The Sea

by A. H. Lee

  His eyes met Roland’s eyes uncertainly. Roland ran a finger over his cheek. “Do you still feel like you need to put away part of yourself to be with me?”

  Sairis straightened. He reached over, picked up his glasses and slid them onto his nose. He turned to look Roland in the eyes. “Roland Malconwy, I am in love with you.”

  Roland actually teared up. He was surprised at himself, embarrassed even. He didn’t know what to do, so he kissed Sairis. When Sairis could breathe again, he said, “I am in love with you against my better judgment, which is what I was trying to say earlier. And I would very much like more than your fingers inside me.”

  Roland laughed. “I think I fell in love with you that first day. I told myself I was crazy, but I only feel more attached every time we’re together. I know you may still break my heart. But it’s yours to break.” He hesitated. “Please don’t do what Hastafel did.”

  Sairis’s face grew still, unreadable.

  “Please don’t tear yourself apart,” said Roland. “You can make better memories. We can make better memories. But please let yourself be...whole.”

  Sairis nodded. Roland thought he might argue or say that what he was doing was better than Hastafel’s sword, or different or safer. But he just whispered, “Alright.”

  Then, to Roland’s surprise, he slid back into the water. He looked up over the rims of his foggy glasses, gripping the edge of the pool, and grinned. “I want to do what you did in the tavern.”

  Oh. Roland allowed his legs to be pushed apart. “Well, I can deny you nothing.”

  He let out a long breath as Sairis lifted his cock. He’d been hard since Sairis crawled into his lap, although his arousal had flagged during their conversation. Now, the slick wetness of Sairis’s mouth made his balls clench. “Gods...”

  Sairis was a novice at intimacy, but he was no fool, and he’d been paying attention when Roland sucked him in the tavern. He got his hands busy, rubbing and caressing, his mouth sucking and licking. He took note of Roland’s gasps of pleasure and sped up with his breathing. Roland had no doubt that with a little practice, Sairis would have him wrapped around his finger.

  Who am I kidding? He already does.

  As the pleasure mounted, he stroked Sairis’s hair, resisted the urge to thrust against his mouth. “Sair,” he moaned. “I’m going to...finish. You might want to...to...”

  Sairis took him as deep as he could, looking up at him over his glasses, his dark eyes intent. Roland let himself go. As the aftershocks washed through him, Sairis leaned up between his legs and kissed him. Roland wrapped his arms around him. “You are a wizard.”

  “That is technically correct.”

  Roland laughed.

  After a moment, Sairis murmured, “Time to go inside? I am reminded that I need to put wards on you.”

  Roland stood up and helped him out of the water. “Will it take long?”

  “No.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No. Well, I don’t think so. I’ve never actually done it to another person.” He caught himself on a spasm of laughter. “We are still talking about wards, right?”

  Roland draped an arm over his shoulders and put his mouth against Sairis’s ear. “It takes as long as we’ve got. It doesn’t hurt. Yes, I have done it to another person.”

  Sairis darted through the door. “Well, then I believe I can do some rather fast spell work.”

  Chapter 3. Claimed

  Climbing out of the hot spring, Sairis wasn’t sure he’d ever felt so relaxed in his life. Or so clean. The contrast of hot water and chilly air had a curiously invigorating effect. Sairis returned to the suite feeling buoyant, not at all concerned with his nakedness. They toweled off beside the door and then Roland suggested they sit beside the fire to finish drying.

  Sairis let himself watch as Roland moved around the room. The thick muscles of his thighs and backside were fascinating. No wonder he doesn’t have any trouble staying on a horse up and down all those hills.

  The trace of curls in Roland’s blond locks had become more pronounced in the water and steam. Sairis wanted to wrap one around a finger. Do you ask princes for tokens of their hair? Probably not. That’s probably princesses.

  Idiot, whispered a voice in his head. No sane person gives a necromancer locks of his hair.

  And yet I’m about to ask him for something worse.

