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The moon hangs faint and low in the still-bright sky, the edging of the seasons bringing her out at a time when it seems she should barely wake.
Mozus Trein himself has nearly lost track of time, body’s rhythm still out of tune with the fast-approaching summer as April is nearing its turn into May, the trees along the walkways of the college having already burst into bloom for their beautiful moment in the sun, only to now drop their petals just as quickly. The cold velvet of winter has sunk back into memory, and the birds have returned, they too no longer knowing quite when to begin their song or quite when it’s time for their symphony to end as the days become longer.
Lucius is, perhaps, the only living thing he knows besides the birds themselves delighted at that, now spending his free hours in a near-constant watch out of the windows and bathing in the abundant sunbeams that adorn the castle hallways. Just the other day he’d strode into the room during afternoon tea and essay grading with two small yellow feathers trailing from his mouth, a look on his small, round face that suggested it’d been naught but a near-miss. He’d huffed out a frustrated yowl before flopping onto his favorite cushion on the chair near the hearth, letting the sun wash over his dark fur and, in turn, vanish all his worries.
Now that the sun is all but set, the feline is now off roaming the castle, as he often does after-hours, leaving him alone in the room, but not for long. He fingers the small square of parchment again where it sits on the edge of his desk.
Tonight. Drinks. After the moon is out.
Cheers,
L
It’s nearly time now, perhaps, as the sky slowly starts to darken. He pulls down a single wine glass from the corner cabinet and undoes the window latch, naught but a formality, a polite way of bidding his guest a warm welcome.
His body feels stiff today in spite of the lovely weather, the pressure in the air feeling thick and heavy, something even the softest spring breeze can’t seem to lessen. The weather is likely to turn, it seems, something he’s long been able to feel in his joints as he ages, the sour heat of his rheumatism making itself known as an ache that runs through all his limbs.
Tonight he forgoes the wine, pours himself a cup of black tea and settles back into grading another stack of student work, keeping half an eye on the window.
Whoever once wrote the rumor they could not enter uninvited had not met Lilia Vanrouge.
He barely even hears the sound of the window swing open, nor the soft land of footsteps on his carpet. The cool spring evening breeze is the first notion he has, the sudden rush of air into the room and the tickling on the exposed nape of his neck.
“Mozus.”
“Lilia.”
There’s the sound of free-flowing, and he turns to find Lilia’s already poured a glass of pinot noir in the time it’s taken him to exhale. That mischievous smile is ever-present on Lilia’s lips as he settles into his usual chair in front of the hearth, but his eyes are lit with a gentleness, a fondness that sends a flutter to his heart.
“I hope I’m not a tad early. It’s getting lighter out, throws off my sense of time. Not as keen as I used to be.”
“Not at all. I was merely assessing some assignments.”
“My, is that so. Anything I should worry about? Or should I trust I’ve done my due diligence?”
“That’s for another day.” He grabs his own cup of tea from off his desk and sits before sending the papers shuffling themselves and neatly filing into one of the desk drawers with a flick of his fingers. The small lock clicks shut, and he levels his gaze at Lilia, who’s smiling wider now. “In spite of it all, you are still my student.”
“I recall a time when it was the other way around, dear.”
“Hm, I believe you were more of a designated mentor, at most,” he says, a smile on his lips, watching as Lilia further relaxes into the conversation, leveling him with a heavy-lidded gaze. “You were hardly assigning me grades.”
He watches as Lilia deliberately crosses one heeled leg in front of the other and adjusts himself in his seat. “I recall you often praised my guidance.”
“Ah,” he says, raising a single thin eyebrow, “I didn’t say you weren’t wonderful. Just that you were not really what one would call a professor.”
“You’re going to stir up my old bones too much if you go on like that,” Lilia says softly, placing his now-empty wine glass on the table and pouring himself another drink. “Remind me of how we spent those nights in the libraries of the castle, just us two.”
