Magician by K.L. Noone

Chapter 6

The night burned, cold as rain and hot as the hearth. Lorre turned from the table, got up, went to the fire. The scorching of it laced his fingertips when he held them out: close to the flame.

He felt Gareth at his back, poised at the table. He said, not turning, “It won’t matter. What you say. I’d still help you.”

A scrape of chair, a brush of wood over floor, suggested motion. Gareth crossed the room quietly, ending up at his side. Their eyes met: Gareth’s were layered and sweet as chocolate, not entirely calm but entirely certain about a decision.

Gareth said, “Of course it matters. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“No. As if you could. And you need me.”

“I might,” Gareth said. “Need you.” His voice, in that faded Northern burr, took the word and burnished it into gold. His hair remained untied, falling to brush his shoulders, because he hadn’t pulled it back again.

“You don’t know what you mean.” Lorre put his hand right into the fire, this time: desperate, abrupt, a motion he hadn’t known he’d make until he did. And there was no burning, no seared flesh. Only heat like gamboling imps along his skin, dancing in ruby and fool’s gold. “Go finish that fish stew.”

“You are hurting,” Gareth said. “Headache? Can I help?” His fingers touched Lorre’s arm, Lorre’s shoulder. He’d done so once before. Offering an anchor. Unafraid.

“I’m not human,” Lorre said, “and I’m older than you and I’m here to help you with a bandit problem and I told you I didn’t expect any form of pleasure or payment. Nothing, from you. There’s nothing you need to do.”

“Then need’s the wrong word.” Gareth shifted weight, stepped closer, let his hand drift up: fingertips brushing Lorre’s face, temple, aching tired places. Lorre should have stopped him, and did not.

Gareth said, “You think I don’t know what I’m offering. You think I’m too young. You think it’s taking advantage of me.”

Lorre took his hand out of the fire. Held it up: still no injuries, no marks, no human agony. Every flare of energy become a piece of himself, not that this prince with fireside eyes could see that transmutation.

“I know what I’m doing,” Gareth said.

“You think you do.”

“You’re older than I am. But you’re older than everyone. And you’re not, anyway.”

Lorre, profoundly baffled by this assertion, had no answer.

“Oh, maybe in years.” Gareth’s fingers stroked his temple, traced his eyebrow; and Lorre for some reason found himself tilting his head into the caress. Gareth’s voice was gently amused, not at him but at some sort of realization. “Of course you’re five hundred years old or however long it’s been. But you like nectarines and silk robes and tea. You like books and having warm feet and pretending to hide from the world. And I know about bandits and snow and losing someone. I know that people die. I’m not as young as you think. And you’re not as old as you think. It’s in the direction you face, you said, about stories.”

“Don’t quote me at me.”

“Also I’m not a virgin. With women or with men.”

Lorre muttered a fairly blasphemous word that’d been fashionable eighty years ago, and then said, “You can’t want this.” Gareth hadn’t moved away. The tie of his shirt was slack, loose, coming undone.

“I want to help,” Gareth said. “I can’t do nothing. I’ve never been able to do nothing. If there’s something I can do.”

“Your quest doesn’t include this.”

“I think you’re beautiful, and magical, and the most astonishing person I’ve ever met. I think you could use sugar in your tea and a fire to keep you warm and someone noticing when your head aches. I want to do that for you. Because someone should. Because I want to.”

Lorre shut both eyes. Breathed, to the fire and Gareth’s hands, “You don’t know what I’ve done. What I could do.”

“I know what you’ve promised to do for me,” Gareth said. “What you’re still doing. Trying to be good. To do the right thing. It’s all right, you know. I want this, and I want you, and I’m asking.”

Lorre opened his eyes; Gareth was there in front of him, close and earth-warm and lovely in autumn colors, cinnamon and brown and long dark eyelashes and a curve of smile that suggested conviction. Gareth’s other hand slid slowly but not tentatively to the nape of Lorre’s neck; Lorre put both arms around him, helplessly, instinctively.

