INDEX:
Link here to a general overview of the novel
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Chapter Two
Daav
I can’t relax. The music plays in the background, the soaring notes of the violin and cello drifting through the urban manse as I move around. I shed my clothes, ridding myself of the stink of the evening that has settled in their fabric, pulling on the tights and loose shirt I need for practice. I keep the music playing constantly in the background day and night, to fill the emptiness of the echoing hulk of this decaying house. Its opulence slides further into shabby, dated disappointment each day that passes.
I roll my shoulders and ignore the stinging at my back, the weakness in my legs from the evening. The club has been a necessary evil.
I have just over one week left. One week to reach a breakthrough point. I am exhausted, but I'll sleep later. There is no time for anything but keeping my focus, working in the lab, opening the Verse, manipulating tangles. Except for dance, and most recently the Stem and Thorn.
Dance increases stamina, and if I push enough the pain from the effort supports my goal. The effort of standing en pointe hour after hour, getting the movements exact. The company had derided my choice as a man going en pointe when I had belonged to the troupe, but they’re not around to comment now. And Trina never judged. She understood. I find the pain of repetition in dance. Again and again. Arabesque, Fouette, Grand Jeté, Chaînes, Relève.
I welcome the pain. Ridiculous that this is how I choose to spend my time after all those years wanting nothing but for the torture to stop. But if Victor was right, if I give this up when there’s any chance, then it was all for nothing.
And admittedly the time in the Verse itself is a respite, the only place of beauty and joy in my life. I visit the space to work magic, achieve my goal, and then tuck away the guilt at the enjoyment it gives me. And when it nudges at me to indulge outside of my goal, I try to ignore its whisper. Mostly, I just keep going.
There’d be time to rest after my quarter century trials. The Conclave is trusting me to become what they need. Johan said as much after Victor died. Fuck him that he died five months before the trials. His abandonment is worth my vulgarity, a practice I try to avoid. After years of living with Victor’s manipulation and cruelty, he leaves right before the very moment that he had tortured me to accomplish.
What riles me the most is how many mornings I almost miss the evil asshole. Or maybe it’s only that I’m so lonely I can miss even that monster. But lonely is the deal. It’s better in a way. It allows for my focus and the last push to get my power to the level it needs to be.
The pain I apply is simply about growing the tangles' reach and strength. I try to convince myself of that each time I tie on the pointe shoes, or recently when I visit the Stem and Thorn.
This has been my fourth session at the BDSM club, and the visits deplete me more each time. Once every other week is all I can stomach. I had arranged the services of a female dominant the first two times. She’d been efficient, and after the sessions I had indeed had several productive visits to the Verse as the tangles spread wider and came stronger than before. But the effects lessened after several days, almost as if pain with no true connection to my life didn’t have the desired effect.
Victor would have found my speculations fascinating, and amusing. His use of pain had context. From the first moment he arranged my kidnapping from Staltz as a boy, to the years he was the only father figure left to me. Left to us. I was even given his last name as my own was ripped from me. That’s what happens to the names of the young mages placed with Mentors like Victor, the surrogate parent whose attention was bought with agony, and who relished changing the rules of our lives according to his twisted philosophy. Our lives. No, just my life now. Alone.
My tiresome melancholy. I’m sick of it. Indulgence much, you waste?
After limited benefits from my first two club visits, I arranged sessions with a man. Men have context in my life. And the effects had lasted longer following that third visit. This fourth one, no idea. But after tonight, I won’t return to the Stem and Thorn. Interacting with a man is…uncomfortably reminiscent of the past.
Even as the Dom locked me on his cross, I had been imagining Sebastian restrained in the same manner. Has he ever attended this club? Any club? He hadn’t while he lived with me here, but we were young then, both only seventeen when he left.
I can’t return to the Stem and Thorn. Strange how a place can be haunted by a ghost even when he has never stepped foot there before. Instead, I’ll dance. Until I find another plan, ballet will have to do.
So, I make my way through the foyer intending to go out back to the studio. The rapid knocking starts just as I turn to go down the hall to the dance wing. I halt, turn around.
As the pounding shakes the door, I quickly walk over to the breakfront, opening the drawer and grabbing my gun. No one should be visiting this time of night.
Harkness?
I click off the safety and unlock the bolt on the entrance, readying myself. I swing it open and raise the gun, aiming at the late night visitor as he comes into view.
Gray eyes stare back. The ones which have always been an antidote to the poison of my soul.
“Hello, Daav,” he says.
