Shadows and Light (19 page)

Xian had been slowing their lovemaking down every time lately, making it last as long as he pleased, and sometimes it lasted for hours. Rafael settled into the rhythm, rubbing his face against the pallet and enjoying the gradual twitch and fill of his own cock as his prostate began to hum, radiating pleasure with every deep touch.

“Let it come,” Xian whispered as Rafael tried to speed up again. “Let it come on its own. Leave it be, pet.”

“I need…”

“I know. I always know.” Xian began to thrust harder, but not much faster. “My Rafael… You’re a feast for me, in every way.”

“I love you,” Rafael gasped, clenching his hands into fists to keep them off his dick. “Love you, I love you.” He had given up expecting to hear it back, but he couldn’t stop the litany of words from spilling from his own lips. Xian didn’t speak, as Rafael had anticipated, but he did move faster, and the shivers of impending orgasm coming from Xian spilled over into Rafael. As soon as he felt the liquid heat of his lover’s release inside him, he came again, wordlessly this time, almost soundlessly. Stars swam in front of his eyes, stars like those he could see at night now instead of ambient city light. He let the starscape swim across his blurry vision, finally closing his eyes and blocking out the few faint vestiges of light in favor of total, soothing darkness.

They lay joined together for some time, until at last Xian pulled out. He carded his fingers through Rafael’s damp hair then tugged on it gently. “You should bathe, pet. You’ll feel better.”

“Mmm… Can’t feel any better than now,” Rafael mumbled.

“Nonetheless.”

There wasn’t really a way to argue with “nonetheless.” There hadn’t been when he was an apprentice, and there wasn’t now. “Do you want water as well?” he asked, sitting up and shaking his head slightly.

“There’s enough left in the skin to wipe myself down with. I’ll take my turn in the stream once it gets dark.” Letting sunlight into the enclosure could be fatal for Xian, and so they both had to exercise a lot of caution during the day.

Rafael scooted to the edge of their little den and lifted the blanket just enough so that he could slide out from beneath it without disturbing the rest. A moment later he was standing naked in the cold midday air, which felt deliciously fresh in his lungs and on his face. He glanced over at the horses. Xian’s was standing docilely, but Rafael’s was staring right at him, and he stamped a foot hard and tossed his head when he saw his rider.

“Don’t start with me.” Rafael ignored the baleful look and headed for the stream, kneeling on the bank and plunging his hands into the water. It was shockingly cold, so much more so than the air, and he dipped and scrubbed and cleaned as fast as he could, rinsing away sweat and dirt and cum until he was a shivering pink mess about to die of hypothermia. He stumbled back toward the enclosure, then groaned when his horse let out a warning whinny.

The last time his horse had made that noise and Rafael had ignored him, he’d pulled free of his lead and trotted off to find his own grazing ground, and Rafael had wasted an hour tracking him down. Swearing, he altered course toward the saddlebags, took out another grain cake from their dwindling supply and split it between the two beasts. “And that’s all you get for now,” he muttered, then darted back into their den before the horse finished eating and had a chance to glare at him again.

The warmth inside their nest of thicket and blankets was a welcome balm to his freezing skin, and Rafael pulled one of the cloths that made their pallet around his naked shoulders. Xian was sitting up, patiently refolding the long swaths of shiny black material that made up his outfit during the day. The cloth was treated to give him some protection from the sun—not enough to allow them to travel during the day, but enough to save Xian from catching on fire immediately if for some reason he had to go out into the light. The fabric was oily and heavy and hard to work, and every morning he peeled it off while they rested, then reapplied it at twilight in thick, winding spirals over every inch of his body.

Usually Rafael liked to watch Xian work with the cloth, but all he could think of right now was the snare slipping from his lover’s fingertips. He stared hard at Xian’s hands, trying to see them in the faint light, to catch a glimpse of a tremble or shake. He didn’t see much of anything before Xian pinched him sharply on the inner thigh, hard enough to make his skin burn. Rafael gasped but knew better than to jerk away, and after a moment Xian let go.

“I’m still more than capable of putting you in your place,” his former master said with a hint of a smile in his voice. “The withdrawal process starts slowly, Rafael. We have plenty of time to make it to our destination before I become a burden to you.”

