The Fever King

by Lee, Victoria

  “You—god, you’re so stubborn, and I—that’s what I love about you, it is, but it’s the worst thing about you, because now I can’t. If I, if you know, and he knows—knows you know—there’re some things I just can’t say, Noam. There—I won’t be the reason you die!” The last part burst out of him like a dam breaking, and Dara pressed both hands to his face, nails digging into his brow.

  “Dara . . .”

  Noam moved toward him, carefully this time—like Dara might bolt if he moved too quickly. Dara was shivering. Noam reached out, his hand hovering there, uncertain. When he finally touched him, Dara’s skin was hot and dry.

  “It’s okay,” Noam said slowly. He let his hand settle more firmly where it was, palm against the sharp wing of Dara’s collarbone where it met his shoulder.

  Dara slapped at his wrist, knocking Noam’s hand away. This time when he looked at Noam, his eyes gleamed with something more than just anger. Dara rubbed the heel of his palm against his damp cheeks, not that it did any good. “It’s not.”

  “All right. It’s not. Do you want to . . . we can talk about it. I promise I’ll listen.”

  Dara laughed, low and bitter. “No. It’s fine. I’m going to shower.”

  It felt like his chest was caving in, organs crushed, even if Dara hadn’t said anything worse than what he already had. It wasn’t what Dara said, anyway. It was that Dara didn’t think there was anything he could say. That Dara was picking his shirt back up off the floor and walking away. That Noam stood there, naked in the middle of this room, and watched him go and didn’t stop him.

  Noam took a shower in the girls’ bathroom with permission from Bethany and Ames, changing into dry clothes and waiting out in the common room for twenty minutes, thirty, just in case Dara needed the time alone.

  But when he finally returned to the bedroom, Dara was already gone.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Noam saw the headline before anyone else. He’d been reading the news while he waited for his coffee to brew, print paper in one hand and the other reaching into a box of salted crackers. The front page was taken up by a story about an anti-Sacha attack down south in Charleston, twelve confirmed dead.

  A terrorist attack meant the other story was pushed to the second page, as otherwise it would have been the top headline in every paper. A small banner on the first page declared the news:

  HOME SECRETARY ASSASSINATED. Turn to p. 2.

  Noam tore the paper open so quickly he nearly ripped the corner off.

  A color photograph of the man took up half the second page; Gordon Ames wore his military uniform, the medal awarded for bravery pinned to his breast.

  Noam put down his half-eaten cracker.

  . . . Ames, 49, is survived by his brother Henry Ames and his daughter, Carter Ames . . .

  “Have you seen this?” Noam said when Bethany emerged from the hallway, already wearing her drabs and boots.

  Bethany held out a hand, beckoning. Noam passed her the paper. “Oh no,” Bethany murmured as she scanned the article. “Poor Ames. I guess that explains why she wasn’t here this morning.”

  Never mind that. Ames was probably thrilled.

  Noam did his best to look dismayed, but he had to keep biting back the twitch at the corners of his lips.

  General Ames was dead.

  That lying, murdering son of a bitch was dead.

  It was a pity Noam wasn’t the one who killed him, but whatever, the outcome was the same. That’s what mattered.

  “I’m gonna check on Dara,” Noam said.

  Noam left Bethany with the paper, skipping a little on the off step as he headed down the hall toward the bedrooms. The door to the bathroom was shut, thankfully. From the sound of it, Taye was taking a shower. Dara was a lump beneath his bedsheets, face turned to the wall and his hair a dark halo against the sheets.

  Dara would forgive Noam for waking him when it was news like this.

  He crouched on the floor by Dara’s bed and set a hand on his shoulder, shaking him as lightly as he could. “Dara,” he whispered. Dara didn’t move. “Dara.”

  Dara mumbled something indistinct and swatted at Noam’s hand.

  “What?”

  “Let me sleep,” Dara said, curling tighter beneath the covers.

  It was Sunday, but it wasn’t like Dara to sleep in. He’d come back late last night, long after Noam had gone to bed. They hadn’t talked about what had happened in this same room, bare skin on skin, all those soft little noises muffled against each other’s mouths.

  Or what came after that.

