Taste the Dark

by Tibby Armstrong

  Dark brows raised in query, Lyandros asked, “Anything else?”

  Shaking his head, Akito stared straight ahead, unable to meet Lyandros’s gaze. He hugged himself around the middle, wrestling his fear and his doubts. Fear was what made you weak. Heroes survived because they were never afraid.

  Lyandros regarded him a moment, before turning again to the door. “Follow me.”

  Leaving the room, they passed the guards, and found Isander and their escort waiting in the hall.

  Isander’s skeptical stare morphed to an impressed moue. “Nice work.”

  Akito bristled, and Lyandros shot Isander a quelling look.

  They traveled to the banquet hall without further comment from either vampire. On either side of the arched entrance, liveried servants stood, sentry-like. The threads of their coats and the buckles on their shoes gleamed with gold. Precious gems and rare metals were so ubiquitous that Akito wondered if the diamonds back home had accidentally been shaken loose in some long-ago Faerie cataclysm. Ostentation wasn’t just a fashion here. It was the effect of the building materials available to the world in which the fae lived.

  Akito entered two steps behind Lyandros. The king and the court fell to a hush at their places along the seemingly endless banquet table. A raised platform, almost scaffold-like, loomed at one end of the hall. They drew closer, and Akito saw that satin and brocade cushions littered the space. Restraints trailed across them with snake-like menace. Diaphanous curtains behind created a contrasting atmosphere of sensual decadence.

  A flutter began in Akito’s belly as he caught the intent of the platform. He glanced to Lyandros. The vampire’s thin-lipped displeasure seemed to indicate he’d reached the same conclusion as Akito. They weren’t supposed to merely cement the Justice Giver-tribute bond for the fae court. They were supposed to consummate it.

  Heat flooded Akito’s cheeks. Arousal flared along his spine to pool in his tailbone. Thoughts of belonging to Lyandros wrapped tendrils of need around his middle. The mere idea of the sexual connotations—of being so intimately tied to this vampire—was enough to bring him dangerously close to contemplating the carnal coupling, audience or no. Breathing deep, he attempted to regain control over his body.

  The court stood in rapt attention, the moment electric. Akito realized between one heartbeat and the next that they wanted to see him humiliated. His stomach lurched, snuffing out his arousal. Here was a way that Lyandros could kill two birds with one stone—make his gift to the king and start Akito’s punishment with the public display. The court would see his vulnerability and craven need when Lyandros commanded his body, and there would be nothing Akito could do about it other than perform like an animal for their entertainment.

  Warm fingers curled under Akito’s chin, forcing his attention upward. “You will be mine, and mine alone. I will not take you here.” Lyandros used his regard as a form of steady reassurance. “Understood?”

  Akito nodded, his relief a cool rush.

  “He will need a dagger,” Isander said.

  Servants were sent for a blade that was delivered presently. Lyandros took the knife and, hesitated, seeming to wait for Akito’s permission to proceed. Wetting his lips, Akito nodded once, giving his silent assent. He would submit to the sentence.

  Lyandros encircled Akito’s wrist and tugged his forearm upward. Akito’s sleeve fell back, exposing his flesh. A shallow nick—more of a paper cut than a punishment—made Akito flinch. At first, he thought Lyandros meant to drink from him, then wetness hit his skin in a heated splash. Akito hissed and jerked his arm at the sting. Lyandros held fast, his grip unyielding.

  The vampire was crying?

  Tears streamed down Lyandros’s cheeks to bathe the nick. Red blood turned pink and trickled down to stain a white satin pillow at Akito’s feet. As the tears entered Akito’s bloodstream, emotions rolled over him. Rage, loss, and oddly, affection. He understood implicitly that these were Lyandros’s feelings over losing his people to Benjamin’s blade, entwined with his conflicting feelings about Akito himself. Akito took those emotions in, owning them, as they became part of his experience of the man who stood before him.

  “You understand your sentence?” Lyandros asked, lifting his head.

