Dragon_The Final War

by JC Andrijeski

  Now, mulling the clothes thing again and realizing I’d violated another seer cultural norm without realizing it, it occurred to me I really should go change. It would be embarrassing either way, yeah, but changing would be less so.

  When in Rome, and all that.

  If I did it now, quietly, a lot of them might not even notice.

  When I got back, I would copy what Revik had done.

  Get a drink. Blend into one of the clusters where I knew most of the seers. Be passively social. Ignore the fact that I’d changed my clothes and hope like hell they did the same.

  At the same time, yeah, I was kind of pissed.

  Why hadn’t Wreg told me? Why hadn’t Yumi? Why didn’t anyone tell me anything around here unless I explicitly asked the question?

  I was already bracing myself to climb the stairs up to the higher platform by the bar so I could make my way back into the building, when I turned, gritting my teeth––

  ––and ran right into Revik.

  He’d approached and stood directly behind me, moving so quietly I hadn’t felt or heard him. Or maybe I’d just been too lost in my clothing faux pas to pay attention.

  Either way, I hadn’t known he was there at all.

  I nearly knocked his drink into him as a result.

  He managed to pull his hand away, surfing the amber liquid to safety. He used his free hand to catch hold of my arm in the same motion, which is good because I probably would have lost my balance entirely if he hadn’t, and maybe crashed into him for real.

  When I glanced up, feeling my face warm, his eyes locked on mine.

  “Are you okay?” he said. He didn’t let go of my arm.

  I let him hold me until I regained my balance. Then I stepped back a little, forcing him to let go. Exhaling, I nodded.

  “Yeah.” I let out a humorless snort. “Yeah. I’m good.”

  When I glanced up, he was staring at my body in the short black dress and sheer stockings. His eyes lingered on the high-heeled black shoes.

  “What the fuck are you wearing?” he said, his voice holding no inflection at all.

  I felt my face go from warm to hot.

  Biting my lip, and the retort that wanted to come out, I shook my head.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I’ll change, all right?” I started to move past him, not looking at him at all that time. “…Forget it. I’ll change.”

  He caught hold of my arm again, though.

  When I looked up that time, his eyes looked puzzled, but also embarrassed. “That’s not… Allie.” He struggled for words. “I didn’t mean that, Allie. I just…”

  He trailed. His eyes slid down me again as he did and I fought to extricate my arm.

  “I’ll change, Revik,” I said, closing my light. “It was a mistake. Forget it.”

  He shook his head, still not letting me go. He gripped me tighter when I tried to writhe away, fighting my attempts to flee. That time when he spoke he sounded frustrated.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “Allie, please. Stop taking this the way you are. Please! Please stay… just for a few seconds!”

  I forced myself to stop struggling, to just stand there.

  Still gripping my arm, he glanced around the deck, at the seers on the different levels of the roof. I felt his embarrassment worsen, but I didn’t follow his gaze. I didn’t want to know how many of them might be staring at us now, truthfully, or what I might feel on their lights as they watched the two of us.

  For some reason emotion nearly overwhelmed me in those few seconds.

  I felt like an asshole, sure, for overreacting, for overdressing in the first place then acting like a jerk when Revik barely asked me about why I’d done it.

  I knew seers didn’t ask appearance questions for the same reasons humans did.

  He hadn’t asked me to give me a hard time, or even to tease me; it had been an honest question. I’d obviously violated some unwritten seer rule about these kinds of gatherings and he was trying to figure out why no one had told me.

  I kind of wondered why no one had told me, too.

  Regardless of any of that, I knew none of those things were what was bothering me. I knew the clothes were nothing, just one more thing I’d fucked up in regards to seer culture. I knew Revik probably didn’t give a shit about my clothes, either, but I couldn’t seem to open my light enough to reassure either of us.

  “Allie.” His voice dropped to a murmur.

  Hesitating a bare breath, he pulled me closer to where he stood. He put down the drink on a low table without letting go of me, then wrapped his arms around me, lowering his mouth to my neck and ear.

