Shadows and Light (24 page)

Rafael cast the whip down and released his lover from the heavy steel shackles, leaving the silver ones that rested higher on his wrists in place. He caught Xian and laid him down on the bench, running fingers intended to soothe through the older man’s hair and wondering exactly which of the two of them he was relaxing with that. Xian cracked an eye open and sighed faintly. “Is it black yet?”

“Not yet,” Nailah said matter-of-factly as she wiped the cut clean.

“Your blood will turn black?” Rafael asked, aghast.

“Every drop that’s been tainted by Erran’s blood has to be pushed out somehow, boy.” Nailah rinsed the rag in the ever-present basin of water, then continued wiping. “I remember it gushing from Heran’s nose, from his mouth… I think he even bled from his eyes at one point. Not that he knew what was going on that far along, of course.”

“What the fuck?”

“Isn’t it time you gave him a few of the more salient details?” Nailah suggested to her brother, her voice uncharacteristically gentle. “He needs to know it all, Xian.”

“What all?” Rafael stared at Xian. “You said you needed pain. I’m getting there, I’ll do better, I swear, but what is she talking about?”

Xian sighed again, then pushed himself into a sitting position. “No, Nailah, you should stay,” he said when she moved to get up. “I won’t be able to tell him everything, I wasn’t there for all of it.”

She didn’t say anything, but she did sit back down.

“Rafael…” Xian passed a weary hand over his face and Rafael noticed, for the first time in days, just how dramatic the changes in his lover already were. Xian was so spare that his cheekbones were like knives, and his collarbones and ribs were individually visible. There was still muscle there, but it was all knotted and strained, never able to relax. The tremors kept him tense, and the only respite came when his body rocked freely under the blows of the whip.

“You’re doing fine,” Xian began.

“He could do better,” Nailah interjected. Xian frowned at her but she persisted doggedly. “He’s not taking you out of your body, Xian, out of your suffering. He’s giving you suffering that’s easier to handle, but you’re there for every moment of it. You need to be lifted to a place where you only feel the sweetness of the lash, or the kiss of a blade. You need the pain to get you there, the attention once you’re there, and the care afterward, but you need it done better.” She turned to Rafael.

“You need to find something that you’re comfortable using and use it with every inch of your skill, boy. Don’t worry about the damage right now. As long as you don’t break something or go too deep, it will still heal. He needs bloodletting, and you’re not good enough with the whip to give it to him. Pick something else.”

“You’ve been to that place, Rafael,” Xian said, drawing his attention. “You know what it feels like. I trust you to take me there.”

“Xian…”

“You have no choice.” Nailah was unmovable. “The longer Xian retains his sanity, the better his chances for recovery will be.”

Rafael leaped at the chance for a change in topic. “What do you mean by that? Why will he go insane?”

“It’s a necessary part of the detoxification,” Xian explained. “Everything in my body has to purge itself of Erran’s blood, and take the time it needs to regenerate. That includes my mind, pet. Everything is going to go eventually, and when it does I’ll be raving, or catatonic, for days on end. I won’t know you, or Nailah. I won’t know my own name. I’ll be extremely aggressive, so you’ll have to bind me and gag me and leave me be until the worst of it passes.”

“He’ll need constant monitoring, though,” Nailah added. “The time between the madness and coming out on the other side is critical. He’ll be more human than immortal then, and will need to start taking water, broth, human foods. He’ll need gradual exposure to sunlight, to begin to toughen his skin.”

“All in all, a lot of fuss and bother,” Xian finished. He let his eyes close as he leaned back against the wall. “The details aren’t pretty, pet. Nothing about this is going to be easy, for any of us.”

“It would be easier if you gave up some of your stinking, worthless dignity,” Nailah snorted. “If you ask your lover to do the work of a man, then you must treat him like a man, not a boy.” She grinned suddenly. “Only I get to treat him like a boy.”

Despite the tension in the room, Rafael laughed. “I can’t imagine you treating me any other way.”

“Exactly. Why ruin a good thing?” Nailah pushed to her feet, straightening her back after a painfully long moment. “And you should tell him the rest of the story,” she added as she turned to go. “He deserves to hear it from you while you’re still capable.” Nailah left, and the silence between the two men was thundering.

“What story?” Rafael asked finally.

