Page 18 of Tending the Ache

Morgan pales. The color drains from his face in a visible tide, forehead to cheeks to jaw, and for one unguarded second he looks exactly like the boy he is. Twenty years old, caught in a lie by the same man who always catches him, and scrambling for purchase.

"I was going to tell you," Morgan says. "The timing wasn't—"

"The timing."

"There was the Jakadi situation. The attack on Askarte. The aftermath of mobilizing the defense. I was managing four separate crises simultaneously and the envoy from the Wolfe clan was not the most pressing—"

Eskil watches his brother's mouth move and sees right through every word the way he has seen through every excuse Morgan has made since the boy was old enough to make them. Morgan lies the same way he does everything else, with precision and competence and an attention to detail that would fool anyone who has not spent twenty years studying the tells that accompany his dishonesty. The way his left hand drifts to his side as though reaching for the documents that are his armor. The way his chin lifts a fraction, not defiance but performance. The way his sentences grow longer, more complex, weighted with justifications that multiply as his confidence in them diminishes.

Eskil lets him talk. He lets the excuses unspool and pile on the floor between them, and when Morgan finally runs out of thread, his voice trailing off mid-sentence, his hand falling still at his side, Eskil asks the only question that matters.

"What did you tell the Wolfe clan?"

Morgan straightens his spine. The caught look vanishes, replaced by something more careful, more deliberate, the composure he wears to deliver unwelcome news. His chin lifts again, but this time it is not performance. It is preparation.

"I told them I would consider it," he says.

The silence that follows has the quality of a held breath before a plunge.

Eskil does not raise his voice. He does not hit the wall or overturn the table or do any of the dozen things his body is screaming at him to do. He goes quiet. The kind of quiet that goes inward instead of outward, that pulls the fury down into the marrow where it can burn unseen and unfelt by anyone except the man standing in front of him, who knows from a lifetime of experience that quiet Eskil is significantly worse than loud Eskil.

Loud Eskil breaks things. Quiet Eskil decides things.

"You told them," Eskil says, and each word is measured and deliberate, set down one at a time, "that you would consider it."

Morgan doesn't hold his gaze. "Yes."

"You told a foreign chieftain that the prince of Rengara would consider being handed over as a bride. Without consulting your king."

"You were not here to consult."

"I am here now, Morgan."

Morgan swallows. The motion is visible, a bob of his throat, a flicker of something in his pale eyes that might be hesitation or might be resolve or might be both braided together so tightly they cannot be separated. He holds his ground. His spine does not bend.

"You are not property to be bartered away for political advantage," Eskil says. "Is that clear?"

Morgan's chin lifts. Higher. The angle of it is fierce. He meets Eskil's gaze again.

"Actually," Morgan says, and his voice is steady and clear and carries the weight of something he has been thinking about for a long time, "that is exactly what a prince's duties are. And it would be the most useful I could ever be to you in my lifetime."

The words go in ragged and tear worse on the way out.

Eskil stares at his brother. At his brilliant, invaluable, irreplaceable brother, who is standing in a library with his ink-stained fingers curled at his sides and his jaw set and his eyes bright with a conviction that is indistinguishable from pain, and who has just said, with absolute sincerity, that the most valuable thing he could do for his kingdom is warm a stranger’s bed.

Something cracks behind Eskil's ribs. Not breaks. Cracks, the way stone cracks when the frost gets into it, a fissure that runs deep and does not heal.

"Morgan." His voice has changed. The measured control is gone. What is left is rawer, stripped of the kingly armor, and it sounds, even to his own ears, wounded.

Morgan does not flinch. He waits.

"You are irreplaceable," Eskil says. "You keep this kingdom steady in my absence. Your advice, your diplomacy, your mind are priceless. I could not rule without you and I have never wanted to."

He means every word. He means them with a ferocity that surprises even him, because he has always known these things and has never once said them, not like this, not with his chest open and his guard down and his brother standing in front of him looking as though he genuinely does not believe he is worth more than a trade agreement.

This is Eskil's failure. Not the council's. Not the Wolfe chieftain's. His.

He has spent two decades loving this boy, fiercely and protectively, with a devotion that would burn cities, and until this moment he has never told him in plain language what he is worth. He has shown it a thousand ways, in food rationed and men killed and languages learned and a kingdom held together with bare hands so that Morgan could grow up safe inside it, but he has not said it, because Eskil does not say things. Eskil hits things and fixes things and stands between his people and whatever is trying to destroy them, and he has always assumed that actions were sufficient.