by May Peterson
“If I was meant to be the next victim, why hasn’t Piero struck again? It would have been easy to kill me when my voice failed.”
His quiet fell over us. Surely, he’d considered this? Rhodry knew better than to seek refuge in coincidence.
“I know he’s waiting for the right moment.” It rose from him as a growl. “And you did just prove that you have the power to resurrect the dead. That has to give Piero pause. And the incubus? For all I know, it doesn’t really have its own feelings. It’s just a face. A false intelligence. It’s like a machine.”
It came to me without thought. “But it is the key to all of this. You said so yourself. Perhaps I can sing for it.”
He abruptly pawed his face with both hands. “Oh, for fuck’s sakes. Mio, will you please think about this? What are you going to do, give Piero what he wants? If he’s sparing you, it’s not out of mercy. It’s because he wants a fate for you that is worse than dying. And here you are, ready to surrender to it.” Fingers slipped away, uncaging damp, gleaming eyes. “I wish I knew what it was I had to say. What I had to do, to get you all to understand. You can’t save me.”
And there it was. The beating heart of it, lying damp, twisted, and dying on the floor between us.
All of him softened, leaned in to me. He knelt, like he did sometimes when he was trying to be gentle. “I’m sorry. You’re in a situation no one should have to be in. Piero is someone who has worked very hard to destroy me and everyone I care about. And I have every reason to believe that, no matter how he is trying to carry it out, he’s coming for you next. I might be able to stop it—for once, for the first time. I am asking—” his gaze quaked, turned aside “—begging you to accept it. It is all I can do. Please, Mio. Please.”
I couldn’t listen to him. I couldn’t hear this. And yet I had to. The hour had come. And I had failed to come up with a better answer.
So I listened. And met the decades of pain glowing in his visage.
His fingers brushed my hair, cupped the side of my face. “And please understand. This is not because I’m trying to avoid more guilt. Or just to get some victory against the incubus. It’s because...” His brow wrinkled. “I love you.”
My heart felt like it was tearing me up, scraping fire across my ribs. I let my grief run free, and signed back, “I love you.” For a moment, his sad smile held me still. And then I slipped myself under his arms. “Can...you hold me?”
There was no hesitation. His arms engulfed me, and once more I sobbed into the expanse of his shoulder. I could already smell ashes.
“You can’t save me,” he said into the crown of my head. “But it means the world to me that you tried.”
This was goodbye.
Chapter Fourteen
RHODRY
I started carrying him to my room without thinking.
There seemed nowhere else to go. The room I’d given him was the site of disaster. So were all the places we’d studied, felt a path through the cold silence with our hands.
But there had to be a place for him now. Before he was gone for good. There had to be a place where I could link to his last hours before doom fell, an endpoint to my memories of him.
He cried softly into my chest, without sound. Just the tremor of his shoulders. He did not resist me. He’d only done so once before—when I’d been pushing him away. My time with Mio had been filled with him not trying to alter me, having no part of the shame that marred my life.
That was what I’d miss the most.
The fire was going still. Not one hour ago, I’d drawn the last lines of defense. The ghosts must have been getting Tibario ready for departure. Mio would be out the door before long, and like the Verge, it would not open again to let him back through.
I sat him back on the sofa, where heat would reach him. He turned his trembling face up to me, and we sat there. Him on my lap, the goodbye between us. His hot, soft, shaking presence surrounding me.
The way his eyes took me in, helpless and endless, was impossible to face. There was too much to say, and no way to say it that would not draw blood.
“Mio.” I said his name again, watched the flare of pink that crossed his face. “There’s one more thing I’d like to do. If you’ll let me.”
He nodded without hesitation.
I took a deep breath. “Let me hallow you.”
It was like another blow. The bruise of his sorrow spread wider, and for a few seconds all he did was shake his head. “Is there any way we can believe something other than the worst?”