Lilia’s voice is heady, gaze hot, and to anyone on the outside, he’d appear to already be drunk on the wine. To anyone else, the flash of his fangs as he laughs softly might not set such a shiver in them. He takes another deep sip from his cup, and in his memory, back nearly forty years, he can still feel the cool stone of the castle walls, and the breath of different kind of Lilia Vanrouge on his lips.
Strange how memories which at one point had been left long in the annals of his mind could suddenly surface and stay there in his forethought, while others that had always seemed so prominent suddenly sunk back again, as though they were being tucked away into a cabinet somewhere until something sparked their retrieval.
Lilia tips back his second glass, drains it in one swallow, the points of his fangs glistening as he runs his tongue over them.
“May I? Or would you prefer we talk more, dear?”
“I don’t mind,” he says, removing his gloves. “There’s no sense in chatting idly merely out of politeness.”
“I’d hardly call it idle,” Lilia says with a laugh. “At our age, isn’t it delightful to be able to ruminate on our past recklessness? These days, I’d never dream of making love on a stone floor.”
He can’t help but smile wryly at that, if only because it feels a bit like a lie. Lilia seems to be no less spritely than any of the other students, and Vargas has said how he’s witnessed firsthand him out-maneuver even the finest Spelldrive players.
This body is much smaller than the Lilia Vanrouge he had first met so many years ago, when he himself had been naught but nineteen. It’s a body no less lithe than the Vanrouge he first knew, and under that schoolboy veneer is still a soldier’s heart. There’s something unspoken that’s still echoed in those eyes, those beautiful thin pupils that have seen thousands of moons wax and wane, kingdoms rise and fall, birthrights and requiems.
Old, yes, Lilia Vanrouge is far older than he himself can possibly try to comprehend, and he’d vowed long ago to keep that out of his mind. It sounded like the type of thing that would drive a good man to madness, a wasp trying to fathom the life of a cicada.
“Where should I take it from?”
Lilia’s hands are hot against his skin, one stroking the pulse in his neck, the other carefully cupping his cheek. He holds out a single finger, and Lilia laughs, as though he’s delighted by the lack of ceremony, the complete frankness of the offering.
“Mozus,” he murmurs, and he nuzzles into Trein’s neck, kisses his way gently down the pulse beating there. He shifts under those lips, trying to resist the urge to lean into the warmth, into the sweet softness of those kisses that seem to melt into his skin, as Lilia continues, “no time for lovemaking tonight?”
“I’ve papers to grade.”
It’s an excuse, if merely because tomorrow is still a school day, and he fears anything with him lying on his back might leave him unable to rise tomorrow morning. The nagging aching of his knee seems to be getting more pronounced, and he finds himself shifting his shoulder to relieve a twinge in his neck he hadn’t felt until now.
Lilia isn’t the least bit deterred, or at least does not make any show of it, and leans forward, knee pressed firmly between Mozus’ parted thighs.
“One kiss, then, pretty please.”
“You say that like I’d want to deny you.”
Lilia’s hair tickles against his forehead as he leans in to press their mouths together, cups that hand more firmly against Mozus’s cheek to be able to press down with the weight of his small frame, kissing him deeper, as though there, too, is a place he wishes to drink from. He pulls back, just slightly sucking in Mozus’s bottom lip with his teeth, savoring the feeling of pulling from him, and in one swift move takes his other hand from Mozus’s neck and pulls the pad of Mozus’s ring finger into his mouth. He lavishes it with his tongue before bringing it to one of his lower fangs, and the moment hangs in the air, Mozus finding himself unable to discern if he’s yet to be bitten until the scent of iron breaks in the air. Then there’s the burn, the sudden delayed realization of pain and Lilia’s bringing up his wineglass to squeeze in three fat drops of his bright red blood into the goblet and downing it with the dregs of his pinot noir.
“Only three?” he asks, because he’s become used to Lilia drinking with unabashed voracity, often from his throat or thigh.
