by Tricia Owens
Hadrian was thrilled and horrified at the same time. He glanced anxiously to the front of the room, but Gavedon was busy using chalk on a writing tablet to illustrate the flow of energy at the base of mountains. Hadrian dared a glance back at Jessyd.
Jessyd scrunched up his face and rolled his eyes as he nodded his head toward Gavedon. Hadrian's mouth fell open when he realized the other boy was making fun of his father. Making fun of The One.
Panicked, he looked back at Gavedon. The black-haired man was tracing the flow of energy as it wound around rivers.
Stop! Hadrian mouthed at Jessyd, fearful of what Gavedon's reaction would be if he caught the boy.
In answer, Jessyd made another face, this time using his fingers to pull his features into such a ridiculous expression that Hadrian had to clap his hand over his mouth to stop himself from laughing. Jessyd grinned and winked at him. Pleasant warmth spread over Hadrian's cheeks as he dared a small smile back.
Jessyd saved Hadrian from possible discovery by facing forward again and pretending to pay attention to the remainder of the lesson. But Hadrian had succumbed to temptation. His eyes diverted to the other boy for the rest of the day, his curiosity piqued, his loneliness momentarily abated.
~~~~~
Hadrian tried his best to be obedient. Gavedon would punish him terribly if he discovered that Hadrian had any contact with Jessyd. Although he drank in the sight of the other boy during their daily lessons, once schooling was over Hadrian was quick to retreat to the isolated safety of his own room. It was a difficult task, for he knew that Jessyd often tried to catch up with him. But Hadrian knew the castle as intimately as he knew the lines of his hand. In the three months that had passed since Jessyd joined the Order, Hadrian had not allowed the boy to speak more than a passing greeting to him.
That changed, though, the one day that Hadrian decided to leave the castle. It was mid-summer and the pull of the island grounds was too much for him to resist. With his studies completed and assured that Gavedon was busy instructing the other members in magecraft, he ran down the stairs to the bottom floor and let himself out into the air.
It was much warmer outside than in the perpetually cool castle. Hadrian jogged into the forest and, spying no one, decided to remove the heavy weight of his robe. The thin undertunic and leggings he wore beneath allowed the fresh air to cool his skin. With a sigh, he draped his robe across a patch of sun-dappled grass and followed it down.
He closed his eyes, letting the sun beat golden red against his lowered eyelids. Insects buzzed in the tall grasses above his head and he imagined he could hear the beat of the butterflies' wings as they fluttered between the flowers that surrounded him.
Life pulsed, slow and welcoming like a lazy river. He felt it beneath his shoulder blades and all along the backs of his legs. He smiled and moved his arms so that his hands fell off the robe onto the silky blades of grass. There, he dug his fingertips into the warm, moist earth. Life's energy hummed against his fingers, traveling like languid, liquid warmth into his veins. Being able to feel Life like this was the greatest gift he could imagine. He thanked the gods every day that he was allowed to share in this sensation.
"Should I worship at your feet, I wonder?"
His eyes shot open, effectively blinding him as the bright sunlight pierced his pupils. A shadow moved to block the sun and spare his vision.
"You look like a god of nature lying there," Jessyd remarked with a smirk. "I feel like I should be offering you some sort of sacrifice."
"What―what are you doing here?" Hadrian asked, looking wildly about him for the other members. "You're supposed to be in lessons." A horrific possibility struck him. "Oh, gods―are they here, too?" Gavedon allowed him to leave the castle only with permission, which Hadrian definitely did not have right now.
"Relax," Jessyd said, stretching his long arms above his head before squatting down beside Hadrian. "I faked illness and pretended to go to my room. Gave me the chance I needed to follow you out."
"Why would you do such a thing?" Hadrian asked, genuinely mystified. Was Jessyd mad? If Gavedon found out about such deceit―
"I wanted to find out why I'm not allowed to spend time with you," Jessyd replied with a rakish grin.
He had put on weight since moving onto Shard's Point. The extra flesh filled out the hollows of his face, squaring it in a way that Hadrian found pleasing. He blinked at his thoughts. He shouldn't be thinking such things.
