Does It Matter?

Chapter 18

It was raining outside, but Bug was warm and relaxed, his back pressed against a bare chest and an arm wrapped securely around him. The room was dark, but light from under the door revealed its small dimensions.

The room smelled of sex and Bug could feel the ache of it in his body, but there was no pain. Just a satisfying exhaustion.

He started to roll over and felt rough cord shift against his neck, a pendant brush his chest.

"Buagh?" a sleepy voice inquired, and then Bug was awake.

Bug wasn't warm, wrapped safely in a lover's arms. He was cold, curled up on a blanket on the floor of a closet, covered in shallow, stinging cuts. He kept his eyes shut and let the heartache wash over him.

This single, persistent vision had been stalking his dreams since he was a child, but lately it had been unrelenting. He couldn't go to sleep without ending up back in that man's arms. He hated it.

He knew it was more than a dream. He had first started seeing it when he was six years old and he had first discovered his ability to see into the future. At that age, he hadn't known enough about sex to conjure up such a scenario.

But it also wasn't something that could ever come to be. Bug knew that.

There was no single, guaranteed future. There were infinite possibilities, constantly being narrowed by the decisions people made. If the scene that kept playing out in his dreams had ever been a possibility, the chances that he was still on a path that could lead him to that one very particular future were infinitesimally small.

Besides, in the dream he'd recently been on the receptive end of sex and he hadn't been in any pain. He was quite sure his body wasn't capable of that at this point.

And the man had called him Baugh. That hadn't meant anything to him when he was six — it had just been his name — but it had been so long since anybody had pronounced his name correctly that even he introduced himself as Bug on the rare occasion anyone asked for his name. He simply was Bug now.

It wasn't some beautiful magic guiding him to his destiny. It was just an accident, some vision of what might have been that had become stuck and hung around to torment him.

#

The two days of travel it took to reach Givanon were a miserable affair. There was nothing Brayan could offer Dara that he would eat without Brayan irritating him until he complied and if he had any other wants or needs he refused to give voice to them.

Maric was silent, for the most part. He ate, but only because it meant Brayan would leave him alone. He asked after Dara to confirm that he had eaten, but he never spoke to him directly.

Arriving in Givanon came as somewhat of a relief. Certainly this would come with its own challenges, and Maric was in no mood for diplomacy, but overall Brayan thought having something else to focus on would do them all good.

Givanon had a single leader, Lord Nolen, who was a direct descendant of the original royal line who had run the city back when it was a kingdom. While he still technically served under King Rowan, the fact that he ruled by birthright meant he couldn't simply be replaced. Not without the local populace becoming disgruntled.

That meant that Brayan wouldn't be drawing his sword on the man unless for some bizarre reason he had cause to use it. Givanon was one of the larger cities in the kingdom, and it was best to keep good blood with them.

There was a whole crowd of people gathered to greet them. Brayan gave Garrod a nod to let him know he was in charge of organising the men while they stabled the horses and gathered their gear and followed Maric over to greet Lord Nolen.