“This is me asking to kiss you,” Gareth informed him, simple and straightforward. He felt wonderful, tangible, real and physical as an anchor, body sturdy against Lorre’s.

“Please don’t hate me,” Lorre said, and Gareth sighed and said, “No, you’re not listening,” and then kissed him, lips bright and firm and sure.

Gareth kissed like firelight and richness, like gradual unhurried pouring honey: like coming in from the cold and finding welcome, steady and unshakeable. He was curious and young without being impatient or demanding; he wanted to know and to explore, to tease Lorre’s mouth with his tongue and find out every reaction and every shiver of response, and he wasn’t shy about it; but he did not rush, either.

Lorre, who had not been kissed by anyone in years, almost forgot to kiss back because he was so astonished by sensation, so lost in the feel and taste and press of Gareth’s lips. Gareth, just slightly shorter, tugged Lorre’s head down more.

Lorre’s entire body shivered with startled arousal. Quicksilver raced down his spine.

Gareth hadn’t shaved, and a hint of auburn scruff brushed Lorre’s skin, not rough but deliciously present. He tipped his head to feel more. Gareth obligingly kissed his throat, nuzzled the soft spot below his jaw, surprised him into an inadvertent moan.

Gareth laughed, airy and clear against Lorre’s neck. “You like being kissed.”

“I do. I’d forgotten.”

“Then I ought to remind you.” Gareth touched his shirt, a question; Lorre nodded, and—wanting to contribute—flicked all their clothing away with a thought. Most of it landed haphazardly across chairs, the hearth-rug, the low footstool; Gareth’s trousers dangled crookedly from the side of the bathing-tub.

“Ah,” Lorre said. “Sorry.”

“Useful, that.” Gareth was grinning at him, accent a fraction stronger now with heat and desire, both of them purely naked. The light dusting of autumn hair continued more places, Lorre observed: not heavily, but present, across his firm chest and stomach and lower, a tempting arrow to the point of glorious unabashed arousal.

His own body unabashedly wanted that muscular breadth and heat and stiff length up against him, or inside him, or under him, or whatever Gareth wanted. Lorre would do that, anything, however Gareth liked. He’d done nearly everything at some point in his long life, and liked just about all of it, every drop of sensual indulgence. He could like it again now; he knew how good those feelings could be.

And he wanted, with a sharp piercing hollow sort of want, to make it all good for Gareth. For those generous eyes and kind hands.

Maybe that would be something—not enough, but something—if he could give one other person pleasure. If he could give Gareth pleasure. Gareth, who’d found him and seen him and not been afraid and only wanted to help. Who did not want someone else to be lonely.

Which was ridiculous. Foolish. Naïve.

Heroic.

He knelt, a bit too swiftly—Gareth looked surprised—and leaned forward and kissed his prince’s left hip. Gareth made a small sound, startled and tender, and put a hand on his head; so Lorre leaned in and licked and tasted and mouthed at him, taking the length of him in, employing much-practiced techniques and skills, and also learning what made Gareth gasp and shudder and thrust into his throat.

Lorre spared himself a small moment of pride: he did recall how to do this, and how to do it well.

“Wait—” Gareth groaned, moving, stirring; heat and male readiness spilled across Lorre’s tongue. “Wait, I—I’m—oh sweet Goddess—”

Lorre wanted him to feel good, simply good, and so did not stop—tongue just there, motion just right, skills strategically applied—and Gareth tensed and tightened and came to completion in his mouth, sweet-sour and male and marvelous. Lorre steadied him with a hand, and licked at him, drank him down, lapped him up, and swallowed.

“Oh Goddess,” Gareth managed again, looking down. His eyes were huge and climax-dazed. “You—you—that—”

Lorre smiled a little, kissed him a little—face pressed into the line of Gareth’s thigh, the crook between leg and hip, breathing him in—and sat back. “All right? It’s been a while, but I think I’ve remembered.”

Gareth opened his mouth, closed it, tried again. Flushed with release, spent and lovely, he licked his lips and left them pinker and shining. “I…that…but…”

“But?”

