Gabriel pushes his hand out of the way, takes hold of him. “Of course I will.” His grip is firm, his hand callused, nothing like anyone else who’s ever done this for Drake. It takes a few careful strokes before he finds a rhythm, but only a few, and then he’s fast, confident, hard. It’s almost too much, the rough treatment, but Fates, Drake’s needed this for so long—he holds Gabriel close against him and pushes and pushes and feels the pleasure hum through him in a rush of golden heat as he spills.
He has to reach down to stop Gabriel, afterward, when he grows too sensitive and Gabriel doesn’t seem ready to stop touching him yet. He can’t find words, so he just lies still like that, his fingers laced with Gabriel’s and his heart pounding.
“You make so many things better,” Gabriel says softly. Admiringly, it sounds like.
Drake laughs. He’s still giddy, though the tension’s gone now. “I’m glad,” he says. “That was so good.”
Gabriel smiles, and lets go of his hand to pet him instead. Drake wipes as much of their mess off his belly as he can, and then has nothing to do with it but smear it on the floor. He should have brought up some water for washing, he supposes. Would have, if he’d known they would be doing this. He’ll try to be better prepared next time.
Not now, though. Now there’s no way he’s getting up to go fetch water outside in the cold, when he could stay here instead and pull Gabriel into his arms again.
“My dragon is happy?” Gabriel asks. He tugs the blanket up to their shoulders, curls into Drake’s side.
“Yes.” He kisses Gabriel again, because it’s still so amazing that he can. “Good night, Gabriel.”
Gabriel tucks his head against Drake’s shoulder. “Good night, Drake.”
They do it again in the morning, before they get out of bed, and Drake’s pretty sure that the second time, Gabriel starts it. His neck feels sore, tender from too many bites, by the time they’re done, but he can’t complain. He catches Gabriel preening as they pull their boots and coats back on, like he’s proud of himself.
Outside, where it’s lighter, Gabriel squints at Drake, brow furrowed. “You never seemed so delicate,” he says, reaching up to touch Drake’s neck. His fingertips are chilled, and Drake flinches. “I’ve hurt you.”
“I’m fine.” Drake laughs weakly. “Left marks, did you?”
“Little red ones.” Gabriel frowns. “If I bite too hard, you should say so.”
“You didn’t. I promise, it’s fine.”
Something wary and feral flits across Gabriel’s face, and he straightens. “Come on. We should go.”
He’s moving before Drake can answer, heading down Cypress at a deliberate pace like he’s going somewhere important. “Wait,” Drake says. “Where are we going?” There’s nothing there at the bottom end of Cypress, definitely no place where they can find food. Just more rotting houses, sinking into the swamp, and the Lady’s house.
“Someone’s after us,” Gabriel says quietly. Drake’s heart sinks. They’d been doing so well lately, with everything making sense and now last night. He should have known it couldn’t last.
“Who?” he asks, hands in his pockets, trying to stay calm.
Gabriel shakes his head. “Men who know what they’re hunting. Nasty ones. Turn here.”
That makes it worse. Drake follows Gabriel’s lead, turning off Cypress down some crooked alley too small to have a name. If the answer had been something fantastical, ogres or trolls or even the Lady’s hound, it would have been easier to shrug off. They move faster now that they’re off the main street, Gabriel’s breath steaming silently in the cold morning air, his eyes alert and seeking. Drake finds himself listening, trying to catch some sign that their pursuers are real without seeming to be looking for them. There’s a noise from behind that could be footsteps sliding on moss-wet cobbles, and a rustling from one of the empty houses that could be a rat or a man trying to be stealthy—and his heart is pounding despite himself, like he believes Gabriel’s pronouncements whether or not he has evidence.
Then they make a turn and come to a pile of rubble where the street ought to be, where a house just slumped forward and collapsed across the road. Gabriel stops.
Drake watches him. There are questions at the tip of his tongue: Now what? and Where are they? But he doesn’t say them, just waits. The hair stands up on the back of his neck. Something scrapes behind them.