“Oh, have you’ve come to notice how much of a glutton I usually am, Mozus?”
Lilia releases the grip on his finger, where the puncture wound has already begun to clot and scab over. The pain, too, is beginning to fade to something of a softer throb, and compared to the general aches of his body, it barely registers.
“One more for the road,” Lilia says, stealing a quick kiss from his lips once more. “And just a second one. I can’t help myself with you.”
“It’s not that I mind,” he says as Lilia makes his way to the window. “It’s not as though I don’t also have the capacity for such an appetite.”
“You have such elegant restraint,” Lilia says with a chuckle. “You always have. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, my love.”
“Until tomorrow,” he says, and Lilia’s out the window before a half-murmured, “love,” drops from his lips with too much hesitance.
The fragrance that lingers is that of wine and rust. He corks the half-drunk bottle with a wave of his fingers and has it walk itself off to the staff fridge in the college kitchens, then sits and summons the papers back from the file cabinet onto his awaiting desk.
He begins reading the first line of the essay on the top stack. Unimpressive. His vision fogs, slightly, and he feels a wooziness in his head. His neck aches again, the same twinge from before. He pours himself another glass of now-cold tea, takes a deep sip, and starts again. The tip of his finger aches strangely, burns in a way that demands every last nerve in his body take heed. It burns above all else.
He inspects his finger under the lamp. It’s usual. There’s nothing unordinary about it at all. In fact, it’s already nearly healed and looks at least several days old. To the ordinary eye, it’d seem nothing but a mere papercut or a nip from his darling boy. He presses it, and suddenly the edge of the wound splits open, a bubble of blood bursting through the thin crack.
He draws it into his mouth. It tastes like blood, nothing more, and he wonders to himself about what kind of taste a fae must experience, what Lilia himself seems to enjoy. What kind of blood does he have that tastes sweet to that strange tongue, a blood that’s to be mixed with a fine wine and savored as such? Blood that Lilia’s indulged in on a number of occasions, often combined with a sort of hedonism that he tries to avoid surfacing in his mind now, if only for the fact he’s trying to focus on the essay in front of him and there’s a discomfort in conflating the two.
This is a time for work, not for play or whatever else one might call whatever he and Lilia entwine themselves in, whatever sort of messy web connects the two of them. The relationship is a simple enough exchange, but the emotions involved are a tangled matter.
He pulls a plaster from the drawer and some antiseptic and continues on, ignoring the burning left behind and the astringent odor.
Another hour passes, and he’s just about to round on grading his way through 3C, though he’d hoped to be further along at this point, when Lucius returns with a triumphant set of meows and a single small blue feather stuck in his bushy collar. He hops onto his usual spot in the middle of the bed, stretching and settling into a little pile, seemingly satisfied with whatever he’d gotten up to.
He sighs, decides it’s time for him, too, to turn in, and sends the stack of ungraded essays back into the filing cabinet before summoning his nightclothes from the cupboard next to the bed.
“Welcome back,” he says, giving Lucius a scratch under his chin. “Did you catch something, this time?”
“Mrrroowww.”
Ah. More than one. Well, at least one of them had a fruitful evening.
* * *
It isn’t until the moon is full and there’s a strong storm about to break that he receives a new message. He wakes at dawn on that day, five in the morning when the hazy morning light is still barely peeking over the horizon. His joints ache more than normal, more than they had the previous week. They’re swollen and stiff, full of pressure and a tenderness that has him stretching out his limbs with a grimace. Lucius, curled in the center of the bed, prances to the edge and jumps off with a grace he can’t help but envy, in a way.
“Mrrrrrow.”
Lucius bats at the heavy velvet curtain covering the window, and when he pulls it open to let in some of the faint light, there is a message waiting.
It comes, as always, in the claws of a small bat pup, and he gives it a grape from off his own breakfast plate as a thank-you. The bat offers a little noise of thanks and flutters back out the window it came from as he sets to breaking the wax seal on the letter.
