CHAPTER 8

Knowing that his cousin was likely to be distracted until they had an answer about his brother, Lisinthir opted to escort Jahir to a more familiar environment for dinner. They took it at an outdoor café in the City—known thus in opposition to the Hull—on the second floor balcony where a scattering of tables overlooked the pedestrian thoroughfares that all starbases built their civilian metropolises around. As Lisinthir had expected, the restaurant was similar enough to venues on Starbase Veta that it worked its subliminal magic on his cousin’s stress level. He found it amusing that halfway through the meal, Jahir eyed him suddenly and said, “I know what you’re doing.”

“I know you know, Healer.” Lisinthir smiled at him over their plates. “This hasn’t prevented it from working.” When Jahir sighed, he added, “You may pay for this meal, also.”

“Am I to pay for all of them, then?”

“As I will be paying for other things we’ll be using….”

“Like the masks?”

“Like the masks,” Lisinthir said. “And the bed. Which we have made very good use of so far, you’ll have noted.”

It delighted him that he could still make Jahir blush, just as much as it delighted him that his cousin maintained an otherwise flawless control over his comportment. They could have been discussing the weather except for that faint hint of peach over the cheekbones. “I suppose there is a fee associated with the entrance to this club, as well, which you have already paid for.”

“What else?” Lisinthir chuckled. “I fear you cannot wrest that privilege from me—I have sent our payment in advance. But rest at ease, cousin my dear. The prices they charge for drinks are appalling. You can take that tab if you so wish.”

“It amused you,” Jahir said. “That I knew you’d paid already.”

“Trying your talent on me?” Lisinthir asked, breaking himself a piece of the soft, flat bread.

“And if I was?”

“Then we have learned something about the limitations of your devastating mind-mage ability,” Lisinthir said. “I was amused, yes. But not that you knew what I was doing.”

“No?”

“No. I found it humorous that I have now begun to expect you to outthink most every ploy I try on you, once you put your mind to it.”

“And this is funny… why?”

“It is funny, exactly. Not ‘there is some irony here that I find humorous.’ Funny, as in ‘I enjoy it. It pleases me.’”

Jahir canted his head.

“It’s fun to be right about you, when being right about you involves assuming you have better than average intelligence and wit.” Lisinthir lifted a brow. “So your talent told you I was amused, but not why. Best keep that in mind when you use it.”

“That one can know what another person feels and not the reason for it?”

“And in fact, it can lead you to erroneous conclusions entirely.”

“For the best then that I am not planning to make any decisions based on that data,” Jahir said.

“Which you have the leisure to do… now. But what happens when you need the data?” Lisinthir rolled the bread and dipped it in the creamed cheese it had been served with. He expected the considering silence, and knew without lifting his head that his cousin was studying him the way he would have a complex and interesting patient. Which was why they had to have this discussion, in the end.

“With you it is always the fate of nations,” Jahir said at last. “The stakes in my life are somewhat less extreme than yours. You have noticed.”

“What I have noticed,” Lisinthir replied, “is that you habitually use all your powers of observation in every arena of your life, cousin. No doubt you use them in your work to evaluate your clients, and they would be the first to tell you their problems are high enough stakes for them.”

“This is not a power I can afford to use.”

“This is a power you cannot afford to ignore, is what you should be saying.” Lisinthir tried the cheese, found it heavy, judged his cousin would eat none of it. He’d had his hands on Jahir a great deal in the past day, enough to learn that at least part of the reason his cousin tended toward cold was the lack of even the smallest insulating layer of fat between his skin and the muscles swimming had layered on his frame. In more ways than one did his cousin tend toward mortification of the flesh, though Lisinthir thought the eating was less a conscious attempt at self-harm and more a product of sublimated anxiety.

Eating was a thing of the body. He would have to see what he could do about that.

Jahir was still frowning at him, so he said, “Would you prefer this ability to manifest when you want it to lie fallow? It will control you if you do not control it.”

To his surprise, Jahir said, quiet, “I know.” And drew in a long, shaky breath. “I can tell because I keep reaching for you.”

“What of the other diners?” Lisinthir asked, interest piqued.

“I think I might be trying so hard to reach you in order to keep myself from accidentally reaching for them.”

Too much pathos in that comment for his taste. Lisinthir had more of the bread, then said, “All the awkwardness of puberty, all over again. Gawky limbs and too-tall legs and the ground suddenly far too far away.”

Jahir covered his smile with a hand, looking away a moment. Then said, “I still know what you’re doing.”

“That’s fine,” Lisinthir answered, amused. “It’s still working.”