  Noam frowned. “It’s eight thirty.”

  “I don’t feel well.”

  Noam couldn’t see Dara’s face from here. Just his hair, a messy tangle on the pillow. Noam wanted to twist one of those loose curls around his finger. Inappropriate. You’re supposed to be announcing a murder. And Dara was possibly—probably—still angry.

  “You need to get up anyway,” Noam said after a moment and squeezed his arm. “I have to talk to you. It’s important.”

  Dara rolled over, eyes opening to narrow slits. Noam could just barely see the glimmer of black irises. He looked sick, or maybe just exhausted, green-tinged with both hands clutching the bedsheets.

  For a moment, Noam thought about Lehrer’s brother—about Adalwolf, gone fevermad.

  Only Lehrer wouldn’t let that happen to another person he loved. Right?

  Noam was thinking that maybe he’d better let Dara sleep awhile longer and evade another fight when Dara finally sighed and opened his eyes all the way, shoving down the duvet and sitting up.

  “Okay,” Dara said. He patted the bed next to him, and Noam . . . he hesitated for a second, heart doing something painful. Yesterday Dara said shut the fuck up and left and didn’t come back. But Noam couldn’t keep squatting on the floor either, so he took the invitation for what it was and sat with one knee pulled up onto the mattress, body angled toward Dara. The bed was still warm.

  “I read in the paper this morning . . . ,” Noam started, but that felt so impersonal. He tried again, unsure if he should seem pleased about this or if Dara might . . . be upset, perhaps, because he and the general had been close. “Dara, Ames’s father was assassinated last night.”

  Dara just kept staring at him, slim fingers braided together in his lap.

  “He’s . . . dead,” Noam said. Just in case that hadn’t been clear.

  Dara closed his eyes. He was trembling. Noam couldn’t see it, but, sitting this close, he could feel it. “Did the paper say how it happened?”

  “It . . . well. They say he was stabbed to death.”

  He watched Dara carefully, marking each minute shift in expression. Dara ducked his head, and Noam couldn’t see his face anymore. One unsteady hand dragged through his hair.

  The reaction didn’t seem faked. But it sure was a mighty big coincidence—that last night Noam accused Dara of doing nothing, and now the general was dead.

  But did Noam think Dara could really commit murder?

  If the papers were true, then Dara went into that house, where Ames Sr. thought he was safe, and he stabbed the general sixteen times.

  Noam edged closer, his touch drifting to Dara’s knee. He wanted to reassure him, somehow—but that was all it took to push Dara over the edge. Dara leaned against Noam’s shoulder, whole body shuddering now as he . . .

  He was crying, Noam realized. Dara was crying.

  Very carefully, Noam wrapped his arms around Dara’s body and just . . . held him there, while both of Dara’s hands took fistfuls of his shirt and clung on tight. He was feverish hot; Noam could feel it even through the sweater Dara wore. It was like holding on to a live coal.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Noam murmured against Dara’s ear, even though he had no way of knowing that was true. “He deserved it. You know that. I would have killed him myself, if you had let me.”

  Dara didn’t tell him to fuck off, though, and didn’t pull away. His weight leaned agai
nst Noam’s chest, one of Dara’s hands abandoning Noam’s shirt to press against the base of his skull instead. Gently, so gently, Noam stroked Dara’s back and wished he was better at this. He had no idea what he was doing, if he was comforting Dara in his grief, or if Dara just . . .

  “Is there anything you need?” Noam asked eventually. His shoulder was damp, Dara still curled in against him and smelling like stale cigarette smoke. “Can I get you something?”

  Dara lifted his head slowly. His eyes were so bright, almost glassy. Then he kissed Noam, soft lips pressing against Noam’s mouth, his hand on Noam’s hip. It was—Noam nearly lost his balance, but Dara’s power caught him, some invisible telekinetic force pressing up on the small of Noam’s back. He . . . he . . .

  He kissed back. What else could he do? He slipped his fingers into Dara’s sleep-tangled hair, keeping him close. Softer, it was softer than Noam had remembered. Dara climbed into his lap, Dara’s firm thighs straddling Noam’s hips, his tongue in Noam’s mouth.

