CHAPTER 15

Their seats at the concert were as far from one another as Jahir could contrive, buying at such a late date and granting the irregular shape of the venue. He hadn’t warned Lisinthir, but when the usher offered to guide them to their seats his cousin had essayed one of those charming smiles and said, “I’ll take the gallery seat. My cousin should be the one closest to the orchestra.”

Useless to protest; knowing Lisinthir, he would tell him to enjoy the experience and if Jahir resisted, add that being close to the orchestra would distract Jahir far more than it would him, and so make the test more useful. So Jahir accepted the gift—because he knew it had been intended as one—and made his way down the elegantly carpeted stairs to the one seat left in the front orchestra section because of its astronomical expense. As he threaded his way among the crowd, he felt his cousin: nothing like the mindline, with its multiple layers and literal transcription of thought. More like how Vasiht’h had always explained his sense of the Goddess, as a certainty, a presence he could lean against and be sure of support.

How Lisinthir would laugh at the analogy! He would have to share it later.

That sense of him persisted, though. It persisted despite the several thousand people sharing the concert hall with them in the noisy prelude to the arrival of the musicians. It persisted after they’d all found their seats and their conversations had quieted to a susurrus more felt than heard. It remained strong when the orchestra arrived, and Jahir waited for his reaction to the music to sweep it away…

…but music made it stronger in him, not weaker, as if passion of any kind made him more open to his cousin’s influence.

They had not planned which talent to try first; part of the experiment was to see if they could communicate their desires across the distance. Jahir had expected this to be difficult but it wasn’t, because he knew Lisinthir’s touch. There was a path into him and it had been opened by fingertips and lips and too-knowing eyes, and it was as easy now as he suspected it would have been difficult before they’d been lovers.

Amid the thousand breathless spectators, they tried their mind magics, and all of them worked. More than worked. It felt natural, so effortless that they put paid to all the experiment’s permutations before the conclusion of the first movement of the concerto. So Jahir pulled his cousin in and held him nigh so that he could share his reaction to the music, and together they listened, and the space between them became inconsequential. Tears beaded beneath his lashes, seeped down his cheeks. The piece was magnificent, the performance staggering. It washed together with the experiences that had preceded it, the ones that had left him raw and broken open, until the crescendo seemed to well out of him, not the instruments. He gave himself gladly to it and didn’t care that others might see him dab his face when it was over.

Outside the hall, leaning against a back wall as the other concert-goers streamed past, Jahir waited with a head full of music and joy. He felt his cousin’s progress like the pulse of a bass drum underlying the treble of the conversation that flowed around him. When the touch glided over his cheekbone he did not startle. Nor did he shy away from the kiss so gently touched to his lips. He breathed out, whispering You see nothing, and knew that no one would look. And then he accepted the kiss, and asked for more with an open mouth, and received it: not cruelty or passion, but warmth and a slow, searching sweetness that left him weak in every joint. When those lips moved up to kiss the salt dried at the edges of his eyes, he seeped it fresh and tasted the tears on his cousin’s lips as if they were his own.

Lisinthir cupped his elbows and sighed. Smiled, and murmured in the gold, “Another wall, my cousin.”

Jahir rested his cheek against his cousin’s. “Another wall.”

Affection suffused him through their touching skins, effervescent with humor, sweet like wine. He suffered the caress along the angle of his jaw, feeling cocooned, softened by awe.

“Come,” Lisinthir murmured. “Now is the right time.”

For what? He wanted to ask. Knowing they should talk about what they’d done, what they’d proven. That it was of staggering significance. Not just the power of it, but how easy it had been… not just how easy it had been, but how easy it had become for him. That he wanted it now; wanted to be put to the work. That he no longer questioned the rectitude of it, if only he could be used, and useful.

God and Lady. To be useful.

The hand framing his jaw tightened, drawing his eyes up to Lisinthir’s, to his cousin’s grave and intense stare.

“I know,” Lisinthir said. “Jahir. I know.”

There was no one in the universe who knew better. But Jahir could feel his cousin’s love for him blazing bright as sunfire through the fingers spread on his face, and what an Eldritch heir loved, he protected. A sheathed sword might never shatter, but it would never draw blood either….

Lisinthir ran a finger along the hair draped past Jahir’s temple, tucked it back behind one ear. “Trust me,” he finished, husky.

What could he say to that? Except, “Always.”

Lisinthir exhaled. “Now. We go.”

He didn’t ask where, but let his cousin draw him after, through the crowds which no longer distressed him. He knew the boundaries between his mind and theirs now, the seam between his body and the air. He could blur those boundaries or hold them at a remove, and it no longer required concentration.

His cousin was amused. That had a flavor, an undertongue tingle, the hyper-arousal of skin newly tickled. He asked, low, “Why?”

“We will cut quite the swath, dressed as we are.”

For a concert? Jahir followed him off the lift and down the first of many stairs and ramps, because naturally they were bound for the Trenches and not the upper levels where two Eldritch in court coats might have won themselves the occasional glance but not the admiring stares they were about to collect. As they passed into the artificial gloaming of the market’s lowest levels, Jahir asked, absently, “Is it dangerous?”

“For someone else, perhaps.” Lisinthir’s amusement grew sharp edges, blood-taint. “Not for us.” And lighter, silvered, “And not here, anyways. It may be the Hull’s midnight district, but it’s still the Alliance.”

To that Jahir said nothing because it was true. He could not hold the pastiche of visceral memories he’d plucked from Lisinthir’s mind during its seizures without admitting to it. He was still contemplating this when his cousin drew him under a ramp and away from the trickle of people walking beneath the dim bulbs of the overhead strings. The hand that had taken his wrist traveled up his arm to rest, unexpectedly, on his shoulder, four fingers over it, thumb resting on his collarbone. Surprised, Jahir looked up.

“Still with me?” Lisinthir asked, low.

“Always,” Jahir said, willing him to hear the message in it. Not just now, but always. Into the Empire, not just without.

