Osmund didn’t meet Cemil again for an entire week.

Not that he’d been counting. (He had. Quite accidentally! What else was there to do in his own mind?)

During the day, he tended the horses. Anaya—the massive, stunning black mare—was every bit the troublemaker that she’d seemed on that first day. She bit and stomped whenever Osmund approached, whipping her neck and tail around like they were deadly weapons. Osmund was almost glad not to see Cemil. He didn’t have the heart to tell him he’d been wrong about his connection with the horse. But then, maybe this job had been charity after all.

The thought soured his stomach. No. Selfishly, he didn’t want charity alone to be the reason he was here.

He knew it was unwise to read too much into his interactions with the Meskato prince. Cemil had seen him in his sorry state, and with princely benevolence he’d taken up responsibility for helping him. He’d fed him, clothed him, and given him work. His behavior was faultless. Osmund was the one who’d decided to want more. To speak with him, or even just to admire his beauty from afar.

At least he didn’t have to watch him kill again.

Presently, Osmund brought Anaya out of her stable and fastened her reins to a post. (The post’s integrity was questionable next to such a giant, but it was all he had to work with.) Just in case she got ideas about bolting again, he spent a few minutes calming her, patting her broad sides until she seemed almost, nearly pleased. Then he headed in with a shovel and a wheelbarrow to muck out her pen.

He didn’t mind getting his hands—and boots, and pants, and, well, everything—dirty. He always had a clean set of clothes available when the work was done, and he stopped being shy about making use of the baths. It was a mental escape, too, doing honest labor under the sun. Now that he was rested and well-fed, any task seemed simple. Like Nuray had said, he was already putting on muscle.

He wished she would speak to him.

It had been a very solitary week, and he’d felt every minute. Osmund couldn’t understand it. If there was one thing he was used to, it was keeping to himself. And besides, he liked it here. He liked waking up in the morning knowing there was something people trusted him to do. He liked the simple companionship of eating with the other servants, even if he still couldn’t understand half of their conversations. (Every night, he read the Tolmish-Meskato dictionary like it was a highly-engrossing novel of the smuttiest order.)

So why did he feel this way? So…alone?

It’s been a while, his mind supplied. You’re still pent-up. That’s all it is. But somehow, Osmund didn’t think this was about his dry spell either, although it wasn’t helping matters any.

A bray came from the neighboring pen. Osmund smiled at the merry chestnut horse, Anaya’s only tolerated equine companion. Banu was one of Cemil’s horses, his preferred steed until Anaya came along. If Banu felt sad somehow about being replaced, she didn’t show it. And she loved Osmund. Most horses did.

“Hello, princess,” Osmund sang, reaching into his pocket to offer her a treat. “I’ll clean your home in a minute, my love! Just you wait!”

“Do you sing often to the horses?”

Osmund whipped around. As if he’d never left, there was Cemil, smiling that little smile at him. Osmund went weak in the knees and flushed head to toe.

“Şehzade Cemil,” he greeted dutifully, bowing once, then again, deeper. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t notice you coming.”

Cemil said nothing, turning to look at Anaya, who seemed to be side-eyeing them from her post as if bitter at being (however momentarily) forgotten. Osmund had never known a more peevish creature. “O-of course! You’re here for your horse!” Osmund stammered, understanding. “I’ll saddle her up for you.”

He went to work at once, thankful he’d just given the midnight mare a good brush about an hour before. He was just tightening the cinch when he noticed that Cemil wasn’t alone. There were two other young men standing in the yard with them, arms crossed expectantly, their clothes as fine and distinguished as those of their prince, and Osmund’s knees went weaker still, this time from sheer nervousness.

Cemil’s presence came up behind him. “You look well,” the Meskato prince noted, sounding appreciative. Osmund was suddenly immensely grateful that he’d managed to put on some weight in the last week; maybe he looked less like a scarecrow. “Life here seems to suit you.”

“It does,” Osmund agreed, and caught himself tucking a stray hair behind his ear as if he were a noble’s bashful daughter. He rushed for something else to say. “This place has g-good company.”

Cemil looked from Osmund, to Anaya and Banu and the other horses in their stables behind them. He clearly thought this was the company Osmund meant. “You really do have a gift with them,” he said, still smiling. Then, “Do you ride?”