  “Dara,” Noam started, though he couldn’t think what he was going to say.

  It was . . . fast. Too fast, Noam thought. Too much. He tasted salt on his tongue, Dara’s tears.

  “Stop,” he said, gasping.

  Dara didn’t stop. He just kissed Noam again, body moving against Noam’s like he wanted everything Noam had to give. Noam hated himself in that moment, but he reached for Dara’s wrists anyway, pushing his hands away and pulling back from the kiss.

  “I’m sorry,” Noam said. “But you . . . not now. I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  He couldn’t have sex with Dara when Dara was like this. Not when Dara had been so eager to avoid him last night. How did he know Dara wanted him, and not just distraction?

  Dara wet his lips, wide eyed and staring at Noam like he’d never seen him before. Noam still held on to his wrists, but Dara didn’t try to draw them away.

  “You’re in shock,” Noam said when it was clear Dara wasn’t going to speak.

  A small, tremulous smile flitted over Dara’s mouth, something almost self-deprecating. “I thought you wanted me.”

  “Dara—”

  Noam had never seen Dara lost before, but that was the only word for the way he looked in this moment. His hands were limp where Noam held on to his wrists, and the longer Noam kept touching him, the more uncomfortable he felt. He let go.

  Dara looked down, where he still sat splayed across Noam’s lap. He made a soft noise in the back of his throat, half a snort. “I guess this is why you’re a good person.”

  Enough of this.

  “Dara,” Noam said again, quieter this time. He placed both hands on Dara’s thighs, because if he touched his face, Dara might flinch. “You didn’t come back last night.”

  Dara said nothing. His damp cheeks were flushed.

  “We argued, and I told you—you said you’d take care of General Ames, and then you left, and you didn’t come back, and now he’s dead.”

  Dara lifted one hand, slid his fingertips along the backs of Noam’s. Noam kept his hand still, so still.

  His heart beat a strange rhythm, lungs tightening when he tried to inhale.

  “Dara, tell me.”

  Dara’s gaze flickered up at last. He was so—he was so close, his weight atop Noam’s lap, lips still red and kiss bitten. “I think it’s better if I don’t say anything at all.”

  Noam squeezed Dara’s thighs—he couldn’t not, a reflex gesture that made Dara tremble.

  He did it. He really did it.

  Dara killed General Ames.

  That knowledge thumped in Noam’s chest like a second heartbeat, arrhythmic and sickening. For a moment, when he shut his eyes, all he could see was the general’s body lying in a pool of his own blood.

  But then Noam looked back to Dara, whose cheeks were as ashen as a magic victim’s.

  “Good,” Noam said, surprising himself with the viciousness of it. “He deserved it.”

  “Noam . . . please.”

  “I mean it. You did the right thing.”

  Dara looked stricken. And maybe Dara felt guilty for killing a man, but Noam refused to reinforce that. The general deserved it. (He deserved it. He deserved it.) Noam smiled at Dara and turned his hand palm up on Dara’s leg, twining their fingers together.

  “You did clean up after yourself, right?” Noam thought to ask after a second, because, god, the last thing they needed was Lehrer’s department finding Dara’s prints all over the crime scene.

  “I told you I don’t want to talk about it.” Dara disentangled his hand and, after a moment, slid off Noam’s lap. He retreated to the corner of the bed, back against the wall and knees drawn up to his chest. He watched Noam from that safe distance, wary, like Noam might lurch forward at any moment.

  “Fine,” Noam said, holding both hands up in surrender. He started rebuttoning his shirt, telekinesis clumsy on the metal button backs. Dara sat in silence the whole time, expression closed off. “I’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want.”

  Dara nodded once.

  The mattress creaked as Noam’s weight shifted off. He glanced back at Dara, who hadn’t moved.

  He wanted to say something else.

  There was nothing else to say.

  So he did what Dara wanted: he left.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Dara slept the rest of the day, emerging only to steal toast around three before retreating to his self-imposed isolation. Noam avoided the bedroom as much as possible. The one time he went in to get a book, Dara was sitting on the bed in his drabs, and the way he’d looked at Noam when Noam came in, it was—

  Well. It made Noam want to do inappropriate things to Dara, situation be damned.