“You’d never be a burden to me,” Rafael replied, his integrity stung as much as his skin.

“You’ve never had to take care of someone in the throes of severe illness,” Xian pointed out. “You don’t know what it will be like, how wearing and exhausting it will be. You don’t know how it feels to have everything you’ve ever considered immutable and sacred in your life worn down to a sliver of its former self. It’s a relentless and frightening process, pet, and even the bravest and most devoted of companions are tested by it.”

Rafael sat in silence for a minute, reining in his sudden flare of anger and gathering his thoughts carefully before he replied. “I watched the city where I spent my entire life fall into complete and utter ruin,” he said quietly. “I saw it happen and I know, no matter how you try to justify it to me, that it happened in large part because of me. You told me not to blame myself for that, and I’m trying hard not to. If I’m not allowed to take responsibility for the past, though, then you’re not allowed to take it for what happens in the future. Whatever it is, whatever we have to go through, I won’t blame you for it. And I won’t leave you.”

“I know that,” Xian said after a moment. “I do know that, Rafael. Are you tired at all?”

“A little,” Rafael said, letting Xian get away with the subject change.

“Then lie down for a bit, pet. Rest. We still have some hours before sunset.” He patted the ground next to him and Rafael turned so that his back was on the spot Xian had indicated and his head was cradled in the cross of Xian’s folded legs. Long fingers wove through his hair, slow and absolutely steady. Despite wanting to stay awake and enjoy the comfort of his lover’s touch, Rafael felt himself slowly relax toward sleep until he couldn’t fight it any longer.

When he woke up Rafael was alone in their shelter, some of which had already been taken down. It was well past twilight, and the pieces of sky he could make out overhead were a velvety midnight blue, just beginning to twinkle in places. He sat up and looked around. No Xian, and both of the horses were missing, but there was no sign of an altercation—as if Rafael could have slept through one anyway. He shivered, then reached for his clothes. He couldn’t do much of anything naked as a newborn.

Xian reappeared just as Rafael was tugging his boots on. He was leading the two monsters by their reins, and Rafael was disgusted to see that his horse was on its best behavior with Xian. “Fraud,” he muttered toward the beast as he got to his feet. He was surprised to see several small animal carcasses hanging from the snares in Xian’s free hand. “You’ve already checked the traps?”

“And let the horses graze for a bit. There was time, and you needed the extra sleep. Besides, we still have things to discuss before getting on our way tonight, and I wanted to get the necessary tasks out of the way.” He staked the horses in place where they’d been before and waved toward the shelter. “Your choice—take the rest of that down or dress the kills.”

“It’s a tough call,” Rafael mused with mock confliction in his voice, “but I think I’ll take folding cloth over gutting rabbits.”

“A wise choice,” Xian said. “For both of us. How you can be so adept at killing people and yet so awkward butchering an animal is astonishing to me. Didn’t Daeva’s organization work out of a butcher shop?”

“I was never a part of his organization, I only killed the marks he found,” Rafael shot back, taking down the rest of the blankets and refolding them quickly. “And I don’t recall you ever bothering to teach me how to catch and prepare my own food back when I was your apprentice.”

“No,” Xian agreed, “there was never any need for that in Clare.”

“How much of it do you think is still standing?” Rafael asked, his voice a little tentative. From where he’d last seen it, standing on the shore of the lake that surrounded the island city, the entire metropolis had seemed engulfed in flames.

“Half, perhaps,” his lover mused, using his sharp, flat-bladed skinning knife to deftly strip a rabbit. “If the wizards got their fail-safes up fast enough. At one point the ruling class of Clare made provisions against massive fire damage, and erected both physical and magical barriers that would help to minimize the destruction wrought by such an event. As Erran’s blood became scarcer, though, those spells were neglected in favor of making sure every High One continued to get their regular dose of immortality. Still, it’s only been a few years since then, so if the spells held… Perhaps half.

