The Laws of Ilyria - 8/17
Title: The Laws of Ilyria
Author: radiogaga33
Pairing: Adam/Tommy, Adam/Kris (friendship)
Setting: Fantasy AU
Rating: PG-13 (NC-17 overall)
Word Count: ~4900
Beta: sweet_poeia
Disclaimers: No claims to any copyrights, trademarks, or any other intellectual property. I do not own these characters. They belong to themselves. This is purely a work of fiction. It never happened.
Author’s Notes: Okay, so this is the last of the giant edit. Which means...new chapters from now on! I'm super excited to start posting new parts.
Warnings: Pseudo-slavefic.
Summary: Adam is a conquering king hell-bent on revenge against the ruler who destroyed his life as a child. He ends up taking the ruler’s son, Tommy, as tribute after winning the war between the kingdoms. Events unfold.
The Laws of Ilyria
Chapter 8
That evening, Adam waited in his tent after the caravan stopped for the night. He spent a long hour in silence, his shallow breathing the only sound in the brightly lit space as he paced back and forth, trying to rid himself of the nervous energy that had taken over him right at sunset. Adam didn’t know what he was going to say or what he was going to do. In his twenty years as ruler of Elysia, first as king-apparent and then, after his Coming of Age rites, as king, he had never had occasion to apologize. In Ilyria, where citizens and slaves alike lived to serve their rulers, kings did not apologize, and they certainly did not beg. So it was no surprise, Adam thought morosely, that he was ill-equipped for the task at hand.
More than once he considered sending a messenger to await the hunting party and tell Prince Thomas that he was no longer wanted in the king’s tent. But each time, he would steel himself against the dread and despair. He had to right the wrong he had done to the prince. He had to earn his forgiveness, whatever the cost to himself. And besides, Kristopher had faith in him. That thought, more than anything, gave him faith in himself.
Even so, he still felt his heart skip a beat, and then another, when Prince Thomas lifted the flap and walked through the entrance into his tent. From where he stood by the table, Adam could see the wariness in his eyes, the tension in his shoulders, as he ventured once again into the space he’d run away from some two weeks prior, marked and bruised from Adam’s hands.
“Good evening, my lord.” Prince Thomas’s voice was low, halting.
“Good evening.” Adam paused, waiting for the prince to come in further. When it became clear that the man had no intention of moving beyond the tent’s entrance, Adam finally spoke. “Come in further, Prince Thomas.”
The prince nodded almost imperceptibly and obeyed. Still, he stopped several feet away from the table where Adam stood. By then, the prince had managed to school his features into the same expressionless mask he’d presented ever since he rejoined the hunting party. Adam stared at him, eyes tracing over the prince’s delicate, beautiful face and his lean, wiry frame. The bruises on his pale skin had almost disappeared by now, barely visible discoloration the only signs of Adam’s rough handling. The cut on his lip had healed as well. Even so, Adam felt sick at the memory.
“You hair…it’s longer than it was when we left Troianus,” Adam began, at a loss for words, seizing upon the first thought he could voice.
Prince Thomas raised his gaze to Adam’s. “I can cut it if it displeases you, my lord,” he murmured.
“No. It…it doesn’t displease me. I just…I mean, it just…it looks different, that’s all. I hadn’t really noticed until now.”
Prince Thomas raised slender hands to tuck his hair behind his ears, as if trying to make himself less offensive to the king. When Adam paused for a long minute, simply staring at him, the prince began to fidget a little where he stood, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, watching, waiting.
“I called you here to…I wanted to…to….” Adam’s voice caught in his throat. He felt his heart pounding furiously in his chest, rattling his ribcage in what felt like a wild bid for escape. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t-Adam turned his back to the prince suddenly and closed his eyes. He took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself.
When he felt his heart slow and his breathing return to normal, Adam squared his shoulders and turned around only to fall into a tailspin once again. Because Prince Thomas was undoing the heavy fabric belt around his waist with trembling fingers.
“What are you doing?” Adam asked, a bit more harshly than he had intended. He cursed himself silently when he saw the prince flinch in response.
“I…I thought this is what you wanted, my lord.”
“What?”
“Is this not why you summoned me, my lord? To take me to bed?”
This time, Adam cursed out loud. So stupid. He’d been so busy worrying about himself and what he would say that he hadn’t thought of what the prince would think, being summoned to Adam’s tent like this. He hadn’t even started, Adam thought, and yet, he was already failing miserably.
“No. I did not ask you to come here for that.”
Prince Thomas frowned in confusion and dropped his hands to his sides, leaving his belt loose around his waist. “Then what did you summon me for, my lord?”
The moment of truth. There was no avoiding it, however much Adam wanted to.
“I called you here because I wanted to tell you…I wanted to let you know how incredibly sorry I am for what I did to you.” Adam lowered his eyes, unable to hold the prince’s gaze any longer. “I…I took something that you weren’t ready to give, something you didn’t want to give. I took from you and I am truly sorry.”
There was a long moment of silence. And then finally-
“You are king. You can do whatever you want.”
Adam raised his gaze to Prince Thomas’s carefully expressionless face. “Not this. Not this. I had no right to do what I did to you. No one does.”
“You are king and I was given to you as tribute. You have every right to do what you wish with me.”
“No. Some kings of Ilyria may believe that, but not I. I had no right. I have no excuses for what I did and I won’t insult you further by making any. All I can say is that I wasn’t in my right mind. I wasn’t myself that night. If I was, I would never-believe me, Prince Thomas, I would never have done what I did. I did you a great wrong and I apologize and ask that you give me a chance to earn your forgiveness.”
“There is nothing to forgive, my lord.” Prince Thomas’s eyes grew cloudy with some emotion Adam couldn’t name. “I tried to kill you. You could have demanded a death-price for my crime and yet you didn’t. That alone makes it so that I have no right to complain of anything you may have done instead.”
His voice grew quieter with each word spoken so that by the end, it was a barely audible whisper.
Adam stared at him as confusion, anger, guilt, and sadness warred for supremacy in his skull. The sadness won out. It weighed Adam’s shoulders down and ignited a sharp ache in the pit of his stomach.
