Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  He wanted to cuddle into Eljean’s arms like a hamster and burrow away from the world.

  “Can you walk, Ellyot?” Eljean was saying, and Torrant frowned at him, forgetting for a moment who he was and then remembering.

  His knees kept threatening to buckle.

  “Food,” he murmured drunkenly. He was starving and parched—all that blood. He was lucky the cut to his thigh had healed partially when he’d changed, or he would have bled out in the alley after they’d climbed the fence.

  “Right. I’ve got some stores….” Eljean was guiding him through the flat to his freshly made bed. The coverlet was brown, and Torrant scowled at it because brown wasn’t yellow.

  “You didn’t get it off the floor, did you?” Torrant raised his head and looked around. “Because I can see a lot more carpet now than I could.” The carpet was cream colored, and Torrant had a passing fancy that maybe all the clothes had been a way to keep it clean.

  There was an embarrassed laugh at his side, and Eljean’s hand, which was helping to bear him up, slipped from the towel and touched his naked hip.

  Torrant’s erection was immediate and electric.

  Oh Goddess—no. Not now. Not when he was weak, and Eljean was willing. Not when he’d sell his skin for someone to tell him that it would all be fine in the morning. Oh Triane’s tears, please not now!

  Eljean cleared his throat, and again. “No,” he said gruffly, at last. “Here…. I’ll be right back….” And with that, he fled to the front room, presumably to his cupboard for some bread and cheese.

  Torrant tried to wrap the towel around his burgeoning private parts while Eljean was gone, and he had limited success. Things were anchored flat pretty much, but nothing had gotten smaller. Fortunately, when Eljean got back with the food—and a shirt that would hang down nearly to his knees—the problem, and the awkwardness that attended it, were temporarily forgotten.

  The food all but disappeared, and Torrant washed it down with gulps of water from a glass Eljean kept in the bathroom as he looked anxiously to see if there was more. Eljean wordlessly provided some jerky and fruit after that, and the second snack seemed to replace some of the blood loss because Torrant was suddenly thinking better.

  “Thanks, Eljean. Here—let me just put on your shirt and borrow some breeches, and I’ll be able to walk to my room and be out of your hair, right? I’ll even buy you bre—Hey….” In amused irritation he batted at Eljean’s hand, which had started tracing patterns across his chest. Eljean had apparently lost all his embarrassment, though, because he wasn’t easily deterred.

  “These….” Touch, flutter, touch. “All of these?” he asked, looking into Torrant’s eyes with increasing agitation.

  Torrant seized his hand, just to stop the distraction of that appealing stroking of his bare skin, and looked to see what he was talking about. “The scars?” he asked, to make sure.

  Eljean stood and reclaimed his hand, then knelt on the bed to get behind Torrant and touch his back now. “All of them,” he repeated, tears in his voice.

  “Eljean, I heal quickly—it hurts, but when I change form….”

  “I don’t give a damn how fast you heal!” Eljean cried, smoothing his hand against Torrant’s back. Torrant managed not to lean into the touch and cursed how much he seemed to want it. “Look at you!” Another touch traced a wound that sliced from his back to his hip.

  “I’m sorry—I know it’s probably repulsive—”

  “I could give a damn how it looks!” And suddenly Eljean’s arms were wrapped around his shoulders, and his face and all that glorious black and curly hair was tickling the skin of Torrant’s back. “All of these scars, Ellyot—all of them! I saw you, the first day you came here. You were glorious, you know—I wanted to weep at how beautiful you were—”

  “I had scars then too!” Torrant went to take Eljean’s hands from his chest and found his hands simply stayed there, rubbing Eljean’s fingers, hoping to soothe some of the other man’s agitation. He felt for the first time the bruise on his palm where he had bitten through when he was changing and hid it against the back of Eljean’s hands.

  “A fraction… a tenth of what you have now. Great Goddess, Ellyot—have you been bleeding for your people twice a night since Beltane?”

  There were tears sliding down Torrant’s back, and he couldn’t let his friend grieve for him—it wasn’t right. This hadn’t been Eljean’s pain to share. Torrant had meant for no one but Yarri and Aylan to ever know the extent of his injuries. It was embarrassing. It seemed to give what he was doing a glamor and a martyrdom he was not comfortable with.