Mozus,
Drinks tonight?
L
He sets the parchment next to his waiting coffee cup and flicks his quill on his desk to set about penning a response, where it hovers over the parchment. The spring wind whistles as it rattles against the old window panes, and he flexes his left knee before setting his morning meal onto his plate. His fingers, too, feel sore and clumsy as he lifts a bit of soft-boiled egg to his mouth.
He commands the quill to pen, ‘See you this evening,’ and rolls and seals the note in a scroll before tucking it into the pocket of his suit coat. He’ll find time today to slip it subtly to Lilia, perhaps during one of the breaks, or perhaps via Lucius, should there not be another opportune moment.
He stuffs today’s lesson plans into his bag and from one of the drawers he summons a small bottle of blue tablets, Crewel’s own making, which do wonders for the more inconvenient aches and pains. He swallows one down and tucks the rest of the bottle into his briefcase. Modern convenience. There had been a time not many years ago when he would’ve been tasked with grinding his own herbs in the morning should he want relief, but technology has come so fast in such a short time. He’ll have to thank Divus later and pick up a box of his favorite raisin butter sandwiches from Sam’s when he finds the time.
The pill dulls the aching in a short time, but it does nothing to quell the sense of burning that radiates from his body, the slow and gentle onset of something that is surely going to take at least a week to ride out. As much as his body nags at him, he has no plans to forgo teaching today, nor deny Lilia’s visit, if only because it feels more troublesome not to.
Part of him fears that, in a way, if he were to tell Lilia of his ailment, his window would burst open within the hour to that vampire, dead set on mothering him like he was on his way to the grave.
That’s not their relationship. They’ve never really been that, not even in his youth, when he’d first met Lilia in Briar Valley, he himself a young NRC student set off into the world. Even then, whatever had sparked between them was the sort of passionate, youthful affair where they clung to each other, desiring nothing more than to breathe the same air.
Now it’s moved to blood, a sort of romantic symbiosis, the two of them courting each other with a strange combination of intimacy and distance. Lilia had one day come to him, sweetly pleaded to let him drink, and he hadn’t felt himself in a position to question it. The respect he had for Lilia, the knowledge he was burdened with of just how vastly powerful and ancient a being he was, he hadn’t felt it was his place to ask for any explanation, let alone why Lilia has pleaded at his feet, out of all the mages in the world.
After that first night, whenever Lilia had returned he would avoid thinking over it too deeply, if simply because it was easier not to. There was a life here he was living at Night Raven College, a life he’d already comfortably settled into long before Lilia Vanrouge had come back into it, and he wasn’t entirely enthused about the idea of upending all of that.
Now, however, fate had forced his hand, requiring him to think about it a bit too deeply, because life was slightly more complicated today than it was on certain other days.
On his way to the classroom he can feel it with utmost certainty, the fever and fatigue in his bones, the way his muscles seem to have only half the strength they normally can muster. The pain has gone, yes, thanks to Crewel’s medicine, but the fatigue still weighs, the corridors he normally passes by feeling torturously long.
He sighs with relief once he’s able to sit in his usual chair, and Lucius hops up onto the desk. He’d traveled alongside him today, a rather rare occurrence, but he can sense his master’s fatigue, being attuned so finely to him. Lucius glances up at him with large, knowing eyes and lets out a small chirp of concern. He scratches him under the chin, reassures him things will be fine, and begins writing out the main lesson points on the board. Normally he’d deem to do it by hand, but today he just flicks his wrist and the chalk sails into place and begins copying his lesson plan word for word, thankful it’s already the end of the week.
The first students begin to trickle in, some still eating breakfast pastries out of take-away bags from the cafeteria, some beginning to hurriedly compare homework answers with their classmates, which he pretends not to notice out of the kindness of his heart. When the bell finally charms he takes one more tablet from his bag, downs it with a sip of water, and begins as though this is merely any other day.
