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A great warrior returning home after a long expedition. City gates flung wide to greet him in full regalia, banners and garlands and song and ale tumbling through the streets. His bloodied and bruised but ultimately triumphant body hoisted on shoulders and paraded to the only place he’d want to go. The towering sandstone castle at the top of the hill. Home.
A king who hears the news only when noise pours into the courtyard; who does not wait on his bronze throne as he ought; who tosses his crown aside and bounds down the high steps to greet the throng before they enter the great hall.
Is it my brother? Is Murph home?
Murph. All scruff and exhaustion with a few more scars than before. Having seen the desert, the forest, the crystal steppe, the dragon’s den, and the glade of sleep everlasting. Wrapped in ruddy leathers stained with blood. Locks stringy, unkempt and sweaty. Gloved fingers, as if on reflex, even in the heat of celebration, gripped tight around the hilt of an iron blade.
Fingers loosening and tightening again at the sight of his brother. King Jacob. Blue brocade shortcoat and soft pointed shoes. Joy crinkling his eyes, red hair pushed back from his forehead with a little dent in it from where the crown ought to be.
Pushing his way through a throng of peasants, royal bright in the dun, where any knife could slip into his back. Unarmored, the fool. Smiling, arms outstretched.
Murph being drawn into a hug. The stench of the city and its people, offal, beer, hay, tempered by the king’s oaky warmth. Murph’s hands loosening from his blade to meet on his brother’s back, spanning fingers wide to protect as much as he can. The crowd cheering around them. Jacob running fingers through his matted mane.
Your hair has grown long, brother. It suits you.
❦
Smallcouncil chambers. Words like daggers. A knight whose fingers itch for simpler blood to be drawn. Whose hands are too rough for fine print. Whose face loathes to be shaved, hair pulls at his skull in its tie.
Old rivalries rekindle. The king’s dearest councillor and his wicked smile which Jacob, despite himself, adores. Betrayal always an arm’s length away. The battle is slow. It ekes in the edges of whispers and contracts.
The window beyond the council table calls. Training in the courtyard. The smell of bread in the market. And far beyond, the forest, where a single raven takes flight.
❦
Sleepless nights on too fine beds. The uneasy stillness of the indoors. Dreams of conflicts long resolved, and those still too fresh to be plucked.
Murph in his nightshirt sneaking to his brother’s chamber. Compelled to, as he has done since childhood. To see if he’s still breathing. Padding down high echoing halls, through secret back passages, hands skimming narrow widths, breath and skin on stone. Still a boy avoiding his parents’ ire. Still a man who knows better.
Watching the rise and fall of a slim naked chest in the near dark. Watching bony hips shift under half-slung sheets. A mouth slitted open, murmuring nighttime secrets to itself. A hand upturned against a pillow in a shaft of moonlight. So soft those hands, to carry so much.
The slumbering body turns, leg arching and sloughing its sheet. Murph holds his breath. Blood beats at his skin all the way down his body.
He can’t flee fast enough, quiet enough. To have seen and wanted. To recognize wanting aching through his gut. To picture himself reaching out for it. To be unable to blink it away, the sight of the blue silver light on pale body. To see the gentle mound of Jake's cock open to the night air and to salivate.
Brothers don’t. Knights don’t. Men don’t. Murph doesn’t.
Returning to his chamber, panting and sweating, and finding a visitor. A black cat on the balcony. Too high by stories for a street cat. Too patient, sitting still on the stone railing under the clouded dark waiting for Murph to approach.
Nowhere to hide, really. Hanging shirt doing nothing to cover the erection. He hesitates, but steps toward her into the cool summer evening with fingers outstretched.
She rubs her face against his hand, and then stops him with a paw. Looks up with eyes he can tell, even in the dark, are ice blue.
He takes a sharp breath.
Tell your mistress I’m not ready yet. Not til he’s settled. But I will keep my promise.
❦
Knight Murphy pushing his brother-king, knocking an astrolabe and sheaves of paper off a desk. An old argument, and a new one.
What were you thinking?
You’re always telling me to—
You haven’t even met this woman!
Bloom arranged it all.
Oh, well if Blumenfeld arranged it I’m sure she must be a perfect angel.
Come now, brother. When will you stop this childish quarrel with him? It’s—
Hands grip the wide open vee of the king’s collar. Nostrils flare. The king struggles to grip back, finds no purchase in the sturdy armor.
You sit an entire life in your castle of silk and pleasantries and I’m the child?
Jacob wrenching his hands away, pulling the crown from his head.
When father died, you stepped down. You gave this to me. But if you want it back—
Stop.
No, I’m sure you could do it better.
