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“I would court you, “ said Damen, “with all the grace and courtesy you deserve.” – Kings Rising
--
In the aftermath of Kastor’s death and Laurent’s sublime victory, Paschal demands at least a week of bed rest for the Akielon king and leaves absolutely no room for argument. Damen wants to argue, wants nothing to mar the culmination of all his desires and Laurent’s, but Laurent promises Paschal that “the King will obey” and soon Damen finds himself drinking a pungent tea, insidiously laced with something that makes his eyelids feel as heavy as stones. Still, before he succumbs to the deep sleep that calls to him, he sees Laurent, sitting by his bedside still dressed in the filthy tattered chiton he’d been wearing to stand trial before his uncle.
“You need to rest, Laurent. I am well-looked after,” he slurs.
“I’ll leave when you no longer have need of me,” Laurent replies.
Damen, delirious with happiness even in his injured state and in the mood for wooing his lover, says, “The day will never come when I no longer have need of you.” Laurent rolls his eyes but Damen savors the sweet flush that steals up his pale neck.
And Laurent still evades goodbyes, like he had after their first night together. After three days without leaving Damen’s side, he whispers him awake in the very early gray hours of the morning, leaving a soft kiss on Damen’s lips and then letting his cheek rest against Damen’s for what seems like a full minute to Damen but is likely only a few small moments.
“I have to go back to Arles,” he whispers.
Damen, edges blurred with sleep and medicine, closes his eyes and says, “Hurry back to me,” before slipping back into sleep.
--
As soon as Paschal is satisfied that he’s not in danger of ripping his stitches, Damen leaves his bed and sends for Nikandros. He’s had nothing but time since Laurent left, time to sit in bed all covered in salve and think about his next steps. Nikandros, primed to discuss affairs of state, enters Damen’s chambers, takes one look at the list Damen tosses towards him across the desk, and closes his eyes.
“…Courting gifts, Damianos?”
Damen grins and delivers his instructions.
--
The first gift is the traditional one. The royal jewelers cast a lovely golden lion pin, exactly like the one his father gave him, inset with glinting ruby eyes. Damen admires the exquisite craftwork before replacing it upon its red velvet setting and shutting the lid of its fine wooden box. He sends it with a courier and watches the man ride out of the palace gates, feeling his blood sing with the newness of it all.
He wants to be able to say that Akielos’s state business keeps him too busy to think of the gift but he’d be lying if he did. And of course, he is busy, his days consumed by meetings with counselors, dining with dignitaries and seemingly endless correspondence with his foreign counterparts. But always floating, at the back of his mind, is the little wooden box with its pin wrapped in velvet and he imagines its progress across his country into another with sweet and constant anticipation, imagines slender, capable hands opening the gift, brushing gently over the glowing gold… Damen feels as if he’s sent a part of himself, a poor proxy, to Laurent.
Several weeks pass with no answer but finally, the same courier finds him in the royal stables one morning, sweaty and watering his mount after a long countryside ride with Nikandros.
“Exalted,” the man says and takes a knee, holding out a rich blue velvet pouch trimmed with delicately wrought golden lace. Damen takes the pouch in his hand, hefting it to feel the weight and shape of it, and realizes his heart is thrumming like a bird’s before he’s even seen the contents. He tips the bag and a glint of gold comes tumbling out onto his palm, cool and solid. The pouch is otherwise empty. There is no note.
As the courier quietly melts away to respect his king’s privacy, Damen stares down at the pin. Then…
“He sent back the pin…. He sent it back, Nikandros!”
His oldest friend looks over from where he is feeding his own horse an apple core. Clapping his kyros on the back, Damen lets out an elated whoop that he knows is entirely unbecoming of a king. Laughing at Nikandros’s flat look of fond exasperation, by now extremely familiar to him, Damen tosses the reins of his horse to an attendant and heads out of the stables.
--
He’s not at all surprised that somewhere, in all of this, between learning a new language, winning men’s hearts, and fighting tooth and nail to claim his throne, Laurent managed to find the time to read a book or interrogate an Akielon attendant about the etiquette and procedure of traditional courtship. Damen doesn’t need an accompanying letter to know what the return of his gift means. In the formalized, centuries-old Akielon language of love, it means, “I am coy. Think of my honor. Consider my virtue.”
But what it really means is, “Try again. Impress me. Woo me. And win me.”
And, because it’s what he would have done had he and Laurent been different people under different, happier, circumstances, Damen intends to.
--
Damen relishes the chance to infuse each gift with a little something of himself and with a little something of Laurent as well. The second gift he sends is far less traditional than the first, a set of long, silver thread laces. When the laces come back to him, they’re packaged neatly in tissue but Damen swears (though he keeps it entirely to himself) that the laces carry the faintest scent of Laurent, as though he’d worn them for a day, under his severe jacket and close to his skin, before returning them.
Encouraged, Damen grows playful. He orders a set of regal silver chalices forged and sends them off with a large blue glass bottle filled with griva, the helpful contribution of Makedon. The wax seal around the cork is silently and defiantly unbroken when the bottle returns.
The weeks pass and in a moment of keen loneliness and longing, Damen sends for a servant to pick apricots out of the orchard and has the palace cook dry a small handful of them to soak in sugary syrup. The little box of candied fruit that goes away comes back cheekily empty and Damen feels a ridiculous, hopeless, helpless ache.
A few weeks later, Damen chooses a tome of Akielon poetry and songs from his father’s library. The book comes back to him with the corner of one page folded down neatly. Turning the pages with admittedly more excitement than he has ever experienced in reading poetry, Damen finds that Laurent has marked the Song of Euphranor:
“I look upon the face of my beloved.
He is the sun and the moon.
He creates the expanse in which I rise,
and make all the days of my life.”
--
Damen’s final gift is a beautiful gray mare, spirited and haughty, with eyes that betray a great deal of intelligence. Laurent decides to keep the horse. She’s too magnificent and as soon as the Akielon courier leads the animal into the palace courtyard at Arles, Laurent can’t bear to part with her.
He names her Manon and when he finally passes through the gates of Ios after months of separation and yearning, he’s riding Manon and wearing a golden cuff.