by Nunn, PL
“What will you do when you meet resistance in the mountains?” Yhalen whispered—an unexpected question. “How will you overcome the wrath of the full-blooded ogres that have issue with your plans?”
Bloodraven narrowed his eyes. “What concern of yours?”
“If you plan on dragging me with you, it is.”
Bloodraven had never considered otherwise. It had always been a given thing. He moved closer, threatening, placing hands on the seat cushion to either side of Yhalen’s head.
“Do you seek to divert my attention? Do you think me so fickle to forget the one thing at the mention of another? Where have you been?”
He moved one hand to Yhalen’s neck, stroking the thudding artery beneath his jaw, lightly.
Something in Yhalen’s face altered. A subtle change from uncertainty to wry acceptance. His lips curved up in a humorless smile. An equally humorless laugh escaped him.
“Will you kill me? Will you snap my neck because you don’t get the answer you want?”
Yhalen met Bloodraven’s narrow gaze unflinchingly and in the shy light of the fire, there was something manic in the glint of his eyes. Something as desperate as it was forlorn. Bloodraven moved his hand away almost without realizing he did it, the notion of snapping Yhalen’s neck abhorrent.
Yhalen laughed again, soft and low, rolling his head back against the chair seat. There was a glimmer of wetness against his lashes, almost imperceptible save for the occasional flare of the fire.
“What other coercion will you use, then?” he asked softly. “There’s no pack of savage ogres here to threaten me with, and your own touch isn’t so distasteful that I quake in fear of it. So what will you do to me? What that hasn’t already been done?”
Bloodraven canted his head, baffled by this utter lack of fear—of simple common sense, as if Yhalen had lost use of his wits. He didn’t smell of strong spirits, or mind-loosening smoke, so Bloodraven had to assume there was some other cause for it.
“What have you been about in this cursed keep in the dead of night?”
“If I told you the dark lord summoned me, what would you say? If I told you he was of my own people—Ydregi—would you hesitate to treat me so much like a slave, for fear of offending my brethren?”
Bloodraven took a breath, startled, recalling the fine-featured face and slim boned body of the dark lord. He could very well have been Yhalen’s blood kin. It was an uneasy thought. He caught a handful of Yhalen’s hair and drew his wandering attention back where it belonged.
“Is he?” He shook Yhalen a little for emphasis.
Yhalen’s fingers ghosted across the wrist of the hand grasping his hair, not quite resisting the grip.
“What does he want of you?” Bloodraven hissed.
Yhalen laughed again and the sound of it lacked sanity. His eyes watered, leaking full-blown tears down his cheeks.
“You know what he is. You know what I’ve done and guess at the things I am capable of…what do you think we were about? Sex?”
Bloodraven shook him again, hard, jealously stabbing at him until he realized that there was no lingering scent of sex, only of earth and storm and rain—yet there had been no such tumult from the skies outside. He suddenly didn’t want to know what Elvardo had wanted with Yhalen. Didn’t wish to consider the possibility that Yhalen might become something out of his darkest nightmares. It skewed the balance of his world.
Yhalen laid hands on his chest and pushed him away. Followed him with that glint of madness in the shadowed depths of his eyes, one knee on Bloodraven’s thigh, hands points of burning contact against his chest.
“Do you still want to know?”
He didn’t. At the moment, he wished to be out of this keep, breathing honest air on the honest earth at the far end of this vale. If this place hadn’t spread its taint even that far. He didn’t in the least like the tremor of unease he felt at Yhalen’s closeness. It was shameful to feel it and the savage half of him wanted to fling Yhalen down, to batter him into submission simply to prove that he could, simply to deny any such ridiculous notion that Yhalen had created a fear inside him.
The civilized part of him realized that wariness in the face of arcane possibilities was no disgraceful thing. That striking out at Yhalen would only serve to break Yhalen, when Yhalen seemed already brittle and damaged.
“Tell me,” Bloodraven growled, against his better judgment, then drew his breath sharply when the answer Yhalen gave was to grasp the contour of Bloodraven’s organ through the fabric of his trousers.
