Page 74 of Setting the Break

"No." His voice is low and rough and not steady. He does not try to make it steady. "No. Morgan. That is not what I meant."

Morgan does not move. He is rigid in Bohdi's arms, barely breathing, and Bohdi can feel the war in him, the desperate wanting to believe fighting the years of knowing better.

Bohdi presses his mouth closer. His lips move against Morgan's skin, against the rapid beat of his pulse, and his arms are so tight around him that he can feel Morgan's heart slamming into his forearm.

"I'm not going to ask you to be a secret anymore," Bohdi says, into his neck. Into him. "I'm not going to ask you to hide. I'm not going to ask you to watch the corridor, or keep your collar up, or pretend in front of your brother that I'm nobody to you." His mouth drags against Morgan's throat. He can feel the tendon there, drawn taut, and the shiver that runs through Morgan when his breath hits the skin. "I'm not asking any of it anymore. I would do anything to keep you, my prince. Anything. If that is what you would ask of me, then so be it."

Morgan's breath comes out of him in a rush.

It is not a gasp. He has been holding something in his chest so long he forgot it was in there, and it breaks loose all at once. His whole body shudders. His hand on Bohdi's forearm stops trying to lift it away and grabs on instead, grabs on hard, fingers digging in, and his other hand comes down and finds Bohdi's where it is pressed flat against his sternum and laces through it and holds.

He does not turn around. He stays where he is, his back to Bohdi's chest, because if he turns around Bohdi will see his face and whatever is happening on it is not something Morgan is ready to let him see. But Bohdi can feel it. He can feel it in the way Morgan's shoulders shake. In the way his grip keeps tightening. In the way his breath keeps catching and starting and catching again, not quite crying, not quite not. It is what a man sounds like when he has been braced for a blow and has just been told, for the first time, that it is not coming.

Bohdi holds on. He keeps his mouth against Morgan's neck and breathes him in and holds him, and Morgan holds onto his arms and does not let go of them, and neither of them says anything for a long time.

His heart is going so hard he can feel it in his teeth.

He has just promised this man something he does not have the first idea how to give. He has no plan. He has no words ready. There is exactly one person in this world he would have to say it to first, and that person is two corridors away asleep with his healer in his arms. The thought of walking into that room and opening his mouth is the most frightening thing Bohdi has faced in thirty years of frightening things.

He holds on to Morgan anyway, and does not let go, and lies in the dark being more afraid than he has ever been in his life.

23

MORGAN

The council meets the next afternoon, and Morgan buttons his collar all the way to the throat before he goes down to it.

He is aware of the irony the entire time he is doing it. He stands in front of the glass with the bruise Bohdi put on him last night sitting high on his neck and the fading ghost of an older one an inch below it, and he does up every button and smooths the front and goes downstairs to spend two hours being the most reasonable man in Rengara.

Bohdi told him last night that he was finished asking him to hide. Morgan believes him, which he finds remarkable in himself, given his general policy on things said to him in the dark by men who are not wearing anything. But a promise made at three in the morning is not a thing a sensible person cashes in before lunch, and Morgan has no intention of walking into a council session and announcing a single thing. The collar goes up.

Eskil is already at the head of the table when he arrives, with a stack of reports under his arm and his jaw set. Morgan takes the chair at his left, where he has sat since he was nine years old and too short for it. Bohdi stands behind the two of them, a pace back from the chairs with his arms crossed, in the spot he has occupied at every council Morgan can remember attending.

Morgan can feel him back there, which is new. The man has been standing at his brother's shoulder for the whole of Morgan's life and Morgan has never once spent a council session aware of the exact distance between his own chair and Bohdi's boots. He is going to have to get over that before somebody notices his distraction.

"The prince has asked to speak first," Eskil says. "So the prince speaks first."

Morgan stands.

He lays it out the way he lays out anything, in order, with the evidence attached. He gives them the lane at the edge of the eastern holdings. Four Wolfe riders in war paint, inside the border, questioning a farmer at his own gate. Not a raid. They took nothing and burned nothing. They asked questions and then they moved on to the next farm and asked the same ones.

"The corporal at the Kettle ford sent his report in this morning," Morgan says. "I sent his three men to that farm when I came through. The riders had gone by the time they got there. They went east. They left the family alone." He lets that sit for half a breath, because he is not above being glad about it in front of witnesses.

"Here is my difficulty," Morgan continues. "The Wolfe were obviously looking for something on our roads and the closest I can gather is that they were aware Bohdi and I were traveling. Which means that they knew we had planned to find Fenris and were looking to intercept us." He looks around the table.

The murmur goes around the room.

"And the Jakadi," Morgan says. "The Jakadi took Indrie off the east road like they knew that he would be there, which was perhaps even lesser known than our trip to find Fenris. They did not happen upon him. They were waiting in the birches."

He puts both hands flat on his papers.

"Someone in this keep is talking," Morgan says. "To the Wolfe, and very possibly to the Jakadi as well. I would like the council's help in finding out who."

The room goes up.

It is loud and useless, which is normal. Everybody has a theory and nobody has a name. It is a clerk in the records office. It is the grooms, because the grooms know who rides out and when. It is the kitchens. It is the traders at the docks. It is Garrik, who came through the gates with his chest open and has been in the keep ever since. It is somebody's cousin. It is somebody's wife.

Morgan lets it run. He has learned that about this room. You let them empty themselves out, and then there is space to put something in.