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No, it was when Murchaud kissed his eyes closed that Kit knew he had made a mistake. “God,” Kit said, and Murchaud flinched but did not draw away. Instead, he caught Kit’s lip between his teeth, but Kit continued to speak anyway, his fingernails bloodying his palms as he struggled not to shove the Prince to the floor. “Murchaud, just finish it.”
Murchaud gnawed at his own lower lip. “I said I will unbind thy angel, though it mean thy life. Wouldst have me misuse thee, also?”
It wouldmean Kit’s life. But if the bonds that trapped the angel in his body were severed first, then Mehiel need not die with him, but–when his cage was shattered–might go free.
Kit drew breath and said, “I would it were done.”
Murchaud leaned down on an elbow, close enough that Kit could feel the heat of his body. He raised his right hand and outlined the scar over Kit’s heart. Kit gasped as that scar and its brothers flared on his skin as if freshly seared. “Is there no means to make this gentle?”
Kit swallowed and closed his eyes. “It is mine to endure.”
“If enduring is what thou chooseth.”
I ca
«And thou wouldst have had no choice, were it Baines.» The voice startled Kit, coming as it did with a sense of unfurling and a gazing awareness within. Eyes like a falcon’s, gold as the sun, and wings whose stu
A rape I could have endured,Kit answered. And yet my lover will be kind.“Murchaud,” he whispered.
“Kit.”
“Bind my hands.” Love?” Honest dismay. “I will not–”
“Thou must.” Kit drew a ragged breath. “I will refuse thee otherwise. I have not the strength of will for this. And I must not be permitted to refuse.”
“I would not force thee–”
“It is not force,” Kit said. “For I am begging thee.”
“Dost thou?”
“So we do,” Kit answered, and realized only after the words had left his mouth that he had spoken for himself, and for Mehiel too. “Bind my hands. And my legs. It will reinforce the sorcery in any case; cut the bonds when thou’rt done with me. If we steal those other Prometheans’ symbols to undo their black work, ‘tis no more than they deserve.”
Murchaud regarded him thoughtfully, and then nodded. “As thou wishest.”
Kit closed his eyes as Murchaud left the curtained confines of the bed. The straw tick dimpled under Murchaud when the Elf‑knight returned. Kit turned to watch him fasten a yard‑long length of silk scavenged from a drapery about Kit’s wrist and draw it outward, to one of the massive bedposts. Kit’s heart beat faster as Murchaud repeated the process on the opposite side, exquisitely gentle and completely without pity.
Every inch the Elf‑knight again.
“Do you have the knife?”
“Aye.” Murchaud covered Kit’s eyes with a blindfold and carefully tugged it down over his cheeks. “I’ll not stop thy mouth,” he said. “‘Tis thy poetry I need of thee, and all thy power. ”
Safer in the darkness, Kit nodded, and Murchaud bound his feet apart as well.
The room was warm, and yet Kit shivered at every brush of the air on his sweat‑drenched skin. If he were a horse, he thought, he would be lathered white with fear. Terror, which crystallized into something else entirely when Murchaud, without otherwise touching him, laid the ice‑cold blade of the dagger against the brand on the inside of his thigh and – cut. And moved the blade to the other thigh and cut again. And once more. And again, defacing each sigil in reverse of how they had been layered on Kit’s skin.
Kit strangled the whimper that rose in his throat, not out of pride–he was beyond pride–but out of fear for how it would sound to Murchaud. Instead he pulled against the twisted cloth that bound him, grunting like a birthing woman dragging at a knotted rope. The pain of the knife was still better than the touch of Murchaud’s hand.
Murchaud kissed his mouth again, quickly, guiltily, before Kit could jerk away. And then, the Elf‑knight straddled Kit’s belly, with the heat of flesh on flesh, his weight like stones. Peine forte et dure.This time, Kit could not silence the sound that rose in his throat. Murchaud swallowed it, kissed it away. He settled over Kit’s hips, toes dug under Kit’s thighs, and must have laid the knife aside, because the next touch was the flat of both hands upon Kit’s breast. The brands on Kit’s sides burned so hot Kit thought they must blister, knife slashes trickling blood across Kit’s ribs to soak into the coverlet.
“For Christ’s sake,” Kit snarled, “get it overwith.”
He felt a small, cruel joy when Murchaud flinched hard enough to shake the bed, but then the Elf‑knight drew himself back and said “As you wish it,” and that was a small kind of victory. Until Murchaud wrapped a rough, calloused hand around Kit’s prick and began, with abrupt motions, to manipulate it.
Every touch was irritation, and the longer it continued the more Kit’s rage grew. It started in his belly, a small uncomfortable coal, and grew swiftly to a venom that would not be contained; he cursed and whimpered and heaped abuse. He used the name of God like a whip, and felt the Fae Prince shudder under it and continue, while Mehiel struggled in Kit’s breast like a fox in a snare’s sharp jaws.
Kit visualized the tumble of crimson fur rolling, tail flagging like a ba
And as for Kit? He supposed he had a destination, too.
Kit thought they would tear him apart between them, the angel and the Faerie Prince. He was grateful for the bindings, which let him thrash however he would and yet held him secure. He was grateful for Murchaud’s hands that held him likewise, and with a strength and negligence that carried no remembrance of Baines’ sick mock‑gentleness. And he was grateful for his unstopped mouth, for the freedom to blaspheme and beg even when he knew the efforts would be ignored.
He thought it would grow easier to bear, the Prince’s touch, that in the darkness it would be all he had to focus on and he would learn to withstand it, as he had Baines’ damned iron bridle. But he grew instead angrier and fiercer, an unstoppered wrath that would not be silenced again. Murchaud, meanwhile, was thorough and remorseless, and Kit wept when his body at last surrendered, arching himself to the touch, scrabbling against the bonds.
Murchaud tarried for a moment, ducked to kiss the bloody scar on Kit’s thigh with a mouth that was wet and hot, and then kissed each of the other three ruined brands in turn. It was a farewell, and that was all it was. And Kit, to his shame, fought and wailed like an orphaned child. It was well he was bound, or he should have used his fists against Murchaud.
When the Prince at last placed pillows beneath Kit and knelt between his thighs, placing the dagger upon his breast, Kit’s gratefulness swelled. The straw tick crunched under the Elf‑knight’s knees; his flanks were warm against the insides of Kit’s thighs as Kit bent his legs, taking the slack from the bonds. “I have thy freedom in my hand.”
Kit “wasn’t sure how he found his voice, but find it he did and made it firm to support his lover’s hand. “Finish it.”
“So mote it be,” Murchaud said, and pressed the dagger to the center of the brand upon Kit’s breast. “The Fae should know better than to love mortal men.”
He leaned into the dagger as he rose into Kit.
The dagger slid through Kit’s heart like a serpent’s tongue, slick and easy. He feltthe force of it, felt the gallant muscle striving to beat, shredding itself on the ice‑cold blade. He might have screamed, but all he could manage was a breathless whine that he meant for a sorry sort of joke: Consummatum est.And then the darkness was no longer merely the darkness behind the blindfold, but encompassing and deep and edged with penetrating cold.