“That was…wonderful. Incredible. I feel…how can you ask if it was only all right, as if…” Gareth drew a breath, put both hands on Lorre’s shoulders. “I thought I’d be the one to. Offer. On my knees for you.”

“Ah,” Lorre said. Perhaps that was what Gareth liked, then. Not this. “You can; I’m certainly in favor.”

Gareth’s eyebrows tugged together. “Are you all right, then? Come up here?”

Lorre got up off the rug; Gareth reached out, pulled him closer, kissed him. Deeply. Lorre had not expected that—not everyone would’ve, with the lingering taste on his lips, and he still wasn’t sure precisely how much experience his straightforward mountain prince had regarding men—but ended up kissing him back, opening up, giving way as if asking for something, though he did not know what.

Gareth took his hand. Guided him over to the large lavish bed. Pushed him down into softness, not a hard shove, only a direction.

The fire flared and crackled. The room was hot now, unless that was Lorre’s skin. His heart beat faster than he recalled it doing in some time.

Gareth ran a hand over him: shoulder to chest to stomach to hip. “You’re lovely.”

“Don’t believe it,” Lorre said. “I can shapeshift.”

“Stop,” Gareth said. “I mean stop saying that. You tell me you’re something I should be afraid of, you say so over and over, and you’ve been nothing but kind.”

“I’ve complained about being cold and thrown a purse at you to pay for this room.”

“You warn me about yourself again and again.” Gareth bent to kiss Lorre’s stomach, looked up, touched Lorre’s throbbing eager rigid length. His hand was gentle, callused, sure of the fondling and stroking. “But you’d never take advantage of me—you’ve tried so hard not to—and you’ve never lied. I didn’t know you five hundred years ago but I know you now. That’s the man I want, tonight. The one I’m starting to know.”

“Stop saying I’m five hundred years old,” Lorre said, “it’s more like three hundred, at best, honestly,” and found himself reaching for Gareth’s arm, wanting to touch, needing to hold on.

“I thought you couldn’t remember.” But Gareth was smiling, and that was teasing; oh, that was the feeling, like laughter, like the glimmer of hearthlight, gathering under Lorre’s skin. Gareth took his hand and kissed his fingers and then moved against him, between his legs, mostly atop him; Gareth’s hand stroked him, while their bodies rocked together.

“That,” Lorre said, “I’m—I—yes, that, your hand, there—” Gareth clearly knew what to do with his hand, and with a man’s stiff dripping prick, growing slicker as the need sharpened and distilled to a crystalline point.

“I want you to,” Gareth murmured, gazing down at him, hand not stopping. “I want you to feel good. I want to make you feel good. Let me do this for you.”

“Oh,” Lorre breathed, looking up at him; and all at once the moment hit, the crashing bursting breaking-point; he was crying out and coming apart and flooding Gareth’s hand with release, shaking as it swept through him.

Gareth watched him, watched his face, stroked him through it, and held him for a moment. Lorre, trembling, shut his eyes and felt the world sing and quiver; he felt more real, more present, more true than he had in years. This body, so defined by sensation—by pleasure, by Gareth’s hand on him and Gareth’s weight lying against him—

This was him, as it crested and burst over him, and he knew it.

Because he was himself, the fire leapt upward and the leftover stew bubbled abruptly, and a flower burst out of the wooden table in improbable ecstasy.

Gareth looked that way. Lifted both eyebrows. “And I’m taking that as a compliment, thank you.” The Northern rumble added smugness, but only a hint.

“Ah,” Lorre managed, panting. “Tell me what sort of flower you’d like, next time, and I’ll see what I can do…”

“I’ve always been partial to sunflowers. Big, bright, full of color. But anything colorful’s fun. Wildflowers, up in the mountain pastures. All pink and purple and blue.” Gareth wriggled up and closer and apparently wanted to kiss Lorre’s collarbone, and then his throat. “Does that happen every time?”

He didn’t sound at all distressed, only curious. Lorre found himself turning—like a sunflower—into the presence of that very human body, powerful and strong and lightly fuzzy with male hair, against his own. “No, actually. It’s been a while.”