Lisinthir’s mouth twitched upward at the corner but the smile didn’t touch his eyes. He kissed Jahir’s brow. “Let us complete the pattern, then.”

The store a few steps down from the ramp sold knives.

Was it punishment for his sins or reward for his sacrifices that had put his cousin in his hands? So damned eager to be used, and so useful, and so necessary? Lisinthir didn’t look over his shoulder, knowing Jahir was behind him and one step to the side, feeling it as a change in the air pressure near his back, in the weight of the other man’s existence sensed through these new and far too convenient talents. What would their homeworld had been like, had it been mostly composed of Jahir Seni Galares? Would he have been so eager to leave it?

Did it matter? They had what they had.

The Tam-illee sitting behind the counter in this shop was so delicate it was easy to mistake him for a woman: little pointed face, slim neck, large eyes with a shelf of lashes to darken their lavender to the hue of amethysts. Some Chatcaavan would have paid high marks to buy him for the pleasure of having a male slave whose body screamed him deserving of use as a female. Even the light fawn of the fur and the elegant bob of the hair suggested fragility.

Until one looked at his hands, and the way he used his eyes.

That, Lisinthir thought, was why the Alliance would win against the Chatcaava… if win they did. The ambush of competence, wrapped in velvet pelt.

“I have come for the knife,” Lisinthir said.

The tod nodded. “I’ll bring it. Would you like anything else?”

“Yes. But we need to discuss it first.”

Returning to the dagger disassembled on his table, the foxine said, “Take your time.”

The question, then… had the sight of the shop shocked his cousin out of the malleability that had inspired Lisinthir to bring him here now? Turning, he found Jahir standing alongside the wall, looking up at the lengths of leather.

“They are unmarked,” Jahir said in their tongue, stripped of any mood shading.

“One chooses the color and breadth and tooling one likes and has it cut to the length one requires,” Lisinthir said.

“Like buying a belt,” Jahir murmured.

“Very like,” Lisinthir said, paused a heartbeat, and finished, “And nothing at all.”

That bought him a laugh, and it was soft and breathy. “What are we supposed to be discussing?”

Lisinthir set a hand on the small of his back, flattening the palm and waiting for reaction: no stiffening. He continued. “I have bought hooks already, but I meant to apply to you for your opinion on how you would like to be held to them.”

Jahir drew in a shaky breath. “Do I need restraint?”

“Absolutely.”

Surprised at his vehemence, Jahir glanced at him, and Lisinthir caught and held his gaze. “You have asked for the blade and I agreed to it. But I won’t have you hurt because you were able to jerk toward the edge.”

Jahir looked away. “Toward,” he whispered.

“You know as well as I do that it will probably not be away.” He stroked his thumb along his cousin’s back and added, softly silvered, “I would have you be no other way.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

His cousin was expecting pathos so Lisinthir snorted. “I fled the homeworld’s safety for the Empire, if you’ll recall. I am hardly one to judge you for leaning into the knife.”

Jahir chuckled softly, but beneath Lisinthir’s palm his body was quivering. “So… restraints. What are my choices?”

“Innumerable, given where we are. To narrow it, rope, leather, or a modern material like the one the Maven herd bracelets are made of.”

“Rope sounds… painful.”

“In a good way?” Lisinthir asked, earning himself a quelling look.

“In a ‘leaves fibers in my skin’ way,” Jahir said. “Not a memento I particularly want to invite.”

“God help me, but you think I’d use a hawser on you, cousin? We’re not talking of hemp…”

Jahir pressed his face into his hand and only the mirth Lisinthir felt through their connection let him witness it with equanimity.

“I will make it easy,” Jahir said. “Go with the modern materials. It is the world we live in.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Lisinthir said.

“It will be when we’re done,” Jahir said, and that had the quality of a vow.

Leaving him, Lisinthir made arrangements with the Tam-illee, and this purchase he did not trust to a courier but accepted personally. It came in a wooden box that smelled fragrantly of some alien hardwood, resinous and deep, tucked into a discreet dark blue bag.

“Toys for the evening,” Jahir said as they made their way back up the ramp.

“Nothing like,” Lisinthir said, implacable. “These are tools for apotheosis, cousin. And we will not be waiting until evening.”

He heard Jahir’s caught breath and waited. It took nearly the entire trip back to their suite before his cousin found a reply. “You’re so certain.”

Lisinthir stopped to face him, found the anxiety lingering in those eyes despite the masklike reserve that framed them in smooth skin and unlined brow.

“That it is more than depravity? That the time is now? That it is a needful thing? Yes, yes, and yes. And this will be the last time I tell you, because you will not believe words. You will believe what we do, so we will do it, and I will bleed the last of your doubts from you.” Lisinthir canted his head. “That is your warning, cousin. If you walk in the door with me, you won’t walk out again until I’m done with you. And before you agree—” He held up his free hand. “You will not have it your way. I won’t savage you in brutal silence and leave you the privacy of your thoughts. We will discuss what we do before we do it and have an agreement on what we allow, and won’t. There will be no question of your consent.” He pinned Jahir with his eyes, let some of his resolve show. “I won’t shoulder the blame for what should be a mutual decision. There will be no ‘but it wasn’t really me because he made me do it.’ I deserve better and so do you.”

Jahir drew in a breath and let it out, slowly. He nodded with a wry smile. “You know me well.”

“I like to think so, a little.” Lisinthir started to hold out that hand and hesitated. “So. Your decision.”

“Healer? Cousin? Galare? Your Delight?”

“Jahir,” Lisinthir said, quiet. “Your decision.”

Jahir tilted his head. “You want it?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want you.” Lisinthir smiled. “This is no act of martyrdom on my part. Some of it will be hard for me. Some of it will surprise me. But I will enjoy myself. I suspect immensely.”

“I would hate to come to someone acting out of charity,” Jahir murmured.

“I wouldn’t do it myself.”

