by J. C. Owens
Isnay glanced at the length of those fingers and set to wondering about what lay beneath the black clothing that the king wore.
He ran a hand over his face, somewhat taken aback by the strength of his musings. He’d had many lovers down through the years, yet never had he experienced the almost instant attraction he had felt to this presently hostile man. This was neither the time nor the place for such things. Yet, his mind and his body resisted his efforts to master them, to keep his thoughts upon his task here.
They passed over the crest of a substantial hill as the horses drawing the wagons strained in their harnesses.
Dransin cursed, low and virulently, and Isnay felt his stomach drop.
Below them, upon the grassy plains that stretched away into infinity, a pall of smoke lay heavy in the windless air. An occasional tiny flicker of flame showed within the blackened ruins of what had been a small town.
Dransin laid heels to his mount, and they trotted down, leaving the wagons behind.
The king drew the stallion to a halt within what would have been the town square, his face grim and tight, grief in his eyes. The smell of burnt wood and charred flesh hung in the air.
King Dransin dismounted. Two of his riders moved close behind, hands on weapons, though it seemed that this atrocity was several days old. Dransin turned slowly in place, jaw flexing, hands clenched into fists before he shot a dark glare Isnay’s way.
“We didn’t even know what was happening until shortly before you arrived. A messenger, a boy really, rode to tell us. I should have just ridden out then, should have left the organization to others. Instead, I come, days later than the attack, for what? This! I am their gods-damned king!” he roared, the sound full of pain and frustration, choked with self-hatred.
“You moved swiftly. You left the same day, doing what you can. Bringing supplies.” Isnay glanced around, still reeling from shock at the destruction, the useless wanton slaughter of lives. He had never been in such a situation before. This horror made it suddenly very clear how protected he was under Anrodnes’s wing, when others were not.
It made him incredibly grateful for his home, and created a need to see this wrong healed.
“Get the others,” Dransin ordered his men. “We will leave some of you here for burial detail. I want every body treated respectfully, every personal effect set aside in case there are those that can claim them. Detail the burial site so that relatives will know where they lay.” The king’s voice was hoarse and cracked with the emotions he withheld.
The men nodded, organizing themselves in silence, grief and rage twined in their expressions.
The wagons arrived one by one. The shock upon the drivers’ faces, the disbelief, made Isnay close his eyes and turn away, blinking away moisture. He had studied history extensively, and it never failed to amaze him the brutality of man against man. There had been no need for this. These people had been peaceful. It was likely that they did not even have weapons to fight back.
The cowardice of these actions made Isnay’s blood boil. He was not an angry person. He could not be in his profession, but the sheer injustice of what he was witnessing brought something hot and dark out of his very being.
This was just one town. From what the messenger had said, there was a trail of destruction left in the invaders’ path.
Dransin swung on his heel to face Isnay. “Swear to me that what you told me is true! That there is a force that will catch these bastards! Wipe them from the earth!” Tears welled in his eyes.
Isnay stepped forward, bowing his head before looking up so they were face to face.
“I swear upon my very soul that I told you the truth. They will pay.”
* * *
Raine
Raine heard the sound of Taldan returning, and he looked up from the book he was reading in bed. He listened, but there was no sound of the man going into the adjoining bedroom.
There was complete silence, and something within that silence gave Raine chills. Some instinct of wrongness had the hair on his arms standing up.
He rose, pulled a robe around his nakedness, and gently pushed back the sliding door that was all that stood between him and the emperor.
At first, he saw and heard nothing, making him wonder if he had misheard.
Then a soft sound, a choked gasp made his stomach clench. Moving swiftly into the outer room, he was appalled to see Taldan collapsed upon the couch, curled up, a hand over his mouth as he fought to contain the spill of sound that signified a complete breakdown of emotions. Beside him lay the discarded mask and gloves. Out of control was not something that Raine could begin to associate with Taldan. Yet here, before his eyes, the man was falling apart, his breath coming hard and fast, turning into a fight for air.
