by May Peterson
All I could see were the coin-like reflections of his eyes, watching me. That made it strangely easier.
“They don’t really put boys under the knife anymore. At least not that anyone knows of. I was born this way. And as soon as that became clear, when my voice didn’t change...” I looked down, toyed with the buttons of my pajamas. “I tried to make myself work somehow. Changed the way I walked. Tried to pitch my voice lower when I wasn’t singing. Tibario was a good example, actually. He’s...dashing.” I smiled in spite of myself. “I tried to be like him, when I could. I don’t think I really had much success.”
I was rambling. This wasn’t what he needed to hear.
“I eventually started to realize that some people just expected me to—” I breathed through my nose, looked into his eyes. “To love men. Maybe because that’s supposed to be feminine. I sang in the choir, and one night when we’d been changing into our robes, a boy said that I shouldn’t be in there. Because—” Should I say this or not? Would he think I was trying to make him feel sorry for me? After a moment, I smiled brighter and went on. “Because I didn’t have any balls, so I’d be looking at them like a girl would.”
Rhodry’s wince was visible. But he didn’t interrupt me.
“So I kept trying. It was a relief after a while, when I didn’t seem to have the same feelings that everyone else had. Crushes, first loves. I didn’t feel that way for anyone. It was like preparing to go on stage, afraid your voice would fail, only to be told to go backstage. I was happy with that.” I tried to keep my gaze on him, but faltered. “Until you.”
His eyes grew, gleaming with a mirror sheen. Now I wished I could see his face. “You’re the first person I’ve ever felt anything like this for. But you shouldn’t have to try and accept...what I am. That’s not something I should have asked of you, but I did ask it the moment I—” Say it. Own up to it. “Kissed you. Practically on top of your wife’s grave.” He’d glowed when she’d taken his hand down there. “Of course you still love her. I’m sorry that I didn’t respect that.”
“Mio. Listen to me.” Rhodry was moving toward me.
My head shook. I had to get this out. “What I am trying to say—badly—is that I want to make myself work again. For you. If you’ll let me help you, I can keep this to myself.” My next breath was like a sob. “I can be the person you need.”
Someone worthwhile.
Rhodry’s knelt at my feet. “Shhh. I’m hearing you.” His words were delicate, like fingers massaging me. “But slow down a minute. There’s something you need to know. Something I shouldn’t have kept hidden from you.”
I balked at the tension in his voice. Hadn’t I already seen his secrets?
His smile was fondness tinged with sorrow.
“When I said I understand, I meant that I am like you.”
His hand touched my shoulder. And every thought evacuated my head.
Chapter Ten
RHODRY
Touching Mio was a calculated risk. It fed something deep inside me, but there was no avoiding the danger in it. I saw myself, the older man, leering covetously down at the vulnerable youth.
Awe swept over his sensitive features, uncertainty visibly unfolding as he absorbed what I’d said.
“I don’t want you to have to work for me. You’re not a fucking pocket watch.” I kept my tone low. This must be done gently. “And on that note, I want to make sure I understand properly. You said you don’t feel in tune with manhood. I don’t want to push any particular image on you. Does it feel wrong to be called ‘he’?”
Widened eyes expressed shock; it must have been the first time anyone had asked him this. I’d had a little shock myself upon first coming to Portia. Vermagna had introduced me to people who may have first been thought men, but were women, or lived transcending sex, bold with androgynous beauty. It’d been magical to walk past them, people not quite like me, but with whom I felt a vague connection. Was Mio like them, and I simply hadn’t understood?
“No,” he signed, after a moment. “That doesn’t bother me. Neither does ‘brother’ from Tibario—or ‘boy,’ honestly. Somehow, those feel more neutral to me. It’s only ‘man’ that simply seems unnatural. I’m not sure how better to put it.”
It made sense, under my skin, wordlessly. I was fairly sure I was all man myself, but the subtlety he described resonated somehow. “Understood. And on the matter at hand—if you recall, lemon drop, I kissed you back. Rather enthusiastically.”
