Shadows and Light (11 page)

“I don’t understand.”

“I never brought you here with the intention of giving you to the council for retribution, Rafael. Everything we’ve done so far has had another purpose. You have three immediate options—running, staying or killing, either me or yourself. If you choose to run,” he continued blithely, ignoring his apprentice’s stunned stare, “I suggest you find fresh clothes, and do be careful. The house is undoubtedly surrounded at this point. Killing me, well, we know how well that went last time. And if you try to kill yourself again, I’ll just revive you and make you suffer for it, but you can attempt it if you really want to.”

Rafael looked down at his master’s hands gently encircling his wrists. Like the cuffs, but far stronger. “I’ll stay. For the moment.”

“As you wish.” Xian let him go and Rafael immediately felt off balance. “There’s clean water in the bathing chamber, if you want to use it. Then I suggest you find yourself a room and sleep a bit more. You need to be rested before the next step.” Xian turned and walked away, leaving faint red footprints in his wake as he left the lofty room. Rafael shuddered when he lost sight of him. Moving slowly, his body still aching despite his master’s restorative blood, he also left the room, not even glancing back. That part of his life had just ended. The next part of it would be…confusing.

Chapter Eight

He’d start with a bath. The bathing chamber wasn’t far, and once inside Rafael saw it was well lit with torches and stocked with cleansing salt and oil scrubs and clean towels, as well as some simple house clothes. Rafael stripped off his filthy pants and tossed them aside, then climbed gingerly into the tub. The water was warm. Blissful. He sank in over his head and held his breath, savoring the soft, soothing feel of the water on his face for as long as he could before surfacing again. He picked up the closest scrub and removed the glass stopper and sniffed. Unscented. Not surprising for a man who needed to be undetectable.

Rafael poured some of the fine granular mixture onto his palm and began to work it, very carefully, into his skin. He tried not to be put off by the bizarreness of it all. By rights he should have been dead now, or at least heartily wishing he was, and instead he was bathing in his master’s house. He was still alive. He might even stay alive.

Rafael recalled his last bath with a sudden flush. Gods, he must be happy to be alive if he was already thinking about sex. He lay back against the edge of the tub and closed his eyes, remembering. He had already been well-fucked, relaxed and open. He had leaned into Feysal, mounted him, rocked and swayed over him until his lover’s hand stroked him to completion at the same time that he came inside Rafael. It had been a gentle coupling compared with their earlier, deliberately violent encounter. Tender, almost sweet… He touched himself and imagined it was Feysal’s hand on him, coaxing him to hardness, but his cock refused to comply. Rafael huffed in irritation. Naturally his body would refuse to cooperate.

It didn’t take long for him to figure out why. When he had last been with Feysal, Rafael had been operating under the assumption that he was his own man, years over his obsession with Xian. Now he knew that wasn’t true, that he’d actually never gotten over it. He’d scabbed over the wounds and insulated his capacity to feel under layers of sarcasm and disdain, but he knew now that he was still Xian’s creature, his apprentice, his pet. His to command, his to control, his to please…

The sudden thought of Xian’s hand holding him made Rafael almost instantly hard, so hard his groin ached. He touched himself gently, closing his eyes and imagining Xian watching him, directing his actions. ‘Hold yourself like this, stroke like this…faster, slower, rub your palm over the head.’ He could see the blood flowing under the surface of his skin, feel his cock swelling further under Xian’s eyes. He moved a hand to his sac, happily spared from the touch of the lash and tight now, needy and heavy. He cupped it, rolled his balls between his fingers, squeezed and pulled them down and away from his body. He spared one finger for his hole, barely stroking the outside. His hands morphed into Xian’s in his mind, and suddenly he was spilling into the tub, jetting out into the warm, oily water at the thought of his master’s hands touching the entrance to his body with desire. Rafael came urgently, so hard he thought he might pass out, but as the physical ecstasy leaked away, the bizarre reality of his situation came back to him. Fucked. He was so fucked.