When Gabriel moves, Drake’s ready; he can see the tiny changes in stance that mean Gabriel’s about to lunge. And that means he’s moving, too, bolting with Gabriel toward the rubble, up onto the crumbling brick, and a knife strikes the stone where he would have been.
Someone curses behind them, but Drake can’t spare a second to look back. “Circle round,” the man behind them orders, which means there must be at least two more. “Don’t let them get to clear ground.”
Gabriel lands hard on the cobbles on the other side, and Drake with him only a heartbeat later. The shock thrums up his ankles, but he doesn’t dare stop to fret about that now. He sprints for the mouth of the alley, his stride matched to Gabriel’s, and at the next street, Gabriel says, “Split up,” before he veers left.
Drake turns right, his heart pounding, and takes off. He doesn’t like this, doesn’t want to get separated when they don’t know how many people are following, doesn’t want to fight without Gabriel to watch his back—doesn’t want to leave Gabriel unprotected, because these bastards have to be after him. Up one block, and there’s movement at the next, some bruiser with a club, so Drake ducks into the house to his left, pelting through its rotten inside and praying the floor won’t give out under his feet. Only a little ways to go—there’s a window with its glass long gone, gaping open to the gray light of day. The floor sags, cracks under his next step with a wet creak, and he runs faster, reaching for the windowsill. There, he’s there, and as he closes his hand around the window frame to boost himself out, there’s pain, a nail or a shard of remaining glass scraping his palm, but he holds on anyway, one boot up on the windowsill to launch himself out to the street.
Still not far enough. Someone shouts as he lands on the cobbles, and he turns left—toward Gabriel, he hopes. He can’t lose Gabriel now, not when things between them are finally so good.
At the next corner someone tackles him, knocking him to the ground and landing hard on his chest. “Got him!” the man yells as Drake tries to strike out. “He’s down here!”
Drake gets one hand free, scrabbling for a weapon. He grabs a loose rock from the paving cobbles and lashes out with it. He hits his attacker in the temple, once, but there’s no force to the blow and the man grabs his wrist, slams it down on the cobbles hard enough that his fingers go numb and tingling and the rock falls from his grip.
“Hurry it up!” the man calls, and Drake tries to lunge for his arm, teeth bared to bite. “The little shit’s not—”
Gabriel lands on the man’s back, knocking him halfway off Drake, and his breath hisses through his teeth as he brings his hand down on the back of the man’s head. He’s holding a brick, and he smashes it into the man’s skull until bone cracks and blood splatters.
The man’s allies are coming, though—someone’s turning a corner off to the right. “Gabriel,” he says, struggling free of the man’s deadweight. “Gabriel, hurry.”
The panic in Gabriel’s face fades as he meets Drake’s eyes. “Come on,” he says, dropping the brick and offering his other hand to haul Drake to his feet. “This way.”
He doesn’t let go, holding tight to Drake’s wrist as they flee down the next alley. The rest of the thugs will be worse now, with their man down. Drake wonders what they want, why the first one didn’t try to kill him when he had the chance.
They’re headed south again, bearing left as they go, until Drake thinks he knows where they’re headed. They come out on Cypress again at the far end of the street, alley cats scattering as they pelt toward the Lady’s house. They slip past the gates, the twisted iron and mess of bra
mbles, and Gabriel slows.
“You think we’re safe here?” Drake asks softly. He keeps moving, and Gabriel comes with him, beyond the first rows of graves, toward the mossy granite tombs in the back.
“No one’s ever safe anywhere,” Gabriel says, but his shoulders relax and the hunted look leaves his eyes.
Drake lets himself breathe a little easier, too. And then back by the entrance someone says, “You three hold the gate. There’s only the one way out of here. Me and Hawk’ll take the rest in to flush him out.”
“What about the little one?” another man asks.
“If he don’t have the sense to run, kill him. He ain’t what we’re here for.”
Drake feels sick. He looks over at Gabriel, hoping for some cue, but Gabriel has frozen, eyes wide, hands clenched at his sides. “Come on,” Drake whispers, reaching up to touch Gabriel’s shoulder. His hand is bloody. He blinks at it, and shakes himself. Gabriel’s gotten him out of plenty of trouble already. “Let’s get moving. Never safe anywhere, remember?”
