The Water Thief

by Jane Kindred

  He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I must have fallen asleep. Are you all right? I know this is all a lot to take in.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Macsen rubbed his face. “What was I to tell you? That August was a liar who preferred to let you rot in a cell in All Fates Asylum while she lived quite comfortably without you in another realm?”

  Sebastian closed the door firmly behind him and leaned against it. “That I wasn’t out of my damned mind might have been nice, for starters.”

  Macsen tried to smile. “I’m not so sure about that one after this morning.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “We both lost our heads a little, don’t you think?”

  “You regret it, then.” Only Sebastian’s silhouette was visible now the light had dimmed, and Macsen couldn’t make out his expression. “Because you’re not like me.”

  “Will you stop saying that? I told you I was sorry I’d said so. Of course I don’t regret it. I just don’t know what it means. Especially now. Here.”

  Sebastian’s body seemed to sink against the door. “I ran away with you. All the way to another realm.”

  “With me?” Macsen could feel his heart pounding in his chest. “You mean to be with me?”

  “What the hell else would I mean?”

  Macsen closed his eyes for a moment. “Come here. Please. I need you here.”

  Like a miracle, Sebastian came to him, sliding silken arms around his neck, and Macsen embraced the sensuous frame and rolled with him onto the bed, burying his face in the curve of Sebastian’s collarbone.

  “Have I done the wrong thing?” He breathed against the comfort of the warm skin. “Bringing you here—I didn’t think it through. It was the only answer I could think of in the moment, the only safe place. I didn’t want to lose you.”

  Sebastian stroked his hands over Macsen’s back as though memorizing every contour of his muscles. “Of course it wasn’t wrong. I’m glad you brought me, even if I don’t understand yet what it all means. Don’t worry, Macsen. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  The reassuring words sent an unexpected ache through Macsen’s chest. They were the words one said to a child. Ones he’d never heard during his own childhood. Of necessity, his mother had been hard on him—to gird him, she said, against the cruelty of others. He had, after all, made her life hard. It seemed a fair trade.

  “The thing is…” Macsen swallowed to steady his voice. “It might not be safe even here. Emrys’s wrath could follow. He has men in his employ in this realm as well.”

  Sebastian stroked his arm absently, a steady, soothing rhythm of touch. “You know him better than I do, of course, but do you really think he’d bother? He has everything in Cantre’r Gwaelod. All the money, all the land, all the power.”

  Macsen rose on his elbows. “I stole his most valuable possession. He’ll be angrier now than he was when he caught us together.”

  Sebastian gazed up at him. “But he has so much of my magic stored up—dozens, maybe hundreds of vials.”

  “It’s never enough for him. No amount of magical stores will ever make up for the fact that he wasn’t born with any himself. I don’t think he’ll stop looking for you. He couldn’t. Your magic—it’s addicting. And he’s tasted it.” Macsen wished he hadn’t said the last as Sebastian’s nose wrinkled in a grimace.

  “But how dangerous is he, really?” It was clearly a rhetorical question, but Macsen knew the answer.

  He pushed himself up onto his knees and began to unbutton the flannel shirt August had given him. Sebastian regarded him with a quizzical smile and with obvious admiration in his eyes as Macsen bared his flesh. Macsen let the sleeves slide down his arms and leaned in once more to let Sebastian reach his arms around him. As though it were already a habit, Sebastian continued his soft, stroking motions. Macsen saw the moment of realization as Sebastian’s fingers slowed.

  “Macsen?”

  He removed the shirt and rolled onto his side so his back was to Sebastian.

  “By all the Fates,” Sebastian whispered. His hands explored the old scars. “He whipped you.”

  “I was ten.” Macsen kept his voice dispassionate. It was easy enough. Ten-year-old Macsen was someone else. “Somebody told him I’d stolen something from the big house. A pocket watch.”

  Sebastian’s fingers ceased their exploration. “A pocket watch?”

  “I suppose you might remember it. August caught me looking at it.”

