“How does it feel?”
The brazier had long since burned too low to throw light, and they’d been too occupied touching each other to build it up again. But Safir’s eyes had adjusted to the dark so that the faint moonlight creeping in under the eave was enough to bring all of Morien’s angles and curves into relief.
“To shift?” Morien considered the question. “As if everything in my body grows tight. But it isn’t painful because everything is shrinking.”
Safir reached down and stroked the man’s prodigious cock. “Hard to imagine everything shrinking.”
Morien grinned. “It does, though. Practically disappears inside me.”
“May I see?”
Morien’s brows rose high. “My tiny bird prick?”
“No. May I watch you shift?”
The fellow’s confident air seemed to slip, and he chewed on his lip. At last he said, “Will it disgust you?”
“Disgust me?”
Morien held his gaze, his own eyes worried. “Right now, it’s all theoretical. You know me this way”—he gestured at his long body, stretching down the bed—“and you know the magpie. But seeing the change…” He swallowed. Glanced away. “I’m afraid you’ll think differently of me afterward. That when you look at me you’ll see a monster.”
He spread a hand on Morien’s chest. His heart thumped heavily under Safir’s palm. “I don’t believe I will. I imagine I’ll be too filled with wonder to have any other opinion. But never mind it. You don’t have to show me.” He leaned in and kissed the man’s lips. They were too generous to look so pinched, and he pressed until Morien relaxed against him.
“I want you to see.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes. Ready?”
“I suppose—”
It happened quickly and with no sound until the magpie standing on the bedding ruffled its feathers.
Until Morien ruffled his feathers.
Safir stared at him. It had been strange, and if Morien had been caught somehow, partway to his avian form, he would have looked odd indeed—unlike any creature Safir had ever seen.
But he hadn’t been caught. He had transformed as smoothly as if he did it every day. Safir supposed he must do.
He smoothed a knuckle down Morien’s neck and smiled when he pushed up into Safir’s touch. Trailing his fingers down a wing, he coaxed the magpie to splay his feathers. The movement spread the slashes of white against blue, almost ethereal in the moonlight, like sails on the great Middle Sea. Safir exhaled in pleasure. “Oh, you are a beauty, Morien.”
Morien’s chest seemed to puff at that, and his head bobbed. Cheekily, he fanned his long tail, and Safir laughed.
Then, as suddenly as the man had become a bird, the magpie shifted. The greater weight of Morien’s body sent Safir rolling against him. Morien hugged him close.
“Was it too strange?” he said softly against Safir’s ear, shy again.
“No. Just as wondrous as I expected. You’re still very much a man to me, only a man who can do amazing things.”
“Such as flying?”
“Don’t remind me. Envy is a sin.”
Morien pulled back, his mouth curled in the grin Safir was coming to like entirely too much. “Since when do you bother with notions of sin?”
“I don’t. A good thing, too, considering what I plan to do to you now.”
Morien’s eyes widened as Safir rolled him flat on his back. “And what is that?”
Safir dipped in to nip at his throat. Morien’s gasp lit a trail of fire down his spine. “I’ve caught myself a magpie,” he said, “and I intend to make him sing.”
“How did you come to be in Cymru from Arabia?” Morien asked, sometime later.
“Well, I didn’t fly.”
Morien snorted softly.
“Some of us had to travel thousands of leagues over seas treacherous with pirates and sirens to find solace in this damp paradise.”
“Sounds like a thrilling tale. Tell me.”
It had been thrilling, when he was that lad. It had seemed a grand adventure. “Palahmed dragged me to the docks and put me on a boat.”
Morien smiled. “He didn’t.”
“Actually, he did. Sort of. I didn’t go kicking and scratching, but he was very insistent.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t care for how my sexual education was progressing and sought to distract me from it.”
Morien tapped on his chest. “You’re talking sidewise. What happened?”
Safir sighed. “What happened was an old friend of my father’s, a Greek he’d known from his school days abroad. He visited us when I had fourteen years under my belt, along with a very curious cock, and I seduced this man. Well, seduce makes more of my skills at that time than is factual, but I talked him into sharing his bath, and then letting me show off for him. Evidently, Palahmed saw us. He told my father, who declined to rebuke his friend. Palahmed was outraged. He woke me in the night and promised me an adventure if I would follow him. Being very, very keen on new experiences, and more than a bit worshipful of my older brother, I fairly hopped out of bed. He took us to where the merchant ships came and went, and he talked one of the captains into letting us work for passage. Then he insisted we stay on that ship to its farthest terminus.” He shrugged. “It was one of your father’s trading vessels, and so we landed here.”
