Chapter Text
The last thing Morga said to us was “Run,” so we run.
We run like we have never run in all our lives. Out of the Proving Grounds, out of the wreckage of her ruined village, its charred and blackened bones lying stark against the white snow. Up the hill and into the frozen woods, through the cold grasping fingers of tree branches snapping against our skin with every flicker of the frosty wind. We run until we reach the horses, and then we let them run for us, Inanna loping along beside them, driven by the same pulsing dread that pushes us onward. The sun drops low in the sky, then sinks beneath the horizon, leaving us with only the light of a cold, heartless moon refracted off the surface of the snow crunching beneath the hooves of our galloping horses.
Inanna stops us, finally, sending up a low howl - as though she, too, is afraid to make too much noise and somehow draw the Count’s attention - and the horses skitter to a halt. We’ve reached the shore of a black, frozen lake. The ice on its surface is too thin to support the animals’ weight, but its circumference is so vast that it would take hours to walk around it.
Even though we’ve been running since midday, and it’s now well past midnight, it still doesn’t feel far enough. It doesn’t feel safe here. We haven’t put enough distance between ourselves and the nightmare we left behind us, the horrible sounds we could hear in the distance as we bolted and didn’t look back. I try telling myself I’ll be all right, that I could rest for an hour or two and then continue on at a more moderate pace; but the moment I look over at Muriel, my decision is made.
Muriel is decidedly not all right.
His face is wild. His eyes are dark with panic. His hands are shaking. His knees look like they’re about to give out, and I’m no longer sure how much longer he can even stay on the back of his horse. We can’t go any farther.
There’s a rocky outcropping near the edge of the lake, with a dark opening beneath it. I hand Muriel one of the torches, and use a flicker of magic to light it for him, though even that mild exertion leaves me depleted. “Take Inanna and go check out the cave,” I tell him. “We’re going to make camp for the night and continue on in the morning. We need to rest.”
Muriel shakes his head wildly. “No time,” he mutters. “No time. Vesuvia - he said -”
“I know. I think I can call Asra, from the water. The lake, just over there. Like we did before.”
He looks up, suddenly alert and interested, a glimpse of the familiar Muriel inside the fog. “Do you think it will work?”
“I hope it will. I’m going to try. If it works, we’ll be giving Vesuvia a hell of a head start. They’ll be ready for Lucio by the time he makes it back. And Nadia should know about Valdemar too, and that - that they -”
I shake it off, clearing my throat. I can’t think about Khamgalai right now. And I don’t want to send Muriel down that road either. “Go make camp in the cave,” I say. “Take the horses inside, if there’s room. It’s too cold out here, and they need to rest too. I’ll be along as soon as I can.”
He nods wordlessly, and we part at the edge of the lake.
* * * * *
The spell does work. Asra is with Julian, and I tell them everything. I force myself to keep my voice even, to swallow back the tears. I’m the Countess’ magician, calling in to make my report. I have to give them all the facts. Lucio has two more hearts since the last time we spoke, Khamgalai’s (which he gave to Valdemar) and his mother’s. Whatever he’s been working on, he’s finished it. We’ve done what we can here, and we’re coming home.
Asra is grateful and reassuring. If he can see on my face that there’s more I’m not saying, that I’m fighting hard not to cry, he doesn’t say anything about it. There will be time once this is all over. Right now, they need to prepare for Lucio, and we need to sleep.
I feel the warmth of the fire as I approach the mouth of the cave, where our horses are happily chomping away, noses buried in their feedbags. Inanna hears me enter and bolts towards me, taking the hem of my cloak in her teeth and tugging me onward, like I’m not moving fast enough. Something in her anxiety is contagious, and I find myself moving back further and further into the cave, where a roaring fire is blazing and a dark shadow lurks beside it.
Muriel sits beside the fire on top of his bedroll (mine, I notice with a rush of warmth, is laid out just beside it), huddled inside his cloak . . . weeping.
Inanna nudges at my hand. No wonder she was worried. Poor thing was probably pacing back and forth outside the entrance of the cave, waiting for me to return and take care of this.
I kneel down beside Muriel and gently draw back the hood of his cloak, revealing a tear-streaked face. “You need sleep,” I say quietly. “It will all look different in the morning.”