  “Allie… listen to me,” he murmured. “I’m fucking jealous. I’m jealous.”

  I felt something in my chest clench.

  He kissed my neck, wrapping his light and arms tighter around me.

  “I’m jealous,” he repeated, softer. “Every seer in here… gaos, Allie. They’re all staring at you. I’m picking up thoughts on some of them. Some of those thoughts are pretty damned explicit. I’m having trouble…” He fought for words. “…Dealing with it. I’m having trouble dealing with it, Allie. That’s all.”

  I let out a humorless sound, but didn’t look up.

  I wiped my eyes seconds later. I hadn’t noticed when my vision blurred, but now that embarrassed me, too.

  His words made that harder resistance in my light collapse, though.

  Forcing a sigh, I leaned my head into his chest. Then I clicked softly, still looking down at the deck rather than at his face.

  “Who the hell do you think I wore it for?” I said. Pressing deeper into him, maybe in part so I could continue avoiding looking at his face, I slid my arm around his waist. “It was stupid. And clearly it’s not…” I let out a choked laugh. “…Not the dress code for group sex. I just thought… I don’t know what I thought. I thought you’d like it.”

  I felt a reaction plume off his light, a mixture of things that swam through my aleimi too fast for me to make out most of the individual emotions.

  I felt grief on him the strongest.

  It was more than I could handle right then, truthfully.

  “Revik.” I stepped back, removing myself from the embrace. “I’ll just go change. Really. It’s not a big deal. Why don’t I just do that?”

  He was already shaking his head, stepping towards me before I’d finished speaking. I felt a flush of anger on him. It felt mostly aimed at himself.

  He stopped when he stood directly in front of me.

  “I’m sorry I grabbed you,” he said, blunt. “I panicked.”

  Clicking softly, I smiled at that, snorting a soft laugh in spite of myself. I didn’t look up though, putting my hands on my hips as I glanced back at the bar instead.

  Too many seers were staring at the two of us.

  “They’re watching to make sure I’m not being an asshole,” he grunted.

  When I still didn’t look over, he caught a hold of my chin with his fingers, gently. Softening his light, he guided me to look up at him.

  When I met his gaze, his jaw hardened.

  He shook his head. Once. Adamant.

  “And no,” he said. “No, Alyson. I don’t want you to change. Not unless you really want to. Thank you, but no. And thank you for wearing it. I should have done the same.”

  Releasing my face, he reached down then, catching hold of my hand, gripping it tightly in his. “Do you want a drink?”

  I exhaled, feeling my shoulders relax for real.

  “Like you wouldn’t believe,” I told him.

  13

  THE LAST NIGHT

  A FEW OTHERS teased me about the clothes, maybe just to make light of my blunder.

  As we all sat cross-legged around the low table they set on the upper floor of the deck, Yumi even explained the custom to me. She said casual clothes were symbolic, meant to convey the light-sharing was being done not from lust or an attempt to manipulate one another, but from our relationshi
p as people.

  So more like friends. Comrades. Brothers and sisters.

  Versus, I guess, a group orgy designed to get into one another’s pants.

  It made a lot of sense, once I thought about it.

  Yumi informed me further that the custom originated in the Adhipan––which immediately caused a heated debate between Adhipan and ex-Rebel seers, most of the latter of whom thought the First Race started the custom, not the Adhipan.

  The whole idea of arguing about the origins of culturally-dictated clothing for group sex was funny to me, but seers take their traditions as seriously as humans, I suppose.

  To me, the other bonus would have been to be able to sit cross-legged with the rest of them, since they’d gone more Japanese-style on the tables. Instead I had to kneel with my legs curled under me because of the short dress.

  Revik didn’t participate in the debate, although he laughed at some of the more outrageous claims. He continued to hold my hand on the cushion under the low table, not speaking much.

  Once we sat down for dinner he switched from bourbon to water, I noticed.

  He didn’t eat much.

