INDEX:
Link here to a general overview of the novel
Prologue, Chpt 1, Chpt 2, Chpt 3, Chpt 4, Chpt 5, Chpt 6, Chpt 7, Chpt 8, Chpt 9, Chpt 10, Chpt 11, Chpt 12, Chpt 13
Chapter Fourteen
Sebastian
Not sure I’m ready to talk, I keep my mouth shut several beats too long for Daav’s liking. The weight of sadness still layers my skin and it’s a struggle to fight it. I can almost hear his frown even though our pressed brows mean I can’t see his expression. And just when I think he’s going to lay into me, he grunts, pulls off, rummages in his side table drawers. Then he’s back hovering over me and pulling open a package of candy, forcing it into my palm as I sit up against the headboard.
“Eat!”
He’s unscrewing a bottle next. “Water.”
And as I start to put the sweet chocolate to my lips he’s gathered the mess of blankets from around us and nests them over me.
I protest, and try to push at them.
“You’re dropping. Eat. Drink. And stop fussing.” Then he manhandles me around and onto his lap again, tucking in the blankets once more.
When the first rush of sugar hits me and I follow it with a large sip of water, my body goes limp and I lean into his firm chest and arms, slamming the door on the dark thoughts about losing him.
I take more bites of the candy, spend a few more silent moments chewing, and can finally put together the pieces of my reaction. “Sorry.” The haze begins to lift.
“Nothing to be sorry for, just the drop taking over. You’re no runner, Angel.”
Ironic, given that’s exactly what happened eight years ago.
He feathers a hand over my hair and I lean into the touch harder. And sigh.
“The sex was amazing. You had me flying, Prince, which messed with me in the end.” I pause. He listens, keeps stroking. It feels so good, I drift again, but find myself once more and continue. “Yeah, the drop, but, Daav, you told me earlier I’m the path to your failure, that you can’t accept me in your life. Then all of the sudden you’re dancing for me, you’re fucking me exactly the way I need.” I try hard to keep the shake from my voice. “I get you were scared when the explosion from Hanna hurt me, but fuck, I’m gonna lose it sometimes if your reactions are a constant revolving door. I’ll hang on, Daav. You know I will. I promised, threatened, whether you’re happy about it or not. It just may be messy on my end at times. I get scared.”
He grunts, the articulate fuck.
I squirm around in his lap to look at him, forcing his hand from my hair.
“Not that you’re off the hook for your part of this,” I accuse, poking him in the chest, but ending by laying my palm against the hard muscle of it. “Your head spinning personality shifts.”
“Can we change the subject yet, or will you treat me to more of your relentless scent hound pursuit?” He rests his own over the top of mine.
Warm, steady touch. He’s here.
“Nothing to say for yourself?” I ask.
“You’ll only find me guilty.”
“No, I think that’s your game. Playing judge, jury and executioner for yourself. But if you don’t want to talk about it more, I’ll let it go.”
“You will?” He raises a brow in suspicion.
“Sure. If you give me something in exchange.”
“What?”
“Lie here with me. Cuddle. Talk. Normal stuff. I’m pretty sure you’ll give me more of this aftercare to make sure I’m okay, then I’d guess you’ll be back to Mister I-can’t-do-this and back away. So, I’ll drop the subject if you put that distant act on hold for the rest of the night and tomorrow. Just let us be friends. Well, friends who sometimes fuck and get kinky.” I wink. He snorts. Again.
“Your talents are wasted as a medic mage. Of better use in the law. Or maybe pit fighting.”
“Deal?” I ask, and pull my hand from his chest, forcing his own off, and hold my palm out to shake.
“You’re ridiculous. But, yes. To snuggling. Talking. Whatever you think passes for normal,” he says. “For tonight and tomorrow.”
I can’t help rolling my eyes. “Of course, for tonight and tomorrow. Your favorite part is the time limit.”
Daav opens his mouth to respond, then closes it. He lifts me up again and scoots down to shift us so we’re both flat now, arranging me so I’m cradled into him with my head resting against his shoulder, tucked under his arm. It feels damn good.
His fingers reach to lightly touch one of the silver hawks falling down from my ear.
“Where did these come from? I don’t remember you wearing jewelry before.”
“You don’t like?”