“How the hell am I supposed to sleep after -” He cuts himself off with a sweeping gesture, encompassing the cave and the snow and the forest and everything that’s happened over the past few days. Everything that’s happened since we left Vesuvia. “We’re too late. We’re always too late."
“We won’t be this time,” I say firmly, as I begin to unfasten my boots and cloak to settle in for the night. Hopefully I can set a good example and Muriel will follow. “I got through to Asra. He’s on it. We may not know what Lucio is planning, but we have the advantage of time, now. If he’d planned on the element of surprise, he won’t have it. And remember, he has to travel like an ordinary creature. He can’t just transport himself back to the city. We’ll rest up, and start back in the morning. We might even beat him back home.”
Muriel is barely listening to me. “What if we can’t stop him?” he whispers, staring into the fire, entirely oblivious as I pull off his boots and cloak and the rest of his gear, trying to make him more comfortable. “We’ve failed so many times. In the forest, when he was with Vulgora. In the graveyard, when he was with Valdemar. And now, tonight . . . Morga . . .” He breaks off, voice hoarse with unshed tears. “I thought we would have more time,” he says miserably. “I didn’t want it to end like that. I wasn’t ready to forgive her, not yet, not today, but I wanted to. Someday. I thought we would have time. We should have had more time.”
“I know.”
“And Khamgalai . . .” His voice breaks, and I watch with an ache in my chest as he closes his eyes to keep the tears from flowing. It doesn’t work. They stream down the sharp planes of his cheekbones, glimmering in the amber firelight. “I thought, after all of this was over, after we defeated Lucio, I thought, maybe I could come back to see her again - maybe she would be able to tell me more about my parents, about our people, about my childhood, all the things I never knew . . . but she’s gone. They’re all gone. Everyone is gone. Every time, we’ve arrived too late.”
“We won’t be this time,” I promise him, but he shakes his head.
“You can’t know that,” he snaps, frustration edging his voice. “You say these things like you know them, like you’re sure, but we’re both just making this up as we go along. Maybe if you’d come on this journey by yourself, if I wasn’t holding you back, but I . . .” He trails off, shaking his head. “Everything was easier, when I was alone,” he mutters softly. “Everything was easier before there were people I was afraid to lose. People I didn’t want to disappoint. Things that seemed worth fighting for.”
“And would you trade it all, to go back to being alone?” I ask him, unfastening the straps of his satchel and belt and placing them with his boots and socks on the other side of the bedroll, leaving him clad only in his loose undershirt and trousers for sleep. I’ve shed my own boots, leggings and woolen trousers, and beneath the thin fabric of the shift I wear beneath my overdress, my skin is blissfully warm from the roaring fire. It doesn’t feel like winter in here anymore. But if I hoped Muriel would relax once he was more comfortable, I was too optimistic. He’s still staring at the fire, eyes clouded with guilt and grief, tears streaking down his cheeks.
He won’t snap out of this until I force him.
“Look at me,” I say quietly, and he turns to face me. His thighs are parted, so I move closer to kneel between them, bringing my face as close to his as I can possibly get, and I cradle his jaw in my hands.
“What are you doing?” he demands, voice raspy with some combination of confusion, panic, guilt, and something else . . . something I know is desire.
“I’m reminding you of what’s true,” I say, and then I kiss him.
Hard.
It’s not like the first time, when we collided in such an ungainly fashion, awkward and tentative, when I was surprised at myself as he was. And it’s not like the second time, where everything was soft and sweet and full of hope and light.
This is the kiss I’ve been holding back since very nearly the moment I met him, the kiss that has been lying in wait while I let him get used to me, like a wild animal who had to become familiar with my scent before I could reach out my hand to stroke it without being bitten or scratched. This is the way I dream about kissing him when we fall asleep side by side on our bedrolls. So distant, so polite, so chaste.
But that isn’t enough anymore, not tonight, not after everything. Not after so much exhaustion and so much loss and so much horror and so much fear. Not when Muriel is circling the edge of a panic attack because he takes the blame for all those hearts on his own shoulders - another pile of bodies, dead at his feet, another set of losses for which he needs to atone.
I can’t let him fall asleep that way.
