by Lisa Henry
Min set a slow pace, but it was inexorable. They both wanted this, they both demanded this from a world that was unfair, and there was no way either of them was going to waste the only opportunity they had to be selfish in this way and be together for as long as the night lasted.
They didn’t speak, but Kaz curled his fingers through Min’s, and whenever Min raised his head to look at him, he found that Kaz was looking back. This, Min thought, was both their first real meeting as well as their slow farewell.
Min kissed him again. Kaz’s mouth was hot and wet, and he shivered as Min licked inside it. Kaz made a tiny sound of disappointment as Min leaned away from him and reached for the small vial of oil. Min opened it and drizzled the oil on his fingers.
Kaz watched wide-eyed.
Min leaned down and kissed him again, settling himself close enough beside him to press kisses to his mouth even while his hand dipped down between his legs. Kaz shifted nervously, the muscles in his thighs tightening. His breath was hot against Min’s mouth as Min pressed his index finger gently inside him.
The movement pushed a noise of surprise from him.
“Beautiful,” Min murmured, and Kaz exhaled shakily and relaxed again.
Min twisted his finger, reveling in the tremor that ran through Kaz. He withdrew his finger and then pressed two inside him. He would love to be doing this in the daylight. Love to use each touch, each kiss, to strip away another veil of Kaz’s anxiety. Love to see him shameless.
Min kissed him on the jaw and scissored his fingers.
He was beautiful. So beautiful.
Kaz melted slowly under Min’s attention, his legs falling farther apart and his hips starting to lift with each gentle thrust of Min’s fingers. Min opened him slowly, until he had three fingers inside him and Kaz was moaning softly for more, tossing his head from side to side.
“Please, Min. Please.”
Min shifted, positioning himself in the cradle of Kaz’s thighs. He lifted Kaz’s legs, tilting his hips up. Then he took his aching cock in his hand and moved so the tip of it kissed Kaz’s hole. He pushed in slowly.
Kaz’s face was a symphony of emotion: anxiety, desire, discomfort as Min breached him, and, finally, surprise as Min seated himself fully.
“Breathe through it, sweeting.”
Kaz squirmed. The muscles in his thighs trembled. “Oh!”
“You are beautiful,” Min said, encouraging Kaz into a gentle, undulating rhythm.
Kaz’s cock was hard. Each careful thrust from Min caused it to leak more and more. He arched his back, eager for more, and Min obliged him, thrusting harder, deeper. Kaz dug one hand into the mattress. He curled the other one around his cock, stroking himself in time with Min’s thrusts. His body gleamed with sweat. His kiss-bitten lips shone, and the moonlight glittered in his dark eyes.
Min wanted this moment to last forever, but it was too ephemeral to grasp.
Kaz cried out as he came, his muscles tightening and releasing as he tumbled over the edge of the abyss, and Min, hips stuttering, followed him down and replied to his sated smile with a series of sweet, gentle kisses.
MIN LEFT Kaz dozing and went downstairs for clean water. He was barefoot, wearing only his breeches, and naturally his mother cornered him in the kitchen. She had always impressed on him the need to dress impeccably and to be both witty and gracious. Mairead Decourcey didn’t run a cheap establishment.
She looked him up and down, and Min waited for a rebuke. Instead, she said, “Still hungry?”
“No. I just want some more hot water.”
“I’ll have one of the girls bring some up.” Mairead’s expression softened, and Min didn’t know how to read it. “Do you know what you’re doing, Aramin?”
Min felt his mouth twist into a bitter smile. His mother had always been perceptive. It was why they butted heads so often, probably. He’d never been able to get a lie past her. “Hardly ever.”
Mairead pursed her lips for a moment, as though she was biting back words, and then she nodded. “Go back upstairs. I’ll send the water up.”
Min nodded and escaped.
When he arrived back in the attic room, Kaz turned to him and smiled, and they both pretended the dampness on the boy’s face didn’t mean he had been crying.
