Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4)

by Lauren Gilley

  Alexei twitched out from beneath his hand, though he regretted it immediately. “You were just saving your skin, snuggling up to me. I was a job – a scam. All of it was lies to make Gustav happy.”

  His brow furrowed. “No, I – I mean I was trying to – but then I met you…” He frowned. “I thought that you…”

  “Forgave you?” Alexei asked with a sneer.

  “Well, yes. At least a little.”

  And the thing was? He had. Logically. What Dante had shown him was too raw, too terrible to be anything but the truth. Just like he saw truth now in the hurt etched on the other vampire’s face.

  But, emotionally…though he hadn’t intended it, he’d developed a bit of care of his own. He’d slept with countless partners over the years: humans, vampires, men, women, groups. He changed preferences like he changed clothes, and hadn’t given a single damn about any of them. It had always been ephemeral and performative; an itch to scratch.

  But, though he’d gone home with Dante the first time out of boredom and a curious sort of arousal, he’d come back again, and again, and kept him close, out of something more. It had felt different – in his study, yes, when he admitted to being Basil Norrie, to being a historian who’d worked for Victoria, to having album after album of his family photos. But, if Alexei was honest, a little before that, too. In bed. It was a simple thing, silly, even, but…he’d felt seen. Like he wasn’t just another collection of pleasing body parts.

  How petty and selfish and stupid of him, to want Dante to love him a little bit, but that was the truth of it, no getting around it. It wasn’t just his pride hurt, now, but his damned feelings, and that, he realized, was going to take a different kind of reckoning.

  Dante seemed to realize it, some of the tension melting out of his thin frame, his expression softening. “Ah. I understand.”

  Alexei sat up, which left the soles of his boots planted square on the sofa cushion. He didn’t care, he decided, with a spike of vindictiveness. Good: he hoped he tracked the damn thing up. “Oh, you understand?”

  Dante’s head tilted. “I do. And I am sorry, for what it’s worth. I hated keeping the whole truth from you.”

  “Why, because you care?”

  This was terrible. He was being an idiot…one who couldn’t stop, apparently.

  Dante said, “Yes.”

  “Don’t feed me that bull–”

  “Lex.” Dante touched his face. Cupped his cheek with great gentleness, his own face full of emotion. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness, and I won’t ask for it. I did deceive you, selfishly, to win my freedom…But once I met you…Once I got to know you–”

  “You think you know me?”

  “I think I do.” Soft, but sure. His thumb swept down Alexei’s cheek until it rested at the point of his chin; he had long hands. “Which is why I was surprised, earlier, when you didn’t have Lanny toss me out on the street. I expected more of…this.”

  Alexei bristled – but he didn’t pull away from that warm touch, the way it grounded him.

  “I hurt you, and I’ll regret that for the rest of my days.”

  This conversation had been a terrible idea. Across the course of it, Dante had regained his footing; no longer the supplicant, but now the comforting, “adult” presence he’d provided for Alexei all along. He’d be patting him on the head and offering him a piece of candy next.

  It was much easier to classify it that way, rather than acknowledge the tenderness shining in Dante’s eyes. Things had shifted irrevocably, and that hadn’t mattered so much when Alexei was playing tsar…but now he was too fatigued to keep his head on straight, and he couldn’t let things get out of hand.

  (Had to guard his heart, he wouldn’t say, even to himself.)

  He brushed Dante’s touch away, and scrambled around so he was sitting with his feet on the floor, coiled and ready to stand. “You didn’t hurt me,” he snarled. “That would imply that I gave a shit.”

  He didn’t get to stand; Dante beat him to the punch, unfolding elegantly. “Yes, of course, your majesty.” He turned away, but not before Alexei caught the very visible signs of hurt on his face. He at least wasn’t pretending – not anymore. Hurt, and resignation, and shame. He gathered himself to walk away. “I’m sorry that–”

  Alexei grabbed his wrist and tugged him backward. Dante fell back to the cushions with a startled oof, gaze shocked just before Alexei put both arms around him, and hugged him fiercely. He buried his nose in the soft waves of Dante’s hair, and took an unsteady breath that was full of the scent of floral shampoo. “I hate you,” he whispered, voice cracking.