"The Almighty Gavedon warned me that although I’m allowed to gaze upon your miraculous beauty, I’m forbidden from touching you." Jessyd snorted in derision. "How utterly preposterous. What does he think you are, I wonder? A priceless statue?"
Hadrian didn't know what to say, nervous over the fact that he was wearing his underclothing while Jessyd squatted over him, fully clothed. No one had ever seen the shape of his limbs. Self-conscious, he moved his hands over his lap. Jessyd's brown eyes followed the movement and an odd heat came into his eyes.
"You truly are an incredible find on this island, Hadrian. I suppose I would do the same with you if I were in your father's place. Although he goes too far, I think. He treats you like a virginal girl, doesn't he?" Jessyd smiled slyly. "Oh, yes. He keeps you untouched in your stone castle, your chastity frozen in time. I wonder, do you wish someone would touch you?"
Hadrian blushed at the directness of the question and the piercing stare he received. The question was too intimate to answer. Hadrian knew he shouldn't be speaking with the other boy at all, much less about such things. Gavedon had forbidden it.
"Please," he urged, "you should return to the castle. If Gavedon finds out how you've misled him―or if he finds you here with me..." Hadrian looked about fretfully. "Gods, if he finds me talking to you―"
Jessyd moved forward. Startled, Hadrian fell back onto his elbows as Jessyd crawled over him. The older boy placed his knees on either side of Hadrian's hips and braced his hands beside the younger boy's head, casting Hadrian's face in shadow.
"Do you know why he doesn't want me touching you?" Jessyd murmured, looking intently at Hadrian's lips.
Hadrian shook his head, trying to use the movement to distract the other boys' attention. Jessyd's nearness made his heart pound. Hadrian was afraid to breathe for fear the movement would bring his body in contact with the other boy's. He clutched his hands together over his chest to ward off Jessyd as the older boy began to lower himself. "Don't!"
"He doesn't want me touching you because he knows I can make you like it," Jessyd breathed, dropping his hips. He forced a knee between Hadrian's and pried the younger boy's legs apart. "I know all the ways, you see. I used to be a whore back home." He worked his hips between Hadrian's straining legs and pressed their hips together.
The shock of Jessyd's confession was nothing compared to the shock of his body pressing down against Hadrian's groin. Hadrian shoved frantically at his chest.
"What are you doing?" To his mortification, his body swelled and hardened exactly where Jessyd rubbed against him. Surely the other boy would feel it.
Jessyd grabbed Hadrian's hands and pulled them away, pinning them to the grass above his head. Jessyd lowered his head, but Hadrian turned his face away. Unperturbed, Jessyd settled with licking his neck.
"I'm telling you," Jessyd whispered. "I can make you like this."
Hadrian whimpered, his lashes fluttering wildly as he felt wetness slide down the side of his neck. He was sweating and he was having difficulty breathing properly. He felt sick to his stomach with nervousness and confusion. As strangely intriguing as it felt to have Jessyd atop him, holding him to the grass, the fierceness of his own reaction frightened Hadrian. He rarely touched himself, his caretakers having left him with the impression that it was something to be done sparingly and without pleasure, only for relief. To allow someone else to touch him this way surely must be grounds for punishment.
"My sister made me come to this tedious little island, convinced she could turn me into something m
ore respectable than a whore." Jessyd nuzzled behind Hadrian's ear. Hadrian felt him smiling. "But a whore is a whore, wherever he goes. Isn't that right, Hadrian?"
Hadrian yelped at a sudden sharp pain in his neck. He strained against the grip on his wrists. He didn't want this. He sensed there was something wrong with Jessyd—almost as though the boy was lying about liking him. He didn't want the older boy touching him any longer.
"Please let me go," he gasped, pulling his face away from the persistent lips that sought his mouth. "Please, Jessyd."
The sound of his name seemed to break through the older boy's focus. Jessyd lifted his head so he could study Hadrian's face. His fingers flexed once over Hadrian's wrists.
"I wouldn't be a very good whore," Jessyd began slowly, "if I had to force my partners, now would I?"
Hadrian nodded uncertainly as the brown-eyed boy grinned. The grip on his wrists lifted away, as did Jessyd's weight. Hadrian blinked up into the sunlight as Jessyd walked away.