Raine thought of calling the Shadows that stood guard outside the emperor’s wing, but looking at Taldan’s white-knuckled grip upon his face, the desperate attempt to hide what was occurring, he realized that he could not betray Taldan in such a way. If he needed to keep this hidden, then Raine would help him. For the first time, he felt like his presence had a reason, his role finally useful.
He knelt by the couch, gently reaching out and taking Taldan’s right hand, clenched into a fist by his side.
The emperor startled, a choking sob escaping his lips, and he flinched back into the cushions.
“Gently,” Raine urged, enfolding the trembling hand in his, meeting tear-wet blue eyes with compassion but no hint of pity. He was all too familiar with how pity could be viewed by others and the reactions it could create. Negative certainly. Violent, possibly.
He did not know Taldan well enough yet to speculate. Since his ascension, cracks had begun to appear in Taldan’s cold, logical facade, leaving Raine uncertain and worried for him.
So instead of pity, he held that panicked gaze and spoke calmly.
“Breathe, Your Majesty. Breathe.” He demonstrated with his own breaths, relieved when Taldan began to unconsciously emulate him. The wild look gradually left his eyes, his body ceasing the panicked search for air.
“Just breathe.” He gently reached out and laid his hands upon Taldan’s face, supporting him, meeting him eye to eye. “You’re all right. Whatever it is, we’ll face it. You aren’t alone. I’m here, and I will do anything in my power to support you.”
A shudder ran through Taldan’s frame.
“Don’t promise that,” Taldan said. “You don’t know what I am, what I’ve…” He drew a shivering breath, looking diminished and lost. “I have done a thing of great shame. It is in the past, but it taints me, haunts me. I did not know—” He let out a harsh, barking laugh that made tears rise to Raine’s eyes in instinctive empathy. “What excuse is that? I did not know. I’m damn sure that excuse has been worn to death down through history. But then, that is my bloodline, isn’t it? They have called my ancestors monsters, tyrants, beasts. Perhaps they’re right. Perhaps that same blood flows through me, and I just didn’t understand the force of it until now.”
Raine leaned up higher on his knees, touched his forehead to Taldan’s, trying to impart comfort. “I know I don’t know you as well as I would like, but I see no monster. I see a man who has devoted his life to the betterment of his people, to finding solutions for problems that others had not even considered.”
“I hurt him. I know I hurt him. Perhaps not physically, but certainly mentally. They order him to—” He jerked away from Raine and put his head in his hands, fingers sinking into his hair and tugging at it viciously. “He came to offer himself as a concubine. There were many that day, but all I saw was him. Little did I know that he had been ordered to give himself to me. He had no damn choice, and I, like a blind fool, took him at face value.”
Raine began to understand where this was coming from. “You speak of Hredeen.”
Taldan flinched as though the name itself was a source of agony.
Raine gently prised Taldan’s hands free of his tortured hair and held them tightly enough that he could no
t continue. “I do not know much of the War Guild, and I’m sure that half of what I have heard is mere speculation and rumor, but all the stories have a common theme, which often means a grain of truth. The children taken there are made into something less than human, if more than a mere creature. He would have been trained for all those years, and I would bet, having met Hredeen, that he would have been damn good at anything he attempted. Therefore, would it have been possible to discern his deception? No. Perhaps the greater wonder is that, after all his training, all his past, he fell in love. With you.”
Taldan stared at him, jaw flexing, agony clear in his expression, as though he desperately wanted to believe Raine but was afraid of allowing himself redemption.
“What would Hredeen do, if he saw you like this?” Raine murmured.
Taldan huffed. “He would have slapped me upside the head. He is—was—always so blunt, so to the point, and it was impossible to take offense. Indeed, it was such a pleasant change to those I had known before. He, at least, was honest. His words were never out of spite or malice. I trusted him.”
