by Cari Z
“You’ve been making me do most of them anyway,” Rafael replied, reaching out and carefully removing the silver needles from Xian’s quivering thigh muscles. Getting them out was a relief to both of them. “It’s like being your apprentice again.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want you to feel unprepared,” Xian said glibly, flexing his legs slightly as if testing the damage.
“I knew there was an explanation.” Rafael’s bravado drained away abruptly and he swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. You did everything right, Rafael.”
“I know it was necessary, but I’m still sorry,” he sighed. “I hate having to hurt you.”
“Ah, pet… You’re going to have to get used to it. Pain is going to become a very big facet of my life, and it’s something I’m going to need if I’m going to get through the withdrawal.”
“Why would hurting you make it easier?”
“Why does hurting you make some things easier for you?” Xian asked rhetorically. “You know why pain helps, Rafael. Pain is potent, it’s primal. Pain focuses the mind on the immediate, not on the thousands of thoughts or feelings that try to distract and destroy you. It will be doubly important for me, since my body is going to be purging itself of centuries’ worth of Erran’s blood. I need a safe way to release it, and open wounds will provide that.”
“Open wounds… Like cutting you?”
“Whipping might be easier,” Xian said with a shrug. “I know it’s a drastic change in our dynamic, Rafael, and I hate to demand it of you, but I doubt Nailah will be in any condition to help me with that part of the process.”
“Oh.” Logically Rafael had known that it could come to this, but he’d managed to avoid thinking about it before. Needles he could do—they barely drew blood—and restraints he could handle, but to actually strike Xian with the intention of breaking his skin… The thought of it sickened him.
It was that same reluctance that had made it impossible for Rafael to successfully fight his former master at close quarters when this all began. He had tried to end it with his crossbow and failed, and once they had closed the distance and began fighting with blades, the moment he’d seen Xian’s face, he’d known it was no use. He couldn’t cut him, not deliberately, not when he wasn’t so filled with rage he was nearly blind. And now he’d have to. “Oh,” he repeated weakly.
“Yes.” Xian trailed his trembling fingertips down the side of Rafael’s face in a gentle apology. “We had better get moving, pet. If we’re lucky, we’ll be there before dawn.”
Chapter Seventeen
Lucky was nowhere near what Rafael would have called their situation a few hours later. The snow was coming down harder than ever, and the wind had picked up enough that he could feel the chill of it straight through to his marrow. He wondered if that was how Xian felt all the time, if the demigod’s blood cooled him all the way through. Perhaps you could get used to that kind of cold after a while. For himself, though, for now, all Rafael could think about was the ice that dotted his eyelashes and the tips of his fingers, and the burn that preceded the numbness creeping up his limbs.
The trail was narrow and slick, one side a rising mountain wall and the other a scree field that descended into a narrow valley. Xian had decided that they were better off on the horses than leading them, and given how cold Rafael’s feet were without being in the actual snow, he couldn’t bring himself to disagree. Still, every time his horse stumbled he found himself glancing ahead at Xian, checking to see that he was still there, still upright. The snow obscured his vision and the wind muffled all sound, so much so that after a particularly strong blast of skin-searing ice crystals, it took several moments of looking for Rafael to realize that it wasn’t that he simply couldn’t make Xian out through the storm. He was actually gone.
“No.” It was the first word out of Rafael’s mouth and the only one he took the time to speak. He forced his horse to speed up, then almost fell as the animal tripped over a deep break in the trail. The snow was dislodged here, the talus disturbed, and Rafael slid off his horse and down the slope in an instant, ignoring the distant pain of shards of rock biting into his flesh. Xian was down here somewhere, and Xian’s hands were still bound.
I should never have let him keep the cuffs on—not now, not like this. Not until we were safe. But there was no safe right now, not with Xian the way he was.
