2. The Separation Decrees #3
Gabriel’s litany of his name wasn’t just pleasure. It was a landmark. He was navigating his way back from whatever dark shore he’d been stranded on, using Miles’s name as his compass and Miles’s body as his map. He would be the lighthouse. He would be the harbor.
“I’ve got you,” Miles grunted, sweat dripping from his brow onto Gabriel’s chest. He caught Gabriel’s leg, hooking it over his shoulder to drive deeper, hitting the ridge of his prostate with punishing consistency.
Miles lost track of the minutes, his world narrowing until nothing existed but their sex.
Nothing but the wet heat of Gabriel squeezing him.
Gabriel felt ruinous, a slick, convulsive grip that squeezed the logic right out of Miles’s brain with every heavy, rhythmic slide.
He wasn’t just tight; he was responsive, his internal muscles rippling and clamping down on Miles’s cock as if trying to fuse them together.
Miles abandoned himself to the mesmerizing movement.
At last, Gabriel’s breaths came in short, sharp bursts as he reached for his own cock, stroking it frantically. He called Miles out of his fuck-drunk haze. “I’m close. Miles, please, I’m close.”
He felt Gabriel begin to clench around him, the tension coiling into a new, sharper key. He chased their release, raw and possessive, wanting to consume Gabriel’s climax, to swallow his fear and leave him empty, sated, and safe.
“Let go,” Miles gasped, his own control fraying. “Give it to me.”
Gabriel squeezed down on Miles, his body bowing upward, a strangled cry tearing from his throat as he spilled onto his stomach.
The sensation of Gabriel pulsing around him snapped Miles’s tether. He groaned, burying his face in the curve of Gabriel’s neck, and thrust hard, once, twice, three times, pouring himself into Gabriel, emptying every ounce of worry and love and desire into the body of the man he adored.
They collapsed together, a tangle of limbs and heavy breathing. The room spun slowly back into focus.
Disentangling was a slow, sticky process.
Miles pressed a kiss to Gabriel’s shoulder, then reluctantly pulled away.
He reached for the nightstand, grabbing the small cloth he kept there.
A simple household charm stitched into the hem kept it perpetually warm and clean. It dampened with a whispered word.
He cleaned them both with tender strokes, wiping away the sweat and fluids. Gabriel lay boneless, eyes half-lidded, watching him with a drowsy, sated expression. The panic was gone, replaced by a heavy exhaustion.
Miles tossed the cloth onto the nightstand and slid back into bed, pulling the duvet up over them. He lay on his back, opening his arm .
Gabriel immediately rolled onto him, sprawling across Miles’s chest like a starfish. He tucked his head under Miles’s chin, his breathing already evening out into the rhythm of sleep.
“I love you,” Gabriel mumbled into the thatch of hair on Miles’s pectoral muscle, the words slurring.
“I know.” Miles pressed a kiss to the top of Gabriel’s head. He ran his hand up and down Gabriel’s bare back, feeling the slow beat of his heart.
Within moments, Gabriel was asleep.
Miles lay awake in the dark. The cottage settled around them, the timbers cooling in the night air.
He held Gabriel tight, protecting him from the invisible monsters capable of breaching locked doors.
The sex had served its purpose; Gabriel was calm for the first time since Miles had walked through the door.
But the unease in Miles’s gut hadn’t dissipated with his orgasm. Gabriel’s “I love you’s” had been too desperate, too much, his need for oblivion too total.
The coat was a lie. Or at best a partial truth.
Something had found them.
Miles stared up at the shadowed ceiling, listening to the man he intended to marry breathe, and formulated a new plan. He would let Gabriel sleep. He would let him have this peace.
But come morning, there would be no more distractions. Miles would find out what hell had followed them to Briarleigh, and then, regardless of anyone standing in his way, he would burn it to the ground.
The moonlight painted stripes of silver across the quilt, illuminating the curve of Gabriel’s shoulder and the messy sprawl of his hair. Miles lay still, listening to the rhythm of Gabriel’s breathing, slow, heavy, wet with deep sleep.
It was the sleep of the exhausted, or the innocent. Gabriel was certainly the former.
Miles closed his eyes, willing his own mind to shut down, to drift into the same oblivion. He counted breaths.
But the unease in his gut was a persistent, gnawing thing.
It wasn’t just the vague sense of wrongness he’d felt at the door.
It was a specific frequency of alarm, a dissonance in the room’s atmosphere.
It was the feeling he used to get on the battlefields of Lyonnor right before the fighting started, the pressure drop before the storm .
