Beloved Son

by Carole Cummings

  “Just like—?”

  “Yes.” Dallin’s hand came up, thumb and forefinger extended, and rested against his own temple. “Bam. Quick and… well, not so clean.” He shrugged. “Creighton held him for me, though by that time there wasn’t much need. I don’t know if Creighton’ll ever get the blood and brains from off his coat. Though I suppose it’s not so bad—it wasn’t his surcoat.”

  Wil shook his head, quite unnerved—not by the story, but by the cold, emotionless recitation of it, the dull, flat look in Dallin’s dark eyes. “I don’t—”

  “It wasn’t the only time, just so you know. I’ve killed men before, and plenty of them in anger, rage… for vengeance. It’s a fine line a man walks, the line between killer and murderer, and I’m not so sure it’s a distinction that matters to many. In fact, I’m not so sure it’s a distinction I’ve managed to maintain.

  “See, the problem, as I saw it, was that Corporal Holden was holding a gun to your head, to my head, just as surely as I was holding one to his. I just beat him to the trigger. Just like you did. And I’ll likely have to do it a couple more times before this is all through. And you know what? I’m not sorry. I won’t be sorry.”

  Dallin paused to stare at Wil for a moment, gauging. When Wil didn’t say anything, Dallin shrugged as if it didn’t really matter.

  “I may not like the way you did it. In fact, I could throttle you for having done it that way at all, and not because of what you think, but because it was bloody dangerous and almost killed you. But this misapprehension you have that I would somehow condemn you for having lived through it, survived, when it’s the one thing I asked of you, it’s—” Dallin shook his head, very obviously angry and frustrated, then turned back to the window. “It’s incomprehensible to me. Insulting, really, though I haven’t quite figured how yet.” He thought about that for a moment, frowning. “See, I believe in you. Whoever or whatever you are, I believe in you, because I’ve touched your heart. I touch your soul every night when we sleep and you let me in. And so I keep thinking you believe in me, and when I have the fact that you don’t, maybe can’t, slam me in the face, it… well, it rather winds me, I think.”

  A long, shaky breath dragged into Wil’s chest, and he held it for a moment, waiting until his heart slowed before he let it go. “I never meant—”

  “Who chooses?” Dallin’s tone was once again impassive, no trace of emotion. “By tradition, it’s the Guardian who calls, but in this case….” His hand opened, waving vaguely. “Doesn’t seem to fit, does it?”

  “Dallin—”

  “I’ve been thinking how odd it is that the Guardian has never been a woman, considering how devoted Lind is to the Mother, and She supposedly to it. None of the Old Ones, either.”

  “Please don’t make this—”

  “Strange, innit? Maybe you should consider Andette. You’d be able to push her around, at least, because she’s still feeling like she cut out your heart just by being related to—”

  “Damn it, Dallin, listen to me!”

  Dallin finally stopped, eyes shut tight. He bowed his head and breathed in deep. “No.” He lifted his head and shook it, looking right at Wil, his eyes no longer blank but on fire again. “I don’t think so.” It was flat, fury finally bleeding through the odd calm as Dallin turned and started for the door. “I’ve already heard more than I can stand.”

  “You’ve not heard a bloody word I’ve said!” Wil retorted sharply, and when it didn’t stop Dallin’s progress toward the door, Wil stood and aimed lower. “I’ll come after you if I have to, and I still get dizzy, y’know. If I fall on my face, I’m going to tell Thorne and the rest of the Old Ones that it’s entirely your fault. I’ll tell them you pushed me!”

  Aiming below the belt worked remarkably well.

  Dallin spun, then stalked back over to Wil, hands fisted tight at his sides and teeth bared. “You can tell them I punched you in the mouth, because if I—”

  “I don’t want a new Guardian!”

  Dallin was looming over Wil again, this close to actually following up on his threat, by all appearances. Momentary uncertainty made him pause before anger closed his face again.

  “Well, it appears it isn’t your choice, dunnit?”

  Wil gritted his teeth, growling frustration. “It isn’t, but—”

  “I’ve fulfilled my calling, She told me that, and why I didn’t guess—” Dallin snarled. “Fucking sentiment. Bloody hell, I’ve been a bleeding fool, haven’t I?”