“I do like them,” he says. “Aren’t I supposed to make normal conversation?”
I chuckle. He’s adorable, so I give him a break.
“I found them at a Borrowers’ sale. I got in the habit of visiting the sales weekly. They’re a great place to find items for my sculptures. Saw these winged beauties there and they reminded me of…stuff. So I bought them.”
“Stuff?”
“The beach. Freedom,” I admit. “Hawks dancing in the air together.” I pause. “You and Trina when you danced.”
I wait for his reaction after mentioning Trina, wait for any tension. It never comes.
“I can see you wandering the aisles at those sales,” Daav says, “touching every little item. You need to get your hands on everything you see. You love everything.” He weaves our fingers together. “Except for moths and the smell of wet paint.”
I shudder. “Verse twist it, moths are creepy motherfuckers. And people like the smell of wet paint?” But underneath the twinge of disgust, I love it that he remembers these details about me. “I got you something there. Multiple somethings. If you reach into my bag you’ll find them in a tin container.”
“You bought me something? When?”
“Starting five years ago, although the last time was two months back.”
The bag sits at the end of the bed closest to his side and Daav disentangles himself from me and opens the flap, digging until he finds the tin.
He’d clearly gone through the bag before to get the toys, but ignored what he’s considered my personal stuff. I know him well.
Daav sits up against the headboard as I move lower and rest my cheek on his thigh. Maybe I don’t want to see his reaction.
“Photographs,” he says as he pops open the metal. “Verse, Sebastian, these are old.” I hear the awe in his voice and listen to the sound of him shuffling through the prints. “There are at least a hundred here.”
I close my eyes and see the images I’d hunted anytime I’d gotten a chance. Antique photos. Black and whites of dancers and scientists. Like the type he’d loved when we were boys and he started collecting them. They’d been a way to feel close to him without him near.
“To add to your stockpile,” I say, rubbing my cheek against his naked skin, loving the feel of the soft hairs of his upper leg. “Although yours must have burned to ash not so long ago, so aren’t you a lucky thing I got these.”
“Hey, look at me, Angel,” he says, his voice heavy with emotion, hands at my chin to encourage me up. I oblige, because really I do want to look at him. All I can.
“Thank you.” His thumb rubs a lock of my hair that’s fallen on my cheek near his grip, his gaze a soft affection.
And Verse, but my heart thuds wildly. I hoard moments like this, when he lets me see the unguarded version of himself. They’re rare, which makes them even more precious.
“I’ve worried about you every moment of these eight years,” Daav says.
Fuck, but there he goes again. And he deserves my own honesty.
“It sucked,” I say, my words wobbling in an unflattering outbreath, fuck me. “But I’ve survived. I’ve been okay. Really. I have friends, my work, my art, the club. I didn’t give up on life, Prince.”
He frowns. Then releases my chin and leans back against the headboard and sighs. He picks up one of the photographs, the edges browning with age, and glances down at the face on the image.
“I know you believe that all I’ve allowed myself is the lab and the Verse and my dance. But I do take other moments. Some star gazing, listening to music and, ready yourself for the shock, I even allow myself to remember dancing with Trina, the joy of it. Of her.”
If my mouth drops open for a moment he lets it go. Is that the hint of a damn gloat on his face? Enjoying the idea of proving me wrong.
“And I thought of you,” he says. “Including the good memories. It’s not been all pain.”
No way to hide my smile, I let my pleasure stampede out of the fucking barn.
“You still star gaze?”
“Yes, I do. They fascinate me.”
“Of course they do. And you still cook?” I ask.
“Yes. See, it’s almost like I’m a well rounded person.” He frowns again. “And I’ll have you know my red sauce is one hundred times better than Ravel’s.”
“I know it is, Prince. Don’t go all offended.” I remember the rubble of the manse again and sit up. “Shit, that apron I made you for your fifteenth birthday is another casualty of the bombs. I spent hours on that thing.” I try not to include a whine with the complaint.
“The only regret I have about losing Victor’s home are those few personal items of yours that are gone.” His knuckle trails over my hip.
“Yeah, but we took away the important stuff.” I tap him on the chest and then my own. “Aprons are replaceable, even my incredibly amazing one. You’re not. And maybe we can cook something together in the kitchen here.”