  With regret, Sairis nipped out of the room to get a few supplies. He returned to find the lamps extinguished and Roland sitting on the rug before the fire. His smile of welcome was as warm as the flames. “Do you need more light than this? I think it’s pleasant, but if you need more light—”

  “It’s perfect,” said Sairis. You’re perfect. He sat down beside Roland, enjoying the warmth on his damp and cooling skin.

  Roland glanced at the cup of water Sairis had brought with him. “Is that from the springs?”

  Sairis nodded.

  “Does it have magical properties? The locals swear it will make us live for two hundred years and never get a cold. Also, we’ll be terribly virile.”

  Sairis smirked. “So it’s working?” He put a pinch of salt in the water. Then he pricked his finger with a sewing needle he’d found in a bedroom drawer and watched a few drops fall into the liquid. After a moment, he said, “They’re not completely wrong. The water’s got a bit of an aura. I doubt regular people can access the magic, though. I’m not sure even I can. The Shattered Sea is full of magic and nobody can figure out how to get at it.”

  He raised the cup, swirling it critically. “It might enhance these wards, though.” He murmured a spell, easily channeled through his own blood. It produced a gratifying glow inside the cup. Sairis set it carefully on the floor between them. “I would like some of yours, too. It’s not essential, but—”

  Roland held out his hand over the cup. Sairis glanced up at him, suddenly reminded of the punch bowl. “I suppose I should advise you that, if letting a necromancer touch you is unwise, giving me your blood is—”

  “Sair...” Roland’s hand turned over and reached for Sairis’s free one. “I trust you.”

  Sairis gave him a sad smile. “I wonder if you realize how much.”

  Roland’s thumb stroked over his wrist. “I remember the River. You could have told me to do anything. I couldn’t think for myself.”

  Sairis could see that Roland found this unsettling in retrospect. Good. If you’re going to pal around with magicians, you should understand what it means to be bound.

  Sairis cradled Roland’s hand in both of his, the tip of the needle against an index finger. He looked into Roland’s eyes. “You were kind to me when you thought I was just a shy stranger in a tavern. You pulled a sword out of me and saved my life, even after you knew what I was. You kept our appointment when you thought I was dead, just to say goodbye.”

  Roland’s eyes misted.

  Sairis squeezed his hand. “I transferred Marsden’s spell to you, and you still came to find me. You handed me my glasses when I was spitting insults at you. You almost let me kill you behind the waterfall.”

  “Sair—”

  Sairis talked over him. “I have never in my life been so lucky in a friend. Don’t think I don’t know it. I would not hurt you for the world, Roland, but you need to understand that giving me your blood is dangerous. You can say no. I can put wards on you with only my blood, but they won’t be as powerful.”

  Roland leaned across the cup and kissed him. “Have all the blood you want.”

  Sairis sighed. He pricked Roland’s finger and two fat red droplets splashed into the cup. “Your name,” said Sairis. “It’ll work best if you say it.”

  “Roland Bertram Malconwy,” said Roland.

  Sairis hesitated. Then, for the first time in more than a decade, he muttered aloud, “Simon Harris.” He activated the spell with words that mundane ears could not parse. Instead, ordinary people interpreted rune-speech as music, often bells, or sometimes visually as smoke or steam.

>   Roland cocked his head, listening to the strange sounds Sairis was making. The water in the cup brightened even more. “I wish I had a bone pen,” muttered Sairis. “Oh, well. Sloppy still gets the job done. Lie down on your back.”

  Roland stretched out on the rug before the fire. Sairis dotted water onto the crown of his head, between his blue-gray eyes, on the shadowed hollow of his throat. He put a dab over Roland’s heart, another at the base of his breastbone, then over his stomach. Finally, he put a dab of glowing water on his cock. It was half hard, and Sairis couldn’t resist giving it an extra stroke.

  Roland let out his breath in a laugh. “Is that part of the spell?”

  “No, I just wanted to.” Sairis began the more focused task of writing the runes. It didn’t really matter where he wrote them. Roland provided plenty of canvas.

  After a while, Roland said, “Do you only have two names?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. My parents had a dozen children. I’m sure they were hard-pressed to come up with one name for all of us, let alone two.” He glanced at Roland quizzically. “I’m surprised you don’t have four.”

