Taste the Dark

by Tibby Armstrong

  Lyandros nodded once, slowly. “Yes.”

  Turning his head, he regarded the niche once more. A vague niggling fear tugged at the back of his brain.

  “When?” he asked, facing Lyandros again.

  “I thought it best to let you sleep,” Lyandros said quietly

  Akito let the words sink in. His hands fell to his sides, weariness overtaking him. “You executed him?”

  “In the central chambers.” Though the deep circles under his eyes painted him troubled, Lyandros answered the question unflinchingly “This morning.”

  Shame gripped Akito, along with frozen dread. “Because I wanted him gone?”

  “Because it was scheduled to be done.”

  Dread melted, replaced with the same sadness he now understood Lyandros felt. Going to his lover he issued a quiet, “I’m sorry.”

  “It was unfortunate.”

  Akito cupped Lyandros’s face and brought their mouths together in a tender kiss. As he did so, he closed his eyes. Behind his lids, again flashed the image of a wraithlike figure undoing the condemned vampire’s chains. The kiss broke apart with Akito’s gasp.

  “What is it?” Lyandros’s brows pulled together in a puzzled frown.

  Going to his pillow, Akito slipped the dagger from underneath. “Remember how I said when I kicked the Morgan out of my head I could see him in there for the first time?”

  Lyandros, following his motions with wary interest, replied, “Yes.”

  He recalled Tzadkiel once saying that traitors weren’t allowed to move on to Gemini. Their souls were left to wander the world, lost and unseen forever. Some were confined to hellish tortures by the goddess Themis, and others simply went slowly mad, likely becoming shades.

  Akito approached the wall and its manacles in casual steps. “Out of curiosity, did these traitors receive the traditional punishment?”

  “They did.” Lyandros had his own dagger out now.

  “Back me up?” Akito asked.

  “Always,” Lyandros answered. “If I know how.”

  Good enough.

  Closing his eyes, Akito stood two feet from where he’d seen the shade in his dreams. The room shimmered, still in view behind his closed lids. Firelight cast shadows that danced over furniture. Six shades ringed the room. All of them with their eyes on him.

  “Shit.” He didn’t dare open his eyes, and instead focused as hard as he could to use his blood bond with Lyandros. “Can you see them.”

  A low rumble served as Lyandros’s assent. Metal rang as Lyandros unsheathed his sword, and they attacked in unison. What the bastards hadn’t counted on was their inability to fight back. Unable to easily affect the corporeal world, they succumbed one by one to his and Lyandros’s blades. The fire guttered as each soul stomach was slit open, releasing its victims to the ether.

  With the last one dispatched to hell, or wherever the damned called the afterlife, Akito, breathing hard, opened his eyes. Trembling, he sank to the stone floor. Lyandros slid down beside him. Eventually, Lyandros broke the silence.

  “You remain connected to the ether,” Lyandros observed.

  Holding out a shaky hand, Akito let it tremble in mid-air just to show Lyandros how fucked up he felt. “I might never sleep again.”

  “Hm.” Lyandros’s quiet agreement exuded sympathy. Standing, he approached a cabinet. “Would you like a drink?”

  Something to warm his sickly-cold middle sounded heavenly. “Brandy.”

  Glass clinked and the burble of liquid splashing gave him a touchstone of normalcy to which he clung. Turning, Lyandros, handed him a heavy glass. Amber liquid sloshed against the sides with the shaking of Akito’s hands.

  The first sip was a wash of liquid delight over his tongue. Taste buds sighing, he relaxed backward a fraction to lean against a footstool and sipped again, carefully.

  “Drink up. There’s more.”

  Akito stared into the glass, downed it, and breathed against the sting his nostrils as he held up the glass. Lyandros poured him another measure. This one, he sipped carefully.

  “The mind has always been your biggest battlefield,” Lyandros said. “It would only make sense that your power would settle there.”

  Chin on his knees, Akito hugged his shins closer to his middle with one arm, his glass dangling from his fingertips. The alcohol warmed his middle with a fiery glow as his muscles began to relax. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve lived most of your life battling your demons.” Lyandros contemplated his glass, swirling the liquid in a hypnotizing motion. “Now the magic bestowed upon you by the gods allows you to fight real demons on the plane of your choosing.” Lifting his gaze, he found Akito and finished with, “Your mind.”