He sat there, unmoving, taken off his guard, with Yhalen in his lap and Yhalen’s hand working its way inside the loosened top of his pants, his slim fingers encircling the flaccid flesh within.
Yhalen pressed his mouth to Bloodraven’s chest, clever tongue flicking against a nipple. Bloodraven growled, grasping Yhalen’s shoulders, trying to hold on to the indignity of the lack of proper answer and failing by degrees as his cock swelled under Yhalen’s touch and the urges that governed his nether regions began to spread upwards in their march for control.
He loosened his grip upon Yhalen’s shoulders, twining the fingers of one hand in the thick, unkempt tail of hair that fell at Yhalen’s back. Yhalen’s hands pushed at his chest. Once, then twice with more insistence, until Bloodraven decided to indulge this strange mood, and let himself fall backwards. Let Yhalen pull his swollen cock out of his trousers and stroke it with fervent intention, until it was engorged in almost painful anticipation, standing proud and upright, the leaking tip no less than level with Yhalen’s navel as he sat on Bloodraven’s thighs before it.
Yhalen crawled forward, and Bloodraven sucked breath as the seat of his trousers dragged across his waiting organ. Let out the shaky breath as Yhalen rose to his knees, fumbling with the ties to his own pants, shucking them swiftly and settling back so that Bloodraven’s cock was trapped between Bloodraven’s belly and Yhalen’s bare bottom, the shaft of it pressing firmly between the cleft of Yhalen’s buttocks. Then he rose again, hair a soft, tangled curtain that hid whatever madness was in his eyes and positioned himself against the tip of Bloodraven’s cock.
Did the little fool plan to mount him without ease of preparation, or at the very least the benefit of lubrication? Almost Bloodraven reached up to restrain such idiocy, but Yhalen was fleeter, grinding himself down with a grimace, embedding the head of Bloodraven’s cock inside the tight ring of his ass.
Bloodraven tensed then, muscles going rigid as the most sensitive part of him was compressed tight by heat and throbbing flesh. Intentions fluttered the way of pollen on the wind. Yhalen took a straining breath and impaled himself deeper.
A cry of ragged pain escaped him, but he slid deeper, and Bloodraven was aware of the warmness of what must have been blood trickling down his cock. That eased the process, if not the hurt, for Yhalen’s body gave way entirely, his weight sucking him down the length of Bloodraven’s thick organ, until his buttocks rested firmly upon Bloodraven’s pelvis, his thighs spread wide to accommodate Bloodraven’s hips. What Bloodraven could see of his face was ashen and sheened with sweat, and he could well imagine the unforgiving steel of his cock nestled deep within Yhalen’s insides.
Then he leaned forward, fingertips on Bloodraven’s ribs, motionless for a span of breaths.
Bloodraven felt a faint tingle, a brief moment of lightheadedness before pure sensation took over as Yhalen began to move, pulling himself forward along almost entirely the length of Bloodraven’s cock, then driving back upon it, rotating his hips and writhing upon Bloodraven’s cock as if he moved to some music that escaped Bloodraven’s notice.
A band of minstrels might have stood over them, plying their trade for all that Bloodraven might have noticed. The blood was too loud in his own ears, the building crescendo of sensation too brilliant to perceive anything beyond the sex act and the creature who rode him.
He spilled himself with a rough cry, arching his hips off the rug and grasping Yhalen’s undulating h
ips to hold him firm and tight against his spasming cock. The moment of culmination came and went with a shuddering of bodies and the thudding of frantic pulses. Bloodraven felt the tension drain out of his body, even as his spent member began its inevitable wilt.
Yhalen slumped, catching his own fall with hands against Bloodraven’s chest. The thickness of his bangs and the hair that escaped the confines of the braid fell forward to obscure his face. Bloodraven felt the tremors that passed through his body easily enough. The low keening that issued from Yhalen’s throat was no less discernible. More startling still when the soft sound turned into a hoarse wail.