Miles opened his eyes. He wasn’t going to sleep. His brain was already cataloging variables, running simulations, looking for the threat variable he had missed.
He slid out from under Gabriel. The floorboards were cool under his bare feet. He grabbed his robe from the hook, pulling it on against the night chill, knotting the belt tight.
He needed to know. Not because he didn’t trust Gabriel—he trusted Gabriel with his life, with his heart, with the very core of his being—but because Gabriel’s instinct when cornered was to curl into a ball and dissociate, while Miles’s instinct was to stand and blast the threat into ash.
He couldn’t fight what he couldn’t see.
He moved through the cottage, bypassing the obvious hiding spots. If Gabriel wanted to hide something from a casual observer, he’d shove it in the wardrobe or under the mattress. If he wanted to hide something from Miles, somewhere near the door….
Miles stopped at the sewing table.
The moonlight washed over the chaotic workspace. Spools of thread, scraps of silk, a pincushion that looked like a poppet of a tax collector. It was Gabriel’s sanctuary.
His hand hovered over the folded stack of half-sewn blue silk.
The coat. A gift. Gabriel had been working on this with love, stitching protection and affection into the seams. A pang of fierce, protective sorrow hit Miles square in the heart.
Whatever had terrified Gabriel, it had interrupted this act of creation.
It had tainted this small, safe altar of their life.
He went through the drawers and found nothing. Then Miles lifted the lid of the wooden sewing box.
It was a jumble of colors: ribbons, chalk, buttons made of bone and glass. He pushed them aside.
And there, buried at the bottom under ribbons and buttons, was the offender.
It didn’t belong. The paper wasn’t the soft rag paper Gabriel used for sketches, nor the cheap parchment of a catalogue. It was heavy, cream-colored vellum, stiff with official intent. The wax seal bore the unmistakable impression of a Crown office.
Miles pulled it out. The paper felt cold, dead compared to the vibrant chaos of the sewing box .
He returned to the bedroom to fetch his reading glasses from the nightstand and considered waking Gabriel. But no. He didn’t want to look at Gabriel while he did this. He needed the sterile clarity of solitude.
He settled into the armchair by the window, sinking into the leather seat.
Miles pushed his reading glasses onto his nose and unfolded the document.
Lord Gabriel Goldmar of Rookgate.
Miles stared at the name, the letters swimming in the dim light. Goldmar wasn’t just a name. Goldmar was the monster. The “Master.” The vampiric sadist they had killed six months ago to buy their freedom. Gabriel had no last name. He was just Gabriel.
Except, apparently, to the state. Lord Gabriel Goldmar .
How? You don’t inherit the title of a man who illegally enslaved you and magically compelled you to serve until you killed him. It made no sense.
And it was cruel. Horribly cruel to address Gabriel with that name of all names.
He forced himself to read through to the end.
Miles’s grip on the paper tightened until the vellum crinkled.
Miles lowered the paper, staring out into the dark garden. The lavender bushes swayed in a breeze, but the air felt stiflingly still inside.
If Gabriel was a Lord—a recognized, titled peer of the realm—then he fell under the jurisdiction of the Separation Decrees. Miles knew them as part of his Guild tests.
Article 4, Section 2: To preserve the sanctity of governance and the purity of magic, no titled noble of Averly may practice magic of sufficient power or sophistication to qualify for a Guild rating under the United Guild of Magical Practitioners, whether or not such rating is actually awarded.
Nor may a titled noble enter into a contract of marriage with such a practitioner.
The velvet box in the wardrobe called to him, mocking him.
Gabriel had no magic. But Miles did.
He couldn’t propose. He couldn’t marry Gabriel. Not legally. Not if this title stood. If they went to the registry now, Miles’s Guild status would flag in the system immediately. The marriage petition would be denied.
And Gabriel... Gabriel had hidden this.
Hot, sharp anger cut through the shock.
Why?
Fear, Miles’s rational mind supplied. Trauma response. Gabriel saw a government letter as a shackle. He saw his master’s name and saw a cage. He thought if he ignored it, if he buried it under buttons and silk, it wouldn’t be real.
“Oh, my love,” Miles whispered to the empty room, his voice shaking.
Ignoring it was the one thing that would destroy them.
Bureaucracy didn’t care about trauma. The Crown Offices were a machine; they would chew Gabriel up and spit him out into a prison if he ignored the summons.
Or worse, if the corruption that Madaze had been a part of caught wind of an absent, vulnerable heir. ..