“I don’t believe that,” Adam finally said, his voice so quiet that he couldn’t be sure Prince Thomas had heard him. “I don’t care what happened beforehand. It’s no excuse,” he said, echoing Kristopher’s words from that night.
When Prince Thomas made no reply, Adam pressed on, voice low and strained as he spoke. “I know that I hurt you and I’m sorry.”
“My lord-”
“Give me a chance to earn your forgiveness. Please. Please.”
Adam watched Prince Thomas’s entire body tighten with shock to hear him beg. Dark brown eyes widened with surprise. “A king does not beg.”
“But a man can. If he has committed a wrong, if he wishes to atone, a man can beg, can’t he?”
Prince Thomas’s hands curled into clenched fists at his sides, like he was trying to rein in some errant emotion. “Yes.”
“So I ask you, as a man, not as a king, let me atone, give me a chance to earn your forgiveness for what I did to you.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. All I ask is that you give me leave to try. Please.”
Prince Thomas gave Adam a long, measuring look. Adam held his breath as he watched the parade of emotions flitting wildly across the prince’s face. Confusion, doubt, fear, and beneath all that, something else, something Adam didn’t recognize, something dense and raw. Unable to stop himself, he shifted nervously from one foot to the other, caught in the prince’s unwavering gaze.
“Alright.” It was the softest of whispers, so low that Adam couldn’t be certain he hadn’t imagined it.
“Do you mean it?”
“My lord, I seldom say things I do not mean.”
He had no right to feel such happiness. For a moment, it displaced the sharp ache in the pit of his stomach. Without thinking, he stepped forward, already raising his hand to the prince’s shoulders. A split second later, he stopped dead in his tracks…because in an instant, all the emotions on Prince Thomas’s face had coalesced into fear. Adam watched the man shy away and the motion tore at something inside him. He stepped back slowly and sank into a chair beside the table, keeping his face turned away from the prince.
“My lord-”
“You may go.”
“Shall I return tomorrow, my lord…or on a different night?”
Adam turned to him. “Only if you want to. You shall have no more orders from me.”
Prince Thomas stared at him for a long moment, his forehead creased with concentration, like he was trying to solve some impossible riddle. Adam watched the prince’s beautiful eyes narrow and he knew he was being measured, that his words and actions were being weighed carefully. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the prince bowed briefly and mumbled some parting word before slipping out of the tent as quietly as he had entered.
Adam let out the breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding and planted his face in his palms, body heaving convulsively in the heavy silence. Tonight would be another long, cold, sleepless night.
In the morning, Adam pulled himself out of bed, bones aching and muscles weary from a long night spent tossing and turning, haunted by dueling memories-of that night in Elysia twenty years ago and the night with Prince Thomas only two weeks ago. But dawn had come, the morning bell had been rung, and the king of Elysia no longer had the double-edge luxury of solitude and silence. Decisions had to be made, orders had to be given. Outside his caravan prepared for the day’s march; introspection and self-castigation would have to wait until another time.
An hour later, he was standing with a few generals, preparing to mount his horse when he saw him, Prince Thomas, walking up from the slave camp to join the hunting party. As always, his heart reacted immediately, launching into a violent rhythm in his chest. Adam watched him grab his bow and pull the straps of his quiver onto his lean shoulders, moving with the grace of a dancer and the confidence of a prince of Ilyria. He was…beautiful, breathtaking. As he watched the prince, Adam felt another part of his body ignite in response, this reaction just as visceral as the first. Desire. Adam tried to push it away. It was a useless emotion now, after what he had done.
Adam thought about the evening before, about the way Prince Thomas had shied away from Adam’s touch, about the way he had stared at Adam, measuring him, weighing his words. What had the prince seen? What had he decided? As if he’d somehow heard the muddled thoughts in the king’s head, Prince Thomas chose that exact moment to look up, eyes turning in the direction of the king. Instead of turning away at catching the king’s gaze like Adam expected him to do, the prince held it deliberately, dark eyes staring at him for a long, surreal moment.
Even when Adam began to approach the hunting party, the prince’s gaze didn’t waver. Only when the entire party fell to its knees before the king did the prince break the heated look.
“You may rise,” Adam said, surprised at how calm his tone was, considering the pounding in his ribcage.
The soldiers rose and returned to readying their horses but the prince remained, holding Adam captive with that strange, searching look once again. Adam disliked the way it made him feel, agitated, breathless, tense, like his bones had suddenly grown too large for his body. The feeling pushed him into breaking the silence between them.
“Good morning, Prince Thomas.”
The prince didn’t answer; instead he kept staring, brown eyes dark and intense. The deliberate silence made Adam feel nervous, small, entirely at the mercy of the moment. But when he opened his mouth to speak again-
“Good morning, my lord.”
Adam exhaled sharply, feeling an inordinate amount of relief washing over him at the prince’s simple reply.
“I…I trust you slept well?” It was the only coherent sentence his agitated mind could muster.
“No, my lord, I did not sleep well.”
Adam started with surprise and concern at the unexpected reply.
“Why not? Is everything alright? Did something happen?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Tell me.”
Adam watched dark brown eyes flash sharp and bright for a moment.
“You, my lord. You happened.”
Adam froze, stunned speechless. When he could finally breath, he searched the prince’s face, trying to find the deeper meaning to his words. It was impossible. By then, the inscrutable mask was firmly in place again and Prince Thomas’s eyes were clear and expressionless once more. He was too late. So, he did the only thing he could.
“May the grace of the Oracle abide with you,” Adam said.
Prince Thomas didn’t answer. He stared for another long moment. Then he nodded briefly and walked away, leaving Adam to his jumbled thoughts.
It continued in much the same manner for several days, each encounter a variation on a similar theme. Adam coming to the hunting party each morning, giving Tommy the old Ilyrian blessing only to be met with pointed silence. And all the time, the prince watched him, rendering Adam incoherent with that intense look. Adam could feel the heat of it every time the prince was near, in the morning before the hunting party departed, in the evening when they arrived, hauling their prey. It went on for days, pattern unbroken, until one evening, a week later, when the caravan was halfway to Batuur.
