by Megan Derr
"I know," Cemal said quietly. "I can't say I'm not mad at him, but if I thought he was evil, I would not have saved him—certainly I would not have nearly killed myself to save him."
Eser nodded, but her reply was prevented by a yawn.
Cemal nodded toward the door. "Get some rest, my lady. I'm awake and likely to stay that way for some time. I will watch over him."
"I will send a servant with food. Do not hesitate to have me summoned if a problem arises." Eser gripped his shoulder and gave him a tired smile before shuffling across the room and slipping quietly out the door.
Cemal returned to his own room to dress properly. By the time he returned to Binhadi, a tray of food was waiting on the table in the corner. The table where so much had happened. It had felt like a beginning. Now it just had the bitter aftertaste of a bad goodbye.
He looked over Binhadi, combed fingers through his long, thick hair, then walked slowly over to the table and dropped into his seat. He reached for the bowl of steaming soup—then pulled it back, both hands falling to his lap as he started sobbing.
Whatever had held it all back had finally broken. Cemal buried his face in his hands and let the tears out. He cried for the Heart, for all the brothers he'd had there who'd never realized he didn't deserve to be among them. For all the people who came to the temples seeking solace or advice or just a few minutes of quiet. For everyone who had died in the midst of a festival celebrating just how many people lived in Orhanis. For the Heart, lying in ruins at the bottom of the Great Lake, and the lake itself, damaged by all the death and destruction.
For the people he'd been able to call friends, the first real friends he'd had since leaving home on a quest that had cost so much of his life. Now one had nearly died, and had possibly been planning to kill them all, and the other two were gone.
He'd never felt so lost and useless in his life. So helpless and…nonexistent. If he'd died in the Heart, no one would have mourned him, if they'd noticed his absence at all. He'd been a good priest, but only one of hundreds, with nothing remarkable about him.
Cemal cried until he was spent and his eyes were so red and sore he could scarcely keep them open. He gulped down wine to soothe his throat and used a rag and cool water at Binhadi's wash stand to clean his face. Going to the bed, he looked Binhadi over again, but other than a slight twitch and sigh, Binhadi remained fast asleep.
Reaching into his dressing robe, Cemal pulled out his prayers beads. He kissed them and pressed them into Binhadi's hands, folding them together on his stomach. Lightly touching his fingertips to Binhadi's cheeks, Cemal whispered, "Get better, you stupid bastard." Turning away, he left Binhadi's room and went for a walk to clear the fuzziness in his head.
The pain wasn't gone by any means, but he hadn't realized what a weight it had become until he'd finally let some of it go.
He finally came to a halt in the music room, enormous and beautiful and haunting. He'd never learned to play any instruments, but he'd always enjoyed singing and had been good at leading the hymns. When he wasn't in trouble for smarting off with the King's Jester, anyway.
The sound of footsteps made him startle. Cemal turned sharply from where he'd been idly toying with the harp strings, stilled as he saw the healer. The man wore the marks of a scholar, one of the highest ranks in the priesthood. He pulled his hands together so they vanished in the heavy folds of his priestly robes, and regarded Cemal pensively. "You were the griffon."
Cemal hesitated, but what was the point in denying it? "Yes."
The healer crossed the room to stand closer to him. He had gray hair pulled back in a loose knot at the back of his head, lines in his face. Rare to see a healer who lived long enough to turn gray. Cemal bowed his head low. "You have the power of the Avatars."
"Overgenerous," Cemal replied as he lifted his head. "I was Oathbound and that lent me power I do not possess on my own."
"Was?"
Cemal looked away, stared at the moonlight coming through the floor to ceiling windows on the far side of the music room. "The bond is broken, and two of our party have left. It was forged by mistake some months ago, and it's only by the Dragon's mercy it lasted this long."
"Yet you do not seem relieved."
Cemal shrugged, still feeling too raw to discuss emotions and hopes that he'd only begun to acknowledge were even there.