Warmth mounted in me. “I don’t think it. You’ll get out of this. But I should have done it ages ago. And...it’s one more thing. The last thing I can do for you. Even if you never need it, and I pray you don’t. But fuck me, if you are leaving this house, Piero and all the hell that serves him is seeing that he will never have your body. No matter what he’s trying to do, no matter what hope he has for you. Your body belongs to you.”
A raw, crumpled feeling shone on his face. But then, he began to nod. “All right. I want you to.”
A simple thing. I ran my thumb on the edge of a fang until a wine-sweet bead appeared. It drew a line down my wrist. Mio stiffened at the sight, and then closed his eyes. As if waiting for a kiss.
I touched the spot to his forehead. A dark streak smudged his cheek, and I worked the point of contact into a star shape. Seven different places I stopped the line. And my virtue sent its hush through me. Warming and cooling the blood in turns. Ritually, I anointed him like I would a corpse. The blessing sealed, a pulse of silver briefly lighting the surface.
“All done.” I wiped my finger before brushing my knuckle to his cheek.
He opened his eyes. A pale, gentle smile seemed to be all he had left. But as we sat together in the shadows, breathing them in, it felt like enough. Mio was calm and still. He was here with me a little longer.
The injustice of it suddenly became too much. A blink, and this could have been another version of the story. Me holding him after a show at the opera house. The cold might have been encroaching winter, spotting his arias with snow. And the fatigue in his eyes could have been the wear of a long night, one which could have ended with him curling up next to me. In a world where we were not cursed. Where no underworld was waiting to devour me.
Where he did not have to go.
“Mio. There’s something I should probably confess to you.” I took a breath, trying to steady my voice. “I didn’t visit you at the Imparviglio just because of your note.”
The frown creasing his brow was eloquent. But he waited, listened.
“The truth is—” A limp chuckle rose in my throat. “The truth is I’d been listening to you sing for years.”
It had to have been years. The fey, mysterious singer at the opera, occasionally painting my grim life bright with music. And I had never really known who he was.
Mio’s frown deepened. “But I was never part of the guild. I only performed about a dozen times.”
“I know.” My chuckle became a full-fledged laugh. “That’s why I had been so looking forward to your performance after the new moon. I’d already had tickets.”
His mouth had tipped open slightly, comprehension lighting his eyes. God, I wanted to kiss that mouth. I wanted to taste him and breathe him and be changed by him.
“I remember my favorite performance of yours.” I chewed on the end of my thumb. “Well. It’s hard to pick a favorite. But I remember your ‘Midnight Air’ like it was yesterday.”
His expression became amused, soft. Color rushed into his cheeks and he looked down. “I was only eighteen when I performed that. I’m amazed you remember it.”
“I still have the ticket stub.” Heat was taking over the skin of my own face. This felt like showing him the last untidy corner of my trauma. “The week before, a young woman had come to me. A nun. The monks had told her I could cle
anse evil. She believed her sister, who’d vanished, was possessed. I have no idea if any ghost actually possessed her sister or not.”
Mio scanned my face. “Did you find her?”
“Of course.” I held the smile on my face, forced it not to drop. “She died. Never knew the cause. But the sister who survived? She came to my house the next day. To thank me. She brought me that.” I pointed, shaking, to the gold-chained rosary lying on the mantelpiece.
His face fell. “Then she—”
“Should never have come here. I worked so hard to make sure we’d always met in town while I tracked her sister. Somewhere relatively safe. I just wanted one of my attempts to fight back to actually work. But it’s like Piero must have known that eventually, anyone who tried to reach me would come here. She’d been killed at the gate.”
Mio was looking at the rosary. “I’m so sorry, Rhodry.” Gently, he took my hand, squeezed it. “I’m sorry.”
“But!” I waggled a finger in the air. “I felt a little better. Because I’d already bought tickets to see your performance that new moon. ‘Midnight Air.’ A piece meant for me if there ever was one. And I remember thinking...” I stopped, realizing that my veneer of bravado was fading. “That if I could just get through that week, well. I could keep going. Just a little while longer.”
