by Megan Derr
Then, one day, Raven announced it was well past time he married …
"Quests?" John asked, suddenly tempted to throw himself off the cliff. He might have done it, if it didn't sound so hopelessly melodramatic that the court would thrive on it and gossip for months. "You're going to demand those nitwits go on quests? What have I told you about your impulses when you're bored?"
"I'm not bored. I'm thirty-one and lonely. That aside, I am a prince and it's long past time I married. My sisters are all settled, and Isabella was correct to point out I should be as well."
John flinched, grateful Raven was not looking at him. He looked at Raven from the corner of his eye, longing washing over him, leaving a familiar ache. What he would not give to be the one to assuage Raven's loneliness. He tried, gods knew he tried to be all that he could, but he was only barely allowed to be Raven's bodyguard, and that only because no one would particularly care if someday he died protecting Raven.
Except Raven, and there was comfort in that. Raven would care if he died.
Hurt twisted sharp in his chest when he realized that, if Raven had decided to get married so soon after… well, clearly if he was over it so soon, then he had never really meant anything he had said. All to the good, John reminded himself fiercely. Raven shouldn't love him, and it was for the best he had realized he didn't and was moving on to find someone else.
John balled his hands into fists, feeling the pull and ache from old burn scars and the place where a dragon had cost him a finger. The same dragon had shredded his back, and he'd spent six months recuperating. Not long after getting back on his feet, he'd been put right back out by a horde of blood faeries.
He did not miss those days, and he hated them all the more because he had at least been moderately handsome when he'd left. Since returning, his ruined looks were just one more thing for the court to disparage.
John drew in a breath, drew in all the hurt and pain, then let it all out slowly. He had lived through worse; he could survive one stupid marriage. "Why a Challenge of Quests, Highness? Surely there are easier ways to pick a spouse."
"I don't want just anyone, isn't that the point of these things?" Raven replied. "I know what all these people are capable of confined to court. I want to see what else they can do. But that's where I need your help." He spun around from where he had been staring out at the ocean, long, dark hair flying in his face before he impatiently shoved it back.
John stared blankly. "My help? What do you want me to do?"
Raven went over to his horse and rifled through one of the saddlebags a moment before coming out with a black, leather-bound book with silver and gold embossed letters that read The Book of Questing. John wondered just how irate Raven would be if he pitched it over the cliff. Flipping the book open, Raven paged idly through it. "No one has called a Challenge of Quests in at least eighty years, so the manual has not been kept up. I'm not even certain which, if any, of these Quests are still viable. Like this one, about the Lake of the Lady's Tears—the castle isn't there anymore, so there's no point in travelling to it to retrieve 'a gold sovereign of the lost king'. All of that is moldering in our treasury."
"So you need to come up with new quests?" John asked, more confused than ever.
"No, it would take years to design new quests, get them verified, so on and so forth. Questing is not merely go here and fetch that, whatever people like to say. No, I need you to help me see which of these are still usable. I thought we could pick a few that seemed promising, you could go on them to ensure they still worked, and then I would know which challenges to issue. There is also the fact that, as you would have done them, you'd know all the ways someone might cheat."
John rubbed at his temples. "You want me to do trial runs of your quests? That is the most absurd—"
"Please?" Raven asked in that soft, quiet tone that John loved and hated. He wanted to hear that soft voice whispering to him in the dark as they lay together in a tangle of limbs, warm and sated, smelling of sex—
And, he reminded himself sharply, it would never happen. Raven clearly hadn't meant it when he'd said he was in love with John. Even if he had, no one would have permitted the union.
He looked into Raven's face and, as always, was undone by the combination of that soft tone and the unhappiness in Raven's eyes. He would do anything, up to and including die, to see Raven happy. If it was breaking his heart into pieces to help Raven find someone to love, well, that was his burden to bear. "Fine," he said with a long sigh. "Let's figure out what quests to try and get this over with."
