After supper they are shown to their chamber by an aide. Fontainebleau is far enough outside Paris that they will return in the morning; in order to arrive in time for the supper they had left the Palais de la Cité before dawn. The room is far larger and more luxurious than their cramped box in the Palais, but as Harry goes to put his bags down the courtier stops him. ‘Ah, you are to come with me, Sir Harry,’ the man says.
Harry follows the aide through the corridors of the palace, across a courtyard and to an upper level significantly fancier than the guest quarters they’d been assigned.
The aide leads him through a small antechamber then stops in front of a carved door, bright with gilding. ‘You will stay here tonight, if you wish,’ the man says, a certain note of disapproval in his voice. He opens the door slightly, not enough to see inside, but enough to check that it isn’t locked.
Harry nods. ‘Thank you,’ he replies.
The aide sniffs and then leaves him there, disappearing down the lamp-lit hall.
Harry takes a deep breath and goes in, shutting the door behind him as quietly as he can. He looks up at the warm glitter of candlelight off gilded ornamentation.
Part of his mind registers that it’s the most beautiful room he’s ever seen, rich with tapestries and carved decorations on the wall, and cobalt-blue velvet curtains around the bed.
The other part can only see Iain, lounging on that bed with a nervous look on his face.
Once Harry locks the door behind him, Iain rasps, ‘Hello, Harry.’
Harry’s saddlebags reach the ground at the same time he reaches Iain. He can’t figure out what to do, because Iain’s real and alive and still wants to see him, but he settles on throwing his arms around him and hugging him as hard as he can.
Iain’s body is thick and strong under Harry’s arms and Harry shakes, years of terror and grief and exhaustion falling off him like a cocoon of ashes.
‘How?’ he says, his own voice cracking into nothingness, unable to hold all the emotion behind that single word.
Iain doesn’t answer, but his eyes are deadly sombre as he slowly slips off his hood and unbuttons his jacket. He discards those garments casually, onto the floor, as if they were dirty work clothes rather than the finest scarlets Harry has ever seen.
Then he takes off his linen shirt. He extends his arms out, displaying himself, displaying what became of the perfect, handsome boy Harry loved.
His body is a mass of scars. There is a particularly horrible one low on his neck, hollowed and twisting the flesh around it, and more on his arms and his chest. The old, silvered scars of the crossbow bolts that nearly killed him are overlapped by newer, pinker scars, from sword and lance.
‘I—’ Iain starts, then he coughs and touches the scar on his throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, barely above a whisper. ‘When they shot me, it destroyed my voice.’
‘I’ll sit closer,’ Harry says, slipping out of his own jacket and hood and laying them neatly to the side of the bed. He sits down next to Iain, close but not touching, unsure how they relate to each other now. He wants so badly to slip back into their easy physical familiarity, but while so much is the same with Iain, there is much that is different too. He’s become a stranger whom Harry must relearn.
He looks up through his lashes and sees those pale eyes on him, staring at him.
‘I want to explain,’ Iain says.
‘I don’t care, Iain. You’re here. It’s like a miracle. You’re here and Montagu is in prison and we both survived,’ Harry breathes. ‘We won. You won, because let’s face it, I didn’t do anything.’
‘God’s breath, five years later and you’re still the biggest idiot who ever lived,’ Iain rasps. Then he shivers, and Harry can see the blush of goosebumps on his skin, how erect his nipples are in the cold. ‘Hold me,’ Iain whispers, almost silently, head bowed. ‘Nobody ever held me like you did.’
Harry throws his arms around Iain and pulls him down to the bed, and even though they’re both older now, scarred and hardened to the cruelty of the world, they still fit perfectly together. Iain curls up into Harry, tucking his head in the crook of Harry’s neck and throwing a leg over his hip. Harry buries his nose in Iain’s hair. Underneath the expensive perfumes, the lime and sandalwood, he smells as he always did: iron and musk and a certain sweetness, the smell of home.
‘That was you, the Black Knight, wasn’t it?’ Harry whispers. ‘My furious Lord Death.’
Iain hums and presses a kiss into the side of Harry’s neck. ‘The King knows, and four of my knights. Nobody else,’ he whispers.
‘Oh, look at you, you have knights now,’ Harry says, unable to help falling into their old banter.
‘Shut up,’ Iain grumbles. Then his eyes brighten. ‘How is Dartington? Alys and Annie and everyone?’
‘Not pleased with me,’ Harry admits, shame creeping into his voice. ‘I didn’t know what to do after you vanished. I thought you were dead. So I went to war. And stayed there.’ He scratches at the stubble on his chin, which is most of the way to being a beard again. ‘You don’t have to think in war, the way you do in peace.’
Iain smiles and reaches out two fingers, touching Harry’s short beard. ‘I like this,’ he rasps. ‘You look tired.’
‘I am. I think I’ve been tired for years,’ Harry sighs. ‘Oh,’ he says, sitting up. ‘Peter and Wat are well. Still at sea. Peter witnessed the mercenaries loading your body onto the ship to France. He saw Montagu pay off the captain. But he didn’t know it was you until Arundel and I came looking.’ Harry gazes at his love, the pale eyes