The warning twitched and curled into itself. But even as Meilyr’s body responded, there was no threat in Osian, only a desire to understand. A desire that pressed softly against the space before Meilyr’s skin, allowing him to withdraw.
If he chose to.
‘To even have such a name would be treason,’ he whispered, breathless.
‘Not to me.’
Osian meant it.
If Meilyr was truly honest with himself, intimacy had always terrified him, even as it remained the thing he longed for most. But nothing was ever safe.Hewas never safe – to be around, or to allow another beyond the walls he had grown around himself: climbers tight to an old farmhouse, shielding even the doors and windows.
Osian read him easily. ‘I did not mean to press you.’
‘No,’ Meilyr said, ‘it – it is all right.’
Another thought slipped into his mind and must have escaped onto his face, because Osian’s voice changed, gaining a wistfulness. ‘You are wondering about my given name,’ the prince said.
‘Forgive me, it is far from my place—’
‘Not at all. It was a gift from my mother. I was her only child. The king, my father, loved her so fiercely he did not question it – would not allow others to question it. A Cyngaleg name for an heir of Khaim. I do not have to ask you to imagine the talk.’
He did not. Meilyr’s heart reached for him, as he kept his body very still.
‘There are those, naturally,’ Osian continued, ‘that imagine my mother had an affair with a Cyngaleg man, with me as the get. Wystan is one of those people.’
Several fragments of talk knitted themselves together. Therumours.
‘I knew my mother, though she died when I was seven. If it were true, she would simply have told me. And though there have been times I wished, even prayed my father was not…’ He caught himself. Steadied. ‘No, I am very much his son.’
Immense, complicated emotions brimmed in Osian.
Meilyr touched his arm. ‘I had no idea. I always thought…’
‘That it was perhaps a means to make me more approachable to the populace, or that I chose it to match the title I would ascend to. No, it was her gift, and though often it has been suggested I change it – a good, strong Khaimlic name – I will never consider it. A name is a gift, and I know you understand that more than anyone.’
He did. His entire chest strained with it.
Osian.A name brought to Cyngalon from the isles to the north, fashioned by Cyngaleg tongues into its own form. A name given with love, to a boy who would be named prince.
Little deer.
‘It suits you,’ he said quietly. He remembered the care inlaid into the old green book of flora. ‘She must have been a remarkable woman.’
Gently, Osian said, ‘She was.’
The sharp scent of the tisane was the final push to douse Meilyr in memory: his own mother, her mane of curls expanding with smoke and focus as she brought the sweet-sharp ingredients to boil. Her eyes as bright and brilliant as emerald valleys lit with dew, her smile and her laugh – her beloved laugh, that rang like rain across leaves in his mind. The one sound he prayed he would remember beyond his dying day.
Though she died when I was seven.
Osian turned his hand so they held one another’s wrists, instinctively natural.
The last few days had changed something. The last days, and that kiss, and the terror of the Great Hall – had uncovered a weed, deep-rooted and flowering oh-so daringly.
Oh-so dangerously.
Meilyr broke contact first. ‘It has grown late. You should rest, My Prince.’
THIRTY