  “Macsen.” Sebastian pressed against him, wrapping one arm over his and across his chest. “I’m so sorry. I don’t…”

  “It’s not your fault. I was a fool to let her see me with it. I bragged that Emrys had given it to me. She called my bluff.”

  Sebastian was silent for a moment, absorbing. “That’s why you threw that rock at her the next time we visited.” He hugged Macsen against him. “We didn’t know, I swear to you. We couldn’t have imagined he’d— By the Fates. I beat you up afterward.”

  Macsen shrugged. “You hated me. I hated you. I think maybe we’re even now.”

  “Macsen—”

  “Let it go, Sebastian. I didn’t tell you to gain your pity. You just need to understand who Emrys is. How seriously he’ll take this. He’s a very important man in both worlds, and people fear him for a reason.” Macsen rolled onto his back to show Sebastian he wasn’t affected by it and saw that Sebastian was crying. He had to stifle the visceral reaction such a visible sign of weakness evoked.

  He stifled it with a kiss, and suddenly he wanted Sebastian even more than he had before, which was a considerable amount. He forgot Sebastian’s sister was just a thin wall away. All he knew as he clutched the damp curls in his hands while he kissed Sebastian forcefully was that he needed to touch and taste every inch of Sebastian’s skin.

  Macsen came up for air at last and pushed up the white cotton shirt, pausing for a moment to admire the tiny, erect peaks of dark blush pink before he dipped his head and strafed one with his tongue. Sebastian inhaled sharply, letting the breath out on a low moan as Macsen circled and sucked until the lord of Cantre’r Gwaelod began to whimper with overstimulation. The idea that this was who Sebastian was, that Macsen was his subject, began to drive Macsen to a frenzy. The lord of Cantre’r Gwaelod was at his mercy beneath him.

  He unbuttoned the trousers with a rough jerk, gratified to see the bulge of Sebastian’s unabashed erection through the tight, white undergarment. He left it alone, wanting the lord of Cantre’r Gwaelod to squirm and beg before Macsen serviced him. Instead, he pulled Sebastian’s shirt up over his head and trapped his arms in it, stretched back toward the headboard, before he returned to tormenting the sensitive skin. Sebastian tried to scramble out of the shirt, but Macsen stopped him, holding Sebastian’s wrists.

  The warm brown eyes went wide beneath him, and Sebastian arched up to grind against his pelvis where Macsen straddled him.

  “Lie still,” he ordered, and silenced Sebastian’s noise of protest with a rough, insistent kiss, his tongue thrusting in while Sebastian moaned helplessly against his mouth. Sebastian tasted like salt water, his tongue, his lips and his bare skin brined and dusted with it. He also tasted of magic, his own unique flavor that reminded Macsen of petitgrain, leather and aged fermented tea, and a hint of his power tingled against Macsen’s tongue like static electricity.

  Macsen moved down Sebastian’s throat, licking and nipping in turn, giving the damp nipples more of the same attention before running his tongue down Sebastian’s torso to circle his navel and trace the light trail of hair below it that disappeared into the cotton garment. Macsen’s mouth hovered over the covered flesh while Sebastian squirmed, his eyes urging Macsen on, and finally settled over it, sucking the engorged head of Sebastian’s cock through the fabric.

  Sebastian made an incoher
ent noise that sounded suspiciously like an obscenity.

  Intrigued by the feel of the inflamed skin through the barrier between them, Macsen lingered at this torment until Sebastian was reduced to moans and whimpers of frustration. He couldn’t put it off any longer. He’d never imagined doing such a thing until Sebastian re-entered his life. He was afraid he’d make a fool of himself, or find it actually repelled him. Somehow, fucking Sebastian had seemed less of a point of no return. Fucking, Emrys had taught him, was what a man did, so whom he fucked couldn’t really make him less of a man. But taking Sebastian in his mouth made him the one penetrated, would stain him forever as less than a man in Emrys’s estimation.

