Page 57 of Salt in the Wound

He stops. The words for what he needs to say don't exist in the careful, clinical vocabulary of a healer delivering a diagnosis. He forces them out anyway.

"If you don't have intercourse with someone, you'll die."

Eskil stares at him. The blown pupils are fixed on his face and Indrie can see the comprehension fighting through the haze, the moment the words register, the moment their meaning crystallizes, the moment Eskil understands what Indrie is telling him and what Indrie is offering.

"No," Eskil says. The word is immediate. Absolute. Spoken with a conviction that the fever has not touched, a clarity that cuts through the haze. "You're not, I won't–"

"You will die."

"Then I'll die."

The words land in Indrie's chest and stay there.

He'd rather die. The thought forms with a clarity that is almost peaceful in its devastation. The idea of Indrie's hands on him, Indrie's body against his, is so repugnant that death is preferable. Not just undesirable, not just uncomfortable, but so fundamentally abhorrent that a man who has survived wars and storms and the open sea would rather let the fever take him than endure Indrie's touch for a single night.

Indrie's hands are still on Eskil's chest. He can feel the king's heart slamming beneath his palms. He should pull away. He should stop touching a man who has told him in every possible way that his touch is unwanted. But if he pulls away, the fever will keep climbing, and Eskil will die, and Indrie can't.

His voice comes out small. Fractured. He barely recognizes it.

"Should I– do you want me to bring Bohdi? If he would be– if you would rather–"

The sound Eskil makes is not a word. It is somewhere between a snarl and an oath, guttural and vicious, and the profanity that follows is in his own language, but the meaning is unmistakable. His grip on Indrie's wrists tightens and for a moment the fever breaks against something harder, something furious and lucid and deeply, personally offended.

"I don't want to fuck Bohdi," he says, and the disgust in his voice is so thorough that it leaves no room for ambiguity. "Gods. No."

Indrie flinches. The reaction is automatic, conditioned, his shoulders drawing up and his chin dropping at the force of Eskil's tone, and the confusion is worse than the fear because he doesn't understand. He doesn't understand what Eskil wants. He doesn't understand what's being refused and what's being rejected and whether the rejection is about the act or the participant and his mind is spiraling and the king is burning and none of this makes sense.

"Then who– tell me who to get and I'll–" Indrie starts, but can't finish.

Eskil's hand leaves his wrist and finds his jaw. The grip is firm, his fingers curving along the bone, tilting Indrie's face up, forcing his gaze level. The fury is still there in his expression, banked but burning, and beneath it something desperate and wild and frightened in its own right.

"Listen to me," Eskil says.

His voice is strained. Every word is an effort, forced through the fever and the desire and the fruit's relentless demand, and the clarity of them is a testament to something, willpower, stubbornness, the iron core of a man who has never been controlled by anything in his life and is not about to start now.

Indrie stares.

"Are you listening?"

Indrie nods. He can feel his own heartbeat in the fingers Eskil has on his jaw.

"You do not have to do this," Eskil tells him, voice clear despite the fruit's effects, each word placed with the same deliberate care he used when he told Indrie he was free. "You do not belong to me. The fruit doesn't change that."

Indrie's heart sinks.

The words echo.You do not belong to me.He's heard them before. On the deck. Twice now, spoken with increasing firmness, and each repetition drives the blade a little deeper. This isn't a vow. This isn't a promise. This isn't a man claiming his partner the way the Cara fruit intends. This is a king, even now, even burning alive, making it clear that what is about to happen is not what Indrie's culture says it is. That sharing the fruit means nothing. That Indrie is here to perform a function, healer, savior, body, and when the function is complete, the arrangement ends.

This is just a use for you no one has found before.

He nods sharply. The motion is jerky, mechanical, and he can feel his eyes burning. The tears are there, behind the surface, pressing against the backs of his eyes with the insistence of something that will not be denied much longer. He's told himself for nearly three weeks that this man is no different from Armond, that kings take what they need and discard the rest, and maybe he hadn't believed it. Maybe some part of him had fallen for the king without his permission, fallen for the stars and the drawing and the strong, gentle hands, and he hadn't realized how far until this moment, when Eskil laid it out in plain language that Indrie means nothing to him.

Eskil touches his face. So gentle. So careful. The hand on his jaw softens into something closer to a caress, Eskil's thumb tracing his cheekbone, and Indrie's chest aches with a pain that for once is not physical.

"You don't understand," Eskil says. The frustration in his voice is thick and desperate, not anger but agony, the sound of seeing the chasm between what he's saying and what Indrie is hearing and being unable to bridge it. "Indrie."

But Indrie nods. "I understand," he says, and his voice cracks. A single fracture, thin as a hairline, splitting the composure he'sbeen maintaining through force of will, and he can feel the first few tears roll down his cheeks.

Eskil's face changes when he sees them. His eyes widen, his expression cracks. And Indrie tries to look away, but Eskil won't let him go. He slides his hand around to the back of Indrie's neck. The grip is warm, firm, his fingers threading into the hair at Indrie's nape, and Indrie braces himself.