Chapter Twenty-Two #2
He didn’t have the words for how it hurt. Didn’t know how to explain. But Robin didn’t ask. He spoke, quiet and fierce and himself, while Zyr stood with his eyes closed and breathed.
“Eight. Unseelie. Beithir. My clever, prickly, sarcastic tempest.”
He wanted to lean in, but his magic made that impossible. He needed control, but the only one capable of control right now was Robin.
“Nine. I like you so much. Even the parts that aren’t my favorite things about you, I like.” Robin gave a light tug on Zyr’s horns. “Good. Keep breathing, beithir. Take a moment, then tell me you’re still attending, if you are.”
He took a moment. He kept breathing. He remained with Robin, who named him as he was. Unseelie. Beithir. His.
“I’m listening. Attending. But not as well as I’d like.
” It was very hard not to lose himself to anger, especially when he couldn’t grip Robin’s ankle or feel the human’s fingers in his hair.
But this, at least, was a problem he could solve.
He’d kept the redcap’s trinket in the heart of his library.
“I need something from upstairs. It’s important.
Will you allow that? I needn’t open my eyes if you’re with me. ”
“Because it’s important and you asked, yeah. I’ll allow it. Take us there and explain what you need. Since it’s important, I won’t say no.” Robin’s assurance was as firm as his grip. “Keep me with you, beithir. Keep your eyes closed as much as possible.”
He could have done as directed, even were they not in Faerie. Could have walked the whole of his library, eyes closed, and named the books on the shelves as he passed them.
But they were in Faerie, which made it simpler still. No need to remember the number of steps to the stairs or to climb them, unseen. Zyr simply reached for the space where he was most himself, while he took one step, then another.
He felt the moment when the heart of the library closed around them. All his most treasured books, pieces of a past most preferred forgotten. All that was left of what had been.
Under no circumstances will we be burning history.
Robin understood what all this meant, as much as anyone could. And he, too, belonged here. In Zyr’s heart.
“The second drawer of my desk,” he said, head bowed and eyes closed–though it was difficult, keeping them so.
“The silver box. It has the Hollow charm from the manticore and the redcap.” He hesitated then.
Not a matter of trust. Merely of weight he didn’t know how to explain. “Would you put it on me?”
Robin went quiet for long enough that Zyr nearly opened his eyes. Then a loss of touch from one horn. The sound of a drawer opening.
“Lift your hand.” Robin instructed. “You know what I need if you want me to do this. I’m not going to ask you for it.”
Yes. Zyr knew what was needed. His name. His true name.
Zyr lifted his hand but didn’t speak. Not immediately. Weighing how best to offer it. Robin disliked free rein.
“A true name’s uses are limited,” he said. “Especially to a human. Binding with an oath or with certain magics, like this one. Only that. Mine is Dhanra Cairlache.”
“Dhanra Cairlache,” Robin murmured. “I like it.”
Then a soft click, and the weight of the Hollow charm on Zyr’s wrist.
Faerie’s magic disappeared.
No. Not entirely. Zyr could feel the vaguest whisper of power, just as he could sense light through his closed eyes. But it was very far away, and the magic within him, the magic that made him, quieted in response. Blood without a heart to pump it, going still.
“Tail around my leg. As high as my knee, low as my ankle. Thank you for telling me what’s not possible with your name.
For giving me what I need to do this.” As he spoke, Robin covered Zyr’s eyes with a strip of Faerie-weave, securing it around his horns.
The sense of light went muted, then disappeared entirely. “Tell me where you’re at.”
Now, he could lean into Robin’s touch, wrap his tail around Robin’s calf. Breathe.
“I’m here, Raven-Robin. Attending.” He considered a moment, then added, “We can feel them, our true names. A sort of pull, toward the speaker. It’s pleasant, coming from you.”
Zyr couldn’t see. Could barely sense Faerie. Only Robin remained. The brush of his lips against Zyr’s cheek. The sound of his breath. The cool metal that must be the arm of his glasses. His voice, most of all, defining the rules of Zyr’s world.
“That’s good to know. Attending and names both. On your knees, beithir.”
Zyr did as bid, guided by the weight of Robin’s hands, until his forehead was pressed to Robin’s–apparently bare–stomach.
“Thank you, Raven-Robin.”
He could think again. Surrounded by the dark, bound to Robin’s will. He needn’t fight, defend his existence. He was Robin’s beithir, irrefutable and real, kneeling in his own heart, at Robin’s feet.
“That’s better,” Robin murmured, his fingers combing through Zyr’s hair.