“Now, I’ve graded your essays and will be handing them back…I was disappointed, to say the least.”
* * *
The storm had begun by mid-morning as naught but a mere trickle, and by the time lunch rolled around it had reached its full breadth, winds howling, rains pouring down with such ferocity they hit like a wave of arrows against the skin, cold and piercing. Now it still rages late into the night, icy, fat drops battering the windowpanes and forks of lightning closing in around the castle, followed by booming thunder that shakes the half-full teacup on his desk.
He glances at the clock on the fireplace mantle. Nearly eleven.
Lilia is, perhaps, late. He cannot quite tell, because there’s no set time when they meet, but it’s nearly midnight already and there’s still no sign of a visitor at his window. He’s tempted to lay down, if only because after spending most of the day standing, the idea of being able to lay is tempting. The bottle of medication sits on his nightstand, now only a single pill remaining where there had been a handful just this morning.
Lucius rubs up against his shin from under the desk, purrs, as though trying to offer a comforting hand. He stands, winces as he finds his knees a bit stiffer than he’d expected and grips the desk to steady himself before making his way to the bed to sit on the edge. There’s a pack of ice he’s conjured on the nightstand, and he reaches for it. The cold doesn’t seem to do anything but distract from the feverish burn in his body, but right now, it’s plenty.
There’s no reason not to make use of the time while waiting. He’s already in his pajamas and dressing gown, so he lays down onto the bed for a moment, re-freezes the pack of ice with a twitch of his fingers, and lets the cold soothe his aching bones as he sinks into the mattress. Lids heavy, limbs tired, his body gives in.
After what seems to only be a moment, he wakes suddenly, with a slight startle, to the sound of pouring. It’s from behind him, liquid into a glass, and he turns over and half-sits, waiting for the blurry fog to clear from his brain. There’s a creature by the fireplace, a glass in hand, and the clock is just past midnight. Long, sleek hair black as the starless and stormy sky outside, slim white face with high cheekbones, a tall and lithe frame. Shining red eyes, set like jewels in a fine crown. A beautiful creature of the night in his full glory, like something fallen from heaven.
Had it not been for those eyes, he would think it could not possibly be the same creature that sits front row every afternoon for his lecture, the same creature who had snatched his heart so many years ago.
Still, in his sleep-addled haze, had Lilia had not sat on the mattress next to him in that moment and handed him the cool glass of water, he’d have thought he was dreaming.
“Forgive me,” he says once he’s swallowed the first sip, his voice coming out still a bit sleep-weary and rough, “it seems I carelessly fell asleep.”
“You’re ill,” Lilia says gently, and his hand finds the nape of Mozus’s neck, strokes gently down in a way that makes his skin prickle pleasantly. “Mozus, you’ve a fever, I can feel just from your skin.”
“It will pass,” he says, reaching for the bottle on the nightstand again and taking the last small blue tablet. “It just has to break after it’s run its course.”
Lilia sets his glass of wine on the bedside table and strokes a hand through Mozus’s hair, nails raking gently against his scalp. “But if you need antibiotics—”
“It’s not that type of fever,” he sighs, and steadies himself as he shifts and sits upright. “It’s rheumatic. I’m just getting older. It’s something that happens to…most of us,” he says. There’s a slight shift in Lilia’s expression, something almost mournful, and he instantly regrets how harsh he must’ve sounded. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean it as a slight.”
“I know.” Lilia intertwines their hands, pulls Mozus’s close and presses a kiss to the back of it. “I’d never think you meant it as a barb to wound me.”
“Lilia—”
“If you would forgive me, Mozus,” he says softly, pressing another kiss, this time to the hinge of his jaw, “I would still ask to partake of you. Let me soothe your aching.”
“Quite the proposal,” he says, wincing as he shifts his position. “But I trust you.”
“Mozus.”
