Sorry about the wait! I could tell you stories, guys, about scratched corneas and skunk disasters and also those four days where all of my Blangst broke completely and I couldn't write anything...

...but honestly? I'd rather tell you a story about dragons :)


Title: The One About Dragons

Rating: Rish, this part; eventually, NC-17

Warnings: DUBCON AND CHILD ABUSE. (Um. Not in the same place.) The dubcon will likely be mild, but the abuse will be very present, and ongoing for at least the first few chapters. Later chapters will also (likely) include graphic violence.
IN THIS CHAPTER: THIS ONE GETS BAD, FOLKS. We get some reasonably heavy on-camera abuse in the first scene, and much of the rest of this part involves dealing with the aftermath of that. Please please to not be triggering yourselves on this. The story will still be understandable if you skip the first scene here, though again, the aftermath's pretty prevalent even then.

Disclaimer: Glee belongs to Ryan Murphy and Fox. I own nothing.

Summary: Blaine's always been told that the dragon you know is safer than the dragon you don't.
In this chapter: Angry dragons have claws.

Notes: Always always crown_of_weeds, who helps me make things feel right.

Also, in case you missed it, this story now has side fic, in gratitude to the lovely eira_cannaid for making the best fanart ever. The story of how Kurt's mother, among other things, found herself a husband, and also a couple of swords.






Blaine knew, when his father stopped him at dinner and told him to come by later that night, that it was going to be a bad one. Usually, his father would summon him with a look. Blaine didn’t trust the break in pattern.

He went up to his room after dinner, changed into a dark, loose shirt gone soft with repeated washings, and then sat in a chair fidgeting with Kurt’s panpipes. He was getting a feel for them, how much air to use, and they didn’t feel awkward in his hands any more. He’d be able to play a basic melody for one of Kurt’s ballads, soon.

The bell in its tower tolled ten times. It was almost, as always, a relief. He could quit stalling now.

There was always too much time to think, leading up to one of these nights. It made him feel awkward, twitchy, churning himself around in circles of how could I have avoided this one and how can I do better next time and sometimes, most useless and dangerous of all, why do I deserve this. It was no good. In front of his father, there was no thinking to be done at all, just remembering to breathe, to not move, to not bite through his lip or his tongue trying not to cry out. There was a simplicity to it that was almost, almost, comforting.

The walk to his father’s chambers was the same as ever, quiet, no eye contact with the servants he passed in the halls. When Blaine let himself in, however, his father was already waiting for him in the antechamber.

That was wrong, too. The tension knotted up just a little bit tighter in the pit of Blaine’s stomach along with the confusion. Nobody told the king he couldn’t wait in his own antechamber. Probably it was nothing. But Blaine didn’t like it.

“In my office, now,” the king snapped. Blaine followed silently.

The king did not pace tonight. Instead, he stood in front of the fireplace, raging despite the warmth of the day outside. Blaine and Kurt had gone down by the river, downstream of the city, to look at the water birds and talk to the fishermen. Perhaps that was what roused his father’s ire. The king of Ander stood backlit, a dark looming shape glowing red and gold on every side, and Blaine kept his eyes level and tried not to move so much as a breath. Everything was tight with the low thrum of apprehension, the sort that precluded any kind of terror, because what was to be afraid of if Blaine knew what was coming? He tried to force his muscles to relax.

And then the king spoke, and no. Blaine hadn’t known what was coming at all.

“The barbarians are leaving the day after tomorrow,” Blaine’s father said. “In spite of all you have done, we have an arrangement.” Blaine waited. “Tomorrow you will pack, and the next day you will leave with them.”

It made Blaine’s eyes go wide and sent a thrill of actual fear down his spine, pulled his chin up so he could look at his father’s face before he could stop himself. “I don’t--” he said, and cut himself off sharply, knowing the pain would come in another minute.

His father, the dark spectre of him, raised a hand--and then, to Blaine’s surprise, lowered it. He took a single step forward, and Blaine froze as cold as winter ice. Nothing here was part of the pattern.

