Chapter Ninety-Four: Inescapable Fact

She knows.

The swirling thought drowned out all the rest in the cauldron of his mind. He stumbled from one step to the one below, from one room to the next.

She promised not to tell.

And,

Oh, god, she knows.

He forced himself to look past this horror to the bigger picture. Nicoleta didn’t trust Lord Pravin and had decided negotiating with the Empire was the safer course. That was an incredible stroke of good fortune. Pravin had miscalculated. Pravin. Cemil. He had to speak to Cemil, urgently.

Someone pointed him towards a chamber with a closed door. Voices emanated from within. “The emperor’s council is not to be disturbed,” a soldier barked, in a tone that indicated that he would not be persuaded by some uppity foreign-born lover.

“Please! It’s important!”

But when he tried to push his way forward, the soldiers stood together to block his path. He decided not to make a scene. He held a healthy fear of annoying the emperor at precisely the wrong moment.

He found an alcove with a chair in which to wait. Interminable minutes dragged by, hours surely, the adrenaline combined with the boredom making him nearly nauseous. Incredibly, he must’ve dozed, because his next awareness was of Cemil gently shaking his shoulder.

Osmund jolted upright, momentarily confused by his surroundings. Cemil was standing over him. At Osmund’s knee sat Prince Luca, doodling. “Were you waiting for me?” Cemil said softly. “I’m here.”

Nicoleta knows. She knows who I am. I have to tell him. I have to tell him now.

Cemil knelt down and put a gentle hand on Luca’s mop of black hair. “I’m going to borrow him,” said the Meskato prince to the boy as Osmund floundered. “Will you excuse us?”

Osmund felt Cemil at his back guiding him down the corridors. He didn’t know where they were going, and he didn’t care. “Cemil,” he attempted. “The ships. For Lord Pravin. Did you give him the ships?”

“My father did, days ago,” Cemil said unhappily. “It’s done. He’s out of our reach now.”

Osmund cursed viciously. The world seemed to close in on all sides. Tell him. I have to tell him. I have to tell him.

He couldn’t breathe.

“Osmund?” Cemil’s concern seemed to reach him from somewhere far away. “What’s the matter?”

Osmund tried to force steady gulps of air down his lungs. Too fast. He tipped forward against the wall, putting out his arms to correct himself. The stone seemed to reach out to swallow him, every detail too close, too real. His lungs were constricting without air.

Cemil put a hand over Osmund’s heart and muttered something that sounded like an apology. His magic flowed from the spot. If Osmund was teetering over a precipice before, the sensation that followed was akin to being yanked backwards at a high speed. He gasped, once, twice, then his breathing slowed to almost nothing. His mind turned to syrup. Every muscle loosened. He toppled like a doll into Cemil’s waiting grasp.

The Meskato prince hoisted him up, one arm supporting his shoulders, the other hooking under his knees. Osmund stared mystified up at him and was weightless. “It’s alright,” Cemil seemed to be saying. “Let’s go.”

There were some unimportant jostles of movement. Ah, they were going up the stairs. Stairs were nice, when you didn’t have to climb them. Osmund felt a softness at his back and realized he’d been laid out onto a bed in an unfamiliar room. His head lolled lazily to one side. On a trestle table were some of Cemil’s things.

“I used my magic to slow your heartrate and breathing,” Cemil said across the room, still apologetic. “The experience can be disorienting. It should wear off soon.”

Healing magic was nothing if not versatile in its applications. Osmund couldn’t remember how to nod, but he attempted it anyway. Piece by piece, snippets started to return.

Nicoleta, approaching him with that serious look in her eye. “Tell me,” she’d said, “For what purpose did you conceal yourself and get close to Prince Cemil of the Meskato?” It was clear she would’ve believed any answer at all, except the truth: that he was an idiot in love with no plan whatsoever. He still hadn’t been able to make himself say it.

His heart fluttered uncomfortably. He took in a steadying breath. Another, or Cemil would use that trick on him again.

When he was most of the way sensible, he propped himself up on his elbow. “I don’t think I should be in your bed,” he slurred.

“I shed blood for this alliance,” said Cemil. He was at the window staring out in a way that uncomfortably recalled Nicoleta. “I can be allowed this.”

Not the soundest logic, perhaps, but Osmund wasn’t in the mood to debate. Cemil came over to sit at the bed’s edge. It was so big that with Osmund laying in the middle, they were in no danger of touching each other accidentally. “What did you mean to tell me?” Cemil asked. “You mentioned Lord Pravin.”

Osmund swallowed down bile again. “If he’s out of Şebyan already, then it’s too late,” he despaired. “Cemil, he’s got bigger designs than we imagined.”

