The Last Sun

by K. D. Edwards

  I got under the bed sheet and sunk low, hiding my flushed face in the pillow. Addam slid down so that our eyes were on the same level. Heat stirred the scent off his skin: sandalwood soap and fireplace smoke. I got lost in it for a moment.

  “Thank you for the sigils,” he whispered. “I am humbled that you trust me with them.”

  “They’re a little more raggedy then the ones you’re used to, but they’ll do the trick.”

  “I like your sigils. They say something about you.”

  “My cameo necklace says something about me?” I asked.

  “It is unique,” he insisted.

  “And a woman’s emerald ring? That says something about me?”

  “You’re teasing,” he said.

  “A little. It makes your accent sound funny.”

  “A lot of things make my accent sound funny. And it was a genuine compliment—I like your sigils. The quartermaster only gives me and Quinn platinum discs.”

  “Ah, yes, my grass is so much greener,” I said. “Know what’s funny? I used to hate this cameo sigil. It came from my mother, who died when I was very young. I was embarrassed to wear it, though. Gods, I was such a shit. I put it in a cubbyhole in my room and never took it out. . . . The thing is, that’s exactly why I have it now.”

  “How so?”

  “I scavenged most of my sigils from Sun Estate after the attack. The people who—killed everyone, they took the armory and ransacked the rooms. If I hadn’t hidden this along with my ankh, they might have been taken too.”

  “Scavenged is a strange word to use,” Addam said. “Sun Estate is yours.”

  “No. It’s not. Sun Estate belongs to the dead. It’s very haunted. I don’t walk into it unless I’m armed like a tank. Or if I need money for the cable bill.”

  He laughed, and we lapsed into a comfortable pause, punctuated by the crack of tar and sap from the burning logs. Addam had been right. It did smell nice.

  Addam said, “You’re lovely in firelight. You really are as beautiful as I’ve always heard.”

  “For the record, the seer was drinking eggnog when she made that prediction.”

  “I was not speaking in terms of prophecy. I was speaking of this real, breathing moment.”

  “You need to stop complimenting me,” I said. “You’ve already talked me out of my shoes. That’s a good start.”

  “Do you not think you are a beautiful man?”

  Maybe I was tired. Maybe the firelight really did make things prettier than normal, including words. Either way, I said what I thought. “I think people make themselves beautiful. I think everything on our outside is a line sketch, and whatever’s on the inside blows those lines into three dimensions. It’s like with Brand. Now, there’s a man who puts no effort into looking good. There’s not an ounce of vanity in his body. Yet he walks into a bar, and people drop and gasp like drowning victims.”

  “Your Companion is very handsome,” Addam agreed. “But I’ve yet to have him step in front of me, in a dark Westlands forest, without the sanctuary of safe paths, and burn away a lich’s self-important theatrics with a wave of fire.”

  “Oh,” I said, and laughed. “Oh, you are so full of shit.” I pushed at his shoulder, turning him on his back. “Go to sleep, Lord Saint Nicholas.”

  He propped back on his arm long enough to kiss my eyebrow, and then withdrew into a burrow of sheets.

  Between the fire’s stupor and the aftermath of a long day, he grew drowsy quickly. His breathing went from calm sighs, to the fits and hitching of someone wavering on the point of sleep, and finally to a loud, dragging rasp that was just shy a snore.

  When I was sure he was asleep, I slid a little closer to him. He’d gotten a sunburn on his neck during our walk. The heat of it warmed my cheek.

  Life magic was one of the strongest forces known to Atlanteans—the twin of wild magic, potent enough to be nearly sentient. And within the constraints of this rare and powerful magic, tallas were considered its most seldom occurrence. Tallas were a pairing of souls; a joining of Will and way. It wasn’t exactly true love, though certainly lovers have become tallas. But there are also stories of mortal enemies developing a bond: soldiers on a battlefield, warring Arcana, court rivals. Hatred and conflict can be as strong as love and intimacy.

  Still, whatever the relationship, tallas gained strength and magic from their forced union. I had heard of talla bonds curing cancer; bridging unwanted distance with spontaneous acts of translocation; folding time with a kiss.

