Page 103 of Tending the Ache

"Don't do anything stupid," he says. Quiet enough that only his brother hears.

Morgan rolls his eyes. "I'll leave that to Bohdi."

"I'm serious."

"So am I. Have you met him? The man's approach to subtlety is to hit things."

Eskil tightens his grip on Morgan's shoulder. Morgan's composure wavers, a hairline fracture visible for a breath, and then holds. His hand comes up and grips Eskil's forearm, fingers pressing hard into the leather bracer, and they stand like that for a moment. Holding on.

Eskil has held this boy through nightmares and fevers and the first broken bone and the aftermath of every loss, from scraped knees to dead parents. He has been Morgan's brother and father and king and shield, and now he is sending him south with nothing but a man with an axe and the desperate, irrational faith that it will be enough.

"Come home," Eskil says. The words are rough. He does not dress them up. "That is not a request."

Morgan's jaw tightens. His fingers press harder into Eskil's arm. Then he says, with the ghost of a smile, "You could always order it. You are the king."

"As your king, then. Come home."

"I'll see what I can do."

Eskil pulls him forward and embraces him. It is not the dignified, restrained clasp of a king and his emissary. It is two arms around his brother, one hand cradling the back of his head, holding him the way he held him when Morgan was six years old and shaking with grief on the night their mother died. Morgan's arms come around him in return, gripping the back of his coat, and for three seconds neither of them is a king or a prince or a diplomat or a strategist. They are just brothers.

Eskil lets go first, because someone has to, and it is always his job to be the one who does.

Morgan steps back. Clears his throat. Adjusts his satchel strap with hands that are no longer perfectly steady. "Right," he says, and his voice is tight. "Well. Try not to let the kingdom collapse while I'm gone."

"No promises."

Eskil goes to Bohdi next. He has his axe strapped to his back, braided red hair bright against the dark leather of his riding cloak.

He looks at his second-in-command, his oldest friend, the man who has fought beside him for fifteen years and has never once failed him, and says nothing for a long moment.

Bohdi finds his voice first, all humor gone from his face.

"I will bring him back to you," he promises.

Eskil touches his forehead to Bohdi's. Their heads press together for a beat, and Bohdi's hand comes up and grips the back of Eskil's neck, hard and brief.

"Bring both of you back," Eskil says. "I did not give you a choice about the first part and I am not giving you one about the second."

"As you say, my king."

Bohdi mounts his horse with ease. Then he pulls back, settles his reins, and kicks his horse into motion. Morgan falls in behind and they move through the courtyard and toward the gates.

Eskil watches them go.

Morgan does not look back. Bohdi does, once, a glance over his shoulder, brief and sharp, and then faces forward. The gates open. The column passes through. The sound of hoofbeats on stone gives way to the softer thud of hoofbeats on earth, diminishing, diminishing, and then the gates close and the courtyard is empty and the silence that fills it is immense.

Eskil stands in it.

The keep has never been quiet. Not truly. There have always been people in it, servants and guards and counselors and the constant background hum of governance, but it has never felt empty the way it does now, with Morgan's absence pressing against the walls like something physical. The absence has weight. It has edges. It occupies the space Morgan left the way water occupies a vessel, filling every corner, and Eskil is drowning in it already and his brother has been gone for less than a minute.

He is aware, distantly, that people are watching him. The guards on the steps. The attendants in the doorway. They are waiting for the king to turn around and go inside and do whatever kings do after they send people away. They are waiting for him to be steady, because that is what he does. That is what he is for.

He stares at the closed gates and cannot make his feet move.

Fucking useless, he thinks, with the vicious self-directed contempt that lives in the cavity where softer men keep their grace. You can kill a man with your bare hands but you cannot watch your brother ride away without falling apart like a—

A hand slides into his.