Page 5 of Blessed

He was…

“Oh no,” Mattin said aloud, and stumbled from his chair to the door. He had sense enough to stop Elbi and tell her he was leaving and why, and to ask if she wouldn’t mind having something to eat sent to his room. Then he didn’t remember much of anything, not clearly anyway, which he was pathetically grateful for when he woke in a moment of lucidity on the floor by the side of his bed with his face buried in the palm of one glove, and the other pressed to where he was slick and wet.

His fever had only lasted two horrible days instead of three, he was surprised to discover. He was still weakened when it was over—the meal he’d ordered at the start barely touched—and he had once again forgotten to stuff himself in the days before the heat had consumed him. But perhaps because Mattin had asked for food at the beginning of his fever, on his day of rest, Elbi knocked on his door and handed him a basket of sweets from the kitchen and told him to get better soon. She didn’t mention the gloves. Mattin silently thanked the fae for that.

In the autumn, Mattin forgot his cloak yet again before his breakfast meeting with Arden and Mil—with the king and his husband—and was given Mil’s to borrow, which did not help Mattin scowl any less as a headache plagued him through the day, although he did appreciate the cloak and tried to be careful with it. He’d already cost them a pair of gloves, though he’d never brought up the matter like the coward he was; he wasn’t going to take a cloak from them too.

But Mil didn’t ask for the cloak’s return, and Arden softly requested some of the old Canamorra scrolls from the library while handing Mattin a slice of apple tart, and then another slice, and finally an apple itself for Mattin to take to the library with him, and while Mattin was there, he received a note from Arden with an additional question about Canamorra history. The paper was crisp but Mattin would have sworn Arden had worn the paper close to his skin because Arden’s scent filled the cubby Mattin had climbed into to dig through ancient records.

Then he’d found what Arden had last asked for—the copy of a copy of a copy of drawing of a tapestry long since lost to time, which depicted one of the ancient Canamorra on the day of their hand-fasting. A wedding portrait that was still so beautiful, even as a copy of a copy of a copy, that Mattin curled up in the cubby on Mil’s cloak to stare at it, with the fur at his cheek and Arden’s letter in his pocket.

Master Arlylian, Arden had addressed him, always using Mattin’s earned rank at the library as if aware Mattin worried over being taken seriously, being a Master Keeper so young. Mattin liked that.

He liked it when Mil called himSasstoo although he could never tell Mil he did because Mil would be smug. Mil thought Mattin had spirit, even though Mattin really didn’t. Mattin was dusty and quite boring in addition to his plainness.

He reread Arden’s note as took the clasps out of his hair, then ate his apple and felt almost at peace as he made his way through an account of the hand-fasting in question. He didn’t know why when nothing of the account was exactly peaceful. The early Canamorra had seized power quite forcefully, something seemingly at odds with the yearning and passion in the stories of that hand-fasting. What Mattin would have assumed was a political alliance was, to the Canamorra, a romance to make Mattin blush and sigh as he read it and reread it.

Canamorra would give their loves anything they asked for, up to and including an entire country. That was what Mattin felt was beneath the story.

He had no idea why Arden would need these records, or why he needed them now, or how Mattin was going to discuss them with Arden without looking at Mil and wondering if Mil was often taken as many had imagined the first Canamorra taking his beloved, how he was going to look at them both and not imagine himself taken as well.

When the firstpullfrom his lower body came—the first sharp enough to make him notice—it was with only quiet surprise and then delight that he’d spotted his fever coming for once. He wished he’d noticed enough to start eating more days ago, but at least it explained why he was so tired and why his pretty hair clasps had pained him. He scooped up the scrolls and climbed out of the cubby before gathering Mil’s cloak about him and walking to the king’s room.

Arden and Mil were not there, although the guards let Mattin in. Mattin frowned over that a bit, but then another pull hit him, harder than before, and he had to lean against the wall to catch his breath and get his legs to work again. When he recovered, he set the scrolls on their table, a little startled to notice the table held a bowl overflowing with fat, luscious apples and a basket of buns and nut cakes from the kitchen that it hadn’t held that morning.