  Akito nodded, unable to look away from the Justice Giver’s eyes. Sheened with dampness, their blue-black threatened to drown him more completely than the Charles River’s murky depths. He felt Lyandros’s arousal as his own. Its vigorous pulses that weighted his sex and pooled in his groin. Lust became a palpable shimmer, and absolution became the most erotic word in the English language.

  Someone handed Lyandros a small white towel. He draped it over one arm and brushed the back of a hand against Akito’s cheek. Studying the Justice Giver from under lowered lashes, Akito came to a decision. If this was what judgment felt like—tender, lurid, and magically alive in equal measure—he wanted to be found guilty. Not just here. Not just now. But in every possible way.

  Chapter 17

  Taking the white towel from his arm, Lyandros dabbed at his lids and cheeks. Today’s tears were not his own. Each one belonged to the goddess, Themis. The mora called them the tears of the damned. When Lyandros examined the cloth, it was splashed with red. Red for bloodshed. Red for anger and fear and pain. Red for death. He handed the towel to Isander who examined it with a nod. The will of the gods had been done. The King Ruler blessed the sentence and its fulfillment with a murmured prayer, and the tribute bond with Akito was cemented.

  “Please.” The monarch of the Fae Realm swept his hand upward in polite invitation, drawing Lyandros’s attention. “Join us.”

  Lyandros tucked the towel into an inner coat pocket and approached the banquet table. Akito trailed after him, two steps behind. A servant stepped forward to pull out Lyandros’s chair, and Lyandros stayed him with a raised hand. Dipping his head, he signaled his wish. Akito hesitated, cheeks pinking. Apparently, he thought the task beneath him.

  “Do not make me chastise you here.” Lyandros spoke so only Akito could hear.

  A defiant flash edged Akito’s gaze, but he pulled out the chair. Lyandros, sat, glancing sharply to the place on the floor to his left. Gingerly, Akito kneeled there. Flawless grace accompanied the tribute’s motion, though a minute wince crossed his features.

  Lyandros frowned. “All right?”

  Akito nodded, surreptitiously smoothing his right trouser leg downward. An uncomfortable looking ridge disturbed the leather’s otherwise smooth lines.

  Aha. Akito was merely enthralled by the newness of their bond. It was always good when the tribute-Justice Giver bond included the sensual. It didn’t always work out that way, of course, but those erotic connections were more likely to result in easily won complicity. The promise of pleasure in exchange for obedience kept a man in check far longer than the threat of a beating. Lyandros had never doubted he would have an intimate relationship with this tribute, but it was good to see the gods had seen fit to strengthen that need on both sides.

  “Later,” the king said, speaking over the rim of his bejeweled goblet, “you and your new tribute will entertain us further.”

  Lyandros’s hand paused mid-smooth against his own trousers. “In what way do you wish to be entertained, Majesty?”

  He knew damned well how the king wished to be entertained, but wasn’t about to let him get away without saying it. Though Lyandros had nothing against sex with a select audience if the situation warranted, it was not a way in which he would ever make Akito submit. Though he refrained from looking at Akito, he felt the man’s revulsion as clearly as if the emotions were his own.

  “We assumed the bonding with your tribute would prove more of a show.” Metal-tipped manicures clinked against crystal goblets up and down the banquet hall in a show of support. The king’s smile broadened. “I believe the court would like to see how the Justice Giver couples with his love slave.”

  Lyandros’s laugh rang hollow in his chest. “We couple as any two men do,
majesty.”

  Akito himself, red faced and growling, began to rise to his feet, but Lyandros’s hand to his shoulder pressed him into place.

  Lyandros leaned in, repressing Akito’s anger with his own displeasure. “Do not test me.”

  Akito backed down, lowering his mutinous gaze to the floor. Hands that should have been laid flat on his knees were balled into fists.

  “You may use our gardens this evening.” The cracked desert landscape of the fae king’s face deepened with his smile. “To enjoy him further.”

  Lyandros opened his mouth to protest.

  “No.” Abruptly, the king’s smile disappeared. “We insist.”

  Lyandros rolled another sip of wine over his tongue, pretending to consider. “It is kind of you to offer me their use.”

