Sunlight poured in through the small cottage windows when he opened his eyes again, and the fire had burned down to ashes.
Niko tried to shift from the floor, but everything ached, making him rise like an old man. He stretched out the aches and spotted Vasili. The prince had folded his tall, lean self into the armchair, one leg drawn up to his chest, the other stretched out. His head rested on his drawn-up knee, eye closed, his face so relaxed he could only be asleep.
Gods, it might have been the first time Niko had seen the man truly at ease.
A few waves of silvery blond hair had fallen over the prince’s shoulder and lay across his cheek. Slightly parted pink lips looked softer when they weren’t sneering. All of him looked smaller, tucked into that chair, like he could be someone’s loving son, someone’s brother, someone’s lover.
Niko winced at that last thought and settled back down in his seated position to stare at the cold fire instead of the vulnerable prince. His gaze wandered back anyway.
To think that a man, the same age as Niko, had the weight of the dark flame on his shoulders. All this time, he’d been fighting to save Loreen from elves. And now the palace was gone. His home turned to ash. His father dead, and his brothers… Well, one was dead, and the other was trying to ruin him by turning the people he’d sacrificed everything for against him.
It wasn’t as though there was any real love in that palace. Perhaps Vasili would be relieved to have it gone?
Niko now knew one thing: Vasili did sleep after all.
He carefully got to his feet and crept from the room, then drew a few buckets of chilling water from the well in the back courtyard. Stripping off outside, he washed the smoke and soot from himself, then threw on fresh trousers and a shirt. Vicious bruises mottled his skin, but their ache would pass.
Carrying the second bucket into the house, he set it by the kitchen stove and was about to start making some hot tea when movement outside caught his eye.
From the kitchen window, he often looked out to the forge’s hitching post to see who had left their animal for shoeing. Today was the seventh day of the week and a day meant for rest. There were no horses due until later. But one waited at the post, biting at an empty feed bag. “I’ll be damned.”
Niko quietly unlatched the back door and ventured around the front of the forge. The morning air nipped at his clean skin.
Adamo snorted a greeting, vapor clouding his nose, and stamped a hoof. The big white charger rocked its head, highly dissatisfied with an empty feedbag. Someone had managed to get a lead rope on him but no saddle. Adamo had probably bolted the second he’d been moved from his stall.
“There’s a good boy.” Niko brushed his fingers down the horse’s nose and let him snuffle his palm. “No carrots today.” Adamo’s nostrils fluttered. Niko took the lead rope and guided the horse around the forge to the back of the cottage and tied him out of sight from the road. Vasili would be pleased. Typical the prince’s horse showed up but Niko’s old nag hadn’t found its way home.
Niko briefly ran his hand over Adamo’s flanks, checking for any sore spots or scuffs. He seemed remarkably well, although his brilliant white coat had greyed with ash in places.
“You found him.” Vasili leaned against the back-door frame. He’d washed the dirt from his face. A few damp tendrils of hair had escaped his quick, messy ponytail. Burns had crimped his clothes in places. The trousers were ripped at the knee. His collar gaped where a few fasteners had been torn free. For all the scuffs and tears telling the story of last night, his expression was soft. Probably because of the horse.
“I suspect he found you.” Niko patted Adamo’s neck and hung a straw bag for the horse to chew on. If only princes were as easily pleased.
Vasili made an agreeable noise and sauntered over to dote on his hoofed companion. He lifted a hand to let Adamo snuffle the backs of his fingers. The horse flicked its tail and went back to prying the hay from the bag with his teeth.
A smile broke out across Vasili’s lips. It was a bright and brilliant thing to witness and completely unfamiliar on his face. Like this vicious, callous man had a real heart somewhere. From everything Niko had seen, that heart was reserved for Adamo only.
Niko cleared his throat, upset his cough some more, and headed inside, away from Vasili. Adamo was here. That was good. Niko would make breakfast, because Mah had always told him it was the polite thing to do for guests, even if one despised their guest, and then Vasili would take Adamo and leave. And Niko would never have to see him again.
He cut the stale end off the bread, found the middle part fresh, and toasted a few slices on the stove, then set the kettle onto the stovetop to boil. All very normal. Even if having Vasili inside his cottage was far from normal.
He’d rebuilt every wall and window and nook and crevice with his own hands, and there was much still to do, but it was finally a place he could call home. Vasili was the first soul he’d let step foot inside.
“I lost the book.”
Niko glanced up. “The one you went into a burning library for?”
Vasili stepped from the courtyard into the kitchen, and all at once, the room shrank around his presence. “I went in there to save all the pertinent books.” He scanned the shelves, reading the hand-scrawled labels on the jars for herbs and flour. “That was the last.” Vasili regarded the stove, with its burbling kettle and toast rack. The last time they’d shared anything nearly as domestic as this, Julian had been between them. Now, there was no Julian to distract. Just a whole lot of judgmental Vasili. “I dropped it in the grass. It’s probably still there.”
If he went back to that palace, the guards would kill him. They’d made that clear. But it wasn’t Niko’s place to advise a prince.
He waited, but when Vasili didn’t offer up any further information, his mind turned to that moment after falling from the roof when Vasili had tried to reach the book and the palace guards had turned on him. “Amir controls the guards?”
Vasili blinked, leaned back against the small countertop, and folded his arms. Considering they’d both fallen from a palace window and almost been killed, he didn’t seem hurt or even bruised.
Vasili raised an eyebrow, and Niko averted his gaze. “I was just checking you weren’t hurt.”
“His influence began slowly,” he said, ignoring Niko’s comment.
Niko steered his attention from wandering up the length of Vasili and gathered the toast instead. He tossed the pieces onto two plates, then hastily strained some tea in cups. When he handed Vasili’s out and received a soft thank-you, he wondered if he’d fallen from the palace roof and struck his head a lot harder than he’d first thought. This softer, bedraggled Vasili was too much like the Vasili from the farmhouse—the Vasili Niko had savagely kissed in a starlit field.
“After what he saw in Talos,” Vasili said, “Amir must have realized the truth in our mother’s tales and began rethinking them. Before, when he was younger—and not on spice—his mind was sharper.”
Niko wrapped his fingers around the hot cup. He’d tried not to think of Amir since leaving the palace. Vasili didn’t know the details of what had happened between Niko, Julian, and Amir, but the prince could guess from the state of Julian’s body, the fiend’s remains, and from whatever Amir had probably boasted of. It was enough. Niko had no wish to mention the fragments he remembered—like that terrible moment he’d ended the life of the lost soldier nobody had saved. He had enough horrors in his head without inviting those back in.