Raven grinned at him, eyes bright with triumph and mischief. John ached to pull him close, taste his lips, hold him tightly and pretend for just a little while that Raven was his. John smiled back, but it hurt. Only a few weeks ago Raven had declared his love for the five hundredth time.
Gods above, what a disaster it would have been if John had allowed them both to believe that was true. But he hadn't thought Raven would change his mind so quickly.
He reached out and snatched the book away, desperate to escape his torturous thoughts. "This one is no good. Neither is this one. That forest isn't even there anymore. Are we certain this book was updated eighty years ago? Did they just make up the bits they didn't know?"
Raven laughed and took the book back, motioning John to follow as he led them away from the cliffs and off to a copse of trees where they could sit, eat lunch, and discuss questing.
*~*~*
It took John three months to finish the first quest they decided upon, but given the book dictated the quester be given four months, he was feeling rather proud. He dared some smarmy, spoiled noble to do better. They wouldn't be allowed to haul along servants and soldiers to do all the work for them; no, they would have to do it as John had done it: with horse, sword, and whatever food and supplies he could carry alone.
"Marvelous," Raven said after they had finished eating and discussing every nuance of the quest. "I knew sending you along was a fine idea. So you don't think this will be an easy quest for cheating?"
John shook his head, shoved back his overlong, muddy-brown hair and wished he could crawl back into bed. He'd slept for half a day straight after returning, then bathed and cleaned up and gone back to bed for another few hours. Despite all the rest he still wanted to go straight back to sleep.
He could see from the gleam in Raven's eye, however, that he would scarcely finish his meal before they began work upon the next quest. "So did anything of note happen while I was gone?"
"Does anything of note ever happen?" Raven asked. "Isabella is determined to go down in history as 'Queen Isabella the Terrifying' except her kingdom is so well-behaved, she's going to be remembered as "Queen Isabella the Sulky'. I believe Lord Rare went about naked somewhere, but I could never determine if it was the Swan Fountain, the Sky Gardens, or the Wine Cottage. Gossips are never very clear on the particulars."
John rolled his eyes and finished eating his soup, pushing it away with a yawn. He stretched in his seat, arms reaching up and back, and groaned as he relaxed again. "So what am I doing next for you, Highness?" His brow furrowed in confusion at the way Raven just stared at him. "Highness?"
Raven jerked, seemed to recover himself, and shook his head. "Uh—right, then. I was thinking one of these three?" He held the book out, and John reluctantly took it, resisting an urge to pitch it across the room and stomp off back to bed. He wished he could figure out a way to make all the quests unfit, but he did not want to know what mad idea Raven would come up with then—and he wanted Raven happy, even if it was killing him inside that Raven wasn't ever going to be happy with him.
"Not this first one," John said after reading through them. "This area is too dangerous. The second and third options have potential. Did you want me to head out now, or is tomorrow soon enough?"
Raven flapped a hand at him, rolling his eyes and smiling. "There's no time limit, ninny. We're testing these out, and we can do that at our leisure—your leisure, really."
"You should have said," Raven said, frowning at him. "You could have gone with a different one—"
"The quests need to be good ones!" John snapped. "The other options are too easy. No one should have an easy time of it." He pushed his chair away from the table and stood up, no longer tired. He might have to surrender Raven to another, but he would be damned if he surrendered without a fight. If he had to work his way through the most brutal quests in that damned book, then he would because the harder they were for him, the more impossible they would be for everyone else. "I changed my mind," he said over his shoulder as he stomped off. "I'm leaving tonight."
"John—"
Whatever Raven had started to say, John didn't hear it, cutting the words off by closing the door behind him.
*~*~*
"We're not doing this anymore," Raven said, mouth tight, face pale. John had never seen Raven's skin so pale—it was practically white, it was so leeched of color. "Quests are supposed to be difficult, not dangerous."
