Shadows and Light

by Cari Z

  He was exhausted too. Rafael finished his bath quickly, rinsing and stepping out onto the floor, then staggering and barely catching himself by grabbing the edge of the tub. He dressed mechanically, slid his feet into the soft, parchment-thin slippers sitting by the door and stepped out into the hallway. He needed to sleep. He headed toward his old room, but upon opening the door and stepping inside, he stopped again. It was filthy in here, dust saturating every corner. Not the best place for him now. There were other rooms. He would choose one of them. He had learned every inch of this house during his apprenticeship.

  He trudged down the hall again, aching and bleary and cold, and opened another door. A bedroom, good. Rafael staggered over to the large, raised bed and collapsed onto it, toeing the slippers off and crawling forward until his head found a cushion. The dark comforter beneath his cheek smelled reassuring and he turned his face toward it and gratefully fell asleep.

  * * * *

  The cushion he was curled around was warm. It was the first thing Rafael noticed as he began to swim his way out of unconsciousness. It smelled wonderful and it was warm, hot almost, and it moved slightly. Those pleasant observations out of the way, he began to wonder why his cushion had these properties. His arms tightened around it experimentally. A hand touched his head and began to sift through his clean, loose hair. “You slept like the dead, pet,” Xian said.

  Ah. Well. So, this could be embarrassing. “Hmm,” Rafael murmured noncommittally as he opened his eyes to take stock of his surroundings. His head was currently using Xian’s left thigh as a pillow, his arms were wrapped around the other man’s waist, and wonder of wonders it didn’t seem to be distressing his master. Not that many things ever did. Rafael widened his gaze to take in the rest of the room, the clean furnishings and bright lamps on the bedside tables and the unmistakable air of Xian permeating everything, and sighed. “I chose this room by accident.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I was tired.” Rafael defended himself. “It was familiar. I couldn’t use my room, it looks like it hasn’t been cleaned for years…” He trailed off as he considered that. “Because it hasn’t.”

  “Ah, thinking again. I’m grateful for that, pet, I was beginning to worry about the strength of your mind.” Xian was looking at him with a small smile, still moving his hand slowly though Rafael’s hair, patiently untangling the long strands.

  “What was Myrtea to you, once?” he asked suddenly.

  “I wondered if you’d ask about that,” Xian said with a sigh. “Myrtea is a founder, like I am. We knew each other well before we ascended, and for a long time afterward, we were very close.”

  “She calls you beloved.” He wasn’t sure why he was pursuing it, but the appellation had bothered him more than he wanted to admit.

  “She’s called me many things over the years, Rafael, and most of them don’t bear thinking about. It isn’t a tale for today. Myrtea has no place in this bed with us right now.”

  “Did you miss me?”

  “Beyond reason. Why do you think I never touched your room?”

  Rafael shrugged awkwardly, not willing to let go of his hold. “There could be other reasons. You couldn’t take another apprentice, I assume, because of the fears over the source, so perhaps you simply didn’t have need of the space.”

  “Well reasoned and entirely facetious, pet, as I think you know.”

  Rafael squeezed his eyes shut. “Don’t tell me anything that isn’t true.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t lie to you about something like this, pet. Not now.” He slowly removed his hand from Rafael’s hair. “You’ve slept the night away. You look better for it, but we have much to speak of.” He reached over to the bedside table and brought back two small bowls. “You should eat something.”

  Reluctantly, Rafael eased away from his master and sat up, blushing briefly when he realized he was hard. Again. Xian didn’t seem to care and so he ignored it as well, and took the proffered bowls. One had lukewarm lemongrass tea in it, flavored with honeysuckle and cinnamon. The other was bread in milk, food that he would normally disdain but knew was about the extent of what his stomach could handle right now. He ate the portion in slow, hungry bites and drank the tea in sips. He paused, waiting to see if he’d need to keep the bowls to catch what came back up, but instead of nausea he just felt ridiculously full.

