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I whined, desperate and rolling my hips against his. More. I needed more.

Tallu loosened the ties of my pants just enough that he could reach inside, wrapping his hand around my cock. My whole body shuddered. It was too much stimulation. His hand too rough, the pressure too tight.

I put my hands on his shoulders, lifting myself up onto my knees and thrusting into his tight grip.

Tallu kissed my neck, then my mouth again, and I could feel the unevenness of his breath against my lips. His chest shuddered, his shoulders curling in, and I backed off, pulling myself free from him, and struggled with his pants until he loosened the ties and lifted his hips, allowing me to pull them down.

Then I pushed forward, my cock rubbing against the soft skin of his. He wrapped both of his hands around us, tightening his grip as I pushed up, meeting the rough skin of his palm and the soft velvet of his cock. Tallu made an incoherent sound against my neck, biting down to muffle any further noise.

I couldn’t stand it, needed more, needed him.

“Tell me again,” I begged, unsure what I needed to hear from him.

“You are the most incredible man I have ever seen. And you love me. It feels impossible. When I say it out loud, all I can think is that I am unworthy of it.” Tallu kissed my throat again. “You are beyond my touch, and I will spend the rest of my life trying to become worthy of you.”

I gripped his hair tight, groaning and thrusting up into his grip. He panted, and I realized he was holding on for me, waiting for my release. The knowledge left me breathless, and I came almost without thought, the noise of it blanking out everything else.

It did not matter that we were in the middle of a war. It did not matter that I had just admitted to myself the true reason I couldn’t bear to face Kacha. All that mattered was Tallu and his faith in me, his unbending belief in me.

Tallu curled forward, tightening his grip on our cocks, and the stimulation was almost painful, except for the way that he seemed to cradle me, seemed to need me to wrap my arms around him and pull him against me.

He groaned into my neck, and then his cock pulsed against mine, I could feel his sticky hot come coating me.

Afterward, he panted against my neck, and I felt the cool air of the forest against our exposed flesh. Tallu grabbed a handkerchief from his pocket, and cleaned his hand and then our cocks, being more gentle than either of us deserved.

“I love you,” I said, watching the play of light across his face. Sunset was strange in the forest; the light filtered through the trees, staining it even darker so that it looked nearly like nighttime.

Tallu reached up, tracing his thumb across the line of my jaw. “Are you certain I cannot convince you to leave on one of Namati’s boats?”

“And miss out on Kacha’s defeat at your hands?” I kissed him again. “Never.”

Twelve

Dinner was loud, noisy with children grabbing at food on the tables, shouting over each other to be heard. Koque sat back, watching it all with gentle eyes, but now that I knew who she was, I could see the strategy under her façade of kindness.

If Millu had listened to her, if he had chosen her way over his, the continent would have fallen before Hallu was even born. She conquered by winning hearts, and it was far more effective than the bloody warfare Millu had engaged in. It was more effective than the war we fought against Kacha.

“You will stay here then?” Tallu asked.

“Until you have succeeded against the traitor generals,” Koque said.

“The Kennelmaster believes you can win,” Topi said.

The Bemishu twins had been shadowing the old Kennelmaster, and he had been considered too weak to live at the military camp. He had been forced into hiding along with Lady Chaliko’s father.

“How is the Kennelmaster?” Tallu asked.

“Perhaps Your Imperial Majesty would like to see him before leaving,” Pito said.

She gestured open-handed, clearly adding a subtlety to the words that I didn’t understand. Koque looked away, observing the children again, her eyes narrowing on her own son further down the table. He was laughing, yellow fruit staining his fingertips.

Across from him, Naî watched him with interested eyes, apparently having forgiven and forgotten their earlier tiff. I remembered Tallu saying that she had been healing him while I was gone on various missions.

“We will see him this evening,” Tallu said.

The Bemishu twins looked at each other, their faces relaxing, and I missed Eonaî. My sister and I had once shared such an understanding. Now, I wondered if we would still be able to speak without words, or if our time apart had changed both of us into wholly different people whose shared language had been lost.

After dinner, the children cleaned up by throwing what was uneaten into the forest for the animals and rushing to a nearby river to wash the plates. The Bemishu twins left Lady Chaliko overseeing these evening chores and led us to a small house built into a large tree.