Just the way he says it draws a shiver up his spine, the way it rolls off his tongue like the sweetest honey. Lilia takes his free hand and uses it to tip his chin up, to bring his lips to meet his own, and the sensation is so sweet, a melting and melding, and for a moment his brain numbs over and collapses on itself like melted candle wax, and he forgets his pain.
“Mozus,” Lilia purrs again into the collar of his dressing gown, and he feels the tickle of fangs against his neck, so sharp but delicate in the way Lilia carefully runs them against his flesh. He feels a hand against his breastbone and realizes Lilia is gripping against his brooch, the brooch containing his magestone. “Here,” he breathes, “let me drink the blot from you, my dear.”
He sits up suddenly, holds a hand for Lilia to stop, waits until they’re both sobered to continue. He glances down at his brooch, and realizes he hasn’t even noticed the stone, the way it’s become murky and the fatigue from his body has pooled within it.
“You hadn’t noticed.”
It’s not a question. He’s too embarrassed to answer, only fingers the brooch, as though he can rub the blot away through sheer force.
“I should have thought of it.”
“You’re so harsh, even on yourself.” Lilia places a kiss to his brow and slowly undoes the belt of his dressing gown, shifting their bodies so his lithe frame cups Mozus’s, settles his aching hips in the crux of Lilia’s thighs, his spine curving neatly and fitting just so against Lilia’s chest. Lilia holds him, nuzzles into the nape of his neck, lips pressing neatly down the sharp edge of his jaw. “Let me take care of you, in return for the boon you offer to me so selflessly.”
“Is it selfless?”
“Kheehee,” he laughs as he opens the buttons on the neck of Mozus’s nightshirt, “are you admitting to me you enjoy our little rendezvous more than you let on?”
“I wasn’t trying to hide it,” he says softly, and their eyes meet as Lilia steals a kiss. Lilia’s eyes are shining, excited, and ah he’s forgotten just how much he somehow enjoys this, the way Lilia looks at him, with that gaze as though he’s something wonderful, a small box of treasures to comb through, one by one, each more fascinating than the last. “Lately I’ve just wondered what about me is so enthralling.”
“Do you not think of yourself as someone worthy of my interest? My, my, it seems I haven’t loved you enough. Perhaps after this I’ll have to be hungry more often.”
“Enough with the jokes,” he says, though he cannot help but faintly smile. “If I’m being forced into such a vulnerable position, I’d love to see you in one as well.”
“Mozus,” he murmurs, and his voice is hushed, low and it trembles. “Perhaps I haven’t been clear enough with you. It is not that you are the only one I am able to drink from. You’re the only one I wish to.” His teeth prickle against Mozus’s neck, sweet fangs like pearls against flesh struck through with creases and age lines, the wall of a mountainside veined through with gold. “I’m in a vulnerable position every time I pierce your flesh, my dear.”
Oh, how he shivers. How deep and delicious it runs, how it fills his whole body with a delicious heat and desire that overruns the fever, leaves him feeling for a moment nothing but the intense want for that bite, that sharp sting and the burn it leaves behind. The wounds heal fast, but the pain in the moment is always the same, the price to pay for blood.
“May I?” Lilia whispers, fingers teasing at the waistband of Mozus’s pajama trousers, “or is too much with your condition?”
“No,” he breathes, and his voice comes out slightly shaking, “I think it’s a welcome distraction.”
Lilia’s hand slips in, the smooth pads of his fingers readily circling the head of Mozus’s half-hard length, and when his breath hitches he feels those fingers press down harder and grasp a little more firmly. His breath comes out from unsteady lungs, chest shaking, and Lilia hums lovely little sounds against his neck.
“Breathe deep for me,” he murmurs, fingering the slit where Mozus is starting to leak, “should I count for you?”
“No need.”
“Then just breathe for me, my love.”