  The food was mostly from local ingredients, a mish-mash of rice, curry, vegetables, chicken, and fish that tasted better than anything I could remember us eating since New York. Revik still didn’t eat much of it, which was unusual for him, especially with seer food.

  I couldn’t quite tell if the current spread was completely seer food or a mix of seer and human, but given how happy my light felt as I ate it, I guessed it had to be more seer than not.

  Even after we finished, we all just sat there for a while, talking and laughing about nothing. It wasn’t quite small talk, not in the stilted or superficial chit-chat sense, but it wasn’t too heavy either. People talked philosophy and even a little about the Myths but not about operations or what we’d be facing when we left Thailand.

  I don’t know when or how that changed, exactly.

  I’m pretty sure it was Revik’s fault.

  I started to notice he was touching me more.

  He did it gradually, working it into the background of our conversations almost without my noticing at first. He started by massaging my shoulder with one hand, then my thigh, then further down to my calf.

  I’d already taken my shoes off by then and said the hell with it and sat cross-legged despite the dress, since my feet had been falling asleep the other way and it was too dark for me to care at that point. Sitting in the candlelight so close to the low table, it’s not like anyone was looking at my crotch, anyway.

  Even Revik didn’t look down at me much, not even while he touched me.

  After a few more minutes of rubbing my calf, he started massaging my feet through the sheer stockings.

  His hands were lulling, soothing.

  His light most definitely was not.

  In fact, it hit me suddenly, as I laughed at something Dalai said, that the dense, sick feeling in my gut was mostly coming from him. Once I realized that much, it was impossible to ignore his light, or his hands. Pain seethed off him, more pain than I’d felt on him even before Dubai, when we’d been re-bonding overtly.

  I didn’t know how to deal with it.

  I ended up fidgeting. Blushing. Not knowing what to do with my hands.

  I drank more, instead of less. I probably ate more, too.

  I could feel others reacting to his light. I saw eyes noticing his hands on me, even though he was being more or less discreet about it. I saw Torek and Raddi watching in particular, both of whom I somehow hadn’t noticed were there until then. I saw Varlan watching us. Given that I’d seen him getting his dick sucked pretty enthusiastically by Feigran only a few days ago, I couldn’t make myself return his stare.

  In fact, the memory weirded me out enough that I fought to shove my awareness of Varlan out of my mind and light totally.

  I saw Dalai and Argo watching us as well, the latter of whom I was beginning to think might have a crush on Revik, if a mild one.

  I tried not to let that bother me.

  I found myself noticing faces the longer I sat there, until I was really looking at them, letting myself see them all for the first time since I’d come upstairs.

  Jon and Wreg, who I’d been studiously avoiding looking at, sat around the other table, so that their backs were to us. I briefly watched Wreg rub Jon’s shoulder with a muscular hand while he ate, then averted my gaze.

  Most of the others I’d known for years. They were friends.

  Balidor. Neela. Yumi. Mutkar. Hondo. Jax and Holo. Tenzi. Poresh. Illeg. Wanai. Mila. Pagoj. Vikram.

  Then there were seers I knew but didn’t know personally.

  Like the other intermediary, Stanley. And the aforementioned Varlan. I knew there’d been some debate about whether or not to include Varlan, given his past with the Rooks and his obscenely high sight rank in actual.

  In the end, I guessed Revik decided Varlan was just too important of an infiltrator not to include.

  The rest were seers I didn’t know at all.

  The new Adhipan seers, Dalai and Nulek.

  Mara, another new Adhipan seer who reminded me vaguely of Kat and got my hackles up pretty much right off by staring at Revik’s ass for a lot too long.

  Chandre’s ex-girlfriend, Talei.

  I noticed who wasn’t there, too.

  Ullysa. Kat. Chandre.

  Mika, Chinja and Anale weren’t there, either; they’d all left with Loki a few days ago. Declan left with Chandre that afternoon. Surli also joined Chandre’s team, along with Jorag. Apparently Balidor fought for those last three names to be included in this, but Revik vetoed Surli and Jorag outright, refusing to discuss either of them.

