Status Updates From Принцовий гамбіт (Полонений...

“Don’t go,” said Laurent quietly.

“I’m just clearing my head. I already told my escort I wouldn’t need them until morning.” said Damen.

And there was another awful silence, as Damen realized what Laurent was asking him.

“No. I don’t mean— forever—just—“ Laurent broke off. “Three days.”

“Did you think Theomedes died from natural sickness? All those visits from physicians that only made him sicker?”

dude.

“What was it, do you think Orlant found out, that got him skewered on Aimeric’s sword?”

Orlant, thought Damen, and suddenly felt sick.

OK COMEÇOU A FICAR INTERESSANTE ATE ATRASEI MEU ALMOÇO POR ISSO

He was looking at Laurent’s signet ring.
He felt the hair rise all over his body. The last time he had seen this ring, he’d been at an inn at Nesson, and Laurent had given it over to a messenger. Give him this, and tell him that I will wait for him at Ravenel, he’d said.
He said it as it opened up inside him, ‘They are our reinforcements.’

Laurent and his insane planning... 😶

and instead found his way to the Veretian tents and sought out Auguste to find some common ground. Laurent would have been thirteen but in Damen’s mind’s eye he would have found him a little older, sixteen or seventeen, old enough that Damen’s nineteen-year-old self could have begun, with all the exuberance of youth, to court him.

My man is writing AU in his head.. Damen would've loved Tumbler and AO3

‘Sentiment?’ said Laurent.
‘Something like that.’
‘You should give me the other.’ Damen flushed slowly, heat spreading from his chest over his skin, his heartbeats intrusive. He tried to answer in a normal voice.
‘I can’t imagine you’d wear it.’
‘To keep. I wouldn’t wear it,’ said Laurent, ‘though I don’t believe your imagination is having any difficulty with the idea.’

‘He needs me,’ said Damen. ‘I don’t care if you tell the world.’

This one pleaded for you. Spending, perhaps, the last of his fading currency with the Regent. Not realising how little currency he had left.
Whether his beauty would survive adolescence no one would ever know, for Nicaise would not see fifteen now.


Ohhh Nicaise 😭💔

He was not the headstrong prince he had been in Akielos. The man he had been in Akielos would never have served a Veretian master, or fought alongside Veretians for their cause.
He would never have known Laurent for what he was; never have given Laurent his loyalty or held Laurent’s trust for a moment in his hands.
Guerin moved to strike the gold from his left wrist, and he pulled it back.
'No, Leave that one on'

when Laurent saw who was beside him, he smiled, the expression a little shy but completely genuine. Damen, who hadn’t been expecting it, felt the single painful beat of his heart. He’d never thought Laurent could look like that at anyone. ‘It’s morning,’ said Laurent. ‘We slept?’
‘We slept,’ said Damen.

Im dying here!!!!

“So you have not tried to find out the perpetrator of the original attack?” said Laurent.

Lord Touars said, “If I did find him, I would shake his hand, and send him on his way with my thanks for the killings.”

Laurent tipped his head back on the chair and looked at Touars’ son Thevenin.

“Is he that lenient with you?”

MY GIRL IS A CUNT BUT ONLY CAUSE SHES SERVING

“[Jokaste] would have chosen him even if you’d had royal blood in your veins, even if you’d had the same blood as Kastor. You don’t understand the way a mind like that thinks. I do. If I were Jokaste and a kingmaker, I would’ve chosen Kastor over you too.”

…

“Because a kingmaker would always choose the weaker man. The weaker the man, the easier he is to control.”

“He had seen Laurent open his mouth and strip paint from the walls. He had seen Laurent lift a knife and in cold blood slit open a man’s throat without so much as a flicker of his golden lashes. Laurent didn’t need to be protected from anything.”