“You will count yourself lucky if you ever see this castle again,” his father said lowly. “You are to count yourself lucky that I do not have you executed on the spot.”

Blaine swallowed. That part was familiar. He was lucky, he knew, every day his father let him live. Something told him, though, that tonight of all nights, the wrong move or word could change his father’s mind about that in an instant. Blaine held his hands still and breathed very, very shallowly.

“When did you plan it?” his father asked. “Did you go on your knees and beg him to take you away and let you betray this country, or did you just beg him to make you his whore? Well?” He leaned in, half a handspan from Blaine’s own face, and Blaine’s voice caught in his throat. “Answer me.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Blaine managed. Long experience had taught him that when he had no idea what to say, an apology would almost always get him in slightly less trouble than anything else. “I didn’t know.”

“You. Didn’t. Know,” the king said, slow and deliberate, terrifying. “Then how did he?”

Nothing made sense, everything dark and too close and Blaine’s heart pounding like a terrified rabbit’s, but he was starting to find an ugly suspicion, something in the echo of the word whore. “I’m sorry,” he repeated for lack of anything else to say.

His father raised a hand, lifted it up to the level of Blaine’s throat, and paused there, the moment hanging sick in the darkened room. “I’ve protected you and your secret for eleven years,” the king said. His fingers curled tightly into a fist, in midair, not around the soft flesh of Blaine’s neck, and his hand fell--and somehow it was that restraint which was most terrifying of all. Never, in Blaine’s entire life, had he seen his father hold himself back from striking a blow when he was angry.

“Eleven years,” repeated the king, “and the thirteen miserable useless ones before that, and for once in your entire misbegotten life, now that I am rid of you, you can do me some actual good. You will keep him happy. You will give him every bit of you that he asks for, from your body to your own life, and you will pray to your new barbarian gods that you can be a good enough whore to keep their prince content enough that his father will fulfill our bargain. You will do this, or you will find out that for all the rage you have caused me in your life, you have never seen what sort of man I can be to my enemies.” Blaine swallowed.

Kurt had told, then, and he couldn’t even be surprised. Never mind that they’d almost come to be something a little like friendly this week. Blaine could follow orders. He could make people happy. Never his father, but Kurt...

If he failed, he’d have to take his own life out on the hills before his father found him, but none of that mattered if he couldn’t survive tonight. Blaine made himself nod.

“Yes, sir,” he said, in a voice that did not, could not waver.

It was enough, at least, to make his father draw back and send him stalking over to the rack of canes and whips on the far wall. A present to remember him by, Blaine knew. But this was more familiar ground, never mind how much sicker he felt in the pit of his stomach than ever, or the very power of the barely-contained rage in the snap of a whip that very suddenly cracked in midair. Blaine knew what to do here. He didn’t have to react any more. He could detach entirely, if he needed to. He needed to.

“On your knees,” said Blaine’s father, which meant he wanted to keep looming tonight. The cold hard stone floor against Blaine’s knees was familiar, centering; two bright spots of discomfort that he could focus on to the exclusion of anything else. “Take off your shirt.”

The first blow, when it landed, was harder even than usual, and Blaine gasped in spite of himself. It was the cat tonight. His whole back lit up in trails of fire, two of the tails wrapping around the top of his right shoulder.

Usually his father wouldn’t go as long with the cat o’ nine. It laid down too many strokes at once, scraped at Blaine’s skin with its knotted rawhide ends. It was for nights when his father wanted to cause a lot of damage and be done with it. Blaine couldn’t help counting in his head, ten strokes, fifteen, twenty, as he clenched his teeth because if he bit through his tongue he’d be lisping for days and his father hated it when he screamed. Tonight...the blows just kept coming.

Blaine wasn’t quite sure how long it took. His head was swimming. He couldn’t quite tell, in the darkened room, but his vision seemed cloudy, full of big black spots he didn’t think were shadows. His back...

It had to belong to someone else. That much pain couldn’t be all his. Nobody could survive being doused in pitch and lit on fire. It was all coming from far, far away.