His face scrunches. “What, so you can turn it into a disaster area? You’re a messy little monster who can’t help causing chaos.”
“Who me? I’ll have you know my sculpting supplies and equipment are kept in meticulous order. I know where every item is down to the tiniest chisel I own.”
“Hhmm, probably the one exception in your disarray.” He glances over at the floor. “The strewn piles of your clothes tell the truth.”
“I was just eager to follow your orders.” I bat my lashes purposefully. “Did you want me to take the time to fold everything into a neat pile before you worked me over?” Daav gives me a look and I laugh. “Okay, I’m sure you would have folded everything into neat crisp piles first if you’d been me.”
He nods with serious confirmation, as if his neat freak habits are being acknowledged as the only correct way to live a life.
I lean back against him, into his chest and shoulders. And he holds me, takes my weight. “This is nice. See how normal we can be?” I murmur.
And it’s with his next sigh I know he’s turning the corner back to Mr. Serious.
“We should discuss what’s happened with the magic.”
I groan. “Verse twist it, don’t listen to me. The ball gag is the right idea.” I open my mouth wide as if to be filled.
He reaches over with his thumb and index finger and squeezes it closed. “As tempting as that sounds, now is not the time.”
“Fine,” I say with a breath out. He’s right. We have little time and too much at stake. I hold up one finger. “The magic. First, the way the Verse forced itself onto both of us during sex in the warehouse. So hot by the way.” I wink at him. “Second, I don’t know about you, but even without that shocking development, my Verse is showing more interest in general. Let’s call it making its presence known. Not forcing me into it, but making noise.”
The fingers of my other hand smooth the bedspread, find one of the leftover clothespins, and grab the top of the pegs, pinching the prongs open and closed.
“Yes, mine as well. And it’s grown the past weeks of my practice, maybe even a small bit since before you showed up. But there’s still a limit, a block. Earlier you said something about an experience during Hanna’s attack. And, by the way, I cannot state more unequivocally how idiotic you were to let yourself touch her Verse reality with yours. Did you learn nothing from our history? The last time you broke bones.”
“Sure, go ahead and state the unequivocal shit out of it, but I’m not going to apologize for wanting to save your ass. So can we please get on with this talk? Then maybe you can fuck me again, because I have eight years worth of filthy fantasies playing on loop in my mind and my window is damn short.” I raise the clothespin to make my point.
“Angel,” he says, all growly and warning. Too bad that only turns me on.
I hold up a palm in surrender.”Fine, Hanna’s Verse.” The hairs on my arms stand on end remembering. “I saw it, Prince. When we fell together and I touched her power on purpose, I saw into her Verse. It had this washed out faded orange background. Lots of angles, points, geometric shapes. Fog lapping around the shapes, over the sides and edges. And mine was there alongside it, like two shadow worlds superimposed over one another. My tangles were hyped up on it all, running toward her shapes, what I assume are her tangles, like they were some lost love, or like gleeful hyenas running to feast on fresh meat. Hard to tell the difference for them, but they wanted to be there.”
“Then the explosion. Did anything change in the two Verse before it?” Daav asks.
“No, it was quick when it happened, just the blindness of the blowback.”
Daav’s expression goes blank. Interesting reaction.
“Spill, Prince. What did you just think you’re trying so hard to hide?”
“When we….that day in the lab when our Verse touched…did you see mine? Before the explosion?”
Eight years ago and the memory his words elicit is as vivid as if it is happening now. I suppress my body’s need to shiver with the visceral sensory reaction. That won’t help Daav.
He sounds half hopeful, half afraid asking the question.
I shake my head. “There was only the backlash. Did you see anything?”
It takes him a while to answer. “No. I’d hoped for it, though. I thought about trying it between us for a long time before that moment, despite the prohibition.”
“Why?” I ask, holding my breath that Daav could get out of his own way with what was between us.
“Because ... .For us to be able to remove that last barrier when we shared everything else in our lives. And after you left, when I thought about it, because maybe I wished something good had come from such a terrible moment.” He closes his eyes, head shaking with his own memory. “It hurt, Sebastian. Everything after. It hurt so much for so long.” And his voice breaks and I’m leaning in to kiss his cheek, feather small brushes of lips over his.
