by Cari Z
“I wouldn’t know, I’ve never spent any time around children,” Rafael replied as he climbed in beside Xian.
“You might like it. They’re delightful when they’re not heinous little monsters.”
Rafael raised an eyebrow. “Speaking from experience?”
“Not actually in regards to you,” Xian said. “You were for the most part a very good child. But I took every one of my apprentices at the age of five, and not all of them were as eager to please as you.”
“That doesn’t exactly inspire me.”
“You’ve never had any interest in having a family of your own?”
Rafael rolled over so that he was on top of Xian and framed his face with his hands. “You’re the only thing, the only person, the only family I’ve ever wanted.” He brought their lips together in a tender kiss, mindful of bruising the skin now that Xian felt every caress as a normal man did. More than that, as a child did, the skin new and fresh, resilient but so soft the slightest bump told on it hours later.
Even as genteel as their shared kiss was, it was enough to get Rafael hard. They were nearly a month into Xian’s recovery, so long since they’d first arrived here that it was practically spring outside now, but they hadn’t made love in all that time. Xian’s body was too sapped of energy to maintain an erection, and although he’d helped stroke Rafael to completion every night after they began sleeping together again, they hadn’t gone further.
His frustration clearly translated itself. Xian pulled back from the kiss and looked at Rafael. “Are you hungry, beloved?” Xian never used ‘pet’ now, substituting new, tender words that made Rafael smile every time he heard them. He was slowly growing used to hearing them from his lover, and Xian was finally losing his reluctance to use the sweeter, more affectionate expressions. The look on his face wasn’t exactly sweet, however.
“I’m always hungry for you,” Rafael replied, angling in for another kiss. Xian evaded him.
“Not like that. Are you hungry, Rafael? Do you want more than you’ve been getting?”
Rafael managed to shrug. “You can’t be inside me yet, and I understand that. I can wait.”
Xian smiled. “I can’t be inside you with more than fingers yet, no. But it doesn’t follow that you can’t have more. You could be inside me.”
The bottom dropped out of Rafael’s stomach, falling along with his jaw. “Are you serious?” he managed at last.
“I wouldn’t bring it up if I wasn’t serious about it,” Xian assured him. “I know it isn’t a role you’ve often taken, but things have changed between us now. I’m not your master. Almost nothing of that creature remains.” He looked into Rafael’s eyes, human brown meeting human green. “Do you miss him?”
“I miss some things,” Rafael answered honestly. “A lot of what I miss I know will return. Some things, though… It was a comfort, having you invulnerable. I felt safer leaving things in your hands and knowing that there was almost nothing that could harm you. It was easier to let you take care of everything.”
“It was easier for me to do so then,” Xian said. He ran the smooth pad of his thumb absently over the rough scar on Rafael’s, the result of hours of teeth and tongue. “Our relationship was less than equal before, imbalanced. The dynamic between us was good but the practical difficulties would have overcome it in time even if Clare still stood and Erran’s blood still flowed. We have to create a new dynamic now, and for my part it needs to include you taking control. You’ve done very well with that since we came here.” Xian leaned close and brushed his lips ever so lightly across Rafael’s, barely there but for his heat and the kiss of his breath, and arousal surged through his young lover. “I’m yours,” Xian murmured. “You should take me.”
Rafael was harder than he’d been in months, his breath already coming shorter. “I don’t have what we need here…”
“I suggest getting it. Fast.”
Rafael almost fell out of bed in his haste, and spared a moment to be thankful that Nailah was already in her room as he darted into the kitchen and began looking in her pots. He settled for sheaf nut oil, so thick it was nearly a paste, which she used as a base for some of her ointments. He was back in bed in moments and Xian was waiting for him, lying relaxed on his stomach, the starkness of bones slowly disappearing under resurging muscle. His hair was still silver, and it coiled lazily down his back. He skin was still white, but flushed pink with blood, his own blood. Xian was the most beautiful thing Rafael had ever seen, and he belonged to him.
