Page 53 of Fought it Through the Teeth

Then he walks over to the tub.

He has no self-preservation instincts whatsoever. He knows this about himself. He has known it since he was sixteen and invited a night guard into the stables, since he was seventeen and fell into a fjord drunk while trying to impress a boy, and the stronghold did nothing to improve it. Morgan's relationship with self-preservation is adversarial at best, and right now, standing beside a tin tub in which a naked man is soaking with his eyes closed, it has packed its bags and left entirely.

He crouches down beside the tub. His knees press against the worn floorboards and his elbows rest on the rim. Bohdi opens both eyes and regards him.

His eyes fix on Morgan's face with the focused attention that Bohdi gives to things he considers important, which is a short list that includes Eskil and weapons and Morgan, in an order Morgan has never been sure of.

"I keep seeing his eyes when I close mine," Morgan says.

He says it because he knows Bohdi won't judge him. Despite every mistake he's made, despite all the trouble Bohdi has hauled him out of, the man has never once judged him. Criticized him, yes. Protected him, constantly. Picked him up and dusted him off and set him back on his feet with a grin and a shove, every single time. But judged, looked at him and found him wanting, looked at him and decided he was less, never.

"That's the first time you've killed someone," Bohdi says.

It isn't really a question. He knows.

Morgan nods anyway.

Bohdi's expression softens. It's a small shift, a loosening around the eyes, a slight drop in the set of his jaw. It transforms his face from the hard, guarded blankness of rest to something gentler and more open, something that Morgan has seen so rarely he can count the instances on one hand. One damp hand comes up out of the water and cups Morgan's cheek. Carefully. The thumb rests against the edge of the bruise without pressing on it, and the fingers curve around his jaw, and the warmth of the wet hand against his skin is so acute Morgan has to close his eyes against it.

"He was going to kill you," Bohdi says. His voice is calm. Certain. Weighted with the peace he's had to make with every life he's taken. "That's on him. Not on you."

Morgan opens his eyes. He stands. He moves back to the bed.

He doesn't look when he hears Bohdi get out of the bath and towel off. He wants to. Gods, he wants to. Even feeling the way he feels, hollowed out, haunted, bruised in places Ivan's hands never reached, of course he still wants him. If anything he wants him more than he did, which he suspects says something unflattering about him. Something about need and desperation and the alchemy that turns trauma into wanting, that makes a body reach for the thing that feels safe because the world has proven itself unsafe, and Bohdi is the safest thing Morgan has ever known.

Because if it hadn't been for Bohdi⁠—

He can't get the look in Ivan's eyes out of his head. That sick delight when he said he would break Morgan one way or the other. That flat, practical certainty. Not a threat. A schedule. And Morgan had come close to agreeing to marry that man, before Bohdi found out about the Jakadi. What would have happened if he had ridden into that stronghold alone?

The question opens beneath him and he falls into it.

Alone. No Bohdi. Just Morgan, in a room, with a man twice his size who wanted to own him, and no dagger in his boot because Bohdi was the one who put it there.

He would be in that stronghold right now, married, or dead, or the thing that lives between the two that Ivan had in mind for him, breathing but broken, obedient but empty, a prince-shaped vessel with nothing inside it but compliance.

He doesn't notice he's crying until Bohdi is standing in front of him.

Bohdi is in trousers and nothing else, water still running in tracks down his chest and his arms. His hair is hanging loose and dark around his face, and he's looking at Morgan with an expression that has no grin in it and no charm in it and no performance in it whatsoever.

He tips Morgan's chin up with two fingers.

Morgan doesn't resist. His face is wet and his eyes are burning and his composure is in ruins on the floor around him and he cannot pick it up, and Bohdi sees all of it, the tears, the bruise, the split lip, the marks on his throat.

Bohdi pulls him in.

Both arms around his shoulders, no hesitation, and Morgan presses his face into Bohdi's bare chest and gets both arms around his waist and holds on. Bohdi's skin is warm and damp from the bath and smells of soap, and underneath the soap it smells of him. It is the scent that Morgan has cataloged and hoarded and dreamed about, the scent that means safety and home and the one person in the world Morgan trusts to see him like this and not think less of him.

He cries. His fingers dig into the skin of Bohdi's back. His face is wet against Bohdi's chest.

Bohdi holds him through all of it. His arms are tight and his chin rests on the top of Morgan's head and his hand is in Morgan's wet hair and he doesn't say a word, and Morgan cries and cries until there's nothing left, and then he breathes, and Bohdi is still there.

Chapter 26

Bohdi

The prince is holding up shockingly well considering what he's weathered, and Bohdi has no idea how to help him through it.

He's been killing people since he was half-grown. His first was a raider on the eastern road, a man who came at him out of the treeline when Bohdi was fifteen and riding supply escort. Bohdi put an axe through his collarbone and watched him drop and felt nothing except the sharp, clarifying satisfaction of having done something correctly. He's done worse than this for Eskil and would do worse still tomorrow. He has sat across from prisoners in cells and extracted information with his hands and a blade and the focused patience that Eskil relies on him for because Eskil knows Bohdi can do it without losing himself in it. He has always been the one who does what needs doing, not because Eskil won't, because Eskil most certainly will, but because Bohdi can do it for him. He can be the blade so his king doesn't have to be.