Adam was sitting with Kristopher at a table outside his tent when he heard it, a small commotion erupting upon the hunting party’s arrival. Adam frowned and craned his neck, trying to see what the trouble was, but the milling bodies in the way thwarted his attempt. He turned back to Kristopher.
“I wonder what’s happening.”
“So do I. I shall go see for myself.”
He walked off, leaving Adam alone for a few minutes before returning, tension tightening his features.
“What is it?” Adam asked.
“It’s Prince Thomas. He’s been injured on the hunt. They said-”
Whatever it was that “they” said, Adam didn’t sit still long enough to find out. Already he was racing towards the hunting party, strong legs slicing through the air, alarm rising hot and uncontrolled. When he reached them, the soldiers parted and fell to their knees. That was when Adam saw Prince Thomas lying on the ground, tunic stained with mud and right leg covered in blood.
“What happened?!” Adam barked at the captain of the hunting party.
“It was the end of the hunt, sir, and Prince Thomas was chasing down an elk. His horse stumbled on some undergrowth and the prince fell to the ground, my lord.”
Adam let out a vicious curse. “Were you not told by Vice-Lord Allen to guard the prince’s safety?”
“My lord, Prince Thomas was not in my formation.”
“I don’t care. I shall have none of your excuses!” Adam bellowed, drawing himself up to his full height, looking every inch the warrior king who had conquered every last kingdom in Ilyria.
The captain’s mouth snapped shut as he sank even lower on his knees, fear twisting his features. The sight broke through Adam’s agitation. There was little usefulness in making a public display out of himself while Prince Thomas lay bleeding.
“Get up,” Adam hissed. “Since you cannot manage to do what you’ve been told on the hunt, at least acquit yourself here. Fetch a surgeon and escort him to my tent.”
“Yes, my lord,” the captain mumbled before racing away.
Adam moved closer to the prince and crouched down beside him.
“Can you walk?”
“I think so, my lord,” came the quiet reply.
He didn’t sound certain enough for Adam’s satisfaction.
“You!” Adam yelled in the direction of the closest soldier.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Help me carry him,” Adam ordered.
Together, they lifted Tommy to his feet and propped him up on their shoulders. Adam’s gaze swept over the rest of the kneeling party.
“You may rise,” he said. After they did, he continued. “But you had better pray that the Oracle’s grace shines upon you tonight. Because should anything happen to the prince, I swear, the same-and worse-will happen to you.”
With that, he ferried Prince Thomas back to his tent, brushing past Kristopher at the entrance, not stopping until they’d set the prince down on a chair by the table. He ordered the soldier outside and began to pace, the seconds dragging on for what seemed like years in the silence. Where was the damned surgeon?
“This is taking too long,” Adam growled out suddenly.
“My lord?” Prince Thomas shifted in the chair, trying to sit up straighter, only to wince sharply when the movement caused him pain.
“Damn it! Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
Adam rushed out of the tent to find Kristopher and the soldier waiting.
“Get me hot water, salve and fresh bandages,” he said to the soldier.
When the man hurried off, Kristopher turned to Adam.
“Adam, are you alright?”
“No, Kristopher, I am not alright.”
“Because of the prince?”
Adam nodded. “I panicked when I saw him lying there like that, bleeding. What if something worse had happened to him? He fell from his horse, Kristopher. From his horse. What if he had died? I couldn’t…I couldn’t bear it.” His chest heaved as he spoke.
Kristopher stared at him with a mixture of confusion and surprise.
“What?” Adam asked.
“Are you listening to yourself? Did you hear what you just said?”
The words made Adam pause, realization hitting him hard where he stood. The force of it made Adam step back unconsciously, as if trying to escape the import of what he’d just said. When had desire morphed into something else? Something that sounded dangerously close to genuine care? It unnerved him, to feel anything like that for a man who, until a few weeks ago, had been a complete stranger. But before he could examine the feeling further, the soldier returned, clutching a steaming bowl of water and a heap of bandages, atop which sat a copper tin of salve.
“Come on,” Adam ordered, already rushing back into the tent.
Once inside, he grabbed a bottle of clear liquor off the table and sat down on the floor in front of Prince Thomas.
“You, put the bowl and salve down and hand me the bandages.”
When the soldier obeyed, Adam looked up at the prince.
“Place your foot on my knee,” Adam said softly.
“My lord-”
“I’m just going to clean your wound. That is all. Please?”
Adam heard the soldier gasp in surprise to hear the king’s solicitous words. He ignored it.
“Yes, my lord,” Prince Thomas replied. A second later, he placed his foot on Adam’s knee and waited, brown eyes sharp and bright again, gaze searching Adam’s face.
Unable to bear the scrutiny, Adam turned away and dipped one of the bandages in the hot water. Then slowly, he began to clean the ugly wound, stopping only when all the blood had been wiped away. Adam examined the gash critically. It was about five inches long, but it was surprisingly shallow considering all the blood.
“I don’t think you’ll require stitches.”
“Thank the Oracle for that.”
Adam looked up just in time to catch the trace of mirth in Prince Thomas’s eyes.
“You may go, and tell the surgeon that his services are no longer needed,” Adam said in the soldier’s direction.
“Yes, my lord.”
When he was gone, Adam picked up the bottle of liquor and poured some of its contents onto a fresh bandage. He felt the prince tense, muscles growing rigid in anticipation of the coming pain. To his credit, the prince only cried out once, but even so, the sound of it tore at Adam. Almost immediately, he was bombarded with images of another night, when the prince had cried out just like that because of him. Adam forcibly pushed back the sinking feeling of despair laced with self-loathing that came over him at the memory. This was not the time to fall apart.
He tossed the used bandage in his hand atop the previous one and opened the tin of salve. Carefully, he rubbed the translucent ointment into the wound. Against him, he felt the prince wince in response.
“I should have them all punished for letting this happen,” Adam bit out fiercely.
Prince Thomas’s hand flew down to grip Adam’s shoulder.
“It was my fault. Please don’t punish them for my recklessness, my lord.”
Adam didn’t reply. He squeezed the tin in his left hand, frozen beneath the weight and heat of Prince Thomas’s hand against his shoulder. As if he’d suddenly realized what he was doing, the prince gasped and snatched back his hand like he’d touched an open flame. When Adam could finally breathe again, he began to apply the salve once more.