  “Better?” Xian inquired as he took the bowls back.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “So…” Rafael stared down at his hands. “Now what?”

  “Now you have to decide what you’re going to do. Let me sketch the basics for you.” Xian’s eyes never left his face. “I have absolutely no intention of turning you over to Myrtea and the council, which is what they’ll be expecting in approximately twelve hours.” He met Rafael’s surprised look calmly. “You needed the rest, pet, don’t let it bother you. Your only option at this point is to run, it just becomes a matter of how and where. In the short term, you have to leave this house before sunset. The doors on the ground level are all being monitored, as are the tunnels, but I doubt any of the council’s guardsmen know about the exit on the roof. It’s your best chance to escape without a fight. I recommend returning to the Lower City as quickly as possible. Once you get that far, well…” He shrugged minutely. “It’s your choice, but if I were you I wouldn’t stay in Clare. The council will be looking for you and Daeva is sure to have his feelers out as well.”

  “What will you do?” Rafael challenged. “You speak like you’re not leaving as well, but we both know that you’ll be as hunted as I am when Myrtea realizes you let me go.”

  “True. I can’t stay either.” Xian turned away now to stare out into the room. “The source will run completely dry by the winter festival, I estimate. Before that there will be chaos in our ranks, and after that it won’t be long until the Upper City falls. Two years at the outside. The addiction will be wearing on most of them long before that.”

  “How long?” Rafael asked quietly. “Before you begin to feel it?”

  “How long before you felt it?” Xian countered. “You lost a lesser version of the same elixir once you stopped trying to kill yourself. I know you’ve been sparing in your use ever since. How long did it wear on you?”

  “Months,” he replied. “Badly for several months, and then less and less for…perhaps a year?”

  Xian nodded understandingly. “I’m one of Clare’s founders, pet. I’ve been drinking the blood of Erran for over five centuries. Pure, undiluted magic. The longest I’ve ever been without is four months, and I began to feel the withdrawal after only a week. By the end of that time, I was nearly insane with need.”

  The distance between them suddenly made Rafael ache. He didn’t stop to think, he just slipped back into his master’s embrace, curled against his side and wrapped his arms around him again. Xian let him in easily, turning and pressing a kiss to Rafael’s forehead. “There is a place I can go,” he murmured. “On the mainland, a month’s travel into the mountains. If I can make it that far, I’ll have reached the closest thing to a sanctuary that remains for an exile. If I get that far, I can die in relative peace.”

  The ache in Rafael’s chest squeezed his heart like a fist. “You don’t have to die. You told me that people have survived it before. You’re strong, you know how to handle pain. You can live.”

  “The pair that survived the process before had help, pet.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  Xian sighed heavily. He shifted and pulled Rafael closer to him, burying his face in his apprentice’s hair and nuzzling the top of his head. “This is your chance to be completely free of everything to do with this cursed city. That includes me, Rafael. Withdrawal is a destructive process, and not one I want you to see. I’ll be mindless by the end, a simple, screaming husk. That’s if I don’t kill myself beforehand. It’s better if we part now.”

  “It’s not better!” Rafael insisted, pulling back and staring hard at Xian. “B
etter for whom? For you? To give up on the only chance you have of living through losing your immortality because you don’t think I’ll be able to bear caring for you? Or better for me, because clearly I’ve been the embodiment of health and happiness for the past five years. Who’s being thick now?” He thrust a finger hard into Xian’s chest. “You raised me, you shaped me, and you ruined me. You admitted it yourself. You don’t get to unilaterally decide what’s better for me now after all that.

  “I need you. I need to be with you, and if you tell me to leave without you again, I will fucking hurt you. I love you, you absolute idiot. Look it up if you don’t know what that means.” Simmering with anger and a little fear, Rafael flopped back down against the headboard and glowered at his master.