John snorted and would have laughed at him in fond amusement if the surgeon had not picked that moment to resume stitching his arm up. He didn't see what had been wrong with just redoing the bandages, but he also knew that arguing with an angry surgeon was the epitome of stupid. "Difficult and dangerous go hand in hand as often as not; it was nothing I could not handle. I made it back in one piece—"
"Barely!" Raven snapped.
Shrugging, John thanked the surgeon as he finished tending his arm. He tugged on the clean shirt a servant had brought him at Raven's command. "You're overreacting. It's just a scratch, albeit a deep one. I can still use the arm, and in a couple of weeks, it will be as good as new. One more ugly scar will not even be noticed." Not that anyone would see it, anyway, since he did not anticipate anyone asking him to remove his shirt—
He broke that thought off right where it was, not in the mood to depress himself further. He was tired, sore, and had just wanted to be home. Technically, he was, but home for him had involved a great deal more of Raven smiling at him and being happy to see him, and not flailing about like an angry fishwife. Rounding sharply, he hissed in pain when Raven crashed into him, swearing as he reflexively reached out to catch him and pulled on his arm.
Raven grabbed his hand and lowered his arm, scowling. "Stop trying to make it worse, you lack-brain."
"Lack-brain yourself!" John snapped. "You're the one who wanted this done, and you said you trusted me to help, so bloody trust me! I'm not a simpering noble; I know how to handle it."
"Yes, I can see that from the wounded arm and the bloodied clothes and that scratch on your face the bloody surgeon forgot to treat."
John reached up to touch the scratch; he'd felt the sting, but had mostly ignored it as trivial. All of a sudden he wondered just how much worse—
Oh, it didn't matter. He turned sharply back around and resumed walking down the hall to his rooms. If he could not have Raven happy to see him because he was too busy acting like a nitwit over a stupid scratch, then he was going to bed. The next quest could wait until he was rested enough to deal with it, and after that he would finally be free to go throw himself off a cliff.
A hand grabbed his good arm, and John swore as he was yanked back. "Would you hold still, you stubborn bastard?"
"I'm a stubborn bastard?" John demanded.
"Yes!" Raven bellowed, startling the small handful of servants working in the long, wide hallway. They all fled, leaving the two of them alone. "You are the single most stubborn bastard I have ever known! From insisting on always taking the punishment when we were children, to flouncing off to the army, to—to everything! You never listen to anyone and always just do what you want! You would rather get yourself killed than listen to anyone else for five minutes!'
John balled his hands in to fists to resist an urge to punch him—bodyguard or not, if he punched Raven, he was going to a noose, or worse, back into the army and shipped overseas. "All I've ever done is listen to others! I listened to my parents when they said I must go and be the whipping boy of the king's only son! I listened to my uncle and everyone else when they said I should cease to be around you. I listened to the captain who cost me a finger and nearly my life. I listened to the general who told me to burn down a village. I listened when they kicked me out and sent me home! Now I'm doing your bloody quests because I listen to you! So shove off." Spinning on his heel yet again, he stormed off, no longer interested in going to bed. One more quest and the whole damn mess was finished.
"John—"
"Leave me alone," he snarled, ignoring Raven because if he looked and Raven gave him that wounded look or used that soft tone then John would be undone. That was the damnable part of growing up with someone: Raven knew all his weak points.
Finding the book amongst the mess of books and papers on Raven's work table, he opened it up to one of the marked pages and picked out the first quest he found that was doable. Throwing the book back on the table, he shoved past Raven and stormed off to gather supplies.
He had a griffon to slay, and those were never easy.
*~*~*
John all but fell off his horse as he reached the stable and gave the stable hand who came rushing out a tired smile in thanks. "See someone takes the bags to my room, would you?"
"Of course, milord."
Snorting at the ridiculousness of anyone calling him 'milord' because he was only a token sort of baron out of pity, really, John limped to the palace proper. Hopefully, he could make it to the surgeons' hall before Raven was told he had returned. He was not in the mood to be screamed at right then.