Yhalen threw his head back and screamed, and there was fury and frustration and grief in the cry.
Bloodraven sat up in surprise, dislodging Yhalen from his perch. Yhalen curled on the rug, sobbing and wailing intermittently as if something of great value and sentiment had been lost to him.
Bloodraven stared down, at a loss, having little enough experience in dealing with the emotional turmoil of others. It was not a talent a young ogr’ron learned, growing up in the northern clans.
Yet, it disturbed him, seeing Yhalen in such agony. He laid hands upon Yhalen’s curved back, thinking that perhaps some grievous injury had been done when Yhalen had mounted him without preparation. But Yhalen turned into his hands upon contact, pressing himself against Bloodraven’s legs, fingers clutching at his flesh.
“I’m forsaken,” he cried. “No less than him, now, and of my own volition. There’s no turning back when she knows all. Forsaken! Outcast!”
Yhalen’s words turned incoherent. He pressed his face hard against Bloodraven’s thigh and Bloodraven patted his shoulder, stroked the wild mass of his hair because it was an act he found comforting, so perhaps his human might as well.
Yhalen quieted, having worn himself to exhaustion. His hand curled loosely atop Bloodraven’s thigh.
Bloodraven turned him onto his stomach and there was no resistance. No sign of consciousness at all when he checked to see what damage Yhalen had done to himself, for damage had certainly been done from the amount of blood on Bloodraven’s limp cock and loins. But, though there was smeared and drying blood amidst the pearly streaks of semen, there were no visible rips or tearing between Yhalen’s buttocks. The hole itself was loosened from the recent sex, but the flesh itself was intact. An oddity, because even with oils and preparation, there had always been some small sacrifice of blood. Always some small rent, the reasonable result of an ogr’ron rutting with a human.
Bloodraven shuddered, spooked, recalling grievous wounds of his own healed in the span of an instant. Of a broken arm and lash marks fading from Yhalen’s body when they should have lingered for many days. Yhalen had done something. Something sorcerous, and he had noticed it for an instant but had cared not in the least, more interested in the body riding his cock than any arcane goings on.
He rose, needing distance, needing to work off the superstitious curl of nausea in his gut. Needing to still the sudden tremor in his hands by pacing from one wall of the chamber to the other. He covered the distance in four strides and repeated the process. Looked to the hearth and Yhalen and tried to work up indignity. Found it a hard emotion to come by when his body was so sublimely sated.
He retreated to the small washroom and cleaned himself, splashed water upon his face and ran wet hands through his hair. If magic had been worked, he was no worse for wear from it. Yhalen had yet to work a magic that caused him harm. Yhalen’s workings, had in fact, only benefited him. This was no exception. He remembered very well the guards outside his cell door falling ill when Yhalen had banished his wounds. He knew that something had been taken from them to aid in his healing.
Judging from his moment of faintness after Yhalen had impaled himself, it was likely the same thing had been perpetrated upon him. He supposed that it was only fair trade that Yhalen had borrowed a little from him to heal the damage of his entry. Try as he might, he could find little fault with the tactic.
Superstition held little sway in the face of such pleasing physical advantages. Yhalen was not, after all, the dark lord of the keep.
He frowned, recalling that Yhalen had neatly avoided telling him what business Elvardo had had with him. Whatever it had been, Yhalen had been little pleased with it. His frown turned into a reflexive show of teeth that did not quite border on a snarl as he tuned to look at the small, lithe body curled before the hearth.
This place tainted all that it touched, and he wanted himself and what belonged to him well quit of it. The sooner the better, no matter what the knight or the lord of the keep thought. Both of them needed to understand that though he made concessions and distasteful agreements for the furtherance of his cause, he was no spineless servant following their every whim.
Though he had never ventured this far to the east himself, he was confident that finding the path through the mountains to more familiar territory would not prove difficult. With or without the help Elvardo might give. Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow he would take his leave and Yhalen would come with him.