“But—” His sign formed, fell apart, returned. “You and Her Ladyship—surely you still...”
I withdrew my touch. Now came the hard part.
“Come, sit down.” I swung a chair over the sofa so he could sit across from me comfortably. “There’s more. And it’s something you really deserved to know much earlier than this.” He slowly took the offered seat, and I settled back on the couch. “I’ve never been in love with Eirlys. I love her. But not in the way a woman deserves from her husband.”
Mio’s mouth compressed into a thoughtful line. “Do you mean there wasn’t attraction?”
I nodded. There was a fleeting impulse to spare myself. Say our marriage just hadn’t worked. But that, too, would be a lie.
“I imagine there must be marriages where there’s not much carnal, and it’s perfectly fine. But for us—” I shrugged, swiped anxiously through my hair. “I think I had hoped I might change, eventually. That if we kept trying, it would—well, you said it, didn’t you? That it would start finally working. So I understand you very well. Because it never did work.”
His lips parted slightly. He, I’d wager, understood me very well too. What it was like to think, I hope this time it will fix me. That I’ll finally wake up a different person, and this me will be gone forever.
“Eirlys and I hadn’t talked about wanting children. And as young as we both were, we didn’t think an heir was urgent. It seemed all right. I wanted her to be happy. I think she was, for a while. I was.”
And it’d taken my death to show me that. I’d been something like happy. Before Portia. Before Piero and our rapid, heated dissolution, all the pieces of me and her and our lives strewn across the frost-stained carpet. “That had no chance of lasting, obviously. How old were you by the last year of the war? If you don’t mind my asking.”
Mio frowned, serious and earnest and adorable, but I was afraid of what would rise up under it during the next several minutes. He signed, “I was six.”
I let out a whistle. Poor lemon drop. The War of the Doves had oppressed me as a commanding officer surrounded by battalions of soldiers. How much more terrifying it must have been from the eyes of a six-year-old. “Then you may not remember, but...there were more people than places to put them. The fires left so many homeless, and there were so many soldiers who’d lost their families.”
“I remember.” He was gripping the fabric of his pajama trousers and biting his lip.
Shit. Of course he’d have been through that himself. “Well, when most of your gentry can’t afford to keep their grand houses anymore, it starts looking cost effective to keep the lowly there. We volunteered to take people in. I think this used to be a ducal manor or something. Anyway. We had every room in this house, full. There weren’t near enough people to run the place, but we tried our best. Eirlys was amazing. I think it helped people to see an officer taking charge. The bright young heroes from the Malloric shore, tending to Portian wounded. Romantic, right?”
A meek smile warmed Mio’s expression.
“Well. My dressing room we gave to the damn general who’d been over us. Talk about an interesting twist. General Piero Santonino. We were both fond of him.” I restrained a chuckle. Obviously not quite in the same ways. “It was all convalescence at that point, so if he’d had an estate of his own with staff, we’d probably have sent him home. But everyone was dead, fleeing, or working in the stations.”
“Lots of bits of luck like that. She helped us get through. But after a while, the worst was over. Piero was one of the few left, because his wounds had needed months to heal. I took up rehabilitating him. Walking every day. Helping him navigate with only one eye. He lost fingers, too, so everything had to be relearned. We were together all the time. He talked about the war, and what Portia had been like before it. About immortality and hope and what he’d do when he was on his feet again. I think I was happy then, too. He was...very dear to me.”
I’d never expressed this out loud to anyone before. My stint with Piero had been a rush of addiction, a drop toward disaster smattered with my post-adolescent nonsense. It felt sinful, violent, to disclose the airiness he’d unlocked in me. The way he’d made me smile. How sweet and gentle my feelings for him had been.
And Mio must have seen the battle playing on my face. “That was when you knew, wasn’t it? That you were falling for your general.”