  Roland laughed. “I believe my great-grandfather did.” He shifted under Sairis’s hands, the muscles of his stomach creating distracting ridges. “What are you...doing?”

  “Tapping into your innate magical energy. Can you feel it?”

  “But...I’m not magical.”

  Sairis laughed. Oh, but you are. “We all soak up magic from the Shattered Sea. Mundanes can’t use it, but they’ve still got it. That’s how demons feed. It’s why human sacrifices work. It’s tied to your ghost...soul...life force, whatever you want to call it. Or some people say it is your life force. All very academic.”

  Roland thought about that. “And these runes protect me from demons?”

  Sairis nodded. “From magical attack.”

  “It feels odd.”

  “Good odd?”

  “I think that’s obvious.”

  Sairis snickered. “Magical transference can have a...stimulating effect.”

  “Magicians live more interesting lives than I thought.”

  “Without a doubt.”

  Roland’s cock was hard against his stomach. His nipples had gone a deeper shade of pink. Sairis had a brief fantasy of straddling his hips in the firelight. Focus. To distract himself, he asked, “Did your father know about you?”

  Roland frowned. “You mean that I prefer men?”

  Sairis nodded, now writing across his chest.

  “I think so. We never talked about it. And I knew I had to be discreet. But I think he knew.”

  After a moment, Sairis muttered grudgingly. “I suppose he wasn’t all bad.”

  Roland smiled. He reached up to stroke Sairis’s back. Sairis realized that he was, himself, not immune to the side effects of magical transference. Godsdamn it. Focus.

  Roland was clearly still thinking about Sairis’s question. “I’d be lying if I said he approved, but I don’t believe he thought he could change me, either. He was a little...disappointed, I think. I suppose that’s why I worked so hard at my training, and why I was so keen to go to the border as soon as Uncle Jessup thought I was old enough. I didn’t want Father to think he had a soft son, even if I did kiss boys.”

  Sairis mentally retracted his word of charity for Arnoldo Malconwy.

  Roland laughed. “And yet for all my training, I never could be hard in quite the same way as Father and Daphne. Everyone says I take after Mother. She died when I was five in a riding accident. I’ve often thought I would have felt less alone if she’d lived.”

  Sairis looked at him curiously. “Were you raised by nannies, then?”

  Roland smiled. “I was raised by Daphne! Right after Mother died, I started wetting the bed. My nurse thought she could beat it out of me, and Father didn’t stop her. He wanted a tough son. Daphne stopped her. She challenged my nurse to a duel.”

  Sairis gave a bark of laughter.

  “That was how the nurse responded, too,” said Roland. “Daphne was seven years old. But she got the switch away from my nurse. There was a scuffle, and Daphne beat her black and blue. The nurse took her complaint to Father, and Daphne steeled herself for whatever was coming. Everyone was surprised when he sacked the nurse.”

  Sairis smiled.

  “My father wasn’t the sort of man who told you what you needed to do to impress him,” continued Roland. “He just waited for you to do it. Daphne did. A lot more often than I managed to. I doubt Father ever expected to love a daughter as much as he loved her. Even before I was born, I think she’d already convinced him that the laws of succession needed to change. She’d already done the hard work for me, and I didn’t even know it. Father didn’t need me to be a king. So I suppose it wasn’t such a blow that I was an invert.”

  Sairis spoke at last. “Daphne is a skillful leader, but only a madman could find you a disappointment, Roland. You are the perfect knight!”

  Roland smiled. “The perfect knight probably would not chase a necromancer across half the kingdom to return his glasses, ignoring his queen’s wishes in the process.”

  “Did Daphne tell you not to come?”

  “I didn’t give her a chance. She was displeased after what happened to me with Marsden’s spell, but she’ll come around when I explain.”

  Sairis swallowed. Anxiety crept in again.

  “Daphne protected me from Father,” murmured Roland, “and she’s still protecting me. There are so many people who believe I should rule, Sairis. They talk about what a perfect knight I am, and the weakness of women. All Daph would have to say is, ‘My brother is an invert. He’s not fit to rule.’”