  Even though Addam couldn’t be my talla, my tired mind played around with the idea. I wondered what it would be like to be metaphysically duct-taped to another human being.

  Eventually I tired my brain, and fell asleep to the metronome of Addam’s breathing, even though I’d planned on keeping watch.

  I dreamed of creatures the size of skyscrapers, and necrotic flesh that turned healthy and pink under waves of white sunlight. I dreamed of a long, teasing conversation with someone who I knew to be both Brand and Addam at the same time. I dreamed of doing cartwheels through a field of bioluminescent bees and kicking up clouds of monochrome butterflies. While some of these dreams had the markings of nightmare, not once did I feel threatened or scared. In every scenario I was contained. By a warm jacket. By a tight belt. By humid summer heat.

  Much later, I opened my eyes, and found myself in Addam’s arms.

  He was still asleep. His breathing made the hair around my ear hot and damp. I went still, very still.

  As quiet I was, though, I woke Addam up. The arms around me tensed.

  In a flash of insight that felt like panic, I realized I didn’t want him to pull away. And I think he knew it. Because, tentatively, he moved a hand up my chest until it covered one of my own hands. I curled my fingers through his. He pulled tighter against me, his knee slipping just through my legs, his chest against my shoulder blades.

  I moved back into him as he pressed forward. My breathing slowed, a rasping sound. His fingers tightened around mine, once, before snaking free and trailing down my abdomen. He traced a pattern down the front of my underwear. When I ground back into him to signal my willingness, he outlined my hardness with his fingertips and circled the tip.

  And then I felt my orgasm, a sudden, unstoppable surge. I made another sound, this time horrified. Whatever muscles or willpower were supposed to stop something like this from happening failed me. My cock jerked three times, shooting warmth. I tried to push Addam’s hand away as if that could hide anything.

  Addam said, “Rune, shhh,” but I struggled until I was free, until none of his body touched mine. I sat up in the bed but kept the sheets over my lap.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “It’s not.” Tearing the sheets away, I retreated into the bathroom, the humiliating, wet cling of my underwear making bile rise up my throat.

  I shut the door behind me, turned on the shower, and undressed with clumsy, angry movements. I threw the underwear against a wall. While the shower heated up, I unspooled toilet paper and cleaned myself.

  As soon as the shower was passably warm, I stepped into it and put my head under the stream. I kept it that way until I was gasping for breath. I punished myself by replaying the scene again in my head, over and over, like grinding a toothache into your soft, swollen gums.

  I put my arms against the tile, and hid my face in them. Sometimes, my life sucked. It was so much easier to fight the monsters outside my head.

  “I’d like to shower,” Addam announced from the other side of the curtain.

  I wiped the water off my face. “Um. Okay. I’ll be out in a minute?”

  There was a short pause. Then Addam said, “Hero.”

  “Oh. Now. Come in?”

  The shower curtain parted and Addam stepped in behind me.

  It was a large shower, and he didn’t need to touch me. He didn’t try to reassure my ego or soothe my feelings, which was pretty damn insightful of him. He just stepped around me and nudged me back,
and bowed his head in the shower until his dark-blond hair was wet.

  Then he opened his burgundy eyes and just stared at me.

  “Would you let me touch you?” he asked.

  “I’m not . . . I’m not very good at . . .”

  “If my touch is unwelcome, or unwanted, you must tell me. I will respect that.”

  “It’s . . . I do. Want it. I do—I’m just not good at—”

  He braced his hands along my body and slid to his knees. He touched my thigh with his lips, kissing my hip bone. He continued to kiss his way upward, tracing each inch with the roughness of his tongue. He was very patient, and it lasted a very long time. By the time he took me in his mouth, I was hard again.

  If the shower stall hadn’t been right behind me, I would have fallen. Addam reached up and kneaded my thighs, encouraging them to do their job.

  He was skilled, and gentle, and very determined. He kept going until my world was his warm mouth and the cold water, until another orgasm shot out of me. I think I screamed along with it.