The conversation afterwards involved trivialities, allowed no doubt because his cousin was using them to bleed off Jahir’s tension. Since he had tension that needed it, he submitted to the coddling, even found himself grateful. By the time they returned to his room, they had an answer. Or a distinct lack of answer, for the note he’d received was a masterwork of brevity.

“Did you receive any word?” Jahir asked, trying to relax his jaw and shoulders. “I have not heard back from my lady mother, and the Queen’s chancellor says only that they are aware of my brother’s whereabouts.”

“Fleet is also aware of them.” Lisinthir tapped his tablet. “As they say he is not on the missing list.”

“That’s all.”

“That would be all they need to say. If he had been missing, they would have said.”

“All this tells us is where he’s not,” Jahir said, frustrated. “It doesn’t tell us where he is!”

Lisinthir set the tablet aside and braced a boot on the side of the desk, watching him. “He doesn’t want to be found, cousin. He must have his reasons.”

“His reasons!”

“His reasons,” Lisinthir agreed. “And in the fullness of time perhaps he will reveal them to you. But we now know, as far as we can know, that he is alive and not in the hands of our enemies.”

“This is a dangerous game to give so many of my own to,” Jahir said, touching his brow with his fingers. “You and now Amber. Who next?”

“You assume he is dancing with dragons, cousin.”

“What else, if Fleet knows where he is but will not say… and the Queen’s own office will not answer a family member’s query?” Jahir tucked his hands under his armpits, trying to warm them. “You know as well as I that she has more than one arrow in that quiver. I would not at all be surprised to discover she’d recruited Amber for something. And knowing him, he would have been glad to do it.”

“Well, then, perhaps he is about her work—and ours. Perhaps. You may or may not be involved, yes? And think of your beloved who will be remaining safe behind if you insist on throwing yourself into the fray.” Lisinthir canted his head. “He did say he would stay behind, didn’t he?”

“Yes.” Jahir sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. “Yes, and I think he will when he realizes how much easier it will be on me if I go. Better to be parted than to worry about him.”

“Then that is one less hostage to fate,” Lisinthir said. “And Sediryl as well. She is on a starbase, is she not? Rung ‘round with Fleet vessels resupplying! Not likely to run into trouble.”

“No.” He sighed again, and with that released his anxieties as best he could. “No, you’re right. I borrow trouble. But only because I’ve never been confronted with so much trouble to borrow.” He essayed a lopsided smile. “You will forgive me for fretting, I hope.”

“I shall, yes. And now, I think, is a perfect time for us to dress for our descent back into the Trenches.”

“To dress, yes,” Jahir murmured. “And I have not the first notion how to do so. So… I suppose I shall have to let you advise me.”

“Shall you!”

The expression on his cousin’s face was disquieting. Or flattering, depending on one’s perspective. Jahir hastened to add a caveat. “So long as you don’t leave too much of me exposed.”

Lisinthir snorted. “You are not likely to take cold in a crowded dance club. Rather the opposite.”

“Nonetheless—”

“Nonetheless,” Lisinthir said. “We shall observe the proprieties.”

The masks had been delivered via Pad, an extravagance in keeping with their price; it was instructive that the hotel room had a specific locale behind the bar where such Pad-pushed purchases could be received. Lisinthir sent him to fetch the boxes while going through their wardrobe, or more likely, some catalog he could use to buy something utterly inappropriate, and while he did so Jahir looked again at his mask, touched the edge of a filigreed wing. He’d expected it to look outlandish deprived of the museum-like context of the shop. Instead, it looked more real somehow, as if it belonged in someone’s hands.

“You still like it,” Lisinthir observed, startling him from his contemplation.

“It is a jewel.” Jahir looked at the smudge he’d left on it, rueful. “If a high-maintenance one.”

Lisinthir laughed. “All the best things in life are high-maintenance, cousin.”

Were they? He frowned as Lisinthir guided him toward the bathroom. “Your rationale?”

“Because the things that matter are the things you dedicate your life to, willingly,” his cousin said, handing him a pair of pants. “That would seem the definition of ‘high-maintenance.’”

Put that way… Jahir rubbed the fabric between his fingers and said, “These pants are too thin.”

“Go put them on anyway.”

He sighed. “At least tell me I am allowed a shirt.”

“I am the essence of kindness, cousin. I am permitting you two.”

“One of them must be transparent.”

Lisinthir grinned. “Close.”

Jahir eyed him, but dressed anyway. The pants reminded him of riding breeches, tight but flexible; in keeping with the Alliance’s near-magical way with materials, they were very thin to also be so opaque, and a dark royal blue in color… no doubt to match the lapis panels on the mask. The first shirt, handed to him absently, was white, also of some thin, soft fabric that clung, with sleeves that reached almost to the knuckle and a high neck. The bottom hem was an annoying length: not long enough to tuck in, but not short enough to be rejected for riding above the waistline of the pants. He was scowling at it when Lisinthir handed him the second shirt: a silver gossamer, with a lower neck and sleeves that opened at the wrist just enough to hang. Unlike the first shirt, it was long enough to be tucked in, but too dense. He had to leave it on over the pants.