  Macsen loosened his mouth from the damp fabric, a rush of angry heat surging over him. Who gave a bloody damn about Emrys’s estimation? He couldn’t believe the son of a bitch could dirty such a moment for him from an entire world away. He wanted Sebastian. He wasn’t going to wait another fucking instant to find out what he tasted like there.

  Sebastian gasped in surprise as Macsen yanked the underwear down and exposed him. He supposed he’d done it a tad more aggressively than was warranted. Macsen wrapped his hand around the shaft and braced himself. Fuck you, Emrys Pryce. He took the plunge, rather literally, diving down into Sebastian’s groin and swallowing the cock—and forgot, instantly, about anything beyond this room and this body.

  Sebastian tasted of earth and musk and salt, and he was vibrating with magic. Macsen wanted to devour him. He moaned around the flesh, sucking and stroking with his tongue. Dimly, he was aware of Sebastian’s fingers roaming through his hair, Sebastian having apparently abandoned the shirt despite his admonishment, but he was too engrossed in what he had in his mouth to care about correcting him. Sebastian was making sharp, truncated gasps, as though trying not to come, but Macsen wanted it, and he was going to have it. He doubled his efforts, and Sebastian’s muscles tensed beneath him, and then he was spilling into Macsen with whispered ejaculations of sound to match the ejaculation of semen—definitely obscenities—and Macsen was swallowing it all.

  Magical energy seemed to flood his veins, and Macsen released Sebastian just in time to rise onto his knees, unbutton himself and jerk himself off, spilling over Sebastian’s bared torso. Sebastian stared up at him for a moment, chest rising and falling with exertion, before reaching to pull Macsen down against him, the spunk slipping between their skin.

  His fingers dug into Macsen’s hair at the nape, and Macsen felt him take a deep breath in preparation to speak, when a loud tap sounded at the door.

  “When you’re decent,” August said clearly, “there’s supper.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Macsen groaned and scrambled off me to put himself together. “I should have been more discreet.”

  I bit my lip as I pulled the oddly stretchy fabric of the thin shirt over my head. “I probably should have warned you.”

  “Warned me?” Macsen paused in buttoning his shirtfront and looked up.

  “August can sense when I’m expending…magic.”

  “Oh, for the love of the Fates.” He went charmingly pink.

  “It’s not like she’s aware of everything that’s happening. I just can’t exactly hide from her that I’m—”

  “Expending magic,” Macsen repeated with a grimace, and then paused in his buttoning once more. “You mean she’s sensed it before? When we—this morning?”

  He looked so miserable, I had to crawl across the bed and kiss him. “It doesn’t matter what realm I’m in, apparently. But she’s not upset with us. Not much.”

  “Not much.”

  “She worries about me. But she doesn’t disapprove of what I am.”

  “What about what I am?”

  I cocked my head at him playfully. “What are you?”

  Macsen frowned. “A thief. A scoundrel.” The bitter look was back in his eyes. “A bastard.” Before I could say anything to refute this, he’d swung off the bed, and with two swift strides, he opened the door and went through it.

  I was still tingling with the knowledge of what had happened as I finished buttoning up. No one had ever touched me as Macsen had. I was always the one who played the passive role. Not that what he’d just done to me was in any way passive. But the men in my experience had expressed no desire to touch me in that manner—though they’d been perfectly happy to have me touch them. I had never questioned it, thinking it was my role. When Macsen had said he wasn’t like me, I’d simply thought he meant he was like other men, not a sissy, as I was, but ordinary.

  The memory of his unexpected ardor was shadowed by the revelation of what he’d suffered as a boy at Emrys’s hand. How could anyone treat a child so brutally? And his own child, at that. My heart ached that August and I had been the cause of it, and that I’d thrashed Macsen for lashing out at her. It couldn’t have been that long after Emrys had whipped him. The thought that I had caused him further pain while he was still recovering from such a savage beating made me ill. No wonder he’d hated me. And it was all the more amazing that he desired me now.