He puts his other hand, the not-bleeding one, on Gabriel’s shoulder, and Gabriel starts like he’s just been woken. Not now, Drake prays. They can’t afford for it to get really bad now. He takes Gabriel’s hand and pulls.
By the time they’ve reached the back fence, Gabriel at least seems alert, but still panicky. Drake holds still for a moment, listening for their pursuers. The iron fence is too tall to climb, rain-slick rails that stretch up higher than Drake can reach. Gabriel leans into him, fingers curling thin and needy into his sleeve. There has to be another way out.
Drake leads the way along the back fence, looking for a weak spot they can use to escape. They’ve made it about ten paces when he sees movement between the graves, three men coming up the path. He pulls Gabriel down with him into the hollow beneath a tangle of briars. They could face three and probably do all right if Gabriel were feeling better, but like this . . . He ducks down, watching the tramp of the men’s boots through the tall grass.
“Gives me the fucking creeps,” one of the thugs complains as they get closer. “You think it’s true? Think the other one really is Gabriel?”
“Don’t care if he is,” the second one says. “Gabriel’s a man, same as you. Gets in my way, I’ll fucking kill him.”
“Lady’s cowl, did you see Matty’s head?” the first man answers. “He beat it to fucking porridge.”
“Shut up, the pair of you,” the third one says. “You want him to know where you are?”
Drake looks around. He needs an escape, needs it soon, before the thugs realize they must have gone to ground somewhere and start searching less obvious places than the standing tombs. He needs—
There’s a spot in the fence a little ways down, just beyond their briar patch, where the years of winter rain have worn the dirt away and formed a ditch running out underneath the iron and toward the edge of the swamp. Drake glances back at Gabriel, finds Gabriel watching him with an awful sort of pleading expression. He points toward the ditch, nods once. Gabriel blinks, and nods back. Good. Now they just need a chance. If the Lady favors them the way she’s supposed to, then—
No. He can’t depend on fairy tales. Look what it’s doing to Gabriel, to have that not work. He watches the path for movement, waits for the thugs to turn. He shifts forward on his elbows, carefully, edging toward the ditch as best he can without leaving their cover yet.
And then the screaming starts.
“Get it off!” someone is yelling. “Fuck! Fuck, get it off! Kill it!”
The thugs near them take off running toward the noise, calling to their man as they go. “What is it?” one of them is asking. “You find the little shit?”
“Come on,” Drake whispers, taking Gabriel’s hand to lead him toward the gap under the fence. But he still hears the answer as they start to crawl toward their escape:
“There’s fucking snakes in here!” one of the thugs yells over the sound of the one still screaming. “Davy got bit by a black fucking cottonmouth!”
Drake’s blood goes cold. It’s midwinter. The snakes should all be gone, dead or hidden underground where they can wait for spring. And yet those men found one alert enough to bite, and it’s one of the Lady’s own: the ones whose bite makes a man’s skin split and rot while he still lives.
“Thank you,” Drake whispers, just in case the Lady’s listening. “Please keep us safe.” He lets Gabriel go first, keeps watch as Gabriel squirms through the muddy ditch and out of the graveyard, but the thugs haven’t recovered enough to keep hunting. They’re arguing now, yelling about whether they should keep looking, whether Gabriel set the cottonmouth on them and what else he might be capable of. Drake gets down on the ground, sliding through the ditch belly-up so he can keep an eye out for pursuit.
And Fates but it’s cold, wet as it is, and the ground beyond the graveyard fence is just more sucking mud, with twisted trees for cover as the dark swamp spreads out beyond. Still, they don’t dare stick too close to the fence, not if they want to lose their pursuers. Drake reaches for Gabriel’s hand again, and holds on as he leads the way into the swamp.
“You’re all right?” he asks quietly, when they’ve gone far enough that he dares to make some noise. The trees around them are bare but for the silvery hanging tendrils of Lady’s moss, and the wet black branches seem to reach for them, skeletal as Her hands.