  “No, it isn’t what you keep—”

  “And here I was, thinking—” Dallin’s hand came up so fast Wil almost flinched, but he only ran it through his hair. “Fucking shit! ‘Choice’ my arse, because I could hardly have made it any plainer, and if you really had to ask—” He leaned in until they were almost nose to nose. “What you’re trying to do here, Wil, it’s called letting a person down easily, and I have to tell you, you’re really crap at it. At least have the stones to say what you bloody well mean.”

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this, damn it.

  “I am saying what I mean, but you won’t bloody listen!”

  “I’ve done nothing but listen—to Him when He told me She chose well, to Her when She told me to believe, and to you when you stood in front of me, lightning dancing in your hand, and told me—”

  “I’m not done!” Wil shouted. “That’s the price I have to pay. There’s more to go, and I need you with me. I want you with me. Not just a Guardian, but you. And I know how unbelievably selfish it is to want it, but there it is, and I know if I loved you like people are supposed to love each other, I wouldn’t want that, but I can only love how I love, and I had to give you the choice, I had to, and I wanted to give you a choice, but I didn’t want to too, because why would you?—bloody dearg-dur, right?—and I desperately want you to choose to stay, but not out of… of duty, or any—”

  Wil panted for breath and swiped at his cheeks. Damn it, he’d started blubbering back there somewhere.

  “‘Not meant,’ everyone keeps saying that, and I used to think it was because they thought you were a danger to me—can’t make good decisions with your cock thinking for you, can you?—but now I know it’s because I risk whoever is standing next to me, likely for the rest of my bloody life, and someone like you, you’re more important to the world than I am. All I am is the barrel of a gun, and I’m really fucking sorry, but selfish or no, I want the person standing next to me to be you.”

  Exhausted all over again, Wil sank back down to the bed, propped his elbows to his knees, and dropped his head into his hands.

  “Fuck!”

  He hadn’t wanted to say it that way, not any of it, and he’d apparently shocked the shit out of Dallin, who stood like a rooted tree in front of him, staring at him with an expression Wil didn’t quite have the courage to interpret.

  Wil scrubbed at his eyes. “How you can even think I don’t believe in you? I believe more of you than you do of yourself. You’ve no idea the things you can do, the things you are, and I wish I had the words to make you understand, but I can’t do—”

  “Shut up.”

  Wil snapped his glance up, blurry eyes narrowed. “I’m not going to—”

  “I said—Shut. Up.” Slowly Dallin went down to one knee in front of Wil, jaw set tight, breath coming harsh and heavy. “You bloody idiot.” His teeth were clenched so hard it was surprising he could get a wheeze out, let alone the growl he’d just managed. “If you ever do this to me again, I swear I will pound you so hard you’ll have to reach up to take a piss, and not even the Mother Herself will be able to hold me back. In fact I might just take a swing at Her as well. Of all the stupid bleeding ways to go about this, you had to pick the one that almost guaranteed I’d go off the deep end, and you don’t even bloody know why, do you?”

  Despite the fact that he should probably be pretty bloody pissed at all the slurs to his intelligence, Wil couldn’t speak. He didn’t trust his own voice or any words that migh
t come out his mouth. He could only shake his head.

  Dallin rattled out something between a growl and a sigh and a sharp, grim laugh, propped his elbow on the bed, and dropped his head into his hand. “Fucking idiot.” He shook his head. “Because, Wil, you can be a cryptic little shit sometimes, and you have yet to learn that it’s possible for someone to just want to be with you. Not for what you are, not for what you can do, but for you, and bollocks to whatever might come.” Dallin looked up, calmer now. “I can’t keep proving myself. I can’t keep offering everything I am to you and have you blinking at me in bewilderment and disbelief. You either trust me or you don’t. You either take my hand because I offer it, and you believe I’m doing it because I love you and I want to, or you—” His mouth tightened. “Or you don’t. There is no choice for me. Haven’t you twigged to that yet?”

  We cannot teach you to accept an extended hand because you are worthy of it. Such a thing requires the patience and persistence of love.

  Well… Dallin was the most patient man Wil knew. And damned bloody-mindedly persistent.

