Page 149 of The Sun King's Noon

Kaelen lowered his voice. “I had been meaning to ask you…I overheard yesterday…the siren telling you of the prophecies?—”

“I do not wish to speak of it,” Richard said quickly.

And there was one prophecy he more than anything never wanted mentioned again. One prophecy that curdled a deep horror each time his thoughts trailed close.

“I see him collared. A prisoner in his own castle. I see him pinned to my own wedding bed?—”

Richard’s stomach lurched, and he set the cup on the prow’s rail.Do not think of it. Do not?—

“That’s all right,” Kaelen said softly. “We need not speak of it today.”

The knot in Richard’s chest loosened.

“May I ask you instead…The dream.” Hope resounded in Kaelen’s words. “You truly—we truly—it was the same one? You were there?”

“It was me.” Richard gave him a small smile. “I know that it was you, too. Only you would bare your heart in a broom cupboard with brandy on your breath.”

Kaelen huffed a sheepish laugh and slowly slid his hand across the railing to climb over Richard’s.

Richard stared first at the hand, then at Kaelen, whose face had gone solemn.

“I want you to know,” Kaelen said, “that I seek no answer. What I said in that cupboard, I said because it has been mine to harbour, and the dream gave me leave to lay it down.”

“Oh. Well.” Richard dithered, his mind seemingly made of two wrestling halves. “That—that is kind of you to say.”

—tell him. Tell him now?—

—wait until we are at the castle?—

—this is the perfect moment?—

—next spring. Next spring would be better?—

Richard bit his lip. No. He was no coward.

I cannot run from this forever.

“There was once a boy prince,” he began, trying not to cringe, “who…who was, in truth, a poor sort of company. When this prince grew into a youth, he found that his peers had begun to speak of things he had no understanding of, and when the seasons turned, and he turned with them, the call of desire did not appear.” Richard hesitated. By the gods, he sounded ridiculous—too fast, too factual. Nothing like Kaelen’s tender, heartfelt words. “The prince turned twenty-one, and his father urged him to find a lover and his mother bade him to open his heart, and the prince learned that to open one’s heart generally meant to open one’s legs or arms, to embrace a man or woman in a manner the prince had no interest in performing. Every relationship his elders pressed upon him looped, sooner or later, to the bedchamber, and the prince shrank from it all for it repulsed him so.”

Kaelen had begun to knead the back of Richard’s hand. It helped Richard continue despite his parched mouth.

“The prince turned twenty-five, then thirty, and by then, his parents were weeping, arguing in their chamber, believing they had failed him. The prince heard their frustration and despair, and the guilt of it sat like a noose around his neck...Often, he wondered why he was born so peculiar. He tried a few times to coax himself into bedding another, but each attempt ended in a disaster that had to be stifled.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Richard saw Kaelen stiffen.

“The prince did notice, once, an eighteen-year-old squire.” Richard chuckled. “A boy ready to face execution for the sake of his prince’s honour. A foolish, brave boy, and the prince felt the beginnings of a distant fondness. And when the boy returned from his adventuring as a knight of twenty-two, tall as a doorway and strong, the prince felt pride. That was where it should have ended.”

Richard’s pulse raced, his muscles coiled, his body on edge, as if he were readying himself for battle. “But near six months ago, the knight’s affections for the prince became clearer. And the prince—or king, rather, for the prince had been made king—saw, for the first time, the true measure of the man before him. A knight, who was loyal, silly and brave and resembled the sun when he smiled.”

Kaelen’s hand tightened on his, trembling.

“And the king began to feel a fondness that was no longer distant. A peculiar possessiveness. An absurd adoration. It took the king far too long to recognise what it was. He had not the practice. He had built a life on never recognising such things. And when he did recognise it, he wondered at his right to feel such a way. He is, after all, a man for whom the bed is a place of sleep and nothing else. And the knight”—Richard couldn’t stop his babbling, couldn’t stop the tumble of unrehearsed words—“the knight is beauty itself, and there are dozens, hundreds, who would gladly climb into his bed and give him every pleasure he could seek to find, so why then would the knight accept a man who cannot offer him what every other partner could? Why would he chain himself to a bed in which he would always be the only one wanting? The king could not think of an answer. He still cannot, in truth, and the asking of it seems”—Richard inhaled deeply—“seems a cruel thing.”

The sea blurred. He blinked hard, and the horizon resolved.

A hand clasped his chin and turned his face.

Kaelen wasn’t smiling. His eyes were grave and his hand gentle. “Maybe I’d not mind, my prince, if it were for you.”