“There, see?” Lisinthir said, coming up behind him and slipping his arms around his waist. “Once you are booted, you will be covered from neck to fingers to toes.” They stared at themselves in the mirror until Lisinthir’s mouth began to twitch. “What?”

“It’s… not neat.”

His traitorous cousin laughed. “It’s not, no. We won’t be either by the end of the night.”

His reflection in the mirror didn’t look like him: too casual, too… loose. He could concede the dishevelment, but not, “It’s so thin.”

“You’ll need something light if you’re not to grow faint from over-exertion.” Lisinthir kissed the back of his neck. “And there are other compensations.”

“Other—” Jahir stopped abruptly at the wicked pinch, vision bleeding white. His knees trembled.

“As I said,” Lisinthir murmured, and nipped his ear. “Braid your hair. It will be less noticeable thus. I will be back.”

His fingers were a little unsteady, but he managed to ignore the throbbing of afflicted flesh and outraged desire to do as asked. Waiting, he rested his hands on the vanity and stared at himself, at the dilation of his pupils and the flush that tinted his cheekbones. And even if the clothing was less precise than he liked—one of the sleeves was riding up a little higher on his hand than the other and he was struggling not to adjust it—he was forced to admit he didn’t look… bad… this way. Nowhere near as dissolute as he’d feared when he’d agreed to the dance club. Though he still wished they would give it up and stay in. Perhaps he might convince Lisinthir with the proper plea? He turned from the mirror and halted abruptly.

Lisinthir had dressed Jahir so that he might walk into a coffee shop without remark. He had not bothered with such niceties for himself. Black boots, black pants—they looked like leather but were probably something as thin as his own—and a long-sleeved black shirt with a high collar that opened all the way to his navel, exposing a long vee of white skin and the pale gray shadows of claw scars. Over the shirt he wore black opera gloves with claw-tipped fingers. In leather. Surmounted by the mask with its horns he looked the dragon he was under the skin.

Jahir’s heart lurched, giving a tremendous double beat before it stumbled.

“Yes?” Lisinthir said, sliding his palms up Jahir’s arms.

“Yes,” Jahir answered, in Chatcaavan. And continued in that tongue, hoping but also terrified, “Keep me here tonight?”

“Mm.” A smile he felt just before Lisinthir pressed it to his lips. “Your accent improves.” And then, after another biting kiss, “But no. We go out, then we come in.”

Jahir sighed against his mouth and resorted to Universal. “I have not learned the language well enough if you can deny me.”

Lisinthir laughed. “Your ulterior motive surfaces.”

“Some of it, at least. I am crippled by the inability to call you something sweetly affecting.” Jahir closed his eyes, submitting to the caress on the back of his neck, made far too easy with the nape exposed by the braid. “There is no ‘my lord’ at all that I have seen in my studies.”

“No,” Lisinthir agreed. “They don’t have our notion of feudal ranking. But they do have titles. It is considered one of the ways to leave one’s insignificance behind. One prefers them to names.”

“Not unlike us,” Jahir murmured, thinking of all the names he and Lisinthir used. “So I should find something for you, if I want to distract you. Is that it? A Chatcaavan title.”

“If you can think of one,” Lisinthir said, amused. He was twisting Jahir’s braid around a finger, and the tug kept dragging his mind from its focus. Between his cousin’s proximity and his own rogue talent, it was far too easy to just… fall forward, into the haze of emotion and dimly sensed memory: of talons shredding skin, of howled challenges, of long, licking kisses that tasted of hekkret, exchanged in a dark and foreign bed. Jahir felt as if he was swimming in an unlit sea, bloodwarm and deep. He came up for air, exhaled, and found a word in the tongue of dragons. “Hunter.”

Lisinthir stiffened against him.

“Yes?” Jahir leaned back. “What one calls a master of hunting, because only such a master would be given the title.”

“Don’t tell me this word was in your vocabulary lessons.” Lisinthir touched a clawed fingertip to Jahir’s lip. The pinprick there was sharp: formed leather, and it tasted like it.

“No,” Jahir said, feeling his way through the process. “It was under your skin, awaiting release.” He closed his eyes as his cousin’s free hand smoothed down his back, lower, pulled him possessively near. “Hunter,” he said again, low.

“And you are my Delight,” Lisinthir said against his ear. And sighed out. “Your distraction very nearly worked—”

“You like your title?”

