Page 1 of Fought it Through the Teeth

Chapter 1

Morgan

Morgan has been on the road for four hours, and he is beginning to understand, with a clarity born of genuine physical suffering, that he has made a catastrophic error with his life.

It isn't a single error but a long chain of them, each one compounding the last, stretching all the way back to whatever council meeting produced the phrase decoy bride and Morgan did not immediately excuse himself, walk to the harbor, and throw himself into the fjord. That would have been the sensible and dignified thing to do. Instead he nodded along with the plan, accepted his role with what he believed at the time to be quiet grace, packed a saddlebag, and rode out of Valen at dawn beside Bohdi without complaint.

Four hours ago, that felt noble.

Now both of his inner thighs are in agony and his lower back is on fire.

The road south of Valen winds through dense pine forest and open moorland in long, sweeping curves that would be scenic if Morgan possessed the capacity to appreciate scenery, which he does not. Every stride of the horse sends a fresh jolt of agony through muscles he was not previously aware he owned. He shifts in the saddle. The saddle punishes him for it. He shifts back. The saddle punishes him for that too.

It isn't that he can't ride. He rides constantly: to the outer villages, to the trade posts, to the northern settlements where Eskil's tax collectors need a diplomatic hand to smooth over the collection of grain levies from farmers who would sooner throw their harvest into the sea than hand it to the crown. He sits a horse well enough to look ornamental doing it. He has been told, on more than one occasion and by more than one person whose opinion he did not solicit, that the crown prince of Rengara cuts a fine figure in the saddle.

What he does not do, and has never done in twenty years of life spent strictly within the borders of his own kingdom, is ride for four consecutive days into foreign territory. At the end of this road waits a power that is actively trying to gut his king and prop Morgan up on the throne as a pretty, biddable puppet.

He has spent two decades relegated to Valen and its surrounding villages, courtesy of an overprotective older brother and, if Morgan is honest with himself, no real desire to go anywhere. Eskil has kept him close and Morgan has let himself be kept. There has never been a reason to leave. Everything Morgan needs is in Valen: the library, the council chambers, the trade ledgers, the manifests and grain tallies and treaty negotiations that constitute his usefulness to the crown. He is a clerk and a diplomat, a man whose weapons are ink and argument and a talent for reading a contract so thoroughly that the person who wrote it comes away feeling they've been flayed.

None of that is useful on horseback.

He adjusts his seat, grits his teeth against the flare of pain, and stares at the back of Bohdi's head.

Bohdi rides the way Bohdi does everything, with an ease so complete it borders on insult. He sits his horse loosely, reins slack in one tattooed hand, his posture relaxed and fluid, the massive axe strapped across his back catching the late-morning light. His red hair is braided back from his face, and from behind he could be out for a pleasant afternoon ride rather than an assassin escorting a decoy bride into hostile territory.

The escort, thus far, has been unnecessary. The only part of this arrangement currently in any danger is his ass.

The assassination plan is presumably more dangerous than the ride. He is being sent south to play the willing groom and sit prettily in the Wolfe chieftain's hall, batting his eyelashes at a man twenty-four years his senior who wants to marry him for political leverage. His job is to keep the ruse alive long enough for Bohdi to find an opportunity to put the chieftain in the ground. Morgan is bait, a distraction, a blond, blue-eyed lure dangled in front of a warchief who thinks he is purchasing a kingdom and is in fact purchasing his own execution.

That Eskil agreed to it at all unsettles Morgan more than any war council report could. Eskil does not lend him, or loan him, or offer him up for inspection. Eskil once threatened to disembowel a visiting dignitary who looked at Morgan too long during a feast, and that was an ally. The fact that Eskil stood on the Keep steps at dawn and let Morgan ride south with nothing between him and a hostile chieftain but one very large man with an axe means that the kingdom is in more trouble than Morgan has been told. It also means Eskil is making a decision that costs him sleep and will cost him more before this is over.

Morgan does not question it.

He questions everything else. He questions trade agreements and grain reports and the council's reasoning and the veracity of every diplomat who sits across from him at a negotiating table. He questions motivations and margins and the precise wording of clauses designed to look generous and function as theft. He has never once questioned his brother, and that certainty is the bedrock Morgan has built his entire life on.

The horse stumbles on a root and Morgan's thighs scream in protest and he makes a sound through his clenched teeth that he will deny to his grave.

Bohdi glances back. "All right?"

"Fine."

Bohdi turns back around, and Morgan thinks he sees the corner of his mouth twitch, and he resolves to say nothing for the remainder of the day even if his legs detach from his body entirely.

By the time they stop for the night, the sun is low and orange through the tree line and Morgan cannot feel anything below his waist.

This is not technically accurate. He can feel a great deal. The problem is that all of it is pain: his thighs, his hips, the insides of his knees, the base of his spine, and a specific, grinding ache in his lower back that worsens with every passing minute. When he dismounts, the landing sends a bolt of agony through both legs that nearly buckles them, and he has to grip the saddle for a full three seconds before he trusts himself to let go.

Bohdi, to his credit, says nothing.

He is surprisingly gracious about the whole thing, which is to say he doesn't make Morgan gather firewood or water the horses or do anything requiring the use of his legs. He swings off his own horse in one fluid motion, stretches his arms overhead until something in his back cracks, and sets about making camp. He has slept on the ground more nights than he's slept in a bed, and it shows. He unsaddles both horses, pickets them near a stream, hauls an armload of wood from the tree line, and drops it at Morgan's feet with a look that is either encouraging or pitying; with Bohdi, the two are often indistinguishable.

"Can you manage a fire?"

"Yes, Bohdi. I can manage a fire."

"You sure? Because if you set yourself alight, your brother will have me quartered."

"I assure you I'm much more likely to light you on fire for being obnoxious."