Page 38 of Tending the Ache

"I didn't know Harrak would show an interest in you," Ermin says, pacing the length of the clinic. "I didn't think. I should have stayed closer. And when I found out what happened I went straight to Harrak and told the man, in no uncertain terms, that you were being courted by the king—"

Every thought in Indrie's head goes out at once.

It is not gradual. It is a shutter coming down. Everything in motion, his breath, his pulse, the sentence he had been assembling, lurches forward and hangs there, suspended.

"Hold on," he says. "Wait. You told him what?"

Ermin blinks. The pacing stops. He turns to Indrie with the expression of somebody who has said something perfectly obvious and does not understand why it is being questioned.

"I told him you were spoken for," Ermin says.

"Spoken for?" Indrie repeats. His voice sounds strange to his own ears, thin and high and breathless, as though the words are being squeezed out of him.

"Yes. I told him he needs to know about you and the king."

Indrie feels lightheaded. Actually, physically lightheaded, the room tilting slightly, the lamplight smearing at the edges of his vision. He lowers himself onto the edge of the examination table because his legs have apparently decided they no longer wish to support his weight, and presses a hand over his heart, which is doing something alarming and fluttery that he would diagnose in a patient as arrhythmia and recognizes in himself as pure distilled panic.

"Ermin." He reaches out and grabs the boy's hand with both of his. His grip is tight. "Why would you tell someone that?"

Ermin is confused. Genuinely, plainly confused, the furrow between his brows deep, his mouth slightly open, a young man who has been asked to explain why the sky is blue and cannot fathom why the question exists.

"Because he needs to know?" Ermin says, as though this is self-evident. As though the answer is so obvious that the question is an insult to both their intelligences. “Do you really think he would have had the gall to approach you if he knew you belonged to–”

"Ermin." Indrie takes a breath. Forces it out. Takes another. "The king is not courting me."

Ermin raises both eyebrows. High. Skeptically. They climb with the slow deliberate incredulity of a man who has been told water is not wet and is waiting for the person who said it to hear themselves.

"He's not," Indrie insists. His face is flaming. He can feel the heat of it radiating outward from his cheeks, probably visible from across the room, probably visible from across the city.

"But you spent the night with him on the ship," Ermin says, and begins counting on his fingers with the relentless itemized precision of a man building a legal case. One finger. "Twice." Two fingers. "You're wearing his clothes." He gestures at the oversized shirt with his third finger. "He just walked you home from the keep." Fourth finger. "After you ran to him.”

Each point lands and Indrie watches them land and cannot produce a single credible rebuttal.

"It's not– That's not– It's not like that," he stammers, and even as the words leave his mouth he can hear how unconvincing they are. He sounds like a man trying to put out a house fire with a teaspoon. He sounds like a man who does not believe his own argument.

Ermin throws his hands up. The gesture is full-bodied and expansive and occupies a significant portion of the clinic's available airspace. "Well, why not?"

The question hangs in the air. Simple. Direct. Devastating in its simplicity.

Why not?

Why not be courted by a king who jumped into a storm for him. Why not be wanted by a man who knelt beside him and cleaned blood from his face with hands gentler than any that have ever touched him. Why not be loved by the person whose shirt he wears to bed because the smell of it is the closest thing to safety he has ever known.

Why not?

Because Eskil told him no. Because you'll never belong to me is not a sentence that leaves room for interpretation. Because Indrie asked and was answered and the answer was clear and complete and final, and the fact that his heart did not receive the message does not mean the message was not sent.

Indrie sighs. The sigh comes from somewhere deep, below his ribs, below his diaphragm, from the place where exhaustion lives when it has been accumulating for months. He rubs his face with both hands and the gesture tugs at the wound on his temple and the pain is grounding in its small practical way.

"It isn't that simple," he says. His voice is quieter now. The flaming embarrassment has cooled to something duller and heavier. "There are things about it you don't know. I'm trying to make a life here and not be a burden to anyone while I do it."

Ermin groans. The groan is full-bodied and despairing, the complete and total groan of an eighteen-year-old confronted with an adult who is being needlessly and catastrophically obtuse. His head tips back. His arms drop to his sides. He addresses the ceiling briefly, as though seeking divine intervention, and then looks back at Indrie with a fierce frustrated tenderness that has run out of patience for being polite.

"You're not a burden, Indrie." He steps closer. His voice has changed, still young, still bright, but underpinned now by something steadier, something that sounds almost like the man he is becoming. "The king risked his life to save you. He obviously thinks highly of you. And you—"

He pokes Indrie's chest. One firm, pointed finger, pressed against his sternum.

"You are the best thing that has happened to this city in years. Everyone says so. Everyone is better for you being in Valen."