Page 7 of Blessed

Mattin’s face was no doubt blazing red. A plate was nudged in front of him, loaded with potatoes, carrots, and venison covered in gravy. Mattin had to swallow to keep from openly salivating.

Mil picked up Mattin’s hand and placed a fork in it. “Eat, please, and then tell us about your trip.”

Really, Mattin should have said something or glared at them both—handing him a fork as if he didn’t know how to eat—but the food did look good, and they certainly had plenty so he wasn’t denying them anything. He did manage to ask if they were sure and caught Arden with a smile on his face that was so indulgent, Mattin had to glance at Mil to see what Mil had done to cause it.

Mil grunted, “Eat,” at him, which was the only answer Mattin got. With both of them looking at him it felt like an order, so Mattin took the smallest possible piece of potato and ate it, pretending the first hint of spice and butter didn’t make him weak.

“Very delicate,” Mil commented in a rough voice. “Very proper. Eat more, please, if you’d be so kind.”

Mattin put more potato in his mouth just to keep in his sighs of longing. “I don’t mean to make you worry,” he said softly when he could.

“And yet,” Arden answered gravely, “nearly a month you’ve been gone. Then you return pale as a ghost except for the color in your cheeks. It’s good to see you again, dear h—Master Arlylian, but I think seeing you has made us worry more.”

“Not that it helped, hearing that you’d returned but that you wereunwell.” Mil pronounced the word as though he’d been practicing saying it instead of whatever he actually wanted to say. So many beat-of-fours complained Mil couldn’t be diplomatic, but he could when he wanted to.

Mattin glanced up, then went very still as Mil wiped a bit of gravy from his cheek for him. Mil licked the gravy from his fingers, casual as anything. Mattin turned quickly to Arden, then dropped his gaze entirely to his plate when Arden’s attention was too much.

The potatoes were all gone. Mattin frowned.

“Carrots next?” Arden suggested. Except Arden of the Canamorra’s suggestions were actually polite orders.

Mattin nodded and wondered how long the look he had just interrupted would haunt him. “You’ve both been well? It takes a while for news to reach Arlylian territory, so I wasn’t sure that… I mean, I hoped that you were well.”

“Oh, some of the usual beat-of-four families kicking up a fuss over any old thing.” Arden spoke lightly of something that was a real problem and, if Cael was to be believed, a danger. “Some of them posturing. Some wanting something else from me. And some… well, not a topic you need to fret over at this moment in time, Mattin Arlylian.”

Mattin opened his eyes, which seemed to have fallen closed, and resumed eating carrots, although he didn’t care for them and drowned them in gravy first. A little too late, he realized this was probably Arden’s dinner he was eating and glanced over. Arden responded by dropping a dinner roll onto Mattin’s plate and smiling.

He had a very charming smile, even if the scar down his cheek made him look ratherforbidden and illicit, like a bandit of old. Mattin turned to Mil, who smiled at him as well. Mil’s warm smiles just made Mil look even more handsome, as though he could be easily charmed, which wasn’t at all true. Although when hewascharmed, it was usually by his husband or Arden’s young niece. Or Mattin when he supposedly sassed them.

But Mattin had come here to say something and it had nothing to do with dinner or smiles. He turned back to his food while he tried to remember what it was. The gravy was quite good. He sopped it up with the roll, then wiped his hands on a napkin, which made Mil sigh for reasons unknown.

After not eating, not as he should have, for several days, and then his fever days where he had not swallowed even a scrap, so much food made Mattin’s stomach hurt, but also made him aware of how tired he was. The fire was incredibly warm. Arden and Mil, on either side of him, were hot as well, although Mattin shouldn’t have been able to feel their body heat where he was. He might have imagined it. Or it was his fever lingering in odd ways.

Arden handed him a cup which held wine mixed with fruit juice, and Mattin was so very thirsty. He emptied it and put it down, then closed his eyes.

“Mil, my love, are your plans for tomorrow still to ride out to look over the back sections of the old palace wall?”

The question was voiced softly over Mattin’s head. Arden must have bathed this evening; he smelled of plain soap and maybe a bit of wine. No leather on him now. Just Arden-scent and traces of bathwater.

Mil must have been busy until late. No soap scent around him, but clean sweat at his neck and then spiced tea on his breath, as if he’d needed the tea to keep going. “Aye, but I’ll be back in time for the council meeting. Wouldn’t leave you to handle that bunch alone. Will you be there too, Sass? Or do you need more time to rest?”

Mattin gave a start, then put his hands to his cheeks as he realized he had been sitting between them with his eyes closed, inhaling their scents. He could not look up. Not even if Cael herself were to ask him to. He hoped they thought he’d fallen asleep, but even that was beyond rude. Anyway, he doubted he was so lucky. They’d noticed. Of course, they would have.

“I’m sorry.” He’d known he would miss them when he left, but he hadn’t thought about what it would be like to return to them, especially so close to a fever. “I didn’t mean to… I’m sorry. I forgot my fever was near. That’s why I was late. I’m sorry.” That was what he’d come here to say.

“We didn’t,” Mil revealed easily, and then paused in reaching for more wine when Mattin squawked.

“What? What do you mean you didn’t?”

“We didn’t forget your fever was due,” Arden explained. “But you were with your family, so we assumed they would make sure you ate enough. I can see now that we’ll have to do better next time since they obviously won’t.”

“Did you think we’d be mad you had your lust-fever and couldn’t visit?” Mil briefly looked hurt. “Why would we?”

Mattin blinked dry eyes, then turned on Arden. “You… remembered my fever was due?”

Saying it out loud was a mistake. Humiliation stung him as he realized they had remembered his own fever schedule better than he had. That was followed by a sweeping, all-over heat to imagine them thinking of Mattin and a lust-fever at the same time, even if they’d only done so abstractly.

Arden met Mattin’s stare without hesitation. “We rely on you, and we like to consider you a friend, and we worry when you don’t appear.”

---