“Why were you reckless?”
“I…I wanted the chance to come to your tent. I wanted to see you. I wanted to ask you a question.”
Adam silently pleaded with his heart to stop racing.
“Tell me what happened out there on the hunt.”
The prince stared down at his hands and began to fidget a little where he sat. “I knew that if I caught the best prey, I would be the one to serve you tonight. I wanted the chance to come here…to talk to you. But it was the end of the hunt and I still hadn’t felled anything big enough. So when the elk didn’t go down with my first arrow, I gave chase when I shouldn’t have. I was careless. It was my fault that the horse stumbled and it was my fault that I fell. I am the only one to blame.”
Adam simply nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak. For long minutes, he concentrated on dressing the prince’s wound. It was only when he’d tied off the final bandage that he set the prince’s foot back onto the floor, stood to his feet, and finally spoke again.
“So, now that your wound is taken care of, I would like to know what it is that you wanted to ask me so badly that you were willing to risk life and limb for the chance to do it.”
Prince Thomas fidgeted some more, clasping and unclasping his hands. “I wanted to know if…if you meant what you said a week ago about seeking my forgiveness, about how sorry you are for what happened that night.”
“I seldom say things I do not mean, Prince Thomas.”
Adam watched the prince’s eyes widen in recognition after Adam repeated his own words back to him.
“So it was true then? All of it?”
“Yes. I’m sorry for what I did. I’m sorry for causing you pain.” Adam’s voice broke a little on those final words.
When Prince Thomas spoke again, his voice was low, rough, like his words were being dragged out of him. “The thing is…it wasn’t all pain. There was hardly any pain after the beginning.” Then even lower, like a hushed confession, “There was pleasure as well, more so than anything else. You gave me pleasure.”
Adam was certain his heart would hammer itself out of his chest. He could barely breathe. “It makes no difference,” he said, his voice heavy and hoarse. “It isn’t any better to force pleasure on a person than it is to force pain. I know how it was. I remember. I was there. I saw you. I heard you. I felt you. I know that I gave you pleasure, but still I apologized, and I will keep apologizing because I was wrong.”
Prince Thomas stared at him hard, pinning him with that familiar searching look. Adam couldn’t bear it.
“Is that all you wanted to know?” he asked. “I don’t meant to insult you, Prince Thomas, but my answer hardly seems worth risking your life to hear.”
“That wasn’t all. I’ve yet to ask my real question.”
“By all means, please do.”
Prince Thomas shifted in his chair, worrying his hands even more. When he finally looked up again, Adam was stunned by the intensity of his gaze.
“What I wanted to know was-I mean, what I want to know is…if there had been no pleasure, if I’d only been in pain, if you had truly been hurting me, would you have stopped?”
Instinctively, his mind cried “yes.” But right after, self-doubt blossomed, helped along by the memories of that night. He thought of how angry he had been, how uncontrolled. At first, he had simply wanted to slake his desire, but almost immediately, all he’d wanted was for the prince to feel it too, to feel the terrible want pulling mercilessly at Adam. He’d wanted to prince to feel the pleasure, to take it, to fall apart beneath the force of that desire, to want, to need the way Adam wanted, the way Adam needed. But he would have stopped if there had been only pain. Adam was certain of it, but still, self-doubt danced around the edges, blurring them, pushing him back into questioning himself.
“I don’t know,” Adam finally replied.
Prince Thomas’s eyes narrowed, the intensity in them seeming to grow exponentially. He sat still for what felt like hours, frowning, measuring Adam with that incredible scrutiny. Finally, he relaxed, tension easing from his features, a new light brightening his eyes.
“Fair enough,” he said. Then he looked down at his newly bandaged leg. “I should go. If I don’t get back to my camp now, I’ll have nothing to eat but dirt.”
“What do you mean by that? Is there not enough food in the slave camp? I ordered the captains to replenish our stock generously in Xien. Don’t tell me they disobeyed my orders?”
“No! I did not mean that, my lord. I spoke in jest, nothing more.”
“Oh.”
Prince Thomas shot him a quizzical look. “You actually care, don’t you? About the slaves, I mean.”
“Of course I care. I care about everyone who marches in my caravan. I draw no distinctions, Prince Thomas.”
“Forgive me. I meant no insult my lord. I just…I’ve marched in caravans with my father and my brothers. They never cared what happened to the slaves. If they were hungry, if they were cold, it didn’t matter. And when they died, my father called it an existential hazard.”
“I am not your father,” Adam said, with more venom than he’d intended.
Prince Thomas’s look turned intense once again, his eyebrows knitting in concentration. Once again, he looked like he was trying to solve a riddle. “No. You’re something else entirely.”
Before Adam could press him for his meaning, the prince stood up, resting the bulk of his weight on his good leg.
“I should go.”
Adam didn’t want him to. He wanted the prince to stay, to keep talking in that clear, lyrical voice of his, even if some of his words were things Adam didn’t want to hear. He wanted the prince to stay.
“Be careful,” Adam said, as the prince limped to the entrance.
“Is that an order, my lord?”
“No. But it is a heartfelt request.”
The prince stared at him for a brief moment. Then with a slight curl of his lips, he said, “I live to serve the king” and walked out of the tent.
Three days later, when the prince finally rejoined the hunting party, Adam walked towards the soldiers, driven entirely by habit and instinct. When the others had returned to their horses upon Adam’s command, the prince stayed as always.
“Do you remember what I said to you the other night?” Adam asked.
“I shall be careful, my lord,” Prince Thomas replied.
Adam nodded. “May the grace of the Oracle abide with you.”
“And also with you, my lord.”
Adam’s eyes widened with shock to hear Prince Thomas give the reply he’d withheld for weeks. His shock must have shown, Adam thought, because right then, the prince let his mask slip and flashed Adam a sweet, hesitant smile. But so brief. So brief. Before Adam had even processed that it was happening, it was finished and the inscrutable mask was back.
He watched Prince Thomas walk away, mount his horse, and ride away with the hunting party. And all the while, Adam stood there lamely, left with nothing but questions hurtling about wildly in his skull.
