*
The herald was speaking to him.
Damen heard it as if from very far away and understood, at length, that there was a small party of his own men here to ride with him back to his camp. He spoke words to the herald, or thought he did, because the herald went away and left him to mount his horse.
He put his hand on the saddle before he mounted, and for a moment closed his eyes. Laurent had known who he was, and had still made love to him. He wondered what mix of yearning and self-delusion had allowed Laurent to do that.
He was battered by what had happened, bruised and aching, his whole body throbbed. He had not felt the blows struck against him in battle until now, when they all came together. The unsteady physical exhaustion of the melee was on him; he couldn’t move; he couldn’t think.
If he’d imagined it, it was as a single, cataclysmic event, an unmasking that, whatever followed, would be over. Violence would have been both punishment and release. He had never imagined that it would instead go on and on; that the truth had been known; that it had been painfully absorbed; that it would be this crushing pressure that wouldn’t leave his chest.
Laurent had tamped down the smothered emotion in his eyes, and would endure an alliance with his brother’s killer, though he felt nothing but aversion. If he could do it, Damen could do it. He could make impersonal negotiations, speak in the formal language of kings.
The ache of loss didn’t make sense, because Laurent had never been his. He had known that. The delicate thing that had grown between them had never had a right to exist. It had always had an end date, the moment that Damen reassumed his mantle.
Now he had to return with these men to his own camp. The ride back was brief, less than a half mile separated their armies. He made it, with his duty firm in his mind. If it hurt, it was fitting; it was simply kingship.