  “My mind?”

  As in the one he was losing right here? Right now?

  “Yes.”

  Akito laughed out loud, giddy and crazy. “I get a fucking superpower, and it ends up being fighting ghosts?”

  Lyandros shrugged. “Apparently. But ghosts, as you know, can affect the physical plane.”

  The gods only knew what those shades had planned for that night. Akito could only imagine that Lyandros had made many enemies on both the physical and ethereal planes over his life and death. The first time he’d been in the room, Akito had only noticed the books, but evidence of Lyandros’s long life in the items he’d collected. Refined taste knew no era, and the objet d’art exhibited there represented millennia of collecting impulses.

  “Could they have hurt you on this plane?” Akito wondered aloud.

  “Not easily. Though apparently, they thought to try.”

  A thought ran its wraithlike fingers up his spine. “They can reach you through our connection. They were going to hurt you through me.”

  He pictured the connection between himself and Lyandros like a tightrope the spirits could walk and bolted to his feet. Gods. Would there never be a time when he wasn’t a danger to those he loved? Intent on shutting himself in the bathroom so he could puzzle this all out, he talked past Lyandros. Warm fingers encircled his wrist, pulling him around.

  Akito tugged against the hold. “Let go. Please.”

  “Will you listen to me for another minute more?” Lyandros loosed his hold. “Then you may do as you please.”

  Sliding his gaze to the door, Akito judged there was no real danger. Not now, anyway. Plans to escape—to put as much safe distance as possible between himself and Lyandros flitted through his brain, and he filed them away for later contemplation.

  He leaned against the bedpost as he’d seen Lyandros do their first time in this room. “All right.”

  “There is nowhere you can go—not this plane or the next—where you will not be connected to me,” Lyandros began.

  The bottom dropped out of Akito’s world even as arousal rocked him onto his toes. He croaked out an incoherent protest, but Lyandros shushed him with a raised hand.

  “There is also no reason I cannot protect myself, now that I know of the potential threat.” Lyandros continued, standing.

  “How?” Akito asked, wary.

  “We are soldiers, and we fight together. All right?” Lyandros came to him. “Say yes.”

  Warm palms cupped his face, compelling his nod.

  Akito laughed despite himself. “Stop that.”

  Lyandros tumbled him backward over the foot of the bed with a playful push that had Akito bouncing against the mattress. Tangled in covers, he attempted and failed to scramble backward. Throaty laughter, Lyandros’s, mingled with his kiss, and they moved toward the bed, intent on finishing what they’d started in the bath the previous evening.

  “Happy?” Lyandros asked, sometime later.

  Akito turned his head and snugged closer in Lyandros’s arms. “Yeah. I’m kind of shocked at how happy.”

  Lyandros’s breath tickled Akito’s hair with his exhale. “Good.”

  Twisting so he looked up at Lyandros from under his lashes, Akito lifted one side of his mouth, teasing. “Do y
ou think…you might hang me up there with Gabriel sometime?”

  Dipping down, Lyandros nipped Akito’s lip, eyes darkening with humor. “Only if you’re very, very bad.”

  “I always want to be your tribute,” Akito blurted.

  Where the words had come from, he didn’t know. He only knew he wanted to gift himself to Lyandros for as long as either of them existed. To be the center of his attention and to make him feel as if the world orbited around them both in equal measure.

  Lyandros smiled. “Haven’t you yet realized? You’re that and so much more.”

  Their lips met and for a time Akito couldn’t think about past or future. When Lyandros finally let him up for air, he realized he hadn’t felt invisible in days. He was seen. Appreciated. The hero and center of Lyandros’s world. He was loved.

  And…so much more.

  Epilogue

  The Justice Giver’s medallion hummed to life, its edges glowing with heat, signaling the approach of the guilty. Lyandros watched from his balcony as, naked and oiled, Akito entered the mora’s central chambers. Nineteen vampires in the gallery looked on while Tzadkiel, with Benjamin to his right, presided over the absolution ceremony. Stopping before the dais on which the War King’s kathédra perched, Akito bowed his head in reverential submission. A tribute, come to request forgiveness from his mora, his friends, and his gods.