“We’re both here because of my father, in a way.”
“Then and now.” In every way. Tell him, Safir’s mind cried out. Tell him about the surcoin.
But he couldn’t do it, and a small, miserable thought nagged at him: if he wouldn’t say it, would he be brave enough to turn the money down?
That was a shade of courage he’d never had.
“Palahmed is very protective of you,” Morien whispered.
He is, Safir nearly said, but once more he kept the words to himself. Morien didn’t need to know the extent of Palahmed’s reaction to Philip’s shifting. “He was,” he said instead, “and rightly so. That man could have hurt me.”
“He didn’t?”
“I never felt as if he did.”
Morien took hold of his hand and squeezed it. “I’m glad.”
“Well. I’d been initiated into manhood not long before and thought I was old enough to pursue any willing partner I chose. The truth is more likely that I was too young yet to have any perspective on the situation, and foolish enough to think myself invincible. I believe I was lucky, no more, no less. Palahmed feels more strongly about it. He’s never forgiven any of them—the visitor, our father, even our mother.”
“So he’s protective and he holds a grudge.”
Safir smiled. “A few of his grudges are warranted.”
But Morien didn’t share his smile.
“What is it?”
“What if he finds out about me?”
Safir gripped his arm. “He won’t.”
“He saw you and that man.”
“Because he wanted to spy on the visitor himself. Palahmed didn’t share that bit with our father.”
“But what if he does find out? Would you…” Morien’s dark eyes were troubled. “Would you shield me?”
“Of course.” The words rushed out of him, almost too quickly, and Morien didn’t look altogether convinced. Safir had to admit the thought of such a scenario made his ribs feel too tight. Drawing a deep breath against the sensation, he edged closer. “I would. I promise.” He sealed it with a kiss and hoped he’d sounded credible.
Why let the man worry over something they might never have to face?
Safir was sitting back later that day, watching the continuing argument between Arthur and Bedwyr, and wondering if it was all a futile thing, when his magpie flew into the hall from the door. He smiled as Morien made one turn about the rafters and then fluttered down to settle on the table next to Safir.
“Hello, lover,” he said, confident none of the others could hear him.
The magpie gave him that funny sidewise look. Then it shifted.
Into Rhys.
Safir flinched, his gut icy, as the hall fell abruptly silent.
Rhys turned his full intent gaze on Safir. “Lover, eh?”
For want of any way to defend himself, Safir turned to the other men. They were staring at Rhys and, one by one, piecing together what Safir had realized the night before. His heart sank for Morien at the expressions on their faces. The mildest was confusion; the worst, distrust and outrage.
Palahmed fixed him with a glare that should have set him on fire. “Did you know?”
Before he could respond, Rhys said, “Where is my son?”
“Out,” Safir blurted, then stupidly twirled a finger to indicate Morien was probably flying somewhere nearby. “About.”
“Out and about? We had an agreement.”
Philip stepped forward. “Has something happened?”
“The Saxons and their wolves are on the move again, but there’s more to it.” He turned to Arthur. “Your brother has gone missing.”
Arthur straightened. “Cai?”
Rhys nodded. “I flew to Uthyr to let him know Philip had arrived. Cai had been stationed on lookout, but when his relief arrived, the man found only Cai’s armor.”
Safir watched Arthur absorb that information. He’d gathered over the years that there was little love lost between the brothers. Arthur’s relationship with Bedwyr was well-known now, but it had begun in secret, a furtive thing they’d had to keep from the people in their village for fear of retribution. Cai had exposed the affair—out of spite, Bedwyr claimed—and Uthyr had sent Arthur away. Bedwyr had followed him, and neither man had returned to their home in the mountains in the decade since. Though they often saw Uthyr at summer’s end, when he visited Rhys, Arthur hadn’t seen his brother since his vengeful act.
Safir couldn’t imagine not seeing Palahmed for so long. When they’d left home, they’d done so together. He had chafed under Palahmed’s protectiveness many times over the two decades since, but it had kept him alive.
“My father knew you were a shifter?” Bedwyr said.
Rhys confirmed with a nod.
“Were there signs of a struggle?” Arthur asked. “Blood?”
Bedwyr turned from Rhys. “Cai can rot.”
“Bed.”
“He threw you in the fire.”
“He acted like a jealous arse. It hasn’t harmed me, or you.”
Bedwyr opened his mouth to respond, but the scuff of boots sounded at the door. Safir watched, frozen to his bench, as Morien’s stride faltered under the weight of the other men’s stares and then halted at the sight of his father.