The bite is so painful, so sweet, a sharp knife through the fog of everything else. There is no other pain, there is only the feeling of Lilia holding him down, the steady pressure as he drinks deep, lavishing against his skin with a soft and hot tongue. He can feel a stray drop of his own blood bead down the side of his throat, illuminating all the hidden crevices of his skin as he twists his head and tries to breathe deep. His vision shimmers, head going dizzy, until the rhythm of Lilia’s hand brings him back, fingers still circling the head of his cock. He leans into that sensation, the pierce of the bite already relaxing to a gentle throb, and it’s as Lilia finishes drinking he nips at the shell of his ear and whispers to him, voice low and breath heady with the scent of his own blood.
“Mozus.”
His body shivers and spasms, and he releases freely into Lilia’s palm as Lilia strokes under his nightshirt and down the notches of his spine, pressing soft kisses to the nape of his neck, his jaw, his temple. Lilia gently strokes him through his release, until he’s left empty and breathing heavy, muscles aching pleasantly from the physical exhaustion. They lay together for a moment, bodies both sticky with sweat under their garments before Lilia finally untangles himself, pulls his hand from Mozus’s trousers, and licks it clean in a way that would be grotesque were it any other creature.
“I still will never understand your desire for that.”
“I like your taste,” he says, and his face splits into a wide grin, eyes narrow and fox-like as he chuckles and runs his tongue along his palm, making sure to meet Mozus’s own gaze with one so lewd he has to turn from it. Such honest hunger, the very image is so obscene it makes him blush down to his very core.
As Lilia finishes and makes his way to the small washbasin along the wall he rights his own clothing, rebuttoning his nightshirt and straightening his bed jacket. He runs his hand along the curve of his neck, stopping to finger the wound, which has already scabbed over.
Lilia turns to the washbasin, and no more has he glanced into the mirror above it for a second before his reflection changes. The person standing there, a smear of blood still on his lips, is now half as tall and twice as cunning.
A crackle of lightning splits the sky, just barely visible through the gap in the heavy velvet curtains covering the window. Lilia brings the pitcher next to the washbasin and a small bowl to the bedside, hovers his hands over it for a moment until a thin layer of ice glistens over the water.
“Where does it ache?”
“Most places,” he confesses, though he’s found a comfortable spot lying on his side, and he reaches to place another pillow under his aching left knee. “Not any worse than before.”
A rumble of thunder bellows from outside, shaking the windowpane, and Lilia lays a cloth moistened with cool water across his brow. He fingers the brooch against his breast, undoing the clasp as he always does before sleep. The gem is already shining much brighter as he places it on the nightstand, the murkiness giving way to cool emerald green.
On the fireplace mantle, the clock chimes one in the morning.
As if he’d been waiting on cue, Lucius pushes his way in the door, announcing himself with a loud yowl that rivals the peals of thunder outside.
“Ah, are you here to take over my duties?” Lilia laughs. “I appreciate it, but I’m enjoying myself.”
Lucius lets out another yowl, and he can’t help but smile as the great cat heaves himself up to curl on the end of the bed, leaving the other half of it open.
Lilia gets up as though to leave, but he reaches to catch that hand, the same one that had moments before held him so fiercely.
“He left you a space.”
“Oh?” Lilia smiles widely. “You’d want this old geezer to stay and care for you?”
“Someone has to take responsibility if tomorrow morning I’m too exhausted to get out of bed.”
“Kheehee. And that person should be me?” He steps out of his trousers, slides off his dorm coat and places his hat on the bedside table, until he’s stripped down just to his undergarments. “Not that I really want to say no to begin with.”
Lilia slides under the bed cover, just enough space between them so their limbs barely touch. He strokes a small, feather-light hand down Mozus’s spine, leaving a small trail of permafrost crystals in his wake in lace-like patterns against his skin. It’s soothing, a comfortable relief, and he settles into it, the gentle stroking of Lilia’s hand a comfort, as is the soft purr of a near-sleeping Lucius, and the gentle throb of the wound to his neck.
Outside, the storm begins to wane, the thunder fading as it moves towards the distance. In the morning, surely, when those curtains part, in will shine the sun.