When his father finally finished and told him to stand up, he nearly passed out from the swift change in altitude, and the movement that set every nerve in that faraway, somebody-else’s back screaming alight. He sagged back to his knees, unable to think about any more.

In the end, Blaine would later have vague, disconnected memories of a servant appearing at his father’s bell and pulling his shirt back over his head, then slinging Blaine’s arm over his shoulders for a staggering walk back to his room. He wasn’t entirely sure what happened when he got there, because somewhere around his chamber door, when the servant propped him up against the door post to tackle the latch, the floating dark spots exploded across his vision and sent everything to black.




Kurt was awake, dressed, and bouncing with barely leashed excitement before dawn had more than begun to threaten the horizon. He tried to confine himself within the tent, until his father rolled over and grunted at him to go vibrate with energy somewhere else. Then he ducked out to the main campfire and set himself to cooking breakfast for the entire envoy.

He’d been half-giddy with anticipation all day yesterday, knowing his dad would be speaking to the king about Blaine that morning, but last night after dinner the messenger had come down into camp with Blaine’s answer. Blaine hadn’t come himself, which was a shame, but pretty soon Kurt wouldn’t have to worry about getting tiny little snippets of time with him. Kurt was going to keep him forever.

There was so much to plan. Kurt loved weddings, but he’d never gotten to plan his own before. He had to talk to Blaine about at least some of it. They couldn’t have it here, of course, what with everything, and Kurt would never get married without the rest of his tribe in attendance anyway, but maybe Blaine’s mother or brother could be persuaded to ride out and stand for him. Kurt already had his father and Finn and Carole, and Santana would kill him if she didn’t get to stand in the ceremony somewhere, which was four for his side before you even added in Tina or Mercedes or Artie or Quinn or Mike or Puck, so maybe they’d have to put the ceremony off until Blaine made enough friends to balance his side out.

Not too long, though. A spring wedding would be perfect. They were riding off to war within the next few months, after all. And Kurt couldn’t exactly be blamed for wanting to tether Blaine to himself before the Beltane.

Kurt hummed as he set the tea water to boil, that ballad Blaine had sung for him the very first time they visited the music room. Dream of young lovers indeed. Maybe he’d put a little more dried fruit in the porridge than usual, this morning. After all, they were riding out tomorrow, they might as well use up the rest of their rations by the time they re-met the rest of the tribes.

“What’s got you so chipper?” Santana grumped as she plodded her way to the log by the fire,

“Looking forward to no longer having to share a tent barely large enough to hold my wardrobe with somebody who snores like a sleeping bear,” Kurt said without missing a beat. “You’re not excited to be seeing Brittany again?”

“I’m not the one bouncing around the campfire like a squirrel hopped up on pixie dust before the sun is even all the way up,” said Santana. “Anyway, aren’t you leaving loverboy behind tomorrow? What, are you that tired of him already?”

“Our relationship is beyond things like that,” Kurt said airily. Santana narrowed her eyes.

“Holy crap,” she said a moment later, seconds after Kurt turned away to check on the porridge again. “You’re dragging him with us, aren’t you? You’re seriously kidnapping the prince of a major foreign power.”

“I don’t know where you get your ideas, Santana,” Kurt said, stirring at the pot, but she was relentless.

“No, that’s totally it. Does the chief know you’re planning this?” Kurt avoided her gaze. “I can’t believe it.”

“Can’t believe what?” the Bieste asked. Kurt glanced up quickly, warily.

“She can’t believe the King of Ander settled things so quickly,” he lied, and the Bieste nodded.

Of course Kurt wanted to go shouting from the hilltops, but his father had been pretty clear about that part last night. They were still in Ander. There was no need to go putting Blaine or the treaty in danger before they’d left.



The whole world was a wash of hazy fire-gold and pain.

Distantly, Blaine was aware that it was only just mid-spring, and the whole castle probably wasn’t baking its inhabitants alive like vegetables in an oven. He couldn’t help it, though. His pillow was hot underneath his cheek, his sheets were hot underneath his body, and his covers, if he could bear the weight of them across his back, were stifliingly hot. He could remember a time, perhaps an hour ago, when everything in the world was freezing and he’d tucked the covers up around his chest and shoulders and legs, curled up into a tight little ball against the shivering, but that was another world now. It was hot, and everything ached.

