Bound and Tide (Villains & Virtues)

by A.K. Caggiano

brooding was for melancholic blood mages with black hair and blacker perspectives.

stabbing-Kitten-in-the-back-and-letting-her-bleed-out-in-his-arms thing.

“Can you not hold it to-bloody-gether long enough for me to have just a little sulk?” he snapped at the tower. The brazier in the chamber’s center went out. “Of fucking course.”

Xander scoffed and traipsed away from the creature who so badly wanted to be a raven it was embarrassing.

Finally, in all this gods-forsaken, wretched, backward town, some ass. Now there—there was a good-looking human. Beautiful, he might even say, though never to her.

A-fucking-dora-gods-damn-ble.

Xander watched the back of her as she bent over and organized linen and twine in the baskets beneath her work table. He wanted to be offended, but the view was too exquisite.

Maisie’s Tainted Tingle Tonic, it read, and below that, for the treatment of downstairs anomalies, chronic itchiness, bit burning, and warts, bumps, and lumps on one’s nether region. “Son of a bitch.”

MEN, DEROGATORY

Productive evening, he thought, letting himself out into the alley, killed a man and rounded up a couple minions.

“What-bloody-ever.”

That and she might not be so willing to pay him a favor after he’d killed her that one time.

Finally, a little fucking fun.

“Mend me, oh, elven healer, with your masterful touch.” “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Well, you did lie to me at least a bit.” He poked at the edge of a petal, and it shivered under his touch. “I did not.” “You said your mother came to Bendcrest with only two things, coin and this seed, but in actuality, she had three.” Xander grinned sidelong. “She had you too.”

White, grey, brown, even the sky was stark and boring. What he would give for just a little red.

his human mother in his mind. Bloodthorne had not known any arcana when he and Xander met, though he’d not even been speaking age back then. Xander had asked Diana why her son couldn’t fight back over Bloodthorne’s sobs after a failed sparring attempt. Diana had cooed patiently that her own son was just too young, and then she’d given him a cuddle that made Xander’s chest feel exactly as hollow as it did now. He hadn’t understood—Birzuma had taken great joy in teaching Xander blood arcana well before even the Chthonic alphabet.

The dark wasn’t home, it was emptiness and abandonment and fear.

BIG DUMB MEN WITH SWORDS

“You are strong enough to do this,” he said, tempered and quiet. “And you must.” The boy finally blinked, but the fear didn’t recede. “But I’m scared.” A lurching in Xander’s heart thrust his mind back to another time when he had been in a darkened prison, forced to play the role of consoler despite how utterly betrayed he himself had felt. In Costa’s dark eyes, he could see Bloodthorne’s—no, no he was just Damien then, and he was so small. They were both small, really. Far too young for what Birzuma had hoisted onto Xander’s shoulders, certainly. For all the evil that his mother had demanded of six-year-old Xander, he had managed to do some good too; holding Damien’s hand, telling him it would be okay even if he wasn’t sure himself, trying his best to mean it. The boy who was the closest thing Xander had to a brother had hugged him then. The blood mage remembered it plainly because the sensation had been so strange. He’d certainly seen hugging but to experience it? The memory and sensation were some of the most palpable he had. “It’s going to be all right,” Xander said. “You will be all right because I will make sure that you are.” Even in the blackness he had created around them, Costa’s eyes lightened. This time when he nodded, Xander believed him.

“Uh oh.” “Uh oh?” Xander spun back toward him. “We don’t have time for—” But then he saw the uh oh, and it was a big one. Bit more like an uh-fuck-oh.

“Shit,” they said in unison.

LOVE IS A GOOD CHISEL FOR CARVING OUT HATE

They stood like that for some uncountable time staring out at the shadows of the horizon, sky melting into sea, stars rippling over far off waves. Xander pressed his cheek to her head and dragged in a breath of herbs and ocean, the smell laced with so much magic he thought for one brief, ludicrous moment that this was all he would ever need.

GOOD BOYS GET TREATS

“I want to give you exactly what you want, what you deserve, so tell me, and be honest.”