  Isander flashed him a look that asked, What are you up to, brother?

  It had been a long time since anyone had forced Lyandros to act against his conscience or his will, and no one knew this better than his sibling.

  Lyandros continued, “It is especially kind since that will prevent you and your court from enjoying the grounds.”

  “The entertainment of your tribute bond did not suffice. We seek a different kind of claiming.” The king jabbed the tines of his fork in Lyandros’s direction. “You will break him in for us, or we will have him yet.”

  Lyandros barely repressed the growl building in his throat. At his feet, Akito vibrated with a wash of fear and fury.

  “I believe, Majesty, that the tales we have to tell will more than entertain.” Isander stepped in, saving Lyandros from committing violence. “When it pleases you to hear them.”

  Fae fans snapped and wagged, disrupting the candle flames. They members of the court turned to each other, whispering and snickering. What was it, Lyandros wondered, about the long lives of these isolated beings that had turned them toward such juvenile perversions?

  “What stories would you have us hear, King Ruler?” The fae king slid his gaze to a smirking lord. “Perhaps you wish to tell us of your dreams while a captive to the Boston coven these last twenty years? Or perhaps of your brother’s maudlin ghostly meanderings? Or maybe of his anticlimactic death?”

  The court tittered and Lyandros felt his own gaze darken dangerously.

  “Not at all, Majesty. Those would be dull accounts, indeed.” Isander leaned forward, his blue eyes placid as he played the king’s game. “Rather, I would tell you a tale of Faery, and the destruction that will soon lay waste to its lands if the Morgan succeeds in building his own bridge.”

  “Bah.” The king stood and the court stood with him, Lyandros and Isander included. “He would not dare. And if he did, my soldiers would lay waste to him and the pathetic coven he calls his army.”

  “I would not be so sure.” Lyandros jumped in, seeing where Isander headed with his distraction. “He has amassed a large amount of magic by capturing Boston’s ley line. He has already created an undead army and seeks to bend shades and other dark denizens to his will.”

  Taking his seat, the king drank deeply of his wine. An advisor, seated to the king’s right, signaling that the man was of the king’s own house and bloodline, sneered when Lyandros met his gaze.

  “You lie, vampire,” the fae advisor said.

  Isander sucked in a breath. The last being who had called Lyandros a liar had died with his entrails around his neck.

  “I never lie,” Lyandros said, fist squeaking audibly around his fork.

  At his feet, Akito shivered once, as if cold ghosted over his skin.

  The court leaned forward, the milling colors of their gowns and frock coats a dazzling distraction that Lyandros resolutely ignored. He wondered that they did not speak until he realized the buzzing and hissing he’d heard all evening was the fae tongue spoken on rapidly moving lips. One half music, one half insect-like hum, it bordered on enchanting and disturbing.

  “You will take the tribute for our pleasure, or we will take him.” Arms made more of bone than flesh crossed a gaunt chest.

  Lyandros stood. The court chatter morphed into an excited buzz.

  “Pray, do not make me choose for you,” the king warned, lids at half-mast.

  “Your Majesty.” Though Lyandros tried to find an ounce of deference in his soul he failed, and his gaze clashed with the king’s. “The making of a tribute has never, before tonight, been witnessed by those outside the mora. I trust…” He placed a hand on Akito’s head. “I trust you understand how valuable this sort of arcana could be when creating your own…attendants.”

  “There was a time, it is said, when you enjoyed an audience.” Ignoring the tidbit, the king regarded Lyandros through narrowed eyes.

  Lyandros met Akito’s gaze, questioning. He needed verification.

  Akito shook his head.

  So be it. If the king judged that Akito be made the court’s plaything, Lyandros would meet his death in this realm before he let a man under his care be subjected to such base and vile a fate against his desire.

  “My tributes are my charges.” Finding his voice shook with anger, Lyandros breathed deep. “They are under my judgment and care by edict of the gods. If, or when, I judge that an audience is a fit use, and that the tribute in question would not be damaged by the lesson, then it is made so.” He tipped his head, indicating Akito. “That is not my ruling, nor my tribute’s desire.”