So I grip his face with my hands, refusing to let him go, and I kiss him like I’ve never kissed anyone in the three years I can remember . . . though I must have done it before, because my body certainly remembers how. My tongue licks hungrily along the seam of his lips until they tumble open, drawing me in. Muriel utters a short, stunned gasp as my tongue sweeps inside his mouth, but he doesn’t pull away; I feel his hands clutch at my waist, holding me there like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he lets go of me.
But I’m not going anywhere.
I let my mouth drift away from his to kiss my way roughly across his cheek, his jaw, and down his throat; his whole body shudders as my tongue brushes the hollow between his neck and collarbone, so I stay there, clutching at him frantically, savoring the warm, earthy taste of his skin. His heart is pounding, his breath coming hard and fast, his fingers digging into my hips, and my kisses grow rougher, more desperate. It feels so good, finally, not to be holding all of this in, trying to keep this avalanche of want at bay every moment we’re together.
My teeth graze the delicate skin of his throat, and he gives a sharp hiss of startled pleasure. “You’ve never kissed me like that before,” he chokes out, voice rough and ragged.
I pull back to meet his gaze, sweeping my thumb over his soft bottom lip, savoring his low moan. “But you must have known I wanted to.”
He shakes his head, eyes wide and baffled. “I - you - how could I have known -”
“Are you telling me you never thought about it?” I whisper, cradling his face in my hands. He can’t meet my eyes. It’s not like his ordinary flush of embarrassment when I’ve teased him before. He’s gone completely white. He looks terrified of me. “Muriel, we’ve been sharing a bed on the road for weeks.”
“With our clothes on. And a wolf between us. This is different.”
“I told you I wanted to take you out on a real date once we got back to Vesuvia.”
“You say things like that all the time. You like to tease me. I just, I thought -”
I kiss him again, even harder this time, letting my hands slide up to fist his hair. He makes a sharp little gasping sound into my mouth, part shock, part the sweet little sting of pain as I give his dark, shaggy locks a tug. I’m being rough with him on purpose, to show him that I’m not afraid, to remind him that I’m not made of glass and he doesn’t have to be delicate with me. He doesn’t have to be frightened I’ll break.
“Don’t do that,” he snarls at me, a little breathlessly, as he finally pulls away. “Don’t do that again. I can’t, we can’t, I’ve never - it was different before. We can’t do this. It can’t be like this.”
I stare at him. “You’ve never what?” A violent flush sweeps his cheeks, and he turns away from me, like he can’t even say it. I gentle my voice, reaching out to cradle his jaw and pull him back to me. “Muriel. Have you ever . . . been with anyone, before?”
“Oh, loads of times,” he says bitterly. “They were all lining up around the block outside the Coliseum to fuck the Scourge of the South. Couldn’t get enough.”
The ugly sting of self-loathing in his words causes me to sit back on my heels, staring at him in astonishment. He gives a snort of derision, like he can’t believe I’m even surprised. “Of course I haven’t. Who would ever let these hands touch them? Who would take the Count’s executioner to bed?” He looks at me sharply. “Would you?” he demands. “If you’d known me then. Would you be sitting this close to me? Would you be kissing me and offering me comfort? Would you be asking me to your bed?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “But I don’t remember who I was, either. Maybe I was someone awful. Maybe if you’d known me then, you would be the one afraid to sit too close to me.” Muriel gives another snort at this, but it’s more amused than scornful. “The point is that we can’t know. Neither of us are those people anymore. Maybe the you and I of five years ago wouldn’t have made it work; but those versions of us are gone. And this me -” I break off to kiss him again, hot and soft and urgent, letting my mouth trail down his jaw, throat, collarbone, and savoring the feeling of him trembling beneath my touch - “wants you very, very badly. What if, just for tonight, that could be enough?”
“I don’t -” He swallows hard. “I don’t know how to . . .”
“You don’t have to.”
“I don’t know if I can - make it good for you . . . I’m not - you deserve -”
“I’ll teach you,” I say gently, stroking his dark, shaggy locks back from his forehead. “I’ll teach you what feels good for me, and you teach me what feels good for you.”
He closes his eyes, and when he speaks again his voice is nearly inaudible. “I don’t . . . know . . . what feels good for me,” he mumbles, like it’s shameful, like it’s a confession, like he’s expecting me to get up and walk away from him.