Xander returned to her chamber but came to a stop at the edge of the bed. The swell of Red’s hips was covered by the linens, a sliver of curved back exposed beneath the fall of her hair. She curled inward in the wake of him, arms sensing the emptiness in her sleep. “Fuck,” he whispered and backed away from the bed. Each step drove pain into his chest until he bumped into the wall and an ache spread through his entire body. There was a single cure for that ache: climbing back under the linens and tucking himself into her arms, a thing he knew as plainly as he knew he was a blood mage and what was happening should not have been possible. Yet there he stood, each breath feeling like his first and last at once. If this was what he thought it was—if this agony was that disgusting, awful, deplorable thing—he had no idea how he’d managed to escape Bloodthorne’s wrath for every threat he’d ever spit at Amma. Because Xander would kill for Evangeline, he knew it then. Sure, he liked killing, but only when it suited him, when it was the most convenient course of action, when it made sense. But if she asked—or really, even if she didn’t—he would have committed any number of atrocities in her name.

Red shifted under the linens with a sleepy sound that made his heart lurch. Darkness, she was beautiful and perfect and…everything.

At its end stood a man whose amber eyes flicked up to Xander’s immediately as he halted his pacing before a door. Xander fell still, but he shouldn’t have feared recognition—he hadn’t taken the form of a village woman and seduced this man away from his post outside the prison, that had only been the work of a succubus he’d summoned. Tilly hadn’t killed the man, apparently, but he was fretting so intently it seemed she hadn’t relieved any of his tension either. “Ah, brightest of morns to you, good sir knight,” Xander said through a grin that felt as fake as a succubus’s breasts. “I’ve come to seek the aid of one of your ecclesiastics, if you would be so gracious as to direct this weary soul to one?” The knight straightened, and, darkness, was he tall and broad. His face hardened, and his hand went to his waist, but his fingers closed around nothing as he wasn’t properly armed. “Sid’s gonna be mad I forgot him in the privy again,” the man mumbled, but then his frustration was turned back to Xander. “What’d you say?” Of course, this was the dumb-as-rocks knight, and simple words were probably best. “Priest?” Xander held up his hands both in inquest and defense. “Where?” “Oh, uh, Father Theodore’s in there.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the door. “And you are guarding him?” Xander tipped his head like a curious dog. “No, I was just…” His heavy brow narrowed, and he swept a hand through chestnut curls. “Well, I need to talk to him, but I’m not sure…” Not sure you can ...

I’ve watched a man weep over a woman’s corpse after trusting the wrong bastard, and it seemed terribly inconvenient.” Never mind that Xander had been that exact bastard, and as far as he could tell, he was lucky enough to not have a rival version of himself fouling up his plans.

“Hopefully we can resolve this without any of the people you love, yourself included, dying.” “I don’t love any—” Xander snapped his teeth so quickly he caught his tongue, biting down and grunting with the pain. Blood tainted his mouth, but it was followed by the taste of Evangeline, her lips, her body, and then he could see her in his mind’s eye and knew he would annihilate everything in her name, himself included. “Oh, fuck.” The priest flipped over the page he was reading. “I’m going to pretend the demon made you say that.”

“All right, holy man,” Xander huffed, slouching down because while he would grant this favor, he wasn’t going to be happy about it, “maybe you’re onto something with this prophecy nonsense.”

Dil’wator’wovl damn him and his stupidly handsome face and his skilled hands and that wonderful tongue and the funny face he makes when he has to touch something slimy and…oh…no, Dil’wator’wovl, don’t damn him at all…

Briefly, Xander had considered forming a more worthy party. He could contact Bloodthorne and call in his I-resurrected-your-woman favor, and maybe even said saved woman would come along, the ability to talk to trees potentially useful in the Kvesari Wood. As for expendable brute strength, he could also convince that big dumb holy knight from Valcord’s temple that this was a worthy crusade to die for. But pride was an Abyss of a hindrance, and while the idea was a fun alternative third act, his party needed to be made up of the characters who had been influencing him throughout the rest of his tale for consistency’s sake. So Xander was instead laden with the worst band of cohorts that could be written onto parchment. Red was capable and intelligent but that fatal mix of not at all martial yet supremely protective. Maia might be capable in about ten years if her hasty temper let her survive until then, but currently she acted as if she were invincible even when her bruises indicated otherwise. And Costa was…Costa—an easy target unless he turned himself sideways and then at least his thinness would make him difficult to hit.

