Love and the Stubborn

by Xenia Melzer

  Then he picked up the trembling, sweating human bundle who had shown him such ecstasy as he had never known before, and placed him on the furs. He slung his muscular arms around the young man and kissed his nape. “You see what happens when you’re irreverent? I have to discipline you.”

  With a sigh, Casto leaned into his lover. “I’d love to be able to promise more obedience toward you in the future, but this was simply too good. I thank you, Barbarian.”

  Gently, Renaldo kissed his heart on the mouth. Now that his first, greatest desire was sated, he could take the time to fondle him. “It is me who has to thank you. I know how hard it must be for you to trust me again. What you just did—it humbles me.” Happy about the way things had turned out, Renaldo pulled Casto closer. “Considering that you’re normally so defiant, your obedience in bed is remarkable.”

  “That’s only because of you, Barbarian. Even when I try to fight it, you always manage to get me to the point where all I can think of is belonging to you. In these moments, you could ask anything from me. My whole being is concentrated on feeling you, being yours.”

  Renaldo felt a strange discomfort. Now that he was thinking with a clear head again, Casto’s statements were no longer blurred and he was able to see the deeper meaning behind them. He slung his arms tightly around Casto, unsure whether he should voice his fears.

  But Casto wasn’t stupid. It was better to have the matter out in the open. “I only hope you won’t regret this one day.”

  Oblivious, Casto snuggled even closer. “Why should I? You make me feel good. Really, really good.”

  “I know, but that won’t always be the case, my sweet one.”

  Casto tensed in his arms. Casto might not possess Renaldo’s divine insight, but he was intuitive enough to realize when something was amiss. “What do you mean?”

  “Casto, I was born a god. And my brother and I, we’ll become gods again. Once you’re confirmed as my heart, we only have to await the arrival of the last Emeris before we enslave this world. Our powers will grow. We’ll lose the humanity we’ve gained during the time after Mother took our hearts. When that happens, we’ll return to being what we were born as, and your will is going to be insignificant then. You’ll be mine, doing my bidding in everything you say and do. Chances are that even your thoughts will be mine. That’s what it means to be with a god.”

  “I know.”

  Casto had only whispered those two words, but they couldn’t have shocked Renaldo more if he had screamed them into his face. “You know?”

  Casto pried himself from Renaldo’s grasp, straightened up, and looked calmly at him. “I’ve known ever since you ordered me in my dream to come back home. Why should I have done that, knowing what kind of punishment was waiting for me? But I acquiesced to your will because I had no other choice.”

  “Oh, Casto, my poor love! You endured the fear of punishment, the terror of losing me, and the knowledge that your freedom turns to dust in my hands? And still you came back to me?”

  Casto smiled crookedly. “Of course. Even though I don’t always like it, you’re my life, my home. I can’t resist you.”

  Renaldo pulled him close and kissed him hungrily. “But still you defy me.”

  “Whenever I get the chance. It gives me the feeling of having at least some control over my life.”

  Renaldo touched the prince’s left ear with his lips. “I love it when you defy me. I like your strong character, your stubbornness. If you weren’t as truculent and strong as you are, you’d never be able to bear me.”

  “You’re not the first to tell me that. You’re obviously not very successful when it comes to lasting relationships.”

  “My reputation is disastrous. Ask Hulda if you’re interested.”

  Casto’s smile vanished. “Did you ever love somebody? I know you had countless partners for sex, but in all that time, there must have been someone who meant more to you than just the satiation of your lust. I want to believe that you aren’t such a beast.”