  Dante held still a moment, and then returned the embrace, rubbing little circles between Alexei’s shoulder blades. “I know. I hate me, too.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me? We could have helped you.”

  Dante carded fingers through his hair. “We?”

  “My pack,” he said, impatient, pulling back. “That’s what the rest of those idiots do; they’ve got hero complexes.”

  Amusement touched Dante’s face, plucking at his mouth. “I thought you didn’t have friends?”

  “Well, I don’t, but I have a pack,” he huffed, and he did. He had for a long time, though there had been resistance on both sides.

  “And maybe some friends, too?” Dante teased.

  “Don’t try to be cute, it won’t work.”

  His expression went immediately somber. “Sorry.”

  “And stop apologizing. Just don’t be a fucking liar anymore.”

  “I won’t. I swear to you, Lex, I won’t.”

  Alexei caught his narrow, oh-so-pretty face between both hands, reeled him in, and kissed him.

  A kiss that Dante didn’t return at all.

  Alexei pulled back, horror dawning, hands falling away, limp. “Was that another lie?” he asked, heart starting to pound, shame building. Oh, God, if Dante had only touched him as part of a ploy…

  Realization flickered through Dante’s gaze. “No. Alexei.” He laid a hand on his thigh, intimate, automatic, unhesitating. “Lex. Love.” He leaned in close, head tilting, voice soft, imploring. “All along, that was the part that was true. Believe me. It’s only…” His gaze cut sideways, toward the arm chairs opposite them. “We have an audience.”

  Somehow, Alexei had forgotten about Severin. A glance proved that the mage was still seated in the wingback chair Dante had invited him to occupy when they first arrived at the apartment, hands loosely gripping its arms, feet planted flat on the floor, as stiff and upright as a prisoner strapped to an electric chair, his gaze pinned to the two of them with the rapt attention of an anthropologist observing foreign customs. It was debatable whether he’d blinked.

  Alexei hadn’t wanted to bring him along, but the boy still seemed unwilling to trust Nikita – doubtlessly a mutual sentiment – and he’d attached himself to Alexei, anyway, shadowing him like a baby animal who’d imprinted.

  “Oh, please, you prefer an audience,” Alexei tried to quip, but it fell flat. Severin’s stare made him want to squirm.

  “Severin,” Dante said, disengaging from Alexei and getting to his feet, his voice bright with false cheer. “You must be as exhausted as the rest of us. Would you like to lie down for a bit? I’m afraid I don’t have a fold-out, but the sofa is marvelously comfortable.” When Severin only stared at him, he said, “Or, you could take my bed. Alexei and I won’t mind camping out here.”

  Severin didn’t respond – but did finally blink, so that was something.

  “Sev,” Alexei said, and earned the boy’s gaze, eyes widening a fraction at the shortening of his name. “Are you tired?” Maybe it was best to keep things simple until he learned how conversation worked.

  He earned a few more blinks, and a reflective gaze, as Severin considered. Then he said, “Yes, a little.”

  “You should get some rest before tonight – we all should. Do you want to lie down out here? Or in the bedroom?”

  More considerat
ion. Then a quick shrug. “Where do you want me to lie down?”

  Dante made a little bitten-back noise of dismay. This whole situation just got more pathetic all the time.

  “Why don’t you stay out here,” Alexei said, getting to his feet. “We’ll leave you alone. Give you some quiet.”

  Severin nodded, but his body swayed forward, as if he wanted to follow Alexei.

  “Stay,” Alexei told him, like he was a dog, belly squirming with distaste.

  “Let me get you some blankets,” Dante said, sliding into host mode. “And you can take your shoes and coat off: more comfortable that way.”

  Alexei didn’t linger. He headed down the hall to the bedroom, plucking a half-full bottle of Cabernet off the glittering drinks trolley on his way.

