Page 2 of The Prince's Fealty

“Oh, goddess. What happened?”

Pel licked his lips. “Part of the nursery collapsed right before you fell out the window.”

It took a moment for the words to penetrate, and then Tor nearly melted with relief. “No, I knew that. That was me, because the mercenaries were about to realize the baby wasn’t in the room. I’d already lowered Pamuna and the baby out the window. I stayed behind to give them time to get away.”

Pel stared at him for a moment like he wasn’t making any sense, and then his face tipped up into a wry smile.

“Of course you did.” He sounded exasperated but… fond? “I don’t see how falling out the window seemed like your best plan, though.”

Tor’s breath hitched briefly as he remembered those last, terrible moments. “I didn’t know what else to do. One of them caught sight of the empty cradle. I knew I needed to stop them talking, so I brought the ceiling down.” The scene replayed in his mind’s eye, and he shivered. “Honestly, I’m not sure that should have worked. I had no magic left, everything was a haze of red, and then it was going dark. And I just… fell?” He was finally brought up short. “Wait a sec. How did I survive?”

Pel rolled his eyes. “How was that not your first question?”

Tor wrinkled his nose. “I feel a bit like I’m wandering around aimlessly through impenetrable fog. Possibly while sleeping. It’s a really weird feeling. Sorry.”

Pel leaned in and brushed a kiss across Tor’s lips. Tor tried to lean into it, but Pel kept it light. His expression was serious. “That’s because you came way closer to dying than you’re ever allowed to do again. Never ever, do you hear me?”

Tor wanted to give Pel everything he wanted, but…

“Um, it’s certainly not my intention, but I can’t truthfully say that my intentions and my actions have always lined up recently.”

Pel’s face softened, and he kissed Tor softly again. “Yes, I get it. I just really don’t want anything to happen to you, and it came really, really close. Again.”

“HowdidI survive?” Tor repeated his question.

Evenifhe’d somehow survived the fall, burning out his core should have killed him.

“You landed on me.”

Tor blinked, tried to process these words, and still came up empty.

“I… landed on you,” he repeated blankly.

Pel nodded. “I was under the window, but I didn’t have anything with me to get up there. And then the wall was crumbling, and you were falling, and I caught you. Well, we both fell to the ground, with you on top of me. Knocked the wind out of me, and made sitting in a boat for days a lot of fun, but you were all right.”

Tor heard the words, but he still didn’tunderstand.

“But why were you under the nursery window? And why did you help? I was an ass.”

An array of expressions flitted across Pel’s face, too fast for Tor to interpret them.

Pel sighed. “I was really annoyed, and you were totally an ass. You shouldabsolutelyhave told me the truth sooner. But once I had the chance to calm down, it was pretty clear that whatever your intentions in coming to Tond, it didn’t go exactly as you’d planned.”

“Not at all,” Tor promised earnestly. This was his chance to clear the air properly. He might not be at his best, but he had to try. “It was a truly asinine plan, which was why, once I realized that I couldn’t go through with it and there werefeelings,I decided it would be better never to reveal it. I knew it would hurt you, and so I convinced myself that you never had to know, as if that would make it all right. In retrospect, not my smartest moment in a series of very poor decisions. I’msosorry.”

Pel rolled his eyes, but thankfully, he didn’t look angry. “Itdidhurt me, and itwasa terrible plan. But I do actually understand about unexpected consequences and getting trapped in a way of behaving and brazening things through. I might have made you work for it a bit more—except I’ve been terrified for more than two weeks that I was going to lose you permanently through death, and that kind of put things in perspective. I—” He cut himself off abruptly, his expression doing something weird. Concern? Consternation? “Actually, there’s something we need to talk about.”

A tendril of alarm snaked through Tor. Had Pel only been taking care of Tor because he was too wonderful to abandon Tor while he was in a magical coma?

Tor’s stomach lurched. Oh, no. He’d totally do that, wouldn’t he?

Trying not to panic, Tor asked carefully, “What is it?”

Pel inhaled a long, slow breath and then blew it out. He swallowed visibly, and Tor allowed himself to be distracted by the bobbing of his throat, because he wasn’t sure he could look Pel in the eyes if Pel was about to tell him he was done with him.

In a calm, matter-of-fact voice, Pel asked, “Did you know that it’s not actually necessary to speak the words of a bond to wind up bonded?”

This was so contrary to what Tor had been expecting that for a long moment, he didn’t understand the significance of the question. His brain tried to reengage. Tor had never really thought about it, and while it was an interesting idea, he didn’t see how it had anything to do with the present conversation, with him and Pel. With him and—