He’d tried to get up some time ago, he thought, maybe. There had been mornings a bit like this before, when everything hurt and he felt feverish and weak, and the only thing to do was to stumble over to his wardrobe and find the little clay pot of salve on the bottom shelf between his boots and pots of paint and hair unguents. It was hard to spread on your own back, particularly when you couldn’t quite twist your shoulders like normal without pain, but Blaine had gotten fairly good at working out tricks for it. When he really needed it, he’d try to spread it on before he even went to bed. There was a bit of magic in there, enough to stop the pain as well as the possible infection, and the ridges on his back healed cleaner, less uneven under his own fingers.

Either he’d tried that this morning and failed, somehow he couldn’t quite remember, or it was a plan he’d been making in his head in enough detail that Blaine couldn’t remember through his fever whether he’d really tried to force himself out of bed yet or not. Probably that meant he should try right now.

Blaine managed to swing a leg over to the right, and slowly wiggle himself over the edge of the bed until, all at once, he found himself tumbling to the ground. He hit with a jarring of his hip that sent sparks up his back like fireballs, and bit back a moan. All right. Next, when his head had stopped spinning quite so much, standing up.

This was different than any time he could remember before. It was worse than the time when he was young and his father had realized, for the first time, just what Blaine really was, although Blaine had been wondering for years if that night had only seemed so terrible in comparison to what he was used to at the time. His father’s rage last night had been like a breathing animal with them in the room, crouched huge and menacing.

Kurt, Blaine thought, as he reached up for the edge of the bed to try and lever himself upright. Kurt would be angry, when Blaine didn’t show up this morning. He couldn’t be sure what time it was any more, but it felt like midmorning. Blaine was supposed to be somewhere. If he could just stand up.

One leg, then the other up underneath him, both hands on the mattress, and slowly, slowly forcing himself upright. Blaine forced himself to breathe, slow and deep, keep pushing himself up until he was tottering unsteady on two legs. Okay. He could do this. The whole world was swimming, but it was no worse than being very, very drunk, if he also factored in hurting everywhere. He’d broken out a light sheen of sweat covering his whole body; had he thought it was too hot in here? It was freezing, winter-cold.

Blaine lifted one foot to take a step and pitched forward onto the bed. He sprawled out there shaking, shivering with cold and exertion, clutching at whatever of his covers he could reach. Maybe that was what happened last time he tried to get to the wardrobe. That would make sense.

Infection was nothing to fool around with, he’d known that for years, but he couldn’t summon the sheer capacity to worry about it now. Of course he wouldn’t die here. It would make his life too easy and his father’s too hard.




Blaine dozed on and off throughout the day. At some point he gave up on any plans to get himself out of bed and resigned himself to shivering in one place until something else changed. His back burned hot and cried out when he moved.

He was pulled back to awareness many hours later, if the darkness of the room was any indication; the fire in the grate had long since burned out, and the sun appeared set out the window. The door to his chambers banged open with no attempt at subtlety, and he lifted his head a few fingers’ breadth to blink blearily.

“Oh, in Belenus’ name, the state of this place. Daniel, light a fire in the grate. You girl, find me candles, I’ll need light.” Blaine knew that voice, the man in the pale purple robes standing in his doorway. Johann, the palace healer. Blaine let himself sag back down to the bed. The old man scoffed.

“What have you done to yourself, idiot boy. I should leave you here, to teach you a lesson, but oh no, we need to be up on a saddle tomorrow, we need to run off with the barbarians to play at swords tomorrow.” The man’s hands on Blaine’s shoulders were thin, rough-skinned and utterly impersonal but gentler than his words implied. Blaine couldn’t help a moan. “Oh, don’t whine, Princess. You’ll be right as rain by the morning, no thanks to you. Four more hours and we’d be battling blood poisoning with these infections. Daniel, set water to boil and bring me my ointments. You girl, fresh bed linens. This is a sickroom, not a cesspit.”