With a purpose in mind, he strode towards the hearth, gently scooped up his sleeping human, and settled him under the sheets on the bed. He didn’t even attempt to recapture lost sleep himself. His mind was too full. He sat instead before the crackling heath and planned for what the morrow would bring.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Yhalen woke up in a haze of confusion, caught between dream and reality. The fading images in his mind were startlingly accurate echoes of the things he’d seen and felt and done in the depths of the night, under Elvardo’s guidance.
The winding staircase down that was secreted behind a facade of featureless stone wall. The series of chambers—workroom, library, and study, all filled to overflowing with the multitude of oddities that had attracted the attention of an eccentric man. Decades worth of collectibles, of odd and alarming projects, all stacked and shelved and spilling over the edges of crates, scattered upon tables with a clutter that wasn’t evident in any of the keep above. A testament that here was the one place that even Elvardo’s strange servants dared not enter.
And yet, he had invited Yhalen. And in that place he had drawn him into the depths of sin. And sin had come easily to him.
He didn’t think, upon reflection as he sat in the warm rays of sunlight that slanted across the rumpled bed, that the things he recollected as nightmare had been anything less than reality. What was worse than nightmare, what had driven him to the reaches of irrationality last night, hadn’t been so much the practical application of forbidden magicks that Elvardo provoked him to, but that some part of him had thrilled to the burgeoning chorus of power that he discovered within himself. That instead of feeling tainted and impure as all the wise elders of the Ydregi claimed a practitioner of the forbidden magicks would become, the truest part of him exalted in the feel of it.
And Elvardo had laughed knowingly, as if he’d let Yhalen in on some close kept confidence. That had been intolerable, Elvardo’s amusement. Elvardo, whose magic was most definitely not pure, and not above reproach. Novice that he was, even Yhalen could sense the caliginous underthread that made the dark lord’s magic different from his own.
He had come back here, loathing himself. Exhausted and confused, seeking punishment/pleasure for his weakness. Bloodraven had proven a reliable source for both. And he had compounded the sin by working that magic that came easiest of all to him in the midst of it. He tried to work up regret, to work up fuel for self-flagellation, but found it hard to come by this morning.
How long Bloodraven had been gone, Yhalen had no idea. The bed beside him was cool and didn’t evidence the imprint of the halfling’s considerable weight. From the angle of the light through the window, Yhalen estimated that dawn was long past.
He rose and dressed, then spent some time in the mindless task of neatly braiding his hair. He looked after the fire, adding a few split logs to keep the chill off the room during the day.
Conte
mplating the low flame, he considered rousing its intensity as Elvardo had shown him, then shuddered and turned away, leaving it to its own state of affairs. He didn’t like the feel of fire, nor of the summoning of it. It was too mindless and greedy, and he was wary of it.
But Elvardo had shown him other things. Things that sat better with him. He laid the fingertips of one hand upon the cold, thick glass of the window and stared out at the long, green valley below. Then he focused on the glass, willing something subtler than fickle flame. Something less destructive by far.
Beads of condensation began to form, spreading out from Yhalen’s fingertips. Both sides of the pane became moist with it, fogging up as if it were a frigid, wet day outside instead of a sunny, crisp one.
He drew his hand away, rubbing wetness between his fingers, and then wiping that upon his pants leg.
There was nothing to do, but go out into the keep to discover what the rest of the world was about.
He headed towards the courtyard, for of all the places Bloodraven would be, the likeliest was the furthest he could be from the dark lord himself. Either that or he had taken off into the vale again, which foray would have surely garnered Sir Alasdair’s displeasure.
Yhalen would have liked to go with him, and smiled grimly at the realization that Bloodraven had become the lesser by far of two evils.
There was a commotion in the courtyard when he reached it. The knight’s men loitered in interested groups, watching as two of Elvardo’s women compiled oilskin packages with considerably more interest than they paid to their captain, who seemed to be having a one-sided disagreement with Bloodraven near the stone trough at the center of the courtyard. Bloodraven looked up, eyes finding Yhalen across the tumult of the courtyard, fixing upon him for a long moment, before he returned his attention halfheartedly to the knight.