  He kept me in his mouth as I softened and then kissed his way back upright. When he was standing, I put my chin on his shoulder so that he couldn’t see the look in my eyes.

  Was I supposed to do something to him now? I’d forgotten the rules.

  I cleared my throat and asked, “Should I . . . ?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No, Hero. Not right now.”

  “Why did you come in here?” I asked stupidly.

  He smiled into the side of my face, drank water from my neck. After a while, he said, “I needed this to be the memory you remember, from tonight.”

  “Addam,” I said, closing my eyes against the conviction in his words. “I wish you could be my talla. I do, I swear I do. I wish it were that easy.”

  “I don’t think it will be easy at all, Hero. I think what would be easy for anyone else is a very great challenge for you; just like I think you routinely do things that would be impossible for others. Now. Take a moment for yourself. Then make the fire hotter and come back to bed. I am very sleepy.”

  A kiss on my forehead, and he was gone. I heard him rummaging through the linen cabinet for a towel, and the bathroom door clicked shut.

  Later, I went to bed naked—with only brief hesitation—and squirmed backward into Addam’s embrace.

  He said, “You rest now. I’ll watch.”

  Using the crook of his arm as a pillow, I surprised myself by falling asleep in moments.

  THE SWIMMING HOLE

  In my dream, the manor was neither abandoned nor snowbound.

  The drapes were thrown wide to thick summer sunshine, and servants, scions, and children raced through waxed and dustless corridors. The dream-people moved faster than I did, leaving vague tracers of light behind them.

  I walked along the edges of the main hall to avoid the swift traffic. At the stairs, I paused, and then started upward. At the second-floor landing I decided to climb over the banister and sit on a wide decorative ledge.

  “You don’t really think this is a normal dream, do you?” Ciaran asked. I heard him sigh. “I detest explaining the difference. It’s tiresome.”

  I looked up. The principality had his hand on the banister, which turned from walnut to tarnished copper. He blinked at me with irises that moved with vague, rippling light.

  He said, “Hello, Sun.”

  “Hello, Ciaran. What a surprise. How in the world did you know that I liked people invading my sleeping mind?”

  I dropped my smile and pulled hard on rational thought, on my inner Will. The blurriness of the dream hardened.

  “At ease,” he tutted. “I’m doing you a favor. A costly favor. Do you have any idea how hard it is to dream-walk at this distance? I’ll be at sixes and sevens all day.”

  “Start making sense,” I suggested.

  He smiled at me with bright-red lips. “Someone would like a word with you. I’m simply making the connection.”

  A connection. The last person I knew whom he’d made a connection with in dream was . . .

  “Quinn,” I said.

  And then Ciaran was gone and the young, blond, cowlicked teen was next to me. He sat cross-legged, in blue jeans and high-top sneakers.

  I felt a weird blend of emotion—a jarring overlap of my distrust of seers and my unexpected affection for the person Addam had been telling me stories about.

  “Wait!” Quinn said. He struggled up on his knees, and ducked in to kiss my cheek.

  He leaned back and gave me a satisfied look. “Hah. You never get mad at me when I did that first. Well, one time you kicked me off the stairway, but everything can happen once, even meteors made of soy beans.”

  “Verb tenses aren’t usually a suggestion.”

  Quinn laughed and clapped his hands. “Most people would have asked about the soy beans. I made that up. We never get hit by a meteor made of soy beans, not really.”

  “Quinn,” I said. “Can Ciaran pull Addam into this dream? He’s very worried about you. He needs to see you.”

  “I want to see him,” Quinn said, and his smile broke apart. “But Ciaran said your mind is better at this than most people’s. But he didn’t say it like it was a compliment. And I don’t think we have much time. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve been trying to help. You do need to go off the safe path by the swimming hole, like you saw on the map. It’s the quickest way to the compound, and Rurik won’t be able to break into the compound, not yet. But, most important, there are no null threads nearby, and he likes those. So you need to go there. Everything important starts to happen there.”