I pause for a moment before speaking again; I want to get the words exactly right. I don’t want to frighten him back inside those walls he likes to hide behind.
“I understand,” I begin gently, “why over the years you’ve maybe - held yourself back, from seeking pleasure from other people. When we first met, you flinched if I even touched your shoulder. I can see that it might have been difficult, even if there had been someone you wanted - someone who may even have wanted you back - to allow someone close to you in that way.” I pause again, taking a breath. “But when you say you don’t know what feels good,” I continue on, keeping my voice deliberately soft, neutral, nonthreatening, “do you mean to say you’ve never . . . given pleasure to yourself?”
Muriel can’t speak. Can’t look at me. His face is pale and drawn and miserable. This is something more than just the fear of rejection by others who saw him only as the Scourge of the South. This is something deeper, something desperately sad.
“You hated yourself that much,” I whisper, feeling tears rise to my own eyes, matching his. “Even such a simple, ordinary human pleasure - you didn’t feel like you deserved it. You didn’t deserve to feel good, ever. About anything.”
“You don’t understand,” he says. “The things I’ve done with these hands . . .”
I reach for him, taking hold of his wrists, guiding his hands up to touch me. I place one on my hip, and the other - more boldly - I slide up the soft linen of my shift, and place it so Muriel is cupping my breast in his hand. He recoils, startled, but I keep my hand pressed over his, and don’t let him pull away.
“I’m not afraid of your hands,” I whisper. “I want them. I dream about them. Muriel, I see you. I know who you are. I know the things you’ve done. I know the man you once were. And I’m not frightened of the man you are now.” I grip his wrists again, and slide both his hands up my body to circle my throat, then hold up my own in surrender. “You’re strong,” I tell him. “If you wanted to hurt me, you could do it. But you won’t. I’m safe in your hands, Muriel. It’s the place I feel safest in all the world.”
“What are you doing?” he whispers hoarsely. “Why are you doing this?”
I close my eyes, feeling his fingertips trembling as they rest against my throat. “To prove to you that you’re safe too,” I murmur back. “Safe from the fear that someday you’ll look at me and see horror in my eyes. Safe from the worry that I secretly believe you’re a monster. That everything between us has been a lie. That I lay awake at night, dreading the touch of the Scourge of the South as he sleeps beside me. All the dark things you tell yourself, all the fears you still harbor about us, about me . . . none of it’s real.” Eyes still closed, I smile up at him. “I yield to you completely,” I tell him. “I know you won’t hurt me. So what do you want to do to me?”
When his mouth finds mine, I’m shocked breathless. He’s ravenous against me, like something has been unleashed, and his hands slip down from my throat to my shoulders to find my breasts again. I shiver as he impatiently tugs down the strap of my shift to pull the soft, creamy skin of my breasts free, running his calloused thumbs over the nipples until they swell into sharp, aching peaks.
“Does it do that because it hurts, or because it feels good?” he pants into my ear.
“It feels incredible,” I sigh, practically swooning beneath his touch. “Don’t stop.”
When he lifts me onto his lap and ducks his head to take my breasts into his mouth, first one, then the other, licking and sucking hungrily, I cry out so loudly that I’m grateful, for the first time, for the remote isolation of our journey. Inanna, sensing we would be occupied for awhile, trots off to go sleep beside the horses. There is no one here but us. In the Palace, in the shop, even in Muriel’s hut in the woods, we might find ourselves compelled to bite our tongues, at least a little. But not here. And we both need this. Unfettered release, pure physical pleasure, pure connection. I let myself cry out, over and over as Muriel nuzzles in deeper, like he’s starved for me.
“When you make those sounds,” he whispers, kissing his way up to murmur in my ear, “it makes my whole body feel . . . achy. Shivery. Hot and cold, all at once. It feels so good.”
“Just wait until it’s your turn to scream,” I retort mischievously, and his face flushes red, half embarrassment and half raw, naked yearning.
“It isn’t the same,” he protests. “You . . . you’re so beautiful, and I’m just -”
“Stop it,” I say, reaching out to yank his loose linen undershirt off over his head and gazing with awe at the gleam of his warm golden chest in the candlelight. “You’re beautiful too.” I lean forward and let my lips brush delicately over the brown peaks of his nipples, one then the other, and feel his whole body convulse. “See?” I tease him. “It’s exactly the same.”