"I remember you," the healer said. "I doubt you remember me, as our paths never directly crossed. You walked around in a cloud of sadness, your mind always somewhere else, even though your faith and devotion were stronger than most of the priests that still reside with us."
Cemal let out a sharp, cracking laugh. "Faith? Devotion? I was devoted to vengeance, and had faith my efforts would pay off with patience and persistence. I'm no priest. I never was and am not fit to ever be."
"Vengeance?" The healer tilted his head. "Did you get your vengeance?"
"Yes," Cemal replied. His shoulders sagged. "And no."
"Tell me."
Cemal stared at the man a moment, then sat on the harp stool and told him everything, from finding his sister's body to the day he'd joined the priesthood to facilitate finding her killer to the night he'd stared down at the bastard and watched him bleed out. Everything that had happened since, minus the sexual adventures.
"At some point, there must have been better ways to go about finding him. The priesthood let you move around easily, but after a time, you had the experience and, I would hazard, access to sufficient funds."
Cemal bristled. "I'm a murderer, I grant you, but I wasn't so set on it that I'd steal from the temple or abandon my duties. I took the vows. I never wanted to violate any of them. I didn't hate the life."
"You are not the first to use the temple thusly, you know," the healer said, and sat down beside him on the floor. "We find such types all the time because they shirk their duties, steal funds, are flippant and selfish and unkind, though not always on purpose. It is obvious with all of them that they would rather be anywhere else, much like the soldier who sleeps on duty or sneaks off when he knows nobody will realize he's not actually on watch. It's never hard to pick out the ones who do not want to be where they are. Your records are full of praise and recommendation. You were granted permission to transfer to the Heart because it was the best place to train you all the way to Eminence."
"Eminence? Me?" Cemal laughed. "I was astonished enough they made me a Shield. Which I've proven to be terrible at."
"Because you resist it. You fight being a priest when you would be worthy if you simply accepted that you are where you want to be and no child of the Dragon lives without making mistakes great and small. You would succeed as Shield if you fully accepted that role. Anyone can do what's right when doing what's right is easy: singing hymns, collecting donations, reciting prayers… It's harder to comfort people in their worst moments, or tell an unpleasant truth, and you have long been commended for both those things and more besides.
"You were recommended to become a Shield because you have the strength to do what's unpleasant in the name of protecting those under your care. Stabbing a man to death in his own home…that was a poor choice, but you seemed to have come to that realization all on your own. Fighting and killing to protect, taking on that pain so that others need not…that is the duty and burden of a Shield—and of an Avatar. You hurt yourself and others by denying what you are and could be, or alternately, by lingering and dithering instead of making a clean break."
Cemal's eye stung and he pressed the heels of his hands to them, ignoring the soreness from the tears already shed. "I think you are too gracious. The point is moot, though. I'm no longer a priest, and the place where I served as Shield is long gone."
"Your place is with your Oathbound."
"The Oath was broken."
"Oaths are not so easily broken," the healer replied. "It's weakened, to be certain, and there are many cracks. But I think if you try, you will find it's not entirely gone."
Cemal lowered his h
ands and slowly looked up. "You speak like you believe in them."
"Hard to deny them when I know very well you turned into a griffon. And the church has documents it does not share with the public for fear the knowledge they impart would give power to dangerous people. Stop hiding in the dark, Avatar. Be what you so obviously want to be. There is someone in this very house who needs you, and two more lost individuals for you to find, and Orhanis needs what only the four of you can do."
Cemal drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. Tried to think of himself as a real priest, not the imitation he'd always believed. The thought of using his powers, fighting like a beast again, was harder to accept…but he'd do it gladly to protect his friends, to protect people who couldn't fight for themselves. If they were ever going to fight together again, Sule needed someone at his side who could fight, and that was Cemal. "You're right. I would like to be an Avatar."