Lisinthir growled. “Impertinent cousin mine. Yes, and you can feel it. But we are due at the dance club, so we are going.” He stepped away and took Jahir’s hand, kissing it, and used their third language, which, Jahir decided, was definitely the language of sex. “Now, my Delight.”

That they managed to gain the corridor Lisinthir counted a victory, and a necessary one, for his cousin’s use of his talent to seine for vocabulary struck him as astonishing. He’d been certain that the discovery that they were apparently mind-mages would have forever put Jahir off the possibility of employing those talents to win the war… but the afternoon riding, and now this… it made him wonder if his cousin was not lost to the cause. They had most of two weeks. By the end of them, perhaps things would change? And then… what? And how could he usher his cousin to that place?

Jahir was casting glances at him as they walked down the hall.

“Yes?” he asked, wondering more than ever what was under that carefully controlled exterior.

“You have done me a kindness,” Jahir observed. “No one is going to look at me at all, given the choice between us.”

Lisinthir chuckled. “There was no need to completely discomfit you when I am capable of being outrageous enough for us both.”

Jahir’s eyes traveled up toward the horns of the mask. “You have a flair for the dramatic.”

“Don’t we all?”

His cousin huffed softly. “It can be suppressed.”

“And suppression has led you down so many useful roads, has it.”

That blush, Lisinthir judged, was less modesty and more true embarrassment. He paused in the empty corridor outside their suite and set a hand on his cousin’s throat, just under the chin. He’d left very little of Jahir’s skin uncovered, and this was one of the few places he could touch, gather his cousin’s feelings with the stroke of his clawed fingertips. Even through the leather he could feel them now. “I apologize. That was too barbed a riposte.”

Jahir was looking down, and said nothing immediately. He cleared his throat. “Merited, I judge.” Quieter, “I… am not sure I can do what you are asking of me.”

Lisinthir trailed his fingertips up, just enough to set them on his cousin’s chin.

“I know it seems ridiculous that I might have found it easier to lie beneath you, but… walking into a place like this…” Jahir lifted his eyes, and not all the frame of the elaborate mask could distract from the anxiety there. There was too much predator in him, Lisinthir thought regretfully, to fail to focus on distress. “It’s crowded. I now have a… a rogue talent. And…” A pained laugh. “I have seen how people dance in places like this, cousin. I don’t know that I can move with that much abandon.”

“I am grateful that you trust me enough to reveal these things to me,” Lisinthir said, shading the words white and silver. He let his thumb brush lightly over the edge of his cousin’s lower lip. “Will you also trust me enough to bring you through this experience?”

“Is it so important that I must?”

Just like that, he knew. “When it was a dance, no. Even when it was intended as elaborate foreplay for what I intended for you later. But now… yes, I think it is.”

“Because?” Jahir asked, quiet.

“Because,” Lisinthir answered. “I want you to put that rogue talent to use in an entirely new fashion.”

The conversation had driven the wounded look from his cousin’s eyes, at least. Once again, Jahir was thinking—and wary. “That being.”

“Unlike you, I have no qualms about dancing in a crowd full of euphoric Pelted celebrants.” Lisinthir grinned, let that grin fade. “So borrow that from me.”

“Borrow it.”

“Yes,” Lisinthir said. “You can sense my emotions. You have used that knowledge to let me guide your hand on the reins of a horse—very well. We know now that you can evoke a physical communion through this ability of yours. Let us see if you can maintain an emotional one. Borrow my ability to enjoy the experience while we’re there.”

“Your courage,” Jahir answered, quiet. “That is what I lack.”

Lisinthir snorted. “My exhibitionist streak, more like.”

“Your…!” Jahir stopped, laughed. “You are no exhibitionist, cousin.” He paused. “Are you?”

Lisinthir grinned at him. “Let us find out, shall we? An hour or two of you siphoning off my responses should provide plenty of fodder for psychoanalysis. I shall expect a report of you later.”

“As if I will not be busy with other distractions then.” Jahir paused. “You are serious. You are inviting me to spy on your emotional state.”

“I am inviting you to use my emotional state to bolster your own. To see if it is possible.”

“And if it’s not?”

“Then,” Lisinthir said, “We return, and I proceed to find some new way to embarrass you into embracing your physical body.”

Jahir frowned, looked down the corridor. “And if it is possible….”

“Then you have a new weapon in your arsenal, do you not? Or at least, you’ll have spent some time profitably in practicing your new and unwanted talent, which is the only way you’ll be able to control it in the future.” Lisinthir let his fingers trail down until they rested flat over the notch at the base of his cousin’s throat, where the clawtips could prick through both layers of fabric. “Start now.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. While we are in relative peace, and you can struggle with how headlong you want to fall into the current of my emotions. Once we arrive at our destination you may be too busy with other stimuli.”