“No, I imagine you wouldn’t.”

Were his cousin’s eyes on his hand? He could feel the attention like the heat from a fire. He’d known they would come to this pass; that all the rough play they’d indulged in had been nothing but a prelude to an act his cousin had not committed himself to. This was the moment they’d both been anticipating since Jahir had accepted his invitation on the courier.

“That is the crux of it, isn’t it?” Jahir looked up then. “Whether I believe you, that I could be acceptable as I am. If I walk through the door with you, I may discover I’m not. That what I am truly is ugly and perverse. Maybe you will be incapable of giving me what I need, and thus prove it to me. Or maybe I will be incapable of standing it, and ruin it with my own self-disgust. But that is what I’m confronting now. Am I worthy of love, despite my flaws.”

“Am I?” Lisinthir asked. “My flaws are rather more heinous than yours, I think.”

Jahir paused, then narrowed his eyes. “You are trying to force me to put my fears in perspective by comparing them to yours.”

“I was trying,” Lisinthir said with innocence, “to engage your empathy in the hopes that it would remind you that you are not the only person in the universe with flaws that dispose him to believe himself unworthy of love.”

Jahir laughed. “Incorrigible man.”

“Cousin,” Lisinthir said, “My hand tires. Will you take it and go in the room with me, there to discuss safe and consensual expressions of violence? Or shall we go to a very late lunch and while the remainder of our day away sightseeing?”

“I hear there are several points of interest in the Hull we have not yet explored,” Jahir said. He slid his hand into Lisinthir’s. “But I think, all the same, that our time is better spent here.”

Lisinthir sighed, relieved. “I was hoping you’d say so.”

Jahir quirked a brow. “Were you?”

“I would hate to have wasted this knife,” Lisinthir said, pulling him. “You have not seen it yet, cousin. It is glorious.”

Jahir shuddered. “Well, far be it from me to waste a knife.”

“Just so.”

They passed in silence through the living room to the bedchamber, where Lisinthir set the bag on their bed so he could retrieve the other items he’d bought in preparation for this interlude, the items he’d spent so long in the choosing, wanting them to be right. Nothing less than a ceremony would pull them both through this, and he wouldn’t deny that he, as much as Jahir, needed it: to separate it from what he’d experienced in the Empire, to lift it above those sordid memories. Once he’d set that package on the bed alongside the knife’s box, he stripped his coat off and started on the shirt. The boots came next, though he left the pants on. Enough to lose the sense that he was suffocating, that his skin was starving for the air.

“So,” Jahir said. “All this is….”

“Instrumental to our pleasure,” Lisinthir said. “Cousin, sit, please.”

“Shall I shed my clothing as well?”

The hesitance… so beautiful, that vulnerability. How dearly he wanted to honor it. “As much as you’re comfortable with. We will not be lunging into the throes of bloody embrace yet.”

“Talk,” Jahir guessed with a sigh as he began disrobing.

“What else? You are what you are, yes?”

“And you aren’t,” Jahir observed, eyeing him over his arms before lifting them to pull off his shirt. “So what is it that we must discuss?”

How to ask? Lisinthir thought of foreplay, thought of testing, thought of gentleness… discarded all of it. “I would ask if you wish to be flogged.”

Jahir froze in the act of reaching for his boots, so completely Lisinthir could see the gooseflesh along his sides and wonder if it was arousal or cold or horror.

“That is… an astonishing question,” Jahir said at last, resuming motion. Lisinthir watched him undo the buckles with swift flicks of his fingers and then sit to peel the footwear off. “I assume there is a reason you ask.”

“Several. The most important of those reasons would be that among lovers who enjoy this form of lovemaking, what we would call the whip is highly prized. So much so that I simplify matters by using the word we would recognize; in the bedroom its variations are broad and are enjoyed for their nuance, and their ability in skilled hands to hurt without destroying.”

That construction brought his cousin’s head up, as he’d thought it would. Squinting, Jahir said, “A safe way to be hurt.”

“You’ll observe I no longer press on your jaw when we kiss?” Lisinthir said. “I have been informed it is unwise to stimulate the nerves so directly. They can become sensitized, or worse, remain irritated.”

Jahir’s eyes lost their focus. Then he shuddered and shook his head, hair swaying around his shoulders. “No. I don’t imagine that permanent irritation of that nerve would be pleasing. Although I miss it, cousin.”

“Do you?” Lisinthir asked, careful of the words, the tone. The Harat-Shar siblings had told him how rare it was to find such extremes enjoyable.

“Oh yes.” Jahir’s smile was rueful. “You will wonder at it when it was literally blinding agony. But that was part of the attraction… because your kiss drew me out of it, re-assembled the pieces of me from the chaos.” He trailed a hand over his jaw, as if remembering. “You brought me back.”

Lisinthir’s breath caught. Could his cousin have planned words better calculated to incite his every need? More importantly—had he? But no, all Lisinthir saw in Jahir’s face was his absolute faith, and witnessing it, his heart shivered like frangible glass. Voice husky, he said, “If it’s in my power, cousin… I will always bring you back.”

“I know.” Jahir sighed, let his hand fall off his face. “And if you can’t… I promise I will bring myself back.”

“Thank you.”

That smile was winsome and sweet. “It is the least I owe you, and everyone else who loves me.” Squaring his shoulders, he continued, “So… you ask if I am willing to be flogged because it would allow you to give me what I need with the least risk.”

“Yes. And I ask because I have no idea if it’s possible.”

“Because I might find it repugnant?” Jahir glanced at him. “Because it is a punishment served the least privileged of our people, and invariably results in death?”

“Have you seen it done?”