Author: radiogaga33
Pairing: Adam/Tommy, Adam/Kris (friendship)
Setting: Fantasy AU
Rating: PG-13 (NC-17 overall)
Word Count: ~4900
Beta: sweet_poeia
Disclaimers: No claims to any copyrights, trademarks, or any other intellectual property. I do not own these characters. They belong to themselves. This is purely a work of fiction. It never happened.
Author’s Notes: Okay, so this is the last of the giant edit. Which means...new chapters from now on! I'm super excited to start posting new parts.
Warnings: Pseudo-slavefic.
Summary: Adam is a conquering king hell-bent on revenge against the ruler who destroyed his life as a child. He ends up taking the ruler’s son, Tommy, as tribute after winning the war between the kingdoms. Events unfold.
The Laws of Ilyria
Chapter 8
That evening, Adam waited in his tent after the caravan stopped for the night. He spent a long hour in silence, his shallow breathing the only sound in the brightly lit space as he paced back and forth, trying to rid himself of the nervous energy that had taken over him right at sunset. Adam didn’t know what he was going to say or what he was going to do. In his twenty years as ruler of Elysia, first as king-apparent and then, after his Coming of Age rites, as king, he had never had occasion to apologize. In Ilyria, where citizens and slaves alike lived to serve their rulers, kings did not apologize, and they certainly did not beg. So it was no surprise, Adam thought morosely, that he was ill-equipped for the task at hand.
More than once he considered sending a messenger to await the hunting party and tell Prince Thomas that he was no longer wanted in the king’s tent. But each time, he would steel himself against the dread and despair. He had to right the wrong he had done to the prince. He had to earn his forgiveness, whatever the cost to himself. And besides, Kristopher had faith in him. That thought, more than anything, gave him faith in himself.
Even so, he still felt his heart skip a beat, and then another, when Prince Thomas lifted the flap and walked through the entrance into his tent. From where he stood by the table, Adam could see the wariness in his eyes, the tension in his shoulders, as he ventured once again into the space he’d run away from some two weeks prior, marked and bruised from Adam’s hands.
“Good evening, my lord.” Prince Thomas’s voice was low, halting.
“Good evening.” Adam paused, waiting for the prince to come in further. When it became clear that the man had no intention of moving beyond the tent’s entrance, Adam finally spoke. “Come in further, Prince Thomas.”
The prince nodded almost imperceptibly and obeyed. Still, he stopped several feet away from the table where Adam stood. By then, the prince had managed to school his features into the same expressionless mask he’d presented ever since he rejoined the hunting party. Adam stared at him, eyes tracing over the prince’s delicate, beautiful face and his lean, wiry frame. The bruises on his pale skin had almost disappeared by now, barely visible discoloration the only signs of Adam’s rough handling. The cut on his lip had healed as well. Even so, Adam felt sick at the memory.
“You hair…it’s longer than it was when we left Troianus,” Adam began, at a loss for words, seizing upon the first thought he could voice.
Prince Thomas raised his gaze to Adam’s. “I can cut it if it displeases you, my lord,” he murmured.
“No. It…it doesn’t displease me. I just…I mean, it just…it looks different, that’s all. I hadn’t really noticed until now.”
Prince Thomas raised slender hands to tuck his hair behind his ears, as if trying to make himself less offensive to the king. When Adam paused for a long minute, simply staring at him, the prince began to fidget a little where he stood, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, watching, waiting.
“I called you here to…I wanted to…to….” Adam’s voice caught in his throat. He felt his heart pounding furiously in his chest, rattling his ribcage in what felt like a wild bid for escape. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t-Adam turned his back to the prince suddenly and closed his eyes. He took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself.
When he felt his heart slow and his breathing return to normal, Adam squared his shoulders and turned around only to fall into a tailspin once again. Because Prince Thomas was undoing the heavy fabric belt around his waist with trembling fingers.
“What are you doing?” Adam asked, a bit more harshly than he had intended. He cursed himself silently when he saw the prince flinch in response.
“I…I thought this is what you wanted, my lord.”
“What?”
“Is this not why you summoned me, my lord? To take me to bed?”
This time, Adam cursed out loud. So stupid. He’d been so busy worrying about himself and what he would say that he hadn’t thought of what the prince would think, being summoned to Adam’s tent like this. He hadn’t even started, Adam thought, and yet, he was already failing miserably.
“No. I did not ask you to come here for that.”
Prince Thomas frowned in confusion and dropped his hands to his sides, leaving his belt loose around his waist. “Then what did you summon me for, my lord?”
The moment of truth. There was no avoiding it, however much Adam wanted to.
“I called you here because I wanted to tell you…I wanted to let you know how incredibly sorry I am for what I did to you.” Adam lowered his eyes, unable to hold the prince’s gaze any longer. “I…I took something that you weren’t ready to give, something you didn’t want to give. I took from you and I am truly sorry.”
There was a long moment of silence. And then finally-
“You are king. You can do whatever you want.”
Adam raised his gaze to Prince Thomas’s carefully expressionless face. “Not this. Not this. I had no right to do what I did to you. No one does.”
“You are king and I was given to you as tribute. You have every right to do what you wish with me.”
“No. Some kings of Ilyria may believe that, but not I. I had no right. I have no excuses for what I did and I won’t insult you further by making any. All I can say is that I wasn’t in my right mind. I wasn’t myself that night. If I was, I would never-believe me, Prince Thomas, I would never have done what I did. I did you a great wrong and I apologize and ask that you give me a chance to earn your forgiveness.”
“There is nothing to forgive, my lord.” Prince Thomas’s eyes grew cloudy with some emotion Adam couldn’t name. “I tried to kill you. You could have demanded a death-price for my crime and yet you didn’t. That alone makes it so that I have no right to complain of anything you may have done instead.”
His voice grew quieter with each word spoken so that by the end, it was a barely audible whisper.
Adam stared at him as confusion, anger, guilt, and sadness warred for supremacy in his skull. The sadness won out. It weighed Adam’s shoulders down and ignited a sharp ache in the pit of his stomach.