Fucking Abyss, I care about them? All of them? Even the little one?

Heaviness settled into Xander’s chest in the deferential silence that followed, but it was not full of resentment and jealousy like when he was small and watched Bloodthorne’s mother kiss and cuddle him. This time, Xander mourned that Maisie and Demetra were gone, but was glad that these three had been loved in the way that they deserved, at least for a little while.

This time there was a feminine shriek along with the explosion of flesh, and Xander’s heart leapt into his throat. Had he not been careful enough? In the wake of the ruptured knight stood Red, arms held aloft and face twisted into disgust, unwounded but absolutely covered in gore. Xander sucked in a breath between grit teeth. “Sorry, darling,” he called. “You still look utterly ravishing though.” She wiped a bit of organ meat off her cheek, gave him a smirk, and went back to blinding the others.

the door as if the bolt would not hold. Their shoulders brushed one another, and he leaned into her just enough to feel she was real, that she was alive. Her littlest finger inched over his, hooking them together. If ever I were to thank the gods,

Xander wanted to hate how much he’d come to crave her gentlest kisses and softest voice, wanted to loathe himself for such weakness and longing, but it was impossible. He could only feel himself slip deeper into that thing he’d always been disgusted by until she’d taught him how wonderful it could be.

But as the stairs twisted and widened, his thoughts turned to her sister, Tea Cakes—er, no, Celeste. The meek woman had been his captive years ago. It was a short stint that she broke out of with her nox-touched powers, his first real experience being enthralled. Though as the noxscura pulled at him to descend faster, he began to wonder if there was a time in his life that he’d not been held captive himself by arcana and duty. “Apologies,” he murmured as if Celeste could hear him. He didn’t know exactly what he was apologizing for—he’d been more hospitable to her than anyone else in her miserable life—but she’d always been timid and sweet and hadn’t deserved to be treated like a puppet in his selfish games. If the gods were kind—and of this, Xander was truly not sure—they would send her the strength to never be anyone’s pawn again.

As he continued on, the meager firelight revealed skeletal bodies and discarded armor, but his mind turned to Kitten. No, to Amma. He’d been far worse to her than Celeste, by all accounts, and not just for the whole murdering her thing; he’d had her sent back to that marquess she was supposed to marry. He knew very little about the royal families of Eiren and even less about the way they played matchmaker with their children, but he’d seen the look in her eyes when she’d called her betrothed a monster. He’d retorted then that he didn’t care, but… “And more apologies,” he muttered, chest heavy.

Gone fluffy and dull with time, the feather was no less comforting in Xander’s hand. Its stem was broken, and there was no magic in it, but he’d guarded it like it was a precious thing for at least a decade. It was one of a kind, after all, its mate destroyed in his attempt to enchant the pair. His attempt with Bloodthorne. They were in their early twenties and had called a truce. Birzuma had been imprisoned by Archibald a few years prior, and one of them had been hurt or lost or something else inconsequential—who could bloody remember—and together they came to the brilliant conclusion they should conspire on a spell. It all ended terribly, of course, because neither blood mage could be trusted, especially when they were so young and foolish. Damien ended up absconding with their only success: a pair of feathers that would allow the users to find one another over great distances—an early attempt at translocation. Xander wasn’t even really all that upset when he discovered Bloodthorne’s betrayal—he’d been planning on killing him when they were finished anyway. But when he found the feather they’d failed on first was all that was left behind, he had become…sentimental. Xander supposed then he always had been capable of love because if he’d ever loved anyone, it was Damien. The man was the closest thing he had to a brother even if Xander spoke to him much too salaciously for that—innuendo and come-ons were a good cover for true, too hard to admit feelings—and for all the tort...