“God and Lady, no.” Jahir hesitated. “Don’t tell me that you have. It’s not done—”

“Among the Seni,” Lisinthir finished. “No, I wouldn’t think so. But my parents were thoughtless and high-handed, not at all like yours. One of our servants was sentenced to flogging for theft. And died, as one does on our world. I was young, so no, I didn’t see it. I would have had to be escorted and it wasn’t the sort of thing my parents would have troubled themselves to attend in person. One does not watch one’s lessers disciplined; one renders a sentence and leaves others to do the sordid work.” Lisinthir folded his legs, resting an ankle on the opposite knee. “I learned about it some years later.”

Jahir was staring at him, aghast.

“So many things you didn’t know, ah?”

“So many things I knew happened in the abstract,” Jahir murmured. “That is a different matter from knowing of specific incidents.” He slipped his hands beneath his armpits—so the gooseflesh was probably cold—and continued. “But… there is more to it, isn’t there.”

“Of course,” Lisinthir said, raising his eyes just enough to meet his cousin’s. “Because I have been whipped.”

“The dragons… do such things?” Jahir asked, careful of the words.

Lisinthir thought of the implements in the use closet, where he’d first seen the racks, the plugs, the clamps. He had hated their application, had nearly gone insane suffering them. He had refused to use them on the Slave Queen, deplored their existence. He spoke as carefully as Jahir had, knowing that he dared not show too much of that revulsion if he wanted his cousin to make his choice free from coercion. “They prefer their own claws and fists. Wrestling is their foremost choice. But granted extended tests of dominance, they do resort to restraints and sometimes to tools. Their whips aren’t like ours, though. They were never developed to spur beasts of burden. They were designed from their inception to scar and mortify other Chatcaava.”

“I find it hard to conceive of such a thing.”

“Can’t you? We have swords, cousin. What is a sword but a more efficient tool for killing other people?”

“Or beasts!”

Lisinthir shook his head, finding some equilibrium in the discussion, some sense of himself. “In some twisted fashion, cousin, the development of the Chatcaavan whip was a form of mercy. If the choice is between death outright and torture from which one might win reprieve and even glory… then in making these tools, they have saved some segment of their population.”

Jahir’s voice was quiet. “I see my cousin and hear a dragon.”

“I am the son of the striking drake, at the last.” Lisinthir smiled, a little. “But… enough. I give you the choice because the use of such a tool is freighted with cultural contexts you might find abhorrent. I won’t flog you if in your mind it will become a punishment that corroborates your belief that you are lesser, and deserving of abasement.”

Jahir looked away, frowning. “I thought that at some level this exercise is supposed to incite such feelings.”

“Ah!” Lisinthir chuckled. “Here is where my education at the hands of the pards will stand us in good stead.” He went for the sideboard and the supplies he’d set there: the pitcher, two bottles, the small selection of spices. He poured a glass of unadulterated port first. “Different people need different things, you perceive. The reason we discuss these things beforehand is to prevent ourselves from blundering onto things you don’t want or need.”

Jahir’s brows lifted, but he did not reject the glass Lisinthir handed him. “You intrigue me. Do go on.”

“So, for instance,” Lisinthir said, obliging. “Having observed you, I know some of the things you don’t need.”

“This should be enlightening.”

“I trust!” Lisinthir set his finger on the underside of the glass’s foot, pushing up. “Drink.” He watched his cousin obey and then returned to the sideboard to set the pitcher on a warmer. Pouring the remainder of the port into it, he said, “You, for instance, do not need humiliation.”

“I… beg your pardon. Do some people…”

“Enjoy it? Oh, absolutely. But embarrassment makes you self-conscious, which is the opposite of what you need.”

“What do I need?” Jahir asked, bemused.

“To let go,” Lisinthir said, simply. He stirred the port, mixing the sugar and spices into it, and left it to the warmer before turning to face his cousin. On Jahir’s face he found the relaxed shoulders and soft, self-deprecating smile that were the signs of submission. But then his cousin looked at him and asked, “And what do you need?” and because the question was unexpected, the answer came, spontaneous and uncensored, and carried with it the roughness of too many unexamined pains and truths.

Ambassador... has there ever been something you wanted more than anything?

“To find a home.”

Of course. How could he have not known? Jahir stepped closer and naturally Lisinthir met his eyes, because he was incapable of exposing his own weaknesses without daring others to turn them into weapons. If he could face his own demons without flinching, how could his enemies use them against him? It was brilliant, and utterly like him, and did not change that they were wounds and they bled. Jahir caught his hand and kissed the fingers, willing Lisinthir to sense his sincerity as he said, in the white, “You will find your welcome in the arms of those who love you, and through them, you will have that home. I pledge it you, cousin.”

Lisinthir’s doubt seeped through their skin, so Jahir tightened his grip and said, “I mean that. You love your dragons and will find a place among them until they are done. Then you will come home.”

“To you,” Lisinthir said, and failed of the sardonic tone. “And Sediryl.”

“And Vasiht’h, who requires your services as mad uncle to his children,” Jahir said. And added, amused, “Sediryl has had two human lovers, one of each sex. Do you suppose she will find you outré?”

“Sediryl loves you,” Lisinthir pointed out, dry.

“She hasn’t met you yet.”

“And you’re the one who loves her, not me. Fortunately for her.” Jahir lifted his eyes from Lisinthir’s hand, saw his cousin flinch, grimace. “Forget I said that.”

“It is not an unfortunate thing, to be loved by you,” Jahir said, quiet.

Lisinthir sighed. “Healer.”

“To whom you promised a cessation of the mortification of your spirit, yes?”

Lisinthir chuckled softly and stroked Jahir’s fingers with his thumb. “I suppose I did. So I promise I shall endeavor, and tonight will be part of that. If you will permit me to continue the discussion?”

More talk about particulars when what he wanted was less talk about them, or more talk about this topic. Jahir sighed. “I suppose it’s necessary.”

“You suppose correctly. Am I right when I assume that your suppository came from a larger medical kit? One you packed yourself?”

That hot flush was surely visible, but how many such blushes had he awarded his cousin by now? “I might have done, yes.”

Lisinthir nodded. “Then do me the favor of going to the bathroom to fetch it. And finish undressing and preparing, if you would. I have my own work to do here.”

