Janez’s breath caught in his chest.
“Ashara…” Held murmured. It sounded like a whisper from a whole other universe.
He looked—beautiful.
He shouldn't have. Pale and thin, sharp nosed and too-large eyes, his clothes and hair askew from the ride and the tugging fingers of branches—he looked a mess, waifish and lean, almost feral. He ought to have looked like any other dirty ship’s boy, like any other peasant.
But he didn’t.
The look of sheer happiness on his face, with his legs submerged to the knees in freezing water, transformed him. He was no peasant, not even a mere man.
He was something from another universe, some other creature in human form, and Janez knew nothing of what he was, what he’d been, or what he’d come to be.
But he wanted—so desperately wanted—to find out.
Chapter Nineteen
THE WATER WAS cool.
Cold, even, but Held enjoyed it so. It surged around his legs and lapped at his skin, familiar and content. It knew him, and he knew it, despite the form. Something of the mer lingered inside him, and the water recognised it, even if there was nothing physical left to know.
But it was not the water that had his attention.
Janez seemed to have no interest in it. He’d retreated to the bank and seated himself on his coat. Parchment lay over his knee, and he appeared to be drawing with small sticks. He ignored Held quite thoroughly.
Yet Held could not ignore him.
The water was cool, but Held was not.
He was no stranger to lust—Meri had described it enough, and indeed, there was that strange, buzzing warmth from Janez’s first kiss upon the roof of the world. But the intensity of this, the way he was overly hot despite the chilly air and freezing water, and the physicality of this form’s response…
There was something far more urgent than had ever been there before.
His body wanted to do things, even as Held didn’t understand what they were or why. It wanted to cross the little river and remove the sticks and paper from Janez’s lap. As well as the prince’s clothes. It wanted his smell and skin, and it wanted his touch. And it wanted it—
Held’s hand crept to the swelling in his groin.
He was…hard.
Mermen had no such external fifth limb as this. It was internal, emerging only in the act of love. He’d supposed—from the first time it had happened—it was merely to void oneself, and skymen had some similar internal organ. But it was stiff, throbbing within its confines, and the feeling was so very different.
Janez was paying no mind, and nobody else was around, so Held unbuttoned the fabric and pushed his hand inside to wrap his fingers around the length.
And jolted.
The touch was sharp and sudden. His hips rocked forward into his hand, and Held barely caught the groan that tried to escape. His legs shivered. His heart raced. And when he squeezed gently, a rush of lust and pleasure so intense it made his very soul shake inside his chest nearly swept him away.
He wanted.
And he wanted Janez to do this. He wanted Janez’s hand there, and not his own. He wanted those smooth fingers around his flesh. Wanted Janez’s mouth against his neck. Body against his own. Wanted that desperate clutch from the darkened room. Wanted—wanted—
Sex.
He knew of it. Knew not how skymen did it, but—he wanted to find out. Wanted to know. Did they twine together like weeds, the way merfolk did? Did they clutch and cling and cry out their joy together? Did they do it at all, or did they do it often? Did men lie with men, and the maids together? Was it a private or a public sort of affair? Did they kiss, and love, or simply twist as one and then come apart again?
He wanted to know how Janez had sex. Were his eyes the same shade of blue in the height of passion? Did his hair burn gold or red? Was he a powerful lover, with strength and sobriety, or did he love in a relaxed and contented state, peaceable and pliant?
Would he kiss Held? If Held were to—
Janez glanced up at him—and froze. He stared at Held’s wrist, and when Held stroked himself again, Janez placed the paper aside.
And beckoned.
Heart in his mouth, Held crossed the bubbling water until he stood between Janez’s legs. Stood shivering as his fingers parted Held's clothes. Shook as a hot mouth pressed to his bare chest, right in the centre over Held’s racing heart.
“Oh!”
Janez touched him.
Those fingers kissed his shaft and began to stroke it. Gentle. Soft. Barely there, until they reached the base and squeezed, so gentle and so commanding. Held whimpered. He reached out, blind and uncertain, and clutched at that fine hair. Brought Janez’s head to his chest, and shook silently there, mouth pressed to the invisible crown of warmth that Janez wore under the gold. Clung, as his entire being narrowed to the hot touch of those fingers. To the hand resting on the back of his leg, barely under the swell of his rear. To the tightening low in his belly—and lower still—and the heat, the heat, that inescapable heat…
As the heat rose to fever pitch, the golden head under his mouth bent.
“Janez!”
Janez’s lips sealed about the head of Held’s length. Hot. Wet. He sucked until Held threatened to buckle by the sheer force of it, and then—
White.
The world—was—white.
Air.
Held raked it in. Gasping. Found himself softening. Found himself soft, buckled over Janez’s frame like water folded over rock. Janez’s hands were cupping his rear, secure and hard. Something deep inside Held wanted them to be closer, but he knew not how or what that meant.
And when the colour bled back into the universe, separating out from whiteness into blues and greens and the soft browns of the world above the water, he bent his head against Janez’s shoulder to peer down his long form and saw the same hardness echoed in his lap.
Clothed, still.