“I don’t believe that,” Adam finally said, his voice so quiet that he couldn’t be sure Prince Thomas had heard him. “I don’t care what happened beforehand. It’s no excuse,” he said, echoing Kristopher’s words from that night.
When Prince Thomas made no reply, Adam pressed on, voice low and strained as he spoke. “I know that I hurt you and I’m sorry.”
“My lord-”
“Give me a chance to earn your forgiveness. Please. Please.”
Adam watched Prince Thomas’s entire body tighten with shock to hear him beg. Dark brown eyes widened with surprise. “A king does not beg.”
“But a man can. If he has committed a wrong, if he wishes to atone, a man can beg, can’t he?”
Prince Thomas’s hands curled into clenched fists at his sides, like he was trying to rein in some errant emotion. “Yes.”
“So I ask you, as a man, not as a king, let me atone, give me a chance to earn your forgiveness for what I did to you.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. All I ask is that you give me leave to try. Please.”
Prince Thomas gave Adam a long, measuring look. Adam held his breath as he watched the parade of emotions flitting wildly across the prince’s face. Confusion, doubt, fear, and beneath all that, something else, something Adam didn’t recognize, something dense and raw. Unable to stop himself, he shifted nervously from one foot to the other, caught in the prince’s unwavering gaze.
“Alright.” It was the softest of whispers, so low that Adam couldn’t be certain he hadn’t imagined it.
“Do you mean it?”
“My lord, I seldom say things I do not mean.”
He had no right to feel such happiness. For a moment, it displaced the sharp ache in the pit of his stomach. Without thinking, he stepped forward, already raising his hand to the prince’s shoulders. A split second later, he stopped dead in his tracks…because in an instant, all the emotions on Prince Thomas’s face had coalesced into fear. Adam watched the man shy away and the motion tore at something inside him. He stepped back slowly and sank into a chair beside the table, keeping his face turned away from the prince.
“My lord-”
“You may go.”
“Shall I return tomorrow, my lord…or on a different night?”
Adam turned to him. “Only if you want to. You shall have no more orders from me.”
Prince Thomas stared at him for a long moment, his forehead creased with concentration, like he was trying to solve some impossible riddle. Adam watched the prince’s beautiful eyes narrow and he knew he was being measured, that his words and actions were being weighed carefully. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the prince bowed briefly and mumbled some parting word before slipping out of the tent as quietly as he had entered.
Adam let out the breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding and planted his face in his palms, body heaving convulsively in the heavy silence. Tonight would be another long, cold, sleepless night.
In the morning, Adam pulled himself out of bed, bones aching and muscles weary from a long night spent tossing and turning, haunted by dueling memories-of that night in Elysia twenty years ago and the night with Prince Thomas only two weeks ago. But dawn had come, the morning bell had been rung, and the king of Elysia no longer had the double-edge luxury of solitude and silence. Decisions had to be made, orders had to be given. Outside his caravan prepared for the day’s march; introspection and self-castigation would have to wait until another time.
An hour later, he was standing with a few generals, preparing to mount his horse when he saw him, Prince Thomas, walking up from the slave camp to join the hunting party. As always, his heart reacted immediately, launching into a violent rhythm in his chest. Adam watched him grab his bow and pull the straps of his quiver onto his lean shoulders, moving with the grace of a dancer and the confidence of a prince of Ilyria. He was…beautiful, breathtaking. As he watched the prince, Adam felt another part of his body ignite in response, this reaction just as visceral as the first. Desire. Adam tried to push it away. It was a useless emotion now, after what he had done.
Adam thought about the evening before, about the way Prince Thomas had shied away from Adam’s touch, about the way he had stared at Adam, measuring him, weighing his words. What had the prince seen? What had he decided? As if he’d somehow heard the muddled thoughts in the king’s head, Prince Thomas chose that exact moment to look up, eyes turning in the direction of the king. Instead of turning away at catching the king’s gaze like Adam expected him to do, the prince held it deliberately, dark eyes staring at him for a long, surreal moment.
Even when Adam began to approach the hunting party, the prince’s gaze didn’t waver. Only when the entire party fell to its knees before the king did the prince break the heated look.
“You may rise,” Adam said, surprised at how calm his tone was, considering the pounding in his ribcage.
The soldiers rose and returned to readying their horses but the prince remained, holding Adam captive with that strange, searching look once again. Adam disliked the way it made him feel, agitated, breathless, tense, like his bones had suddenly grown too large for his body. The feeling pushed him into breaking the silence between them.
“Good morning, Prince Thomas.”
The prince didn’t answer; instead he kept staring, brown eyes dark and intense. The deliberate silence made Adam feel nervous, small, entirely at the mercy of the moment. But when he opened his mouth to speak again-
“Good morning, my lord.”
Adam exhaled sharply, feeling an inordinate amount of relief washing over him at the prince’s simple reply.
“I…I trust you slept well?” It was the only coherent sentence his agitated mind could muster.
“No, my lord, I did not sleep well.”
Adam started with surprise and concern at the unexpected reply.
“Why not? Is everything alright? Did something happen?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Tell me.”
Adam watched dark brown eyes flash sharp and bright for a moment.
“You, my lord. You happened.”
Adam froze, stunned speechless. When he could finally breath, he searched the prince’s face, trying to find the deeper meaning to his words. It was impossible. By then, the inscrutable mask was firmly in place again and Prince Thomas’s eyes were clear and expressionless once more. He was too late. So, he did the only thing he could.
“May the grace of the Oracle abide with you,” Adam said.
Prince Thomas didn’t answer. He stared for another long moment. Then he nodded briefly and walked away, leaving Adam to his jumbled thoughts.
It continued in much the same manner for several days, each encounter a variation on a similar theme. Adam coming to the hunting party each morning, giving Tommy the old Ilyrian blessing only to be met with pointed silence. And all the time, the prince watched him, rendering Adam incoherent with that intense look. Adam could feel the heat of it every time the prince was near, in the morning before the hunting party departed, in the evening when they arrived, hauling their prey. It went on for days, pattern unbroken, until one evening, a week later, when the caravan was halfway to Batuur.
