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That felt too close to the secret part of him that had felt pleased to see James do as he ordered. That felt pleased that James was here, in a place he didn’t want to be, only for Will’s sake. It made Will want to keep him safe, give him warmth and approval, tell him he’d done well.
Pacat your kink is showing
James looked like a consumptive heroine from a painting, the kind that dies beautifully.
His relief that James would recover almost spilled out into words. You did it, he wanted to say to him. For me. I’m grateful. There was a deeper part of him that was pleased in ways that he shouldn’t be at how far James had pushed himself. For me, it also whispered. You drained yourself. You gave me everything you had.
“He won’t kill you just for lying down next to me,” said James. “Who won’t?” “You know who,” said James. “My jealous master.” He wasn’t talking about Sinclair. He was talking about another figure whose shadow extended out from the distant past. “I think he might very well kill someone for that.” The words just came out.
But sometimes when I wake up, I can’t move. Trapped in sleep, but awake, and it’s as if . . . there’s a great power bending over me. And it’s whispering—” Find you. “—I will always—” Find you. Try to run.
James is not a possession, Will wanted to say. He had to force himself to sit still, to allow the idea that someone was going to put hands on James. His head was pounding.
“He’s loyal to us,” said Will. “Is he?” Cyprian’s voice was hard. “Don’t forget that he was reborn to serve the Dark King.” “I never forget that,” said Will.
Will felt a surge of satisfaction and pride. Try to take me on the steps of my palace with James by my side.
“Will, did he hurt you, did he—” Will had never seen James like this. He didn’t understand why James was concerned for him, and then he realized that James had seen Will and Captain Howell clutched together, and mistaken who was predator and who was prey.
But James wasn’t wearing the Collar. He was protecting Will because he wanted to. Sarcean never had this, Will thought with a kind of weak longing, undone by what James was giving him.
“You can feel mine, can’t you?” James’s voice in his ear, soft as the touch. “You know I can.” He felt it when James walked into a room, felt it even when James was depleted, a guttering flame, and Will wanted to curl around him, and nurse that flame into blazing fire. “What does it feel like?” said James. “Like the sun. Or something brighter.” The truth, even as he was breathing shallowly. James had always had his complete, helpless attention.
“It’s the same for me. You’re powerful . . . more powerful than anything I’ve felt. I can’t look away.” James said, “I could close my eyes and know you.”
“Can you feel it?” James said, and Will was parting his lips to say no when power arced and sparked. Will’s mouth flooded with saliva as the tang of James’s magic hit. It was wrong. It was so wrong, an exhilarating rush of power and potential. He had always known it, felt it. When James had used his magic on the docks, Will hadn’t been able to take his eyes off him. “Yes,” he said, or thought he said. Yes, yes, yes.
A flutter at the words you have me. Will ignored it.
Elizabeth had resisted those hugs sometimes, not realizing that one day they would end.
James’s hair gleamed in the torchlight, a golden crown of his own, slightly mussed by the fingers he’d pushed into it. Will found himself wondering how James would brush it into its fashionable style away from the conveniences of the dig. He felt, then extinguished, the desire to run his own fingers through it.
“You’re testing me,” said Will. “You shouldn’t.” “Why not? You’re the perfect hero, aren’t you?” “I’m not your salvation,” said Will. “Are you going to let someone else put it on me? Let someone else—” “No,” said Will, the vehemence of it taking both James and himself by surprise. And then: “There must be a way to destroy it. When this is over. We’ll find a way.” He let the words sink in, James’s blue eyes wide. “If you still want me to order you around after that, I can.”
Another smile. Lying was unlabored.
“Someone I believe could save this place.” And then, so quietly Will almost didn’t hear, “Someone I believe could save me.”
“I will find you,” Anharion said. “I will always find you. Try to run.”
They were in the middle of nowhere, a rocky hill summit on one side, a forested slope on the other. You never knew when geography would come in handy. Elizabeth reached into her pinafore and pulled out her homework.
I’m sorry about your horn, she didn’t say, because she knew by now words didn’t help, and that when things were broken they never really got mended. You just went on. You just went on as best as you knew how.
He just kept his gaze steady on her. “You’re the one I trust with it,” said Will. “The one I know will do what’s right.” She lifted Ekthalion and angled it in the light. It gleamed all the way along its silver length. “I just hope I never have to use it.” “Me too,” said Will.
Will kept his voice casual. “We need you at the gate.” “I can’t protect you at the gate.” Warmth. Like drowning in hot sunlight. He felt selfish for wanting it this badly, for taking it under false pretenses, even as he said with a little wellspring of that golden light, “You’re worried about me.” James frowned and didn’t deny it. “I—”
“I know you,” said Will, as James’s eyes widened. “Those people you’ll be taking to the gates, I know you won’t let them down. I know you’ll do everything you can to protect them. That’s what you are, you know. A protector.”
James turned away as if his feelings had crested, and this was what Will wanted to protect in turn, this part of James that was so rarely seen.
Will couldn’t help the acquisitive sound in his voice. “You stayed faithful to him.” To me.
It was sickly pleasing, even as at the same time he was jealous: a violent jealousy of his former self. He wanted to be the one James had made his vows to. He wanted to be the one to make James break his vows, even as he knew those vows were to himself.
“That he was my end. And I was rushing toward it. I couldn’t see past him. Until I met you.” “James—” said Will. James’s blue eyes were on his, the openness in them uncharacteristic, and clearly difficult for him, breathing shallowly as he offered what he had never offered to anyone. “Take what was his. Prove you’re not afraid. And that nor am I. We have the night,” said James. “One night, before the end of the world.”
I— After,” said Will. “When this is all done. Come to me after.” He saw James realize that it wasn’t rejection: it was an offer, a desperate hope for the future—a future in which they might be just themselves, if that was even possible.
He brought their foreheads together instead, holding James tight in his arms. “Will—” said James, helplessly. “After,” said Will. “I promise.”
He walked out past the outskirts of the village, into the sloping hills clustered with trees. No one stopped him. No one suspected him, but then again, no one ever had.
Will had made that leap of faith, in him.
He was used to the fear and the hatred and the violence that came when people saw his magic. Before Will, he would have been bitter, reveling in his power and the reaction. “I’ll show you unnatural.” But there was one person who looked at him and saw something more—more than a possession that was useful or pleasing. Will. He wouldn’t fail him. He could hold. He would hold.
He had been the best in the Hall. He could hold. He would hold.
James said to Will, “Darling, I’m not here to kill you.” James only had to gesture once, and Visander went flying backward, hitting a pillar and then the floor, his body slumped and slack. Cyprian took a step forward, and James merely glanced at him, and sent Cyprian careening across the floor. Will was staring at James in shock. James looked down at Will and held out his hand. “Well?” “He’s the Dark King,” said Violet. “And I’m his lieutenant,” said James, “here to fight by his side.”
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
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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.
Because maybe it was enough to have one person, one person who believed, one person who had faith in him.
