But no matter what he told himself, making himself leave was still the hardest thing Ksar had ever done. His feet felt heavy, his body reluctant to cooperate, as if it was bound to the young man he was leaving behind with tight, invisible ropes. Mine, his body insisted. Mine, the feeling in his chest said.
Ksar managed a few steps when a sound stopped him.
A laugh, harsh and a little hysterical.
Ksar turned, and stared.
Seyn was laughing, his hands covering his face as his shoulders shook with laughter. “Sorry? You know where you can shove your fucking apology?” He lifted his head, glaring at him. “You just have to ruin everything, don’t you? I don’t want to hear your apologies. I don’t want to listen to you saying that I mattered to you. I want to hate you, dammit. Let me have that at least!” He slumped forward, running a hand over his face. “I hate you,” he whispered, his voice wavering. “Don’t take that away from me.”
Ksar eyed him with furrowed brows. He took a step closer, and then another, and another, until he was looking down at Seyn’s bowed head.
“I…” he said, his hand twitching toward Seyn. He’d never felt so out of his depth. He wanted…he wanted Seyn to stop feeling upset. He wanted to fix it. But he didn’t know how. He knew what he wanted to do, but it was highly unlikely Seyn would even accept comfort from him.
Seyn heaved a sigh and stared at the blue flowers again. “Have you ever heard of Queen Esme of my clan?”
Ksar frowned, taken aback by the change of subject. “I don’t recall her.”
“You wouldn’t. It happened over five thousand years ago and she ruled for just two years.” Seyn touched one of the blue petals. “These are poisonous, you know. They can be used to create a lethal poison—poison that was very popular at the court back then. To protect her daughter from poisoning, Queen Esme’s mother fed her small doses of poison from very early childhood, to build up her immunity. But it worked a little too well. By the time Queen Esme ascended the throne, she was completely addicted to it. She was stabbed two years later while she was too high to even notice it.”
Seyn lifted his eyes back to Ksar. “It’s a story told to all children of our House. The moral of the story is supposed to be that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but I used to think that my mother just made up that story to stop me from doing something reckless and dangerous.” Seyn gave a crooked smile. “I didn’t believe that you could actually grow to need something that hurt you. It seemed really messed up, you know?” He laughed, the sound sharp as broken glass. “It is messed up.”
Ksar stared at Seyn, his heart beating fast and hard.
“Queen Esme didn’t die from that poison,” he heard himself say.
“No, she didn’t,” Seyn agreed, his face raw with emotion that hurt to look at. “She died because she didn’t give a shit about anything but her poison. She died because she was too weak to resist it. Isn’t that essentially the same thing? She was an idiot. I’m an idiot, too, or I wouldn’t hate Ambassador Denev for not being the insufferably arrogant, infuriating, immoral asshole who hurt me all my life.” Seyn glared at Ksar, but there was something fragile about his expression, his eyes shining with unshed tears. “What have you done to me? I should hate you.”
Slowly, Ksar dropped to one knee, and then the other, until he was kneeling in front of Seyn, who was staring at him, wide-eyed.
Well aware that anyone spying on them could probably see him kneeling on the hard ground, Ksar took Seyn’s hand and brought their clasped hands to his right shoulder.
Seyn took in a sharp breath, clearly recognizing the gesture: it had once been used by clan lords to swear fealty to their king. It had gone out of use thousands of years ago; it was considered too demeaning by modern standards.
“I can’t promise you that I will never hurt you again,” Ksar said, looking Seyn in the eye. “You know me. I’m not—good at emotions. But I can promise you that I will try—as long as you’ll have me.” He was dismayed by how raw his voice sounded, how desperate he felt—and likely looked. Crown princes didn’t kneel. He didn’t kneel. But this was more important than his pride. Seyn was owed some groveling after years of rejection and rudeness; Ksar was well aware of that. He wasn’t blind to his own faults—he would always be “insufferably arrogant”—but that didn’t mean he couldn’t suppress his pride and arrogance when it mattered.
And this mattered.
“Stop that, get up,” Seyn said tightly, looking away. “What are you even saying? It doesn’t matter anyway, does it? It’s too late. You are marrying her in four days! And I already said yes to Ambassador Denev.”