Epilogue
Palahmed watched the two across the table for a moment, then leaned over to his brother. “Hero worship?”
Safir snorted. “Obvious, isn’t it?” He considered Palahmed with an amused expression. “Envious?”
“No,” he scoffed.
“Certain about that?”
“I’m certain I need some sleep.” Not that he’d be able to.
Safir half rose. “I’m off to find a fuck. Care to join?”
“I said I need sleep.”
“Suit yourself, old man.”
His brother knocked his empty ale cup against Palahmed’s, then left the table. In his absence, the usual evening bustle of Rhys’s hall pressed up against Palahmed’s senses.
He wasn’t old, not objectively. But sometimes, when everyone around him was enjoying life and all its trappings… he felt weary. And irritable.
His eyes met the bright green gaze of the lad across the table.
Weary and irritable and unwillingly aroused.
The lad grinned at him, then turned back to Arthur. “How soon ’til winter camp?”
Arthur laughed. “We just got back from summer campaign. Celebrate. Aren’t you going to get some ink?”
Gwalchmai shrugged. “Maybe.”
“It hardly hurts,” Arthur said and winked at Palahmed.
Gwalchmai glanced at Palahmed as well, before saying, “I’m not afraid of pain. Palahmed doesn’t have ink—”
How did he know?
“—and he’s not afraid of pain. Are you, Palahmed?”
Afraid of it?
Sometimes he wondered if he craved it.
The lad turned back to Arthur as if his point had been made. “See? Besides, the ink man’s been busy with Bedwyr, hasn’t he? What’s he getting?”
“Wouldn’t tell me,” Arthur said, scanning the hall.
And then it happened, the transformation Palahmed had witnessed countless times over the summer as he’d fought with the young warriors from the mountains. He’d seen it on Bedwyr’s face too, but Arthur was less adept at masking it. It was probably only a subtle shift of muscle, but nothing so mundane could encompass the result: an expression that said a man had just spotted the one who made up his entire world.
It was rare.
It was beautiful.
It made him want to cut his own throat.
Bedwyr approached their table, his shirt draped over an arm. With his burly chest and dark hair, he was very much the picture of his father, Lord Uthyr, minus one hand and a cartload of arrogance.
Arthur rose from his seat, grinning. “Well?”
Bedwyr nodded to Palahmed, then to Gwalchmai, and then snagged the lad’s cup and sipped from it, as if he had all night.
Impatient, Arthur rounded him until he could see Bedwyr’s back…
…and his smile fell. Not all the way to a frown, more to a surprised blankness. He blinked, and then his dove-colored gaze—so strange on a fellow otherwise so vibrant—surveyed Bedwyr’s back.
“What is it?” Gwalchmai asked, and Palahmed had the odd urge to hush him, as if they’d stumbled on a private moment.
Bedwyr turned to show them, and the pieces fell into place.
Spanning the height and width of his muscular back was the figure of a bear, rampant and fierce.
Slowly, Arthur stepped back around until he faced Bedwyr. They looked at each other for a long moment, during which the hall rightly should have combusted around them, and then Arthur took hold of Bedwyr’s face and kissed him.
Palahmed couldn’t look away. He’d heard the rumors; Rhys’s hall was a marketplace for information as much as tangible goods. Elain had confirmed the whispers when she’d recounted her time in the mountains. But though the devotion between these two was apparent to anyone paying attention, they hadn’t yet shown it like this—with a searing kiss that went on for several breaths while hundreds watched. One such observer whistled, and another called out, and Palahmed wondered what Uthyr was thinking, until he recalled seeing the warlord leave the hall sometime before with the redheaded whore named Nan. The din grew raucous, and Arthur broke the embrace to murmur something in Bedwyr’s ear. Bedwyr turned and they walked calmly toward the doorway, one behind the other, slipping through the open entry and out into the night.
When Palahmed turned back to his cup, Gwalchmai was watching him.
This would be the perfect time to go to bed.
The lad picked up Arthur’s abandoned cup and drank, looking at Palahmed over the rim.
The perfect time to fail to sleep.
Gwalchmai set down the cup, licking his lips. “Why didn’t you go with Safir?”
An excellent question, to which he had no good answer. “Wasn’t finished with my ale.”
Gwalchmai leaned across the table and peered into Palahmed’s cup. His dark hair, trimmed short in the style of Lot’s men, was a riot of curls after a summer’s growth. They looked as though they would whisper between Palahmed’s fingers.
Gwalchmai looked up at him with a crooked smile. “Cup’s empty.”
“Time for bed, then.”
But he didn’t move.
And the lad noticed. With those quick green eyes that seemed to see everything.
He rose and came ’round to sit on the bench next to Palahmed, leaning back against the table. He brought with him the scent of his sweat, which tweaked Palahmed’s throat, made his tongue ache.
“When you go with Safir, what do you look for?”
“A willing partner.”
“In a brothel?” Gwalchmai laughed softly. “Sounds easy. Is there a catch?” His gaze warmed the side of Palahmed’s face. “With you?”
There was, and handing it to this one would be a grave mistake.
“Come,” the lad said, knocking a knuckle to his shoulder. “We’ve fought together now. Do you like someone loud or quiet?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Round or slim?”
A game. Wonderful. “Slim.”
“Pale or dark?”
He turned to Gwalchmai. The summer had done little to bake his skin golden. He’d had a perpetual sunburn throughout the campaigns. Setting it off, always, had been those dark curls and mischievous eyebrows. “Both.”
The lad looked from one of Palahmed’s eyes to the other and swallowed. The lines of his throat were smooth, the sinew supple. “Beautiful… or handsome?” he asked softly.
No. This wasn’t going to happen.
So he let his gaze drop over Gwalchmai’s narrow chest and wiry arms, his hands that clutched each other, his strong thighs. Raising his eyes, he took in the delicate cleft chin, rosy lips, and freckled nose. The maddeningly long lashes. The eyes like moss in a forest glade.
“Pretty,” he said.
Gwalchmai blinked. He turned away swiftly to look out over the hall. His hands worked themselves in and out of fists. His chest rose and fell on quickening breaths. With a final, decisive inhale, he turned back to Palahmed. “Would you—”
Palahmed pressed a fingertip to the lad’s lips, silencing him.
He couldn’t do this again.
He couldn’t even pretend it had only happened once before.
Slowly, he lifted his finger. “How old are you?”
Gwalchmai frowned and straightened. “Twenty.”
Not a day past fifteen; Palahmed would have laid his meager savings on it. “Seven,” he said and rose from the bench.
The lad stood. “Seven what?”
“Years.” Palahmed looked down to him. “If you still want to ask me that question in seven years, you may.”
That sweet chin dropped. “Seven years?”
Palahmed could scarcely believe he’d managed to say it, but the young one’s outrage gave him the rare feeling he’d done something right. Relieved, he allowed himself a teasing smile. “Some things are worth the wait, Gwalchmai.”
“That’s a cradle name,” the lad said, glaring at him. “My true one is Gawain.”
Palahmed groaned inwardly. It was too much knowledge. He didn’t want to know this lad’s true name—the name that would follow him into manhood. Didn’t want it branded into his mind like this.
Because he wouldn’t be able to forget now. Not even with seven years to try.
He performed a desperately brief bow. “Goodnight.” Entirely against his will, his treacherous tongue added, “Gawain.”
The lad’s eyes flared, liquid in the torchlight.
Palahmed turned and made his escape, the shape of the name still in his mouth, soft, breathy, relentless, like a desert wind set to drive a man mad.
End of Book 3
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