“Work,” Jahir murmured, feeling the word.

“Work I anticipate for the pleasure it will bring us,” Lisinthir said. “But it must be done right to ensure our safety. I prefer not to be distracted from my pleasures by catastrophe.”

“Catastrophe!”

“Or inconvenience.” Lisinthir grinned. “Go, cousin.”

Jahir rested his free hand on Lisinthir’s chest and inclined his head. In Chatcaavan, he said, “I obey.” And brought Lisinthir’s hand to his lips for one more kiss, which his cousin turned into a caress, cupping the side of his face.

The bathroom seemed far too significant a place when he stepped over its threshold, knowing that when he exited it, he would be submitting to what he suspected would be a life-altering experience. Trailing his fingertips over the counter, he avoided meeting his eyes in the mirror, not wanting to know what he would see there: desire? Shame? Anticipation? Fear, probably. All those things. He wanted to know if feeling them made him craven, or corrupt, and yet… he had nothing left in him to support such uncertainties. He had yoked himself in a bond closer than marriage to an alien; he wanted his pleasure mixed with pain, at the hands of a man; he was a mind-mage like something out of legend, who could force his feelings on others. How many other ways could he be debased… by the standards of others? And which others, when he lived with his foot in so many cultures?

Jahir lifted his eyes and looked, and saw only a great calm. His cousin had trusted him on the Chatcaavan vessel when he’d said Lisinthir was no monster. Now, he found, he trusted Lisinthir to tell him the same.

The medical kit was next to his toiletries. He stripped the rest of his clothes off and brought the bag, and halted just outside the bathroom. There were complex-looking hooks extending from the ceiling some distance in front of the wall, and beneath them a circle of white velvet resting upon a small wooden block. On the bed across from this, a blanket so deep a red it gathered black shadows in its folds. And the room smelled fragrantly of cardamom and oranges, and brought to him forcibly the association of safety, of countless holidays spent warming his fingers on glasses of mulled wine after vigils spent in cold chapels.

He said the first thing on his mind, brought there by his convulsive embrace of his supplies. “The white will stain, surely.”

“That is the point,” Lisinthir said. Perhaps something in his face betrayed him, for his cousin laughed. “No, my dear, I’m not intending to keep it as some proof of my virgin conquest. I bought it because I wanted another visual indicator of how much you’re bleeding.” Lisinthir glanced at the velvet. “The more warnings I can build into this, the better.”

“Because you’re not planning it to be safe.”

“No.”

Jahir stared at him, inhaled, and set the kit down on the bed. “You have not asked me for a safeword.”

“You know about them.”

“I’m not entirely unlettered,” Jahir said. And added, smiling a little, “I have known a great many Harat-Shar since coming to the Alliance. One is unavoidably educated.”

Lisinthir chuckled. “Yes, one is. It’s one of their charms. Now, ask me why I haven’t required you to give me one.”

Jahir met his eyes. “Why haven’t you asked me to choose a safeword?”

“Because,” Lisinthir said, “you’ll never use it.”

He’d needed it badly. To hear it said aloud. To know that Lisinthir knew it. The whole body shudder it sent through him was relief, or release, or both.

“I could ask you to choose one,” Lisinthir continued, bringing the knife—still hidden in its box—to the table he’d set up alongside the wall. “I could even compel your promise to employ it. But you wouldn’t. Either willfully, because you don’t want to be safe, or thoughtlessly, because you were too lost in the moment to recall it. But the extraction of that promise would lead me to believe you would use it, and that would make me complacent.” He shook his head. “No. I can’t trust you with your safety because you don’t know your own limits. And that means I will have to be vigilant and pay close attention to what I see and sense through my fingers. No safeword, thus.” He smiled, lopsided. “Don’t tell my mentors in the art. They would be horrified.”

“I am sure there are places on Harat-Sharii where there are no boundaries.”

“I’m sure,” Lisinthir said, holding out a hand for him. “But there are reasons for the conventions we are about to flout, and I dearly wish we could use them.”

Jahir gave him his hand, watched his cousin loop the broad but colorless restraint over his wrist. To be so carefully designed, and yet so easy to overlook. He could see his skin through the strips lining the padding. “Do you?”

Lisinthir hesitated, then laughed, low. “All right. Perhaps it makes the thing more interesting, to have it be dangerous. But you do me wrong, cousin, in thinking that I am cavalier about this when your safety is at stake. I might enjoy risk-taking on my own, but some part of me does wish you would take enough care of yourself that I need not fear for you.”

Jahir gave him the other wrist. “There will always be parts of us that don’t belong to more civilized worlds, cousin.”

Lisinthir caressed the edge of his wrist, tracing the bones. “No. There would be no negotiation of boundaries on the homeworld.”

The memory of the rush of their horses through the forest swept through him. The exhilaration of it, of knowing that a broken neck awaited a single misstep, of the absolute certainty that Lisinthir wouldn’t guide them wrong. “We are what we are, and I would have it no other way.”

“Then, let us see what lies on the other side of this,” Lisinthir said, kissing his hands, now trammeled with their unassuming circlets of flexible silver. “And enjoy the journey.”

As Lisinthir led him toward the wall, Jahir said, “Will it begin with the knife, then?”

“Yours not to question, but to accept.” Lisinthir caught his wrist, stepping up onto the block and yoking it to the hook. “And on this I will brook no argument, cousin. I expect compliance from you from here on, until we are done. Anything less and we will not begin at all.”

Did his voice tremble? “I understand.”

“Good. Up with the other hand now.”

The hooks were just high enough that he had to stand on the balls of his feet: planned, indubitably, which made him wonder when his cousin had measured his height. How soft the velvet was! He spread his toes, enjoying the caress of it. Lisinthir had mapped every particular, which made him say, suddenly, “Did you buy a whip in case I had wanted it?”