“And this bothers you not at all,” Jahir murmured.

“It’s you, cousin. You are welcome. So. Reach for me.”

Just like that: Reach for me. Had his cousin always been so open? Was it openness at all, or merely pragmatism? To Lisinthir’s thinking, their talents conveyed upon them advantages that were there to be used. One made the most of one’s strengths and minimized one’s flaws. Reach for it, as if what he asked was some feat of strength rather than an abomination before God and Goddess. Except that by Lisinthir’s thinking, it was no such thing. And Vasiht’h would have agreed with Lisinthir… not only agreed, but insisted it was a divine gift.

And if the two people he trusted most disagreed with him, he surely owed them the courtesy of re-examining his premises.

So, he reached. He was only dimly aware of the faculties that permitted it, but he could sense his cousin’s edges as if Lisinthir was sheathed in heat and smoke and something that tasted on his tongue like blood and smelled like ambergris. It was very little like the mindline, which bloomed in him as if Vasiht’h lived in his body with him. Lisinthir was outside of him, and exotic.

He had not wanted to enjoy the communion that had flared between them during their afternoon ride. He didn’t want to enjoy this. But there was something heady about drinking from the well of Lisinthir’s confidence, knowing that it wasn’t his but that he could wrap it around himself like a robe against the cold.

“And?” Lisinthir asked, gentle.

“You have such distinct edges,” Jahir said, and didn’t know where the observation had come from.

“Dull knives are useless for their purpose,” Lisinthir said, and having turned this talent on him, Jahir could sense that it had been intended twice: as true observation, and as titillation.

“Still teasing,” Jahir said, cheeks too hot.

“I promise, cousin,” Lisinthir said. “There will be a knife. I intend to take you with me to pick up the one I’ve had made for you.”

Jahir stopped abruptly, lost the connection between them, lost everything to the inchoate needs that tangled in him.

Lisinthir stopped as well. “Did you think I would tease you about this? When you need so badly?”

“I didn’t think you’d…”

“Be willing?”

“I don’t know,” Jahir admitted, throat closed around his voice. “There are things that shouldn’t be encouraged.”

For once his cousin remained at a remove, rather than closing the distance between them and addling Jahir’s head with his proximity, his touch. “It may be that this need is a manifestation of your need to mortify yourself. If it is, I will not indulge it. I am not here to help you unmake yourself. But if it is something else… then that, we should know.”

“Should we?” Jahir asked, low.

“You would live in ignorance?”

“No,” Jahir admitted. “No. But you have observed I am… very good at compartmentalizing.”

“If by that you mean you tend to trap your pain into very small boxes that you can shove into dark and unexamined corners… then yes. I agree that you are. The problem, cousin, is that you also trap your needs into those very small boxes… and until we open them, we won’t be able to tell which you’ve hidden.”

“You make all these things sound so reasonable.” Jahir sighed and admitted, shadowing the words, “I don’t like being this conflicted, cousin. I would not have called myself your equal in decisiveness before, but this…”

“Truly is a wound.” Lisinthir did come closer then, slid an arm around him, pulled him close. The hand that came to rest beneath the braid on the back of his neck was somehow more intimate than any kiss… perhaps because it had been set there with the obvious intent of guarding his spine. “Mine is a rough healing, I am afraid, but I think nothing less will serve you now.”

“No.” Jahir smiled a little, thinking of the dormant mindline. “Vasiht’h has been at work on me for years now with a gentle hand. Sometimes one needs the surgeon’s touch, not the therapist’s.”

“A bit of a muddle in the metaphor there, cousin.”

“You have that effect on me.”

Lisinthir chuckled softly. “Come. What we do is needed.”

Jahir sighed and followed. But as they walked, he concentrated on borrowing the cloak of his cousin’s assurance and winding it ever more tightly around his anxious psyche.

The club was called Exodus, the name emblazoned above the dark maw of its entrance in fluorescent blue. By the time they’d threaded the crowds still filling the Trenches, Jahir’s eyes had acclimated to the weirdling light that illumined this would-be underworld. Strands of dimly glowing bulbs shaped like stars or globes draped the galleria near its shops and restaurants, but the descent took them to places lit only by blacklights and their effect on pale clothes and fur. It was as if they’d dived into an abyssal cavern, one thronged by schools of luminescent fish, and every casual brush sent a shock through him: gossamers of emotions, broken thoughts, and a gestalt that seemed born of their desire to be here, in the club district.

There was music. It pounded against his skin like a second heart from outside the doors; he could only imagine what it would be like inside. It was not the source of that unifying pressure, but a symptom of it, and the beat seemed to echo through every person he pushed past.

