Page 67 of Salt in the Wound

His finger under Indrie's chin is light. The barest pressure, just enough to tilt his face upward, and the touch sends a cascade of sense memory through Indrie's body,that hand on his jaw, that hand in his hair, that hand on his hip guiding him down, and he has to lock his knees to keep them from buckling.

He swallows his feelings. It takes effort. They're too large and too numerous and they fill his throat and press against the backs of his eyes and the best he can do is shove them down far enough to speak.

"I know we come from different cultures," Indrie says. His voice is quiet but steady, the healer's voice, the one that delivers hard truths without flinching. "I know last night was necessary. For your survival. And I do not expect you to —"

He can't say it.

The wordskeep mecatch in his throat, barbed and immovable, and he knows, heknows, that if he says it he will cry. He will cry in front of this man, in this hold, surrounded by oranges and crates and the smell of salt and timber, and he refuses. He refuses to give Eskil the full weight of what last night meant to him, because the king already carries the weight of a kingdom and a crew and a three-week voyage and he doesn't need the addition of Indrie's broken heart.

He shuts his mouth on the words and the silence where they should be is louder than anything he's ever said.

Eskil's face is conflicted. The raw, unfinished expression has deepened into something more complex, frustration layered over concern layered over something Indrie can't name. But it's not anger. Indrie has learned this distinction the way he's learned everything else about the king: slowly, painfully, through observation and error and the gradual dismantling of assumptions he didn't know he was making.

"Indrie, I need you to understand me," Eskil says. The frustration is not at Indrie. It's at the gap, at the language, at the wall between them that neither of them can see over. He steps closer. His hand moves from Indrie's chin to his cheek, cupping it the way he did last night, the way he's done before, the gesture that has become as familiar as it is heartbreaking.

"You are free," Eskil tells him. "To do whatever you want when we dock in Valen. You do not have to be our healer. You do not have to stay. If it is not what you wish —"

"Where would I go?" The words come out before Indrie can stop them, small and bare and honest in a way he didn't intend. "If not with you?"

Eskil brings Indrie's hand to his face and kisses his knuckles.

The press of his lips against Indrie's skin is soft and warm and deliberate and it sends a flush cascading down Indrie's neck and into the collar of his shirt, Eskil's shirt, still, he hasn't changed, hasn't had the chance, and the intimacy of the gesture, the tenderness of it, is so at odds withyou do not belong to methat Indrie's vision blurs.

"Wherever you desire," Eskil says against his knuckles. "And if that desire is back in Kalkoa, then I will return you there. If that is what you wish. I would not see you harmed again, but if it is what you wish, I will take you back."

Indrie shakes his head. Frantically. The motion dislodges two oranges from the basket and they roll across the floor and neither of them cares.

"I don't want to go back," Indrie says. The words are fierce, fiery, more emphatic than anything he's said in weeks. "I want to stay. I just —"

He pauses.

He doesn't know how to say what he needs to say. Doesn't know how to put into words, in his language or Eskil's, the thing that lives in the center of him and grows larger by the hour. He doesn't know how to sayI don't know how to serve you without loving youbecause the words, laid out plainly, are too much and too honest and too damning. He doesn't know how to explain that serving Eskil was supposed to be simple, cook his meals, heal his crew, stay out of his way, and instead it became the most complicated thing Indrie has ever done because somewhere between the spilled stew and the starlit deck and the storm-tossed ocean, he fell in love with the man he was supposed to be afraid of.

He shuts his mouth. Nods firmly. Swallows the rest.

"I will stay," he repeats.

Eskil opens his mouth to say something else, Indrie can see it forming, the words gathering behind his eyes, something he's been trying to say for days, but they're interrupted by the sound of boots on the ladder and a deckhand's voice, breathless and excited, calling down into the hold.

"My lord! Land, my lord — we've spotted land!"

The words echo through the hold and Indrie watches their impact cross Eskil's face, the shift from personal to professional, from the man in the hold to the king on the ship, the instantaneous recalibration of a leader whose responsibilities do not pause for matters of the heart.

Eskil lets go of Indrie's hand. The release is slow, reluctant, his fingers trailing across Indrie's palm before falling away, and the absence of his touch is a cold that has nothing to do with the temperature of the hold.

"Whatever you need," Eskil tells him. His voice has changed, still low, still careful, but with an urgency beneath it that the approaching shoreline has put there. "Whatever you desire. I will make it so. You need only ask."

He holds Indrie's gaze for a moment longer, one breath, two, and whatever he sees in Indrie's face makes something in his own tighten and then release. He nods, once, to himself, confirming something.

Then he turns on his heel and heads back toward the ladder, his stride lengthening as the king reasserts himself over the man, and his boots hit the rungs and he's gone.

Indrie stands in the hold.

The oranges have rolled. Two of them are against the far wall, stopped by a crate. The basket is clutched against his chest. His hand, the one Eskil kissed, hangs at his side, the knuckles still warm.

His knees give out.

He sinks to the floor, the basket settling in his lap, and he sits among the crates and the barrels and the oranges and the dim lamplight and presses the knuckles Eskil kissed against his own lips and closes his eyes.