Stop, brother.
Just take it!
Jacob sliding to his knees, crown held upward. Murph would look so good in it. Severe like the kings of old.
Murph grabs him under the arms, pulls him up, slams his back down on the desk. Ink bottles, quills, baubles rattle. The crown clatters to the floor.
They are eye to eye, then, knight abdicator and his golden brother king.
You do not kneel. You understand me? You never kneel for anyone.
Flurried breaths meeting between noses.
Kings marry and make queens, Murph. Why don’t you want that for me?
Knotted hands at the king’s collar twitch. Fists press into chest.
Not someone he chose.
Soft beringed hands mirror, palm the knight’s gruff face.
Someone you choose?
❦
Jacob clad in olive green velvet, laced with gold embroidery in the pattern of stag horns across his collarbone. Fringe dusted pauldrons and hand molded brass lapel buttons. Fawnskin sheathed longsword at his side. Nine pointed crown inlaid with rubies and topaz.
Jacob being undressed, lily white bare chest and linen underclothes. Silken socks slid off of lean calves. Pants unlaced at the back by manservant hands.
That’s enough, Hugo.
Sir?
Leave me and my brother be.
A king and his halo as if illuminated on a manuscript. Sun drenched flesh through lead paned glass.
On your knees.
Jake.
Going to make your king ask twice?
The painting of worship. To kneel before beauty. Scarred hands on pristine thighs.
Murph’s head cradled by long jeweled fingers. Turned gently aside, exposing rough edges, haggard lines of work and worry.
Relax, brother. There’s no one else here.
Steel and brass. The moon and sun.
Murph opens his mouth without being told to. Light pours in.
❦
The expedition of suiting. Letters to allies, trusted friends. Carriage rides to neighboring nations, the Summer Keep, the sea.
Why can’t you come with me?
Someone has to watch the castle, Jacob.
Bloom can—
Blumenfeld is an idiot, Jacob.
A season apart. Of blackbirds and cats and strange dark ermines finding their way to Murph’s balcony. Of dreams visited by the witch woman and her nightshade stained lips. Of fending off every would-be usurper who so much as thinks in his direction. Of Jacob sending letters he shouldn’t trust to any messenger filled with words he shouldn’t write. Murph drowns them in the bath. Watches the ink bleed away and the parchment turn all to pulp.
A season of nights where his hands cannot decide who inspires their movement between his legs, or which is worse.
❦
Finally, the return and pronouncement. Betrothal, alliance, concord and prosperity to the region. A queen-to-be and her name on every herald’s lips, her likeness collected and distilled into bardic tales far and wide.
The evening celebration ebbs, hocks of meat gnawed to the bone, but long before he should be, the king is absent his own party.
High up in his locked chamber, faceted gemstone jewelry is discarded on the nightstand like game dice. In its myriad cast reflections in candlelight, the king presses into his brother’s back.
I missed you.
You’re engaged.
Kings keep mistresses.
Murph laughs and it hurts and he clenches his fist. Is he, too, breaking a vow? He’s not sure.
Jasmine blooms on the balcony. Stars dot the indigo night. Jake’s fingers spread on a canvas of hair and muscle. Swaying, sliding, breathing.
Murph doesn’t fight the grip on his waist, the pinning a too gentle mockery of real combat. It is losing, this. To turn his hips up and be fucked and fucked again. To bleed sweat for the empire into a goosedown mattress.
It is a night of losing.
The picture moves, rocks backward and arches. Oil slides down curves of hard flesh.
The blade in a dragon’s throat, deeper and deeper. The thrum of deadly adrenaline. The rhythm of sparring, to you, to me; hot breath on a shoulder, closer brother, stay, a little more; a wet pulse, a sob, and Murph loses, gives up into the earth, ruins himself for the king like a good soldier.
❦
A cold morning where the king wakes alone. Sneaks through the back ways in his satin robe to Murph’s room, and finds it empty. Not only of his brother, but the drawers and wardrobe cleaned of every thing he owned.
A letter on the desk which says too little. Says not to follow.
A laden horse long in the distance, bound for the witch in the wood. The feeling of the tightening string of magic between them.
For how does a single warrior best the dragon in the field and protect the king in the castle at the same time?
He sells his heart to the fearsome witch of raven hair and sapphire eyes. He promises never to touch another woman so long as he lives. He keeps his promise well enough. He returns to her roughspun embrace and lightning cackle. He chops her firewood, hunts her meals, keeps her witch’s sabbaths and tends her vined labyrinth. He lets his whiskers grow, and the paranoia of nobility fade from view.
He wishes he kept the letters, but it’s better that he didn’t.