Lilla’s voice was low, almost as if he didn’t want his husband to hear him, and for one bitter instant Tayan was tempted to pretend he hadn’t. The words he’d said – the turns of phrase he’d used – echoed in his head and spirit and filled him with fear. He held out his hand behind him without looking and Lilla took it, and he let the taller man draw him gently around and into his arms again. Into that warmth that smelt of home and hope.

‘You really sacrificed to Malel?’ he whispered.

‘We did. She told us to stop the song. I … don’t know what’s going to happen now, or why she would make us do something that deliberately draws the enemy to us early, but I trust her. It’s done – or at least it’s begun – and now we know they’re coming. Thanks to you.’

Tayan sighed and nestled closer, rubbing his cheek against Lilla’s salt-cotton. ‘But no extra warriors, no element of surprise. And a two-week journey on to the Sky City to tell them. By the time I get there, the Melody will be here and you’ll be outnumbered.’

Lilla’s breath caught and Tayan slid his hand beneath the salt-cotton and the shirt to the hot, soft skin of his husband’s back. He wanted to ask him to come home with him, to leave this patch of jungle where he would fight and bleed and kill and maybe die. He didn’t. Tayan’s job was to bolster Lilla’s courage, to be his spine when his own lacked, his conviction in the night when Lilla’s faltered. His home and hope in reply. He would never put down that burden. Lilla would never find him wanting.

‘But then, if you hadn’t decided to press forward, we wouldn’t have met here and now,’ he added and the edge of his mouth turned up as his husband pulled him even tighter. ‘I’d spend the next week stumbling through the jungle falling into ditches and getting bitten by snakes and still believing I was so very clever that I’d fooled an entire empire.’

Lilla kissed his hair, his temple, his cheekbone. ‘You are very clever,’ he whispered fiercely. ‘And you are a fool.’

Tayan pinched him. ‘Rude,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve come all this way only to be insulted. Ancestors preserve me, but sometimes I do not know why I love you.’

Lilla smiled and pressed his lips to the corner of Tayan’s mouth. ‘Yes, you do,’ he whispered.

‘Yeah. I do.’

They stood quietly, wrapped in each other, remembering the feel and shape and smell of how they were together, but then Lilla suddenly stepped back. ‘How did you know where to find me?’ he asked. ‘You were running, as if you knew I was here.’