Page 24 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“When you and Mikel go af­ter Ko­dra, I’m go­ing with you. Swear you’ll tell me when it hap­pens.” Raul touched his left side where his tat­too twined, their old sig­nal of sol­i­dar­ity.

Gabriel shook his head. “You are too valu­able to your fa­ther and to Cal­eva.”

“So I sit at home like a cow­ard while you play the hero again. Mierda, I didn’t mean that,” Raul said, squeez­ing the bot­tle un­til it col­lapsed. “You are a hero. You didn’t play one.”

They’d been around this cir­cle be­fore. Raul couldn’t get past his guilt, and Gabriel didn’t want to re­live the ter­ror, so he would shut down the con­ver­sa­tion ev­ery time it reached this point.

Sud­denly, he changed his mind, seiz­ing his cousin’s wrist and giv­ing it a hard shake. “I love you like a brother, but I would have done the same thing even if I hated your guts.”

His cousin’s scowl shifted to sur­prise. “What the hell?”

“They were look­ing for el Príncipe de los Lirios. We still don’t know what they re­ally wanted you for, be­cause they got me.” Gabriel smacked his fist into his palm. “Think about it. Cap­tur­ing you would have given them tremen­dous lever­age over your fa­ther. Who knows what they might have de­manded? Then he would have had to choose be­tween what was good for Cal­eva and what was good for his son.”

Raul pointed his wa­ter bot­tle at Gabriel in an ac­cu­sa­tion. “And you thought about all this in the split sec­ond be­fore you claimed to be me? Bull­shit!”

“Not all of it, no. That came later.” When he had been ly­ing naked and ter­ri­fied on the cot in the win­dow­less tent where the kid­nap­pers had im­pris­oned him. “But you and I have both been raised on what our duty is to Cal­eva. I wasn’t think­ing of you as Raul. I was think­ing of you as my prince.”

Raul crossed his arms, his pos­ture tight and with­drawn.

“You knew in the mo­ment that I did the right thing,” Gabriel pushed. Maybe they could fi­nally clear the air be­tween them. “Be­cause you kept your mouth shut. I could see in your face that you wanted to iden­tify your­self, and I prayed that you would be smart enough not to.” He looked at his cousin, see­ing the same slash­ing cheek­bones and dent in the chin that he saw in his own mir­ror. That’s why the kid­nap­pers had been easy to fool.

His cousin mut­tered a curse. “I heard my fa­ther’s voice telling me that Cal­eva was more im­por­tant than my feel­ings. I hated my­self for that. I wanted to save you.” His voice shook with re­mem­bered an­guish.

Gabriel reached out to grasp his cousin’s shoul­der. “I know that. I knew it then. We made the right choices.”

“Did we?” Raul asked. “I can be re­placed on the throne by some other cousin, but you—you were a ge­nius with your gui­tar. I de­stroyed that.”

“You didn’t de­stroy it, you ass­hole. The kid­nap­pers did!” Raul’s guilt ran deeper than Gabriel had re­al­ized.

“That’s why I need to go to Italy or wher­ever Mikel needs us,” Raul said. “I need to catch these moth­er­fuck­ers and pun­ish them for what they did to you. While you were be­ing held in that tent, I sat around the palace and did noth­ing. When they sent your—” His gaze went to Gabriel’s ear, and Raul swal­lowed hard, his throat mus­cles work­ing. “I can’t do noth­ing again.”

“It’s not my de­ci­sion,” Gabriel said, even though he un­der­stood his cousin’s sense of help­less­ness. “What if Ko­dra is some kind of trap? The kid­nap­pers missed you the first time. This might be an at­tempt to get you away from Cal­eva to try again.”

“This time, we would be ready for them. In spades.” Raul’s face took on the same hard an­gles that Gabriel saw on the king’s when he plunged into a par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion. Peo­ple knew to get out of Luis’s way when that hap­pened. “I want to make sure ev­ery last one of them is hunted down and made to pay for what they did to you.”

And to you, Gabriel thought.

Raul gripped Gabriel’s fore­arm. “Swear that you will tell me when you and Mikel are go­ing af­ter Ko­dra.”

It sounded like a com­mand, but Raul’s gaze held a plea. He hadn’t been taken cap­tive, and he car­ried the bur­den of it still. Maybe the only way he could get past the guilt was to be part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Gabriel gave a de­ci­sive nod. “I will tell you.”

Raul kept his gaze locked on Gabriel a mo­ment longer be­fore he re­leased his arm and sat back. “Muchas gra­cias, her­mano.” He hes­i­tated a mo­ment be­fore he asked, “Do you ever feel like mov­ing to Antarc­tica?”

“Ev­ery May and De­cem­ber.” Gabriel ac­cepted the change of sub­ject.

Raul choked out a laugh. “Brass-and-grass. Brass-and-mass. Which one do you hate more?”

In their snarky early teens, they had la­beled the two times of year when they felt like they lived in their uni­forms with all their re­quired “brass”—the shiny medals and gold braid. May’s plethora of cer­e­mo­nial events tended to be out­doors, so they’d added “grass,” while the win­ter hol­i­days re­quired at­ten­dance at mul­ti­ple church ser­vices, hence the “mass.”

“Nowa­days, I hate May the most be­cause it’s fuck­ing hot in that wool uni­form,” Gabriel said.

“And you’ve got­ten good at sleep­ing with your eyes half-open at mass,” Raul added.

“You’re not ex­pected to smile and wave in church ei­ther.”

Raul snorted and went silent for a few mo­ments be­fore he asked, “Why do you never wear your Medalla de Honor at the brass events?”

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