"Then you are," the healer said, and patted his hands before standing. "When Warlock Binhadi is well enough, come see us at the temple and we'll see you properly outfitted." He held out a hand and pulled Cemal to his feet. "I hope all goes well for you."
"Thank you," Cemal said quietly.
Clapping his shoulder, the healer smiled and turned away. "I am headed home in the morning, but I expect to see you in a week or two, Avatar."
"Yes, Father."
Cemal waited until he was gone before leaving the music room to return to Binhadi's side. He was still fast asleep, but he didn't look as pale and sickly as he had before. Or maybe Cemal was just seeing what he wanted. Kicking off his house slippers and shrugging out of his robe, he climbed into the bed and stretched out along the open half, turning to face Binhadi.
*~*~*
He woke to something warm on his cheek. His eyes fluttered, closed, fluttered again before finally staying open long enough to comprehend the something warm was in fact Binhadi's hand. Cemal jerked upright. "You're awake!"
Binhadi withdrew his hand and raked it through his hair. "By Dragon's mercy and your quick action, I am told. Mostly the latter." He frowned at the blanket.
"I could hardly let you die."
"My understanding is that everyone would prefer if the evil, scheming shadow mage did precisely that," Binhadi said, but the cold tone in which he tried to say them failed completely. In any other person, Cemal would have thought tears were threatening. Binhadi sounded tired in a way Cemal knew all too well.
He reached out and covered one of Binhadi's hands with his own. "I think they acted rashly and are probably already regretting their actions. Those two are volatile, you know that. It's how they protect themselves. Whereas I just move to a new temple and you glare until everyone runs away."
The barest hint of a smile flickered on Binhadi's mouth before dying. "You're still here."
"I didn't want to give up on you. I mean, I don't really have anywhere else to go, or so I thought, but really, I didn't want to think that everything that's happened these past months meant nothing. They meant something to me. I wanted to believe…" He fell silent, not quite able to get the words out, already too cut open from the encounter with the healer.
"I've never really had friends," Binhadi said quietly. "Seda was my friend, then my lover, but after our travels abroad, we came home and…" He closed his eyes, and his hands trembled beneath Cemal's. "We told His Majesty, Seda's father, that we wanted to marry. Do you know what he said?"
Cemal frowned. "That he wouldn't permit Seda to marry someone from such a traitorous family?"
Binhadi laughed—and kept laughing, an eerie, hollow, broken sound that made Cemal shiver and pimpled his skin. "If only it were that simple. No, he said we couldn't marry because we were brothers."
Cemal's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Try as he might, the words wouldn't form and his voice wouldn't work.
"Yes, that was my reaction. The late king was impotent, so he asked his secret bastard brother, my father, to sire his children. Seda and I are twins, though not identical. My date of birth was changed so as not to arouse suspicion. Yavuz is my younger brother, produced by my father a few years later so the king would have a spare." He looked at Cemal then back at the blankets.
Try as he might, Cemal still could not think of what to say. It was not something he had ever expected to hear. He could not fathom the pain of falling in love with someone only to be told that person was his twin brother and his entire life was built on an enormous lie.
"I'm so sorry," he finally managed, and shifted to wrap his arms tightly around Binhadi, who gasped and then held on like he was afraid Cemal would float away.
"That's not the end of it," Binhadi said after several minutes, loosening his grip enough to draw back enough to speak clearly. "His Majesty's will didn't say that Yavuz should be king—it specified me. Seda… well, let us say that once he loved me greatly, and now he hates me with that same passion. Everyone says I turned on him, but I never wanted his damned throne. I was as blindsided as everyone else. We captured Seda and put Yavuz on the throne and called the matter done. I should have killed him when I had the chance."
"Killing a man I hated made me miserable," Cemal replied, shifting to straddle Binhadi's lap and cup his face. "I don't want to think about the pain of killing somebody I once loved—and probably still love, in some measure. I wish I had words more adequate than I'm sorry."
Something flickered across Binhadi's face—longing, or maybe wistfulness, but then it was replaced by his more familiar contained look.