"You'll come find me when you want more. They always do," Jessyd called back cheerfully.
Trembling, Hadrian wrapped his arms about himself and watched the other boy melt into the forest. It was only after Jessyd had disappeared that Hadrian felt the small pain in his neck. He reached up and touched the small circle of indentations where the other boy had bitten him.
~~~~~
Nothing escaped Gavedon's notice for long. The keeper of the castle possessed eyes where he needed them and those eyes had seen what Hadrian had tried desperately to hide.
"What is that on your neck?"
Hadrian had known at once that something was wrong when he'd been summoned to the study room to meet his father. They had finished their daily lesson hours ago and retired for supper. Hadrian's meal now sat like a lump of hard clay in the pit of his stomach as he stood anxiously before his father.
"I took a nap after lessons," Hadrian began, knowing he was sealing his fate with every word, "and I must have scratched myself in my sleep."
Indeed, he had scratched himself quite deliberately in the hopes of covering up the incriminating bite mark. The result was a dark, wine-like stain that stood out like a bloody gash against his pale skin.
Gavedon eyed him in silence. Hadrian felt his face grow hotter and had to look to the stone flags as his confidence began to fail him.
But instead of calling him on the obvious lie, Gavedon said, "Indeed. I think I need a second opinion on the matter for I am unsure whether or not you speak the truth to me. You may enter," he called out loudly.
Surprised, Hadrian turned his head and immediately blanched as Jessyd shoved the tapestry aside and entered the room. The older boy's eyes widened when they fastened upon Hadrian and Hadrian knew with a sinking heart that every deceitful word he had just spoken to his father would come back to haunt him a thousandfold.
Jessyd approached them reluctantly, his eyes flicking from father to son and eventually settling upon the mark on Hadrian's throat. Hadrian could see the panic on the other boy's face and knew that Gavedon must see it, too.
"I have a question for you," Gavedon said drolly, picking at a non-existent piece of thread on his robe. He glanced at Hadrian with a look so cold that Hadrian flinched from it. "One or both of you disobeyed my edict. I wish to know who it was." His dark head swiveled to study Jessyd, who had gone pale. "Any ideas, Jessyd? I advise you to tell the truth since your sister effectively abandoned you to my care and you now depend entirely upon me for your...well-being."
Jessyd's mouth opened and shut. Then a curious thing happened. The fear slipped from his face, replaced with a sneer as he looked Hadrian up and down.
"Your boy found out I used to be a whore, is what happened." Jessyd waved his hand dismissively at Hadrian, ignoring Hadrian’s shocked expression. "He thought he could force a free lesson from me, so I had to bite him to get him off of me."
"What are you talking about?" Hadrian sputtered, covering the bite mark with his hand. "You―you―bit me and tried to kiss me and―"
Jessyd leered at him. "Oh, come now, Hadrian. Admit it: you were so curious about intimacies that you couldn't control yourself. You told me yourself that you've never touched anyone before. You said you were anxious to know what it felt like." He shook his head reproachfully as Hadrian blushed an angry red. "You're lucky I'm this dedicated to becoming a sorcerer and that I listen to Gavedon's orders, else I might have let you have your way."
Hadrian shook his head, stunned by the other boy's words. Surely his father knew him better than that! But when he looked to Gavedon, he found the elder ni Leyanon watching him with gray eyes that were absent of both warmth and understanding.
"But you can't believe him!" Hadrian protested to his father. "Surely you know I would never―"
"You lied to me about how you received that mark on your neck. Why should I believe you now?" Gavedon asked with an arched brow.
"B-but, Father―"
"Select, Hadrian."
Hadrian instinctively took a step back, his eyes darting fearfully to the rack. "Please don't," he pleaded. He glanced quickly at Jessyd and then had to look away at the amusement on the other boy's face. "At least, not in front of him!"
Gavedon glided to the wall near the doorway and leaned back upon it with his arms crossed over his broad chest. "Actually, Hadrian, it is Jessyd who will dole out your punishment this time. It is he you assaulted, after all."
Hadrian felt the floor drop out from beneath him. "You can’t."