He was exhausted too. Rafael finished his bath quickly, rinsing and stepping out onto the floor, then staggering and barely catching himself by grabbing the edge of the tub. He dressed mechanically, slid his feet into the soft, parchment-thin slippers sitting by the door and stepped out into the hallway. He needed to sleep. He headed toward his old room, but upon opening the door and stepping inside, he stopped again. It was filthy in here, dust saturating every corner. Not the best place for him now. There were other rooms. He would choose one of them. He had learned every inch of this house during his apprenticeship.

He trudged down the hall again, aching and bleary and cold, and opened another door. A bedroom, good. Rafael staggered over to the large, raised bed and collapsed onto it, toeing the slippers off and crawling forward until his head found a cushion. The dark comforter beneath his cheek smelled reassuring and he turned his face toward it and gratefully fell asleep.

* * * *

The cushion he was curled around was warm. It was the first thing Rafael noticed as he began to swim his way out of unconsciousness. It smelled wonderful and it was warm, hot almost, and it moved slightly. Those pleasant observations out of the way, he began to wonder why his cushion had these properties. His arms tightened around it experimentally. A hand touched his head and began to sift through his clean, loose hair. “You slept like the dead, pet,” Xian said.

Ah. Well. So, this could be embarrassing. “Hmm,” Rafael murmured noncommittally as he opened his eyes to take stock of his surroundings. His head was currently using Xian’s left thigh as a pillow, his arms were wrapped around the other man’s waist, and wonder of wonders it didn’t seem to be distressing his master. Not that many things ever did. Rafael widened his gaze to take in the rest of the room, the clean furnishings and bright lamps on the bedside tables and the unmistakable air of Xian permeating everything, and sighed. “I chose this room by accident.”

“Do you think so?”

“I was tired.” Rafael defended himself. “It was familiar. I couldn’t use my room, it looks like it hasn’t been cleaned for years…” He trailed off as he considered that. “Because it hasn’t.”

“Ah, thinking again. I’m grateful for that, pet, I was beginning to worry about the strength of your mind.” Xian was looking at him with a small smile, still moving his hand slowly though Rafael’s hair, patiently untangling the long strands.

“What was Myrtea to you, once?” he asked suddenly.

“I wondered if you’d ask about that,” Xian said with a sigh. “Myrtea is a founder, like I am. We knew each other well before we ascended, and for a long time afterward, we were very close.”

“She calls you beloved.” He wasn’t sure why he was pursuing it, but the appellation had bothered him more than he wanted to admit.

“She’s called me many things over the years, Rafael, and most of them don’t bear thinking about. It isn’t a tale for today. Myrtea has no place in this bed with us right now.”

“Did you miss me?”

“Beyond reason. Why do you think I never touched your room?”

Rafael shrugged awkwardly, not willing to let go of his hold. “There could be other reasons. You couldn’t take another apprentice, I assume, because of the fears over the source, so perhaps you simply didn’t have need of the space.”

“Well reasoned and entirely facetious, pet, as I think you know.”

Rafael squeezed his eyes shut. “Don’t tell me anything that isn’t true.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t lie to you about something like this, pet. Not now.” He slowly removed his hand from Rafael’s hair. “You’ve slept the night away. You look better for it, but we have much to speak of.” He reached over to the bedside table and brought back two small bowls. “You should eat something.”

Reluctantly, Rafael eased away from his master and sat up, blushing briefly when he realized he was hard. Again. Xian didn’t seem to care and so he ignored it as well, and took the proffered bowls. One had lukewarm lemongrass tea in it, flavored with honeysuckle and cinnamon. The other was bread in milk, food that he would normally disdain but knew was about the extent of what his stomach could handle right now. He ate the portion in slow, hungry bites and drank the tea in sips. He paused, waiting to see if he’d need to keep the bowls to catch what came back up, but instead of nausea he just felt ridiculously full.

“Better?” Xian inquired as he took the bowls back.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“So…” Rafael stared down at his hands. “Now what?”

“Now you have to decide what you’re going to do. Let me sketch the basics for you.” Xian’s eyes never left his face. “I have absolutely no intention of turning you over to Myrtea and the council, which is what they’ll be expecting in approximately twelve hours.” He met Rafael’s surprised look calmly. “You needed the rest, pet, don’t let it bother you. Your only option at this point is to run, it just becomes a matter of how and where. In the short term, you have to leave this house before sunset. The doors on the ground level are all being monitored, as are the tunnels, but I doubt any of the council’s guardsmen know about the exit on the roof. It’s your best chance to escape without a fight. I recommend returning to the Lower City as quickly as possible. Once you get that far, well…” He shrugged minutely. “It’s your choice, but if I were you I wouldn’t stay in Clare. The council will be looking for you and Daeva is sure to have his feelers out as well.”