  Judging by the craning of necks, the fae court had rarely seen a better tennis match than the one between their king and Lyandros.

  “Those are large words for a man who has lost his seal of office.” The king tilted his chin, indicating the empty circle where a medallion had once graced the harness crisscrossing Lyandros’s chest.

  Lyandros looked down. It was true, the place where his medallion had once rested was vacant. When in ghostly form, it had been there. He’d bathed, dressed, and put his harness back on, and not noticed it had been missing.

  “He lost it after he died,” Isander said. “As I…lost my staff some time ago.”

  Cup… Shield… Staff…

  Distracted, Lyandros ran a hand down his face. Where had the objects been taken? Had the Morgan once possessed all three?

  “We really need to discuss the Morgan, your majesty.” Lyandros faced the king.

  The fae king’s face hardened to a craggy alabaster landscape. “You know my price for a parley with you on the subject.”

  Lyandros shook his head slowly, forgetting the mora’s sacred objects. Anger at a slow boil, he said. “And you know my answer. It is not my kingdom that is in danger.”

  Paper white flesh turned purple, the king’s anger seeming to implode inward before exploding outward in a spittle-laden shout: “Get them out of my sight!”

  Three guards seized him, Akito, and Isander by the arms to escort them from the long hall. Frog marched to their suite, doors slammed and locked behind them, he and Isander stumbled into each other and righted themselves. Akito landed in a heap at Lyandros’s feet. Slowly, hair curtaining his eyes, he took up the submissive posture Lyandros had taught him. Palms upward on his thighs, he appeared the model tribute.

  “Stand,” Lyandros said.

  Akito complied, going to parade rest, and Lyandros cast him an approving look. A fire crackled warmly in the hearth, and a few well-placed candelabra lent the room a mellow glow. Shadows danced around the billowing curtains, the cool breeze lush with frangipani and night blooming jasmine.

  “Do you think…” Pacing the swirls of green and gold carpet that warmed the room’s gold and white marble, Lyandros addressed Isander, his thoughts turning to matters more important than the fae king’s perverse fixation on public congress. “That the Morgan once had all three instruments of the archon’s office?”

  “He does not have them, though I know he once did.” Isander’s attention alighted on Akito. “You rescued the kylix from the Morgan.” He frowned, gaze going inward as if he searched his memory. “Do you know if the prince still has the shield and the
staff?”

  “What prince?” Akito’s dark brows lifted, snapping together. “What shield? What staff? I only know about the kylix.”

  “Each of the archon has their own instrument of power,” Lyandros explained. “Tzadkiel’s is the kylix. He is the arbiter of the blood, deciding which vampires may be made and which may move on to Gemini after death. He draws his power from blood magic, feeding it to the rest of the mora as he sees fit.”

  “So, what’s yours?” Akito asked.

  “Mine is the Justice Giver’s shield.” Lyandros indicated the place at his chest—an empty circle devoid of the bronze medallion that had once nested there. “It allows me to call on the gods to shield the innocent—the mora as a whole or its individual members. Through Themis, I cast protection over the pure, and judgment on the damned.”

  Akito’s gaze went to Isander, whose face had taken on an ashen quality. “And your item?”

  “A staff,” the King Ruler answered. “It draws power from the gods in Gemini, acting as a divining rod and instrument of power. It gives me the ability to bring the mora together in times of crisis and guide it as a cohesive unit.” He glanced to Lyandros. “It also allows me to settle internal discord among the mora and the archon.”

  “And together?” Akito seemed to intuit where this led.

  Lyandros smiled faintly. He’d only seen the three objects brought together to form the Tarot once. His uncles and father had used them at Thermopolae. Legend had it that the 300 Greeks who fought there had perished, mortal men. Nothing was further from the truth.

  The mora had dressed defeated soldiers in Spartan armor as decoys, and afterward left Greece to avoid human detection. To this day, mostly, only other magical beings knew of the vampires’ existence. If the mora had still possessed all three instruments—and the archon had still been intact—the Morgan would never have been able to take or keep Boston Common.