WHERE ALL LOVE BEGINS AND ENDS

“Darling!” Xander came bursting up out of the stairwell at the corridor’s end and collided with her. His arms wrapped about her waist and the two spun in place as his mouth found her own. Evangeline was so shocked, she barely managed to kiss him back under the duress of the crumbling temple and the fact he looked like the absolute Abyss. “What happened to you?” she breathed, hands scrambling all over his skin, slick with blood and covered in welts. “No time, whole place is about to come down, but I promise to regale you later. Care to accompany me in fleeing?” But they were already running hand-in-hand back the way she’d come toward the temple doors where Maia, Costa, the imps, and the elven guardian were urging them to speed it up.

A FITTING END

“And I mean to say also that, obviously, I didn’t just do it because I thought he was a prick, and I didn’t just do it because I wanted to try out what it was like having full control over noxscura and water magery, and I didn’t even just do it because I had to resolve the B plot. Or was it the C plot? Never mind—what I’m trying to say is, I did it for you. I know you would never ask because you like to pretend you don’t need anyone—a sentiment I understand wholeheartedly—but that thing you said about protection and everyone requiring it, that’s true, and I want—” His voice hitched, and he let it, taking a breath and staring down into her emerald eyes. “I want to protect you, Evangeline, like you’ve protected me. If you’ll let me.” Finally, Red’s face warmed, and a smile played at her lips. “I think,” she said, fluttering her lashes, “I could allow you to do that.” He blew out a breath. “Ah, good. I was worried there for a bit you might have been angry with me for doing all that murder.”

“Xander, I want to…” she panted, back arched as she gazed down at him between heaving breasts. “I need to…I’m sorry, but I love you.” “Oh, gods, I forgot to say!” He popped back up to his feet and gripped onto her waist. “I love you, darling, and it’s marvelous, isn’t it? Just really, really wonderful to be utterly enamored. Wish someone would have bloody told me because this”—he shook her—“feels so fucking good!” Of course, Xander had been told, but after everything, he’s probably earned one more little exaggeration, so we’ll let him have this one. “Not exactly what I was expecting you to say,” she breathed, “but I’m glad.” He kissed her, and it was soft and kind, and it told him she had meant every word she’d ever said to him—that she was fond of him, liked him, loved him. But when he pulled back, she was frowning. “Dearest?” Her eyes darted down between them and then back up. “You’re not finished.” “Yes, ma’am.” Xander licked his lips and sank back to his knees.

EPILOGUE or HOW TO EULOGIZE YOUR NEMESIS

“Corben?” The creature flew itself across the chamber to land on the vanity and screeched in his face. “All right, all right!” The blood mage ran fingers through the bird’s feathers, and an image formed in his mind so clearly, it was like he had been translocated. He blinked about at the parlor made up of dark stone, one he recognized, though there had been a bit of redecorating, sprawling plants climbing up the walls and a set of bright pink pillows on the sofa. And seated just between them— “Kitten?” Ammalie Avington’s sunshiny face beamed back at him. “Damien, come quick, our spell worked!” She popped up off the sofa and ran, lavender dress and blonde coils streaming after her. Xander could not turn to watch where she went, arcana holding him in place, but he could hear her voice calling down a hall. And then there he was, the blood mage himself, Damien Maleficus Bloodthorne. Clearly he had run, pulled along by Amma, who still had hands wrapped around his arm, but he came to a halt, his violet eyes honing in on him. “Well!” Xander was positively alight at the sight of that scowl. “To what do I owe this pleasure of all pleasures?” Damien took a deep and leveling breath as he trudged over to the sofa and threw himself down. Amma sat gently at his side, still beaming. “No, let me guess.” Xander held out his free hand, not knowing if they could see it but not caring. “Someone’s been horrifically murdered and you need me to bring them back.” “No, no,” lilted Amma as she gigg...

And he too would gladly see to her needs, to serve her because he wanted to, and be cared for in return because that was what love did. Love made one wild and free but safe and sincere too, and it overcame birth and duty and even hopelessness because, in the end, it was the most transcendent of virtues, and even a villain understood that.