“If nothing was done to stem the fury of the fire, then it’s conceivable that the entire city could be gone at this point, although I doubt that. There were areas of very little magic that have likely held up. It’s more likely that around two-thirds of it are gone, and most of that would be from the Upper Half of Clare. And don’t think I haven’t noticed you trying to divert my attention from the task at hand,” he added.

“What, gutting rabbits?” Rafael asked innocently as he tied the blanket rolls to the backs of the saddles.

“No, pet. How to compensate for my impending disability.”

In a heartbeat the cold, tight ache was back in Rafael’s chest, hard to breathe around, hard to move against. “Mm,” he said noncommittally.

“Mm indeed,” Xian agreed, looking and sounding entirely too cheerful for what they were discussing. He finished with the rabbits, wrapped the carcasses carefully, then disposed of the offal in a shallow hole he’d already dug and went back to the creek to wash his hands. When he returned he looked briefly through his saddlebag, then pulled out a small black satchel that Rafael recognized immediately.

This satchel was the only thing other than himself that Xian had brought away from Clare. It held things he’d said Rafael would need to learn to use, but up until now Xian hadn’t seen fit to return to the subject and Rafael certainly hadn’t been in a hurry to remind him to. Now to see it again, after two weeks of startlingly easy companionship, was a rough reminder of everything that had come before.

Xian untied the knot holding it closed and reached inside, pulling out a pair of slender steel cuffs a moment later. They were quite pretty, actually, almost like bracelets, and not so thick that they would really restrict the mobility of the wearer’s wrist in a meaningful way. The outside of the cuffs was matte finished and gleamed dully in the growing moonlight, but the insides were polished and shining. The chain between them was thick enough to remind Rafael that no matter how pretty they looked, they existed to bind and restrain, not to adorn.

“These are lined with a silver alloy,” Xian said, tossing them to Rafael. “That will keep my strength under check and prevent me from tearing them apart, if it seems like I’m becoming violent. Silver weakens High Ones, as you well know.”

“It also poisons you,” Rafael protested. “Wearing these, even if they aren’t pure silver, will cause abscesses all the way around your wrists.”

“They’ll heal,” Xian replied blithely. “And once my magic is so low that the wounds stop healing, hopefully the cuffs won’t be necessary any longer. We don’t have to use them yet, but I want you to take them now.”

“Do you really think they’ll be needed before we get to wherever it is we’re going?” Rafael asked. He was nervous enough about making his way across this no man’s land of mountainous rubble with Xian fully functioning. He couldn’t imagine how difficult it would become if Xian was incapable of leading them.

“I doubt it, but I don’t want to leave you unprepared for the eventuality,” his lover told him. “This is their key.” He handed over a thin, flexible piece of metal that looked unlike any key Rafael had ever seen before. “Keep it somewhere safe, like with the blood.”

Right, the blood. The vial of Erran’s blood that Xian had given to him in case of emergencies. The healing properties of the blood were such that even if one of them were mortally injured and on the brink of death, it would bring them back from the edge if applied or drunk fast enough.

Unfortunately, the blood had immediate and highly addictive properties as well, so addictive that Rafael had never been allowed to drink it in its undiluted state. Any benefit he had ever derived from Erran’s blood had been when his master had chosen to gift him with the taste of his own magically enhanced blood. Xian had been drinking the elixir of immortality for half a millennium now, and its potency would sustain him for some time yet without needing more. Once he did need it, though…

Rafael shied away from those thoughts and refocused on what Xian was saying just in time to catch another packet. “Silver needles.”

“I’m not putting needles in you,” he protested.

“You’ll have to if I start to thrash and seem like I might cause harm to you, or myself, or to anyone else,” Xian said firmly. “You know how to use them to disable a High One, I taught you that during your apprenticeship.”

That was true, and Rafael had occasionally used that knowledge to good effect when he had been an assassin hunting down High Ones with Daeva, but he had never thought he’d be using them on his former master. The whole concept made his stomach roil.

“But they’ll hurt you,” he whispered.

“You’ll be doing me a favor, Rafael,” Xian insisted, coming over to him and putting his hands on Rafael’s shoulders. “Pain is a powerful distraction, and I can take pain much more readily than I can take the weakness and lack of control that will come with detoxification. You’ll be giving me what I need.”