Fifteen feet down the slope Rafael found the horse. It was buried hip-deep in the scree, and he could tell from how it quivered that something was broken. The animal didn’t move, didn’t make a sound, just trembled and bled. It was bleeding heavily, he could smell that much even though he couldn’t make it out in the dark. He felt around the hapless horse for any sign of Xian, a bit of his clothing, the silk of his hair, but there was nothing. So he must have fallen farther.
Rafael turned from the horse and continued down the slope so fast that he almost fell over Xian five feet later. The man was a mass of darkness against the white, almost a shadow, but when Rafael’s foot hit something soft instead of hard he knew what it was. Falling to his knees beside him, Rafael turned his lover onto his back. “Xian?”
There was no reply. Xian was utterly still, dark streaks against the white blur of his face indicating places where he’d gotten cut. Those would heal soon enough as long as he was still breathing, and after an anguished second with Rafael’s ear pressed to Xian’s chest, feeling it move beneath him was a blessing. Rafael sighed with relief and raised his head, cupping Xian’s face with his hand. He frowned as he felt the wounds in his lover’s skin, and peeled off his gloves to touch ragged edges. They weren’t healing, not at all. That meant something else was going on, something that was using all of his magic.
Rafael began to shift rocks out of the way, unearthing buried limbs. When he felt Xian’s lower right leg he knew that something was wrong. Jagged bone jutted through the cloth, and Rafael could feel the muscles straining beneath his hands, trying to shift the break back into place. Blood, not cold like he’d been thinking but hot, almost scalding, spilled across his fingertips, blood that brought warmth into his frostbitten hands immediately, blood that healed everything it touched. Blood that should have stayed inside Xian, damn it all to fucking hell.
Rafael didn’t take time to consider it, he just pulled down on Xian’s foot, then shoved hard against his broken shin. The bones shifted with a disgusting crunch, but they did disappear back beneath the torn skin, which instantly began to mend. Rafael felt along the line of the break, trying to tell if the ends were aligned or just close, but there was too much swelling to be sure either way.
“Xian?” Rafael left his leg and crawled back up his body, cupping his face again. “Xian?” Still nothing. The gashes on his face remained open and raw, but they weren’t bleeding now. “Fuck.” Rafael glanced back up the slope and saw that Xian’s horse was totally still now—the stillness that came with the final end of pain. “Fuck.” They needed a horse now, more than ever. If his had decided to take off—
Rafael let go of his lover and ran up the rocks. He slipped more than once, but he was on his feet again in moments, forcing himself to run and make sure that his cursed, damned, stubborn-as-shit horse hadn’t gone and bolted. Breathlessly arriving back on the path and seeing the animal standing there was almost anticlimactic, but Rafael didn’t let relief stop him from tying the animal’s reins to the twisted stump of a scrub tree that stuck out of the side of the mountain. Once he knew the horse was secure, he gingerly patted its mane. “Good boy.” The horse quivered but didn’t shy. “Good,” Rafael repeated. “That’s it, that’s good. Just be calm and wait for us. I’ll be back.”
Getting down the slope again was simple. The prospect of getting back up it hauling Xian with him was nearly enough to make him collapse, but Rafael forced himself to move. He couldn’t carry Xian up the hill, but he could drag him. It wasn’t ideal for an injured man but it was the only option he had. He slid his gory hands beneath Xian’s armp
its, braced his feet on the slope and heaved. They moved half a foot. He repositioned, took a second, inhaled deeply and heaved again.
By the time Rafael got them both back up to the trail, he was sweating with exertion, and feeling a strange combination of overheating and freezing. He managed to lift Xian up long enough to get him over the horse’s back, but then his strength seemed to fade away and he all but collapsed against the cliff. He knew he should go back down, take Xian’s saddlebags off the body of his mount, bring them back up here… But he couldn’t. Fifteen feet had never seemed so far, and they were merely back on the trail, not yet to their destination. There had been no place worth stopping all night and the sky was already beginning to lighten ominously.