My mind goes blank. And all that resolve that has so rapidly come to life at the knocking, my readiness to put down any threat from Staltz, to punish my autocrat father’s pawns, evaporates into nothing.
The gun shakes in my hand.
I can’t speak. I’m in danger of falling over in fact.
“You greet all your guests this way? You must be the life of the party.”
His voice is laced with acid, his fists clenching at his sides.
I still say nothing. All I can do is drink down those bright gray eyes illuminated by the street lights outside, and take in the tension in how he stands there, so foreign to what I know of him. My laughing, loose-limbed boy’s gone missing.
Red as fire hair to my black. The fire that has drawn my darkness to it from the first. It hangs loose, brushing his shoulders, moving with him to punctuate his words. I remember how he’d liked me to fist it, to pull as we crashed into one another.
He tilts his head, and as his hair moves I notice the line of studs trailing up both ears, the lowest piercings filled with the swing of dangling silver hawks, wings spread in flight. All new. Victor hadn’t allowed jewelry.
“Invite me in, Daav. I know you can, you’re alone here with no more guard dog. Dead and buried, or maybe you brought him to the dump to save on burial costs. I would have.”
“Sebastian,” I finally manage, although the shock still leaves a falter in my voice.
“You may want to lower the gun unless you plan to shoot.” He shrugs, and rests his hands on his hips. “Either way, make up your mind. I have things to say to you.”
He’s angry. Have I seen him truly angry before? Yes, but rarely. He’s usually smiles and laughter, just like he’s meant to be.
My hand continues to shake as I lower the weapon. I let it fall to my side.
“Come in.”
His eyes narrow. “First you’ll have to stop blocking the door.”
Oh, I need to move my feet. Clearly his appearance knocks my sense away.
As if half dead, I shuffle back from the entrance.
Sebastian enters, all six feet of him. He’d been the taller one after we each hit our growth spurts. I measure only five foot eleven. Yet Sebastian has a way of slouching as he moves through a room that leaves others believing him shorter.
The light is low in the foyer. I keep most lights off in the mansion. What’s the point? There’s no one else to look at. But now I wish I’d turned them up, if only to see Sebastian better. To see that small crook to his right canine tooth that pops when he grins.
So beautiful.
Not that he’s smiling now.
“Are you going to offer me a drink for my birthday?”
Today is his quarter century. The fact has nagged at the back of my mind all day. I want to wish him a happy birthday, and ask about his trials. I don’t.
Instead, I back away and turn to walk toward the front parlor where we keep the fifty year reserve whiskey that Victor had liked.
It’s only when I reach the wet bar in the corner of the parlor that I realize I’m still carrying the gun. I place it on the wood and bend down to retrieve the bottle from beneath the counter, then go for two highball glasses in the cabinet to the side.
“You don’t drink,” Sebastian says with assuredness as I pour a finger into each glass while he approaches the bar. After eight years how can he know? But, it’s Sebastian.
“Tonight I do.” Anything to get through his presence here.
He laughs, the sound holding a jagged edge. I hand him the glass, watch his long fingers, like butterflies, wrap the sides. I love his fingers.
And then he is downing the shot, placing the glass back on the surface. He looks around the room, eyes scanning the bookcases, the balding spots on the long, aging ornate salmon settee.
“Ah, lovely memories from this room,” he says with a dramatic sigh. “Remember the first time he forced us to stand here in the parlor, holding piles of heavy books out straight in our arms? His little wards, he our stern Mentor, showing us the way. He ordered us to hold up those books for an hour. Were we six? And when we dropped them he’d add another hour onto the task. I kept dropping mine that first time, so it had to be four hours before he let me go. But you, you maybe dropped them once. My Prince, feeling half proud, half guilty when he sent you away but kept me there. You were strong, even then. Or was it stubborn?”
Sebastian is rubbing his finger along the top ring of his glass, eyes far away with the memory. He’s thin. Too thin for his frame.
I stare at him then pick up my whiskey and force it down. I suck in the cough as the burn hits my throat, trailing down to my stomach.
Sebastian pushes his empty glass across the bar top toward me.
“I’m just going to say this and get it done,” he begins. But then his clear gray eyes travel over me where I stand, my hand braced on the wooden surface, leaning heavily. He hesitates, brow suddenly furrowing with concern. “Do you need to sit down?” he asks.
And there’s the Sebastian I remember. The boy who cares about everything and everyone. Cares too much, even when others don’t deserve the care. He never could help himself, the angel to my devil. It’s how I’ve come to think of him the years since he left. My Angel. I miss him. I want to touch him. I hold myself back.