DAWN HAD barely softened the darkness when Min and Kaz left the house. Streaks of pale pink and orange lay against the dark blanket of the sky, heralding the approach of the sun. The streets were still dark, though; the faint light hadn’t filtered down to the cobblestones yet. It was market day, so there were already a few people in the streets, walking briskly to keep ahead of the slight chill. Soon the dribs and drabs would become a bustle as more and more people climbed out of bed to hurry to the marketplace. Market days were always busy in Amberwich, surpassed only by the festival days that came around once every few months.
Min and Kaz walked in silence, their fingers loosely linked.
Min had told Kaz he would give him the night, and now he found that he wanted to give him what he could of this morning as well. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
They walked slowly, the streets widening as they passed out of the eastern quarter and by the Shrine of the Sacred Spring, where the leaves on the trees danced in the breeze. The torches around the temple proper were still lit, burning down slowly as the dawn settled over the city. Min thought briefly of Aiode Nettle.
He and Kaz climbed the slope of the hill out of the valley, to where the workshops and storefronts gave way to the garden walls and porticos of the private houses of Amberwich’s richest men. It felt as though no time at all had passed before they were standing in front of the wide portico of the Sabadines’ house.
“I don’t remember it,” Kaz said softly. “I don’t remember it at all.”
Min wondered if that was because it had been years since he’d been here or if he’d been as much a prisoner inside those walls as a child as they intended to make him now.
“I’ll come for you,” he said suddenly. “When Harry’s safe again, I’ll come for you.”
“Don’t. Don’t say that.” Kaz blinked and tears slid down his cheeks. He tightened his grip on Min’s hand. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. You’re cleverer than that.”
Was he? Min wondered. He didn’t feel clever today. He felt as though there was some grotesque creature burrowed into his rib cage, and it was squeezing his heart in its thick, ugly hands. He felt as though he could hardly breathe.
Min had always known life wasn’t fair, but this was the first time since he’d been a child that he wanted to scream and beat his fists about it.
“You gave me all I asked for,” Kaz said softly. He lifted Min’s hand and pressed his mouth to his knuckles. “Thank you. I won’t forget you.”
Like a happy memory, Min thought, or an aching scar?
Kaz dropped Min’s hand and squared his shoulders. He held Min’s gaze and nodded.
Min knocked at the door and, moments later, a narrow-eyed servant opened it.
“What is your business?”
“Aramin Decourcey,” Min said. “I’m here to see Edward Sabadine.”
“The master is still abed.” The servant sniffed. “As any decent gentleman is.”
“Then wake him,” Min said firmly. “And tell him I have brought his grandson home.”
The servant looked from Min to Kaz and back again, jaw dropping, and opened the door wider to let them inside.
Min felt the same creeping sense of dread he had the first time in this house. There was an oppressive weight that seemed to hang over the place, and Min was sure it was all to do with the evil old snake who lived here.
The servant showed them to the room remembered from his first visit, the walls painted in pastoral scenes of livestock and harvests. Min didn’t sit and neither did Kaz. They weren’t waiting long before Min heard footsteps in the hall outside, and a moment later Robert Sabadine appeared in the doorway.
“I thought you were d
ead,” he said.
Min gave a half bow. “Sorry to disappoint.”
Robert shook his head slightly.
“Is Harry here?”
Robert’s jaw tightened, which gave Min the answer he needed before he opened his mouth to confirm it. “Yes.”
“I don’t like you,” Min said, “but I trust that you are a man of your word.”
“He’s unharmed,” Robert said. “He will be safely returned to you and the curse lifted, I swear.”
Coming from Robert, Min actually believed the assurance. He wouldn’t have, though, from the man who now stepped around Robert to enter the room. Edward Sabadine. He was wearing soft shoes and an embroidered purple bed robe, and his white hair was mussed with sleep, but he still managed to exude an air of cold menace.
“Well,” he said, his dark eyes glinting. “You actually did it. Come here, boy, and let me look at you.”
Kaz, his head down, stepped forward.
