Page 10 of Blessed

Someone who would not care for Mattin breathing them in or sharing their table.

Mattin’s lips curled. A tiny sound rumbled in his chest. The tea made him sweat, so he didn’t add more logs to the fire in his office fireplace.

Then he got too cold and gave up, trudging to his room in the dark of night without his cloak which he had forgotten again.

He threw the list he’d made in the fire the next day and started over. His head ached from his fitful, restless night. He let his fire go out and was vaguely aware of an ache in his bones as he neatly wrote out a final list of candidates.

The rap on the door was another assistant, a new one whose name he didn’t know, with a tray of toast and jam. Breakfast foods.

Mattin had not taken breakfast with Arden and Mil—the king and his husband, they must stay the king and his husband—for several days now, he realized, and longed to be at their table, where the heat of a fire did not plague him. They would be there, of course, the king and his husband, Arden and Mil, to watch him and fuss over him and offer him fruit and speak of hunger and… he had to give them the list.

Once they had it, once they chose…. Mattin ended the thought there.

He folded up the paper and ignored the toast, knowing he’d find it later and eat it, cold or stale, without tasting it. Then he headed out, grateful for the snow to cool his stinging face and slow his rushing blood.

He wondered absently where he’d left his cloak. People gave him strange looks as he passed, perhaps for that, or his lack of winter gloves, or for the sweat at his hairline and the back of his neck.

He stopped in a corridor halfway to his room to unfold the paper and look at his list again. Once Mil and Arden chose someone, Mattin would probably never know them as fever partners. Or anything else, but he hadn’t been offered anything else. Only that.

He started to walk again, the paper crumpled in one fist, and startled a passing guard with a growl that rumbled from him with no warning.

The sound shocked him into stopping to give a flustered apology. Then he hurried away, flushed to his ears, pulling at the buttons on his vest until it was loose enough for him to shrug away. The cold still did not reach him. It didn’t take the low pull in his belly for him to realize what was happening.

He had growled at a guard. Word would get out. Mil would tease him.

The second pull hit him at the thought of Mil’s smile, and Mattin dropped to his knees in the snow. This pull was sharp and hot andslowbecauseMil would tease him but Mil would also fuck him if he asked. If Mattin sighed Mil’s name and curled his fingers to summon him like a real Blessed would, Mil would answer. Mil was bigger than Mattin, so much bigger, larger even than Arden, and he would crush Mattin and fill him, and smile, satisfied and smug when he turned to his husband. Because Ardenwouldbe there. Mattin couldn’t beckon one without the other, not for a heat, not for a fever in his blood and such an ache that he could barely walk around it.

He imagined if he demanded it as was his right as a Blessed, they would take him together, stretch him so wide he would never feel empty again. If they were his Gifted, he could make such a request and fit perfectly between them while they obeyed and ravished him.

Mattin bit his lip hard but it did not keep him from moaning on his knees right there in the corridor.

“Are you all right?” someone asked very far away. Mattin stared at them blankly for too long, then nodded and got to his feet, legs shaking, his clothes wet with more than snow, snarling a little when the stranger tried to help him up because he didn’t want that person to touch him. He gulped around another apology but could feel the snarl lingering on his face. He had ruined his pants but couldn’t seem to feel upset about it, in the same way that he had forgotten his approaching fever once again but wasn’t bothered, because they’d sent him food. They had remembered not only that Mattin would need to eat, but his favorite foods.

And now they would marry and he would never know them unless he….

He stumbled to a stop at the door to the king’s rooms, confused to be there and then aware of himself enough again to be embarrassed at the stunned expressions on the faces of the guards.

Mattin glanced down at himself, half-undressed, dirtied and wet from snow at his knees and then… and then wet elsewhere, sticky at his backside and down his thighs. His clothes were too fine for the winter, too thin, as Mil would say. Mattin’s arousal would be obvious who anyone who glanced down. He imagined his eyes were fever-bright, his cheeks as red as his lips, which he kept biting because he kept wanting to moan.

The stickiness against his skin would have bothered him at another time. Like mess. Like the juice of a peach, it had to be dealt with right away before it became a problem. He thought of Arden’s hand, and Mil’s mouth, and bite marks and deep kisses, and felt his knees wobble.

He dropped his head and said, “Excuse me,” in his politest voice before hurrying into the waiting room outside Arden’s study. No one was using it to wait today. He thanked the fae for that.

Behind him, one of the guards called for the other one to run, and quickly. Mattin paused for that, worried that perhaps there was a threat or some danger, but they’d let him in, so he continued to the study, also unoccupied, and then with no announcement, into the sitting room.

That was silent and cold. Of course it was. Arden and Mil were out, and would likely be out all day. Mattin was silly for being here. He didn’t have much time left before he embarrassed himself further.

Without the fire lit, the room was chilly, although he noted the goosebumps on his arms without feeling them. He didn’t know when he’d rolled up his sleeves. In the snow, possibly, on his hands and knees, when he’d nearly dropped the list.

The list was damp and stained now. Mattin frowned at it, feeling another snarl build that he forced down. He put the cursed list on the table and let go.

He took a breath. He had to be calm, although he couldn’t recall why. The air in the sitting room remained cool. He could smell Arden and Mil but only faintly, and wondered if they would mind if he took a cushion back to his room, or maybe a shirt they might have lying around.

He inhaled again and turned blindly toward the stronger scent of them. Of Gifted. Of Arden and Mil. OfhisGifted.

Then he was beyond another curtain, in another room, and the scent was so powerful that he put his hands over his mouth to muffle his whimpers. Before him, like something from his fever dreams, was a bed. A large bed, covered in blankets and furs that had been tossed over it as though Mil and Arden had woken late or been in a rush that morning. There was no fire in the fireplace by the bed but Mattin could feel one beneath his skin. He licked his upper lip and then sank his teeth into his lower one, which was already bruised.

He should not be there. If he stayed, he should at least not touch anything unless they said he could.

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