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Damen had a number of scars. Seeing the lighter track of an old sword wound against his skin no longer startled him; even the mess of scarring across his back had become just another thing to wash. And he'd grown used to Laurent's gaze, and his touch, following the marks on his body when they were alone.
They'd talked about his back, talked it to death. Argued over it, cried over it. Every few months Laurent would come to him, stiff-shouldered, eyes down, and try to bring up what had happened, what he'd done.
Once, Damen had said (more loudly than he'd meant to, his temper rapidly fraying) that forgiving or not forgiving him would not take the scars from his back, so he was happy to move past it and not wallow in self-pity.
Laurent's expression should have struck him dead. Damen had gone to visit Nikandros for three nights, spending all three getting spectacularly drunk and returning to Ios with a hangover and an apology.
But tonight, as Damen dozed and pale fingers traced familiar paths across his body, Laurent's touch stopped at a different scar, one on his shoulder. Deep and darkened with age, though it didn't pull with the movement of his arm as much as it used to: a starburst of healed flesh left by the sharp, well-made sword of a golden prince, just before Damen had cut him down.
"Veretian steel," Laurent said softly. "I'm not surprised it was sharp enough to go through your armor."
Damen opened his eyes to keep the image of blood gouting from Auguste's neck from playing over and over in his mind. "I was only wearing a breastplate, to keep from getting stuck with an arrow. His sword only had to cut through cloth and a bit of fancy embroidery."
He'd flinched as the sword thrust forward, expecting it to hurt, expecting it to go through his throat. And it had hurt, in a cold, detached sort of way. Again, he saw Auguste, golden hair dark with sweat, mud and blood splattered across his face. Again, he saw the flash of white teeth as something was shouted at him, first in Veretian, then in Akielon.
"It must have gone all the way through," Laurent said.
It hadn't, quite. Auguste's blade had gone into his right shoulder, an inch below the collar bone. Damen had staggered, right hand spasming, and he'd had to take his sword into his left hand to keep from dropping it.
"It wasn't as bad as it could have been," Damen said. "I was... Laurent, I..."
"No. I was angry, but I know, now. I know you had to fight for your life. If you hadn't killed my brother, he would have killed you."
Auguste, the point of his sword drooping into the mud, calling out to him in accented Akielon.
"You fought the battle, but someone else was pulling the strings," Laurent assured him. "I know that now."
Auguste had said, "Yield! Yield and I won't kill you. We don't have to die here."
Damen had lunged, left-handed, taking advantage of the gap in Auguste's defenses to bring his blade down hard between the neck and shoulder. He'd shut his eyes to keep from being blinded by the blood, and kept pushing down, down, down, until his sword caught in the prince's spine and stuck. A roar had gone up, a hundred Akielon voices shouting his name, the burning heat of his men rushing forward to push the scattering Veretian army back.
Prince-Killer.
"You're right," Damen said, taking Laurent's fingers and kissing them. "There was no other choice."