  If his apology pleased the gods, Akito’s soul would be set free from servitude to Lyandros. If not…well, either things would go on as they were now, or Themis could choose an even harsher sentence than the one Lyandros himself had passed. It wasn’t as if he’d had time to consult the goddess’ wishes in handing down Akito’s punishment. Lyandros shook his head, refusing to think on that possibility. Themis would not be so cruel. Not after Akito had all but saved the mora with his actions last winter. This much, Lyandros had to believe.

  “Who has come before us to seek absolution?” the War King demanded.

  “Akito James, immortal Son of Pollux, the Justice Giver’s tribute to the goddess Themis, violator of the gods’ sacred laws, and traitor to the mora.” Lyandros issued the required answer over Tzadkiel’s head.

  He felt, more than saw, Akito flinch. Torchlight flared on an unseen breeze, guttering the flames and lifting strands of his dark hair from his back. From his balcony perch, Lyandros looked down on pale skin as Akito knelt and pressed his forehead to the ground in prostration before his mora and his king.

  “Rise, Akito James,” Tzadkiel said.

  Akito standing, awaited the command to approach the kathédra. On a rosewood table, the chalice known as the kylix rested, its contents glimmering darkly in the torchlight’s red glow. When he neared the table, the War King rose. The blood of all twenty-two of the mora’s remaining free members had been combined. Akito would drink it down. Then they would know.

  “What have you to say to us,” Benjamin asked, participating for the first time in the mora’s rites. “Akito James?”

  The hunter’s white robes proclaimed him the consort to the War King and, now, figurative head of their religious body. Before the night was through, that white cloth would proclaim Akito’s absolution or condemnation. Red for life. White for death. Black for his sentence as tribute. Lyandros himself could overrule a death sentence, but that was all.

  Lyandros held his breath, fingers clenching the granite balustrade of his station, as Akito lifted his chin to deliver his plea and his apology.

  “I would offer my life to the mora, cleansed of the sins I have committed against my people.” Akito cupped his hands and the light of his aura shone from his fingertips, bathing the ceiling high above with ripples of watery light. “I offer my soul to judgement by the goddess Themis. Whether for absolution, death, or chastisement, as is her will.”

  Stepping forward, Benjamin dipped two fingertips in the kylix and brought them to Akito’s lips. The tribute opened his mouth and accepted the blood on his tongue, swallowing before he spoke again.

  “I also ask forgiveness of my War King and his consort, of the mora and its friends, for the offenses I have committed against them.” Holding out his hands, palms up, Akito turned to Tzadkiel. “I humbly beg for leave to return to my place among your people, sire.”

  Tzadkiel, shoulders back, fingers tapping the kathédra’s gilded arms, nodded once. “You have our forgiveness and leave to return to your place among our people.”

  Akito’s legs wobbled. Lyandros leaned forward a fraction, wishing he could move to his mate’s side. The stress of the ceremony showed in the taut lines of Akito’s shoulders and the way the sweat trickled over his abdomen. Droplets made their way in shining rivers down his back and glistened along his calves.

  “Thank you, sire.” Akito knelt again at Benjamin’s sign, keeping his palms outstretched.

  An olive branch with its leaves was dipped in the kylix. Benjamin, circling around Akito, stood at his back. Lyandros bit his lip as the branch, dripping with life, crisscrossed Akito’s shoulders and then his hands in harsh slaps. The blood sprayed outward, turning all it touched a pulsing pink. Life force. Magic. These permeated through the tiny abrasions in Akito’s skin. Lyandros, as Akito’s mate and as the Justice Giver, felt Themis’s presence doubly when she overshadowed the room.

  “Drink.” Lyandros’s command came from the goddess herself. She would hear Akito’s petition and pass judgment.

  Please, goddess, forgive this once-mortal soul.

  Lyandros added his prayers to those others from the mora heaped on the ether, in hopes the goddess would be swayed. Contrary to what Akito had believed, he was popular among the mora and had been viewed as their hero for some time.