“You have a pretty name. It fits you. And if you want to hear me say it, to have ‘Raven-Robin’ answered with ‘Dhanra,’ you need to ask. Not every time. Just this once. Do it the way you know I like best, question marks and all. The way only you do.”
Only Robin would think to make him ask to hear his true name spoken. To make every surrender not something taken from Zyr, but given to him. Asked for, then granted like a gift.
“Would you call me Dhanra, Raven-Robin?” Asking the way Robin liked best meant not just a request, but an explanation. “It holds all that I am. Unseelie. Beithir. Scholar. Yours.”
“I like all that you are,” Robin answered, fingers twisting tighter in Zyr’s hair, just enough to almost ache. “That was good, Dhanra. If I slip and use your given name at times like this, it won’t be as a punishment. Not a sign you did something wrong. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Zyr was familiar with punishment. Nothing about Robin, neither his indulgences nor his denials, had ever felt similar.
“My unseelie scholar, Dhanra.” The quiet murmur of Robin’s voice had Zyr sighing. Each use of his name like a touch, like Robin was running his fingers not through Zyr’s hair, but over his soul. “Asked properly, kneeling for me. Trusting me to lead you into the dark.
“Listen carefully. I’m going to ask you something, and I don’t want it to be a ‘yes’ because you think I’ll be pleased by you agreeing. You know I want honesty. And I know that even if fae lied, you wouldn’t. Not to me.”
“Never,” Zyr affirmed, though Robin hadn’t asked him to. He’d failed to be fully honest about their potential bond, left Robin feeling deceived. He wouldn’t risk it again.
“Good. I want to take you into the dark, as deep as I can right now. Where you can’t fight.
I’d like to restrict your movements, to do that.
Bind your wrists together, specifically.
I’m very good with knots, Dhanra, and without your magic, you might not be able to get out of them without me.
Is that something you’re willing to try?
A ‘no’ won’t disappoint me. It won’t take it off the table for later. And we can stop at any time.”
Everything laid out just so, possibilities and temptations. Zyr rolled his wrists. Flexed his fingers. Already, the cool bracelet at his wrist kept so much of him contained. Turned all of Faerie into the barest whisper.
“I’ve never been bound before,” he admitted. “I don’t understand the desire. How it might help. You’ll release me if I need you to?”
“Yes. If you need me to, or want me to, or it doesn’t help.
I swear it, Dhanra, on whichever of my names Faerie considers the true one.
It’ll only be your wrists, crossed over each other.
We’ll use the same words as before for stop and slow down.
If you use those or say you want them off, they’re off. I won’t be upset or disappointed.”
“If you believe it will help, I’m willing to try.
” At some better moment, he might have allowed it from curiosity alone.
Now, he’d try anything that might quiet the raging hurt beneath his skin.
“Dinam to stop. Aster to slow. Tail to you arm, if I wander. I’m in your hands, Raven-Robin. And you may bind mine.”
“Very good.” Robin’s voice didn’t go unpleasantly soft with the praise. That edge of him, that Zyr liked so well, remained. “Unwrap your tail. I need to move.”
Robin stepped back, but not away. A touch to Zyr’s horn. His cheek. Footsteps on wood and the stirring of the air as Robin settled behind him, hands on Zyr’s shoulders.
“Tail around my waist,” he said, pairing those clipped instructions with touch, guiding Zyr first to settle on his heels, then lift his head, sitting with shoulders back. “Perfect, Dhanra. Don’t move your upper body save for breathing, blinking, and talking until I say otherwise.”
Zyr braced himself silently for discomfort. Not threat, not from Robin. But irritation.
Robin’s touch was so sure. Practiced. Efficient without being perfunctory. A count of rope like a count of breath, as it wrapped four, five, six times around his wrists.
And Zyr heard himself sigh. Breathe. Still angry, but no longer needing to concern himself with the roads that anger might take him down. He was in Robin’s hands. His own were bound. He didn’t need to struggle for control, because he didn’t have it. Robin did.
There was a question, though. One that threatened to call him away. He could ignore it and risk it getting louder. Or ask it and risk all the world crumbling around him.
The world was already crumbling.
“Had you not been there,” he began, quiet because he could be, here in the heart of himself, “I would have attacked her. And she would have killed me. It’s how we settle things. Brutal. Efficient. Like monsters. Is that who you saved, Raven-Robin? A monster?”
Zyr had built himself out of paper. While his “ill done by” generation was broken down, taught to loathe the very nature that built them, Zyr had found his past and future in stories and other people’s memories.