  But if Noam hoped to talk to Dara the next day, those hopes were dashed when Lehrer rescheduled his meeting with Noam for early morning. He didn’t invite Dara, because it wasn’t a lesson. Not this time.

  Lehrer looked like he hadn’t slept. There was a gauntness to his face, like his bones were finer than before—a hunger. He had a mug of black coffee in one hand as he paced the length of his study. Noam sensed the sparking threads of magic that kept the coffee from spilling out of its cup and onto Lehrer’s uniform, thin live wires enmeshed over the ceramic rim.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Noam said when Lehrer was on his eighth lap and showing no signs of slowing down, or indeed acknowledging Noam at all. “General Ames was your friend, right?”

  “Yes,” Lehrer said, finally. He stopped at the end of the ninth pace, turning to face Noam and setting the coffee down. “He was. A close friend, in fact. I’d known him since he was a child.”

  Noam nodded as if he understood. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Please tell me if there’s anything I can . . . do.”

  Lehrer watched him with cool eyes.

  For a single reeling moment, Noam had the sense that Lehrer knew, somehow—that he knew just by looking that Noam wasn’t sorry at all.

  Lehrer said, “Actually, there is. Gordon’s funeral is this afternoon. I want you to attend.”

  So soon? General Ames had just been murdered—why were they rushing him into the ground?

  “I didn’t . . .” Noam started to say, I didn’t really know him but thought better of it at the last second. “Of course. I’ll go.”

  “Good. You’ll be my second set of eyes. Report anything and anyone suspicious; Gordon’s killer will be there.”

  Yeah, no kidding. Of course Dara would be there—General Ames had doted on him, practically saw him like his own son, to hear Ames tell it. But what was Noam supposed to report back to Lehrer? Yeah, I paid attention, but no one was acting weird; sorry I can’t be of more help?

  “How do you know?”

  “It would have been someone he knew. He was killed in his own bed. If not his daughter, then perhaps a lover.” Lehrer tapped his fingers on the edge of the table where he’d put his coffee, one-two-three. “We arrested Carter this morning. I spent some time interrogating her pe
rsonally, but I’m convinced of her innocence. Her alibi is solid, and she told me she wasn’t involved in the murder. She couldn’t have lied to me.”

  Lehrer sounded far more confident about that than Noam thought was warranted, but then again, Noam didn’t want to imagine what was involved in Ministry of Defense interrogations.

  There was no warning Dara. He was gone when Noam got back to the barracks. Noam waited around, sitting at the common room table, shuffling and reshuffling the same deck of cards as if setting up a poker game might somehow summon Dara. But then it was past three, Dara wasn’t back, and Noam had to go meet Lehrer for the funeral.

  Lehrer had another coffee as he slid into the car, this one in a thermos, but he looked like he’d pulled himself together sometime between their lesson that morning and now. The circles under his eyes were gone, hair combed in its usual neat style. Only the tension between his shoulders betrayed the truth.

  “Are you all right, sir?” Noam asked eventually, when they were stuck in traffic.

  “I know about as much as I did this morning.”

  Noam tugged at the cuff of his sleeve, pressing it against the side of his thumb hard enough it blanched the skin. “So it could be half the people in Carolinian high society.”

  Lehrer shook his head. “I have my ideas,” he said, “but I can’t prove them. Not yet.”

  He reached over with one hand and grasped the corner of Noam’s collar between thumb and forefinger, adjusting its angle. Noam stayed still, let him, and wished desperately that he could peer inside Lehrer’s mind in this moment and see—what was he thinking? He’d been talking about lovers, but he hadn’t said anything about the obvious alternative: a surrogate son, who would easily have been allowed anywhere in the home secretary’s mansion.

  Was Lehrer so blinded by his affection for Dara that he couldn’t guess?

  Noam swallowed against the sudden queasiness in his stomach and turned his face toward the window as the car drew up in front of the house. Attendees had spilled onto the back lawn, their cell phones and wristwatches a low hum to Noam’s magic.

  He followed Lehrer out of the car and up the drive. In the foyer, the mahogany display tables lining the walls bore antique vases overflowing with anemones and lilies. The smell was sickly sweet.