Page 29 of A Suitable Brat
He reached up to check his long braid, painstakingly bedecked with glass beads and tiny strips of gold wire only that morning, but Sun batted his hand away.
“Don’t touch it.”Sun was firm.“You look incredible and that’s all you need to worry about.”
That was hardly all, but Westin glanced up.
Standing beside Westin’s chair, Sun met his eyes, made a little punched-out noise, then turned his attention back to the rest of the room.
“Not the lenses too,” he complained, breathless but snotty about it.He was ridiculous about what he thought of Westin’s looks even now with silver cuffs all down the shells of his ears to match the threads of silver in his hair.His lips were pushed out in a slight pout, even while he kept watch on the various nobles milling around.“Your hair done as a proper beat-of-four and the lenses that make you look yet more serious than you already are?And I must behave?You will owe me when this is over.”
“Oh?”Westin asked with mild interest, playing along because dealing with his husband was more entertaining than trying to suss out which people in this room were going to be a problem.Negotiations were easier if his mind was open to everyone at the start, he’d found, and he would need to be especially sharp here.Soothing noble pride and noble tempers with regard to a wedding should not have been worse than stepping in to try to keep peace during decades of warring.But since one was the conclusion of the other—hopefully—Westin was possibly right to worry.
It wasn’t going to be easy, in any case.Westin’s skills as an arbiter had been called upon often in the last twenty years, but even he had never dealt with this many noble families at the same time, all of them vying for attention and victory.
“What is it you think I owe you?”Westin asked to keep himself from examining the others in the room one by one, though he would be doing that soon enough anyway.
Sun hummed.He put a hand on Westin’s shoulder and bent down to whisper.
“Your mouth.”His lips brushed Westin’s ear.“In that garden out there.It’s a familiar-looking garden.”
Westin doubted his knees would enjoy kneeling on a stone path or moss-covered ground.Nonetheless, he considered it.
“With the lenses on, then?”he wondered.Sun had been obsessed with them from the moment Westin had reluctantly agreed he needed them.Westin had thought it another sign of age that might make him undesirable, but much like the mostly gray color of his hair or the crinkles at the corner of his eyes, Sun liked them.
Sun liked them a lot.
He made the punched-out sound again and curled his fingers over Westin’s shoulder.“Must you make eyes at everyone?They’re staring at you.”
“They are staring atyou, brat.”Westin looked up to observe Sun glaring at nearly everyone in the room and put his hand over Sun’s to bring Sun’s attention back to him.“Rather surprised you aren’t trying to charm them.”
Sun scoffed.“What for?They’re all going to be focused on the king and maybe the new husband-to-be.To-be.”Sun scoffed again.“I’d bet a whole season’s beet crop that the king and his husband have made vows to the little one already.Doesn’t matter what spectacle they want or what The Arlylian says.It’s done.”
Westin glanced over to one of the windows, where two large figures stood behind a smaller, slighter figure peering down at two books he had open and resting on a window ledge.The small one was almost completely hidden from the rest of the room by the larger men, which Westin assumed was intentional.He glanced over the room again, at the nobles in their best surreptitiously watching the trio at the window, at the guards, palace and personal, at the one pretty-but-scowling figure in the corner dressed like a well-paid library assistant but probably a Master Keeper.They all seemed to be younger now too.
He finally returned his attention to the three everyone else was staring at.The larger two were talking to each other, not aloud, but in glances and looks, with an occasional shrug, like a pair who had known each other for most of their lives, but also like outguards in hostile territory who didn’t want to risk their words being overheard.
Westin considered the largest man first.Mil Wulfa, he of the stories and songs.A legitimate hero, by most accounts.About forty or so, Westin thought, and wondered idly if Mil Wulfa would have left the Outguard on his own if circumstances had not led him to where he was now.But the Wulfa family had long been palace guards, and if this one had run off with a Canamorra at a young age, he had to have known what he was marrying into.
He probably didn’t like or want any of this fuss, but was smart enough to know it was necessary.Twenty years of warring couldn’t end without something to mark it or to give people hope.Nor could all the feuds and enmities that had built up between the noble houses during those years of war fade away without some concessions to the pride and honor of every family in this room.This wedding spectacle was necessary, but it was also a logistical and practical nightmare, particularly in matters of security.
Especially when one was marrying a sparkling little librarian.Every single person in this room, and probably in the palace and capital beyond, knew the librarian was a weakness.Oh, he was of a beat-of-four family with no scandal or feuds attached to it, and he would make a far better diplomat than the king’s first husband.This alliance would strengthen the king’s rule in countless ways.But he was a weakness too, vulnerable and hardly a fighter.Young and, judging from what Westin had so far observed, prone to getting lost in books.If anyone wanted leverage over the king—and everyone did—they were going to go after the librarian.
Westin moved his attention to Mil Wulfa’s hand, on his librarian’s shoulder much like Sun’s hand onhisshoulder.A loving, caring gesture.But even that revealed fear.
Together with his husband, Mil and the king had formed a wall around their prize.That revealed fear too.But also a promise to any noble thinking to come for the little one.
Westin nodded.“Oh, yes, they’re already married.”He paused, thoughtful but pointed.“Little?”The librarian wasn’t that much shorter than Sun.
“Little,” Sun repeated himself, ridiculously sulky for a man glaring at every noble and sworn guard in the room.“You think he’s pretty.”
“Heispretty.”Westin kept hold of Sun’s hand.“Soft, though, as you accuse me of being.Delicate.He’s probably hardly any trouble at all.”Westin considered the known attempt on the librarian’s life and all the rumors about how the king and his husband had struggled to woo him that had reached Solace House and therefore reached Westin in the heart of Corilyeth territory.He amended his words.“At least, not your kind of trouble.”He watched Mattin of the Arlylian turn and look up with wide, wide eyes, as if perhaps just noticing that his husbands flanked him.Sunlight glinted off the many sparkles in his hair.It gave Westin ideas.“You know, I will be honored well if I succeed here.We might ask the librarian where he gets his clasps and jewelry.”
“For me?”Sun assumed immediately, smugness in his voice.“Only if there is enough honor left over that I might also find a new gold piece for you.”
Westin stifled the urge to tell him it was nonsense, that he was too old to be draped in bits of gold.It would only make Sun more determined, and then Westin would have to hear, again, about the piercings the Rossick were alleged to do and narrowly avoid Sun trying to keep Westin’s cock in gold chains permanently so that everyone would know who it belonged to.
Westin shifted in place nonetheless, also far too old to feel a spark at the thought and yet the spark existed and warmed him through.
It would likely only hurt the once, he reasoned.Although, he did wonder who Sun imagined was going to see his cock outside of the occasional visit to a public bath when traveling.Sun would see it.That was what mattered.