“I love to ride,” Osmund replied breathlessly. He finished with Anaya and stood aside, unsure whether to help Cemil into the saddle, but the prince mounted the gigantic horse in one flawless movement.

“Take Banu out as you wish, whenever your duties are done,” Cemil bade him, from so high up he might’ve been a king—or an emperor. “Help Kemal and Ayaz with their horses. We go hunting.”

The other two men (nobles? Friends of Cemil’s?) didn’t even glance at him as he worked. They spoke merrily amongst themselves and to their prince, then climbed right atop their horses the instant he’d finished saddling them. Osmund felt lonelier than ever as he watched the three of them disappear down the road. Hunting no less, a pastime Osmund had never enjoyed. It was the firmest reminder yet that his fantasies about the other man were just that. Even if I told him I were a prince of Valcrest, Osmund thought miserably, what would it matter? It might even make Cemil think less of him, or revile him. What kind of prince behaved like a pauper?

Yet, he couldn’t help but be a little happy when he returned to Banu and saw her pacing excitedly in her pen, as if she’d overheard what her old master had said. “That’s right, Banu,” Osmund murmured in a little sing-song voice. “You and me will get to ride together!”

She brayed again, seemingly overjoyed at this news, and Osmund gave her another little treat, just because.

Over the weeks that followed, Osmund resolved to take steps against his loneliness.

At first, he considered speaking up during dinner, perhaps trying out his new vocabulary with the other servants. They’d mostly left him alone until now. He hesitated to say that they ignored him, because they passed him his portion at mealtimes and even commented from time to time (with a touch of pride) at how healthy-looking he had become in their care. But their trust would have to be earned. And to do that, he had to speak their language.

But days (and dinners) passed, one after another, and Osmund, regardless of his budding understanding of the conversations around him, found he simply had nothing to say.

No one expected him to talk. He was an observer, a curiosity. To insert himself into the rhythm of the other servants was an intimidating prospect. It was easier to keep his head down and eat.

Over an entire month passed this way, in which he was almost entirely silent apart from the short, polite exchanges he had with Cemil in Tolmish. Osmund was ready to scream.

Thankfully, he knew of a fun social activity which didn’t require any speaking at all, and it was definitely one with which he had more fruitful experience. So what if it was only a little temporary reprieve to this ache he felt inside?

He was going to end his dry spell, tonight!

The bathhouse was relatively empty this time of the evening, with most of the civil servants having already headed for home.

Osmund had become a frequent visitor here, stopping in at various hours of the day to feel a bit less…horsey, but to his mixed relief and disappointment, he’d never seen Cemil among the other bathers. He had to conclude that the Meskato prince bathed very early in the morning or very late at night. He certainly wasn’t the sort of man to forsake basic hygiene—that much was clear looking at him.

Really, it was a good thing. He didn’t need Cemil knowing about his sexual escapades, and the men involved in them.

Osmund grabbed his tiny towel and cast a furtive eye around the steam room. Those that were here sat mostly in small groups, engaged in easy conversation, but then he locked eyes with a man sitting alone in an empty corner, mostly out of view. His was a wholly new face, but that was hardly surprising—it just meant he didn’t work in the servant’s quarters. He was shorter than Osmund, but of a similar build, with bronze skin and copper hair nearly the color of blood. Something about him was bookish and refined; one could imagine him chanting theorems and casting ice blasts or something like that. The man didn’t look away when their gazes met, and so, heart pounding, Osmund approached.

He worried about what to say—maybe it was better to say nothing at all. He was saved from needing to fret about it. Nearly the moment he sat down, the man’s hand ran boldly up his inner thigh. Oh.

Osmund cast another nervous look around the bathhouse. No one was paying them the slightest attention. Narrowly, he resisted squeaking aloud as the man’s hand reached beneath his towel. Who knew that here in a different country, with a different life, it was just as easy to wind up beneath a stranger’s roaming fingers if you approached it with the right enterprising spirit?

After only a few moments, he couldn’t withstand it. This begged for someplace private, where he wouldn’t have to worry about his volume after so many lonely months. “Let’s go,” he murmured in Meskato in the stranger’s ear, and before long, they had left the bathhouse behind.