Gavedon had, in his lifetime, willfully defied every order of the Council of Elders. He could turn the sun to ice with a look. Gavedon turned that cold fury on Hadrian and Hadrian quite literally felt his knees shake. "Don’t disobey me again, Hadrian."
Hadrian felt faint. Perhaps he would lose consciousness and wake up to find this was a bad dream. He staggered to the rack, the sweat cold upon his brow. With a hand that shook violently, he pulled a whip with three broad leather straps from its holder. He couldn't look at Jessyd as he handed the instrument to the other boy. If he looked into the older boy's deceitful face, Hadrian knew he would try to claw it.
Shame-faced, Hadrian dropped to the stones and draped himself across the wooden bench. Without being prompted, he dragged the hem of his robe up until it bared his leggings-covered backside. He wanted to scream, the humiliation was so acute. But he clutched the edge of the bench and forced himself not to make a sound. Not for Jessyd, not for Gavedon.
"Don’t be nervous," Gavedon told Jessyd. "He's suffered this before when he's been disobedient. You can’t hurt him."
"Of c-course," Jessyd stammered and it was a small mollification that the other boy sounded uneasy about proceeding.
That comfort exploded into nothingness at the first fall of the whip against his buttocks. However much he was prepared for the pain, it hurt badly. And differently, for the whip was being wielded by a different hand. A traitorous hand.
Hadrian hung his head, his body jolting with every lash until eventually his tears dotted the stones beneath him. Over his own choked gasps, he heard Gavedon order Jessyd to stop and leave.
Once the tapestry slapped back into place after the other boy's exit, Hadrian allowed a pained sob to escape his throat. He hurt, and in more than his body.
"You didn’t listen to me and here you’ve learned why you should have." Gavedon's deep voice boomed and echoed in the circular room, shivering Hadrian's bones. "The world outside of Shard's Point is a wicked, vile place full of liars and those who would gladly hurt you. You should never trust them with anything of yourself, Hadrian. The only one you can trust is me."
Hadrian understood. It was his first lesson in betrayal.
"I'm sorry I disobeyed you," he whispered. "I will never do it again."
Chapter Seven
Hadrian's twentieth year...
Six heavy stones levitated in the air before the two white robed men who stood in the castle's courtyard. The stones flew forward to smash into pieces against the worn
wall of the castle, pocking its weathered surface. A single boulder also lifted from the ground, trembling in the air as though it would fall at any moment. It steadied before hurtling forward. It struck the same wall but with less force than the stones before it had. It thudded against the wall but did not crack, falling with a heavy thump to the ground.
"Better," Gavedon said without enthusiasm. "But only just. Your performance is remarkable in its mediocrity."
Hadrian, dressed in robes that only last year had been let out to accommodate his late growth spurt, had been standing beside him in hopeful expectation. At his father's words though, the young man's shoulders visibly slumped. Frustration resumed its familiar grooves within his face. "I can’t pull more energy than that,” Hadrian protested quietly. “There's nothing there for me to take."
Gavedon regarded his grown-up son with dispassionate eyes. To his dismay, Hadrian still favored his mother, the fact becoming more obvious with every passing year. Shorter than Gavedon by several inches, with a slim build that no amount of food could fill out and refined features that were a hairsbreadth from being considered feminine, Hadrian was Roisin in the flesh. If it weren't for the saving graces of Hadrian's black hair and gray eyes, Gavedon might have succumbed to his urges and had the young man banished from his sight forever, so great was his displeasure.
But Hadrian was truly his son, if not entirely in appearance then in magickal ability. As the old seer had predicted, Hadrian could draw energy with little effort. Gavedon still denied his son lessons in magecraft, keeping him ignorant in the ways of control, but it hadn’t mattered. Hadrian far surpassed the abilities of the other members of the Order through sheer natural ability.
He was strong, as his performance with the stones proved. But he was not yet able to pull from the heart of Life as Gavedon did. Hadrian could gather the loose, random energy that mages used and control it for magickal purposes. That was a skilled that could be learned by anyone with the motivation. But instinctual power—the ability to draw energy from Life itself—was something only sorcerers possessed. Sorcerers were rare. They were ostracized. They came to Shard’s Point Isle because the Order of the White Shard appreciated them, because Gavedon ni Leyanon was the only man willing to train them and develop their powers.