  “But he’s expecting that,” I said. “Right? Rurik is expecting me to go off the safe path at the point closest to the compound.”

  “He expects everything,” Quinn said. His face hardened. “But so do I.”

  I settled back against the bannister and calculated sigil spells. Had I done enough yesterday in the sanctum? Was it a fight I could win—at least long enough to break for safety?

  I said, “Can I at least tell Addam you’re okay? He’ll focus better if he’s not worried.”

  “I’m . . . trying to wake up. The doctors and nurses are very nice. There’s a lady who rubs my hair and whispers to me. But it’s hard. I’m trying.”

  Quinn suddenly threw back his head and screamed. I just about shit myself.

  He stopped and scratched his nose. “That didn’t work,” he said. “Maybe you can pinch me? Or slap me. Try to slap me.”

  “I don’t think Addam would want me to slap you.”

  “But you don’t care what he thinks yet,” Quinn said, and then his face puckered like he’d tasted a lemon. “Oh, you do, and that’s not what a shower is for at all. I need to go now and dream about battery acid. Feh!”

  He vanished and Ciaran reappeared, still at the railing. The texture of the banister changed under his hands again, now a spreading pool of velvet green moss. Ciaran had always had an unpredictable impact on reality, but this was the first time I noticed that the impact was not unlike the unpredictability of dreams. It made me wonder about the source of his powers.

  Ciaran arched an eyebrow and plucked his fingers off the railing. “Don’t give me that look.”

  “What look?”

  “The look a butcher with a chainsaw gives a cow.” He gave me a shoo gesture. “Be off now. I need to go.”

  “Ciaran, wait! Can you please get word to Brand and Lord Tower? Tell them I’m okay. Tell them where I’m headed.”

  “That would never have occurred to me. I’d actually been planning on keeping Lord Tower in the dark. I hear he appreciates that sort of thing.”

  He started to say something else, and a smile flitted across his lips. He stared upward. “It appears that Lord Saint Nicholas is being rather . . . enthusiastic in his attempts to wake you. You should—”

  “Oh,” I said as my eyes shot open.

  The sights and sounds of the dream blurred into the physical
sensation of Addam, from behind, squirming against me. Which made me say, again and with feeling, “Oh.”

  When he realized I was awake, he wrapped his arms around my stomach. “Good morning, Hero,” he yawned against my shoulder blades.

  “I had a dream,” I said.

  “I see. And you want to share it. Is this something I can expect every morning?”

  “No, smart-ass. Ciaran brought Quinn to me.”

  I felt Addam’s entire body go still.

  “He’s going to be okay, Addam. He’s trying to wake up now.”

  Addam didn’t move, didn’t speak. I started to turn, but he tightened his arms and kept me facing away. A few seconds later, I heard him clear his throat and sniffle.

  I gave him a moment to collect himself, and enjoyed the expiring warmth of my pillow.

  Outside, the freakish winter weather had given ground to something more like spring. It turned the lawn into boggy turf and mud puddles.

  As we trudged toward the nearby safe path, Addam looked like he had something on his mind. It took him a couple dozen yards to work up the right words.

  “Do we need to talk about last night?” he asked.

  “Absolutely. That’s how I always get ready for battle, talking about my feelings.”

  “That’s settled, then,” he decided. “Very well. Matter at hand.”

  A minute later, we transitioned from one ward to another. I felt the frisson of the estate’s protection yielding to the stronger defensive spells of the safe path. I was relieved; at least Rurik hadn’t broken past these wards yet.

  Of the three routes that led off the estate, the one closest to the Moral Certainty compound was much, much narrower than the road we took yesterday. The forest was close. Thin branches crossed the air in front of us, and shadows fell across our bodies like ash-colored whip marks. I took the lead, pushing the branches to the side and holding them for Addam.

  We walked for a half hour, hands near weapons. Clouds slid across the sun by eight o’clock, dulling the sunshine. Eventually the woods opened up into a field of yellowing grass. It was scattered with shells, sand, driftwood, and dried starfish. We were a good mile from shore, but this was the Westlands, and stranger things had crunched underfoot.