  Dante’s room was as he’d left it in the wee hours: drapes pulled shut, letting in only faint slivers of daylight, the bed rumpled, smelling of sex, of Alexei and the woman he’d been with last night. Her scent – human, and a stranger – disgusted him, suddenly, and he stripped all the linens off. He was piling them up in the corner when Dante slipped quietly into the room.

  “Ah,” he said. “I’ll be back.” He left, and returned a moment later with a armful of fresh, crisp linens. “Here, help me do the sheets.”

  They worked in silence, smoothing fine Egyptian cotton over the mattress, tucking the corners in tight and putting the pillows in new cases. Dante had even brought a fresh quilt, soft and lavender-scented. When they were finished, they folded the covers back, and Alexei turned to get the wine.

  He took a few long pulls straight from the bottle, standing up, and toed his boots off without bothering over the laces.

  “Forgive me, because I know you won’t like it much right now, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it,” Dante said.

  Alexei turned to find the other vampire in the process of undressing, shirt gone, thumbs hooked in the waistband of his jeans as he worked sinuously side-to-side to get them down his hips. He was all slender, sculpted muscle, a figure that belonged in marble, bare with only a drape on his hips, expressive face drawn with anguish, long arms reaching. Something tasteful and classic in a museum.

  Alexei allowed himself a moment of appreciation and then started on his own clothes. “Mention what?”

  “Our young Severin seems to think he owes you his allegiance. You are a good kisser,” he said with a tired, half-hearted smirk. Then grew serious again. “You don’t have any Familiars.”

  “Really?”

  “He’s powerful. A binding could be beneficial for both of you – and for our cause.”

  Alexei sighed. He wouldn’t lie and say he hadn’t considered it – but only briefly, in a do-I-dare sort of way. He’d considered the ways it would guarantee Severin – unpredictable and frightening – would stay loyal to him, that he’d mind him. And the binding itself might be a reassurance to the boy; help him adjust to the real world, give him an emotional stability he sorely needed.

  He hadn’t ever had a Familiar…but he didn’t share Nikita’s loathing of the idea.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said. “But I don’t want to talk about it now.”

  Dante nodded. Clad only in his black briefs, he slid into bed, propped up on his side, on one arm. “Will you share?” He reached out a hand – maybe for the wine, maybe for Alexei himself.

  Alexei kicked his jeans away and climbed in, passing over the bottle.

  He’d been unbearably tired out on the couch, but now, in clean sheets, fortified with a few swallows of wine, he felt annoyingly awake.

  Dante took a long swallow and rested the bottle between them, holding it loosely, licking a few stray drops off his lips. “It isn’t just me that’s troubling you,” he guessed.

  Alexei took the bottle, and another sip. His automatic reaction was to push back, more petulant oh, so you think you know me. At this point, he had to admit that Dante did know him. Understood him, at least.

  “What Val said.”

  Dante’s brows quirked. “The three emperors thing.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  Another up-down of his black brows, clearly surprised to have been consulted. “Numerical symbolism has always been powerful. The superstition about Friday the thirteenth, for instance–”

  “I don’t need a history lesson, professor,” he said without any heat. “I asked for your opinion.”

  Dante thought a moment, lips pursed; took the bottle back for a moment. “Did you know,” he said, after he’d swallowed, “that Moscow is a city of seven hills?”

  “What did I just say?”

  “No, this is important. Moscow is a city of seven hills – just as Byzantium. Just as Rome. It’s one of the reason the Muscovites bought so readily and enthusiastically into the idea of the Third Rome.”

  Alexei suppressed a shiver, all the hair on his body prickling. “You’re kidding.”

  “Very much not. There’s power in numbers, three and seven especially. Seven hills, three Romes, three seats of immense power, wealth, and mystique. Three histories rife with unbelievable stories, and leaders too strange and terrible to be believed.

  “I’d not heard a theory like Price’s before, but it makes an awful kind of sense.”

  “None of those empires exists today,” Alexei argued, but weakly. His skin was crawling.

  “And neither does Romulus, king of Rome, according to humans.” Dante looked at him seriously. “Does the idea frighten you?”

