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Patrick pressed the tips of his fingers down against the leather of the chair to keep his hands from clenching into fists as Oliver took Mal’ik’s empty glass as well and walked away. That was the second time in as many days that someone had lambasted him for doing the right fucking thing.
Fal’ran and Oliver. Both young and cocky and beautiful, with the world spread out at their feet. The rules were different for them. What did they know about what Patrick had to do?
Mal’ik grimaced and reached across to pat Patrick’s knee. “I’m sorry about him.”
“Don’t be.” Patrick waved his hand. He snorted and let some of the tension bleed out of him. “I’ll take it as a compliment that he cares.”
“He does care.” Mal’ik leaned back but held Patrick’s gaze. “Because I care. You deserve to be happy, Patrick.”
Deserve. Patrick didn’t deserve anything. But he smiled at Mal’ik anyway because god knew his friend deserved it. “Did I ever say I wasn’t happy?”
A rueful smile tugged Mal’ik’s scars up around his tusks. “I’m realizing there are lots of things you don’t say.”
Patrick blew a breath out of his lips and dropped the back of his head onto the chair and looked up at the gaudy chandelier he hadn’t even noticed before. “I wasn’t trying to keep secrets. We just don’t talk about these sorts of things. We never have.” He wrinkled his nose up at the hanging crystal. “I’d like to be done talking about them now, if you don’t mind.”
He heard Mal’ik chuckle. “Alright, what do you want to talk about?”
“Tactics.” Patrick dropped his chin back down, his chest loosening as they moved back into safe topics. “Guns, gatlungs, lifting.”
“Manly man things.” Oliver returned with his pretty lips twisted up and handed a refilled glass to Mal’ik. “Enjoy.”
He picked his darts back up off the side table and returned to his mark in front of the board. Mal’ik watched him go with a sweetness in his eyes that made Patrick avert his gaze, like it was too intimate for him to see.
Chapter Eight
Fal’ran dragged the whetstone along the serrated edge of the gatlung with a satisfying shhhink.
He knew who he wanted to use the gatlung’s wicked blade on.
Shhhink.
A certain pompous, traitorous, former captain who had looked at Fal’ran like he was the jungle dirt caked into the tread of his boots.
Shhhink.
A certain scarred up giant of a man who Smith looked at like the whole fucking sector revolved around him.
Fal’ran didn’t bother to pretend it hadn’t been jealousy that had lanced through his chest a week ago, when Smith had looked down from the tree they sat in together, seen Mal’ik of Klah, and rappelled down to him without a second thought, with his whole face transformed into pure joy and his blue eyes shining, leaving Fal’ran forgotten behind him.
So that was how Smith looked at someone when they really had his attention, when they really mattered to him.
It wasn’t anything at all like the way Smith looked at Fal’ran.
“You’re sharpening it again.”
“Hm?” Fal’ran looked up from the blade to see Bar’in scowling at him from across the tent.
“You’re sharpening it again. You’re supposed to be dulling it.”
“Right.” Fal’ran shook his head to clear it of his half-furious, half-melancholy thoughts. “I know that.”
Dulling the blades. Shaaank. The Trial was tomorrow and while it was brutal and dangerous as all hell, it wasn’t meant to kill half the new Klah’Eel recruits. They’d be using paint-filled fake bullets and dulled gatlungs. Which was why Fal’ran was supposed to dull the pile of four gatlungs at his feet.
Bar’in sighed from where he sat straddling the weight bench behind Tar, his delicate fingers picking apart the knots in Tar’s thick hair. “They’re not fucking, you know.”
Fal’ran scowled. Shaaank. “Who?”
Sazahk piped up from his cross-legged seat on his desk chair, oblivious to Fal’ran’s I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-it tone. “Patrick and Mal’ik. They’re not fucking. They might have in the past, I wouldn’t know about that, but Mal’ik is in a very serious relationship with the youngest Turner brother and I’m very sure he’s the monogamous type.”