I wondered what he’d do with a confession as heavy as that. That I had essentially been watching him as he grew into an adult. Grew into the dazzling mystery of Vermagna.
He seemed to need a moment to gather his thoughts. “Did you know who I was, that night of the festival?”
“I don’t think I ever understood who you really were. I must have believed you were a spirit of the opera house.” I caressed his cheek with my thumb, pulling a faint grin from him. “So when I heard you speaking at the festival... I don’t know what I thought. Your voice reminded me of something I had heard. Something I had longed to hear. I’d like to believe I would have helped you anyway, but...” I shrugged. “It wasn’t until later that night that I put the voice with the face. And by then, there wasn’t a chance in hell I wasn’t going to figure out what that note meant.”
He buried his face against my chest. Which may have been the most amazing sensation in existence. When he looked back up, he was flushed, eyes shy. “I’m so sorry I did that. I don’t know how I thought that would help.”
The angle of his face, body, was aligned to be open to me. I took full advantage of it, shamelessly, and cupped his chin. Lifted it so that he and I were looking into each other’s eyes. “It helped. It changed everything.”
Teardrops drew light to the corners of his eyes. But he was still smiling.
“Will you—” My breaths were uneven, desperate, foolish. “Will you stay with me tonight? While we still have time? Can we try again?”
A breathless moment passed. And he nodded.
And we sat there, with him on my lap. Contemplating the decision we’d just made. We spent the next several minutes not moving.
Then, with ritual intention, I carried him to my bed.
His body was so tense as I laid him down that he trembled. I began unbuttoning his shirt, cherishing the play of innocence and need on his face. This would have to be an exercise in gentle care. It didn’t take much to tell he was a virgin, probably as virginal as they came. And he’d been violated in so many ways. My desire to hold him, cover those bruised places, could just as easily hurt him again.
I thought for a moment about letting him decide how to act. But he needed something from me first.
I fondled a curl at his forehead, stepping away to gesture at my clothes. “Dash it all, will you look at me? I’ve been under your garments twice now, and without reciprocation. We best remedy that forthwith.”
I peeled my own shirt free, then the pants came down with gusto. Tossing the clothes across the room was an erotic little stroke. I wasn’t going to be able to easily step back from this.
It all came free, in plain view. Hands on the bedframe, I stood spread eagle and gave him as much an eyeful as he wanted. I wasn’t interested in hiding anything about myself from him anymore.
His rapt focus on my abdomen and hips, and then how quickly he looked away, made my belly do a little flip. Grinning, I spiraled to face away, twisting an arm around my head to glance down my back. “Oh, dear. How embarrassing.”
I hadn’t been bad looking as a boy, but death had changed so much. With Piero I’d learned to be so proud of my round backside, jutting and firm—unquestionably his favorite part of my body. After everything starvation had stripped away, most of what’d come back was muscle. My body rebuilding itself to withstand eternity.
I all but purred as I straddled the bed. Slow now, no pressure—even if I felt like rubbing the whole length of myself against him. His fists balled in the blanket, eyes indecisively flitting. I arced my back and rested a hand over his.
He let go. And I undid the last of his buttons.
In seconds, we were both stripping off his clothing. Sliding trousers off each ankle, discarding belt and shirt. I tried to control my motions—a slow drip toward pleasure was also worthwhile. In minutes, I had unwrapped him like a piece of candy.
The contrast of our bodies sent a thrill straight to my groin. I wasn’t the fuzziest beast ever seen, but Mio was smooth where I was dark—pink, flaring visibly with nothing to hide it. My lines were firm, hard; his were supple curves along a tender frame. God, he was so soft. Everything about him was soft.
And such pretty, delicate nipples. I grazed a thumb over one. He gasped.
“You’re so sensitive,” I breathed into his ear. He tightened, arm reflexively crossing over his chest. One hand produced the sign for sorry. “No, no. Shhh. It’s one of my favorite things about you.”
