he remembered of his plan. “You didn’t like my previous choices, so I’ve amended them.”
“We liked them fine,” Mil was quick to assure him. “You didn’t fail us, Sass.”
“But I disappointed you.” Mattin was getting quite skilled at skirting the truth. “I should have considered that it would take you time to feel comfortable, so you wouldn’t have to choose convenience. I should have thought more in terms of… of potential. Not just of names and backgrounds. I considered meetings and similarities, but not maturity, or understanding, or past lovers and what that might mean.” He smiled without meaning it. “I’m afraid I don’t have experience with your sort of love.”
Their silence was too much for him, so he hurried on. “I’ve also put a few on there who, well, are more… thoughtful. Actually, one of them has been running the estates for his family. So, while he is unlikely to want to leave for the capital, he would have the experience. He’s also a few years older than the previous candidates. Even if you were only to speak with him, it would likely improve your relations with that house.”
There was a bit more silence, although Mattin was vaguely aware of the murmur of the crowd.
“Very thoughtful of you.” Arden’s use of the word seemed pointed. Mattin slid a look to the side. Arden regarded him almost warily. “We greatly admire your thoughtfulness, as well as your insight.” He was distressingly formal, which Mattin should have wanted. The tangle of feelings was illogical and Mattin didn’t like it. He also wanted to hold it close to him. Arden took such care with him, even in this. “You confuse us at times,” Arden admitted, “but we have come to admire you very much. You do know that, don’t you?”
It made Mattin stumble and forget what he had planned to say. “I… I admire you both as well. You’re heroes, of course, I do.” He jerked his head up. “Please don’t be insulted by that! I have never intended any disrespect. Not for you. I—”
“Disrespect?” Mil stood up to loom over them both with restless energy. “Did you think I’d mind being your hero? As though that wasn’t one of the few things in my favor?”
“Mil,” Arden put out a hand, but Mil brushed it off and stormed past them to join the guards closer to the sparring. He immediately began to gesture, calling a halt to the whole thing as he threw aside his cloak to reveal his figure strapped in armor. Then he took a pole from one of those who had been sparring and went in swinging after the other one. Arden hissed a little, but at least Mil’s opponent managed some sort of block. Not much more than that, however.
“You’re supposed to be sharper than that,” Mil told the guard only moments later, helping them up after knocking them flat on their ass. “It’s your life at stake, as well as the person you’re supposed to be protecting, so you’d better be.”
That earned him a smile of all things, grateful and pleased, as though this was a compliment. Maybe it was. They had managed some defense against Mil. That had to count for something.
“Are you frightened?” Arden asked.
Mattin glanced at him, but Arden was watching Mil. Mattin shook his head. “No. Never.”
Arden turned to Mattin long enough to smile. “That will please him. He has a great deal of patience, but right now he doesn’t know what to do, and that frustrates him.”
“And people worry over your temper.”
Mil demonstrated something with the pole, flipping it slowly from hand to hand before tossing it back to the one he’d taken it from.
“As they should.” Arden’s voice hardened. “I don’t like threats, and I protect my family. They should know that by now.” He inhaled, then released a long breath. “Does that frighten you?”
“Yes.” Mattin’s hands would have trembled if he hadn’t locked them tight around the mug. “Not you. But the threat. It’s why this is so important. And why I don’t blame you for looking for the simplest answer.”
“Simplest answer?” Arden glanced at him, then looked again more intently. “What about this is simple to you?”
Mattin looked at him, in dark gray today, striking against the silver in his hair, the faint lines at the corners of his eyes, then shook his head. “No, not simple. You are right.”
“And now I am right?” Arden frowned, though it felt a bit playful. “Are you well, Master Arlylian? It’s not like you to let me win so easily.”
“Perhaps that is Mil’s job?” Mattin suggested, not certain what had come over him, except that he no longer wanted to do anything but sit next to Arden while they both watched Mil heft a pole with a blade on the end in one massive hand.
“Mil only lets me win when the mood strikes him, and then only for one particular purpose,” Arden said, his voice low and heated enough to make Mattin’s mouth go dry.
Mattin watched Mil swing the pole-axe into a pile of snow-covered straw, and imagined how such a movement might look without armor and clothing hindering the view. Arden, sitting next to him, was likely thinking of the same thing, but with detail that could be filled in by experience.
Mattin forced his gaze away, hopefully before Arden realized they had been ogling Mil together, but that was precisely his problem. Arden probably had realized. Probably before Mattin had.
Mattin cleared his throat, then spoke quietly although the guards kept their distance today. “I did not thank you for my gloves. Thank you.”
“I am happy to see you wear them,” Arden returned, just as quietly. “They seemed a small thing, but you needed them.”
“They are warm, as well as beautiful.” If Mattin’s cheeks darkened, it was from Arden’s gentle sigh of pleasure, not the steam still rising from the mug in his hands. “The cloak as well. I should not have snapped at him—well, perhaps he deserved it.”
That seemed to sober Arden. “It truly upset you.”