  Xian was shaking slightly. It took Rafael a long, tense moment to realize he was laughing. He was trying to hold it in, but the subdued expression on his face was fast expanding to a grin. “You’re delightfully honest, pet, an absolute treasure.” He laughed aloud then, and let his head tilt back until it touched the wall, eyes closing. He kept laughing, and finally Rafael grinned with him. “And I can’t argue with your logic,” he said at last. “I owe you whatever you want.”

  That splashed a bucket of cold water right over Rafael’s rising hopes. “It shouldn’t be about that.”

  “It isn’t only about that,” Xian replied. He tilted his head toward the other man. “I always cared for you, Rafael. That hasn’t changed.”

  Cared for. Cared. Owed. Missed. None of these words were the one Rafael was dying to hear, but he couldn’t ask. He didn’t want to hear the answer if it was going to be no. He wasn’t strong enough for that right now. He wanted to hold on to the fragile sense of hope that had replaced the convulsive ache in his chest.

  “My poor Rafael,” Xian said, reaching out and cupping his apprentice’s face in his hands. “You’ve suffered a great deal for me. You’ll continue to suffer for me, because I won’t make you leave me even though I think you should.” He brushed his thumb slowly across Rafael’s lower lip, tracing its contours with a gentleness that was surprising. “Beautiful boy.”

  Rafael couldn’t ask the question burning through his mind now either, but he didn’t have to. Xian looked into his face and read it there, in the tension in his body and the rapid rise of his erection. “Of course I want you.”

  In a second Rafael was sitting astride Xian’s thighs, facing him and clutching him, pouring his recovering energy and body and spirit into kissing him. Xian chuckled around his lips. “Passionate,” he murmured, “willful. Beautiful.” He opened his mouth and kissed back, and the wrought-iron walls around Rafael’s heart, already stressed and cracking, shattered into countless sizzling fragments that burned ecstatically as they dissolved into his body. He pressed their chests together, resenting the cloth between them even as he reveled in the closeness. Xian’s hands moved down his neck, across his shoulders, and splayed against his back, fingers seeking out healing welts and stroking them gently. Frissons of painful pleasure radiated up and down his spine, and Rafael knew he couldn’t think too closely about who was touching him or he’d shoot right away, like he had in the bath.

  Xian knew, of course. He pulled back a little ways and stared into Rafael’s beseeching eyes. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you come, pet,” he said in a voice gone husky with desire. They had never done this before, but there had been times when Rafael hadn’t been able to keep himself from orgasm during a session in the high-ceilinged chamber. “Remind me of how it looks.” He slid his hands over Rafael’s abdomen and into the loose pants and touched him. Not tentatively but firmly, sure of what he sought, and all Rafael could do was give it to him.

  The reality of Xian’s hands where Rafael had imagined them only hours ago swept over his nerves like fire, and he thrust forward into the channel they made with a hoarse groan, his forehead coming to rest against Xian’s. Once, twice and by the third thrust he was coming, crying out and screwing up his face against the long-anticipated wonder of it. He came fast and hard and heavy, and soon after he lay his head down on Xian’s shoulder, panting and shuddering through the aftershocks.

  “So beautiful,” Xian whispered against his ear, kissing him there, raising his hands to gentle his trembling apprentice like he would a spooked animal, with long, soothing strokes. His fingers were wet with cum but neither of them cared. “And mine. You were always mine, pet, only mine. No matter whom you were with or what you did.”

  “Yes,” Rafael managed. “Yes.”

  “I want you now.”

  “I’m for you.”

  Xian chuckled. “So you told me long ago. All of you, all for me… You’re a feast, Rafael.” He lifted his head up and kissed him again on the mouth, more insistent now, more controlling. Rafael relaxed into his master’s embrace, the raw edge of his need smoothed over but his body still pleading to be taken. Owned. He wanted to be owned by Xian, consumed, wanted and needed in return. He wanted to feel Xian inside him.