  “I trust you,” Wil said, small and cracked.

  “Yeah?” Dallin flopped his face into the mattress, his shoulders sagging. “Good to know,” he muttered, muffled by the furs. “Until the next time you don’t, anyway. Bloody damn, you make my brain hurt. And you wear me to the bone. I feel like I’ve just run a dozen leagues. Underwater.”

  So did Wil. “There won’t be a next time.” Because he was sure now, and there really wouldn’t. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just don’t do that to me again. Say the ‘I want you to stay’ part before you say the other bit, yeah?”

  Five minutes ago, Wil wasn’t sure he’d ever have cause to smile again. Now he couldn’t keep one from twitching at his mouth, and it only made his eyes blur more.

  Not invisible. Not merely the sum of his sins.

  “Yeah.” He reached out tentatively and slipped his fingers into Dallin’s hair. “I want you to stay.”

  “Good.” Dallin sighed. “Because I don’t think I can move just now.” In direct negation, he turned and sat so his back was to the bed frame, flopped his head back this time, and peered up at Wil, upside down and with a frown. “I’m supposed to be feeding you and getting you ready for a trip down to the main common. There’s a honking great festival for the Turning, y’know. They weren’t going to have it, what with—” He waved his hand about. “—everything, but the Old Ones said it’s more important now than ever, and I agreed. Our presence is… encouraged. Thirty minutes ago, I thought it was a brilliant idea.”

  Wil shook his head, trying to adjust his thoughts and emotions to this sudden relief, this new lack of tension. He’d been sure that, one way or another, there would be a good-bye back there somewhere. And then there just… hadn’t been. Instead there was only… this—the same this that had been between them from the beginning—and there it was, still there, and it took Wil a moment to slide his brain from Please don’t go away to Let’s go to a party. It was, to put it very mildly, boggling.

  The very thought of a festival made Wil tired all over again, but a honking great festival with a horde of Linders might help him pull his mind from the wad of cotton that had settled around it. And he always seemed to arrive at new places in Lind half-dead and unconscious. It would be a nice change to arrive somewhere awake and upright.

  How had Dallin put it, back when they’d been trekking through the wilderness and undecided yet if they still hated each other? Taking hold of life, or something like that—latching on and valuing it, and if that wasn’t quite right, it was at least close. Wil hadn’t been doing much latching on lately. More like drifting beneath everyone else’s surfaces and hoping they left him to it. Well, he’d got his wish, for the most part, and it didn’t take much to show him he didn’t really want it. He’d fought hard for life—had chosen this life, with this man—so he’d best start living it. Time, after all, had never been his friend, so making the time for a festival seemed one of the wisest things Wil had ever considered.

  Later. Because there was time. For the first time in his life, there was time. And right at the moment, he was feeling a pleasant, slow-spiraling need to indulge himself—a need for something more immediate, something earthbound and close, just between them, just for them. A need for reclamation and affirmation. The feel of bare skin against his and hoarse whispers in his ear. Lind and the Turning could go hang, for the next… well, half hour, at least.

  “Come to bed with me.”

  One corner of Dallin’s mouth turned up, and his sandy eyebrows twitched. “Was that an order? Does the Aisling command his Guardian?”

  And that was it—it really was over, and it really was going to be all right. Whatever came, Wil could stand anything, if only Dallin would always look at him like that.

  Wil couldn’t help the grin, soppy as it likely was. “I could make it one, if it’ll help.”

  “Bossy.” Dallin smirked, then sighed a bit dramatically. “Don’t let this ‘servant to the Aisling’ thing go to your head. I’m not as easy as I look.”

  Wil’s laugh came out a loud guffaw. “Easy. Yeah. Sure.” As if that was a word that could ever be applied to Dallin Brayden.

  Dallin gave him a wide return grin before he slid it wolfish. “I don’t have to go about calling you Drút, now, do I?”

  Wil’s smirk crimped. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “Good. Because that would be a little too twee, I think.” Dallin started to lever up from the floor, but stopped. He frowned and sank back down. “What’s more to go?”

  Well, Wil had known that was coming. He was only surprised it had taken this long.

  Wil’s fingers were in Dallin’s hair, stroking at whatever tension he’d put there.