  Sairis’s wet finger traced runes across Roland’s shoulders. He could feel the tension there.

  “Finding proof would be child’s play for her,” continued Roland. “She knows me too well. Her life would be so much easier if I were permanently disgraced. But she doesn’t do it. She has never even threatened, not even when we argue.”

  “You are lucky in your sister,” admitted Sairis.

  “I’m lucky in a lot of ways.” Roland shivered and Sairis could sense the shift in his attention, returning fully to the moment. “Gods, Sair, that...tickles.”

  Sairis had some idea of what Roland was feeling. I never take magic from other people, he realized. Not living ones. “Almost done.”

  Under his hands, Roland’s chest gave a hitch. Sairis’s cock bumped Roland’s thigh and he spoke the final rune in a hiss. Both of their bodies lit with lines of green light. The runes he’d traced onto Roland knit themselves together, bled into the chakra points he’d marked, and then spread outward over Roland’s body, crawling across his skin like living things.

  Roland’s eyes opened wide as he stared up at Sairis, covered in the same spiderweb of runes. Sairis braced himself as the magic leapt between them. He felt Roland’s ghost tug gently against his own—a fish on the end of a line, something he could bind or shield. The wards blazed for an instant. Then they began to fade.

  “Done,” whispered Sairis.

  Roland stared up at him. He started to say something. Then Sairis bent over and kissed him. “Take me to bed,” he whispered.

  Roland was off the rug in a heartbeat. Sairis laughed as Roland first pulled him to his feet and then slid an arm under his knees to lift him. Roland carried him, still laughing, into the bedroom. “I didn’t mean literally!”

  “Would you like me to put you down?”

  “Only if you plan to climb on top of me.”

  Roland dropped him onto the soft mattress and reached for the dish of oil beside the bed. “We take this slow. I mean it. You’ve got to ride tomorrow.”

  They took it slow.

  Sairis had never really thought about what it might be like to kiss in a comfortable bed, to feel his lover’s weight bearing him down into the mattress, to feel the slide of their cocks together with oil. He’d never thought much beyond an awkward kiss in a tavern and a quick f
umble in the dark. Now, he found that he liked this long, slow build in lamplight. He liked seeing the planes of Roland’s body moving above him. He liked the soft mattress, the clean sheets, the privacy, the feeling that they had all the time in the world.

  But we don’t. This may never come again.

  Don’t think about that.

  Roland’s mouth left hot, wet tracks over Sairis’s throat, down his belly and chest, playfully licking at his cock, but never to climax. Roland’s oiled fingers were patient and eventually more than fingers. By the time Roland pushed a pillow under Sairis’s hips and settled between his legs, Sairis was panting with pleasure and frustration, pushing up against him. “Please, Roland. Please, please...”

  The sensation of penetration was overwhelming. Roland stopped on the first long slide and looked Sairis in the face. “You put your name on me, didn’t you?”

  Sairis spoke unsteadily. “Yes.”

  “Simon.”

  Sairis shut his eyes.

  Roland kissed the hollow of his throat. “You claimed me.”

  Sairis spoke without thinking. “It feels...the other way...around.” Tied across your saddle, Roland.

  Roland moved again, and Sairis thought he would climax. A sweet tremor washed through him. His legs quivered around Roland’s waist. “I don’t want you to regret this,” whispered Roland. “No matter what you decide to do later, no matter what happens, I want you to know that you are beautiful and lovable and—”

  “For gods’ sakes, Roland, just fuck me.”

  Roland sped up. Sairis threw his head back and cried out. The pleasure built and built until Sairis thought he couldn’t stand it anymore. Roland was going to fuck him right across the River, and he couldn’t think of a better way to go. He tried to get a hand between them and Roland pinned it over his head. Sairis caught his breath on a sob. The muscles of Roland’s torso were hard as steel under his shaking thighs.

  “Sair...” panted Roland. His rhythm faltered and he let go of Sairis’s wrist.

  Sairis caught him around the neck and spoke in his ear. “Want you inside me,” he breathed.