Later, Makedon took Laurent by the shoulder and told him about the hunting in his own region, where there were no longer lions as in days of old, but still great beasts befitting a king’s hunt. Hunting reminiscences went on for several more cups and brought out a great deal of fellow feeling. Everyone was toasting lions by the time Makedon clasped Laurent by the shoulder again in a way that indicated his farewell, and rose, making for bed. The bannermen followed him, weaving.
Laurent maintained a scrupulous posture until they were all gone, his eyes dilated, his cheeks slightly flushed. Damen spread his arm over the back of his own seat and waited.
After a long moment, Laurent said, ‘I’m going to need some help standing up.’
* * *
He wasn’t expecting to receive Laurent’s full weight, but he did, a warm arm slung around his neck, and he was suddenly breathless with the feeling of Laurent in his arms. His hands came up to steady Laurent’s waist, his heart behaving strangely. It was sweetly, impossibly illicit. He felt the ache in his chest.
Damen said, ‘The Prince and I are retiring,’ and waved the lingering slaves out.
‘It’s this way,’ said Laurent. ‘Probably.’
The hall was strewn with the last bits of the gathering, wine cups and empty couches. They passed Philoctus of Eilon, sprawled out on one of them, his head on his arms, sleeping as deeply as if in his own bed. He was snoring.
‘Is today the first time you’ve been beaten in an okton?’
&nbs
p; ‘Technically, it was a draw,’ said Damen.
‘Technically. I told you I was quite good at riding. I used to beat Auguste all the time when we raced at Chastillon. It took me until I was nine to realise he was letting me win. I just thought I had a very fast pony. You’re smiling.’
He was smiling. They stood in one of the passages, wells of moonlight from the open archways to their left.
‘Am I talking too much? I can’t hold alcohol at all.’
‘I can see that.’
‘It’s my fault. I never drink. I should have realised I’d need to, with men like these, and made an effort to . . . build up some sort of tolerance . . .’ He was serious.
‘Is that how your mind works?’ said Damen. ‘And what do you mean, you never drink? I think you’re protesting a little much. You were drunk the first night I met you.’
‘I made an exception,’ said Laurent, ‘that night. Two and a half bottles. I had to force myself to get it down. I thought it would be easier drunk.’
‘You thought what would be easier?’ said Damen.
‘“What”?’ said Laurent. ‘You.’
Damen felt the hairs rise over his whole body. Laurent said it softly, and as though it was obvious, his blue eyes a little hazy, his arm still around Damen’s neck. They were gazing at one another, halted in the half-light of the passage.
‘My Akielon bed slave,’ said Laurent, ‘named for the man who killed my brother.’
Damen drew in a painful breath. ‘It’s not much further,’ he said.
They went through passages, past the high archways and the windows along the northern side with their Veretian grilles. It wasn’t unusual for two young men to wander the halls together, swaying, after a revel—even among princes—and Damen could pretend for a moment that they were what they seemed to be: brothers in arms. Friends.
The guards on either side of the entrance were too well trained to react to the presence of royalty leaning all over each other. They passed through the outer doors to the innermost chamber. Here, the low, reclining bed was in the Akielon style, the base carved in marble. It was simple, open to the night from its base to its curved headrest.
‘No one is to enter,’ Damen ordered the guards.
He was aware of the implication—Damianos entering a bedchamber with a young man in his arms and ordering everyone out—and he ignored it. If Isander suddenly had a startling reason why the frigid Prince of Vere had foregone his services, so be it. Laurent, intensely private, would not want his household present while he dealt with the effects of a night’s worth of drinking.
Laurent was going to wake with a blinding headache fuelling his corrosive tongue, and pity anyone who ran into him then.
As for Damen, he was going to give Laurent a push in the small of his back and send him staggering the four steps to the bed. Damen unlooped Laurent’s arm from his neck, disengaged himself. Laurent took a step under his own power, and lifted a hand to his jacket, blinking.
‘Attend me,’ Laurent said, unthinkingly.