“I know, Prince. I know.” I whisper it and lean my forehead against his, trying to siphon as much strength and comfort into him as I have to give.
He lets me.
But finally, he places palms against the sides of my head and moves me away.
“We’re off track. The magic.”
I allow the separation although I’m pretty sure I let out a half whine, half growl. Fine. He can only give so much before he needs to raise his walls. I understand.
“Maybe we should try again, try to let our power touch and join our Verse,” I say, forcing the conversation forward when all I want to do is curl up next to him and help him feel safe. “You’ve tried everything else to grow your strength.”
“Because the time we tried before was such a success? And this time with Hanna? Both explosions were fast and furious. Despite your peek into Hanna’s Verse, I have yet to hear of a benefit. You felt stronger from it?”
“Well, no, but if we try it on purpose and are prepared?”
“While your spirit of experimentation is laudable, and putting my ridiculous wish aside, the risk is still too much. I’m working hard to keep us alive without throwing it away by accidentally killing us both in another explosion. We have no hypothesis to test, and random ideas are not reasonable justification for experiments.”
But behind Daav’s eyes he’s considering, gears clicking in his head. I read the fact of it easily on his face, and pretend it doesn’t hurt that he keeps those thoughts private.
His stubbornness is predictable. I rub the sandpaper of his cheeks, the dark stubble sexy as shit and a lovely grate against my fingers. “Promise me you’ll consider it. There’s something big we’re missing. Something different than the path Victor put you on and the assumptions the Conclave makes.”
Or maybe this is all we’ll ever have until we don’t. No. I’m going to keep moving forward because if I stand still, I’ll never find more with Daav. Or for myself. And I want it, so bad the taste is coating my tongue, filling my nostrils, itching at my skin.
Daav’s thoughts continue to swirl behind his eyes. “If there is more, something the Verse wants from us, then why didn’t it push out at us when we had sex just now? What’s different from the warehouse?”
“Maybe my tangles were satisfied with their visit with Hanna? All tired out?”
“Or perhaps we’re confusing random, non-significant changes to the Verse and magic with clues toward a solution we desire. The magic lost its strength once already at the end of Crane’s life. It may change more, and without much of a pattern or explanation.”
I poke Daav. “Hey, remember you’re the one with the attitude about growing your power, getting this done. Don’t start spinning my head again with your mood and attitude shifts. You’re already doing penance for the first.”
He blows out and rolls his eyes.
“Don’t roll your eyes at me.”
Daav chuckles.
“Just promise me to consider it,” I say. A desperation floods me and the need to do something different, consider something different, is there refusing to be ignored.
“I promise.” He softens, and I rub his cheek again with quick, back and forth strokes.
“Sandpaper man. How long since your last shave?” The man needs one five seconds after his last.
“It’s been a busy day.”
“Not really complaining. All the better to feel it between my cheeks.”
“One track mind,” he grumbles.
“I’ve missed you. I really don’t want to lose you again.” The admission pops out. And fuck me, but I blush. Which makes no sense after all we’ve shared, all we are to one another.
Daav pulls me tighter to him. His voice echoes out deep with emotion.
“I know what you feel for me,” he says. “I see it. I don’t understand how it’s possible, I never have. But it’s real and I don’t dismiss it. It’s what I feel for you. My choices now…they aren’t a rejection of our love, that’s not what’s going on for me. I’m sorry that I can’t do more, offer more.”
My heartbeat stutters. I know he loves me, but to hear him say it again….It’s amazing how much pleasure and pain can come from the same words. And this is our moment, time swallowed by the black of the night, to peel our skin away with each other as witness.
“You’re not the only one who feels guilty, Prince.”
I pull away and sit up again, turn enough to avoid his gaze. I grab another clothespin, pinching it opened and closed with my fidget. Then squeeze the spring to open the prongs and let them close over the meaty flesh of my thigh. Pick up another to fidget again.
“And I’m not talking about how I gave into Victor and let him run me off,” I say. “Guilt there plenty. But just now, and almost every moment I spend with you, watch our world struggle to survive, I get off a little bit. Our pain, the nation’s pain, our friends’ pain. Standing in the fucking room with them as they suffer gives me a high and part of me’s glad. I touch it and it’s a head trip. I love it, I hate it and I’m embarassed as fuck, but it’s true.”
