Chapter Text
“My King.”
James spoke the words into the darkness from behind him, and Will tried not to flinch.
It was the title he’d been using since they’d reunited, and it gripped him sharply across the chest every time. He could hear it on Violet’s lips, in Cyprian’s eyes, his mother’s dying words. Will drew in a slow breath as another wave of nausea threatened, choosing his next words carefully.
“My name is Will.” Will said.
Then waited.
They were riding–James one pace behind him on the narrow rocky pathway–astride horses stolen from the first town they’d passed. Nothing but the white death to stop them.
And Will was quickly discovering what he could say to James without eliciting any sort of compulsion.
His first lesson had been quick. Still reeling, the vision of red jewels fresh and raw, Will had snapped at James to hurry and get dressed. Then watched in alarm as James–still splayed on the damp forest floor where Will had left him, cheeks flushed despite his jacket pulled back to his elbows–was taken as if by an invisible force, his body stiffening, lashes fluttering for a brief moment, before fixing his clothes with an unnatural swiftness. When he’d finally pulled his cravat over glittering red, James had glanced knowingly at Will.
Better, darling?
He couldn’t hear it from James’s lips. Darling. King. The words–pet names from another life–did things to him, pulling on emotions buried in memories that weren’t his own.
James hadn’t replied though, the clopping of hooves and the whistle of a gentle breeze the only sound between them. Had he wanted to say something? Did he think he was in trouble? That Will was angry? Did he–
“You are fine to speak to me whenever you want,” Will said abruptly. “However you want. About anything you–”
James was laughing.
An easy sound, familiar, with an almost nostalgic quality to it, piercing the forest around them. It took a lot of effort on Will’s part to resist the urge to turn and look at him–to see the white gleam of moonlight across blonde hair; a beacon in the night.
“How generous you are today. I’ll take note.” There was amusement heavy in James’s tone, but Will felt his shoulders relax.
It was all wrong–Sinclair, the collar, his uncovered identity, the despair of feeling totally alone for the first time since he met Violet on a London dock. But hearing the words come out of James’s lips with the same dry sarcasm mixed arrogance quality that Will was familiar with, was a welcome relief. This was his James.
Will said, “I mean it, though.”
“I know you do,” James said, matter-of-factly. “You’ve always preferred me to speak freely around you. So I do.”
Will looked back over his shoulder then, “Is it free, though?”
“Of course,” James said, a quick a reply to a complicated question. “I always say what I want. Like this, now: you are being terribly cute, and I’m still annoyed you won’t actually kiss me. And this, which is what I was going to say in the first place: why don’t we go to Amlin Palace? I don’t care for a straw bed in the next village. Pretty please.”
Will turned away, eyes searching the darkness ahead for the lights he’d seen in the distance, and spotted them easily through the trees. Then he paused once again to find a statement that was as neutral and non-compulsive he could manage.
“Because I’m tired. And the town is right ahead.” And he had no idea what or where Amlin Palace was, and had no intention of asking–because those words came from Anharion, not James.
“You don’t need to sleep. I opened your power.”
“I–what?” Will started, not expecting that answer. Sarcean didn't need sleep? It couldn’t be, because Will was exhausted. Wasn’t he? And– “You have always needed to rest. You can barely open a gate without keeling over.” Because you tried so hard for me, he didn’t add.
“You were always better at gates than me, so that’s not a fair comparison,” James said with a sigh. Then after a moment added, quietly: “I need sleep, yes. But you don’t.”
The next village was larger. Will watched the glow of the lights grow closer as they rode through the clearing. As expected, there was not a speck of sound or movement. No one to greet them as they approached. Instead there were just dozens of white statues frozen in place: cuddled in bed; knitting at a fireplace; asleep with an arm flung over a chair. All caught in the last position they’d been inhabited in, like a painter would capture on canvas. The plague must have been quick, shadows moving through the trees and engulfing the town in a silence the would now last forever.
“They shouldn’t wake at least for a day,” Will said. “And when they do–”
“They’d kneel before you.” James finished Will’s train of thought, crudely. Will only nodded. They were safe here, for now.
Eventually they found a place that looked clean and comfortable enough to sleep in. A house with a wealthier build, well insulated and warm, a roaring fireplace with plenty of dry logs stacked–they must have come a way north, or dipped into some sort of valley for the temperature to have dropped this much.
