Page 2 of Corin and the Courtier
Turn around, Corin silently begged.The gate’s closed. This tower couldn’t possibly be less welcoming. And neither could I. Get lost, you courtly, popinjay prick.
The horse picked his way along the rocky path and then clopped over the bridge, stopping directly in front of the gate and out of Corin’s line of sight from the bedroom window. He could still hear, though, and the murmur of the man speaking softly to his horse and the squeak of leather as he dismounted carried clearly.
And then came the sound he’d been dreading: the clang of the large bell attached to the chain dangling beside the gate.
Bother, as Fiora would say.
The bell clanged again, more insistently this time. “Hello there!” called a pleasant tenor voice, as sweet as the scent of roses. Corin froze, his spine fusing into a steel rod, it felt like. He fucking knew that voice. “Hello, up in the tower! Sir Corin, I assure you I come in peace. And I request a night’s hospitality, if you please! I’ve gone too far to retrace my steps tonight before it’s dark.”
By the end of that, the voice remained pleasant…but strained. Perhaps even a shade desperate?
But Corin didn’t give a damn for his troubles, because God. It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t fucking dare. Hearing his name spoken aloud for the first time in over a year would’ve been odd enough, but in that familiar voice…
A short silence fell, Corin holding his breath as if his unwanted visitor would be able to hear it and know he stood there listening. He wouldn’t, of course. He was as human as could be. Corin eventually had to breathe in, and the rosy sweetness had only grown stronger. How had he never registered that scent as being a part of the man now at his gate? Perhaps because it was such an odd aromatic overtone for a man he’d mainly seen in the palace training yard.
“I know you’re there,” the voice went on after a few moments. Fuck, he did? How the hell had he— “This isn’t the kind of gate you can lock up from the outside! So open up!” A very slight pause. “Please?”
Damn it. Had the fucker no sense of self-preservation at all? Corin had challenged everyone else who’d come knocking, though precisely none of them had taken him up on it. Surely they’d reported their welcome back at court. Not to mention, his last act before leaving the capital hadn’t been one to entice people to approach him.
The bell rang again, this time accompanied by a crack of the metal bell hitting the stone of the wall.
Damn it all twice. He’d asked for shelter, which meant Corin couldn’t challenge him. And he wasn’t fucking taking the hint. Perhaps he could still be shamed or intimidated into slinking away back to the village, and then Corin wouldn’t have to let him in.
Of course, Corin would still have to see his face.
Fuck.
With a sigh that rattled his very bones, he turned and stomped away from the window, through the bedroom, and down the stairs, forcing his feet to move.
The lowest two levels of the tower were dug into the mountain bedrock, so Corin stepped off the stairs at the third level, crossed an antechamber, went up and down another little set of stairs, and finally passed through the main hall and down the defensible corridor that led to the gate.
Once there, he paused with his hand on the heavy bar keeping it closed, gathering all his ill-temper and allowing his body to begin its shift to the draconic. His vertical pupils and the faint green tint to his skin always showed the world who and what he was, but if he concentrated, or if he grew too angry to concentrate, a ripple of scales would spread across his face, on his arms and chest; his fingernails would lengthen slightly into gleaming claws. In short, he could make himself even more intimidating than six and a half feet of well-trained knight would be at the best of times.
He had to be able to make him leave. Hehadto, or he couldn’t be answerable for his actions. Picking a fight with this particular courtier would be petty and dishonorable and unfair. But he couldanswera challenge, and he could make himself as unpleasant and unwelcoming as possible.
The bar would’ve taken the full effort of a normal man to lift. Corin tossed it aside with one hand and pulled on one side of the gate with the other. It creaked open, and Corin stepped forward.
Bright blue eyes gleamed from under the hood of the man who stood expectantly only three feet from the gate. Corin’s breath caught, his throat closing up. The most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen, and the last time he’d looked into them they’d been shimmering with tears and malice, they’d been…
And then the man threw back his hood. The last time he’d looked into those eyes, they’d belonged to someone else, and Corin sucked in air, his heart restarting and his lungs unfreezing. This pair of brilliantly blue eyes, fringed with thick gold lashes, ornamented a man’s freckled face, bizarrely unsuitable for their plain setting. On Belinda they were perfect. Just like the rest of her, damn her.
The man smiled tentatively, those eyes big and round and hopeful.
His face looked pale and drawn even in the dim light, and painfully young. Up close his fine clothes bore the stains of travel and hung on him too loosely, as if he’d lost weight very recently. Whatever had brought him here, he wasn’t on a holiday.
Something Corin feared might be his conscience twisted in his chest.
Fuck.
“Lord Aster,” Corin said with heavy resignation. “I guess you may as well come in.”
ChapterTwo
Although Aster had hardlyexpected enthusiasm, Corin’s greeting achieved some kind of nadir of welcome Aster had never even imagined. If he’d dug a well and buried all the world’s excitement in it, and then drowned it for a few years, it might have resembled Corin’s downturned mouth and dull dark eyes, and the heavy sigh he let out as he stood aside to allow Aster through the gate.
Corin had always been the most magnificent man Aster had ever seen, with his strong nose and jaw and his (usually) flashing eyes, the faint scales that feathered over his pale bronzy-green skin and gleamed in the sun, his firm mouth and his height and broad shoulders and skill with a sword, and well…Aster would’ve been there all day if he’d tried to list all the ways Corin outshone other men.
Not to mention, he’d been scrupulously faithful to his own fiancée, unlike the man Aster had been meant to marry…several days ago, now.