“Mine.” Rafael didn’t even register shedding his clothes and falling back onto the bed. He heard the low, possessive voice speaking, but didn’t really connect it to himself. His hands were consumed with mapping his lover’s recovering flesh, tracing the faint lines of scarring that still remained. It was far less for Xian than for Nailah, but still present. Rafael kissed every jutting vertebra, stroked every inch of pale, perfect skin he could reach, but it wasn’t enough.
“Mine.” He had to own this creature, this changeling. Fingers found the oil, spilling it some, but he didn’t care, he was too driven to possess. Rafael pressed one finger slowly inside Xian, tentative at first, remembering how to move and what to touch. He found Xian’s prostate and his lover gasped, and Rafael reveled in that faint sound. His hunger was still there, but banked, burning steadily as he spent ages opening Xian, making him shudder and moan and clench, stroking that spot inside him over and over until the sounds of need were too much. More oil for his cock, then Rafael was on top of Xian, entering him, and it was glorious and divine and filthy and human all at once, almost overwhelming, and he didn’t even realize he had bitten Xian’s shoulder until his next “Mine” came out muffled. He let go and drew back a bit, then pressed inside again, as deep as he could go, and they both moaned.
“Fuck,” Rafael whispered. “God, fuck, Xian…”
“That’s perfect,” his lover encouraged him. “Harder. Faster. I won’t break, I want you in me.”
In Xian. In Xian. Rafael’s balls tightened threateningly and he bit his lip hard, holding back his orgasm. He began to move, steadily, in and out of the clutching heat and smoothness that was his lover, his mate, his everything. His. His. Rafael pounded the message home, making his claim clear. Xian was his, they belonged to each other, and this was a part of their equality and it felt, fuck, it felt incredible, so perfect and so right and so good that he couldn’t stop himself, when his orgasm swelled again he rode the wave of it and crashed with it, deep, deep into Xian, pouring his heart and his soul out with his breath and his cum.
Rafael felt the tremors around his cock, reached down and realized that Xian had come after all, come with him, come from Rafael being inside him, and his possessive feelings swelled even further. He rolled them onto their sides to keep from crushing Xian, but held the other man tight and stayed within him even as he softened. “Love you,” he managed finally.
“I love you too,” Xian replied gently. “Apparently we both needed that.” Humor laced his words.
“I didn’t even realize I needed it.”
“But you enjoyed it.”
“It was…amazing.” He kissed the point of Xian’s shoulder. “Wonderful. Perfect. But I wouldn’t mind doing it the other way in the future as well.”
“We undoubtedly will.”
“And I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to…do more.” Rafael didn’t really know how to bring up the pain dynamic that had existed for them before it became twisted into something to give Xian relief from the withdrawal. He knew he wouldn’t heal the same way he had before, but he also knew that he loved the blow of the whip and the edge of a knife against his skin.
“We can keep that,” Xian promised. “We just have to relearn our limits. Both of us. For my part, I’ve had all the pain I can stomach lately, but I’m more than willing to give that to you.”
“Thank you.” They lay together until Rafael gave in and got something to clean them up, then slept longer and deeper together than e
ither of them had since their ordeal began.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Xian reacquainted himself with the sun on a rainy day, almost at twilight, when it was least likely to injure him. He stood beneath the canopy of trees and watched the desultory, inglorious spring sunset, and Rafael wished it had been more magnificent, more colorful, more anything before he got a look at his lover’s face. They were both damp from the rain, but the water shining in Xian’s eyes had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the sky. He turned to Rafael and said, “That was perfect.”
And Rafael replied, “Yes,” because it suddenly was.
By early summer Xian was nearly well, and entirely human, it seemed. He walked with a limp, a lasting reminder of their disastrous arrival. He bled when he was cut, he got blisters when he chopped wood and he cursed very colorfully as he relearned how to cut and shape leather. It was an old skill, an ancient skill, one he hadn’t really utilized since his first period of humanity, but there was a need for a leatherworker in their tiny mountain community and, as Nailah had said, no call for assassins.