Adam was sitting with Kristopher at a table outside his tent when he heard it, a small commotion erupting upon the hunting party’s arrival. Adam frowned and craned his neck, trying to see what the trouble was, but the milling bodies in the way thwarted his attempt. He turned back to Kristopher.
“I wonder what’s happening.”
“So do I. I shall go see for myself.”
He walked off, leaving Adam alone for a few minutes before returning, tension tightening his features.
“What is it?” Adam asked.
“It’s Prince Thomas. He’s been injured on the hunt. They said-”
Whatever it was that “they” said, Adam didn’t sit still long enough to find out. Already he was racing towards the hunting party, strong legs slicing through the air, alarm rising hot and uncontrolled. When he reached them, the soldiers parted and fell to their knees. That was when Adam saw Prince Thomas lying on the ground, tunic stained with mud and right leg covered in blood.
“What happened?!” Adam barked at the captain of the hunting party.
“It was the end of the hunt, sir, and Prince Thomas was chasing down an elk. His horse stumbled on some undergrowth and the prince fell to the ground, my lord.”
Adam let out a vicious curse. “Were you not told by Vice-Lord Allen to guard the prince’s safety?”
“My lord, Prince Thomas was not in my formation.”
“I don’t care. I shall have none of your excuses!” Adam bellowed, drawing himself up to his full height, looking every inch the warrior king who had conquered every last kingdom in Ilyria.
The captain’s mouth snapped shut as he sank even lower on his knees, fear twisting his features. The sight broke through Adam’s agitation. There was little usefulness in making a public display out of himself while Prince Thomas lay bleeding.
“Get up,” Adam hissed. “Since you cannot manage to do what you’ve been told on the hunt, at least acquit yourself here. Fetch a surgeon and escort him to my tent.”
“Yes, my lord,” the captain mumbled before racing away.
Adam moved closer to the prince and crouched down beside him.
“Can you walk?”
“I think so, my lord,” came the quiet reply.
He didn’t sound certain enough for Adam’s satisfaction.
“You!” Adam yelled in the direction of the closest soldier.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Help me carry him,” Adam ordered.
Together, they lifted Tommy to his feet and propped him up on their shoulders. Adam’s gaze swept over the rest of the kneeling party.
“You may rise,” he said. After they did, he continued. “But you had better pray that the Oracle’s grace shines upon you tonight. Because should anything happen to the prince, I swear, the same-and worse-will happen to you.”
With that, he ferried Prince Thomas back to his tent, brushing past Kristopher at the entrance, not stopping until they’d set the prince down on a chair by the table. He ordered the soldier outside and began to pace, the seconds dragging on for what seemed like years in the silence. Where was the damned surgeon?
“This is taking too long,” Adam growled out suddenly.
“My lord?” Prince Thomas shifted in the chair, trying to sit up straighter, only to wince sharply when the movement caused him pain.
“Damn it! Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
Adam rushed out of the tent to find Kristopher and the soldier waiting.
“Get me hot water, salve and fresh bandages,” he said to the soldier.
When the man hurried off, Kristopher turned to Adam.
“Adam, are you alright?”
“No, Kristopher, I am not alright.”
“Because of the prince?”
Adam nodded. “I panicked when I saw him lying there like that, bleeding. What if something worse had happened to him? He fell from his horse, Kristopher. From his horse. What if he had died? I couldn’t…I couldn’t bear it.” His chest heaved as he spoke.
Kristopher stared at him with a mixture of confusion and surprise.
“What?” Adam asked.
“Are you listening to yourself? Did you hear what you just said?”
The words made Adam pause, realization hitting him hard where he stood. The force of it made Adam step back unconsciously, as if trying to escape the import of what he’d just said. When had desire morphed into something else? Something that sounded dangerously close to genuine care? It unnerved him, to feel anything like that for a man who, until a few weeks ago, had been a complete stranger. But before he could examine the feeling further, the soldier returned, clutching a steaming bowl of water and a heap of bandages, atop which sat a copper tin of salve.
“Come on,” Adam ordered, already rushing back into the tent.
Once inside, he grabbed a bottle of clear liquor off the table and sat down on the floor in front of Prince Thomas.
“You, put the bowl and salve down and hand me the bandages.”
When the soldier obeyed, Adam looked up at the prince.
“Place your foot on my knee,” Adam said softly.
“My lord-”
“I’m just going to clean your wound. That is all. Please?”
Adam heard the soldier gasp in surprise to hear the king’s solicitous words. He ignored it.
“Yes, my lord,” Prince Thomas replied. A second later, he placed his foot on Adam’s knee and waited, brown eyes sharp and bright again, gaze searching Adam’s face.
Unable to bear the scrutiny, Adam turned away and dipped one of the bandages in the hot water. Then slowly, he began to clean the ugly wound, stopping only when all the blood had been wiped away. Adam examined the gash critically. It was about five inches long, but it was surprisingly shallow considering all the blood.
“I don’t think you’ll require stitches.”
“Thank the Oracle for that.”
Adam looked up just in time to catch the trace of mirth in Prince Thomas’s eyes.
“You may go, and tell the surgeon that his services are no longer needed,” Adam said in the soldier’s direction.
“Yes, my lord.”
When he was gone, Adam picked up the bottle of liquor and poured some of its contents onto a fresh bandage. He felt the prince tense, muscles growing rigid in anticipation of the coming pain. To his credit, the prince only cried out once, but even so, the sound of it tore at Adam. Almost immediately, he was bombarded with images of another night, when the prince had cried out just like that because of him. Adam forcibly pushed back the sinking feeling of despair laced with self-loathing that came over him at the memory. This was not the time to fall apart.
He tossed the used bandage in his hand atop the previous one and opened the tin of salve. Carefully, he rubbed the translucent ointment into the wound. Against him, he felt the prince wince in response.
“I should have them all punished for letting this happen,” Adam bit out fiercely.
Prince Thomas’s hand flew down to grip Adam’s shoulder.
“It was my fault. Please don’t punish them for my recklessness, my lord.”
Adam didn’t reply. He squeezed the tin in his left hand, frozen beneath the weight and heat of Prince Thomas’s hand against his shoulder. As if he’d suddenly realized what he was doing, the prince gasped and snatched back his hand like he’d touched an open flame. When Adam could finally breathe again, he began to apply the salve once more.