“What will you do?” Rafael challenged. “You speak like you’re not leaving as well, but we both know that you’ll be as hunted as I am when Myrtea realizes you let me go.”

“True. I can’t stay either.” Xian turned away now to stare out into the room. “The source will run completely dry by the winter festival, I estimate. Before that there will be chaos in our ranks, and after that it won’t be long until the Upper City falls. Two years at the outside. The addiction will be wearing on most of them long before that.”

“How long?” Rafael asked quietly. “Before you begin to feel it?”

“How long before you felt it?” Xian countered. “You lost a lesser version of the same elixir once you stopped trying to kill yourself. I know you’ve been sparing in your use ever since. How long did it wear on you?”

“Months,” he replied. “Badly for several months, and then less and less for…perhaps a year?”

Xian nodded understandingly. “I’m one of Clare’s founders, pet. I’ve been drinking the blood of Erran for over five centuries. Pure, undiluted magic. The longest I’ve ever been without is four months, and I began to feel the withdrawal after only a week. By the end of that time, I was nearly insane with need.”

The distance between them suddenly made Rafael ache. He didn’t stop to think, he just slipped back into his master’s embrace, curled against his side and wrapped his arms around him again. Xian let him in easily, turning and pressing a kiss to Rafael’s forehead. “There is a place I can go,” he murmured. “On the mainland, a month’s travel into the mountains. If I can make it that far, I’ll have reached the closest thing to a sanctuary that remains for an exile. If I get that far, I can die in relative peace.”

The ache in Rafael’s chest squeezed his heart like a fist. “You don’t have to die. You told me that people have survived it before. You’re strong, you know how to handle pain. You can live.”

“The pair that survived the process before had help, pet.”

“I’ll help you.”

Xian sighed heavily. He shifted and pulled Rafael closer to him, burying his face in his apprentice’s hair and nuzzling the top of his head. “This is your chance to be completely free of everything to do with this cursed city. That includes me, Rafael. Withdrawal is a destructive process, and not one I want you to see. I’ll be mindless by the end, a simple, screaming husk. That’s if I don’t kill myself beforehand. It’s better if we part now.”

“It’s not better!” Rafael insisted, pulling back and staring hard at Xian. “Better for whom? For you? To give up on the only chance you have of living through losing your immortality because you don’t think I’ll be able to bear caring for you? Or better for me, because clearly I’ve been the embodiment of health and happiness for the past five years. Who’s being thick now?” He thrust a finger hard into Xian’s chest. “You raised me, you shaped me, and you ruined me. You admitted it yourself. You don’t get to unilaterally decide what’s better for me now after all that.

“I need you. I need to be with you, and if you tell me to leave without you again, I will fucking hurt you. I love you, you absolute idiot. Look it up if you don’t know what that means.” Simmering with anger and a little fear, Rafael flopped back down against the headboard and glowered at his master.

Xian was shaking slightly. It took Rafael a long, tense moment to realize he was laughing. He was trying to hold it in, but the subdued expression on his face was fast expanding to a grin. “You’re delightfully honest, pet, an absolute treasure.” He laughed aloud then, and let his head tilt back until it touched the wall, eyes closing. He kept laughing, and finally Rafael grinned with him. “And I can’t argue with your logic,” he said at last. “I owe you whatever you want.”

That splashed a bucket of cold water right over Rafael’s rising hopes. “It shouldn’t be about that.”

“It isn’t only about that,” Xian replied. He tilted his head toward the other man. “I always cared for you, Rafael. That hasn’t changed.”

Cared for. Cared. Owed. Missed. None of these words were the one Rafael was dying to hear, but he couldn’t ask. He didn’t want to hear the answer if it was going to be no. He wasn’t strong enough for that right now. He wanted to hold on to the fragile sense of hope that had replaced the convulsive ache in his chest.