  Akito lifted the kylix in shaking hands and drank deeply of its contents until no drop remained. He spilled nothing, though his deep breaths spoke of his struggle to consume all that he’d been given. When the mora had been three-hundred strong, the ceremony had taken days and often left the tribute sick with his attempt to drink down the offering.

  Benjamin moved to a brazier that had been set up in the middle of the room. Over this, he placed the kylix, and took off his thin, white robe. Tzadkiel commanded Akito to kneel before him once more, and Lyandros said a final prayer for his tribute’s forgiveness. The cup, Benjamin wiped out with the robe, sopping up its remaining moisture. Below Lyandros, Akito appeared small, bowed as he was before their War King.

  Chants were uttered and the brazier lit while the robe remained in the kylix over the ceremonial fire. Scents of herbs and incense drifted upward on the smoke while Themis deliberated, then curled into white nothingness and disappeared. The chants quieted and Benjamin lifted the robe from the kylix to shake it out.

  Holding it up before the assembled throng, and Lyandros to see, Benjamin spoke loudly. “What is your sentence, Justice Giver?”

  His sentence…

  It was all Lyandros could do not to collapse to the ground in defeat. The robe was white. Murmured conversation rose to a din. Tzadkiel held up his hand and silence fell. Lyandros breathed deep, attempting to find his footing. His mind. Below, Akito still pressed his head to the floor, unaware of the outcome.

  “We…” Lyandros swallowed against nausea’s tide.

  All eyes lifted to him.

  If he were to rule effectively as part of the archon at his brothers’ sides, he would have to carry out the death sentence Themis had handed down. It was his duty. To do any less was to throw the goddess’s judgment in her face.

  “We sentence the tribute, Akito James—” His voice shook. “We sentence him to—”

  “Wait.” The command came from Tzadkiel, who stood. “Benjamin, show me that robe.”

  The War King’s consort held out the robe, and Tzadkiel took it in his hands, turning it inside out. Gaze questioning, he held it up so Lyandros could see both sides at once. It was white on the outside and a pure burgundy on the inside. Never, in all his long life, had Lyandros confronted such a riddle from the goddess. And then, somehow, he knew.<
br />
  “The tribute is forgiven. His life is his own. This, the goddess, Themis, judges to be so.”

  A shout went up. Akito was lifted to his feet, and Benjamin hugged him around the middle. The robe was placed over his shoulders, and the mora carried him from the central chamber to the dining hall on their shoulders where he was given pride of place across the round table from Benjamin and Tzadkiel, Lyandros to his left.

  Conversation echoed from the high rock ceiling’s decorative beams. An oil lamp chandelier burned brightly over the gathering, as glass after glass of wine was raised in toast to the gods, Themis, and those lost and loved over the centuries. Stories were told and reminiscences shared. When attention turned to the tale Benjamin told of his time in Gemini, a recollection he’d reclaimed only recently, Lyandros turned to Akito.

  “You are my breath and my heart. I love you,” he said, quietly.

  “I love you too,” Akito answered, leaning into him.

  Warmth flooded Lyandros’s middle and he drank in Akito’s kiss. Tzadkiel coughed and they came up for air on a gust of self-conscious laughter

  Fingering Akito’s sleeve, Lyandros turned it inside out so Akito could see its white lining. “You are blessed by the goddess.”

  Akito, eyes widening, lifted his gaze to Lyandros’s face. “She sentenced me to death?”

  Lyandros shook his head. “No. You did that. She sentenced you to live.”

  Indeed, the goddess had shown her hidden message with the portion of the cloth that would have once rested on the inside, next to Akito’s skin.

  “Your inner core is that of strength and survival. What once pressed against you from the outside has been removed. Death touches you no longer.”

  Akito sipped at his wine, thoughtful. “Does that mean we’ll win the war against the Morgan?”

  “That remains to be seen.” Lyandros evaded, knowing they were no safer with the doors to Faerie temporarily closed. Someday, the Morgan and Lady Morgana would clash. When they did, the results would likely be cataclysmic.

  Akito leaned to rest his head against Lyandros’s shoulder and stared out over his chosen family. “So, what do we do?”