Finally Rafael decided that the bags could wait. There was nothing essential in them, he was the one carrying the blood and the needles. He unwrapped the horse’s reins and tied them loosely around his waist. If one of them was going down again, they all were, damn it. Then he set out along the trail, trying to remember the details of Xian’s description of his sister’s home, trying to spot any sign of habitation, trying desperately to keep himself from giving in to the panic that was nipping at his heels. He couldn’t afford to panic. Not now.
Rafael would have missed the turn into the valley entirely in all the fresh snow if the house in the distance hadn’t been blazing with light. It had windows, paned with real glass, not the skins that so many people here seemed to favor. It was only a single level but the windows extended all around the house, and they glowed like a flickering wreath of fire.
Honestly at this point Rafael didn’t care who the house belonged to. It could have been anyone’s home and he still would have stumbled up the snow-entrenched walk, beneath a corridor of looming trees, and banged ceaselessly on the door until he could beg the inhabitants for help. When the door opened on a woman, her golden hair gleaming like a halo but her face shadowed by the predawn darkness, Rafael gathered himself and prepared to do just that.
The woman stepped back from the door and suddenly the tall, imposing angel was transformed into an old woman, her hair white, not gold, her back still straight and strong but the lines of many decades mapping her face. She took another long look at the tableau in front of her and finally snapped, “Get him down and inside, boy.”
Rafael didn’t say anything, he just turned and pulled Xian’s body off the horse, biting back a groan of pain as the weight settled. His arms burned and his lungs ached, but he managed to drag his lover into the light. A padded leather bench waited, just wide enough for a body, and Rafael set Xian down as gently as he could.
“What did you do?” the woman exclaimed. It took a moment before Rafael realized that she wasn’t talking to him, she was talking to Xian, and her expression was both angry and tender. “Fool,” she said, sitting down on a stool placed nearby. “Old fool.” She touched his face, examining the wounds there, and glanced up at Rafael. “You only left Clare a month ago. Why does he look like this?” She caught sight of the manacles and her face became furious. “Get those off him! Why are they on in the first place? He shouldn’t need them yet.” Her voice was the voice of a much younger woman, low and smoky and probably sensual when she didn’t sound so incensed.
What order was Rafael supposed to answer those questions in? “Xian’s horse fell on the trail. The animal died and Xian broke his leg. I tried to fix it, but I’m not sure it’s straight. And he told me yesterday to put the manacles on, because he was getting…he was becoming…” When had he turned into a stutterer? Rafael reached wearily into his pouch and fumbled for the key, finally withdrawing it and managing to get it into the lock. The silver restraints fell onto the floor. Neither of them moved to pick them up.
The old woman eyed him for a moment, then sniffed and dismissed him. “Go tend to your horse. There’s a stable in the back.”
There was a task he could do, and needed to. Feeling suddenly very unnecessary, Rafael walked out of the brightly lit house and led his shuddering horse around to the stables. He removed the bags, the saddle and the bridle, threw a heavy blanket over the animal’s back and pulled out a brush. He smoothed it over the short, coarse hair, removing ice and debris, and gradually both of them calmed down. There was already hay and water in the stall, and eventually the horse was gentled enough to start eating.
“You have your priorities straight,” Rafael murmured, leaning into the large, warm body. He shut his eyes and sighed. He was so tired…
A bright shaft of lantern light flared against his eyelids, and Rafael started into wakefulness. The old woman was next to him, lantern in one hand, a cane in the other. She stood as straight as ever, but he could see now that she leaned most of her weight on her right side. “Come and help me move him,” was all she said. “The sun is almost up.”
“Oh, hell,” Rafael muttered. He bent painfully to grab the bags, but then her stick banged purposefully against his side. “Ow!”
“Leave them. The boy will bring them in later in the day,” she said. She looked him up and down with gimlet eyes. They were brown, Rafael realized. Wet and rheumy, but brown. “I doubt you could haul them in at this point anyway.” She turned and limped out of the small, four-stall stable, and Rafael followed her.
The center door leading off from the living area was open. The interior of the room beyond it was utterly dark. “Push the bench inside,” the woman directed.