There was a smaller bedroom that was abandoned–the young girl had been sleeping with her parents as the plague had come through, they’d discovered grimly. She’d been a tiny girl, of maybe six or seven years, her arms curled around a small toy as she slept between her parents. The girl who would never live another day, yet her body would. Who would inhabit her? Someone who’d already lived a hundred years?
Will clenched his jaw. I could have stopped this. I would have. Cyprian.
Both of them were filthy from the pit, the blast of the mountain, tumbling together on a damp forest bed. They washed up as best they could in silence, Will actively avoiding being too close to James. He could feel it but not see it: tendrils of control that leached incessantly from his mind, his heart, curling outward to envelope James like an aura. The closer in proximity, the more potent the pull.
Will threw some new logs onto the fire, and a pillow and few blankets in front of it. There was no way he was going to sleep anywhere close to James tonight. He’d made too many mistakes. But Will had dozens of question, and James had Anharion’s memories.
He was greeted with James lying in underclothes on the small bed, barely long enough for him–definitely not long enough for Will. Seeing him walk in, James went to make room on the bed, but Will waved him away, instead pulling up a small nearby chair and sitting down slowly and carefully.
“Oh, no.” James said, rolling onto his back and flopping a forearm over his face in mock despair. “Please no. Not that look.”
“What look?”
“The ‘let’s plan’ look.”
Will frowned, leaning back in the chair and considered him. Was this Anharion speaking? Or James? At this stage, it could be either. Or both.
James was peaking out at Will from under his forearm, relaxed and playful, so much like his usual goading self that it hurt. As if they were in their tent at Sinclair’s dig, lounging on their shared bed. As if this were a day ago, surrounded by friends who loved and trusted him. As if this were mere hours ago in the pit, then the forest, when he’d thought James had come of his own free will, and given himself over freely.
Will inhaled and looked at James with as much serious intent as he could muster.
I can make this right. I can do this.
“What was the point of the brand, if I can control the army anyway? Aside from releasing them all?” Will asked.
A moment of silence followed his question, the only sound from the crackle of the fire in the adjacent room.
Then James lowered his arm from his face and Will watched his features morph into incredulity, then amusement, then incredulity again, before he shook his head in disbelief.
“Look at you,” James practically breathed, an intimate puff of air leaving his lips, “You’re like a baby with a china doll, wondering why it isn’t a rocking horse.” He was smiling, fondly, curling onto his side on the pillow, extending a hand to lazily beckon toward Will. “Stop it, now. Come to bed.”
“James.”
“Obsessed with what you don’t know, what you can’t control,” James continued, his voice wondering, “He did this incessantly, and always, always before bed.” Blonde lashes fluttered as James rolled his eyes, gently mocking, before looking up at him with a tender nostalgia that made Will’s throat tighten. “It’s really you, isn’t it? How I didn’t see it sooner is beyond me. From the beginning, Sarcean, it was–”
Will stood abruptly. “That isn’t my name.”
He said the words firmly, and James blinked up at him, wide-eyed.
He wouldn’t order it. He wouldn’t tell James what to do. What to call him.
Will now realised it was a silly idea to be asking such delving questions. When all he wanted, desperately, was for James to speak to him as Will, and not Sarcean-now, more than ever. His chest ached. With his secret out, the thread-bare identity he’d crafted was fragile. Was it selfish to ask for just one person to see him as Will, the boy whose mother never loved him?
Will flopped down back onto the chair again and brought both of his hands to cover his face with a wobbly sigh.
James sat up then too, as if naturally gravitating towards Will’s discomfort.
“What can I do?” James’s words were soft, inquisitive. “Darling. I’ll fix it all–Sinclair. My punctilious little brother. This awful bedding.”
Will shook his head.
“Tell me.” James breathed.
It was hard, to see James like this–acutely alert, openly receptive to anything Will might request. A dog begging for approval. He’d been like this before, to a point, but the collar augmented it sharply: Will hadn’t even said anything that would induce a compulsion, but James was all but asking for it.
Will felt his own possession curl thickly in the air between them. He's been avoiding the indulgence of looking at James since he first saw the collar, or more accurately, has been avoiding his own response to it. But they were here now, and after everything else that had gone wrong, Will finally allowed his eyes to wander.
James St Clair was incongruous in the small room, the ceiling barely tall enough to stand in, brown scratchy blankets thrown messily over the bed. He sat, clean and pristine, for me, leaning forward attentively, undershirt open to his naval revealing near translucent skin, eyes wide with concern and unadulterated attention.