Edward looked him up and down and then reached up to flick his curls away from a pointed ear. Kaz flinched away, and Edward gripped a handful of hair to restrain him. “Stand still, you mutt!”
Min clenched his fists at his sides, fighting the urge to intervene, and caught Robert’s unreadable gaze.
Edward resumed his inspection. “Do you remember how to address me?”
Kaz’s shaking voice was hardly louder than a whisper. “Yes, my lord.”
“Good.” Edward released his hair. “You belong to this House now, do you understand?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“To whom do you bow?” Edward demanded.
“T-to you, my lord,” Kaz whispered.
Min’s chest tightened. “Sir,” he said, drawing the old man’s attention back to him and away from Kaz, for all the good it would do in the long run. “May I remind you that I am owed my payment?”
Edward’s piercing gaze found him, and his thin mouth curled into a smile. “A boy for a boy, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Edward clicked his fingers, and the servant who had been lurking by the door scuttled forward like a cockroach. “Go and fetch the Decourcey brat. Have Abelard remove the curse.”
“Yes, my lord.” The servant scuttled away again.
“You must tell us, Decourcey, how you escaped the fae.” Edward stepped away from Kaz, clasping his hands behind his back. “Robert tells me he thought you had both been killed.”
“Even the fae have their weaknesses,” Min said, which was an answer that would strengthen his reputation better than the truth: it was dumb fucking chance that had saved his miserable hide. Dumb chance and Kaz.
Edward let out a bark of laughter and said, approvingly, “You are no coward, are you?”
Actually he was an inveterate coward, but Min only smirked and inclined his head.
“And Kallick gave you no trouble getting the mutt away?”
Min met Kaz’s gaze. “No, sir. No trouble.”
The lie would serve no purpose, probably. Robert must have told Edward already that Kaz was a necromancer. Yet it was one thing to know in theory what Kaz’s actual Gift was and another to know he’d practiced it to animate his master’s corpse for over a decade. Min couldn’t be sure that Edward would treat Kaz any better if he didn’t know about Kallick, but the lie still came easily enough.
Kaz looked achingly grateful.
Min told himself there were a hundred things he wanted to say to Kaz, a thousand, but that was another lie, wasn’t it? They’d barely spoken on their walk from the eastern quarter, because of all those things Min wanted to say, there wasn’t a single one that wouldn’t have cut like a knife.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow this would all be behind him. Tomorrow he would take his usual table in the Footbridge Tavern, Harry at his side, and wait for someone to approach him with an offer of a job. Someone who had heard of Aramin Decourcey’s reputation for walking through locked doors and passing beneath the notice of the Gifted and all their wards and spells, and who had enough coin in his purse to pay handsomely for Min’s trouble. A sordid, grubby transaction made in a sordid, grubby tavern, but compared to all this, it would feel as clean and clear as a draught of water from a mountain spring.
Min just had to make it through today first.
“Ha!” Edward laughed. “I knew that old fool of a hedgewitch was all bark and no bite!”
Min was saved from having to respond by the slap of footsteps from the hall, and suddenly Harry was darting into the room and flinging himself into Min’s embrace.
“I thought you were dead!”
“It seems nobody had any faith in me at all,” Min replied archly. He squeezed Harry tightly and then released him so he could inspect him as closely as Edward had inspected Kaz, though with a world more care. There was a faint red flush on Harry’s cheek, as though he’d slept on it, but the sigil that had marked his curse was gone.
Min was almost overwhelmed with relief, but he didn’t dare show it here. To show a man like Edward Sabadine that he had a heart was like showing his throat to a wolf. A heart was a weakness to a man like that, just another place to sink his fangs.
“I believe this concludes our business,” he said.
“I believe it does,” Edward agreed. “If the boy ever shows his face here again, mind, I’ll cut him up and feed his remains to my hounds.”
“Understood, sir,” Min said, gripping Harry’s shoulder tightly. He looked to Robert, who nodded at him shortly, and then to Kaz. Kaz did not meet his gaze, and Min didn’t blame him. Min wasn’t the only one who knew not to show Edward Sabadine how to wound him. It was better they parted as strangers, and not the friends they had been last night.