Cemal remembered how ardently Binhadi had kissed him, though. The almost reverent way he'd touched even as he controlled and commanded. Binhadi was so contained and in control, it had been easy to miss that he was as lonely and starved as the rest of them.
Heart drumming in his ears, he leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss to Binhadi's mouth. Binhadi gasped softly, but after the barest pause returned it, hesitant at first but with increasing confidence when Cemal made no sign of pulling away. His arms came up to wrap around Cemal's waist, and at some point, he twisted so Cemal lay beside him on the bed, pressed into the pillow and blankets as Binhadi kissed him like a starving man finally given sustenance.
Cemal trembled against him, some of the cracks caused by the recent upheaval beginning to shrink and fill.
When the kiss finally broke, he leaned in to rest his head against Binhadi's shoulder, content to maintain the silence and relish a closeness he'd thought lost forever.
SHADOWS
Binhadi stared down at Cemal, fast asleep, draped in silk sheets and dying candlelight. He could not remember the last time he'd had someone in his bed who felt like a lover. Fucking had long ago turned into one more weapon in his arsenal, and being reduced to that, losing the last and simplest pleasure in his life, had been what truly turned him into the man everyone feared or loathed.
His hands struck something hard as he shifted, and Binhadi grasped the object, pulled out Cemal's prayer beads where they'd somehow gotten lost in the bedding. He'd woken before and found them in his hands, and the despair that had made him want to die receded enough he'd been willing to face the world again. It had receded even further when he saw Cemal fast asleep beside him.
Sule had lost all faith in him. Mahzan—
Binhadi swallowed, fingers clenching the beads.
Mahzan had tried to kill him. At best, he'd been so furious that he hadn't cared if Binhadi lived or died. Or in what state he was left if he did live.
He was used to people feeling that way about him, but it had hurt much, much more coming from someone he'd been stupid enough to care about.
Setting the beads aside on the table by his bed, Binhadi scrubbed his face in an effort to banish lingering exhaustion and climbed out of bed to take a piss and find something to wet his throat. His body still ached from being thrown into the wall, especially his wrist, but thankfully it wasn't bad enough to require something to manage the pain.
An abandoned meal was on the table where only a short time ago
a light repast had turned into a heady encounter the likes of which he'd never imagined. He couldn't deny he had hoped for something to build from the Oath, but it was friendship that had haunted him. Nobody called Warlock Binhadi friend. Not anymore. The only two he'd ever had… Seda hated him, and Eser had left. Everyone else called him a bastard, a schemer, evil, cold. The nicest ones called him 'ruthlessly loyal'. He'd counted himself lucky to enjoy a civil conversation here and there.
He hadn't noticed the lust was there until that moment when Sule's astonishment and happiness had gotten the better of him and he'd kissed Mahzan in gratitude. Then Binhadi had realized what had been slow-burning at the back of his mind, and it was as awful a realization as it was happy. Lust had never gotten him anything but into trouble.
For three years he'd loved and fucked Seda, had thought this was the one, this was the person he'd be with forever. He would never forget the horror and disgust that had filled King Majar's face. The sick, broken feeling that had not left him for months after learning just how much of his life had been a lie.
Even now the lies spun by the people he should have been able to trust continued to ruin his life. If they weren't already dead, Binhadi might have finally killed them himself. If he could go back and do it all again, he would happily resort to murder.
Or maybe not, as the worst part of the whole matter was the way Seda changed. If Binhadi had murdered their fathers right then and there, would it have only hastened Seda turning into a cold, cruel bastard?
Had he been so all along and Binhadi had been too infatuated and lust-addled to notice?
Many things haunted him, but that one was near the top of the list. At the end of it all, he could not blame people for preferring to avoid him. For hating him.
But for a short time, he'd known what it was like to have real friends, to be teased and trusted, to be thought of as a normal person. Not the cold, creepy bastard who could manipulate shadows and probably killed as easily as he breathed.