In the summer travelers began to return to the Severed Sisters, passing around the mountains or, for the very bold, over them. The wayfarers carried more tales of the fall of Clare, of the gruesome fates of High Ones in distant cities and the torments that everyone connected to them endured. They told of the High Ones’ madness, their dark magic, and how they had become twisted creatures, less and less humanlike as time and their addiction drove them. Rafael listened to Malcolm’s enthusiastic recounting tensely, always wondering if this would be the day that he’d learn of Myrtea, the day that the shadow of her psychotic drive would fall over them again, even if only through stories. No names were ever mentioned though, and none of the tales originated in any place even close to their range of mountains.
The travelers who came through sometimes brought letters from distant family, and after considering the possible ramifications, Rafael finally decided he had to know what happened to Feysal and Mina. He composed a note, to be sent to the same safe, impersonal third party that Xian had directed Feysal to originally, and tried not to wonder and worry about whether it had reached them for the next three months. A reply came in autumn, just as the high passes were becoming too treacherous to attempt.
The lengthy missive, written in Feysal’s distinctive hand, told of escaping the city the same night Rafael and Xian had left. He and his daughter had found their way to Tarsam, received an obscene amount of money set aside in their name from the factor Xian had directed them to, and settled into their new lives. Feysal had opened another brothel, staffed largely by fellow refugees from Clare, but for the most part the conflict touched had them very lightly. He insisted that Rafael come to see him when he could, and ended the letter with words of gratitude and affection. The sense of relief that Rafael felt on reading it was almost overwhelming. Finally, everything was all right. Finally, he could relax.
In a perfect world, which Rafael had naïvely come to believe he might exist in, that might have been the end of all mention of Clare and the ghosts of the past. In the real world, naturally, it wasn’t. It was fortunate that on the night one of those ghosts descended upon them, more than a year after their arrival, most of the inhabitants of the valley of the Severed Sisters were attending a wedding lower down the mountain. It took those people out of the way of evil and probably saved several lives. It was also unfortunate, because the three of them had declined Malcolm’s invitation and left their uninvited visitor with no choice but to choose her victim from among them. She chose Rafael.
He should have felt it, or seen it. Seen something. One instant he was coming back from tending to Sled for the night, stumbling slightly in the dark, and the next instant he was rigidly upright as talon-like fingers gripped his throat and the point of a knife dug into his side. At least, it felt like a knife. It took another several frantic moments for Rafael to realize that it was actually a hand, a grossly misshapen hand, the nails grown together into the semblance of a blade.
“Pet,” Myrtea whispered, and the sweet stench of Erran’s blood was heavy on her breath. Rafael felt lightheaded inhaling the fume of it. “Xian’s little pet. Where is your master, dog?”
“Dead,” Rafael choked out. He struggled for a moment more but gave it up when he realized how vastly his attacker outclassed him in strength. “Since the winter.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” she purred. “I don’t think that’s true at all. You wouldn’t still be here if he were dead. You can’t live without him, little pet. You need your master’s heavy hand, don’t you?” She ground the point of her claw deeper into his body, piercing his flesh. “Why don’t we find him together, hmm?” She marched Rafael around the house, her fingers clenched so tightly on his throat that it was all he could do to draw breath, much less shout a warning. Once they got to the front Myrtea kicked the door in, and it shattered under the force of her blow.
Xian and Nailah were both sitting by the fire, Nailah with a basket of sewing and Xian scraping away at a skin. He froze as he saw the two of them, but his reaction was nothing to the one that came from Myrtea. She took one look at him and shrieked, the sound high and resonant and enraged.
“You descended!” Myrtea gasped, and her claw pressed a little deeper into Rafael’s side. “You descended without me! Human again, and you did it without me! You were supposed to wait for me! Why didn’t you wait for me?” Her throaty voice took on a tragic note. “You could not even save your humanity for me, the least of what you owe me… Instead you gave it to your weak-minded sister and your useless pet!” She actually snarled, and Rafael realized that she might truly be insane now, glutted on the last of Erran’s blood and driven by centuries of hatred.