“So you’re saying that if we do it again I shouldn’t expect roses?”

“It’d depend on how much I’m concentrating, I think.” He touched Gareth’s hip, ran a hand over Gareth’s back: still somewhat startled that they’d arrived here, drinking in the feel of another person so naked, so easily exposed, beside him in bed. “Was that an offer? Round two?”

Gareth’s eyes got all wide, exaggeratedly so. “Magical in all sorts of ways, then.”

“Well, maybe. I am three hundred years old. Give me five minutes.”

“Ancient,” Gareth said serenely. “And magic. You can even have seven. Minutes.”

“Oh, thank you.” He walked fingers along Gareth’s spine, taking in the arrow of it, the line, the depth and bone and vertebrae, the layers and layers that made up a man. “Where do you like being touched?”

Gareth laughed. “You couldn’t tell, earlier?”

“I’m aware that you enjoyed my mouth.” Lorre, interested, nudged Gareth to his back; the prince went willingly, and smiled up at him, spice-dark hair flung across a pillow. Gareth’s chest was broad and also dusted with dark red hair, not heavily but intriguingly so, and his nipples were taut and tempting. “These?”

“Mmm. Yes. You’re an experimental sort of magician, aren’t you? Hands-on.”

“Very.” Lorre teased his left nipple with fingers, pinching, rolling, exploring; Gareth moaned softly, and his legs shifted. His cock, in the way of young men, stirred: not entirely recovered yet, having just spent itself, but heading that direction. Lorre inquired, at that, “Would you like to fuck me? Or would you prefer I do the honors? Or not, if that’s not something you do at all.”

“I certainly do, and I’d like both, if you’re offering. Though…” Gareth reached up to catch Lorre’s hand with his own. “I’d very much like the chance to take care of you.”

“Hero.”

“You said you thought I’d be fun.”

“Did I? I must’ve been thinking about the bathing-tub.”

Gareth laughed more, which was good: Lorre had meant it as a joke, and had carried on tracing the flat plane of Gareth’s stomach, the trail of rich russet hair, the nest of curls at the base of him. Gareth’s prick stiffened more with Lorre’s fingers stroking it; Lorre inquired, “Seven entire minutes, did you say?”

“And you’re not even practicing magic,” Gareth said. “Unless you are. In a way.”

“Oh, I could be. What would you like to feel? Heat? Cold? Flower-petals?” He trailed fingers along the delicate inside of Gareth’s thigh. Asked his blood to flow, hands to warm: heat, in his fingertips, skated along Gareth’s skin. And then cold, as he pulled the pumping glow of it back: fingertips remembering how it felt to be rain, sleet, clouds, hail. Skimming Gareth’s legs.

Gareth gasped. Trembled. Arched up into his hands. “All of it—”

“Never dare a magician to do that.” Lorre shut his eyes, thought of roses—lush, scarlet, spicy, thorned, velvet—and carefully did not quite become flowers, but knew them inside and out: the essence, the presence, the element that said roses to the universe. He let Gareth feel the whisper of petals, the scent, the lightest possible scratch of thorns.

Gareth whispered, “Oh Goddess yes.” His eyes were enormous and eager, watching Lorre’s hands stroke over his skin; his prick was upright now, wet-tipped, hungry. “But—you’re doing that for me—I want to make you feel this way—” He sat up, abruptly; he caught both Lorre’s hands, heedless of thorn-sensation. “Please. This time, at least.”

“Ah,” Lorre said, buying time. “What would you like?”

“You.” Gareth touched him, then: hands flexible and exploratory, caressing Lorre’s face, side, hip. Pressing him back into the extremely fluffy mattress. Finding his cock, fondling him, bringing up more firmness. “Tell me what you enjoy.”

“I—” He had every answer, or none; he didn’t know. “I’ve done just about everything you can think of, and likely everything you haven’t thought of—”

“Do you like this?” Gareth bent and licked him, a tender long swipe of tongue from root to tip. “You taste sweet. Sugar. Honey. Mead. What about this, here?” And blunt sturdy fingers cupped the heavy weights below Lorre’s cock, and cradled them, and then ventured further back: delving into intimate space, rubbing over the small tight entrance.