His cousin trailed a hand over his chest, ducked under Jahir’s arm. “I didn’t, no. I thought your acquiescence unlikely enough to save myself the expense.”

That seemed implausible, given how carefully Lisinthir had planned everything else. “But then what would you have done if I’d said yes?”

“I had the pards instruct me on the use of a belt.”

Jahir started. “You would have flogged me with your belt?”

“With my sword belt, yes.” Lisinthir sounded amused—satisfied too, no doubt because he felt Jahir’s shocked interest through their skin. “I thought that would offset the association of flogging with corporal punishment. It would be personal.”

The heat that ripped down his spine when he let himself fully imagine it… personal, yes. The belt that held Imtherili’s swords to its heir’s hips? To know that his blood would stain the leather that his cousin wore into battle? To transform that symbol of potential violence into one of trust and intimacy? To feel it, still warm from Lisinthir’s body... God and Lady, sword belts were incised with patterns, and had buckles and hasps. He could almost feel the metal slashing his side....

Lisinthir spread both hands on either side of his ribs, his concern like cold water on his too-hot skin. “Cousin?”

“A very… compelling… image. I am forced to admit.”

The humor then was very gentle. “Should I go fetch it?”

“No! No. I think… but maybe next time.” Jahir bit his lip, realizing too late what he’d implied, but Lisinthir’s hands stroked down his sides to his hips and came to rest there.

“Then next time. I will have you kiss the leather before I use it on you.”

“Welts,” Jahir whispered.

“Patterned with twined dragons.” Lisinthir kissed the back of his neck, reached over Jahir’s shoulders, and pulled his hair back. Was he braiding it? Yes, from the tugs on his scalp, too gentle for Jahir’s taste. He wanted more. “You give me something to look forward to.”

His body was beginning to tremble and he couldn’t make it stop. His mouth was dry. “Are you looking forward to this?”

“I don’t have to look forward to this,” Lisinthir murmured, spreading his hands over the backs of Jahir’s shoulders. “I’m living it. Are you ready now, Galare, Healer, beautiful cousin?”

“Please,” Jahir said. “Gentle me.”

“Nothing would gratify me more.” Lisinthir dropped a kiss below the nape of his neck… and then grabbed him by the braid and yanked his head back, and here at last was the pain he’d yearned for, enough to bring spontaneous tears to the corners of his eyes. “You are going to have to earn the knife, cousin. Show me your absolute obedience and I will give you what you want.”

“Anything…!”

“Promises,” Lisinthir growled, low and hungry. “Now you will make good on them.” And bit him on the neck, below the ear.

When Jahir had imagined this interlude, he had seen himself lying on his back, with his cousin near him but not covering him, held at a clinical distance. They had both considered the knife. Been utterly focused on it. Experimented with it, slowly, scraping, analyzing each discrete sensation. He’d had some vague notion that eventually the threat of the knife would arouse him and then there would be lovemaking, at which point his imagination had failed him; he hadn’t been able to decide what happened to the knife then, or whether it remained germane to the situation. There had been a chill dignity to it, an awareness of the dangers, and a measured and intellectual approach to the matter.

The moment Lisinthir slammed him back, demonstrating why he’d left enough distance between his spine and the wall, all his carefully constructed fantasies shattered. There would be no academic deconstruction, no discussion, no distance. He would suffer: give up breath at his cousin’s command, shudder under teeth and nails, twitch at the endless pinches and the twisted posture imposed by hands tangled in his hair or knees forcing his legs apart… and when he did not comply in exact detail, he knew himself fettered by the talent he’d helped his cousin hone, and he no longer found it horrifying, but welcome, so welcome if it meant his obedience was more perfect. He knew, then, that he would go to the knife fevered, begging wordlessly, short of breath and desperate for release… and surrendered to the inevitability of it. His cousin had known him better than he’d known himself, again.

He sank into sensation, and drowned in it so utterly he abandoned himself to thought, and fear, and shame. So completely, in fact, that he found it hard to concentrate on the words he heard his cousin speaking, from such a great distance. The fingers on his face were holding him steady. Was that important? He wasn’t being dragged down for a kiss or pushed back for something else… so he lifted wet lashes and focused, with difficulty, on the darkwater eyes searching his. And what he saw in them kindled a level of arousal he’d thought impossible when his body burned so much already.

Words. He struggled, found one, used the language of dragons. “Now?”

Lisinthir dragged a finger over his bruised lower lip, and all his body throbbed in response. He dizzied, forced himself to concentrate again.

“Now,” Lisinthir said, low, and something cool pressed against his chest, near the sternum. He could sense its outline like a brand against his fevered skin, knew its shape: slender and purposeful, like a scalpel. “Yes?” Lisinthir whispered, kissing him gently.

“Yes,” he hissed, shivering.

His cousin’s hands skated down his sweating sides, tracing his ribs, returning to his chest. There, a scrape, not enough to draw blood. A threat, an unbearable friction that made him burn for it, for the illumination of his edges. Another scrape, lower, moving outward. He inhaled, expecting it to continue, but received it instead on the opposite side. Never cutting. Abrading, only, drawing all his yearning into a tight knot beneath its path. So much taunting. He flinched after each scrape, struggling not to push into it, until at last he gasped out, “Please, I can’t!”

“Then I’ll make you,” Lisinthir said gently, kissing the corner of his mouth with a tenderness that made him ache in entirely different ways, until he thought he would weep. And then, mercifully, his cousin took his body from him and forced it not to twitch… and also not to breathe as deeply as he wanted, until between the teasing of the knife and the stealing of his wind he became nearly senseless with want, and when he thought he could bear nothing further his cousin crushed his mouth beneath his and the knife slashed him—

—on the side, where Chatcaavan claws had left scars—

He gasped in, and on the inhale, Lisinthir dug his fingers into the slice and smeared the blood over his skin.