“Why were you reckless?”
“I…I wanted the chance to come to your tent. I wanted to see you. I wanted to ask you a question.”
Adam silently pleaded with his heart to stop racing.
“Tell me what happened out there on the hunt.”
The prince stared down at his hands and began to fidget a little where he sat. “I knew that if I caught the best prey, I would be the one to serve you tonight. I wanted the chance to come here…to talk to you. But it was the end of the hunt and I still hadn’t felled anything big enough. So when the elk didn’t go down with my first arrow, I gave chase when I shouldn’t have. I was careless. It was my fault that the horse stumbled and it was my fault that I fell. I am the only one to blame.”
Adam simply nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak. For long minutes, he concentrated on dressing the prince’s wound. It was only when he’d tied off the final bandage that he set the prince’s foot back onto the floor, stood to his feet, and finally spoke again.
“So, now that your wound is taken care of, I would like to know what it is that you wanted to ask me so badly that you were willing to risk life and limb for the chance to do it.”
Prince Thomas fidgeted some more, clasping and unclasping his hands. “I wanted to know if…if you meant what you said a week ago about seeking my forgiveness, about how sorry you are for what happened that night.”
“I seldom say things I do not mean, Prince Thomas.”
Adam watched the prince’s eyes widen in recognition after Adam repeated his own words back to him.
“So it was true then? All of it?”
“Yes. I’m sorry for what I did. I’m sorry for causing you pain.” Adam’s voice broke a little on those final words.
When Prince Thomas spoke again, his voice was low, rough, like his words were being dragged out of him. “The thing is…it wasn’t all pain. There was hardly any pain after the beginning.” Then even lower, like a hushed confession, “There was pleasure as well, more so than anything else. You gave me pleasure.”
Adam was certain his heart would hammer itself out of his chest. He could barely breathe. “It makes no difference,” he said, his voice heavy and hoarse. “It isn’t any better to force pleasure on a person than it is to force pain. I know how it was. I remember. I was there. I saw you. I heard you. I felt you. I know that I gave you pleasure, but still I apologized, and I will keep apologizing because I was wrong.”
Prince Thomas stared at him hard, pinning him with that familiar searching look. Adam couldn’t bear it.
“Is that all you wanted to know?” he asked. “I don’t meant to insult you, Prince Thomas, but my answer hardly seems worth risking your life to hear.”
“That wasn’t all. I’ve yet to ask my real question.”
“By all means, please do.”
Prince Thomas shifted in his chair, worrying his hands even more. When he finally looked up again, Adam was stunned by the intensity of his gaze.
“What I wanted to know was-I mean, what I want to know is…if there had been no pleasure, if I’d only been in pain, if you had truly been hurting me, would you have stopped?”
Instinctively, his mind cried “yes.” But right after, self-doubt blossomed, helped along by the memories of that night. He thought of how angry he had been, how uncontrolled. At first, he had simply wanted to slake his desire, but almost immediately, all he’d wanted was for the prince to feel it too, to feel the terrible want pulling mercilessly at Adam. He’d wanted to prince to feel the pleasure, to take it, to fall apart beneath the force of that desire, to want, to need the way Adam wanted, the way Adam needed. But he would have stopped if there had been only pain. Adam was certain of it, but still, self-doubt danced around the edges, blurring them, pushing him back into questioning himself.
“I don’t know,” Adam finally replied.
Prince Thomas’s eyes narrowed, the intensity in them seeming to grow exponentially. He sat still for what felt like hours, frowning, measuring Adam with that incredible scrutiny. Finally, he relaxed, tension easing from his features, a new light brightening his eyes.
“Fair enough,” he said. Then he looked down at his newly bandaged leg. “I should go. If I don’t get back to my camp now, I’ll have nothing to eat but dirt.”
“What do you mean by that? Is there not enough food in the slave camp? I ordered the captains to replenish our stock generously in Xien. Don’t tell me they disobeyed my orders?”
“No! I did not mean that, my lord. I spoke in jest, nothing more.”
“Oh.”
Prince Thomas shot him a quizzical look. “You actually care, don’t you? About the slaves, I mean.”
“Of course I care. I care about everyone who marches in my caravan. I draw no distinctions, Prince Thomas.”
“Forgive me. I meant no insult my lord. I just…I’ve marched in caravans with my father and my brothers. They never cared what happened to the slaves. If they were hungry, if they were cold, it didn’t matter. And when they died, my father called it an existential hazard.”
“I am not your father,” Adam said, with more venom than he’d intended.
Prince Thomas’s look turned intense once again, his eyebrows knitting in concentration. Once again, he looked like he was trying to solve a riddle. “No. You’re something else entirely.”
Before Adam could press him for his meaning, the prince stood up, resting the bulk of his weight on his good leg.
“I should go.”
Adam didn’t want him to. He wanted the prince to stay, to keep talking in that clear, lyrical voice of his, even if some of his words were things Adam didn’t want to hear. He wanted the prince to stay.
“Be careful,” Adam said, as the prince limped to the entrance.
“Is that an order, my lord?”
“No. But it is a heartfelt request.”
The prince stared at him for a brief moment. Then with a slight curl of his lips, he said, “I live to serve the king” and walked out of the tent.
Three days later, when the prince finally rejoined the hunting party, Adam walked towards the soldiers, driven entirely by habit and instinct. When the others had returned to their horses upon Adam’s command, the prince stayed as always.
“Do you remember what I said to you the other night?” Adam asked.
“I shall be careful, my lord,” Prince Thomas replied.
Adam nodded. “May the grace of the Oracle abide with you.”
“And also with you, my lord.”
Adam’s eyes widened with shock to hear Prince Thomas give the reply he’d withheld for weeks. His shock must have shown, Adam thought, because right then, the prince let his mask slip and flashed Adam a sweet, hesitant smile. But so brief. So brief. Before Adam had even processed that it was happening, it was finished and the inscrutable mask was back.
He watched Prince Thomas walk away, mount his horse, and ride away with the hunting party. And all the while, Adam stood there lamely, left with nothing but questions hurtling about wildly in his skull.