“Oh, God, when you do that, I . . . it’s . . .”
“Shhhh,” I murmur gently, stroking his hair, and guiding him onto his back, the bedroll between his body and the cold stone floor, and let my body curl on top of his, one hand caressing the dark soft curls at the nape of his neck and one gliding slowly lower, lower, lower, as I suck gently at his nipples. When my hand finally reaches the swell between his thighs, his whole body jolts, and I remember all over again that I’m the very first person who has ever touched him here. Even he himself has not.
“I don’t know how to,” he begins again, shaking his head, struggling to sit up, but I shake my head.
“Muriel,” I murmur, leaning up on my elbow to meet his gaze, hair falling in a loose curtain around my shoulder. “I’d like to touch you. Do you want me to touch you?”
He squeezes his eyes closed and turns his head away, like he’s too mortified even to look at me while he admits it, and gives his head the tiniest, faintest nod.
I smile, and stroke his hair. “I’ll be gentle,” I promise him. “Just my hands, this time. We have all night for the rest of it.”
He sits bolt upright at this, eyes wide and staring. “What are you - what do you -”
“You know what I mean, Muriel,” I say. “You know what I want. Do you want that too?”
And, perhaps it’s cheating, but as I wait for him to string together the words for a coherent reply, my fingertips find the drawstring of his loose trousers and tug them open, and Muriel feels the touch of a hand stroking his cock for the very first time.
He’s massive, which I’d expected, with a thrill of anticipation, and astonishingly hard already, just from the kissing and touching. He collapses back against the bedroll, panting, shaking, undone by even my most delicate touch.
“Yes,” he groans. “Please. Yes. Please. I want . . . I want you. I want everything. I want this never to stop. I want . . . I want . . .”
I silence him with a kiss as I settle in beside him, my hand working gently up and down his shaft as he shudders in my arms. “You can have it all,” I whisper. “You can have everything you’ve ever wanted. Tonight, and tomorrow, and when we get back to Vesuvia, and every night for the rest of our lives, because I’m never going to stop wanting you.”
His cock seems to respond to my words as much as to my touch; I suspect he’s already hovering on the brink, from the coiled-up tension simmering through every muscle in his body, and it won’t take much to make him come. Then, hopefully, he can rest a little while, and let go of at least some of the weight he’s carrying.
But it’s the first orgasm of his life, and I want it to be a good one.
My hand grips his shaft and glides up and down in smooth, sure strokes. “What do you like, so far?” I ask him gently. “Where does it feel best?”
“Everything you do feels good,” he mumbles dazedly, but I shake my head.
“No, I’m really asking,” I say. “Listen to your body, Muriel. There are places we’re more sensitive. Places we particularly like to be touched. Everyone’s are different. I want to know yours.”
He hesitates for a moment, biting his lip to concentrate, as my hand glides all over, exploring him, and finally he reaches down to rest his fingertips on my wrist, stopping me.
“Right here?”
He nods.
I smile at him. “Good boy,” I murmur affectionately, which makes him shudder with pleasure, as I let my fingers caress the spot he pointed out, the very tip of his cock, already slick with precum. I rub circles around it with the pad of my thumb, and I can feel his whole body quake. He’s so close. I lean down to murmur in his ear. “You’re so beautiful,” I whisper, pressing delicate kisses against his throat as I tease the head of his cock. “You are so precious to me. Every day I’ve wanted to tell you, and every day I’ve stopped myself, but . . .”
He’s sweating now, gasping, hips thrusting up and up, and I can feel how close he is.
“I’m so in love with you,” I whisper into his ear, as his back arches and his hips stutter and his cock begins to pulse, and as I repeat it over and over again - “I love you, I love you, I love you” - he finally bursts with a harsh, ragged cry, coming over and over and over again in my hand as he pants my name like a plea and a curse and a prayer all rolled into one.
When it’s over, he sinks down against the bedroll in a sweaty heap, eyes fluttering closed, and he doesn’t speak or move, but the corners of his mouth lift just the faintest bit.
He’s smiling.