“No, I am fine,” I answer.
He rolls his eyes. “Of course you are. Which is good, because I sure as fuck am not fine. So at least it’s only one of us with a problem.” He pauses, drags in a breath. “So here’s the thing. I saw you at the club tonight.”
What?
“I know you were there to get some pain freak on. It’s exactly what you would do without Victor’s handy built in sadism.”
It’s then it hits me. He’s here. Seb is here! My head spins as it struggles to process what he means. I lean more heavily against the bar top. He’d been at the club? Is he a regular? How often does he go to let some stranger hurt his body? I know he craves it, actually likes it unlike me. I’ve known for a long time. I swallow down my growl and keep silent.
Sebastian runs his fingers hard through his beautiful copper locks, loose around his shoulders tonight instead of up in a queue.
“I’m so fucking angry, Daav. You have no business being at that club. You hate pain, you’re not a bottom or anything submissive, and even now I know you’re hurting. You’re leaning like a son of a bitch on that bar because you can barely stand.” His voice gets progressively louder, his diatribe streaming out of him. “You were wincing at the club and I’ve seen the tightness to your muscle. I don’t care about any noble goal to deliver the prophesied mage, but that’s not even it. It’s all self-hatred. You don’t need to fucking punish yourself, Daav. You have nothing for which to make amends.”
But didn’t I?
The cold of the room settles in my bones. The heat is turned off despite the dipping late fall temperatures, a habit left over from Victor’s insistence that coddling is for weaklings. Or maybe the cold came from inside me. I push off the bar, forcing myself straight now that he’s emptied himself of this torrent and paused, if only for oxygen.
“You’re wrong. About all of that. I really am fine.”
I’m nothing but a liar. Why go through the motions pretending when I have no one to convince? Sebastian already knows. He’s always seen me. Maybe I want to pretend because if I voice the truth out loud I will break apart, and I’ve no time left for the indulgence of a melt down.
Sebastian gives another jagged laugh. Closes his eyes. I watch him suck in a long, slow breath and release it. His shoulders slump. He flicks a finger against his thumb at his side, a familiar gesture I’ve seen him make thousands of times. Like he’s dismissing his emotion, refusing to give it any more attention. Let it pass over and through him as if he’s put all to rest. I’ve envied him this ability, to let a feeling go and move forward.
“Okay, I’ve gotten it out,” he says, opening his eyes, all malice gone. “Anger done. Now how about we get you showered and put some salve on your back. I know it needs it. And Victor had some muscle rub if I remember. We’ll use that.”
No. This is not going to happen. I’m too close to the finish. I have already sacrificed for so long. I already gave him up, chopped my heart into small pieces and ground them into the dirt. Some value had to come from that pain. So I force myself to say the words.
“It has been eight years, Sebastian. You cannot come in here and make pronouncements like nothing has happened. You left before, so simply leave again. I have work to do.”
He blinks rapidly, a shadow crossing his face, his shoulders slumping. My chest squeezes to see him like that, but it’s necessary. Yet, after a moment he shuts it away, smiling at me. Verse, that smile. It seizes my lungs, rips meat from my bones. He is a drug for which I was always too dependent. And if I am the same for him, then I'm glad he was forced away from me.
“There’s your nice, crisp pronunciation. No contractions to be seen anywhere when you’re wound up. My Prince coming out to trot around in his haughty splendor. Get over it. I’m not leaving. Despite looking like shit, you look wonderful to me, Daav. ”
He says what he feels, what he means, his truth. He always has, no matter how difficult it is to hear.
I push away the warmth trying to curl inside my rib cage.
He glances down at my body again. “I can’t believe you were going to dance tonight after being worked over. Although those damn tights are hot. Verse twist you, I’ve missed your stubborn, ridiculous drive. And again, I missed those fucking tights and how they show the bulge of your dick and balls even with that dance belt thingee. You must like the world seeing your big package wearing those things. They should be illegal.”
This time it’s a groan I hold back.
“Please. Leave.”
“No.”
He thinks I’m the stubborn one?
I scrub at the rough bristle of my jaw, bite down against the frustration.
He continues, gaze hesitant again. He raises a hand in my direction, but pauses it halfway there and he lets it fall.
“I thought maybe after Victor died…you’d look for me. I…hoped. But I could have just as easily shown up here myself.” He makes a shy dip of his head, but lifts it. “I suppose I was afraid you’d toss my ass out the door if I did, just like you’re trying to do now. But here I am anyway, all mature at twenty-five, ready to apologize. It’s long overdue.”