I laughed until I coughed. Nothing had been as secret as I’d wanted. The temptation came again. Mio had given me a way out. I could stop there, say that the point of this story had been my wayward epiphany, a sad, bloodless feeling of self-recognition. He would probably relate to that. His situation was innocent.
I looked Mio in the eye. “Piero was my lover, Mio. I committed infidelity with him, right under Eirlys’s nose.”
The widening of his eyes was like a sunrise. But a sunrise whose light I could only imagine blighting any tenderness he’d felt for me.
“She found out. It probably wasn’t even hard.” My own voice surged on, a sea of gravel burying the excuses. “She confronted him. He panicked, came to me saying we had to stop. Call it off. I thought that nothing could hurt worse than that.”
A hand had closed over Mio’s mouth now. Maybe he was assembling the pieces.
“Well, I was wrong. Because that was the night. The night we found her dead. Ripped through with her own sword. All like some feudal mystique roman that ends with a tragic lesson. That’s the kind of fucking joke I made of our marriage.” Self-reproach and poison thickened my voice, made my saliva bitter. “It looked like suicide. Rosemary even checked the way the blade had punctured, said the wound had to be from the sword being pulled inward.”
Brutality climbed up my throat. In that instant, I knew what I wanted. For him to fucking hate me. For someone to just blame me. Because then I wouldn’t be the only one doing it. Then I could be sure I really was the sinner here, and be done with all the goddamned ambiguity. I was tired of waiting for the judgment that had to be coming.
Mio’s signing was like a shadow, meaning flickering through it. “What happened to General Piero?”
The question surprised me. “Well. He died. When Eirlys’s spirit rose up...that’s when it all began. It seemed she was taking vengeance by slaying people on her land. Cecilio was the second to go. Piece of ice through his heart. I’d figured it would have been Piero, but hey. He went next. Then Rosemary. Then me.”
Horror shone from Mio like heat haze. Whether it was at my spoiled humor, or me—just the great black stain that was me—seemed unimportant.
“That’s the one piece that never made sense,” I went on. “We never saw a ghost rise from Piero. Everyone else, every single one, left a spirit. But not him. I still don’t know why.”
Mio stood. The blanket he had draped around him dragged at his feet. “And this is why you died. Tried to pay her back.”
God, he sounded so concerned. I laughed, not caring how sour it made the air. “Of course. She wanted retribution. And let’s be realistic here. If anyone deserved to be resurrected to fight the incubus, if anyone could have fought it, that person should have been her. Not me.”
He was still chewing on his lower lip. “I’m glad you came back. I’m glad you’re here.”
It felt like he’d knocked me over the head. And I just sat there and looked at him. Because no one had ever come out and said, yes, Rhodry. You did this. You did all of this. No one except the incubus, its voice like an echo in a cave.
But no one had ever said that to me either. That they were glad I was here.
“Mio.” I got on my knees. It felt appropriate. “I’m trying to tell you that I’m an adulterer. A cheat. And you deserved to know the moment—” The moment I kissed you back. “That your life started depending on me. It’s led to so much death.”
“But did it?” Mio knelt down from his seat, so that he was looking up into my eyes. “Lady Eirlys didn’t kill herself. You know that now. She didn’t die because of you.”
“And you think that makes it better?” The mordancy was ebbing away, and with it the anger that’d been holding me up. I was all raw, throbbing nerves. “I created the incubus. The curse it came from was because of my and Piero’s sin. It’s practically my fucking love child. And now it has over a hundred souls chained in a literal hell.”
He didn’t answer. But something like sympathy sang in his eyes, carving a line of misery over his mouth.
“You don’t owe me anything.” A sigh escaped my lips. “You don’t have to make anything up to me. Or serve me. If you earnestly want to fight for those that have been lost, then I’m beyond the point where I could tell you not to. You’ve already accomplished more than I have in over ten years. But don’t do this for me. I’m the villain in this story.”