Naturally his cousin remained sanguine, like a predator of the depths cutting past knots of people and trailing their sudden avaricious gazes. It was hard to blame them when Lisinthir wore his horns with the authority of a dragon. Jahir couldn’t imagine what it was like for strangers, but he knew how his cousin had won the right to that confidence and watching him reveal it was… affecting. Gathering Lisinthir’s emotions brought the taste of blood back into his mouth, a metallic tingle that stung his nostrils. He inhaled, hard, and caught his cousin’s hand before they could be separated as they passed into the club.

The crowd outside had been nothing compared to the press within. There were arteries that allowed flow around the edges of the dance floor, carrying people to and from the bars and the restrooms. But the floor was everything, and it was three stories tall, staggered like the seating in a theater. There were so many people dancing he saw them first as a single writhing mass.

He nearly shut down then. He might have, and not known it. But Lisinthir swept him off to one of the darkened corners and held him, and it was less embrace and more the hold of a healer immobilizing a panicked patient.

“Breathe,” Lisinthir murmured.

“There are so many people…!”

“Stop thinking about them and breathe.”

Jahir closed his eyes. The music was physically shaking him, up through the soles, in through his back.

“Breathe,” Lisinthir said again, and because this time it was a command, Jahir obeyed, let his cousin protect him—ridiculously—from the terrors of a club.

“Don’t,” Lisinthir added. “Keep breathing. And don’t fight the music. Let it have you.”

The words sent a shudder through him that worked against the rhythm, like the ripples from separate pebbles dropped in a pond. “I can’t do—”

“Stop talking,” Lisinthir said, and shook his head. “Always with the talking, cousin.” He rested his clawed fingertips on Jahir’s lips. “Stop.”

He stopped, let the music thrash him, over and over. The relentlessness of it reminded him of more carnal things and his knees weakened.

“Better,” his cousin murmured. “Now, fall further into me.”

“Further?”

“You are already in me, or you wouldn’t be able to hear me over all this noise so easily.” Lisinthir smiled, and the mask transformed mischief into wickedness. “So yes. Further forward. So I might teach you something.”

He hesitated until a hand snaked to his back and pressed the claws against his thin shirts. He stiffened.

“Relax,” Lisinthir said, and because it was a command, and because those claws were threatening, he gave in… and discovered, swamped in his cousin’s emotions, that the one thing Lisinthir didn’t feel was overwhelmed. He was holding all the people around him at bay effortlessly, and the ease of it nearly jerked him from the communion. The clawtip pressure forced him back.

“I don’t understand how you do it!”

Lisinthir sighed and used his free hand to touch Jahir’s lips. “It is because you live in your mind too much, cousin. If you lived in your body you would be able to tell the difference between the inside of your own head and the insides of others’.”

“It can’t be that easy,” Jahir said.

“It is simple,” Lisinthir corrected. “But easy? For you? No. And that is why we are going to dance and you are going to live in your body. Because I am going to make you.”

Before Jahir could ask how, Lisinthir pulled him out of the shadows and into the dance, and it was that: one dance, a single thing made of hundreds of bodies… and his cousin guided him to its heart as if he was carving them a path because, Jahir realized through the communion, Lisinthir was: was testing his own new abilities by deflecting people just enough to keep them from jostling them. He wanted to say so—wanted to say that he understood that the dance club was important now for his cousin as well, as a way to test himself—but then he was in the middle of it and in Lisinthir’s arms.

There was no stepping back. There was no room. And the hands on him were unyielding, and through them he fell into his cousin—into the confidence of dragons, and their hungers, and their pleasure at his submission. There was nothing shy about a dragon.

Let go, all of it hissed in Chatcaavan.

Let go, the pattern whispered, in their birth tongue.

Lisinthir leaned into him and said into his ear, in the limitless potential of Universal: “Let go.”

He was masked in his disguise. His cousin, unveiled by his. Power borrowed made him strong, and through it he sensed the control that kept the space around them clear. Lisinthir’s hands pet him into his body, and seated there he pushed away the thoughts and emotions of everyone around them, until all that remained was the music, his body, and power… and his body was not the least of those things. The sweat that made the mask cling to his cheeks. The pulse, so swift now it beat in time with the music, and so hard he could feel it in his neck and wrists. His answer to his cousin’s desire, painfully intense, and the pinprick promise of the clawtips on his hip, on his neck.

The world spun away, and he danced.

How long they spent there, in that cocoon of perfect synchronicity, he didn’t know. But his mouth was parched, and as always his cousin seemed to know and drew him through the mass of dancers to the bar, choosing its farthest corner at the wall. In that darkness, Lisinthir pulled him close by the back of his neck and didn’t kiss him—didn’t kiss him, which was frustration beyond bearing, and yet he savored the frustration, lived in it, felt a peace in surrendering to it.

