Page 60 of Fought it Through the Teeth

The bank is mud and loose stone and the horse's hooves are slipping, each stride less certain than the last, and the warriors have separated, splitting to either side to force him to choose a target. The one on the right circles toward Morgan. Bohdi makes the choice. He drives the horse at the man moving toward Morgan and the man sees him coming and sets his feet and swings, a rising cut aimed at the horse's chest, and Bohdi wrenches the reins hard left and the horse shies and the blade misses by inches and Bohdi leans out of the saddle and opens the man's shoulder on the pass. Not deep enough. The man staggers but doesn't fall and his partner is closing from the flank.

The horse stumbles. The footing on the bank is gone and Bohdi feels the lurch, the sickening sideways tilt that means the horse is going down, and he kicks free of the stirrups and drops. He lands in the mud on both feet with the sword in his left hand and the hunting knife in his right, and his grip on the knife is bad and the fingers don't want to close properly.

The man with the wounded shoulder comes at him immediately. No hesitation, pressing the advantage before Bohdi can set his feet, and the sword comes in fast and low. Bohdi parries with Ivan's blade and the impact travels through his wrist and his forearm and jars the ruined right shoulder, and the pain is extraordinary, a white-hot shriek that runs through his entire right side, and for a half-second his guard drops and the man's backswing catches him across the forearm. The cut is shallow but it bleeds freely and the blood makes the sword grip slick and Bohdi adjusts, tightening his fingers, and drives forward. He feints high and goes low and the sword finds the gap between the man's hip and his belt and sinks in three inches and the man buckles. Bohdi finishes him with a thrust through the throat.

His partner is on Bohdi before the body hits the mud. The man is fast, faster than the others, and his sword work is clean and practiced and Bohdi gives ground because he has to, backing toward the water's edge, parrying strokes that come faster than his one good arm can answer. A cut gets through his guard and opens a line across his chest, not deep, and another nicks his already-bleeding forearm, and Bohdi can feel the situation turning against him — each exchange costing more than the last, each parry slower, each recovery longer.

He compensates with fury. He stops giving ground and drives into the man's space and gets the knife up and punches it into the man's eye and the motion is ugly — an overhand stab, delivered at close range, driven by the weight of his whole body because the arm doesn't have the strength for finesse. The man's sword was coming up and it doesn't arrive.

Then the fourth man, the one who was walking the bank upstream, comes in behind him and gets a blade into Bohdi's thigh.

The sword punches through the muscle of his left leg above the knee and Bohdi feels it — hot, bright, the tearing sensation of the blade going through — and he roars. The sound comes from somewhere deep, somewhere past pain and past anger, from the place where the animal lives, the part of him that was forged in a childhood where survival meant being louder and meaner and more dangerous than whatever was trying to kill you.

And Morgan, still bound, throws himself sideways into the man's legs.

Morgan hits him low — shoulder into thigh, the blind, graceless tackle of a man with no training and no technique and no hands, using the only weapon available to him, which is his own body. The warrior goes over. His sword arm flails, the blade swinging wide, and he hits the mud on his back with Morgan half on top of him and the impact is enough. It's enough because it buys a second, and a second is all Bohdi needs.

Bohdi surges up off his knee. The leg screams. He ignores it. He drives the sword upward and the blade enters the man's chest between the ribs and the man falls, and then it's done.

Silence.

River water running over stones. The sound of laboring breath, his own, ragged and wet and coming in hitches that pull at the fresh cut across his chest. The horse stamping nervously in the shallows. And somewhere above the treeline, a bird singing.

Bohdi drops the sword, wrenches the hunting knife free, and crawls to Morgan. He reaches him and cuts the bindings off his wrists.

His hands won't stop shaking. The knife trembles against the cord and he has to saw at it, back and forth, the blade juddering, and the cord parts strand by strand and then falls away and Morgan's hands are free.

Morgan is looking at him with an expression Bohdi cannot categorize. Wide-eyed. Trembling. The bruise livid on his face and the blood dried at his temple. He's looking at something impossible, something that shouldn't exist, something that defies the rules of a world that has spent the last two days teaching him that the rules are the only things that matter.

The second the cord falls away Morgan grabs him by the front of his bloodied shirt and hauls him forward.

"You came for me," Morgan says.

And Bohdi looks at him.

At the bruise on his cheekbone. At the blood dried at his temple. At the blond hair tangled and filthy and stuck to his face with blood and tears. At this prince who just threw himself bodily into an armed warrior with his hands tied behind his back, who killed a warchief with a dagger out of his own boot, who has been braver every single day of this nightmare than anyone in Valen expected him to be. Who is sitting in the mud of a river crossing with four dead men around him holding onto Bohdi's shirt with both hands and looking at him as though he is the answer to every question Morgan has ever asked.

"Of course I came for you," Bohdi says. His voice is rough and wrecked and every bit of what he feels is in it. "I will always come for you, my prince."

Then he grabs Morgan by the back of the neck and pulls him in and kisses him.

Chapter 31

Morgan

Morgan makes a sound against Bohdi's mouth that is closer to a sob than a moan.

Something cracked open and desperate, from the bottom of him, from the place where the wanting lives, from the half a decade of silence and distance and careful, practiced composure that have been keeping the sound locked away. It comes out against Bohdi's lips and Morgan doesn't try to stop it because he can't and doesn't want to and has spent years trying and is done.

Bohdi is kissing him.

Where the bath was a fierce, hungry collision of two bodies circling too long, this starts quieter. Careful. Bohdi's mouth is gentle against his, almost tentative, as though he's asking permission he's already been given, and the taste of him is blood and sweat and something underneath both that is entirely Bohdi, warm and mineral and real.

Morgan kisses him back and the careful part ends.

It ends because Morgan gets his fists tighter in Bohdi's shirt and pulls and Bohdi makes a sound low in his throat and opens his mouth against Morgan's and the kiss deepens into something that has teeth. Morgan feels the shift, the exact moment Bohdi stops being careful and starts being honest. Bohdi's tongue against his lower lip. The scrape of stubble against his jaw. Bohdi's hand tightening on the back of his neck, fingers digging into the muscle at the base of his skull, pulling him closer. Morgan goes willingly, gladly, with the whole of his body leaning into the contact and his hands fisted in bloodied fabric and his ribs screaming, and he does not care.

He opens his mouth and lets Bohdi in and the taste of him deepens, salt and copper and heat, and Morgan's world narrows to the press of lips and the slide of tongue and the rough, desperate sound Bohdi makes when Morgan bites his lower lip. A groan. Low, vibrating, pulled from somewhere in Bohdi's chest, and the sound of it sends a bolt of heat through Morgan's body that the morning air can't account for.