His hand—small, warm—closed unexpectedly over mine. It made my breath catch, but I didn’t fight it. Our fingers entwined.
“Rhodry.” He shaped his signs right in front of my face, as if enunciating. “I’m not sure if you are considering what a villain really is like. I’ve spent years cracking people’s minds open so they could become less than slaves. I found their deepest, most private places and helped conquer them. You told me why you keep all these—” He gestured at my baubles, my mementos “—near you. To remember. I remember all of my victims too. I remember what they felt like. What they thought.”
I hadn’t imagined exactly what it was he’d had to do. But it didn’t convince me. “You were forced to do that. You—”
He shook his head and smiled. “I stayed because I was choosing my safety over their freedom. That’s why I left. I couldn’t do it anymore. But I did do it for years. And sorcery is a much, much worse crime than adultery. I asked you to kill me for the same reason you’re asking me now not to trust you. But instead you gave me shelter. Protection. Company.” His lips quirked sorrowfully. “Did you think I was going to do differently for you?”
And just like that, he had cut through again, leaving me bleeding, but unbound. “Oh, God, Mio. I don’t know what to do.”
“Let me help you.” Carefully, his forehead touched mine. “Let me give something to you, too.”
A mix of relief and anguish quaked in my chest. “Are you sure? You’ve already paid so much.”
A nod, streaking my senses with warmth. His body was pressed against mine, and I could feel his heart’s rhythm from under the thin pajamas. I stroked his back, cupping his shoulder, and he did not pull away. This time, when the invitation was offered, I accepted it.
He fit so perfectly in my embrace. Mio felt somehow so small, human, mortal, and yet like he filled me, surrounded me. Bathing me in his clean scent. I lifted him, and a gasp shot from him, but he hugged my neck.
I wanted him. I wanted everything connected to him, all the shining spots of the world still vibrating with the music he’d left behind.
The next string of moments slowed, coiling softly around us. Carrying him back to the sofa, I cradled him and breathed in what I was doing. That this beautiful, trembling youth was in my arms.
I kissed the expanse under his ear, drawing shudders and fresh gasps. Caressing his cheek, I nuzzled him. “Are you frightened?”
A shake of the head, though his eyes were clenched tight. And a brilliant pink flush had spread over his face and neck. My breath felt like a wild animal lashing around in my rib cage. Merciful fuck. It was overwhelming, the simple pleasure of running my tongue along the path of that blush, the heat radiating off him.
“I think I am.” I was panting. “But I’ll do everything in my power to protect you.”
“You’re not doing it alone anymore.” Some of his signs were out of sight, traced along the nape of my neck. But the meaning transmitted clear as telepathy.
Not alone. Maybe the judgment had already come, and this was it. Protect him. Make it right.
I claimed his mouth, as gently as I had in me. Our tongues brushed together, and the taste of him overwhelmed my senses.
He became everywhere. His fingers wove through my hair, clung to my back. He was like a string so tense he was shivering. Our lips met and parted in turns, my tongue penetrating him deeper. I couldn’t seem to experience enough Mio. I gripped his waist, snaking a hand up the back of his pajama jacket. All these soft, intimate planes of him. Pulsing, flushing, flinching sweetly under my fingertips. The weight of him ground against my groin, and flashes of bare skin caught the firelight. I separated, growled with need as I nibbled tenderly down the line of his shoulder.
I pulled back, breath shaking. “Am I hurting you?”
“No.” Again his words seemed to seep in through osmosis. “I don’t care.” His eyes were wide, lips swollen and glistening.
One hand cupping his pert buttocks, I pulled him closer, nestled myself under his throat. His back, shoulders, and chest were all open to me, and I chewed off his top button to loosen the jacket further. The scent of his hair and skin was like a drugged injection, heady with chemical pleasure. I caught his tense, erect little nipple under my thumb and squeezed. A sharp gasp arced through him, moving him to press into me. Oh sweet fucking merciful magic God that was good.