Lorre shut both eyes. Hard. Shocked at the sudden wetness under his eyelashes. “I…yes. I made myself…taste good…once, a long time ago…I wanted to be magical in all ways, of course…and then it just became part of me, and I didn’t have to think about it…do you like it?”

“I do,” Gareth murmured against his shaft, “but I would anyway. You’re liking this, then? My hand, right here?”

“Yes,” Lorre whispered, eyes still shut. He wanted to come again, or to beg Gareth to let him, or to finish this on the spot; it was too much, too raw and too gentle with his pleasure and too much like everything he did not deserve.

Gareth stopped. “Please tell me I’ve not made you cry.” And his voice was almost comically dismayed; his face, when Lorre peeked up, held pure concern.

“I’m not crying,” Lorre said, because if he said so it’d be true. “I want you to fuck me.”

“And I want to.” Gareth rubbed a thumb along the crease of Lorre’s leg, where hip met thigh. “But I’m not the person who’d have my way with an unwilling partner.”

“No,” Lorre said. “No, it’s not about—it’s not that. I’m willing. Believe me. Extraordinarily willing.”

“Then you’re worried about hurting me?” Gareth leaned down and kissed the tip of Lorre’s prick. His lips were entertained by the idea, incontrovertibly sure of the answer. “I’ll tell you if you do anything particularly distressing, magically speaking, I promise. And you’ve said you won’t hurt me, and you’re you, you know, so I believe you.”

“I’m me,” Lorre said. “I can do anything. Yes.”

“No,” Gareth said. “Not the dread sorcerer of Goldenfell, not the last great magician of the world. The person who told me he’d help me no matter what clumsy words I babbled at him over fish stew. I trust that person.”

Lorre swallowed, felt earlier thorns catch and snag in his throat, swallowed again. “It’s not that either. I wouldn’t hurt you. I can not hurt you. I promise you that. It’s…I feel…it’s difficult.”

Gareth waited, hand lightly stroking Lorre’s cock.

“Sometimes I’m a cloud,” Lorre said. “Or a salmon. Or an oak tree. Sometimes I think…this body, this me…maybe someday it won’t be. But it is, or at least this is what I come back to. And when you touch me…I want to come back to it. I want to live in it. I said I’d forgotten how it felt…”

“Being kissed. Yes.” Gareth did so again: a kiss brushed to Lorre’s stomach. “I see, I think. As much as I can. It’s good, though? The way you feel.”

“Yes,” Lorre said. “So much yes. So much.”

“Well, then. You just let me help you with that.” Gareth grinned at him: youthful, beautiful, ever so slightly proud of being told his touch felt like an anchor. “And if you feel like turning into a cloud or a fish, you let me know. I’d rather you didn’t, not that the roses weren’t a bit of fun.”

Lorre opened his mouth, closed it, found his heart somewhere in lightness. “How do you feel about feathers?”

And Gareth laughed. And moved atop him, between his spread thighs, kissing him and caressing him. Lorre moaned and moved with him, hips lifting, body reacting; breathless, he called slippery slickness from nothing, oils from the memory of woods and flowers and ointments once upon a time in the air of this room, rekindled.

Gareth’s eyes got a bit wider at that—his fingers, caressing the entrance of Lorre’s body, clearly felt the easier glide—but he only said, “Useful, again, that one,” and nuzzled at Lorre’s shoulder, a kiss and a nip of teeth. “How’s that? For feeling.”

“More,” Lorre told him, and Gareth’s mouth pressed marks into his skin, scorching. Gareth’s fingers slipped inside him and made him full and made him cry out, remembering and rediscovering this feeling too, being opened and readied and stretched. Gareth slid the fingers out and moved against him, cock hard and fat and hot; Lorre panted and begged and asked for more, again.

Gareth pushed into him, and took him, and filled him up.