Xian slowly stood up. He held a stitching awl in one hand, but apart from that he was unarmed. With Myrtea as full of magic as she was he had no chance against her, and Rafael wanted to tell him not to risk himself but he couldn’t speak, he could only plead with his eyes.
“Beloved,” Xian said, and his voice was strong and pure like a bell, vaguely familiar for some reason. He looked at both of them, serene and compassionate, and Rafael felt Myrtea’s grip weaken.
“Beloved,” Xian repeated, honesty and desire ringing in the word. It hung in the air between them as they watched each other, unmoving, until suddenly Rafael was thrown aside, thrown so hard that he crashed into the far wall. He slumped to the ground, winded and dazed, and watched the scene with a horror he couldn’t catch his breath to express. Myrtea was wrapped in tattered red velvet and stained with mud and leaves, evidence of rough days under rocks. Her head was tufted with filthy hanks of silver hair, her lips drawn back from abnormally sharp teeth in a painful rictus of hope and fear, and her eyes dripped white smoke down her face like thick, cloying tears. Her gaze was fixed unwaveringly on Xian.
Xian stepped forward slowly, moving carefully so as not to show evidence of his limp. He moved until he was almost within touching range of Myrtea, stretched his hand toward her face and said again, “Beloved.” Myrtea twitched forward, a fraction of an inch, closing the space between them until her skin touched his hand. She sighed with contentment, letting her burning eyes drift closed. For a moment they just stood there, still and silent, unnaturally calm. Then Xian repositioned her ever so slightly to the left, checked his angle, and jammed his long, sharp stitching awl through her stomach and out her back.
Myrtea made a faint noise like a hiccup, but other than that she showed no sign of being impaled. Not just impaled, but stuck to the frame of the ruined door like a red velvet butterfly on a board. A moment later and Nailah was there, thrusting Xian’s forgotten sword into his hand, the sword she had proclaimed useless. Xian leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss to his wife’s forehead, then raised the sword and swung it with all his strength.
Myrtea’s head fell gracelessly from her shoulders, her body suddenly slumping against the awl, pulling it free of the doorjamb as her
corpse fell to the ground. The scent of flowers was heavy in the air, but Xian left Myrtea’s body without a second glance and came over to Rafael, helping his shaken lover to his feet. “Are you all right?” he demanded, his hands lingering on the wound in the younger man’s side.
“Yes,” Rafael replied dazedly, his voice coming out hoarse. “It’s not that bad, she didn’t go too deep, but… What did you do to her?”
“Killed her, love.” Xian hung his head for a moment, his eyes haunted, darting toward the carcass of his wife. “I’d hoped to never see her again, hoped she’d died already. I didn’t want to do this, but I should have known better.”
“I did warn you,” Nailah said acerbically from where she stood over the body. “I said this would be the way of it. I knew you’d have to finish her. The woman was dogged beyond belief.”
“But how?” Rafael demanded. “I thought you couldn’t do magic.”
“That wasn’t magic,” Xian said, pulling Rafael over to his chair and making him sit. Nailah didn’t speak, for once, just began threading a needle to stitch up his side. “That was a fail-safe, Rafael, and one that would only work if Myrtea were completely focused on me. She and I were together for a long time, even after things began to go badly between us, and I realized then that I would need something to protect myself and my companions if she ever came after me. It was hypnotism, my love, nothing more. Hypnotism reinforced over the years, in whatever ways I could do so. Much like what she worked against Daeva, except she used an instrument to create her focusing tone, and I used my own voice.”
“You called her beloved,” Rafael said, illogically hurt despite knowing that it had probably saved his life.
“At one time, she was,” Xian sighed. “But the word means next to nothing when applied to her now. I only have one beloved, Rafael, and it’s you.” He brushed long black hair away from Rafael’s face and took hold of his shoulders. “Do you believe me?”