  “Sebastian?” August was at the door again, peering around it. The shorn hair, apparently in the manner of this world, took me aback every time I saw it. I’d seen her so many times in Cantre’r Gwaelod of late—or thought I had—appearing as I’d expected her to. The look suited her, but it would take some getting used to. As would everything.

  “Sorry. Woolgathering.” I smiled and rose to take her offered hand. Except for her hair and her manner of dress, she might easily be the ghost who’d haunted me these past months. The lovely interlude with Macsen had distracted me from the strangeness of all this. My sister was alive. And Macsen was right: she’d lied to me. And was lying to me still.

  “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.” She lowered her voice, pausing in the hallway before we neared the kitchen. “But from the energy flowing between you, I take it you didn’t tell him.”

  “That you think he’s in league with Emrys in some scheme to use my magic here in the upper realms? No, I didn’t. Because I think you’re wrong.”

  “Why else would he be using your magic to cross over so often?”

  “Just as he said. To help the tenants he inadvertently put in harm’s way with Emrys to escape.”

  August shook her head at me as if I were a gullible child. “He paints himself as a martyr, after living your life for almost a decade and showing no sign of ever intending to give it back. Just because he’s helped the people he himself endangered doesn’t mean his motives are pure. I wouldn’t take anything he says at face value.”

  “You’re the one who told him to watch over me in Cantre’r Gwaelod after you caught him realm-hopping on my magic.”

  “Because I knew he didn’t mean you any physical harm. I saw how he reacted to what Emrys did to you—I was there, inside you, Sebastian, every time—and I knew he’d come to care for you. I thought it best to take advantage of his soft spot to make sure someone on the other side was looking out for you. I think he’s proven beyond doubt that he would do anything to defend your person from his father’s violence. But that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t rob you blind if it benefited him. And he has.”

  “You don’t know how Emrys has treated him. He would never aid him in anything against me. Not now.”

  August sighed. “You’re far too trusting.” I certainly had been. But my eyes were starting to open. She was keeping something from me about her life here, and I meant to find out what it was.

  * * * * *

  Macsen was quiet over supper, bordering on sullen, though I guessed he was masking embarrassment at August knowing what we’d been up to. When he pretended to ignore my hints as we turned in for the night that we might turn in together, I decided it was best to leave well enough alone.

  Lying in the guest room next to his, my mind whirled with all that had happened in less than a day. The unexpected
tumble into bed with him in my room at Llys Mawr already seemed like a lifetime ago. But despite all the overwhelming revelations and changes that had followed it, it was that moment in the corridor outside my room when he’d begged with his eyes and his halting words to touch me, that moment I felt my magic on him and knew it for desire, that I could not stop turning over in my head.

  * * * * *

  In the morning, both Macsen and August were in a better mood. August proposed to give us a tour of our surroundings—something it seemed Macsen had never stayed long enough to do. The weather was windy but clear and August thought we’d enjoy a walk on the seashore. It was a short walk down the hill from her flat to where the promenade began, and a broad walkway by the water made it easy to view both the ocean and the jumbled array of houses and storefronts hugging its shore.

  I was fascinated by how close together everything was, no spaces between buildings. In Thievesward, it was the same, but this was no Thievesward slum. Colorful three- and four-story stone buildings huddled side by side, clean and welcoming, with no street trade to speak of, and there was little automobile traffic on the street beside us, though every available space along the road had a stationary vehicle occupying it.

  “There must be so many people in this realm,” I remarked. “And every one of them has his own coach.”

  August laughed. “This is a mere village, Sebastian. You haven’t seen anything.”

  I shuddered at the thought. “I’m not sure I want to.”

  “You should see Cardiff,” said Macsen behind me. “More people there than in all of Cantre’r Gwaelod, all crammed together. It made me dizzy.”

  August stopped in her tracks. “How do you know? When were you in Cardiff?”

  “Emrys has a place there. I followed him the first time I crossed.”

  “I thought the day I met you on the beach was the first time you crossed.”