Friends.
The word was insufficient. There had been more between them than friendship. There had been a different emotion altogether compressed into the places where there shouldn’t have been any room for anything at all: between their mouths as they kissed, between their clasped palms, between all of the places their bodies touched.
The tightness in Min’s chest was almost painful, and his throat ached. “Good day, then.”
And he steered Harry out of the room, toward the front door, and then through it into the daylight.
MIN STILL had enough of Robert Sabadine’s money in his purse to get rollingly drunk, and he did it with relish. He sat at his customary table in the Footbridge Tavern with a jug of Swann’s foulest and strongest ale at his elbow and a cup in his hand. The ale churned in his guts in a way that promised it’d be fighting its way back out any moment now, but Min didn’t care.
Harry sat with him, shoveling porridge down his throat like he hadn’t been fed in days. Maybe he hadn’t. The Sabadines were probably not the most generous of hosts.
“Kept in a storeroom since we got back to the city,” Harry said around his porridge when Min slurred the question out. “Wasn’t even any food in there. Just linens. I pissed on a board-cloth, then folded it up and put it back in the middle of the pile.”
Min snorted. “That’s my boy.”
“How did you escape?” Harry asked, his forehead wrinkling. “On the road, with the fae?”
“No fucking idea,” Min said, and took another swallow of ale. “Just grabbed Kaz and ran into the woods.” He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the way he’d pressed his hand against Kaz’s mouth and how warm his breath had been on his palm.
“You just ran?” Harry prompted, and Min wondered if he’d stopped talking for too long. He was drunk enough that his brain was having difficulties with the concept of time.
“He saved me, though, I think. There was this clearing, with a spring in it. Made my head muzzy just looking at it. I would have drunk from it if Kaz hadn’t stopped me.” He set his mug down, glaring at it when ale sloshed over the sides. “How did you escape?”
“Rode like hell and didn’t look back.”
Min dragged his finger through the puddle of ale on the scarred tabletop. “Good strategy.
”
Harry quirked his mouth. “I learned from the best.”
Min was the best? Funny, because at the moment he felt like the fucking worst, and it wasn’t even the ale that was to blame, though it certainly wasn’t helping. His guts churned again, and Min took another swallow of ale to remind them who was in charge.
The Footbridge Tavern was mostly empty at this early hour. There was a girl sweeping last night’s straw out the door and into the street and a man leaning against the bar and staring into the middle distance as he sipped from a large mug. Min vaguely recognized him as the baker from the next street, who routinely escaped his harridan of a mother to get quietly drunk at the Footbridge. Min had always felt a sense of warm camaraderie with the fellow.
A man and a woman were slumped together at the table in the opposite corner. They were both snoring, and the woman was drooling a little. A skinny dog, whip-thin tail lashing, wandered up to them hopefully and sat at the man’s feet like he was waiting for a treat. Swann stomped through the taproom, heading for the kitchens, and the dog reevaluated its chances and followed him instead.
“Did you fuck him?” Harry asked suddenly.
Min frowned. “Who? Swann?”
“No! Kaz!”
“Oh. Yes.” Min picked up the jug, held his cup, and more or less managed to get some ale from one to the other without pouring too much over the table. “Yes, I did. Last night.”
“Do you love him?”
“Pfft. He’s a necromancer who is half fae and… and half Sabadine. I don’t know which is more dangerous.” Min laughed, although he wasn’t sure what was funny. His own stupidity, perhaps. “A man would be a fool to fall in love with someone like that.”
Harry shrugged his skinny shoulders. “Plenty of fools in the world, Min.”
Well, wasn’t that the pathetic truth?
“I abducted him,” Min mumbled into his ale. “I delivered him into the hands of his poisonous family. I am the architect of his misery.”
Harry snatched his cup away from him. “You’re a drunken fool, and you’re no architect of anyone’s misery. You’re not as important as you imagine yourself. An architect? You’re nothing but a tool.”