  I knew that was part of the reason Revik pushed Chandre and her team to leave about fourteen hours early. Originally the plan had them leaving tomorrow morning.

  Yarli didn’t make it, presumably because of Balidor.

  Tarsi wasn’t there, either (thank the gods).

  I was pretty sure Dalejem was still being monitored by the medical techs or we might have had to discuss him, too.

  Maygar, being Revik’s blood son, had not been invited.

  Loki wasn’t there either, but only because he’d already left for Afghanistan––something I’d been chewed out for pretty heatedly by Loki’s new girlfriend, Gina, just that morning. I could feel on her light that she wasn’t too happy with some of the assignments to Loki’s team, either, Mika especially. I sensed a story behind that but didn’t probe her to learn what it was.

  I glanced around at all of them, not counting heads but maybe getting used to the idea all over again.

  I looked at them and I didn’t look at Revik.

  I felt my skin flush regardless, growing increasingly warm as his hands massaged my skin. I knew it might be bothering him how little I was engaging with him on this. If so, I couldn’t feel it on his light. As for me, I mostly felt confused.

  Some of that might have been shock that he was actually touching me. Some of it might have been the whole idea of this, meaning doing the group thing with all our friends.

  And yes, Revik had barely let me near him in weeks. I guess I’d assumed I’d need to be the aggressor with him tonight, too.

  As it turned out, not so much.

  He leaned by my ear as I thought it, speaking low.

  “Is it too early?” he murmured. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

  Thinking, I shook my head.

  No, I sent.

  I felt a coil of reaction in his light, but I still didn’t look at his face.

  When I didn’t say any more, he slid an arm around me carefully. He wrapped his hand around my hip just as cautiously, sliding me over nearer to him, a hint of asking permission in his light. When I softened my aleimi in response, his fingers tightened.

  He had me more or less in his lap seconds later.

  Well, sitting in front of him to be more accurate––but it felt like being in his lap. />
  Either way, I think I turned red up to my hairline. He wrapped an arm around my waist when I leaned against his chest, his other arm sliding around me in a near-hug as he gripped my opposite shoulder and pressed his chest to my back.

  Another hard coil of pain left his light.

  He’d always liked to hold me that way. He’d done it since we first started dating––if you could call it that, given that we’d already been married at the time. He liked doing it during sex, especially when we were far inside one another’s light.

  And yeah, it was just as distracting now as it had been the first time he’d done it, in that upstairs bedroom in Vash’s compound in Seertown.

  I fought to relax, and to listen to the others talk.

  They’d veered into shop-talk by then.

  “…Did I really hear the Americans are thinking of nuking Asia?” Raddi said. Popping a piece of mango in his mouth, he looked directly at me, chewing. I felt a pulse of heat off his light once he had, right before his eyes shifted to Revik sitting behind me.

  I didn’t follow his gaze to see what he was looking at.

  “I don’t know,” I told him, flushing. “I only heard about it a few hours ago––”

  “We’re not talking about that tonight,” Wreg cut in, turning to look over his shoulder at us from the other table. His black eyes met mine. “Not tonight, princess. You said so yourself. It will be there in the morning.”

  Barely hesitating, I nodded.

  I was about to say something, maybe to change the subject, but Revik picked then to kiss my neck, putting a heated thread of light into his lips and tongue and causing my vision to slant. My mind stuttered in the same set of seconds, even before he started using his teeth lightly on my skin, pulling on me sensually with his light.

  Something about the combination of his light and his teeth forced me silent.

  Raddi laughed. I felt pain on him too.

  “Gods. You should see your wife’s face, Illustrious Sword.”

  “Don’t encourage him,” Wreg joked, again looking over from the other table. “Brother Sword’s got the patience of a drunk adolescent tonight. Not that I blame him.”

  Jon smacked Wreg in the chest from the other side, using the flat of his hand.