Blaine wondered distantly if he was meant to argue over who was responsible for his state, or to protest as the healer’s cold ointments came into contact with the raw skin of his back. He hadn’t held the whip, but he hadn’t lived up to expectations either. Something itched under his skin like unfairness, but of course that was just the prickle of Johann’s magic, forcing healing and driving out infection.

The maid and the healer’s apprentice bustled around the bed, pulling drapes and lighting fires, following Johann’s orders. At one point, they hauled Blaine out of bed entirely and he found himself slung over Daniel’s shoulder while the maid quickly stripped his blood-blotched, sweat-soaked sheets and replaced them with a fresh set. They weren’t as threadbare as the ones Blaine usually got.

Tomorrow he’d be sleeping on whatever square of ground Kurt and the other barbarians gave him, Blaine realized as they tipped him back onto his stomach on the mattress. He should appreciate his last night on sheets for a while.

He couldn’t, though, he couldn’t think about what tomorrow morning meant, try to understand what his father wanted from him, try to predict what Kurt might. There were too many rules and not enough information to piece them together, treaties and whores and a side table covered in things. Blaine could be bought and sold just so easily, and that part made enough sense, but what he was meant to do...

He had this, tonight. He could lay still under Johann’s hands and let the magic go to work, let the blame wash over him, understand his place in the world. Tomorrow, when his fever had broken...he’d worry about tomorrow then.




Blaine didn’t come down to the parade ground once, the day before the envoy was supposed to leave. Kurt wasn’t feeling anxious about that. Of course not.

He did an excellent job all day of being not at all anxious, in fact, and anything Santana said to the contrary was pure invention. He was helpful. They were leaving in the morning, after all, and that meant everything needed to be packed, and repacked, and reorganized to accommodate anything they might have bought while staying in the city, and repacked again. And then, as the person who’d spent more time out in the market than anyone else in camp, of course it was on him to volunteer to run last-minute errands for the rest of the envoy, as soon as they’d finished unpacking enough that they could actually make lunch.

Kurt would have felt so much better if he’d been able to make the proposal himself. Had Blaine been excited? Nervous? Maybe he was having second thoughts. The palace messenger said Blaine had agreed, but it wasn’t binding, not really. If Blaine had just agreed to meet Kurt in a traditional challenge for his hand in marriage, maybe a sword fight that everybody knew Blaine would lose, then that would be different. Then Kurt would know. Now...well all right, his stomach and his hands were all a-flutter.

Maybe he’d pushed too hard. Maybe the king of Ander had changed his mind about letting Blaine go at all. Maybe Blaine was just as nervous and excited as Kurt was, and he was worrying about being romantic enough. Kurt forced himself to believe it was the last one, and made sure to buy out an entire merchant’s supply of Salongan herbs and spices, just in case Blaine got homesick.

He spent more time at the market than he should have, and bought more than he probably should have, and when he finally got back to the castle gates, the evening guards glared at him because the day guards hadn’t thought to stop him on his way out like they should have. His father and Tina and half the camp swore Blaine hadn’t come by while he was gone, which left Kurt alone to fret and worry and repack everything yet one more time, to fit all his new purchases safely in.

“You know, the night before I met your mother’s challenge, I don’t think I slept a wink,” his dad said. Kurt glanced up from the empty pack and the piles of glass vials and thick woolen socks laid out in front of him. “Kept wondering what if she didn’t mean it, or if she was gonna decide to throw the whole thing and take it back.”

“Blaine’s not going to take it back,” Kurt said. He wouldn’t. Burt nodded.

“I know,” he said. “Any guy special enough for you to be this gone over him isn’t the kind of guy who backs out on a marriage proposal. The question is, do you know that?”

Kurt pressed his lips together and glanced away. “Of course I do,” he said.

“Good,” said his dad. “So that means we can put the torches out at a decent hour and you’ll at least pretend like you’re grabbing a couple of hours of sleep before we head off on a four-day ride tomorrow?”