The shock of it broke him open and he cried out, wordless, and the universe spilled out through him, stretching him open, pouring him full. He saw too many worlds, more worlds than he could hold in his arms, more worlds than could be conquered, and despaired of the conquering—

Only love can hold this, because the war for it will never end

You will have to make a choice, arii, a choice, you will have to make a choice

It is not enough to rule, one must Change

“C-cousin,” Jahir gasped out, terrified, exalted, blinded by it. He remembered living in a body but couldn’t find it, smelled the copper tang of blood and sweat and desire, was swept in cold and hot waves. “Cousin, please…!”

He fell from the hooks into Lisinthir’s arms, tangled in the velvet, and still he felt history—unwritten and inevitable and enormous—like the welts he’d refused from his cousin’s belt, and it was so implacable he was sobbing for breath, like something hunted. He would be lost, he would never find his way back to his body, he would be pinned by the weight of the future and die under it….

Lisinthir bit his throat at the collarbone, shocking him. “No,” his cousin commanded, voice dangerous with possessive edges, words hard as dragon’s talons. “You won’t.” Fingers skidded down his side. Jahir gasped as they found the slice and stroked it as they might have his lips. “Live in this body, cousin.”

“Oh, God,” Jahir said, “Make me, please!”

Lisinthir rolled him onto his back and took him, so hard it shocked a cry out of him, and then he reached up for his cousin and gave in and gave in and left the future where it belonged. There was only this, and the fire of the wound and the iron taste of blood in his mouth as his cousin kissed him, forced his release, did it again, and again, until everything hurt and it was a relief, so good. So good, and when it was done he started shaking, and Lisinthir whipped the red blanket around him and swaddled him in it and rolled him into his arms, and through their skins Jahir felt his adoration, his concern, the ferocity of his love. Turning his face into Lisinthir’s neck he sagged, and gasped out, “Lin, oh Lin.”

The shock of reaction in his cousin’s skin mattered not at all. And after a heartbeat, not to Lisinthir either, who cradled him, dropped gentle kisses on the top of his head, and held him until his heart slowed and his limbs stopped shivering. When he was steady enough, Lisinthir left him briefly to fetch the warmed port, and brought the rim of a glass to his lips: mulled with sugar and cardamom, tart enough to sting his mouth and oh, the sugar, he needed the sugar.

“Slowly,” Lisinthir murmured, stroking his hair back from his jaw. “If you gulp it, you will be sorry.”

Jahir managed a husky chuckle and did as bade before tucking himself back into his cousin, who scooted back until he could rest his spine against the wall. And there they remained, furled in the dense, plush blanket, recovering in that warm safe place together.

At last, Lisinthir spoke, his voice a rasp. “Say it again.”

A smile curved Jahir’s lips. He didn’t lift his head. “Lin.”

Such a small sound, so short a breath could carry it. But that was the way with milk names, wasn’t it? Not that he would know as he had never had anyone to call him by one. He’d lacked for siblings, and the parents who cared more for their consequence than their heir would never have permitted the nurse, tutors, or servants to assign him a diminutive. That would have been encroaching. They had given him a long name, as was the custom, without ever bothering to contract it to derive the love name Eldritch children accepted as proof that they mattered.

Lisinthir let his head ease down until his nose was pressed against Jahir’s hair, and trembled. Would the pards have approved of his needing reassurance as a part of his cousin’s aftercare? They would have found it suspect, perhaps… but then, they hadn’t known he’d be cutting a therapist. He smiled at the touch that slid up his shoulder to rest against his face.

“You deserve one,” Jahir said, low. “You know it.”

And since he had so richly earned the admission, Lisinthir murmured, “I do now, Healer.”

Jahir lifted his head just enough to meet his eyes. “It is not the Healer who calls you so.”

Lisinthir kissed him between the brows, tasting the salt there. “Jahir. Whom all the world loves so well he needs no formal name.”

“My complex and perfect Lin Imtherili,” Jahir answered, accepting the touch with closed eyes. He exhaled, a cool plume of air against Lisinthir’s throat. “Oh, but you can cut me anytime.”

“Good, then?”

“God… and… Lady.” Jahir shuddered against him, managed a weak chuckle. “I could have done without the prophetic interlude, but the rest of it….”

“For me, too.” Lisinthir brushed his cousin’s hair back, observing the tangle that had fallen out of the braid and thinking that next time, he’d have to set aside a brush with the blanket. If, in fact, there was a next time. “I heard it too.”

“The words?” Jahir looked up at him.

“Change and choice.” Lisinthir leaned past him for the glass, brought it back for them both to sip from.

“Do you… do you know what it means?”

Did he? He’d recognized the cadence of the Chatcaavan tongue in the first words. But the others? And what was a single utterance like that, devoid of context? There would be no guessing at its inspiration. He rested his cheek against Jahir’s temple, watching his cousin drink, and said, “There is no hazarding the guess. For the best, I think.” Accepting the empty glass, he added, gently, “Are you clearer-headed? You sound it.”

“I feel it. But… languorous. For once…” Jahir trailed off, then blurted a laugh. “For once I want only to stretch every limb and luxuriate in my own satiation, like a decadent.”

“At last!” Lisinthir said, stroking the backs of his fingers across his cousin’s tacky cheekbone. “I have finally rendered you limp. Living Air help me. It takes a great deal to sate you, cousin…!”

Jahir snickered, and pressed his fingertips to his mouth. “God, but did I make such a noise.”

“Didn’t you, and so injurious to your dignity. It is almost as if I had seen you naked!”

That won him the laugh he’d wanted and he smiled as he brushed the tip of his nose against Jahir’s. “If you are fully in this world, then, I would like us to rinse off, and to see to the wound.”

“Was it dire?” Jahir glanced down, though there was no seeing the cut with the blanket swaddling them both. “It felt like nothing, and then as if you’d ripped me open.”

“A very, very shallow slice,” Lisinthir promised. “But aggravated when I petted it.”

“Then we should see to it, yes.” Jahir sighed. Quietly, “I did not mistake it, did I? You cut me where the dragons left their mark.”