Taldan pulled his hands from Raine’s grip and raised his wrists to scrub at his eyes, resembling nothing so much as a small, broken child in that moment. The most powerful man in the known world, and Raine was the only one to see him this way.
“I trusted him,” he whispered once more, the loss in his eyes devastating.
Raine moved from the floor to the couch, sitting beside Taldan and gently rubbing his shoulder, waiting patiently for the man to gain control.
“I, for one, am glad he was sent to you. His initial place here was not the truth you might have wished for, but it became something else. What he felt for you was truth. That is what you trusted, whether you understood it or not. Don’t taint that.”
Taldan leaned back, looking utterly exhausted, with lines of weariness beneath shadowed eyes. If Raine had not been finding sleep, then it was obvious that neither had Taldan.
Raine rose to his feet, offering a hand. “Come. Neither of us have slept, and things enlarge themselves when a person can’t see straight.”
Taldan hesitated before taking Raine’s hand and letting him pull him to his feet.
He swayed, obviously completely done in. Raine guided him through the door into the bedroom and over to the massive bed. He pulled Taldan’s boots off, then gently pushed him down upon the massive bed.
Taldan went, numb and chilled.
Raine slid in beside him, pulling the thickest covers over them and offering his own body heat.
Taldan didn’t react for the longest time, just shivered in his grasp, but finally, he reached out and drew Raine closer yet, held him tightly.
Raine hummed softly under his breath, an old children’s song that he remembered faintly from childhood, while he stroked through short, white hair that was soft to the touch.
Taldan’s painfully tense body slowly relaxed, and finally, his head lay on Raine’s chest, his breathing falling into the release of sleep.
Raine woke to the unfamiliar feeling of a hand stroking over his hip, so lightly that he thought it a dream until he remembered where he was and who he was with.
His breath suspended, his eyes flying wide, meeting an ice-blue gaze containing a heat that Raine had never had directed at him by another.
His breath resumed, albeit haltingly, as the hand continued its meandering path, stroking over the join of leg and groin, stroking over soft, exquisitely sensitive skin.
Raine licked his lips, heat rising with astonishing, almost terrifying speed. To have Taldan’s entire attention riveted upon him was heady.
There was something in the emperor’s eyes that made him believe that, for the first time, Taldan was entirely invested in him. Raine. The invisible ghost. The second-choice Chosen. The pawn in his brother’s schemes.
He reached up to stroke over a high cheekbone, feeling daring. To have the right to touch this silent, cold man who showed so little of what surged within him, the fire that had no place in being emperor, was enough to have his head spinning and his heart pounding.
To his astonishment, Taldan turned and kissed his palm.
It felt like a dream, an impression that only deepened when his lover leaned down, captured his lips in a scorching kiss that curled his toes and swept away the last vestiges of doubt.
He didn’t know how real this truly was, but he was damn well going to enjoy the moment.
They were eye to eye, and Raine found the courage to touch more than Taldan’s cheek, letting his touch trail down over a strong throat, stroking along a prominent collarbone. His fingers traced over hard muscles on a powerful chest, the contours fascinating, tantalizing.
Taldan’s breath sped up, then a strong hand came beneath Raine’s knee, tugging him forward so that his leg lay over Taldan’s hip, pressing them intimately together, hardness to hardness.
His fingers sank into Raine’s curls, holding him firmly as he angled his face to deepen the kiss. Raine moaned, pressing closer. If this was a dream, then let him never wake to reality. His hero, actually wanting him. Not just as a sexual release. There was something more in those intense eyes, something in his touch that Raine opened to eagerly.
If Taldan pulled back, it would shatter him utterly. This had to be real, it had to.
He whimpered, opening his mouth, letting a clever tongue sweep between his lips and tangle with his own tongue. Taste and sensation. Breathing each other in.