He could have meant several things. Mattin chose the safest. “Knowing that you two did not intend to go on wooing any of the people we have arranged for you to meet?” he asked, his tone a touch frosty. “I asked you. I said you did not have to. You agreed. I… I researched. I helped you practice. And you….” He sniffed and rubbed his nose. “Why would I be upset?”
“Ah, Sass,” Mil exhaled the name as he sat back down at Mattin’s other side. His cloak was off one shoulder as he refastened the clasp at his throat. He was breathing slightly harder than before.
Mattin quickly looked out at the crowd, growing still to notice that several of them were staring back. It was natural that they should. But Mattin had kept that thought at bay with all of the others. Until now.
Arden drew Mattin’s attention with softly spoken words. “We are not against the idea of another marriage. We told you that. And now we have learned so much about what is expected in these matters. It would need to be proper, we have long thought that, even when we were not certain what that would mean. Proper is all that would do.”
Mattin sniffed again, blaming the cold. “Are you going to continue?”
Neither of them spoke.
Mattin raised his head. “Are you?” He glanced from one to the other.
“Did the age difference bother you?” Arden asked, startling Mattin. “There is new white in my hair each day, it seems. We both have aches from old injuries when it rains, knees that crackle.”
With a frown, Mattin tried to gesture his confusion, then remembered the mug and set it down on the ground beneath his chair. The pause gave him time to reconsider his initial response. “Everyone involved is of age, and some well-experienced, from what I hear.”
“Didn’t mention that part before,” Mil remarked. “Maybe we should have them for another tea.”
“You’re not funny, my love.”
“Sorry, Sass,” Mil apologized without hesitation, although Mattin
was not the one who had chided him.
Mattin turned to him, shaking inside when their eyes met. “Thank you for the cloak, if not for the guards who help me remember where I’ve left it.”
Mil’s gaze was warm. “You’ll get no apologies for those.”
“They stand outside the library for hours, freezing.” Mattin huffed. “They won’t come in unless I harangue them.”
Mil was unbothered by this. “It’s not their job to. It’s their job to watch for threats. Don’t fret over them.”
“I’m not fretting,” Mattin insisted, plucking at the strap to his satchel. He could have left the discussion there, said his farewells, and hoped his message had been received. But words continued to spill from him. “From the start, I did not think this was a wise idea, for your sakes as much as… as much whoever you would choose. I suggested not doing it, and doing it as an alliance only, and you—you two said it would end up more than that. That is what you both said. So I tried to find a way to help you. I will do almost anything to help you.” He did not care for the tremor in his voice. “I worked very hard.”
“We know,” Mil assured him. “You are a determined little thing—not little. A determined thing.”
“Your choices were all sound,” Arden added. “Your reasoning was practically flawless.”
“The Tyrabalith….” Mattin glanced around again, searching through the crowd although The Tyrabalith himself was not present. “I wanted to….” He trailed to silence, aware of how foolish he would sound if he said he had wished to protect them. He drew in a breath. “So. If you do not want the revised list, then we will go back to my original plans to strengthen relationships with the other nobles, and to improve your reputation without another marriage… and we do not ever need to speak of this again.”
“You are fretting.” Arden’s hand hovered over Mattin’s knee, then withdrew.
Fretting could be a useful distraction. “I think the key, a key, might be the songs already sung about you. The good ones, I mean. Maybe you could offer a prize for a new ballad, or for the one you choose as your favorite, or hold a public contest for bards, who are sure to sing songs to flatter you. It would be generous and encourage merriment, as well as remind people of your great love for each other, which is part of why so many adore you.”
He wondered if he had stunned them to silence. He still did not think they were truly aware of just how favorably the public regarded their hand-fasting. He coughed, then continued.
“I wrote out a few of the songs, in case you hadn’t heard them.” Possible secret tavern visits notwithstanding. “I, hmm, collect them, you see.” With every other secret so close to the surface, that one hardly seemed to matter anymore. “I will have them nicely bound one day, in better scribbles than mine. But it means I had some of them handy.” Mattin busied himself by digging through his satchel to find the papers he had copied last night in beautiful gold ink. He held them out with noticeably shaking hands, and it was Arden who took them and kindly did not comment. Mattin dared to study him while Arden’s attention was on the papers. “Your love is… beautiful. Enviable. I cannot imagine wanting anything less. So… so there is no point in trying.”
“Mattin Arlylian.”
His full name, from Mil, brought Mattin’s head up and tricked him into meeting Mil’s stare. Mil’s large hand settled on Mattin’s shoulder, over the cloak, his fingers sinking into the fur. He could have brushed the chilled skin of Mattin’s throat if he had wanted to.
Mattin lifted his chin and gazed back at him, helpless.
The tangle wanted him to run, and it wanted Mil to touch him, and it wanted to stay to hear what Arden would say. Arden and Mil were kind. They would understand. Mattin knew that. Yet he would stay, trembling, between them if they were not kind, if they pushed again for what they wanted. He was as soft as they thought he was.
“Well,” he said, voice high and thin. “I’ve more to read up on, and you are busy.” He could not look away from Mil. “You will let me know what you decide?”