“…James,” Will’s voice was barely a whisper, but he knew James would still heat the approval thick in his voice.
And James responded immediately, shifting his posture subtly, lips parting gently, eyes speaking promise. He wasn’t shy, not at all–this was the show of someone well accustomed to attention, and for good reason.
Because there, shining a deep burgundy in the dim of the room and adorning almost the entire length of his neck: the collar. Will felt all the breath in his lungs leave him, as his body swayed forward involuntarily toward it. It was impossible to look away, as if the jewels demanded his eyes linger. Will couldn’t even blink. There were so many colours, so many depths, so many patterns.
And for a moment, Will thought he might not be able to look away, falling endlessly into the deepest shades of ruby forever.
This isn’t what James wanted, Will reminded himself. And then, from somewhere darker, more primal–he sought me. He presented it to me and begged it donned. He might have followed me by choice, but he prefers when his choice is taken from him–
Will inhaled sharply, withdrawing back with a sudden movement and screwed his eyes shut.
Too close, that was too close.
He rubbed his face in his hands and hunched forward.
–Then it hit him. Everything. It was the first time he’d been able to close his eyes and be enveloped in darkness, the first time he’d been able to sit and absorb what had just happened. How greatly and terribly he’d failed. How unloved he would still be. Will's throat constricted and he screwed his eyes shut, his body curling around on itself as his legs drew up in an attempt to stop a frustrated sob bubbling over.
He felt James come to him, then. Leaving the bed to kneel on the ground before him, and draping himself over Will’s lap; a tether reunited.
Will could hardly breathe. “You don’t know–what I’d planned–” he took a deep breath, voice wobbling and thick, trying to ignore James’s head being so close,“–none of it, because I’ve been lying. Always lying. But I did it for them, to stop–the army, tell them to destroy themselves.”
James made a shushing to sooth him, picked up Will’s hand, and began tracing small patterns over his palm with a fingertip.
“And now they will think I’ve put the collar on you–I didn’t what that for you, James.” Will tipped his head back to look at the ceiling, trying to even out his breathing. He couldn’t look down at James when he was like this. “I didn’t protect you when you needed me.”
He was beginning to understand the deep despair of loneliness that Sarcean must have endured, knowing he had Anharion, but at the same time, he didn’t.
They stayed like that for some time, long enough for wetness to dry on his lashes and his breathing to settle. James, with his legs folded under him and his head rested on Will’s lap, said nothing, just stayed, waited, soothed.
I’ll make this right.
“James?”
James slowly lifted his head up to look at Will from the floor. He looked sleepy, his eyelids heavy.
Will said, “If we found a way to remove the collar?”
The collar was so close, he could feel it. James made a noise that sounded like some sort of sleepy dismissal, and flopped his head back on Will’s lap in answer.
Will clenched his teeth, then released them. Then, “Try it.”
In an instant, James’s demeanour changed. Will felt a ripple course through his body, more intense than what he’d seen in the forest. Then James sat back on his haunches, his face contorting briefly in confusion, no longer any trace fatigue. But then it was gone, and his body relaxed.
And calmly, carefully, James stood–his face a picture of placid contentment–and walked silently over to his jacket and pulled something out. Something short and metallic and shiny, and he unsheathed it, bringing it away from his body then angling toward–
“No!” Will lurched forward. “Stop!”
Will launched desperately off his chair and barged into James, tackling him to the ground while fumbling to grapple his hands from his neck. They both hit the floor hard, but Will didn’t care.
James had tried to decapitate himself.
James had tried to decapitate himself.
Will scanned for blood, stab wounds, any sort of mark, but there was nothing. James was okay, the collar sitting snug against his throat. He's okay, he's fine. Will could’ve cried in relief, his breath coming out in grateful heaves as he lay across James on the floor.
“Ow.” James huffed from underneath him. The compulsion gone, James was back to being…James. It was the sweetest thing he’d heard. “That was…entirely unnecessary.”
“I’m sorry–”
“I’d already stopped, too.” James wasn’t angry, if anything he sounded uneasy. Cautious. “Even before you yelled at me, I felt the moment when you realised what I was doing, and changed your will. Then I stopped. That’s how it works.”
That’s how it…?