“Better,” Lisinthir murmured, and this time it was a comment that was also a question.

“Better,” he agreed. And then, quieter, “You are testing your power.”

“Not only that,” Lisinthir said, “I am using your power to aim mine.” Into Jahir’s silence, he ordered for them both, pitching his voice to be heard over the music... which they hadn’t needed to do amongst themselves. How was that possible? Were they communicating the words through skin? Through air? Lounging against the bar, one elbow on it and his palm propping up his cheek, Lisinthir smiled a dragon’s smile at him, too dangerous to be so seductive. “We are here to learn the limits of these new abilities, yes? And it is easy enough to use mine for obvious purposes. I do not have your view into the hearts of others, though. So I have been seeing if it is possible to ride your power the way you can ride mine.”

“And can you?” Jahir asked, startled.

Lisinthir nodded, just once, slowly.

“God and Lady. How... how is that possible?”

Their drinks arrived. He had water, which was all that he wanted; Lisinthir had eschewed alcohol in favor of tonic water, from the smell.

“I couldn’t tell you. What theory the priests could teach us was scant, you’ll recall. Certainly nothing like this was in the catechism.”

“Save as proof of sin and evil?”

Lisinthir snorted.

“But no,” Jahir agreed. “What is it like, then? What do you do?”

“If I am mindful,” Lisinthir said, “and you are already connected with me, it is as if there’s a field around you that paints everyone with their emotional state. I can look through it and see what you see. Imperfectly, and with effort. And with limitations I don’t quite understand. I can read the dancers on the mezzanine, though the ones nearer us but hidden behind other dancers are occluded... perhaps by one another, visually or metaphysically.”

“And anyone you can see....”

“So far, I can nudge. Not by controlling their bodies, oddly... it is almost as if I push the air between them. That makes it easier, which is in fact how I discovered it. I was straining for distance, and ceasing to afflict individual bodies allows for a significant increase in space covered.”

The thought that this ability might reach near-magical levels of manipulation was so unbelievable that he found himself simply accepting it. How much more fantastic was it for them to be able to expand air as to control people’s limbs? And yet... “You are conducting an experiment on strangers. Without their consent.”

Lisinthir had a sip of the tonic water. “Yes.” When he lifted his eyes, Jahir saw the reflection of that anger in them from the forest, the one that whispered of things he had never seen and had no desire to see. And because he couldn’t answer the challenge in Lisinthir’s eyes without submitting to the shattering of that ignorance—because he half-feared that if he saw the atrocities that had been visited on innocents, he would be even more committed to the use of their talents than his cousin—he let it go. “You are not tripping them, at least?”

Lisinthir laughed. “In this crowd? If I did, they’d bounce off someone before they fell. But no, I was not trying to tangle their feet. Just to open spaces between them, the way I was doing with us.”

“It worked,” Jahir said.

Lisinthir sipped from his cup. “It worked. So are you appalled?”

Was he? “I am parched near to hoarseness. I am exhausted. I am driven almost mad with frustration that you are sitting at arm’s length from me. But no, I am not appalled. I think... I am awed.”

Lisinthir cocked a brow at him.

“I know,” Jahir said. “It seems a ridiculous turnabout from someone who was horrified not so long ago. But even I can see the potential in it. If ever we needed it, which I dearly hope we don’t.”

His cousin swirled the ice in his glass, letting that lie. Instead he said, “You sit as if you wish me to kiss you. If I pressed my attentions on you in public, you would not be pleased with me.”

“That dancing was very nearly lovemaking, and quite public.”

Lisinthir chuckled, low. “You noticed. I thought you too far gone in my feelings to have any time for your own.”

As if…! Jahir was trying not to notice his own: the mortification that such public display inevitably evoked dampened by the ardor he had stopped fighting. “Can you use my own ability to sense my feelings?” Jahir asked suddenly.

“I... had not tried?” Lisinthir eyed him, then laughed, though that laugh did not quite cover the sudden avaricious gleam in his eye. “Oh, you are clever!”

“I have my moments,” Jahir said.

“Rather many of them, I think. You are too modest. And too sedentary. Come, let us go back.”

“Go back!”

“The night is young, cousin. And I won’t settle for mere frustration. I accept the reprimand of suffering your thwarted desire through the lens of your talent…but if you thought it would be sufficient to cloud me with fever…” He paused, laughed. “You should know better.”