“Of course,” Kurt said stiffly. “I was just making sure our medicine store didn’t need to be replenished, and nothing would break while we’re moving.

“All right,” said Burt. “Give it another hour, then get some rest.” Kurt rolled his eyes.

“Not ten years old any more.”

“Nope, but I’m still your old chief and your old man,” Burt said. “I want you rested in the morning. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and I can’t have you too distracted when we get back to the tribes to help me get this past all the other warriors.”

“Okay, dad,” Kurt promised. He looked up to meet his father’s eyes, and smiled a little to soften it. “I promise.”

It was more like an hour and a half before Kurt finally tied off the last bag in what would have to settle for contentment. They’d need to pack the tents and the bedrolls tomorrow anyway, so it wasn’t as though every last thing needed to be ready to go at the crack of dawn. And, well, every person in this envoy had been gathering up their own belongings, tents, and breakables to move every couple of mornings for years, if not their entire lives. It would be fine.

Kurt’s sleeping pad was stuffed with soft grasses and raw wool, thin enough to roll tiny and lash to the back of his saddle, thick enough to be completely comfortable. He’d been sleeping on this pad, or another just like it, for his entire life.

It was a narrow thing, just wide enough for Kurt to stretch out on. There was a little alcove in his tent where he set it up, nobody else’s sleeping mat to worry about, nobody else’s breathing to listen to in the middle of the night. He’d lost the last sleeping mat in a flash flood, lost the one before that trying to have sex on it, since it seemed softer and a bit better-insulated than hard-packed dirt, but they really weren’t designed for two people, or that much movement. Sex was really a bare ground sort of thing. No need to worry too much about mess, or fluids or what-have-you.

Most of the married couples Kurt knew drew their sleeping mats up with just the head of them parallel to each other, so their feet faced opposite directions, just in case of any sort of attack during the night, or they could turn to face each other and be mere finger’s widths apart. Tina and Mike kept theirs snugged up side by side, and shared one set of blankets and furs between them. Kurt had asked Tina once; she said that outlanders used their big, wide wood-framed mattresses for everything, sleep and sex and physical contact through the whole long night. She said Mike had asked to try it that way and it was nicer than she’d ever expected.

It seemed odd, letting another person so close while you were asleep and vulnerable, the sort of thing Kurt hadn’t done since he was a small child falling asleep in his mother’s arms. Maybe Blaine would want it that way. Maybe he’d want to curl in under Kurt’s arm, to fall asleep so close you must wake instantly if the other person was ever alarmed. Or maybe he would be as used to sleeping alone as Kurt was.

After the wedding, Kurt supposed he’d find out.





In the end, Blaine didn’t pack much.

He woke around dawn and nearly yelped as he tried to move, caught out by the stiffness in every muscle. It took a few moments longer to realize that, stiff or no, his back didn’t hurt any more. He stretched a hand around, cautiously, to feel along the unbroken skin; there might be a few new scar ridges, he couldn’t quite be sure, but it certainly wasn’t about to kill him any more.

Johann, or the serving girl, had left a tub full of water sitting in the middle of the room, and it looked clean enough to bathe with. Blaine sponged himself down with an old shirt he wouldn’t be needing any more, and carefully catalogued his state. His knees were bruised, and his back was still just a little tender when he swiped the cloth across it, but he’d had far worse before, when no healer came to see him.

His face, Blaine realized, when he reached for the mirror and the hair unguent, was completely untouched. He wouldn’t need even a dab of paint today, or a high collar or scarf to hide marks on his neck. He remembered his father’s fingers curling shut without landing a blow, and swallowed.

Very well; he had a job to do. He needed to pack. He had to bring all of Kurt’s gifts, of course, and those would more than fill up a sack of their own, and he needed some way to keep the little crystal dragon safe. He ended up wrapping it as securely as he could in a shirt, a dark, heavy one that would survive the cold and never showed blood.