Lorre might’ve outright screamed with pleasure. He felt rather than saw the fire blaze, the water-pails bubble up. Something under his skin raced and fizzed, fireworks going off: not a metaphor, because Gareth’s breath caught.

Lorre opened his mouth to apologize. Gareth whispered, “Sweet Goddess, you feel like stars—” and thrust harder, deeper, filling him to completion; and Lorre really did scream, then, and fell apart into light and thunderclaps and sunbursts.

He came back after a minute or an eternity, blinking—he had eyes—and lay there being dazed. That was a bed beneath him, luxurious and feather-stuffed. That was Gareth’s weight atop him, broad-shouldered and astounded. That was Gareth’s heat—Lorre wriggled in place—inside him, the wet sticky spurts of release and the heavy thick length of a man’s ebbing arousal, stretching the opening of his body. His own stomach was sticky as well, painted with white.

Gareth was looking down at him with all sorts of emotions, human and complicated, but the foremost one seemed to be wonder; one large hand was cradling Lorre’s head, playing with his hair.

Since Gareth wasn’t talking, Lorre tried. “Was that…ah…I didn’t…I assume no fish were involved?”

“You’re beautiful,” Gareth breathed.

“Thank you, but I imagine you say that to all the salmon?”

“You were still you.” Gareth hadn’t moved or drawn away. “You, but…brighter. Not exactly glowing, not like candles, but…underneath, sort of. Made of light. And you felt so—it was like shooting stars. Not real ones, of course not, but how I’d imagine. Crackling and shining and flying, and next thing I knew I was coming along too. And I tasted strawberries.”

Lorre stared at him. “Strawberries?”

“You like them, I’m guessing.”

“That…might be a new one.”

“I’ll take that compliment, as well.” Gareth kissed him full on the lips, and full of delight. “You just lie there for half a minute, and I’ll fill the bath for you? You’ve heated up all our water so well.”

“Strawberries,” Lorre said, half to himself. Now that he thought about it, he could taste them too. And cream. That one made some sort of sense, he supposed.

“Beautiful,” Gareth reiterated, and withdrew from him, with care: softened length and girth easing out of Lorre’s body. He came over with a warm wet bathing-flannel, before anything else, and gently cleaned Lorre’s stomach, and between his legs: the kind of unselfconscious naked kindness that’d peeled nectarines and offered to make tea and warmed a magician’s clothing by a fire on a boat.

Lorre propped himself up on elbows. “You don’t need to fill the bath. I can do that.”

“I know. I don’t mind.” Gareth paused. “Not too sore, are you?”

“Me? No.”

“Only you said it’d been a while.”

“Yes…”

“So I’m asking.”

“Oh. No, though, I’m perfectly fine. And if I wasn’t, I could heal.” He had to think about that one too. He might in fact be a bit—not sore, but well-used. Gareth’s prick was also heroically sized.

But the twinge of it felt good, in a way he’d forgotten. Sated, wrung out, and very, very present.

He stretched a leg against the bed-linens. Watched Gareth get up and go over to the tub and lift and pour buckets of water. Appreciated the flex of muscles, the width of shoulders, the serene sturdy accomplishment of a task.

He sat up more. His hair fell into his face; he flicked it away with a thought, but he had a lot of power running through his veins just now: all of his hair stood up for a moment, a golden halo. A sunflower.

He flattened it swiftly with a hand before Gareth looked up. Lorre did not especially care about looking dignified—he liked comfort and bare toes and sand too much for that—but he drew the line at outright ludicrous.

Gareth came back to the bed and held out both hands. Lorre took them, getting up. Gareth said, “Want me to scrub your back?”

“You don’t have to play bodyservant.”

“And you’re not making me do anything I don’t want to do. Come on.”

The bathing-tub was large, and hot, and blissful. Lorre settled into steaming water by the fire, listening to the rain and the wind and the pop of sparks, hearing and inhaling and even tasting the world. His hair got wet; being long, it stuck to his cheek, his throat.

Gareth smiled, and found soap.