Xian smiled grimly. “How we came to be. Why we changed our minds. Personal history that I haven’t wanted to bore you with.”

“I won’t be bored,” Rafael promised.

“I know that, pet. Sit here.” He pointed at the floor between his feet. “I want to touch you.”

Rafael came and sat and a moment later cold, trembling fingers began stroking his hair. They traced the edges of his forehead and the shells of his ears and curled down his neck. “You’re very warm,” Xian noted absently.

“Not really,” Rafael said. It would be so easy to lose himself in the sensation and let everything else go, but he knew that they needed to have this conversation. “Why did you take the blood in the first place?”

Xian huffed a faint breath of laughter. “You’re not going to be distracted, are you, pet? Good. I took the blood because it was offered… And because I thought I would do better with it than those who had come before me. At the time our tribe was nomadic, landing on a different island every summer, living out the winter there and then moving on before we used all of its resources. When we landed on Clare, the blood was flowing up like a spring in the very center of the island, forming pools. The ground was so alive you could practically feel it breathe. We were cautious at first, especially after the first few who drank burned to death in the sun. It took some time to learn that darkness was needed to thrive, continual darkness. There were caves there that those who drank took to living in.

“Over half the tribe decided to partake, and the rest left at the end of the winter. Nailah was undecided, I was undecided… The increased strength and speed were impressive, would make us better hunters, but the bleaching of our skin and hair, and our aversion to sunlight…it was a great sacrifice. My wife wanted us to leave, but eventually I decided that my curiosity had to be satisfied, and so I drank. The rest of my small family followed suit.”

“Your wife?” Rafael asked apprehensively, even though he already knew what the answer would be.

“Yes.” Cold fingertips paused on Rafael’s temples, rubbing gently. “Myrtea. My beloved. She didn’t want to drink the blood of a demigod, she thought it was sacrilegious and foolhardy, but I convinced her to stay with me, to drink with me. She drank, and then she changed. She began changing to what she is now…or was, perhaps…almost immediately. It’s as though the blood knew her apprehensions and magnified them into neuroses of character. Uncertainty became suspicion, doubt became fear and her waning faith in me became a twisted sort of hatred. She wanted me with her and yet couldn’t stand to be near me. She said she loved me and yet all she gave me was pain and grief. After a decade of trying, I ended our marriage. Myrtea never forgave me for that. She never really forgave me for encouraging her to drink in the first place.

“Our wizards used magic to build our new civilization, and they gutted the island to do it. The first new settlers who came we took as slaves, but gradually our control relaxed enough to allow the society to become more like what you’re familiar with, pet. And so we ruled, for five centuries, before everything ended in fire.” He slid his fingers back into Rafael’s hair, leaving the skin of his face chilled. “Now you know how culpable in all this I really am. So much tragedy could have been avoided if I had gracefully ceased to exist at my appointed time, but I tried to cheat the gods, and they’ve taken their revenge on an entire city.” Xian let his hands drop away and moved his legs so that they no longer touched Rafael’s shoulders. “Can you bear to stay with me now, knowing what I’ve done? And knowing the creature that I’ll become?”

Rafael got to his knees and turned. Xian’s face was lowered, his expression one of utter weariness. He was shaking, hard, so hard that his shoulders rhythmically beat at the wall behind him, a soft
thump thump thump
occasionally interrupted by the sharp impact of one of his shoulder blades on the wood. Rafael didn’t say anything, he just stood up, then lifted Xian to his feet. He led the other man to the far wall and cuffed his hands over his head, this time so he faced out. Rafael left him there, trembling, while he went to retrieve something out of his room. When he came back he was holding a knife. It was his favorite now that his athame was lost, with a heavy, curving blade and a polished ebony handle.

Without speaking he drew close to Xian and grabbed one of his elbows, holding the entire arm fixed in place. A second later he slid the blade down his arm, tracing the path of a pulsing vein. The blade moved through flesh like water, so sharp and so smoothly drawn that the wound barely had a chance to begin bleeding before the cut was finished. Dark blood flowed from Xian’s wrist to his shoulder, and his white eyes were wide and staring as Rafael let that arm go, only to make a second cut across his chest, in a straight line from nipple to nipple. He didn’t cut through them, but right to the edge. Xian hissed under his breath but he never took his gaze off Rafael, and after a few more seconds the tremors began to diminish.