“You gifted us our love for each other?” Arden whispered at last as if overcome. His hand was heavy on Mattin’s knee and then gently curled around Mattin’s, which had fallen to meet it. Arden was always so hot, even though his hands were bare.
“What else could I give you that would ever compare?” Mattin wondered, a shameful quiver in his voice now. He looked without seeing at the crowd, aware that he must be flushed and likely breathing harder. He stood up with no warning, swaying a little as Mil’s hand fell away from him and Arden pulled his hand back. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Sass.” Mil’s voice was husky.
“My name’s not Sass,” Mattin told him, an old fusspot, and closed his satchel as he hurried away.
His guards trailed behind him once again, but he barely noticed except to walk faster so they would not see his face.
Someone ought to have knocked on the door to Mattin’s office to offer him tea at some point in the day. Mattin suspected the assistants had been whispering about him and were leaving him to stare moodily at his inkwells and stacks of unfinished work out of a fear of upsetting him further.
He had no doubt that he was already the subject of many conversations. A great deal had begun to make more sense once Mattin had realized that most in the palace had guessed where their king and his husband’s attentions lay. Not that it had taken much guessing. Not once Mattin had started wearing their gifts about. But many had seemed to know before then. Arden was not shy with his favorites, as Mattin had been told. He and Mil had befriended Mattin, and favored him, and when Per Tyrabalith had made his bold suggestion, apparently only Mattin hadn’t thought to consider himself a potential suitor.
Foolish of him. Though wise as well, since he did not think he could have said yes.
He was spared that uncertainty now; Arden and Mil would never ask. Mattin had disappointed them, but they would respect his wishes.
Knowing that had done nothing for the knot still tangled in his chest, which was an extraordinarily, annoyingly stubborn thing which insisted he think about it. It would be there tomorrow, when Mattin met them in their rooms as they had breakfast and they would tell him whether they would continue on with their hunt—pretend or not—or decide to forget it altogether.
The thought of it made him ache and grow restless. Mattin paced a few times before his fireplace, and prodded the tiny fire to keep it burning for a while longer, and tore the pins from his hair to let it hang loose while he rubbed his temples. Eventually, no less restless but now irritated as well, he braided his hair back again, using the collection of mismatched clasps that the assistants often found in the library and left in the drawer of his desk.
He pulled out a new sheet of paper to make notes on what a contest for the bards might offer as a prize aside from recognition, but wrote nothing. The sky grew darker outside his small window. The faint noises from the library grew quieter. His stomach rumbled once or twice.
He considered that Mil and Arden might decide to press on with the meetings, with their eye actually on the others this time. And though this should have changed nothing, it made Mattin fall into his chair and hang his head.
No two people should inspire so many feelings at once. But, of course, they did. The hero and his husband, another hero.
Mattin wished they had not decided to court him. He wished they would not court anybody, though it was selfish when the calm and safety of the palace, the capital, and the country, was potentially at stake. Mattin should help them, whatever they decided, and keep his hopes to himself and whichever fae might be around to spot the truth.
But it was hope in his heart, a bright, terrible sensation when he considered that Arden and Mil might eventually forget any others and Mattin would not lose his time with him. It was hope because their moments at breakfast, or any moments with them, could give Mattin peace throughout his day, or make him happy in a way that only the library ever had before. He could not be their
political match, but he could watch them pour each other tea, and bicker, and help each other into their armor, and listen to their whispered endearments. Thinking of that did not displace the tangle but instead eased it.
He considered that feeling as the room grew colder and then darker, while he covered the papers in front of him with scribbled notes in orange or purple ink. Mattin crossed out lines and chose a new color, red, his favorite, to circle the points that kept reappearing, the word that he could not avoid no matter how many times he shuffled the papers.
After so long his eyes burned and his shoulders ached, he put down his quill and stared at the conclusion he had reached.
Arden and Mil could not have been expected to know this when Mattin would not dare allow himself to even think it. But he had felt it. It had been there, a growing pile of scrolls in an out-of-sight cubbyhole, hidden, perhaps for years.
It was on his paper now, in bright and bold red.
He loved them.
He was in love with them.
What a fool of a Keeper he was, what a silly Arlylian. The thing that had driven Mattin all this time was love, unfair and beautiful.
When the ink had dried, Mattin put the piece of paper that said what he would not beneath his collection of songs about the Traitor King’s great love, and then he got up to leave his office and return to his room at last.
Mattin staggered out into the silent, dim library. It appeared empty, which meant it was very late, although there might possibly be a Keeper in a distant row of books, or asleep at a table somewhere on the upper floors.
He pulled up the hood of his cloak and unlocked one of the entrance doors. Then he turned quickly the moment he was outside in the freezing dark so he could lock the door behind him. He shuddered at the sudden drop in temperature and hissed an apology to his guards as he slipped the key back into his satchel and hurried forward.
Only one brazier was lit in the entire corridor, not that Mattin was going to stop to warm himself. He was aware of the cold only because his body was wracked with shivers, but he could not seem to feel it.