  “Well…yes! Look at me.”

  Dante’s gaze moved across him, hungry suddenly.

  “Not like that.” He took a hard pull off the bottle; there was only a little left, now. “I can call myself tsar all I want.” He shivered, hating, for a moment, that he was showing doubt, that he was letting Dante bring out his vulnerabilities – but shoved that worry away. For good or for bad, he did care, after all, and even if he’d lied before, Dante was a comfort, now. Had been from the first. “But I’ve only ever been a tsarevich – and a sickly one at that. I wasn’t even out of the schoolroom when it all came crashing down, and I – I can’t be an emperor. Not one fated to lead Rome against its founder. That’s ridiculous.” And terrifying, he didn’t say.

  Dante studied him a moment, then plucked the bottle from his hand and twisted to set it on the nightstand. When he rolled back over, he settled his hand on top of Alexei’s on the sheets. “Can I show you something?”

  A joke formed and died on his tongue. He swallowed. “Show me what?”

  “Observations. Your lineage.”

  “I know my lineage. I don’t need to look through anymore of your albums.” Though a part of him wanted that, desperately. To see the faces of his parents and his sisters again, even if they were grainy and colorless. To lay their true features over the indistinct memories that lived in his head.

  “No, not like that.” Dante lifted his hand, and very gently brushed a few stray pieces of hair off Alexei’s brow, tracing delicate fingertips across his forehead, after. “Show you. Like before, with my own past.”

  Alexei stilled. “What you’ve studied?”

  “I have studied it. But – it comes and goes. There are glitches. But once I start down the path, I can usually follow it for a time. I can see what was, not just what’s been taken down in books. Not all dream-walkers tread the same paths on the astral plane: the past is my path.” He smiled, faintly. “How else do you think I made such a good historian?”

  Alexei held still a long moment, every muscle tensed, debating. “How – how much would you show me?”

  “Sometimes I can control it. Sometimes I can hand-pick. But sometimes it runs away from me.”

  “What are – are you trying to convince me of something?” His lungs worked, tight and painful, pulse hummingbird fast in his throat, making him faint. The lightest cut would have bled him into a coma right now.

  “No.” Dante’s fingers slid down his cheek and jaw, until he pressed a thumb to the quick throb of his pul
se. “You’re trying to decide something. I want to help, if I can.”

  A lie, he wondered?

  But Dante had never looked so sincere. So – well, there was an emotion there, something affectionate that Alexei refused to name.

  Finally, he nodded. “Show me why Liam Price wants me.”

  And perhaps that would go a ways toward explaining why the hell Liam’s Price’s son was so attached to him.

  “Alright.” Dante pulled his hand back. “Lie down, sweetheart.”

  They settled on their sides, facing one another. “What do I–”

  “Close your eyes,” Dante instructed. “Try to relax. Let your guard down, if you can.” A moment later, his hand landed on Alexei’s face, a light touch on his cheek. “Breathe.”

  Alexei took a deep breath – and fell.

  ~*~

  He opened his eyes and found that he stood in a drift of dirty, half-melted snow, the edges of brown leaves peeking up through the screen of it. It was evening, the light the low, blue shadow that came when early spring was still mostly winter, the clouds heavy, the air breathtakingly cold. Bare tree trunks surrounded him, ranged close together. He smelled frost, leaf mold, freshly-turned soil – and death.

  He started to turn – and there was Dante beside him, his hair scraped viciously back and clubbed with a bit of ribbon, wearing a tailored, shabby old suit with leather elbow patches on the jacket. Clothes from his mortal life, it seemed.

  “I know this forest,” Alexei said.

  Dante nodded, morose, and motioned over his shoulder.

  Alexei turned around.

  A boxy lorry sat parked amongst the trees, its tailgate lowered, a lantern poised their illuminating several long bundles bound up in greasy old canvas tarps. Another lantern was held aloft by a man standing at the edge of a deep hole, the tips of shovels rising rhythmically over the edge, flinging out black, wet earth.