  They had never had sex before. Given Rafael’s nature his training had always carried a certain sensual edge, but Xian had never taken him and Rafael had never been bold enough to ask. He’d made do with fantasies, fed by every shared look and focused moment of attention Xian bestowed on him. Now he was with him, in his arms, and Xian was turning him onto his back on the soft comforter and kissing him possessively, and it was glorious. The rub of cloth against his abrasions was a goad to his pleasure but the feel of Xian’s skin after he stripped them both out of their house clothes was even better. Xian’s length was a hard, hot brand between his thighs, and the sheer rightness of it made Rafael moan with need.

  “Yes,” he begged. “Yes. Please.” One hand left his body briefly and came back holding a small glass vial. Xian tipped the contents carelessly onto his hand and let it leak over his fingers—a thick, unscented oil. He reached down and pressed against Rafael’s entrance as his teeth nipped at his lip, then scraped a glowing red path down his neck to a hard nipple as his fingers pushed inside.

  He could have slammed into Rafael completely dry and his apprentice would have been deliriously happy with it, but the fact that Xian was taking care with him now, giving him the sort of attention he had craved, was almost too much for him. He was completely hard again, and the touch of fingers against his prostate made him quiver with the need to come.

  “Wait,” Xian murmured against his chest, his lips and teeth still busy, his hand still moving, stretching and twisting. “Wait until I tell you.”

  Gods, wait? How could Rafael hold back the storm building inside him, two decades of desire given physical form? He could because he had to, he reminded himself. Because Xian had told him to wait, and he would do anything for him. He lay there writhing, suffering blissfully on the edge of completion and utterly content to do so.

  Xian finally pulled his fingers back and raised his head again. Rafael lifted his hips, arching wantonly into Xian’s body, and his master smiled hungrily at him, then held him still and quickly plunged inside.

  Rafael shuddered and caught his breath. It hurt, despite the preparation. Xian’s cock burned and he burned with it, all over, and it felt incredible. Xian didn’t move, just held his eyes as he adjusted to the sensation. His master’s lips were parted, his own breath coming fast and Rafael loved it, loved knowing it was because of him. Xian’s eyes were normally blank, expressionless due to the loss of their color, but Rafael could read the desire in them now.

  “I love you,” he whispered, needing to say it again even though he was sure his lover wasn’t going to reciprocate.

  “My Rafael…” Xian began to move, little more than an undulation at first but it grew quickly into lengthy thrusting. Rafael wrapped his legs around Xian’s waist and pulled him in with more force, slams that scraped over the sweet spot inside him and made him wail. He kept his hands on his master’s arms, unable to touch himself, knowing he would come the moment he did, and he couldn’t let that happen, not yet. />
  The speed and force grew, and the fight to control his body’s reaction escalated into an all-out war. Rafael gritted his teeth and forced himself to focus on the curve of Xian’s shoulder, the clean scent of his hair, the warm cloth against Rafael’s own back that was keeping his wounds deliciously raw. He could do this, control himself, he could, he could…

  All of a sudden the space between them disappeared as Xian leaned in and claimed his mouth in a brutal kiss. He tasted blood staining his teeth but didn’t care, because now Xian’s body was pressing down on his cock, providing friction that was too perfect, too much, and Rafael thought he might go out of his mind. Then Xian jerked back and almost all the way out. “Come,” he ordered, and slammed back inside.

  It felt so good to let go, the pleasure of obedience heightening the ecstasy in his body. Rafael threw his head back and came, the force of his orgasm bowing his whole body around Xian’s and tearing a scream from his throat. His fingers clenched raw furrows down the length of his master’s biceps as he clung to him, and the pleasure went on and on, relentlessly abolishing his ability to do anything other than feel and tremble with the strength of it.

  Coming back to life with Xian holding him, kissing his face gently as hands rubbed soft circles over his pounding heart, was one of the sweetest things Rafael had ever experienced. He didn’t open his eyes, just slung limp arms and legs around his master and pulled himself closer. He was floating in a blissful haze, and the longer he could make it last the better. Xian was patient, and just held him and petted him for minute after minute until the glow diminished enough that Rafael felt capable of using his mind again.