But the griffon pelt was in his saddlebag, and that was three quests completed, and he dared any noble to do better than him.
"John!"
"Damn it," John muttered, but was helpless to escape as Raven came bolting for him. Gods have mercy, he looked more beautiful than ever. It had taken John two and a half months to find and kill the griffon, much to his dismay. He had spent nearly six months straight going on quests, had barely seen Raven in all that time, and the last time they'd been angry—
Seeing him then was both balm and beating. Raven was dressed in court finery that brought out the blue in his midnight hair and lightened his eyes just the slightest bit. To judge from the flush to his cheeks, he had either been riding very recently or had been yelling at someone.
Why, John thought miserably, could he have not been born good enough? But it was stupid to keep wishing for it because it would never be. He had proven the quests were doable, and now men and women would step forward to complete them and one would succeed and wed his prince. John wanted to cry just thinking about it, but he'd run out of tears long ago. "Greetings, Highness," he said, voice still a bit hoarse from the smoke he'd used to flush out the griffon. He probably looked a fright, even though he'd made some effort to clean up before he returned home.
Raven scowled at him. "You are determined to get yourself killed, I vow."
John drew himself up, refusing to be hurt, and said stiffly, "I have completed your quests, Highness, as you requested. You may call for your questers. May the best—"
"Shut up," Raven said and grabbed his wrist, then turned and dragged him along. John cried out in pain and stumbled, falling to the floor and taking Raven with him. Raven looked at him, horrified and immediately contrite. "I'm sorry! I didn't know—"
"It's fine," John said, face hot with humiliation. "I'll just—"
Raven slapped a hand over his mouth. "Shut up. You're not going anywhere. We have a meeting with Isabella."
John scowled at him then yanked his hand away. "How can I have a meeting with Her Majesty? Even I did not know I would return today until the snow held off long enough to pe
rmit it. How can I have a meeting with her?"
"We just do," Raven said and stood up, then tugged John to his feet. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "How is your leg?"
Shrugging, John said, "It'll be fine once I've rested for a bit. Let's go meet with Her Majesty, then." He limped along, head up, striving to ignore the stares he drew.
In the queen's private salon, Isabella reclined on her sofa as though it were her throne in the formal hall. She beckoned them close with her fan and lifted her head so that Raven might kiss her cheek. "Brother, I hope you have good reason for delaying my midday meeting with the Duke."
John frowned, confused. Hadn't Raven said they had a meeting?
"Of course," Raven said before John could ask what was going on. "As you can see, Lord Farthing has returned from the last of his quests. He has completed all three successfully. He is of noble blood. He is also distinguished in the army. He meets every requirement."
Isabella laughed, and John's frown deepened. "But I—" Before he could finish the explanation, Isabella looked at him, and John fell silent.
"Is it true, Baron? That you have completed all three quests?"
"Yes, but I wasn't questing, I was testing—"
"Yes or no."
John stared at her, utterly lost. "Yes, I did complete them, but—"
"Yes is yes," Isabella said and smiled warmly at him, the sort of smile she normally only gave to her children and siblings. "By Right of Quest, Lord John Farthing, Baron of Reading, I grant you permission to marry Prince Raven. We will formally announce the engagement tonight at dinner. Do try to stay out of trouble, both of you, from here on out." She rose and kissed each of them on the cheek, then briskly departed the salon with her handmaidens around her, giggling madly behind their sleeves.
"What just happened?" John asked, looking at Raven.
Raven's mouth twisted in a fond smile. "As I said to you months ago, lack-brain, you are the most stubborn man I know. You would not believe me when I said I loved you—you would not listen to me at all! The only way to get you to marry me was to make you feel you were worthy, even though you've always been bloody worthy. The only way to make you realize it was to make you do something to prove your worth. But if I had called for a Challenge of Quests and tried to persuade you to do it, you would have refused. So I tricked you, and it worked."