Page 65 of Fought it Through the Teeth

Morgan groans. "Please spare me the details of what you two get up to in the bedroom."

Indrie's face goes scarlet. "That's not — I didn't —" He stops. Swallows. The composure he's been assembling for months scatters across the courtyard. "It is not like that."

Morgan huffs out a laugh. It's small and rough and it hurts his ribs and it is the most normal thing he's felt in days, this easy, stupid joke at Indrie's expense, this glimpse of the life that was waiting for him while he was gone.

He wraps his arms around Indrie's smaller frame and pulls him close, and Indrie holds him carefully and tenderly, clearly having waited for permission.

"I worried for you," Indrie says into his shoulders, his voice tight. "Quietly. I told him you would be fine, but I worried every night we didn't see you ride through the gates."

Morgan tightens his grip and smiles. "I was in good hands. Just like my brother."

He can feel Indrie's smile even without seeing his face.

"Tend to Bohdi first," Morgan says, when they pull away. "His thigh needs stitching. He's been riding on it for two days and he won't tell you how bad it is because he's an idiot, so don't let him."

Bohdi gives him a look. Morgan gives him one right back. The look says sit down, shut up, let the healer work, and it is delivered with unyielding authority. Twenty years as Eskil's brother, and Morgan has finally, irrevocably found his own voice.

"Come with me," Indrie says to Bohdi, and there is no negotiation in his voice.

Morgan watches them go. Bohdi limping. Indrie's hand on his arm. The two of them disappearing through the doors of the Keep, and Morgan stands in the courtyard and feels the absence of Bohdi's warmth at his back, a cold space, a vacancy, the shape of a man cut out of the air.

He turns to his brother.

"We should debrief," Morgan says. His voice is steady. His composure is back. "I have a lot to tell you."

Eskil nods. He reaches over and squeezes Morgan's shoulder, careful of the injuries, and the gentleness in it, devastating, fierce, impossible, is so completely at odds with the ferocity of the man delivering it that Morgan's composure nearly cracks in front of the entire courtyard.

It holds. Barely. By the width of a breath.

He follows his brother up the steps and into the Keep.

Chapter 34

Bohdi

It has been five days since they came home and Bohdi is not sleeping.

He lies in his own bed in the Keep and stares at his own ceiling and the ceiling is wrong. Not literally, it's the same timber and plaster he's been looking at for twenty-five years, the same knots in the wood, the same water stain in the corner that he's been meaning to report and never has. The ceiling is the same. Bohdi is different.

He thinks about Morgan.

He thinks about the bath at the stronghold, which plays behind his eyes on a loop every time he shuts them.

He thinks about the riverbank. The mud. The blood. Morgan's hands on his face and the tears on Morgan's face and the words, you came for me, spoken with such raw, incredulous gratitude that Bohdi's chest cracked open on the spot. The kiss. The taste of Morgan's mouth in the aftermath, something sweet and warm that was just Morgan, just the essential taste of him, and Bohdi has been trying to get it out of his head for days and it will not go.

He thinks about the bed at the inn and Morgan's mouth on his, soft and tentative and brave, the bravest thing Morgan did on the entire trip. Morgan killed a man with a dagger and threw himself into an armed warrior with his hands bound, and kissing Bohdi in the morning light was braver than any of it.

He thinks about all of it and he does not sleep.

Five days of war councils. Scouts riding out along the southern roads, watching for Wolfe movement, watching for Jakadi activity, watching for the retaliatory strike that Bohdi told Eskil is coming and that the council is debating and that nobody in Valen is prepared for because nobody in Valen was inside that stronghold. Nobody except Bohdi. And Morgan, who heard the parts that mattered more, born to read between lines.

The Jakadi problem is sharpening. Bohdi can feel it, the pressure in the air, a wrongness in the reports that come back from the border. The skirmishes are different now. More organized. More precise. Less like raids and more like reconnaissance, small groups testing the defenses, probing for weaknesses, mapping the response times. Someone is gathering intelligence, and Bohdi would bet his borrowed sword that the intelligence is flowing south to whatever is left of the Wolfe command structure.

And Bohdi cannot hold a single thought in his head for the length of a sentence.

He sits in the war council and Eskil is talking about troop deployments and Bohdi is thinking about Morgan's mouth. He stands at the map table and traces supply routes and his finger finds the southern road and he thinks about Morgan's fingers on his forearm, tracing the tattoos. He eats dinner in the great hall and looks up and Morgan is at the far end of the table, and Bohdi loses the rest of the conversation he was having without noticing it was gone.

Five days. Five days and Morgan has not asked him for anything.