Raine hooked his leg around a lean hip more tightly, thrusting slightly, rubbing their shafts together in delicious friction. Taldan let out a needy sound, almost a growl, then pulled back from the kiss to breathe in Raine’s ear, sending a shockwave of heat through his body. He arched into his lover, rutting more strongly.
The heat, dear gods the heat! There was no thought, nothing beyond the moment, the next touch, the link that flared to life, blue light flickering over them, encasing them in their own world.
That light was a reminder of who they were to each other, that the gods themselves had ordained their relationship. It gave Raine confidence. This was right and good, could lead somewhere wonderful for them both, given half a chance.
Taldan stretched to the bedside, murmured to Raine when he returned, promise in the tone.
He gently lifted Raine’s upper leg, exposing him completely. Raine flushed at being so vulnerable, so wanton, but when Taldan’s oiled finger circled his opening, he threw his head back, gasping, becoming a creature of pure want, writhing, pushing, wanting…
The fingertip slid in, still circling, nothing of force behind it. Whispers in his ear that he could not decipher, his body attuned only to the intimate touch and the promise of more.
When Taldan shifted over him, pushing Raine’s legs up, he rolled to his back, loose and compliant, submissive in a way he could not grant any other but this man.
Taldan’s finger withdrew, and his gaze was fierce and bright as he guided himself to Raine’s entrance, sliding in slow, torturous increments.
Raine’s lip curled, and he surged up, impaling himself, a growl of his own escaping his throat.
Taldan gave a startled laugh, then a moan as Raine tightened around him. He threw his head back, his beauty otherworldly in a pose so wanton, so passionate.
Raine drank in the sight, etching it upon his mind’s eye. He wanted to remember every moment of this encounter, unsure if there would be more or if this was something special to this moment only.
Taldan looked down at him, eyes blown wide with lust. He began to thrust, short and shallow.
Raine groaned, growled again. “Please!” He wasn’t even sure what the plea was for, only for more.
His lover thrust hard and deep, making Raine cry out softly, pleasure bursting over his body so that he hardly knew where he was, who he was.
Taldan gave short, hard grunts with each powerful thrust, never taking his eyes from Raine’s.
Raine opened his mouth soundlessly, attempting to breathe air that
seemed to have disappeared, his body tightening, a feeling on the edge of pain…
He fell over the edge, the pleasure overwhelming. The cry that escaped his throat sounded like nothing human, and it seemed to push Taldan over an invisible barrier. Teeth bared, his lover chased his own release, driving deep into him, half pushing him up the bed before freezing in place, expression frozen in a rictus of ecstasy.
Taldan finally collapsed on top of him, their heaving breaths loud in the room, sweat-slicked bodies pressed together.
As the pleasure ebbed back into a sense of reality, Raine found himself clutching the emperor closer, feeling a wild need to keep them joined. “Please,” he whispered. “Don’t leave me. Let me stay.”
Something in Taldan’s expression softened in a way Raine had never seen before.
“You stay in my arms tonight. Tomorrow…tomorrow I don’t know.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Naral
Naral, head of Persis security, stood scowling as he watched the guards train in the outer police yard. Occasionally one man or another would glance in his direction and redouble his efforts, obviously taking Naral’s displeased expression to be personal disapproval.
He attempted to smooth his expression into something less murderous. But after a few half-hearted attempts, he gave up completely.
Everything was wrong. Zaran gone. The gods knew what was happening with him. Hredeen cast out, most likely back in the grasp of the War Guild. Wasn’t that a happy thought? Isnay long gone, off on a diplomatic mission into Bhantan. He was somewhat comforted by the message from Isnay that had arrived that morning with news that a new king was in charge. The gods knew the old one was useless. Perhaps a younger man might have new ideas, ideas that would see that country find a balance between peace and protection. Still, having heard nothing from his cousin in days was making him more and more tense. Then there was Taldan. Since Hredeen’s exile, the man had not been himself. At least not the man Naral had come to know since his arrival.