WILL LOOKED UP at James as at a mirage in the desert.
The men Will had possessed were still unconscious, littering the floor like the dead. Violet was kneeling beside Tom with horror on her face. Cyprian and Visander were both sprawled in the dust, Elizabeth running to Visander’s side.
James ignored all of them, slashing open the restraints binding Will’s hands. ‘Can you move? We need to go.’ Blue eyes full of concern.
Will couldn’t make sense of it. James had heard Violet call him the Dark King. But if he knew, how could he—
‘Tell me that you know,’ said Will, ‘what I am, what I—’
‘I know,’ said James.
‘Tell me you don’t care,’ said Will.
‘I don’t care,’ said James.
Will went hot, a shiver right to the core of him. He met James’s eyes with the jolt of a connection locking in place. ‘Tell me again.’ He needed to hear it.
‘I don’t care.’ Another shiver, this one deeper.
‘Anharion.’ Visander spat it.
He was trying to get up, and was too hurt to do it. Cyprian was the first to move, shaking his head to try to clear it, his gaze fixed right on James. ‘I knew you’d turn.’ Cyprian’s words had a hard edge of pain.
Will looked over at him. His friends – arrayed against him, staring at him in varying states of shock, fear and revulsion. But that was expected. That was … he had seen that look before in his mother’s eyes.
He hadn’t expected James at his side.
Part of Will was still waiting for the knife, for the hands around his throat. Each moment that didn’t happen felt like hope. Each moment a spark inside him grew.
Maybe – this wasn’t Bowhill, where both his mother and his sister had tried to kill him. Maybe it wasn’t even the old world, where both lovers had turned on him.
Maybe he wasn’t alone, fighting to prove he wasn’t the monster his mother saw, when he wasn’t sure he believed it himself.
James believed – in him, in Will.
‘What would you have me do?’ said James.
Will said, ‘Get us out of here.’
James pulled him into his arms. Will put his arms around James’s waist in turn. A second later, he felt James’s power push into him, just as he had at the dig. This time, he closed his eyes and let it happen. A circle completing itself: the seeking tendril of James’s magic connected to the vast reservoir of his own.
Will made a sound as raw power burst from him, and he glimpsed the night sky above him scattered with stars, barely aware of the screams around him. James said, ‘Hold on to me,’ and Will was only just starting to realise his power had blown a hole in the mountain when they were rising in it, a rushing of air as James’s gift swept them up and out of the palace.
Flight. They were flying, or something like it. Beneath them the palace was growing distant, as power and air rushed past them. Clutching tight to James, all Will could do was hold on while the wind whipped at him. He hadn’t known that James could use their combined power to fly. He’d never seen Anharion fly in any of his dreams or visions. Maybe Sarcean had never lent him the power. How could he have ever forgone something so exhilarating?
‘I thought you’d hate me.’ The words were all breath. Will could feel the warmth of James’s body against him. His fingers gripped at James’s waist. ‘Tell me you don’t hate me.’
‘I don’t hate you.’
Another shudder. His fingers gripped tighter. ‘I should have told you.’ The words were tumbling out. ‘I should have – I was afraid; I thought if I told you that you’d kill me, or try to. I thought that you’d – tell me again.’
‘I don’t hate you.’
The words touched something deep inside him, a place that had never known acceptance. That had been braced, waiting for the blow not just since Bowhill. All these years. Even as a child … his mother had … because she had been afraid.
He hadn’t meant to make her afraid. He hadn’t meant to make any of them afraid.
James wasn’t afraid. Against all odds, James trusted him.
Will’s gratitude was incandescent. He felt it spilling out of him. He felt bursting with loyalty of his own that he had always wanted to give to someone. He wanted to give James power, the world, everything.
His feet touched the earth. They had landed in a small forest clearing, where the dark trunks of ancient beech trees stretched upward all around them. The ground was leaf-covered, and the few fallen logs were soft with moss. Hushed green privacy shrouded them.
‘We said after. If you came to me after.’ Will could feel James warm and real against him, as he said, ‘You came to me.’
James said, ‘You asked me to.’
Because maybe it was enough to have one person, one person who believed, one person who had faith in him.
Sarcean had lost everyone, but Will hadn’t. Will had carved this one point of difference – this one thing of his own. It meant he could be different. He and James, they could both be different. They could cast off the past, and make a new future together.
James had given him this chance to be – himself.
‘Tell me you know – me,’ he said, gazing into blue eyes full of loyalty, and he wanted to hear James saying the words forever. ‘Tell me you know who I am, and you’re mine.’
‘I’m yours. I know who you are. Will—’
Will kissed him. It was good, it was so good, to feel James give himself, as eager as Will. James felt like he would give him everything, gasping, ‘I’m yours,’ as Will kissed him and kissed him. ‘I’m yours,’ as Will’s hands pushed inside his jacket, up over his warm shirt. ‘I’m yours,’ as Will touched his shivery hot skin, then pulled his cravat from his throat. ‘My King.’
It was like the whole world shifted around him. His mind splintering, Will staggered back from what he saw.
The Collar encircled James’s neck in opulent red and gold.
It glistered, a strident slash, revealed by James’s half-open shirt. James’s cravat lay on the forest floor, leaving him half-undressed, dishevelled. Will stared at him in horror.
James’s hair was mussed, his cheeks flushed, his lips parted in surrender that was almost unbearably erotic, except that the gleaming rubies of the Collar looked like a slit throat.
‘My King?’ said James.
Nausea rose in Will violently. He flung his hand out and clasped on to the trunk of the nearest tree. His stomach clenched, then heaved, spasming as he vomited onto the earth. Dizziness threatened to overwhelm him. He closed his eyes on it, only to see an image of Anharion lying dead on the ground as the executioner sawed at his throat. He vomited again, bent in half, then pressed the back of his hand to his open mouth.
James’s voice behind him. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
‘What’s wrong?’
Everything was wrong. Everything was broken. Will looked up at James despairingly. The gleaming rubies of the Collar seemed to mock him.
‘I’m yours,’ said James. ‘I know who you are. I don’t hate you.’ A rapt prayer from a supplicant handpicked for his beauty. James looked achingly genuine.
They were his own words echoed back to him. His orders, he thought sickly. James looked like himself, but he wasn’t James. He was no more than a mirror of Will’s desires, and it was terrible to see them so starkly reflected. No one would ever join you by choice, not if they knew what you were. The Lady had said that to him in Undahar.
‘Are you telling me what I want to hear?’
‘Yes,’ said James.
Will tried not to flinch at the answer. ‘And what’s that?’
‘Your dream is within your grasp. You can take this world. Your army is ready. I will rule with you, by your side.’
And that wasn’t right. He wanted—
He wanted what he’d had, just moments ago. What James had given him. What he’d never had after all, alone here on the mountain. He clung to the moment when he’d thought himself different.
‘That’s his dream. Not mine.’
‘You are him.’
James said it with confidence, as if he knew it beyond doubt. He faced Will as if he saw in him a figure from long ago. A figure he served. A figure he knew.
‘You remember,’ said Will.
James looked back at him with the past in his eyes.
‘Sarcean. I remember everything.’