  “Ríocht.” It was all Wil said, because just the one word more or less explained it, or at least it was good enough to be getting on with.

  Dallin went a bit narrow-eyed. “Not marching on the Guild, I trust.”

  “No.” Wil shrugged, tugging at Dallin, impatient, but Dallin still didn’t join him on the bed. “I expect anonymously would be advised.” Cautious, he peered at Dallin through the tangles falling over his brow. “Someone has to do something. It’s gone on too long. The corruption’s gone too deep.”

  Dallin rolled his eyes. “Too bloody right.” He rubbed at his face. “Ríocht.” His expression went predictably wry. “Bloody typical. Should prove interesting, at least. I hope you won’t mind skittering about under rocks, because I’ll be just a bit obvious over there.”

  “I know.” Wil sank his fingers deeper into hair gone russet-gold in the weak strip of winter-thin sun threading in from the open window. He kneaded gently, satisfied when Dallin’s eyes drifted shut. “It’s why I shouldn’t want you with me.”

  But I do. I’m sorry, Mother. I really did try.

  Dallin quirked a weary grin. “Can’t help yourself, I know. It’s my carefully cultivated air of danger. A bloody magnet, me.”

  The grin was contagious. Wil clutched the fur around him and slithered down to the floor beside Dallin. He leaned in until his head was resting comfortably on Dallin’s wide shoulder and slid his legs over Dallin’s thighs.

  “A lodestar.” It was embarrassing how Wil very nearly purred it. “I followed your pull all down the whole of Cynewísan and didn’t even know it.”

  Dallin was still for a moment before his arm came up and around Wil’s back. “I don’t think I know what that means.”

  Wil only closed his eyes. “’S all right. I do.” He hesitated, cheeks heating the slightest bit. “I’m not starless anymore.” It came out quiet, the rawness inside the truth of it discomfiting.

  “Hm.” Dallin pulled Wil closer. “If you say so.” He dropped a kiss to the crown of Wil’s head. “I thought we were going to bed?”

  Wil grinned, lifted his head, leaned up, and kissed him. It was fairly well received—in fact, pretty enthusiastically received—so
Wil kept kissing him until he turned himself dizzy, and it had nothing whatever to do with hurts and healings.

  Eventually Wil found himself on his back, trying to curl around Dallin and at the same time stretch him out to get his clothes out of the way, because Wil wanted skin and heat and touch me, please, don’t stop. It was easy to vanish, unafraid, inside kisses and hands and gently nipping teeth and words breathed with an urgency that set Wil’s skin on fire. Their bodies rocked and melded together, arching one into the other, until all Wil could do was breathe Dallin’s name over and over again like it was the only word he knew, and hear his own panted back, and Please, and Yes, as a sea of stars slowly unfurled behind Wil’s eyes and melted his spine.

  They never quite made it to the bed.

  THE FESTIVAL was very different from Ríocht’s. Turning Night, for Wil, had always been a strange mix of anticipation and dread. Once the shakes and spasms tapered off, and the cramps had died down to a dull, achy need, the call of seeing the stars again, and the hopeless but ever-present dream of escape—one way or another—would rise up and set his heart racing with life he’d forgotten was even in him. Faces staring up at him, an endless sea of faces, and he couldn’t see a single one of them, not clearly, and he used to wonder if any of them might somehow see, might know. How many of them had he seen in dreams? And if he’d been in their dreams, how could they not understand, feel his pain, take pity, or even succumb to fear and hatred and send an arrow sailing up to the ramparts, strike him down as he mouthed blessings he didn’t believe and didn’t hear?

  This—Linders and bonfires and music and beer and spiced cider and meat on a stick and joyous songs that bid temporary farewell to the Mother and welcomed the Father with praise and gladness—this was a festival.

  Dallin hadn’t trusted Wil on horseback yet—still too dizzy when he stood too fast—and though Wil didn’t quite trust himself yet either, he put up enough of a fuss for show. Dallin drove them in a sled pulled by a furry gray stallion that looked like it had never seen a sled before and wasn’t in the least pleased now that it had. Dallin only snorted and told Wil it was a bit of retaliation in Miri’s honor.