  Renaldo was too busy thinking to react to the challenge of the last words. “Once there was a young woman. It’s been so long I’ve forgotten her name. She was intelligent and funny, and like you, she wasn’t afraid of me. I liked her because she was able to pass the time for me not only in bed. But she left me after only two months. She knew she had to go, because otherwise I would have destroyed her with my hunger. That was the longest relationship I ever had that wasn’t purely sexual.” He traced Casto’s face with his fingertips. “I don’t like to admit it, but I really was a beast. I had a man or woman with me almost every night, sometimes more than one. It was an unsteady, poisonous time. Nobody managed to catch my interest for more than a few days. They were all vessels for my frustration and despair. I felt empty, shallow. The continuous sexual joinings led me to believe in a closeness I couldn’t hope to know. My looks, the fire inside me—all that had isolated me. Although I was never literally alone, I tasted bitter loneliness.

  “Then you came. You weren’t afraid. You stood up to me openly, and my looks didn’t interest you at all. That bothered me, but I also found it impressive. Our first kiss was almost more than I was able to bear. Never before had I felt so intensely, had I been so alive. And you weren’t repulsed by me, neither by my anger, nor by my jealousy, nor my love.”

  Casto laughed drily. “That’s not necessarily a compliment. Not knowing when to give up is one of my weak points.”

  “And I’m glad about it. I couldn’t stand it if you left me. Or if you were afraid of me.”

  Mischief lit up Casto’s features. “How could I ever leave you, Barbarian? Since you’re giving me such nice orgasms on a regular basis.”

  Growling, Renaldo pressed his lover into the furs. His right hand traveled boldly over the outstretched body; his left hand prevented Casto from getting up. “It seems I haven’t exercised you enough. If you can be cheeky again, you aren’t really exhausted.”

  “Please, Barbarian, I was only joking. I’m really done.”

  “You should have thought about that before you challenged me. Now it’s too late. I’ll only stop when you’ve truly run out of steam and can’t cheek me anymore.”

  Casto tried weakly to wriggle free of his master’s grip, but when Renaldo held him all the harder, he gave up.

  Heyday

  1. Mercy

  THE DAY of his execution sent some lost sunrays into his cell that danced across the stone floor as if they didn’t know that today his life would come to an end. With a trace of sadness, Sic watched the light spinning, knowing it was the last time he would see true beauty. But he was also glad, because the day also meant the end of the nerve-racking wait.

  Sic had no illusions that his execution would be anything but painful. He knew the Angel of Death had invested a great amount of time in the planning of the due punishment of those who had almost killed his heart.

  He was just glad that he’d told the truth in the end. At least he could meet his death with his head held high. Although his master had a different opinion on the matter and had told him clearly what he thought of him, Sic had managed to preserve a last scrap of dignity for himself. In light of the misery of his entire existence, it was enough.

  The heavy iron door to his cell opened, and a guard entered to unchain him. He wanted to drag Sic, but the young smith shook his head.

  “Please, I won’t try to run away. But I’d like to walk on my own.”

  For a moment Sic thought the guard hadn’t heard him, but then the man gave an almost imperceptible nod and stepped back. Sic passed him unsteadily—he had been chained to the wall for almost a week and had problems making his feet obey him.

  In the dimly lit passage, the other traitors were already waiting, including Damon and Assani, all bound with iron chains. Sic followed the gloomy procession as it slowly made its way out of the dungeons.

  Outside, he blinked rapidly under the bright morning sun, whose rays were reflected by the snow and made the Valley look a
s if it was covered in diamonds. The stinging cold attacked him like a hungry animal, but Sic was glad about that, since it meant that he was… still… alive.

  The path to the place of execution wasn’t long. Everybody in the Valley had gathered around an oval with a canopy erected at the south side under which the divine brothers and their Emeris sat on throne-like chairs. Sic recognized Casto; the young man was standing behind the Angel of Death’s chair. Noran was there as well, sitting between Hulda and Bantu. His gaze went through his former apprentice as if he didn’t exist. Sic wasn’t surprised that it hurt him more than any torture he’d endured so far.

  Knowing he had disappointed his master, the most important person in his life, was like a knife constantly twisting inside him, a pain reaching deeper than anything that could be done to his body.

  In the middle of the oval, eight crosses had been erected. Each of the convicts, with exception of Assani, was now bound with their arms stretched wide to one of the wooden poles. Nobody had thought it necessary to tell the convicts the details of their punishment, except that their end would be excruciating. Sic didn’t know what was awaiting them.