Will lifted his head to look at James, then to the knife lying two feet away, as if it’d dropped well before Will had even reached him, then back at James.
James scoffed at his confusion. “You really are like a child–”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Will did feel stupid, but the relief flooding through him was so immense that it was all he could do to keep his hands off James, adore him, breathe down onto him. Mine, you’re mine. He took James’s face in his hands, then threaded his fingers through soft blonde.
James was so close, a fresh smile gracing his face from the new attention, the length of their bodies flush together. So close.
He could just–
Will placed his hand on the collar, and the world contorted around him.
As soon as his fingers connected with the red he could feel James. But almost nothing else. No child’s bed, no crackling fire, no house, no town full of white death.
There was hot breath leaving his mouth, floorboards under his back–he was in James’s head looking up at his own eyes: dark, possessive, creeping black at the edges. Then he was back in himself, James’s lashes fluttering, his mouth falling open, and–
Will kissed him. Kept his firmly hand over the collar, and kissed him.
It was like coming home, sweet, familiar, warm. James immediately responded, a pleased moan escaping into the kiss, his body plaint, wrapping his arms to pull Will closer.
Will breathed into James’s mouth, “You would kill yourself on a command?”
James arched beneath him. “Please.”
It was addictive, and he shouldn’t, because he was losing control, heady with it, the desire to push him as far as he could. To have everything from James that he could take.
“You would harm yourself if it pleased me?”
James let his head tipped back on floor, writhing gently, his voice wispy and lost. “Always, please, more.”
“…And you would enjoy it?”
Another moan, a stutter, maybe a laugh.
“You know I do.” James said, and Will wanted more.
He fell back in through collar and into James, and sensed immediately the utter devotion and affection surging through his heart and more urgently, lower down–lust, heat, the desire to spread his legs.
He looked further, and for a second, Will saw blond hair–longer and softer than anything he’d even seen on a woman–cascading past his lower back, pooling around him, dark hair and sheets of midnight black.
Further still, Will found a pool of searing white, like bottled lighting–a cobra ready to strike, sitting in James’s chest, dormant and waiting as if asking to be used.
Will pulled back into himself, pleased at everything he saw. The power he had to control James, and the power he gained from the control was endless. All the things they could do together. There was his own lust, yes, but the control is what had his body feverish.
His kissed James, shuddering against him, pressing his own arousal firmly down against James’s, and James moaned, pushing right back. Then blond lashes fluttered opened, and after a moment he sighed in recognition. “Your eyes, it is you…” he whispered, smiling gently, bringing his hand to Will’s cheek in intimate affection. James moaned, “Sarcean…”
Will jolted back violently, his hand leaving the collar all at once.
And with it, the pressure lifted and he came back fully into himself, blinking for a moment at James.
Then he sat back and put some distance between them. And some more.
“Will.” James reached back to him, breathlessly searching for words. “I’m sorry, I’ll call you Will. Come back.”
“Because I am Will.” Will said, but even he could hear the uncertainty in his own voice.
James only nodded, solemnly. “Yes, you're right. You aren’t him. You are Will, and I'm James. I just have extra memories and they play with my mind. It’s confusing.”
Will nodded, but said nothing.
He wanted so badly to believe James. But how can he trust anything James said, if it was always going to be something Sarcean would want to hear?
He had to leave.
He was shaking, his arms tingling, his lips prickly numb. He was playing with powers he didn’t understand, and whilst the control he had over James was so incredibly natural, his own control over his body was lacking.
And maybe, Will thought, if he lost control–Sarcean would gain it.
He stood up and fixed his shirt.
Control.
He turned the concept over in his head. Not it was new to him, but that it was something he should have considered, before. Kettering had told him control and death–these were the domains the Dark King excelled in most.
He can’t lose control now. He might’ve been able to, before James had the collar on.
Will looked back.
James was sitting on the floor, flushed and dazed, but with a mote of concern.
He didn’t ask James not to follow him. He didn’t ask James not to bother him. But he closed the door gently on his way out, feeling the welcome rush of clear-headed thought flood back to him as soon as he did.
James didn’t bother him all night, not a peep.
Which was good, he needed time to think. Everything was his fault–and we was going to make it right.
He’d sent James to the gate–knowing he’d be vulnerable after opening it, and without anticipating movement from Sinclair. He'd lied to everyone he's ever cared for. And now, he's worried he's lying to himself.
Will sat down in front of the fire, and began to think.