I let the second close over my skin next to the first. “You suffer, and I want to rip my heart out at how much I need it to stop. But I’m also lost in it, riding it, and the buzz ... .So when you say you’re protecting me from watching you suffer, it’s not that clear for me. I’m not all innocent.”
I turn back to him with a third pin in my grip. He’s watching me, like he can look inside my soul. He probably does. Then holds out his arm in an offering. My breath stutters as I reach over, pinch open the prongs and close them around the flesh of his biceps. He lets me.
He cups my cheek. His sea eyes accept my words. He nods, and the relief is bitter beautiful from that acceptance.
“Tell me something real from the past eight years. Not about us, but just…real,” Daav says.
We’d played that game growing up. But I’m the one who always starts it, throwing out those exact words, trying to get inside his head, open him up.
I smile into the memory.
“Okay. How about this? Guilty pleasure? I go to parks. Sometimes I sit and watch the kids play. Not perv like, but they fascinate me. Then around dinner time, when most are carted home, I sit on the swings, pumping as high as I can go. I feel free there, and Verse, I want that. I want to spend my whole life flying on those swings. Kind of like the same freedom I feel going to the beach. I head up to Northside beach almost every week.”
“These are your guilty pleasures?” Daav sounds surprised.
“It’s…the beach is about my parents.”
“You still think about them?”
I nod. “I even still have that tacky seashell necklace I was wearing when they left me. There’s that crazy part of me that wishes I knew who they were. The why of it? They gave me to the Conclave at three, not five when the gold shows. I know I showed gold early, but no one else would have known if they’d kept it to themselves. No one would have expected such a young child to show gold. Why didn’t they keep me at least until then?”
Daav frowns. A look halfway between fear and guilt flashes his face before he smooths his expression. What’s that about?
“That’s a normal wish, normal questions, Sebastian. Not crazy.” He laces his hand with mine and I know he feels how it shakes. His palm squeezes mine. “There’s nothing wrong with this, Angel. What you want.”
“Maybe, but it’s almost an obsession and I need to get over it. Life’s complicated enough, so why dwell? I’d rather focus on helping you.”
I hear the steady rhythm of his breathing as he’s quiet, thinking.
“Come on,” he says at last, starting to get off the bed.
“What?”
“I’m taking you somewhere.” He’s found his pants and steps into them, pulling them up.
“Now? Middle night?”
“It’s the holiday, week’s end, what keeps us from frolicking after late, late chimes?”
“Frolicking? Really, Prince?”
“Shut up! Dress and we’re going.”
He leads us down through the darkened building. It’s late enough that the usual prep for Tristan Crane day that lasts far into the night is done and staff are catching a few hours of sleep before the celebration.
Where the fuck is he taking me?
And then we’re at a door and Daav swings it open.
Into the middle courtyard, the one we can see from floors up from our suite’s windows. I’ve forgotten about this entrance.
I suck in my gasp, and my stomach feels like it’s been kicked.
In the center is the large Tairlo tree, its green and purple leaves filling the air of the small interior greenspace with its soft spicy fragrance. And attached to the tree, hanging from its largest branch, the broad wooden seat of a swing swaying gently in the night. Impossible to see from floors up, was it here before?
A touch at my face, Daav’s thumb wiping at the wetness there. Verse! And then more fingers gently pushing strands of my hair back from my face. The barest tug at my earlobe and his soft chuckle.
“Hey Angel, will you swing with me?”
Maybe I nod a response, not sure with the fog of my mind.
And then he leads me over to the swing and it’s wide enough to allow two people to sit side by side. So we do, each of us with one hand on the ropes, our other grasped together between us. The strength of his grip holds me steady. I need that tether.
We kick back and forth, slowly at first, then momentum building, higher.
Higher still, and I’m laughing through it all.
Until we’re as high as we can be without falling off, the jerk of the swing as it almost flips us at the height of our arc.
I close my eyes, lean my head and body back as far as they go as we fly.
And yell into the night. “Yesssss! Wooohoooo!”
No Verse, no magic, just us and the wildness of it.
Daav’s gift.
More tears slide sideways down my cheeks with the force of our motion.
Freedom, maybe just for this precious moment. But freedom.
I let it take me.