Out came the story of Nicoleta’s correspondence, minus what would incriminate Mirhan and Sakina—and the fact that they’d all sheltered an impostor in their midst. Osmund expected the Meskato prince to fly into a fury, but Cemil was oddly calm. “I see,” he said.

“Pravin wants his own empire,” Osmund said again, in case he did not quite grasp the seriousness the first time around. “He won’t be satisfied with the Isles or even Chantel! He’s manipulating your family and those around you to get what he wants!”

A hand moved to Osmund’s thigh, a gesture intended to comfort. “According to your account, his plans have already fallen apart,” said Cemil. “The Tolmish prince wants no part of it, and though Nicoleta is naturally sympathetic to her own people, she plainly understands the wisdom of our alliance. I’ll put out an order for his arrest, of course, if he sets foot on our soil again.”

Osmund’s leg twitched. “I don’t think I’m unduly frightened,” he insisted. “Cemil, even if Lord Pravin dropped dead tomorrow—” Would that we could be so lucky! he thought longingly, “—the rest of Ocendom has sniffed out the rebellion in Videl and are weighing an alliance.”

“All of them joined together can’t match us,” said Cemil, “and they know it. So long as we make no moves on their territory, it’s all bluster. Osmund, believe me.”

He was so confident. So untouchable, as always. How tempting to believe that nothing terrible would come. Except the wedding, Osmund reminded himself with a pit in his stomach, awed by his own capacity for self-pity. That fact, it seems, is inescapable.

Cemil maneuvered out of his boots and coat before shifting his full weight onto the bed. He wrapped an arm around Osmund’s waist. They lay side by side, sharing one pillow. The Meskato prince’s black hair had come jostled out of its tie, and loose strands lay across his face, swaying gently with his breath. Osmund moved a hand against the other’s lips so he might feel that breath curling warmly against his skin.

“You won’t have to run away again,” said Cemil suddenly.

Osmund stared back. “You’ve left your home once before, and everything dear to you,” Cemil continued. His brown eyes were locked on Osmund’s blue. “Your place with us is not temporary. The Empire, your home, is not in any danger, Osmund. And thanks in part to you, neither am I. You’re a true friend. I’m indebted to you, always.”

The Meskato prince was putting on a brave face for him, then. The secrets twisted inside Osmund like a torrent of knives. How could he dare to ask for the truth when he couldn’t offer the same?

Cemil began idly playing with the buttons on Osmund’s doublet. Not up to some mischief, at least not yet. “I’ve been learning a lot of Ocentine wedding traditions,” Cemil said.

Osmund would have rather talked at length about crop failures, or bowel failures for that matter. Anything else in the world. “Oh.”

“Yes. Very interesting. Different from our way, though not as much as I expected.” Cemil took up one of Osmund’s hands next, running his thumb over his knuckles one by one. Osmund watched these explorations distantly. “Did you ever think of getting married yourself?” Cemil asked with that same casual air.

“Not really.”

“Never? That surprises me.”

“I was expected to marry a woman,” Osmund said tightly, forgetting his story for a moment. “I suppose if I ever believed I could marry someone I loved, I might’ve given it some thought.”

“Hm. It isn’t against any laws for two men to marry.”

“It might as well be,” Osmund said. He was very close to asking Cemil to drop the subject rather than keep taunting him with it.

Thankfully, the flow of conversation ambled on. “I feel as though I’ve returned from war to find my lover has borne a son,” said Cemil. “You and Luca are so inseparable.”

Osmund nearly smiled at that. “I’m sorry to say, he isn’t yours,” he joked.

“I’m taking him on as my ward,” Cemil said. “He’s coming back with us to learn to rule, and to make him loyal when he’s grown. His lessons begin right away.”

“‘Lessons’?” Osmund echoed. “Of what sort?”

“Swordplay, speech, writing, reading,” Cemil said. “Apparently you are teaching him to ride already.”

“Yes.” Osmund couldn’t hide the worry on his face, not at this intimate distance. “Cemil. What if he isn’t suited for it, the life of a prince?”

“It’s not a matter of whether he is suited,” said Cemil. “He will learn.”

“And what if he doesn’t?”

“He will.”

“And what if he doesn’t?”

There was a pause while Cemil studied him, clearly perplexed at the turn this had taken. “He’s a very delicate child,” Osmund argued. “He may not learn what you want to teach him. Not ever. Will you forgive him for it? Will you still treat him kindly?”

Cemil pressed a kiss to the crease between his brows.

“He will,” said Cemil again. “Don’t worry.”