Page 3

Before Tobi can explain more, a man who can only be Kerik appears in the doorway.

He is wearing only a sleeping shirt, hanging to his muscled thighs. He has a blanket slung around his shoulders as protection against the cold of the Bride House’s freezing corridors.

Half-dressed and clearly debauched, Kerik is a fine looking man, almost as tall as Damon and built the same. His face is quite as handsome and far less serious. He grins broadly to see Tobi, saying, “Ah, and you must be Tobi Darekul. I have heard much of you. My mysterious brother.”

Tobi stands as Kerik approaches him, letting himself be drawn into an embrace with easy strength behind it. “I am the mysterious one,” he says into Kerik’s meaty shoulder. “I heard you were dead.”

Kerik pulls back from the embrace and looks around the room as if thinking about this. “I’m not dead.” A smile twitches at the corner of his mouth.

“I suppose you are not.”

Kerik looks down at Baby, asleep, stretched out before the fire. “You are the Beast Tamer,” — he points — “and this your beast. Is this thing safe? It won’t attack me?”

Tobi shakes his head happily. “She won’t attack you.”

Kerik nods to Harok. “And this other beast?”

Before Tobi can answer, Harok says in his rough Artemian, “I am tame beast.” And laughs.

Kerik looks quite startled, although he is still smiling. “I thought you spoke no Artemian,” he says to Harok, in Artemian.

At this, Harok only frowns. Tobi says, “He is picking it up. And he certainly knows the word beast.”

Kerik’s smile becomes quite knowing, as Perl, the brittle fae creature, appears — coming up behind Kerik and touching him on the arm.

With a short, joyful exclamation, Kerik spins around and kisses the fae briefly on the lips, before saying, “There you are, my faerie, Where have you been?”

“You told me to order our room.”

“Ah, I did.” Kerik leans closer to Perl and kisses him again. More deeply. His whisper in Perl’s ear is audible to Tobi, “Always so ready to obey my commands.”

Tobi feels his cheeks colour, the pair are so intimate. He knows they have recently declared themselves lovers. No doubt they are still flushed with the raptures of early coupling.

Kerik and Perl stop kissing, and Kerik pulls Perl by the hand to take their seats. Looking at the steaming cauldron of porridge on the table, Kerik claps his hands and declares himself ravenous with hunger.

“I heard you performed some powerful magic in the Blue Mountains that drained you,” Tobi says, politely making conversation.

Kerik laughs. “I have certainly drained myself wholly.” As if to illustrate his point he fills his wooden porridge bowl almost to the brim and pours over cream, which runs thick and glossy down the bowl’s rim. Kerik lifts the bowl and licks at it before the contents spills onto the table cloth.

Beside him, Perl, folds his pale hands. The contrast between them is marked; Kerik, so strong and muscular, spooning porridge into his mouth like a starving man, while Perl, delicate and eerily pretty, sits demurely, looking as if he carries all the world’s problems on his shoulders. He does not touch the food on the table.

Do fae eat food like mortal men?

Tobi watches as Kerik reaches for Perl’s forearm and grasps it with the hand that is not busy with the process of consuming porridge — a considered combination of command and reassurance. Perl looks up at Kerik and Kerik grins at him. Perl’s solemn, serious expression seems to melt into something soft, eyes on Kerik’s and suddenly it is as if Perl has no concerns except being Kerik’s lover.

They have all found love. All four of them. Perhaps that is a gift from the Gods. A compensation for the battle they must now face.

If he does face it. If he does not leave for the forest.

Elric arrives next in the dining room and Tobi remembers that although they have all found their lovers, not all of them are with those lovers. His heart feels desperately sore to imagine how he would feel if Harok was languishing in an Empire dungeon.

Elric only nods a greeting, sitting down and putting a scant spoonful of porridge into his bowl. He stirs it, but does not eat. He looks pale and thin, freckled skin taut over his fine, sharp cheekbones.

Tobi does not know Elric well but he knows he is Lukas’s lover. That fact alone intrigues him. The lover of the notorious traitor prince. The outlaw. According to Damon, Lukas is quite besotted with the pretty red-haired son of the Warden of Pluma-Ferris.

A young Zai Bride comes silently into the room and sits down beside Elric.

It is Eloidi. She is often around and usually seems to be looking at Elric when she is.