They stayed quiet, for a while. Lorre wasn’t sure how one began conversation with a Northern prince who’d moments ago drawn fireworks and shooting stars from his bones, who offered kindnesses so freely, with only the promise of aid in return. Gareth might’ve been asking the same question, or not; he simply smiled more, almost to himself, and made tea and brought that over too. Lorre felt utterly decadent, and a few other emotions, difficult and opening like caverns in his chest.

He liked the decadence. He liked being taken care of. Old memories of sweeping robes and fine aged wines and bowing courtiers rustled—and glanced like steel along his ribs. Strawberries dwindled to ash and dragon-flame arrogance on his tongue.

He had run from that, as he always did; he knew he did. He might have killed the young king of Averene; he nearly had. He had been saved, which he did not deserve, and he did not deserve this indulgence now, though he wanted it.

Gareth knew who he was. Gareth knew what he’d done. Gareth had kissed him while knowing. Or claiming to know.

Lorre turned the mug of tea around in his hands, gazing into it. Darkly steeped, deep brown, it provided no answers.

Gareth said, apologetically, “There’s no more sugar.” Something about the words sounded like a different emotion. Forgiveness, perhaps. If that could be possible. Which it wasn’t.

“It’s all right,” Lorre said, and sat up more. Water sloshed. “I’ve been occupying this tub for ages; did you want to bathe? After the rain and the salt water and the splendid exertions, just now?”

Gareth paused. Gave him a small wry head-tilt. “I’m guessing I should.”

“I think I can clean the tub for you—”

He could. Simple enough, with heat. He also wrapped himself up in a blanket, not feeling like a return to trousers and a coat just yet—he missed loose airy robes—and wondered whether he should offer to wash Gareth’s back, but the prince was already handling that himself, rather vigorously, with the soap and bathing-flannel.

Lorre looked at him, looked at the fire, wiggled bare toes against the woven rug. Would Gareth like tea? Bread? Re-warmed fish stew? A rose? He could manage a rose. A bouquet, perhaps.

The tiny bluebell he’d unexpectedly summoned from old wood nodded at him encouragingly, from the table.

He said, “I can ask the fire to be hotter. If you want.”

“No need. I’m from the North, remember? This is balmy.” Gareth shook his head, made water-drops fly, hopped out. Naked, wet, gleaming, he was delicious to look at; Lorre felt every sensation all over again for a moment.

Gareth pulled out a spare shirt and other clothing from his pack; Lorre hastily dried him off with a wave of one hand. Gareth grinned. “Also useful.”

“I’m magical at laundry.”

Gareth threw a spare pair of socks at him for the pun. Lorre caught the socks mid-air and sent them back. Gareth said, mostly dressed, extremely earnest, “You know I’m not asking for anything. Well, more than I already am. I don’t expect…I mean, I know you’re you. And I’m me. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to oblige you to—to do anything more. After all this is over, I mean. I promise I’m not trying to keep you.”

“No,” Lorre said. “Of course not.”

“This was good, though, wasn’t it?” Gareth’s eyes searched Lorre’s face, earth-brown and hopeful. “I wanted you—I want you—and you wanted this too, and we could…if you wanted…if you wanted to do that again, I very much would. Again, no obligations, none of that, I’d never ask.”

“Yes,” Lorre said. “I…would, yes.” His feet, bare, recognized the roughness of the weave in the rug. “Though you may want to rethink that offer. Since we’ll be at your family’s hall tomorrow.”

Gareth straightened up in surprise from putting away socks.

“I can drop us on the mountain road, on the way up to the Crest, if the geography hasn’t changed much in the last fifty years. I wouldn’t aim for your hall or the village; I don’t know the buildings, these days.”

Gareth’s eyebrows did their quiet wry amused quirk again.

“What?”

“Nothing. You. I’d been thinking we’d need to hire horses. I know you’re magic, and I keep forgetting. It won’t take us a week of solid riding and provisions, after all. Yes, of course, drop us on the main road, that’s only a few hours’ walk.”