Gabriel nods slowly. “Where are we going?” His breath is a tiny puff of fog in the air.
Drake shakes his head. “I’m not really sure. Away from those guys. There were too many of them.” This is all wrong. Gabriel shouldn’t be asking him to lead the way.
But Gabriel doesn’t seem to have really recovered yet, because he stays quiet as they pick their way through the swamp. In some spots the ground is dry enough to support them, and in others the water has seeped up to the surface, black and still, and sometimes the cover of fallen leaves makes it look like they have stable footing until they take the next step and find themselves sinking into sticky mud. Drake’s stomach growls occasionally, and he tries to ignore that along with the stinging chill in his hands and feet. If they can get far enough west, he’s pretty sure they can come back up into the city without anyone knowing to expect them. It’s easier said than done, though, trying to keep his bearings in the gloom under the cover of the trees.
Getting back into the city is only the start of things, anyway. After that they’ll have to deal with the men who came hunting them, which Drake’s not looking forward to at all. He’s going to need Gabriel if they’re going to have a chance, and right now it seems like Gabriel still can’t deal with the idea of people coming after them in the Lady’s house.
“We’re going to be all right,” Drake says, not because he’s sure of it but because he feels like it needs to be said. “You’ll see.”
“You sound so sure,” Gabriel says quietly. At least he’s willing to argue, Drake thinks. It’s a start.
“We get help when we need it.” He tries to sound certain. “And we make our own luck when we have to.”
Gabriel hums, and goes quiet again. The silence is eerie, after the city—there’s no place in Casmile, not as far as Drake can tell, where it gets this quiet. There are always people out doing something. Here the sound of their feet breaking twigs or kicking up leaves seems loud. If there are birds in the trees, they aren’t singing, and if there are animals in the underbrush, rats or frogs or snakes— Fates, Drake wishes he hadn’t thought of that. If there was one black cottonmouth out and about in Casmile today, there could be another in the swamp, under a fall of leaves or in the knot of a tree’s roots. For all that he said they make their own luck, Drake’s not sure if he trusts it to hold when they’re out here. It’s a lot harder to bluff the swamp than a gang of dockside toughs.
When he sees the movement through the trees for the first time, he thinks he’s going mad. He’s cold and wet and miserable; what if he just wants to find some reason to hope? What if he’s finally caught w
hatever it is that Gabriel has, seeing the Lady in shadows and hearing things that aren’t there? But the apparition is the first thing he’s had to guide him since they got through the fence, and right now he’ll take it. He picks up his pace, heading toward the movement he thinks he saw.
A few steps later he sees it again, and Gabriel hisses like he sees it too. That has to be a good sign, doesn’t it? If they’re both seeing it, then neither of them is mad. They walk faster, toward the flicker of dull color through the trees. Drake wants to ask Gabriel what he’s seen, wants to call after whatever—whoever—they’re following, but the silence has grown too thick, too potent, and he doesn’t dare disturb it.
The part where his heart leaps, where he starts to really hope, is when they can smell fire, a little further into the swamp. He breaks into a jog, and Gabriel lopes along beside him, head up and eyes alert at last. It’s the wrong season for wildfires. Everything out here is soaking wet. The only way for there to be a fire out here is for someone to have tried hard to build one.
Puddles splash under their feet, and for a moment Drake is caught, the heavy mud sucking at his boots, but he pulls free; he can’t afford to get lost now. Maybe they’ve made it back to the city’s edge, and once they reach the streets they can find a tavern where—
But this isn’t the city at all. They come through a dense thicket of trees, brushing the hanging moss away from their faces, and there are people here, facing off with them in the muck of the swamp.
The man’s dark, probably Jua’zan, his hair long and his face thin and hungry. He’s holding a pitchfork, a rusted old gnarled thing that’s likely spent more time down here in the swamp than doing honest farm work. The woman has a sickle, and she’s wearing trousers, like a pirate or a field slave. She says something in a language Drake doesn’t know, harsh and clicking.
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