Rafael looked blurrily at Xian, but the other didn’t appear to have moved at all, and still seemed completely unconscious. Rafael’s fingers itched to touch his lover, but an impatient bang of the cane next to his foot broke him out of his reverie. He bent his shoulder to the bench and pushed, surprised by how easily it slid across the smooth wooden floor. Once it was entirely inside, the woman entered. The lantern light revealed a pile of blankets in one corner, a ceramic basin filled with water on a low table, another stool, and fixed into the wall were a set of bulky steel manacles. Even as tired as he was, Rafael knew enough to glare at the woman.
“These ones aren’t silver,” she said haughtily, then shoved at him with the cane again. “The room next door has water to bathe with and a bed for you. Go rest. I’ll tend to him now.”
“I want to stay,” Rafael protested, not willing to be parted from Xian now after so long together. The woman could see he was serious.
“You will stay,” she said soothingly. “Later. For now, go and rest.” She paused for a moment, then added, “You may call me Nailah.”
“His sister…” Rafael said muzzily.
“Yes, I’m his sister. He told you that much about me?”
“Not very much.”
“More than I thought he would,” Nailah said with one raised eyebrow. “Go. Sleep.”
Exactly how he found his way to the room she had prepared for him, managed to shed his ruined clothes and had the sense of mind to rinse the worst of the filth from his body before sliding between the cool sheets, Rafael didn’t know. He only knew that as soon as his head hit the pillow, he was swaddled in darkness so deep and soothing that even his fears couldn’t penetrate it, and he slept for once without dreams or nightmares.
Chapter Eighteen
The scent of food brought him out of it eventually. Food and smoke―a strange, thick smoke that smelled faintly herbal. Rafael’s body ached intensely, but there were no sharp pains and the cuts on his arms and legs were already halfway healed. His saddlebags had been brought in and set on a mat against one of the walls. A simple woolen tunic and trousers had been laid at the foot of his bed, and after taking care of necessities, he tugged them on, then headed into the main room.
Nailah was there, sitting in a high-backed rocking chair that somehow managed to look regal. She had her left hand lying still on the armrest, and in her right she held a thick cheroot, one end flaring with a reddish glow as she drew the smoke into her lungs. Her feet were propped up on a footstool, and the fire burning in the enormous grate to her left blazed merrily with a dozen large logs.
The room was almost hot, and Rafael fell in love with it instantly.
It was still dark outside. “How long did I sleep?” he asked, looking from her to the doorway to Xian’s room. It was open, just a crack, but there was no light coming from within.
“All through the day and into evening,” Nailah replied. She waved toward the chair opposite hers. “You might as well get some food and sit down. He’s still sleeping, and will be for some time.”
Rafael looked and found a pot simmering over banked coals in the kitchen, which was set back a bit from the central room. He spooned soup of some kind into a bowl, filled another bowl with clear water from a nearby barrel, then returned to Nailah. She said nothing. He sat, ate a bite, and also said nothing. They stared stubbornly at each other for a long time before the old woman sighed.
“You’re hardly what I expected him to settle for in the end.”
“He didn’t settle for me, he chose me,” Rafael said firmly.
“Calm down,” Nailah said with a dismissive wave, taking another drag from her cigar. “I know my brother rather better than you do, I think, and I know how adamant he can be about things once his mind is made up. I’m certain he did choose you. I just wish he could have gotten his head out of his rear end sooner, that’s all.” She glanced over to Rafael before looking back into the fire. “Is Myrtea dead?”
The question surprised him. “I don’t know,” Rafael replied. “She wasn’t when I last saw her.”
“More’s the pity,” Nailah interjected. The look they shared this time was entirely in accord. Nailah’s lips twisted then, a bitter parody of a smile. “So, Clare has finally fallen?”
“Yes.” Rafael didn’t prevaricate this time.
“It was time. Past time, really.” Her eyelids lowered to half-mast, the irises barely visible through the drifting smoke. “Anyone with sense had known this would happen. The gods never give a gift for free, not even to their own offspring. Why would mere humans be any different?”