Held reached. Tugged his clothes apart with determined movements. Janez closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against Held’s shoulder, but made no other move. And then his hard flesh sprang free, long and sleek and hairless, and Held touched it in fascination. A pulse hammered inside it. Soft and silken skin, smooth as though wet while it was perfectly dry, but for the very end of it.
Held rubbed his thumb over that damp end, and Janez shuddered. Shivered, as intense as a fit, in Held’s grasp.
So Held did it again. And again. And again, until he learned the very writhe and moan of those shivers—and then he slid his hand as Janez had done. Watched the swell and darken of tender flesh with a tired sort of pleasure, a sated joy. This was—this was sex, was it not? This was how skymen did this, yes?
Janez’s hand closed about his, and with a sharp jerk of his hips, the prince fell under that same shocking bliss. His eyes went wide and glazed. Held’s hand was coated in a thick liquid, burning hot, and when the shaft had softened and sagged from his fingers, he lifted them to taste Janez’s pleasure. Bitter. Strange. Yet—alluring. The smell was stark and alien, and he wanted more of it.
Wanted more of—everything.
And of the way Janez stared up at him, mute and mysterious.
Held smoothed his fingers down that golden hair in secret kisses and knew that he was lost, now. Utterly lost.
For he would trade the world for that wide-eyed stare and the firm hand upon his rear—and he only had one more day to keep it.
Chapter Twenty
JANEZ ATTENDED THE war council the following evening.
He dressed in his finest uniform and called his grumbling manservant to fix his hair and face. He went armed, sword and sash slung about his hips pristinely. And he bowed low to both his king and his admiral, the face of a subordinate fixed in place over his own.
For Alarik would not like this.
Yesterday—the river—had been a mistake. Pure and simple. The flushed sight of Held in the grip of carnal pleasure had been too much, far too much, and J
anez had taken risk in both hands—and mouth—and drunk it down. And now he was lost. Quite utterly lost. He had mixed both his feelings and his body, and now they clung together in a burning passion that was easing, in the quiet moments and in the colour of the sun in Held’s near-white hair, into love.
And he was engaged to be married.
Janez knew his duty. To marry. To breed. And, one day, to die with honour and be buried in the family tombs underneath the castle.
But his duty was a cold and miserable one when love danced in dust motes around Held’s face. How could he possibly do his duty to his wife when he wanted none but the stranger in Hauser’s rooms? How could he feign an interest in some powdered princess when he’d held Held’s weight upon his tongue and drunk his pleasure like he was no prince, but a parlour-boy in a harbour-side inn?
How could he be happy?
And Janez had no duty to be happy, no right to have happiness—but he wanted it. He wanted it, deeply and desperately, and why ought he have been shackled to duty when there were others? He wasn’t the heir to the throne anymore. He would never be king. He was expendable—the spare heir Alarik had teased him about when they were boys. If he could be placed on the deck of a ship, placed in the path of enemy fire, then surely he could be placed in the path of passion, and his lapses forgiven as any peasant man’s would have been?
He sat brooding and silent through discussions of tactic and territory, through the admiral’s grumbling about the landsmen in the service and the first minister’s simpering excuses that boiled down to the treasury running dangerously dry and there being debts to pay, new enemies to make if they were not paid—
“Winter will ease us,” Alarik said. “They will have one last strike at us—one last attempt—and then there will be silence while the ice seals their ports.”
“We must strike them then!” the admiral thundered. “Sail north and batter their batteries!”
Janez ignored the argument. Usually, he would have been on it—the benefits of doing so, the risks of running aground on icebergs as big as the ships themselves, the very real danger of exhausting themselves needlessly to be smashed to pieces in the spring, but the chance—the slim and sly chance—of crippling their enemy while they lay helpless.
But he did not. He sat in silence, aware of the curious looks, and said nothing.
“If it could not be done in my father’s time, it cannot be done in this one,” Alarik said. “Our best hope is the alliance. Who knows? Our spies say they struggle as we do—perhaps the very existence of such an alliance will suffice to silence them and bring about peace.”
The admiral harrumphed—a military man from boots to bulbous nose, he thought of peace much as others thought of death and taxes: a terrible, insidious, disgusting thing.
“King Sigurd and his daughters are travelling to the Winter Palace for a ball in their honour. Janez will choose a bride from among them and be married by spring—sooner, if we can persuade King Sigurd to part with his nation’s superstitions on winter weddings. And—”
“I cannot.”
Janez spoke quietly into the great room, but the sharp silence was as though he had screamed it. The admiral’s eyes bulged. The first minister squeaked like a trodden-upon mouse.
And Alarik simply—blinked.
Startled.
“Janez?”
“I cannot marry,” Janez said, a little numbly. The phantom sensation of Held’s skin against his lips prickled in memory.
“What on earth do you mean?”
“I cannot marry. I—I am in love. With another.”
The first minister scoffed. “Love? What does love have to do with marriage?”
“Is your newfound love a lady of standing?”
“No—”
“A servant, then. Take her with you, for all I care,” Alarik said. His attention swayed away. “None of the daughters are married as yet—potentially, a permanent alliance may be established if—”
“I cannot.”