  He turned a little, not minding the towel, and wrapped his arms around Eljean, then pulled his friend’s face into the crook of his shoulder.

  “Hey,” he whispered, “it’s not that bad. I’m fine. I’m alive. Aylan’s alive. Don’t worry. I don’t want you to worry about me.”

  Eljean drew in a breath on a sob, and another, and his hands roamed Torrant’s chest at will, feeling the ridges of the uglier scars and the smooth, sanded divots of the wounds that had just taken skin. Torrant closed his eyes, hating himself in this moment because he didn’t love Eljean, not that way, but the touch…. Oh, it felt so good to be touched.

  “Eljean,” he rasped, his voice strangling, trying to keep his humor. “Eljean, my friend, you have a lover, and while Zhane might forgive me, he’d never forgive—”

  Eljean turned shiny green eyes toward him, his face a study in hurt. “He broke up with me… said….” Eyes closed, a resolution made, Eljean suddenly looked like the adult Torrant had begged him to be. “He said I needed to know if you were a man or a god.”

  Torrant tilted his head back and groaned aloud. “I’m not a god—” he started, but while his neck was bared, Eljean placed moist lips against his exposed vein and kissed him, and the rest of the words were lost in a hiss of arousal.

  “Eljean,” he gasped. “Eljean, I have to go.”

  “Let me take care of you,” Eljean whispered against his neck. His lips traveled to Torrant’s throat and collarbone, then he grazed his teeth against Torrant’s chest.

  “Oh Goddess,” Torrant moaned, knotting his fingers in that lustrous black hair, thinking to pull Eljean’s head up as his tongue laved his stomach, his teeth nibbling just enough to make him gasp. “Eljean, please. I still have—ouch!” Eljean’s hand had grazed the partially healed stab wound on his thigh. “See? I still have wounds….”

  “Let me soothe them,” Eljean begged, gazing up Torrant’s broad chest with his chin digging suggestively into the softest part of Torrant’s belly.

  Torrant breathed and tried to stand. Eljean slid down even lower, and the towel fluttered to the floor. Torrant sat down in a hurry, finding the cover of Eljean’s body less disturbing than his own nakedness. He fought an urge to weep, to sob, to purge the anguish of his deeds and the horror of his night on this very innocent seducer. Ah Goddess….

  “Eljean—”He smoothed the hair back from those sweet, mesmerizing green eyes with hands that shook. “—baby, I have blood on my hands. Please don’t make me touch you tonight, not with blood on my hands.”

  Eljean sat up a little, so his chin rested on Torrant’s shoulder, and his hot puffs of rapid breath dusted Torrant’s throat. He seized one of Torrant’s hands and brought it to his mouth, kissed his palm, and then looked carefully when he saw Torrant wince.

  “It doesn’t hurt?” Eljean asked, laving what was still a bite-shaped bruise. “I saw you biting your own flesh so you wouldn’t scream. I know that there are lies upon lies in your life, but don’t tell me it doesn’t hurt.” He kissed the injured palm again, then pulled Torrant’s thumb into his mouth and sucked it gently. Torrant popped the thumb free and stroked Eljean’s high cheekbone, rubbing in careful circles, thinking this was the time to walk away.

  “Pain is penance, Eljean,” he said firmly, shifting his weight to the balls of his feet and moving past the weakness of his knees, “and I have much t
o pay for. You need to let me go.” He was doing it, he was standing, still looking soberly into Eljean’s eyes when Eljean took his hands and kissed his knuckles with enough gentleness to make the wobble in his knees sit him down again on the bed, hard.

  “You’ve paid for our sins enough,” Eljean whispered against his hand. “Let me touch you and take some of it away.”

  Torrant’s will bent, his better judgment wavered, weakened, a wall of water, crashing around his feet. His eyes fluttered closed, and he touched Eljean’s cheek again with his thumb.

  “No.” But he didn’t try to move.

  “Let me,” whispered Eljean, kissing up his arms to his biceps, then tickling the crease of his arm with his tongue.

  “This isn’t fair to you….” Oh Goddess, please… please give him the strength to stand and walk away.