Rafael cut again, this time down his side. When he reached the point of Xian’s hip he shifted the knife so that the point dug in, penetrating almost to the bone. Blood welled around the unyielding metal and ran down his leg like spilled wine, but Rafael didn’t even look at it. He kept his eyes on Xian’s face and watched in silence as his lover’s trembling faded further and further, finally ceasing entirely just as the top of the first cut began to scab over. The lines of pain bracketing Xian’s mouth and radiating from his eyes lessened along with the tremors, until even though he was still in essence being stabbed, his face and body were serene.

Rafael removed the knife from Xian’s hip, took a moment to clean the blade with the wet rag in the basin, then set it down. He unshackled Xian and caught his weight, taking all of it onto himself as his lover’s legs failed. “Listen to me,” Rafael said, finally firm, his anguish and revulsion at what he was doing well hidden, if not completely gone. “You told me that Clare has always been doomed. You told me not to take the blame for its fall onto myself. You have to listen to your own advice, Xian.” He pushed the other man back against the wall but didn’t touch the manacles. Instead he wrapped him in a hug so tight he knew it had to be causing his lover pain, especially on his open cuts, but Rafael didn’t care. Love, he was beginning to realize, was inextricably linked to pain.

“I love you,” he whispered hoarsely, his desperation to be understood coming through clearly in his voice. “I love you, and you have to see now that it doesn’t matter to me what you’ve done or what will happen to you except insofar as I hate to see you hurting and sick. I would do anything you needed of me to make you well, and if that makes me a fool or a monster, then that’s what I am. I can’t help it any more than you can help any of this. Please stop asking me if I’ll leave you. I’ll never leave you, Xian.”

Steady, strong arms wrapped around Rafael’s back, steadier than they’d been for weeks. “I’ll stop,” Xian promised. “I needed you to know everything, but I was too cowardly to bear telling you. Nailah has been arguing with me about that from the start. But I know you won’t leave me, Rafael. I never truly doubted your loyalty to me. Or how you feel about me.” He paused for a moment, his breath still in his chest, before letting it out in a long, slow sigh.

“Our tribe had a history of mysticism. I grew up being told that when I found the right person to be with, the person I was meant to be with, that I would know it. I would feel it straight through to my soul. As a young man I thought that that person was Myrtea, and perhaps she was, while we were both mortal. The blood killed whatever connection there was between us, though.

“Nailah complains about how long it took me to come here, but she herself waited for Heran for centuries. He was simply right for her, and she was right for him. I couldn’t seek anything less than perfection for myself, even if it took years, or if it never happened at all. You… I simply knew with you, Rafael. I knew from the moment I saw you that you could be mine someday, exactly what I wanted, what I needed. I hoped I could become that for you as well.”

“You are,” Rafael insisted, feeling a little dazed at the tacit declaration of love from Xian, saying that he was perfect, that he was just what Xian needed. Apparently this was just as big a deal for him as it was for Rafael.

“Hopefully you’ll still feel the same way about my mortal self,” Xian said. He pressed a chaste, comforting kiss to the top of Rafael’s head. “My beloved. More than I deserve.”

“Not more,” Rafael whispered. “Just exactly what you deserve.” They stood together in silence for a long time before the closing cut on Xian’s chest forced Rafael to pull back or have his shirt assimilated into the scab.

“Nailah’s laundry girl will have her work cut out for her,” Xian observed as he looked up and down Rafael.

“I think I’m her laundry girl,” Rafael replied morosely, and Xian laughed at that and shook his head.

“I fear so. Go to her, pet, she undoubtedly has things for you to do and is getting tired of waiting.”

“I was tired of waiting years ago,” Nailah said crossly by the door. She examined the tableau in front of her and nodded once. “Better late than not at all, I suppose.”

“You were always the clever one,” Xian said, affection clear in his voice.

“Too right, and you were always the stubborn one.” She met Rafael’s eyes. “Malcolm’s taken Sled to haul firewood, so don’t bother going to care for him tonight, he won’t be brought back until tomorrow. Likely with news from the village. The boy can’t resist the chance to gossip,” she added with a snort. Malcolm had taken it upon himself to keep them apprised of all the latest news that passed through their remote community and Rafael appreciated it, even though most of it these days was bad.