This time I flicked my tongue against his nipple. His breath caught. I grinned. “Intense?”
He nodded, eyes clenched. Poor thing was so stiff he was practically vibrating. I eased off, tucking the line of his back against my chest. Might have to save the nipples for later. “Is this all right? We don’t have to do anything that scares you. I just want to be with you. We’ll go at your pace.”
This nod was more tentative, but his shoulders immediately relaxed. I hadn’t considered the anxiety he had to feel about his body, and I wasn’t sure I was equipped to soothe it. Let him get acquainted with the sensations first.
He drew a quick breath. “Are you sure this is what you want? Piero...is it only men you desire? I don’t think I can be that. Is it...”
I nuzzled him. “You are who I want. I’m not sure where the lines are for me. I never quite fit what was expected of me as a man—by no fault of hers, it didn’t work with Eirlys and me, not in that way. But that doesn’t mean I need someone like Piero. I long for you.” If anything, my attraction to Mio was even stronger than it had been to him, perhaps because the emotional connection was so much richer.
People here talked about castrati like they should have fish tails, but as my gaze crawled down his skin, I found no mystifying physiology. I’d been curious at first, especially with stories in my head about creatures of song that could break if they fell over. But under it all, Mio was an achingly ordinary youth, though preciously unique. The lanky, gentle limbs, all the planes and dimensions of the person I’d come to love.
I kept my hands up, to show I wasn’t going to grab without permission. Kneading his back, just massaging, bringing him a little closer so that our bodies made a sinuous line. One kiss, then two, down his neck until I was petting him and mouthing his shoulders. For now, this was plenty. I wanted my arms to be a place of comfort, not pressure.
Gradually, his muscles softened and his breath slowed. The sound of his heart calmed me, amplifying my attention into something like meditation. The whisper of the flames behind us, the sensory immersion of Mio’s skin and scent and rhythm, all of them consumed me, made each
of my kisses ecstatic. When he was relaxed enough, I surrounded him completely with myself, arms and legs a fortress against the outside. I missed this so badly. Being able to stop thinking for a second and let someone else become the world.
“It’s all right.” My voice came out a hum. “You don’t have to be afraid. You’re safe with me.”
I wouldn’t let it be a lie this time. If my power was conceived for any good, it would be to sanctify these dying hours, so that for now no force on earth could touch him.
Mio shifted, turning so we lay face to face. A little space created by his touch on my chest, as if asking, Wait just a moment. I looked for what he needed, what his heartbeat and face told me. This was a cue I knew exactly what to do with.
I cupped the back of his head and kissed him.
Somehow running my fingers through his hair felt decadent. Mio’s tongue probed mine, shyly—like that first time he kissed me, and I almost couldn’t control myself. I played with it, invited him in and then pulled back so we’d be in constant rhythm. I tried not to penetrate too aggressively, but it amazed me how hungry I was for this kiss.
My other hand sloped down that slim back, testing a grip on his arms. He fondled my chest, as if feeling the shape of my muscles. Maybe it was good to be so firm. Speaking of firm—he jumped slightly as I took a liberty. Heavens, did he have a bouncy little plum. Sweet cleft, muscle tensing under my grasp—damn, I could hold on to that forever.
He drew back with an embarrassed noise. I chuckled. “Sorry.” But I squeezed again, and in seconds he was squirming against my groin. Which escalated things a bit. One would think we’d then take each other in hand and begin proper introductions. As tempting as the curve of his hips was, the region beyond was one I still felt unsure of. I became aware of my supernatural strength, as if there was something brutal about simply grabbing it, like I might hurt him.
Our crotches were all but ground into each other, but my hands stopped. Mio might very well be able to read my mind now, so it was no mystery that he understood my hesitance. “You can.” His pink-faced smile and messy hair turned the sign into a sexual command. “I’m not as fragile as you’d think.”