  “Let me,” murmured Eljean from his neck again, kissing, rubbing his chest, rubbing his thigh, the upper inside of his thigh, grazing the swollen pleasure at his groin.

  “Ahhh….” Oh sweet Triane, it had been so long since Yarri had touched him there, had taken him into her soft mouth, her sweet hand, the haven of her body. “This isn’t fair to—” And he couldn’t even say her name, he thought in agony. He couldn’t bring her into this bed to ward off his seducer, because Eljean didn’t know he wasn’t Yarri’s brother but her lover. His head pitched forward on a whimper, and he closed his eyes against thoughts of her, here, in this alien city, when he had done murder and worse than murder, and she was not there to comfort him.

  “Let me, Triane’s Son,” Eljean said softly against his spine, smoothing a hand from his neck to his buttocks and making Torrant groan in sudden, complete acceptance of hands on his battered skin.

  Let me… let me… let me… let me…. Oh, once, just this once, when he was so weary, to let someone else make the decisions….

  Let me… let me… let me….

  Eljean led, Eljean kissed, Eljean caressed, and Torrant lay, eyes closed, and allowed Eljean’s mouth on his skin, his hands on his pleasure places, his soul to lay claim to a name that hadn’t had an owner for long years.

  Let me… let me… let me….

  Merciful Dueant, Holy Triane, Violated Oueant… please… just please… please make it right, just for a moment, just for now, just for tonight.

  Let me… let me… let me….

  And so Torrant did.

  And when Eljean was pressed along his back, invading his flesh, Torrant clutched the strong arm across his chest and broke, sobbing like a child.

  Later, Eljean lay spooned against Torrant’s back and rubbed his shoulders as the last of the sobs choked out into the privacy of a pillow, murmuring what he thought would be soothing, grown-up words to calm him.

  “Poor baby,” Eljean said at last, when he thought the final, shuddering breath had cleared his lover’s chest. “You’re not made for this business any more than I am.”

  “No,” whispered the man in his arms. “No. Ellyot always was the better hunter.”

  Abruptly, he fell asleep, leaving Eljean staring wide-eyed at the sleeping figure in the holy lover’s dark.

  TORRANT AWOKE before the first gray of dawn, sharply aware he was not in his own flat and that Aylan would break down the door of every flat in the complex if he didn’t find Torrant there when he arrived at dawn.

  He rolled naked out of bed and thunked solidly on all fours, then winced. His body hadn’t healed all of his hurts the night before. Sometimes, when he had been very badly wounded, even the change from the snowcat to human couldn’t fix everything.

  And sometimes, unaccustomed activity left its own sorts of soreness.

  Oh Goddess. Torrant turned and looked at Eljean, his narrow face hidden under that curtain of black, curly hair. With a little whimper, Eljean rolled over in bed, snuggling into the warmth where Torrant had just been, and Torrant scrubbed his own face with his hands.

  Aylan was going to kill him.

  He closed his eyes on that thought and went looking for the shirt and breeches he had been preparing to wear before… before….

  Oh, he didn’t want to think about that. How could he have been so weak? And Eljean… poor Eljean. He wasn’t going to understand.

  Aylan had known—he had always known—that Torrant’s heart hadn’t wanted what his body seemed to crave in those moments after the Goddess left him, and he was stuck in the human consequences of what her body allowed him to do.

  Eljean was going to think this was love.

  Yarri would have known better, he thought dismally, pulling on his breeches and fighting the urge to weep—again! Yarri knew about what his body did, the shameful weakness that overcame him.

  He stopped as he was pulling the borrowed shirt on over his head.

  That wasn’t true, he realized dimly. Yarri didn’t know. She had been too young, when he’d first been the snowcat, and they had both been recovering during much of the time after that. Aldam knew, he realized, his heart giving another throb for his missing brother, whom he hoped was safe back in Eiran or Wrinkle Creek. Lane had known, and Bethen had known.

  He swallowed against a sore, dry throat and fought the urge to sink to his haunches and rock himself to mourn the hole in his chest his family left.

  The only thing that kept him on his feet was the thought of Aylan, who was here, and whom, he hoped, would forgive him anything.

