Page 58 of Peculiar Engagements

“Don’t have to ask,” he said.

Charon bent to kiss him one more time and rose from the bed. He had left his best tea kettle with Laurent, but there was a serviceable one by the hearth, and Yves had left the rest of the food he’d acquired from the kitchens under a tin bowl. Charon fetched water and a cloth for Yves, but he let his hands wander as he ran the cloth up his legs and along his inner thighs. Yves submitted to it with a pleased smile, and he watched Charon as he stood to prepare a plate of fruit and stoke the fire.

They ate together on the floor before the fireplace, with Yves in Charon’s lap and the kettle steaming on a hook over the fire.

“I could keep doing this, you know,” Yves said. “Staying in inns, traveling. Running from disappointed kings.”

“Let’s avoid the last one,” Charon said.

“Well, there are only so many kings in this world.” Yves leaned his head against Charon’s shoulder. “You’ll have to get used to luxury on the road, though. I’ll need a carriage, which means a carriage driver, and horses…”

“A carriage, but we drive it ourselves.”

“But if there’s an inn, we use it.” Yves stretched his legs and settled back in Charon’s lap. “There are enough diamonds on that wedding suit alone to get us to Gerakia without dipping into our private funds.”

“Did the king giveyou that suit?” Charon asked, twisting to look at the strips of cloth and diamonds draped over a chair. Yves waved a hand at them idly.

“He didn’t say I couldn’tkeep it,” he said. “We should probably grab my things and leave early so he doesn’t have the time to ask.”

“You don’t mind coming with me?” Charon had been worried about this. Yves was a creature of habit. He loved Duciel, with its operas, gardens, cafes, and even the courtesans who only saw Yves as competition. King Adrien would forgive Yves for the disastrous wedding if he wanted to stay. “We’ll be traveling through the countryside for much of it.”

“Yes, but so long as it isn’tmycountryside, I don’t mind.” Yves turned in Charon’s lap and kissed him. “You’ve been talking about these places ever since I first met you. I won’t complain about the occasional tent or farm ifyou’rethere.”

“Thank you,” Charon said. “Traveling Iperios wouldn’t be the same without you.”

“Of course it wouldn’t,” Yves said. He got to his feet, naked and lovely in the firelight, and gathered the diamond suit in his arms. “So we might as well get started.”

Duciel, Two Years Later

Yves and Charon’s carriage trundled to the door of the House of Onyx a few hours after dawn, while most of the Pleasure District was asleep. It wasn’t a particularly elegant carriage. Charon had spent the better half of one afternoon chipping off its gold paint after they’d been stopped by an exhausted, woefully incompetent highwayman a few miles outside of Duciel. Two years of picking up dust from the streets of Gerakia, Kallistos, and Thalassa had worn down the rest of its shine, and it practically groaned under the weight of all the books, clothes, and boxes of luggage they’d acquired.

Yves and Charon, however, had lost none of their luster. Yves stepped down from the carriage in a Thalassan-style sash and short pants that left very little to the imagination, wearing his favorite Kallistoi sandals with straps that wound up his legs like a knotted rope. Charon had let his hair grow out, which suited Yves, and he wore a fine red Kallistoi shirt and a half skirt, half trouser affair that he’d picked up in Gerakia. Yves didn’t mind it, because it showed off his muscular thighs when the skirt flew back in the breeze. He’d been spending most of their travel days on the driving bench with Charon just to admire the view, andnow his entire body was spotted in freckles. Still, Charon seemed to like them, so Yves hadn’t bothered to cover them up.

At least they didn’t have to slink in like fugitives in the night. According to Laurent’s letters, it was no secret to the king that Charon had killed one of his nobles, but Sabre had convinced him that punishing Charon would likely incite another riot. The whole affair had been discreetly brushed aside while Yves and Charon were exploring the libraries of Gerakia. Charon hadn’t been too pleased to hear that the law had been bent in his favor, but Yves certainly wasn’t about to complain.

From the outside, the House of Onyx looked as though it had been unstuck in time. The walls were the same ominous black, the garden had the same flowers pushing through the gate and crawling up the walls of the laundry shed, and the violet curtains billowed in a light breeze.

It reminded Yves of the first time he’d brought Charon to the farm on their way out of Duciel. They’d made it before Harriet, but it seemed as though she’d told Yves’ parents enough about Charon beforehand, as they were unsurprised to find him with Yves on their new carriage. They’d welcomed them into their home, and Yves had sat in alarmed silence as his mother had patted his arm in approval.

“Perhaps it isn’t what I expected,” she’d said, in her usual brusque way. “But you love him, and he certainly loves you. That’s enough.”

It had been a shock to sit there at the kitchen table, surrounded by the ordinary blue wallpaper and the sounds of the farm outside, with his mother behaving like shedidn’twant to bite his head off for fleeing the altar and showing up with another man. Yves felt the same discordant wariness now as he approached the House of Onyx and knocked on the door. A young woman with a mass of white-blond hair and a cheerfulsmile led them into the lounge, which also looked like it hadn’t changed since Yves and Charon left.

“Are you friends of Lord de Rue?” the woman asked, eyeing Charon with obvious interest.

“Something like that,” Yves said, and wound his arm through Charon’s.

“And here I thought we’d gotten rid of you,” a voice called out from the stairs. Laurent de Rue came down in his usual ostentatious velvet, and Charon broke free of Yves to embrace him. Laurent may have been a tall man, but he was willowy, and Charon practically engulfed him.

He gave Yves a wary look when Yves opened his arms for a hug, and Yves laughed and extended a hand instead. “You’re not still sore over the wedding, are you?”

“Only that it took you to the eleventh hour to come to your senses,” Laurent said. He turned Yves’ hand in his, and the gold ring on Yves’ finger glinted in the light. “Did you forget to invite me to something?”

“We had it done in Kallistos,” Yves said, a little too innocently. “A matching set.”

They hadn’t bothered with a proper ceremony. They’d already been practically married for long enough, and even Yves’ penchant for pageantry wasn’t necessary. They’d commandeered a jeweler’s forge in Kallistos, where Charon had melted down the gold coins he’d brought from Arktos. They made simple rings, nothing glittery or ostentatious, but Yves often found himself staring at them at night, trailing his fingers over the bands. In Arktos, the coins were supposed to be a symbol of loyalty. Yves knew what it meant for Charon to have transformed them into wedding bands, and he prized his simple gold ring.

Laurent drew them onto the couches reserved for guests and rang for tea. Another stranger came in with drinks and foodfrom the kitchen, and Yves stared after him as he left. “More new people?”

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