“I suppose I should.” Jahir drank down the rest of his glass, then accepted the gloved hand. There were promises in it he could feel now without the skin to skin contact, and he let those promises carry him back into the mob. It was beginning to feel natural, drawing his cousin’s emotions to him—knowing Lisinthir was using that to borrow his abilities made their existence, their use inevitable. And inevitability calmed him in a way choices never seemed to.

Lisinthir drew him close until there was no space between them. “Better,” he murmured against Jahir’s ear, almost lost against the music.

Give in

Reach out

“Better,” his cousin said on a sigh, and they danced, and as one they gathered the euphoria of the room and slid among its packed crowds, leaving trails of space behind them as talent worked as intimately as the bodies they used to seat those talents. Frustration became need; need became surrender; surrender became pliability, until Jahir felt he was a shape formed by Lisinthir’s hands on him.

Twice more, they left the crowd to restore themselves; by the time Lisinthir led him to the exit, Jahir wondered if he would disappoint his cousin, who’d brought him here to find his body’s edges. He’d found them and lost them again in a soft haze, long past the point of desire and well into some new place where everything was bearable except when it was unbearable, beautiful. He was grateful beyond speech when Lisinthir looped an arm around his waist and guided him away from the fluorescence and the shadows and the music that was too remote and too loud at once.

The lift was very far away. Observing this, staggering, he said, “I am drunk.”

“Without a single sip of liquor,” Lisinthir agreed. The lift opened for them, and closed behind them, and then it brought up its lights and the lights blinded him. He hid his face against his cousin’s shoulder, swaying against the arm around his waist.

“Stay with me, cousin,” Lisinthir murmured.

There, at the edge of his perception: such resolution, hard as steel, as knives. That was Lisinthir. Had Jahir thought his talent unnatural? But it was so natural to know. Lisinthir was a knife, so how could he not feel it?

“You are taking me back to the suite,” Jahir murmured. The sudden silence was a vast, muffling weight after the din in the club. He could barely hear himself. “To deflower me.”

“Again,” Lisinthir said, with a hint of amusement. “You have already been, you recall.”

“What did you do to me?” Jahir asked. But no, wrong question. “What do you do to me?”

The smile then was gentler; he could hear it or feel it, or both. “I love you.”

The corridor leading to their room was too long. And too large. And too empty. “I love you also, but I feel….”

“Destroyed?”

“As if that was not the answer I was looking for.”

Lisinthir laughed. “Very good! If you can pretend to primness, you are coming back to me.” He waved the door open then pushed Jahir against the wall, and this seemed inevitable, and that was good. That was just right. He remembered a time long removed from this one, on the courier, with the burning hekkret and his cousin pressing him against a wall. “I like walls,” he said, thoughtful.

“Good,” Lisinthir said. “I like them too.” And kissed him quiet, kissed all the thoughts in his head away, scattering them like glass shards from a dropped vase. The kiss demanded, was molten, was glory, and a distraction from his cousin leaning on him slowly, more and more until breathing was an effort. That was unbearably good. The wall was even better, because the wall was holding him up. No, the wall was keeping him from breathing because it wouldn’t give beneath his cousin’s weight, and he was trapped between them….

He couldn’t breathe into the kiss. He was coming apart and it was good, so tremendously good. Coming apart but not quite there, cognizant enough to feel the caress of gloved fingertips along his temple.

Jahir opened his eyes, found his cousin considering him with that predatory regard. Except there was merriment there. Merriment?

“This is not working as I planned,” Lisinthir said.

It seemed to be working perfectly to Jahir. But he managed to find words. “It’s not?”

“You swim, cousin… tell me… how long can you hold your breath?”

It took a moment to work through the implications of the question, to realize that his cousin was trying to invoke some of the pain and fear he craved by controlling his breathing, and… he started laughing too, soft.

“I thought so,” Lisinthir said, grinning. “Well. I shall just have to improvise.” And the hand Jahir had forgotten against his shoulder flexed, driving the clawtips past his too thin shirt and into skin. Jahir gasped in, his cousin shoved him hard against the wall and stole that breath, ate it off his lips, kissed him hard.

After that, he lost all control of his body. It didn’t matter how long he could hold his breath when he never knew when he’d be breathing. And the claws were so close to knives, and so far, and the kisses so brutal—he had no voice to beseech with, but there came a time when time became an eternal moment and that moment was one long plea for release.

When he came back from that space he was still against the wall, and still dressed, and a complete mess, and none of it mattered. Lisinthir was petting his face, solicitous and protective, holding him up.

The first words that came to him, that came from him, were hoarse. “Cousin, I want you.”

That earned him a gentle kiss on lips that felt bruised and sensitive. “I want you too.” Hands gathered his elbows, stroked down to his wrists, his palms, clasped his fingers. “Come.”