26. Killian

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

KILLIAN

I t didn't make sense, to be both relived and angry at the same time.

Orestes was leaving. Not of his own volition, because the fucking arrogant clan chiefs had decided they knew better than he did about how he should live his life. But he'd be safer than he was on the wall.

I would never wake up to the news that the latest southland incursion had killed him.

That was good. Right? Even if I lost, Orestes was getting something good out of this. I'd have said Nemeda was getting something out of this ridiculous decision, but no, they were throwing him away. Urial was getting him, as much as they didn't deserve him.

They had tried to murder Hector, after all. Who was to say they wouldn't try to murder Orestes too?

If they did, by the winds, I'd fly up there myself and kill every one of them with my bare fucking hands.

I almost leapt at motion to my right, as Hector sat himself next to me. "Sorry to bother you, but I... I wanted to talk."

It was ridiculous that here, surrounded by the people who were supposed to be my countrymen, my heart was pounding at someone coming up behind me. I should be able to trust my safety here, of all places.

But hadn't yesterday's meeting been a reminder that even the people I thought were my friends could easily turn their backs on me for the sake of their own convenience? Not Brett, no, but Balthazar had cared more about political bullshit than about Orestes.

As ever, I promised myself that I would never hold a single human life in lower regard than political convenience. Not even Balthazar, even if he'd done that very thing. Not even a southlander. Life was more important, always.

I'd held true to it.

What else had Carlyle been, after all?

I'd been a child, yes. So had he. We'd been the sons of respective war leaders, and we had both wanted to see an end of the fighting. We'd both been sickened by the constant war, the loss of generations of young people—men on their side, and everyone on ours—to sate some incomprehensible bloodlust. Because his people wanted to die of Avianitis.

They'd seen it as a trial by fire, he'd told me, and that was important to his people for some reason. Nemedans went to the wall because we needed to. Because we had to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Southlanders went to the wall to prove themselves. Their skill and valor and whatever other prideful nonsense their fathers demanded of them.

We had met in secret for months, trying to find a way to forge peace, but in the end... well, in the end, when his father had told him to prove himself or die, Carlyle had brought his father's men against the wall.

I had killed him myself, with my own spear. I fingered the long white feather, from my own wing, that I'd tied into my hair for him. "You don't bother me," I told Hector. "You've never bothered me."

"You're angry, though."

I snorted and shook my head. "With the clan chiefs. With myself. With the war and all the pointless fucking death. Not you."

He pressed the length of his arm against mine, a warm line against me. Subtle. Quiet. No dramatic statements of intent, just simple support.

It was incredible, what a Crane the man was without even knowing it.

"Still, I wanted to apologize."

I lifted my head, turning to raise a brow at him. "What do you have to apologize for? You're possibly the only person in this whole damned camp who hasn't done a single thing wrong. Well, you and the Hawk Clan."

"Last night, I, ah, I came on very strong. You were right, I was drunk. It wasn't appropriate." He ducked his head, red suffusing his cheeks and making him look positively perfect. Not that he ever looked anything but perfect.

The first moment I'd seen him, even as he'd been—sallow and sweating, unconscious because he was being poisoned by his own people—I'd been struck by the beauty of the man.

I watched as my own hand reached out without my permission to caress his cheek. Not that I'd have stopped it; I simply didn't recall telling it to do that.

"You did nothing wrong," I told him. "Most of us drank, some more than you. That was fine. What would not have been fine was for me to take advantage while you were in that state."

His flush deepened, and he didn't look at me when he said, "I wouldn't have minded. I know... I understand what you're saying. Just, being sober now, I haven't changed my mind. I know you don't want that, but I do. I'm sorry. I really?—"

This time, I was fully in control of my own body, when I leaned in and pressed my lips to his.

He opened to me like a flower in the dawn, and I took every advantage. I slid an arm around him, pulling him close to me, running the hand that had cupped his cheek down his face, his neck, his shoulder, then his tautly muscled chest. His time in the smithy had done impressive things for his physique already.

Hector had been beautiful in Urial. He'd been born that beautiful, likely. He'd had more muscle than his slender waif of a brother since we'd met, but I'd always appreciated that in a bed partner. Strength, both internal and external.

Every single thing about Hector made me want him more. Made him sit there in my mind, stuck on the rocks while everything else flowed through like water.

I was finished pretending otherwise.

So I kissed him with all the passion I had in me. All the anger at the situation with Orestes and the clan chiefs. All the misery at the continuing fucking war. All the frustration at trying to make Hector see that I valued him even as I was trying to keep him off the wall. Most of all, with the passion I'd been withholding, trying to keep to myself because I didn't want to be the one who gave Hector Avianitis.

Well fuck that. He was a grown man. I didn't have the right to keep him off the wall to protect him if he wanted to be there, and neither did I have the right to force him to be protected from Avianitis by pressing him into celibacy.

Hector wasn't a child, and I was done protecting him from himself. From me. If he wanted me, then that was precisely what he would get. I turned and scooped him into my arms, standing and turning toward the tents, all without taking my lips from his.

When we did finally break the kiss, he looked positively debauched, with swollen lips and blown eyes, panting for breath. My own voice was ragged when I spoke. "If you've changed your mind, tell me. Because I'm finished resisting. I mean to have you, and if you don't want that, I have to know now."

Instead of answering immediately, he grabbed my face with both hands and pressed into another devouring kiss. There were wolf whistles behind us, but I paid them no mind, focused on not falling down as I dragged Hector back to my tent. When he pulled away again, his eyes were wild. "I'm never going to change my mind. I want this. Want you."

"Even with an audience of the whole fucking meeting?" I asked as another whistle sounded from behind us.

He snorted, and didn't so much as glance away from me. "They're just jealous. And they should be. Now take me to bed. Right now."