“I can move horses too,” Lorre said, “but that gets a bit harder.” Gareth’s expression had shifted: less readable, more pensive. “I can try. If you’d like.”

“It’s not that. I thought…” Gareth exhaled, dropped into a chair, picked up a hunk of bread only to stare at it. “I thought we’d have more time to plan. A strategy. For bandits. And my uncle.”

So that was what one talked about: practicalities. And sex was merely sex, mutual desire along the road. And nothing had to change. No one had to be changed by anything. Nothing at all.

Lorre took the chair closest to the fire, tucking both legs up under his blanket. It was dark blue, and quilted, and friendly enough against his skin. “Very well. Strategies. I should warn you now I rarely have one.”

“You’ve been in wars.”

“I’ve mostly ended wars. Mainly by showing up. Or exploding someone’s siege towers in some sort of spectacular fashion.”

Gareth visibly considered this information.

“Unless you’d like me to explode your uncle, I imagine that strategy’s off the table.”

“I’d rather you didn’t explode people, thanks.”

“Not even your bandits? You said they had a mage. Someone with weather-gifts, or at least ice.”

“They have someone. I don’t know who.” Gareth sighed. “We’ve had patrols out…I thought you might want to organize, I don’t know, defenses…”

“Can any of your people fight magic? No. I can improvise. It’s generally what I do.”

Gareth sighed again. This one seemed closer to resignation, plus a mild amount of agreement with Lorre’s earlier claim about magicians and arrogance. “Do you at least want to know when they normally come?”

“So they’re bandits with a considerately announced schedule?”

Gareth looked at his hunk of bread as if contemplating throwing it.

“I don’t entirely not have a plan,” Lorre said. “I can put up a shield, probably. Some sort of warning wards. That’s what I was thinking, to start.” Only just now, but he didn’t say that part.

“You might’ve said that.”

“I might’ve. Tell me what happens, when they come? Cold, you said, and shadows, and ice.”

“Yes,” Gareth said, and his voice was the voice of a prince, hurting for his people. “We’re used to cold. But this is different. The killing kind…”

He went on, describing frozen pastures and biting darknesses and men and women who’d tried to stand guard and been left frozen to ice themselves, along with grass and trees and the earth under their feet. Lorre, curled up in a large chair with hot tea and a thick blanket, listened more to his voice than the words. The magic sounded like someone with a weather affinity, but they hadn’t done anything else, no battle-spells or light or shapechanging, so he guessed they couldn’t; if they could, they’d’ve found a tactic less potentially harmful to goats and cheeses and vegetable stores, since the raids were the whole point. He could handle a weather-worker.

He listened to Gareth talk about his people and his land, about craggy mountains and long valleys and shaggy goats. That sort of love was powerful in its own right: a shield, in a different way. Because Gareth had gone out and searched for a way to protect what he loved. It could be useful, as well.

Lorre shut his eyes for a moment, hearing less with ears than with awareness. Gareth’s heart thrummed like golden harpstrings, like Northern pipes, skirling and melodic and devoted. The Marches were real because Gareth loved them; Lorre could see the hills, the green, the lakes, as they took shape. He might be able to touch them from here, as they grew clearer, resonant, tied to this room by threads of longing.

Gareth said, “Are you listening?”

Lorre opened his eyes. “Don’t interrupt me. And yes. I’m building you a shield. Keep talking.”

“You can do that from here?”

“Not perfectly, and not if you’re asking questions. It’s less a shield and more of a bandit detection system, if you want to be more accurate. I’ll know if anything comes in that shouldn’t be there, or that’s the idea. Doing something about it will take more effort. I need you to show me what it’s supposed to be like, though.”

“Oh.” Gareth hesitated, reached across the table, held out one hand. “Thank you.”

Lorre glanced at the offered hand, and at Gareth’s face. Anchors, he thought. And he had missed being touched, these last long years.

He set his hand in Gareth’s. Gareth’s smile leapt like the firelight. “Should I tell you about the lakes, then, and the waterfall up along Rose Peak, where Dan and I used to go swimming? Of course I’d bring a book, too, for after, in the sun.”