  Assani was led right in front of the brothers. Two overseers held the struggling female with unrelenting hands. When all the traitors were in position, Lord Renaldo raised his hand. Immediately everybody fell silent.

  The Angel of Death’s voice echoed coldly through the air, a sound that reminded Sic somehow of the darkness of the grave.

  “The scum you see bound here have dared to raise their filthy hands against me and my brother. They’ve tried to harm my precious heart, and they’ve worshipped the false goddess here in the Valley. There is no punishment imaginable to compensate for this kind of crime, but be assured, the suffering of those who challenge us doesn’t end with death. Ana-Isara, our beloved mother, will speak her verdict on the other side, once the traitors have left this world.”

  For a moment his gaze wandered aimlessly around the crowd. The inhumanly beautiful face had frozen to a mask that made it impossible to guess the emotions behind it. When Renaldo spoke on, his tone sent shivers down the spines of everybody present. He picked Assani first because she and Damon were the leaders.

  “Assani, because you dared to lie to your god and wrongly accuse his heart, you don’t deserve an easy death. The pain and suffering your actions have brought shall be reflected in the way you die.”

  The Angel of Death then nodded toward the two men who had been waiting at the edge of the oval. Shuddering, Sic watched as they threw Assani to the ground. One of them held her down while the other grabbed her left foot around the ankle and held it up. An overseer stepped forward. He had a whip in his hands. Almost gently, he touched the sole of Assani’s foot with the leather before he swung his arm back and let the whip crack. Assani screamed like a demon from the other realm when blow after blow rained down on her exposed foot. After twenty strokes, the men changed to her right foot and repeated the action. Renaldo and Canubis observed with expressionless faces how the slave was tortured. Casto, who was still standing behind Renaldo’s chair, was white as linen, but his face didn’t betray any of the emotions raging inside him.

  Noemi Amerasu, who was standing right behind her husband, stared intently at Lord Canubis’s back, unable to bear the brutality unfolding in front of her eyes.

  The other Emeris showed no sign of emotion. If anything, the faces of Kalad and Aegid displayed their boredom.

  The sun had already risen quite a bit when Assani’s screams grew hoarser and finally died down to a whimper. The men let her go but didn’t allow her to get up. The woman was panting and her blood dripped in a steady stream into the snow. One of the overseers stepped behind her, yanked her upper torso back brutally, and slit open her abdomen in one swift movement.

  The once proud, merciless woman roared in pain, the new source of agony successfully bringing back her voice. The man who had hurt her now stepped back and let her bleeding, twitching body fall into the snow, where she curled up into a tight ball. The diamond glittering was instantly covered by a thick stream of red.

  A growl resounded behind Sic when the wolves entered the oval. The powerful predators sauntered toward Assani, who lay dying on the cold ground. The alpha wolf licked the bloody snow, and then the glowing, predatory eyes turned to the slave. With a forceful motion, the wolf turned its prey onto her back and with its paws prevented the hysterically screeching woman from getting free.

  The female alpha approached. Her silky gray fur shone in the sun like polished silver. Her muzzle descended to the open wound, pushed inside the abdomen of her prey, and emerged bloody and with entrails dangling left and right from her jaw.

  Assani’s screams were no longer human: they sounded like the wailing of a vengeful spirit. The remaining pack members, which had waited respectfully at a distance, joined the alpha couple and the feast started. It didn’t take the wolves long to strip Assani’s corpse of all its flesh. After only a short time, all that was left of the slave were the bloody bones with which the pups began to play.

  Again Lord Renaldo made a gesture, and Sic felt movement at his back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw several overseers stepping forward with glass whips in their hands. Even before his ears registered the angry buzz of the especially brutal instrument of torture, the first wave of pain hit his body. The man who was whipping him knew what he was doing. He thrashed him with all his strength, methodically, from top to bottom to cause maximum damage. Sic had the feeling that his muscles had peeled from his bones, blood streamed down his legs into the snow, and he soon stood in a puddle of the warm fluid. He screamed, unable to cope with the pain in any other way, but he didn’t beg, unlike the other convicts.