Lisinthir kissed his cheek. “What else? Come now, my dear.”

They washed together in a warm silence, interrupted only by occasional laughter and gentle touches and exchanges of quips that were freighted with the hours they’d spent in one another’s arms. Once they were out of the shower, Jahir offered to see to the cut himself and Lisinthir refused him. “Mine to do,” he said. “As I put it there. Sit.”

“I don’t need proof that you won’t leave me wounded.”

“Yes,” Lisinthir said, “You do. And I need to prove to myself that I am not that man, as well.”

Jahir hesitated, brows lifting. With a chuckle, he said, “You school the healer.”

“I might have mentioned I have some vague grasp of psychologies.” Lisinthir set the flat of his hand on his cousin’s back, pressing him toward the bench beside the mirror. “Be still now. It’s seeping.”

“It seems a minor slice.”

“It is. I won’t over-fuss.” Lisinthir found the vial of antiseptic bandage and eased it open, and became aware that he was being stared at. “Cousin?”

“There is a thing we must discuss.”

“Ah,” Lisinthir murmured. “So I am about to receive my comeuppance now.”

Jahir’s mouth twitched. “It was you who taught me that discussion is necessary. Don’t blame me for learning the lesson when what I preferred was to pull you over me.”

“Mmm. Well, then, earned it I have.” Lisinthir spread the skin over the cut, ignoring the hiss, and started brushing the bandage on. “Speak, then.”

“You were right.”

“I like this so far.”

Jahir silvered the words. “I should hope.” More seriously: “You invited me to this tryst, believing that without it, I would never have pushed past my reticence, and thus never made sufficient peace with my body and my desires to approach the woman I wish to marry.”

An incredible beginning, one he had no idea how to react to. He continued what he was doing, focusing intently on the skin as the liquid began to cloud. “I had a feeling.”

“A prescient one, I think. I am far more comfortable with the idea of being with her now. Perhaps because what we are to one another is so transgressive that marrying her seems minor in compare. I find…” Jahir trailed off, nodded. “I find I am looking forward to what we might be to one another.”

“Then I have done a great thing,” Lisinthir murmured.

“But.” Jahir caught his wrist, startling him with the vehemence he felt through that palm. “But whatever she and I will be to one another… it will never be what we are to one another. Cousin, I have loved your teeth, your claws, your fist in my hair. But I have loved them because they were yours. Your dragons will take you far from me. And perhaps Sediryl—when I find the courage to tell her about all of this—will not be willing to give her husband to the occasional assignation at another man's feet. But if those things keep us from consummation again, I will seek no other cruel hand. Gentleness I can do with another. But this belongs to you.”

This speech was intolerable, and only growing more so. “Cousin—”

But Jahir spoke over him. “Yours was my first rough touch, and the only I want. If not you, then no one. The thought of celibacy does not trouble me the way it would another.”

“You must not miss me,” Lisinthir breathed. “Cousin, you must not.”

“But I would.” Jahir held him in place by the wrist, so gentle to be so inexorable. “I would miss you like a limb ripped from me, the way I will miss Vasiht'h when he has passed on. But it will not sway me. My needs might be needs, but you are not replaceable, and I will suffer no other hand. None will do.” He breathed in and let it out, and the sweetness of that smile, and the hunger in it, and the wistfulness…. “After what we have just done, how can I not know? How can you not?”

The pace of his heart was frenetic enough to nauseate him. Such an incredible thing to be promised, and he knew, absolutely knew that he could not accept it. And yet, he had asked Jahir to accept something similar with his hand when they’d come back to the suite, hadn’t he? To risk rejection and denial, and the shattering of trust.

It was his faith in Jahir’s constancy that made the idea unbearable. Because he could not, would not, stand in the way of his cousin’s future bliss. And because he didn’t know if he would survive the war to return, even were he welcome.

He tried to find refuge in humor, but the words came out silvered and white. “I'm not sure whether to be appalled at the thought that I might accidentally prevent you from ever again achieving your satiation... or honored. Such a romantic, cousin.”

Still holding him in place, Jahir said, “We are who we are, Imtherili. Are we not?” And the challenge in his eyes was so charming, Lisinthir couldn’t help but warm to it.

“Always, Galare.”

Jahir searched his eyes. “I don’t expect you to accept this until you return from battle and find my arms have not closed to you. So I will say: promise me, cousin, that you will use your belt on me when next we meet.”

“God and Living Air,” Lisinthir said with a groan. “Must you place me in such a position, cousin!”

Jahir’s mouth twitched, but his eyes were far too grave. “Promise me.”

“I do,” Lisinthir said. “If we exit the next chapter of our lives intact and you are able to welcome me, I will not hold back.”

“Good. Then I will teach you as you so like to teach others. By the doing.” Jahir kissed his wrist and let it go. “And I am growing cold and want very much to be held by the man who is so good with a blade. And you see, I have even shaded it crimson.”

“Not, I hope, because you want more tonight,” Lisinthir said, resuming with the bandage. “Your appetites have used me up, cousin.”

“I’ll believe that when we retire and you remain uninterested.”

“I shall have to remember that knives and whips make you more assertive once you’ve been under them.”

Jahir paused. “Not more assertive. More comfortable.”

Lisinthir glanced at him, found him bemused, smiling, and… relaxed.

“I like my skin right now,” Jahir finished. “You have made my needs sacred. I am…” He trailed off, then said in wonderment, “Happy. Just that.”

“Cousin,” Lisinthir murmured, finishing with the wound despite his trembling fingers, “You break my heart.”

“Only because I want into it.”

Lisinthir set the vial aside and cupped Jahir’s face. He could find no words, but resting his eyes on his cousin’s, he needed none. They kissed, lingering, savoring the tenderness of bruised flesh. Resting his brow against Jahir’s, Lisinthir said, “Cousin.”

“Lin. Take me to bed.”

And he did.