Page 142 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

A place of lore and lullaby. The haven for lovers.

Jannart circled his navel with one finger. “I do,” he said. “I have gathered enough evidence to believe it existed before the Grief of Ages, at least. Ed has heard that the remaining scions of the family of Nerafriss know where it is, but they will tell only the worthy.”

“That rules me out, then. You had better go alone.”

“You are not getting away from me that easily, Niclays Roos.” Jannart shifted his head closer, so their noses brushed. “Even if we never find the Milk Lagoon, we can go elsewhere.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere else in the South, perhaps. Anywhere the Knight of Fellowship has no sway,” Jannart said. “There are uncharted places beyond the Gate of Ungulus. Perhaps other continents.”

“I’m no explorer.”

“You could be, Clay. You could be anything, and you should never think otherwise.” Jannart rolled a thumb over Niclays’s cheekbone. “If I had convinced myself I was no sinner, I would never have kissed the lips I longed to kiss. The lips of a man with rose-gold hair, whose birth, by the laws of a long-dead knight, made him unworthy of my love.”

Niclays tried not to stare like a fool into those gray Vatten eyes. Even now, after all these years, looking at this man took his breath away.

“What of Aleidine?” he said.

He tried to sound curious rather than sour. It was difficult for Jannart, who had spent decades stealing between companion and lover, at great risk to his standing at court. Niclays had no such care. He had never wed, and nobody had tried to force him.

“Ally will be fine,” Jannart said, even as his brow crinkled. “She will be the Dowager Duchess of Zeedeur, wealthy and powerful in her own right.”

Jannart cared about Aleidine. Even if he had never loved her as companions loved, they had fostered a close friendship in their thirty-year marriage. She had handled his affairs, carried his child, run the Duchy of Zeedeur at his side, and throughout it all, she had loved him unconditionally.

When they left, Niclays knew Jannart would miss her. He would miss the family they had made—but in his eyes, he had given them his youth. Now he wanted to live out his last years with the man he loved.

Niclays reached for his hand, the one that bore a silver love-knot ring.

“Let’s go soon,” he said lightly, to distract him. “Hiding like this is beginning to age me.”

“Age becomes you, my golden fox.” Jannart kissed him. “We will be gone. I promise.”

“When?”

“I want to spend a few more years with Truyde. So she has some memory of her grandsire.”

The child was only five years old, and already she would leaf ham-fisted through whatever tome Jannart set in front of her, bottom lip stuck out in determination. She had his hair.

“Liar,” Niclays said. “You want to make sure she carries on your legacy as a painter, since Oscarde has no artistic skill.”

Jannart laughed richly. “Perhaps.”

They lay still for a while, fingers intertwined. The sunlight washed the room in gold.

They would be alone together soon. Niclays told himself that it was true, as he had every day for year after year. Another year, perhaps two, until Truyde was a little older. Then they would leave Virtudom behind.

When Niclays turned to look at him, Jannart smiled—that roguish smile that teased at one corner of his mouth. Now he was older, it made his cheek crease in a way that somehow only served to make him more beautiful. Niclays raised his head to meet the kiss, and Jannart cradled his face in both hands as if he were framing one of his portraits. Niclays drew a line down the white canvas of Jannart’s stomach, making his body arch closer and quicken. And even though they knew each other by heart, the strength of this embrace felt new.

By the time dusk fell, they lay entwined in front of the fire, heavy-eyed and slippery with sweat. Jannart skimmed his fingers through Niclays’s hair.

“Clay,” he murmured, “I must go away for a while.”

Niclays looked up. “What?”

“You wonder what I do in my study all day,” Jannart said. “A few weeks ago, I inherited a fragment of text from my aunt, who was Viceroy of Orisima for forty years.”

Niclays sighed. Once Jannart was in pursuit of a mystery, he was like a crow on a carcass, driven by his nature to pick every bone clean. As Niclays craved alchemy and wine, Jannart craved the restoration of knowledge.

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