Page 43 of Salt in the Wound

Eskil will take it.

"I am not angry with you," he says, choosing his words carefully, speaking as clearly as he can. Slowly. Simply. Each word a stone laid in a path he needs Indrie to be able to follow. "You have done nothing wrong."

Indrie's expression remains wary. But something shifts, a fractional easing, his shoulders dropping a quarter of an inch, his crossed arm loosening against his chest. He doesn't step back, but the urge to visibly drains from him.

Eskil should let go of his wrist. He's made his point. He's stopped the retreat. The responsible thing to do is release him and create space, not sit here with Indrie between his legs and his pulse fluttering against Eskil's thumb.

But he's half afraid if he lets go his hand will find Indrie's hip instead, and down that path madness lies. At least the wrist is safe.

He keeps his grip where it is.

"I am..." Eskil pauses. The next words are there, formed and ready, but they require something from him that doesn't come naturally. Honesty about his own failings is not a skill he's cultivated. Kings project certainty, decisiveness, unshakeable confidence. Kings don't make mistakes and wouldn't admit to them if they did.

But Indrie is standing in front of him with fear in his eyes that Eskil put there, and the cost of maintaining his pride is measured in the younger man's suffering, and the numbers don't balance.

He purposely chooses to flay himself open instead of causing Indrie another moment of distress.

"I am easily angered," he says. "Easily frustrated. Quick to react and," he meets Indrie's eyes, makes sure the younger mansees his intent, sees that this is not an excuse but an admission, "slow to apologize."

Indrie doesn't understand all of it. Maybe. Eskil can see him parsing, the slight furrow between his brows as he works through the sentence, matching sounds to meanings. But he understands enough, because something changes in his face, the wariness rearranging, making room for something else.

The sweetest smile Eskil has ever seen.

It's tentative. Fragile. The kind of smile that doesn't know if it's allowed and is bracing for the possibility that it isn't. It starts at the corners of Indrie's mouth and spreads slowly, uncertainly, and it transforms his face entirely. The fear is still there, underneath, visible in the slight tremor at the edge of his lips. But the smile is real. It's his. Not performed, not practiced, not the careful pleasantness of a slave who has learned to reflect whatever expression his master wants to see. This is Indrie's own smile, given freely, directed at Eskil, and it hits him in the sternum with the force of a gods-damned arrow.

Eskil has to physically remind himself to behave.

"You don't have to apologize to me, your majesty," Indrie says, and the smile playing at the edges of the sentence says he finds the concept ludicrous. A king, apologizing to a healer.

His smile dips then, into something ashamed. The warmth recedes and what's left is smaller, quieter, turned inward.

"If I have angered you, then I should be the one to beg your forgiveness, not..." He falters. His eyes drop from Eskil's. "Hide from you."

Eskil shakes his head. "You did not anger me, Indrie. And even if you did, you owe me nothing."

Indrie's brow furrows. "But you were upset at what I said."

"Yes."

"Then..."

"Not at you." Eskil can see they're going in circles. The same words, the same circular misunderstanding, the gap between what he means and what Indrie hears unbridgeable by repetition alone. There's a barrier they can't get around, a wall built from different languages and different worlds and different understandings of what a person can be to another person.

He needs a different approach.

Eskil reaches out with his free hand and pushes the plate aside. He pulls a sheet of parchment to the center and grabs a piece of charcoal from the cup at the desk's edge.

He reluctantly lets go of Indrie and begins to sketch.

The shapes that emerge are rudimentary at best and outright crude if he's being honest. He's not an artist, that's where Morgan has always excelled, his brother with his steady hand and his eye for proportion, who can render a face in charcoal so realistically it seems to breathe. Eskil's talents lie elsewhere. What comes out of his charcoal is functional: blocky shapes, rough outlines, proportions that suggest rather than depict.

But he can do a decent enough job to get the point across.

He draws land first. A coastline, curving, with mountains behind it. Trees, represented by vertical lines with scribbled circles at the top. A river, winding from the mountains to the coast. Buildings clustered near the shore, squares with peaked roofs, a larger one that could be a hall, smaller ones around it. He draws it quickly, without pausing to refine, and the charcoal smudges under his hand as he works.

He finishes the sketch and pulls Indrie closer to the desk to see it. His hand on the younger man's wrist guides him forward, but the desk is close and the chair is in the way, and Indrie catches his boot on the chair leg and pitches forward with a startled sound and Eskil's free hand shoots out and grabs his waist and pulls him down before he can think about what he's doing.

And pulls Indrie into his lap.