Chapter 13: The Choice He Makes Again

Aquas caught Lucien's hand at the forge-hall threshold and pulled him off the corridor line.

A runner stood by the post with the assembly notice still in his fist, waiting for someone to carry it.

Aquas walked past him and did not say where they were going.

He took the first side door he found and pulled Lucien through it.

The room behind was small and cold, a clerk's office with one lamp and a table stacked with blank ledgers.

Aquas shut the door on the notice and the runner and the whole waiting hall.

Lucien stood where he was put.

'Voss's paper and the dawn do not decide what you are to me,' Aquas said.

Lucien's jaw moved once, the way it did when he was about to say something careful.

'Do not manage this,' Aquas said. 'Not even kindly.'

Lucien closed his mouth.

Aquas crossed the room and took hold of the front of Lucien's coat and pulled him down to his mouth.

Lucien's hand came up to the side of his face, and his thumb found the edge of the jaw, and it was gentle, and Aquas did not want gentle.

He took the hand off his face and put it back at Lucien's side.

'When I say stop, you stop,' Aquas said.

'Yes,' Lucien said.

That was the whole answer, and it was enough.

Aquas set the pace himself after that, and Lucien followed every word of it without adding a condition.

The coat came off first, and the silver clasps bit cold against the table when Aquas dropped it.

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