  With a dodge into the patio, he found his boots and his black cloak, both of which had been shaken free of glass the night before, probably by Eljean while he’d waited for Torrant in the shower. He heard a murmur from the bed and sighed, resisting the sudden compulsion to jump the patio fence and run for his own backyard.

  “Hey,” he said softly, coming inside to sit on the bed and put on his boots.

  “You’re going?” Eljean’s voice rose with hurt at the end of that second word, and Torrant hid a grimace.

  “Aylan and I always spend rest day together,” he said, lacing his boot. “If I’m not there by the time Aylan gets back, the ruckus the snowcat caused is nothing compared to the fit he’ll throw looking for me.”

  “So….” Eljean pushed himself up on an elbow, his narrow, palely muscled chest exposed by the falling sheet. “You just go to your flat, take off your boots, and pretend that last night didn’t happen?”

  Please, Torrant thought with pain, please, Eljean, don’t do this. “Oh, I’ll confess to Aylan,” he said with a smile into those pretty green eyes, trying to get Eljean to smile back, “and to my family. We don’t do secrets like this one; it’s not how we work.”

  Eljean bit his lip, looking down at his hand as it rested on the rumpled sheet. “So I’m a confession? A mistake? Something to get off your chest?”

  Ah Dueant, forgive me. “Not at all,” Torrant said truthfully, taking Eljean’s hand to his lips and kissing, then nipping his palm.

  “Then what am I?” Eljean asked, looking into his eyes and begging for something, anything, to reassure him that the night before hadn’t been a mistake.

  Torrant closed his eyes and remembered the taste of dried apples, eaten while sitting on a cave floor and contemplating an uncertain future. “Sweetness,” he said softly, and leaned down and kissed Eljean’s cheek. “You were sweetness.”

  A small smile then, graced Eljean’s narrow features, and also a sudden soberness. “May I have the honor, then,” he said, looking down at their still-twined hands, “of knowing the name of the man in my bed last night?”

  Torrant sucked breath in past his teeth as though he’d just been hit. “I’m sorry?”

  Eljean swallowed and looked him in the eyes. “You said ‘Ellyot was always the better hunter.’ And you called Yarri’s name in your sleep…. Nobody calls their sister’s name like that. Nobody asks a sister to wait for them the way you pleaded with her as you slept. Please… you… you trusted me, with your body. With your heart, even for just a night. Could you not trust me with your name?”

  Torrant shook his head,
muttered, “Aylan’s going to kill me,” and closed his eyes against Eljean’s suddenly wise gaze.

  “Ellyot Moon was killed in the barn with the rest of the family,” he said at last, and as it always did, speaking that one truth aloud ripped his chest open, spilled everything else worth seeing before him to read in bloody runes. “His sister, Yarri, had been taking a nap with one Torrant Shadow, who had been raised with Ellyot and Tal and Qir just like a brother. He and his mother were in the family paintings. Owen Moon had even sent money ahead to his brother, Lane, for Torrant’s schooling. Torrant—” His voice caught, speaking of himself this way. “—Torrant knew that the one thing the family would have wanted was for him to keep Yarri safe, and so he did.”

  Eljean reached up and touched his face, and his fingers slipped and skated along a taut cheekbone.

  He cleared his throat. “Everything else I’ve told you is true,” he said through a thickened throat, “but—but they kept sending priests and soldiers for Yarri, and they thought I was Ellyot. And Torrant Shadow could sneak into Clough and kill Rath anytime he wanted, but….”

  He let that last sentence trail off, then stood abruptly.

  “I’ve got to go,” he rasped, hating himself, wanting Aylan so badly his hands shook.

  “But only Ellyot Moon could change the world that killed his family.” Eljean supplied that last part, sitting up in bed and ignoring the sheet as it slid down to his waist. “I’m sorry I hurt you—”

  Torrant shook his head again and moved toward the front door, checking the spell on his hair and fingering the divot in his ear as he strode. “I’m going to go by the complex canteen and get breakfast,” he said, keeping his voice casual. “Meet us in my flat in a bit. We’ll just mooch about, eating, reading forbidden books, laying low during the curfew. Djali will be at the funeral all day—no reason for you to be bored.”