Arden and Mil wouldn’t begrudge Mattin either, he knew, but still hesitated. Then his stomach growled with enough force to feel nearly as bad as the tugging, pulling, growing, inexorable need from his lower body. He ended up stuffing a nut cake—two cakes—in his mouth so the guards wouldn’t see, and taking an additional apple and pastry with him as he made his way back to his room.

In the winter, Mil unexpectedly took Mattin and Cael with him on a tour of the new barracks for the unattached palace guards, and sat Mattin down next to him to eat a meal with all of them. It was plainer fare than the nobles ate, but Mattin emptied his bowl of stew and half of the plate of bread and butter that Cael insisted she didn’t want, and then ate the other half when Mil said he didn’t want any either.

Arden told him his brother had been practicing his needlework and had made Arden a chair cushion he didn’t need, and offered it to Mattin for his office.

For a cushion Arden didn’t need, it smelled of him quite a lot, and of Mil as well, much more than the cloak that Mattin had shoved under his bed and never returned to Mil out of fear of Mil finding out that Mattin had drooled and mouthed at the fur lining while rubbing his small Blessed cock against it, his nose full of the scent of the king, of Mil, while he tried to fill his emptiness with his fingers.

Even thinking of it was enough to make Mattin unable to meet Mil’s eyes.

Nonetheless, Mattin piled both onto his bed that evening when he realized the heaviness in his limbs meant his fever was coming on. The cushion and the cloak, and the gloves too, and half a dozen spiced biscuits that Arden said had come from his sister Jola’s house.

The items helped make a nest, of course, but Mattin didn’t think about that. Not then, and not while he was face down in the cushion and frigging himself with a too-large glove, and not later when he cleaned everything before hiding it all beneath his bed.

He spent his day after in his room without much protest, mostly because Cael had mentioned something of it recently, on account of some relative of hers, and how hard lust-fevers could be on the body. It was pleasant to spend a day lounging in the bath or in bed with a book he chose to read and not one he felt he ought to. Although he’d been itching to get back to work by the time he left his room in search of dinner.

Mattin had never had a fever go so well and thought he understood why so many other Blesseds didn’t mind them so much. He could have done without the sweating and writhing and the sounds he sometimes heard himself making, but at least no one else witnessed those.

He went to breakfast the next day as usual, and only blushed faintly when Arden poured sugared almonds into his palm and Mil pushed his cup toward him. If Mattin kept his gaze on his tea, he could imagine they werehisGifted watching intently as he nibbled almonds and drank tea with honey and milk. He could imagine it even when he wasn’t staring at his cup, and decided he ought to keep his visit short, since his day of rest after his fever had not cooled his blood enough. Only to then linger at their table anyway, inhaling heat and strength and the plain soap they still used even though Arden as king might have had anything.

Mattin thought of offering them some of his soap, although neither of them likely wanted to smell of mint, or chamomile, or lilies. But he could imagine those scents on them, traces left behind from Mattin’s hands or from wherever they had touched him. Mattin used oils on his skin to leave it softer, so they might also smell of that, and the scent of him with them and how Mattin would use them would soak into their bedding along with Mattin’s slick. Like a nest. Like the only nest worth having. Mattin wouldn’t want to leave it. He wouldn’t want them to leave it. He could call them to his nest like a real Blessed would, and they would take him, one at a time or together. However Mattin wanted, as many times as he wanted, like the gifts from the fae they were.

“More?” Arden’s lovely voice broke into Mattin’s thoughts. Mattin turned to him, still lost in his dream, altogether too warm as Arden swept a look over his face.

“More?” Mattin returned, certain he would always want more but unsure how Arden knew that.

“You don’t seem satisfied,” Arden declared, the firelight hitting the silver in his hair. He had so many more years than Mattin. So much more experience. Mattin must seem an awkward youth to him. To both of them.

Mattin looked to Mil, no less confused when Mil, unlike Mattin, seemed very satisfied indeed. Almost smug.

“Near ravenous I’d say,” Mil offered in response to Arden. “I’m familiar with the expression,” he added pointedly. Bruises along one side of his throat had the shape of bites, of a mouth.

Arden placed a slice of a hothouse peach in Mattin’s palm. It was warm from Arden’s hands and dripping. He gave the rest of the peach to Mil.

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