“You have no need,” I say.
“I do. I left you. And with only a fucking note.”
Sebastian’s face twists in his own guilt, the last thing I want.
“I know you were forced to leave,” I say, anything to break his self-blame, to get those easy smiles to return. “That Victor threatened my life if you did not, and made you lie to me in that letter.”
His mouth gapes wide, although even his shock is adorable. If I lean into him for just one moment….
“You know about that?” he asks.
“Yes. I’ve known for a while. I found out a few years after you left. I do not blame you.”
Sebastian looks confused, hurt. Like he only now realizes that despite knowing he was forced out, I had not fought to be with him, or followed after even knowing the truth. And I see how that cuts him deep.
“I understand,” he finally says, voice subdued. “I get why you stayed.”
“You say you do, but I don't think you understand. You still wear all your emotions in plain sight. It gets you hurt.”
“Will it get me hurt now, by you?” It’s like he’s holding his breath.
I nod. “Likely. You need to leave.”
He stares me down, assessing. The large house echoes around us with the silence of his contemplation. The low strings of music in the background only punctuate this other type of quiet, like my soul is being weighed in that silence. But I had weighed it long ago and already knew its measure. Its faults.
“No,” he says, shaking his head with some decision. “I’ve spent years away from you. Trying to be happy, but mostly failing. I don’t need more of the same. I told you a long time ago that if you need to hurt me, that’s okay. I’ll take everything you can dish. I can handle it. Victor’s dead, and it was a mistake to stay away. Your quarter century trials are in one week, and you need me now more than ever. So strong arm me out of the mansion if you want, but I’ll just show up on your doorstep again. I’m like some insidious weed. You can pull me out, but I’m only going to freaking grow back.”
He smiles a twisted smile with his words.
Verse, but he was always the strong one, the courageous one.
“You are an idiot,” I say.
“Funny, Nuée was just saying the same to me tonight.”
I know she has stayed in touch with him, although I always guard myself from asking after him when I see her.
I press my lips together to keep from laughing. Yes, adorable. Verse, curse this.
“Stay if you want, but it changes nothing.” I spin and start walking back out of the parlor toward my studio.
I need to get away from him.
“Where are you going?” he asks.
“To dance.”
“You forgot your gun.”
I halt, but keep my back to him. He’s trailing after me. I can feel him there, too close. The heat of it shivers over my abraded flesh.
“Don’t think I’m going to let that little tidbit pass by. You need a gun, Daav? You keep it handy in case you get visitors? Point it at everyone who knocks on your door? This is because Victor is dead, you’ve lost his protection, and you’re about to turn twenty-five. How dangerous has your life become?”
“Precaution only. You arrived in the middle of the night.”
Like always, he sees through me. Sees everything.
“How many attacks have there been? Because I know something’s happened.”
If I tell him, he’ll only insist on staying. But he’s already said he’s staying no matter what. A part of me melts with relief, another fills with anger. And another wakes with an irrational, ridiculous hunger. For him. My tangles whisper again, smiling with delight and joy, encouraging me to keep him. My hunger is unsurprising if unwelcome.
“It does not matter. I keep to myself, go out only when necessary. The Conclave is aware.”
“Maybe I’m not the only idiot around here.”
“Find yourself a room, Sebastian. I’m going to dance.”
“And I’m going to retrieve that salve and muscle rub. I’ll meet you in the studio. Protest all you want, but I’m here to stay.”
I grunt, refusing to engage any longer. Start walking again.
“Turn around. Take your gun. I’m going to help keep you alive, Prince. Your father can try all he wants. I’ll be the one at your quarter century trials, watching you kick ass, wearing the widest grin of them all.”
Just then, the faint sound of glass shattering further back in the house near the dance studio punctures the air around his promise.
“Fuck! What’s that?” he says.
I spin to him, hold out my hand. “Give me the gun.”
He gives it over. “Do you have another?”
“Foyer breakfront. Second drawer down.”
Sebastian hurries over and removes the other pistol, checks its magazine, finds it full as I’ve left it, then shoves more clips from the drawer into his pants pockets, keeping a few out. He clicks off his weapon’s safety, returning to me, and hands me extra ammo.
“It came from the studio.” He’s dropped his voice low.
“Stay here,” I order him in a matching whisper.
“Fuck that.”
“Fine,” I say. “Then keep to the walls.”
I follow my own advice and press myself against them as I move quickly down the hall toward the back studio.
To deal with the intruders.
To deal with what is sure to be my father’s threat.