Tethered by Meljean Brook

Archimedes, however, Yasmeen thought that Bilson hadn’t perfectly understood what had happened. He might have invited Archimedes into their group, but Archimedes had likely joined for reasons of his own—probably because they’d finally begun talking about something that mattered to him.
    Hell, he and Bilson had probably been partnered for so long simply because Bilson had been engaged in something that Archimedes also wanted to do.
    Bilson sipped his wine, gaze unfocused as if lost to memory. “The brotherhood was stronger for having him. We never had quite the same success at home again—perhaps because the Liberé war was such a distraction.”
    “But you were all quite the rebels,” Yasmeen said, sending a teasing look to Archimedes. He answered it with a flutter of his lashes.
    “No. Not truly. We wrote the handbills anonymously, andwe all walked the straight and narrow in public.” Bilson’s gaze sharpened on Archimedes. “Except
he
didn’t. Not after our second year.”
    Oh, she truly did enjoy having this man here. Yasmeen leaned forward. “What happened?”
    “He came back to university after the summer recess wearing a god-awful green waistcoat.”
    “It was
emerald.
” Archimedes smoothed his hand down the green silk of his current waistcoat, as if protecting it from similar abuse. “It matched my eyes.”
    “And it got him tossed out of the first lecture.”
    “The bright color was disruptive to learning,” Archimedes said when Yasmeen looked to him for an explanation. “But I wasn’t tossed out until I asked whether I should remove my eyes for being disruptive, too.”
    “And he became worse after that,” Bilson said. “The waistcoats, the trousers—the
flirting.
God.”
    Worse? To Yasmeen, that sounded like he got better. “How long before you were expelled?”
    “Three weeks,” Archimedes said. “But I stayed on. There was still studying to be done.”
    “He’d won favor with some of the lecturers, in truth. They kept him on to perform their research.”
    “And because they thought my eyes were distracting, too.”
    Bilson shook his head. “That’s what many of the other lads thought—that all the dandy clothing meant he was visiting the market around the corner.”
    “With other men?” Yasmeen hadn’t heard it phrased that way before, but it wasn’t difficult to guess the meaning. Frowning, she looked to Archimedes. “How did you survive that?”
    She only realized how much anger and worry had sharpened her voice when his fingers covered hers in a reassuring touch. “By learning to fight,” he said. “I took a few beatings, but eventually made certain they didn’t bother me anymore.”
    That probably wouldn’t have stopped them—perhaps something else had. “And there were women?”
    “A few.”
    “A few more than that,” Bilson countered. “All of the sudden he’s this charming bastard, always laughing and singinglike a fool—nothing like the buckled-up inknose I’d known. At first I thought it was an act, some ruse to ease his way into their beds. But it wasn’t. The laughing fool had been under those buckles all that time, I think, and he’d finally let it out.”
    “That’s a bit what it felt like,” Archimedes said.
    Bilson nodded, his gaze speculative. “I always wondered what happened to you that summer. Was it a girl?”
    “No.” His smile held little humor. “A man.”
    And probably not in the way he suggested, though Yasmeen would have preferred that to the likely truth. Archimedes had reasons for wanting to kill his father. No doubt one of those reasons had been created that summer.
    Bilson accepted that without further question. As Yasmeen refilled his wine, he continued, “At any rate, not long after that I heard about a smuggling job through one of my political acquaintances. I asked the others in the brotherhood if they wanted to join me—though Archimedes was the last one I expected to go. He took to smuggling, though.”
    He’d