Besides that, Blaine packed one more shirt and a spare pair of pants, a couple of underthings, and a heavy leather hunting jacket. He hesitated with his hand hovering over his nightshirt for a long moment, then pulled back. He wouldn’t need it where he was going. Instead, he found his hair unguent and tucked it securely down at the bottom of his bag. It wouldn’t last long, but Kurt obviously liked Blaine with his hair properly tamed, so he could at least start out right.

Lastly, he knelt down on the floor to fish his little bag of gold out from underneath the wardrobe. There weren’t very many places to hide it on his person, but he split the coins up as best as he could: a couple tucked into each boot, a few more secreted through the little hole he’d worried into the lining of his jacket, most of the rest stashed inside his bag. Just in case.





Kurt was waiting in the same stone hallway where Blaine had met him every morning for a week, before life somehow got even more complicated than it already was. Blaine spotted him first; he saw the moment that Kurt noticed him, and bounced forward on his toes, breaking into one of the biggest grins Blaine had ever seen him wear. It made the pit of Blaine’s stomach churn and it made him answer with a smile of his own, a little hesitant but as sincere as he could make it, before he even had to force himself it.

“You’re here,” Kurt said, with an extra little bounce that should seem so out of place on a man in that much studded leather. Kurt didn’t make sense. Blaine’s entire life was being put into his hands now, and Blaine had better figure him out sooner rather than later.

“Of course I am,” Blaine said, and held himself steady from drawing back as Kurt threw himself forward, wrapping his arms around Blaine’s shoulders tightly. Blaine’s own arms were full of his packs, so he couldn’t hug back; Kurt wouldn’t think it unusual that he didn’t.

Kurt drew back slowly, and met Blaine’s eyes for a moment, their faces just fingerwidths apart. Blaine’s breath caught in his throat. Kurt was going to kiss him, he thought. Kurt’s eyes were storm-sky blue.

There was a rustle of footsteps on stone, somebody else making their way down a reasonably well-used corridor, and Kurt drew back with a wry smile. “Come on,” he said, already turning away towards the parade ground. “You can ride one of the spare horses, we shuffled all the packs around, and Pavarotti is never going to keep up over a four-day ride. I have to introduce you to everyone. My father is going to love you.”

Kurt chattered on the rest of the way there, and then as he showed Blaine where he could put his belongings, and introduced him to his new horse, a small, determined little mare who Blaine suspected would make sure they kept up with the rest of the envoy whether he contributed to the ride or not. By the time Kurt started introducing him to people, Blaine had gotten some of his old poise back. He chatted with a tall, graceful warrior named Mike for almost five minutes before Mike’s wife called him away for something.

Last time Blaine had been down to the barbarian envoy’s camp, it had been a sea of tents, campfires, picket lines and even dog runs, but through the apparent chaos it was soon clear that every person here knew exactly what they were doing to get the camp up and on the road. Blaine found himself mounted on his little mare and pointed towards the grand north gate of the palace less than an hour after coming into camp, and every man and woman around him ready to ride off, too.

The king didn’t come down to see them off, and Blaine bit the inside of his lip to remind himself that it wasn’t right to be grateful. Cooper did. He exchanged a few words with the barbarian chief that Blaine didn’t hear, and then met Blaine’s eyes across the crowd for a single wave. Blaine raised one hand to salute back.

The sun had risen enough, as they circled around to the east, that it wasn’t quite directly in their eyes, but the horses all set off very nearly into it. The Naebamil River flowed along to their right, wide and slow; Blaine wondered how long they’d be heading upriver.

The market of Westerville, behind so many walls that he couldn’t see it even if he craned around to look over his shoulder, fell away behind him; the place full of bustle and noise and so many strangers he could lose himself, for a little while, was gone now. Around him rang out a different kind of noise: the thunderous clop of at least thirty sets of hooves trotting determinedly over hard-packed ground, and the squeak of leather and the jingle of metal, and the laughter, and the men and women calling out one to the other, telling jokes that got half blown away by the wind before Blaine could hear them and wouldn’t have made sense anyway.

All he could see over his shoulder were the highest towering stone spires of Castle Lima. Blaine turned back to the road ahead, and caught sight of Kurt grinning at him again, and smiled back.