Janez’s voice sounded a little firmer to his own ears, but it must have burst forth too sharply, for Alarik drew himself up, chest pushing outwards. His brows came down. And Janez knew, sure as he knew it was daylight outside the windows, that any chance of his brother listening to him had fled.
For this was no brother. This was a king.
“You are a prince,” Alarik said. “Your duty is to your kingdom. Not your heart.”
“All men have a right to love.”
“Not you.”
It seemed to slip out a little too raw, for Alarik winced the moment it escaped. And raw, it stabbed. Truth, yet it stabbed. It pierced Janez’s chest cleaner than any sword. Cold and painful.
And his eyes narrowed in anger.
“Father did. As did you. Why must I marry a foreign princess while you lie with a noblewoman?”
He was making it worse, yet he couldn’t stop himself. The pain—and the anger beginning to burn from the wound—spurred him on. And that, in turn, fuelled his king’s ire, for those stormy blue eyes also narrowed, and the voice was like ice.
“Never. Speak of my wife. In that manner. Again.”
Janez clenched his jaw. The room was pink about the edges. His breathing was too hard.
“You proposed this alliance, Janez. Why the sudden change of heart?”
“I was not in love then.”
“It was but two weeks hence.”
“Things have changed.”
“Some whore or servant changes nothing.”
“I cannot—”
“Greta changed nothing.”
His blood ran cold. Greta. How dare he—Greta. His first love. The mother of his child. The child he had never seen, never known—did not know, even now, if he had some pretty girl or lanky boy roaming about the world, now near grown and likely discovering the joys of men and women for themselves. He could be a grandfather, for all he knew, and how dare Alarik throw Greta in his face like she’d been some common bitch.
“Leave us,” Janez whispered.
The admiral shifted uneasily. The first minister looked a little green about the gills.
“Leave us!”
“You are not king here, Janez,” came the sharp rebuke, and Janez lifted furious eyes to his bro—his king.
No brother. Not here. Not now.
“You will not wish any, not even your most trusted advisors, to hear what I have to say.”
Alarik tensed.
For a long moment, there was nothing but silence. It rang in the room, clearer than any bell. A great oppressive thing, heavy and physical.
Then the chair scraped. The king rose. Crossed to the window. Hands clasped behind his back, he watched the busy hive of activity on the harbour and spoke slowly.
Coldly.
The king of a kingdom at war. He had no family in such a voice.
“Leave us.”
This time, there was no hesitation. The admiral bowed out without so much as a word. The first minister, usually so particular, crammed his papers together and scurried after. The silent priest did not linger.
And then the great door closed, and they were alone.
“It is that foreign spy.”
Janez knew better than to speak.
“You would betray your kingdom for a foreign spy.”
“I betray nothing!”
“We have one chance, this alliance, and—”
“I am not your heir!” Janez exploded. He flew up from the table. The chair toppled, and crashed to the floor. “You have a daughter! A son! If Sofia’s complexion is to be believed, you will have a third before the summer comes! Why must I be the one sacrificed, when I have found love!”
“You have no right to love!”
Alarik’s thunderous reply stopped Janez short.
“You have no right,” Alarik repeated and finally turned from the window. “You may not be my direct heir, but Sigurd has no sons. Yours may well be future kings. This alliance would last for centuries—so do your
damned duty, and—”
“Duty,” Janez sneered. “I have done every duty you have ever demanded of me, and now this.”
“You will always do every duty I demand of you. I am your king.”
“I was your brother, once.”
Alarik’s jaw visibly tightened. He turned back to the window. His hands, still clasped behind his back, clutched about one another into tight fists and shook faintly.
“Other kings have young sons and would entertain Ingrid for many summers in hopes of a match. Yet more have infant daughters, who would make pretty wives in time for your boy. They know nothing of love. They can grow together with their betrothed and love them. But I—I have found it, I do know it, and you would—”
“I would have a prince of my kingdom do as he is ordered.”
The reply twisted that shard of ice buried in Janez’s chest, and he swallowed. Looked down at the table and his shaking hands, pale fists upon it.
“You would have your brother miserable for the rest of his days,” Janez whispered. The truth—the pain, the anger, the burden of the second son only released from kingship in adulthood, too late to have enjoyed his youth—bled out like a suppurating wound. “You would make Father proud. Strip Janez of love, wherever he may find it, and condemn him to misery under the guise of a duty you yourself have never followed.”
The movement flashed in the dim room. The blow was heavy and hard. The ring—the sigil of their people—slashed into Janez’s jaw and left a great, gaping cut.
Slowly, painfully, Janez turned his face from window to his king’s face.
And smiled.
It felt brittle. A bubble of blood burst and dripped down his cheek. His collar was damp.
And Alarik’s face was stunned. Eyes wide and absurdly young.
“I have no right to love, Your Majesty, because the kings of my land forbid it,” Janez said. “I have found it—twice—and twice it has been cut out from under me.”
Alarik licked his lips. “Jan—”
“I will pick whichever bride can birth a son the earliest,” Janez said icily, “and I will do my damned duty until she swells. And when she does, I will don my lieutenant’s uniform and return to the sea, and then I will pray—day and night until some god listens—for the storms to drown me and release me.”
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