  At first, because he knew how useless it was, and secondly, because he deserved it. He had not only betrayed his god and his god’s heart, even worse, he had disappointed his master. He deserved whatever the Angel of Death had in store for him.

  After an eternity imprisoned in worlds of agony, the beating stopped. The overseers stepped back from their victims and two of them approached Damon. The once charismatic and cruel man was reduced to a whimpering, bleeding bundle of pain who was unchained and led to a cross lying on the ground. With his arms and legs spread wide, the priest of the Good Mother was bound tightly. One overseer wielded a knife that glinted cruelly in the sunlight. A guttural scream full of unspeakable anguish echoed through the oval while between Damon’s legs, his penis and testes slithered to the ground in a heap of gory tissue. A hissing sound, closely followed by another howl and the stench of burned flesh marked the cauterization of the wound.

  Sic saw and heard several onlookers throw up violently, but the gods’ expressions remained unreadable.

  Now the overseers lifted the cross up and positioned it on four posts so that Damon’s ravaged body was presented to the sun.

  When the first ravens started to circle in the sky, Sic knew that the priest’s suffering had only just begun.

  The other overseers stepped toward their respective victims again, all wielding knives like the one that had just castrated Damon. Sic fought desperately against the panic rising inside him, determined to keep as much of his dignity as possible when faced with such a humiliating way to die. That, at least, he owed to himself.

  But while the other convicts suffered the same fate as their leader, except that their bodies were left to the wolves, not the ravens, Sic felt his torturer slicing the trammels fastening him to the pole. Whimpering, he dropped into the gory mud with blood dripping from his wrists where he had been bound so tightly. Strong hands seized him and dragged him across the oval to the place where the Emeris sat.

  The overseer tossed Sic into the snow in front of Renaldo, then left. With an effort, Sic managed to get to his knees, but he kept his gaze down. He was terribly afraid of what the Angel of Death had in store for him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Casto observing him with his amazing blue eyes as if Sic were some rare species of insec
t.

  An all-too-familiar hand fell heavily on his shoulder. His master’s voice sounded as if he had just found something unpleasant under the soles of his feet. “I thank you, Lord Renaldo. It’s very courteous of you to give this slave back to me.”

  Lord Renaldo’s perfect features didn’t show the slightest emotion. “It’s my pleasure to do my brother-in-arms a favor.” The Angel of Death cast a quick glance at Casto. “I only hope we won’t regret this one day.”

  Noran, too, addressed the young man next to Renaldo when he answered. “I hope that, too, my lord. Very much so.” He pulled his slave up roughly. “You, come with me.”

  Noran’s voice was so ominous that Sic involuntarily cringed. He almost feared his master’s unbridled fury more than the cold, controlled anger of the Angel of Death. With long strides that had no consideration for Sic’s hurt state, Noran hurried toward the smithy.

  He tossed Sic to the ground in front of one of the forges. His voice was ice-cold and so hollow as if it were coming from a grave.

  “Don’t you dare make the mistake of thinking for even one moment that I’ve forgiven you. Against my better judgment, I grace you with the possibility to earn yourself a second chance, although I doubt you’re worth such an honor. For the time being, I don’t want to see your face too often. That’s why you’re going to spend your mornings in the compost heaps, and in the afternoons you belong to Casto. You’re going to obey him as if he were your master, and he can punish you whenever and however he sees fit. Every morning and every evening you’re going to be beaten with the strap until further notice. Five blows, every time.

  “You’ll sleep here, chained to the anvil like the dog that you are. In my presence you only talk when I explicitly ask you to. Should you feel the inclination to address me, for whatever reason, you kneel down with your forehead on the ground. Only if I give my consent are you then allowed to speak.