Episode 1
Ellisandre’s fingers trailed over his skin, certain and steady. “I know what you’ve done.”
“Impossible.”
“You’ve ruined lives, Vast. You’ve crushed dreams. There are souls who wake screaming to the memory of your face. You’ve failed. Again and again.”
Sevastyan shuddered. That was the Ellisandre he knew behind any mask. Honest to the edge of a blade. They had not so much found their way into him as cut their way in, bled him until there was room, and then set their throne up in the wreckage.
“Worse,” he whispered.
“Tell me.”
“No.”
Sevastyan waited for the need to flee to fill him. Ellisandre had so quickly found a slowly seeping wound. Perhaps there were too many wounds for them to avoid them all. The urgency to flee refused to arrive. He wanted to drift. If only thoughts would forsake him.
Beat me. Break me. Make me.
If Ellisandre took choice from him, then he wouldn’t have to own the decision. He could be shorn of the burden without opening his proverbial hands if only Ellisandre would slash him apart and take the words he couldn’t force himself to say.
Ellisandre’s hands stilled on his skin. They pushed Sevastyan down onto the rugs. He fell on his back, pinning his arms behind him. The posture arched his spine. Ellisandre grabbed his right ankle.
“I have time, Vast,” Ellisandre said, starting to wrap rope around his foot.
Will you let me go? The question filled his mind without being uttered. If he didn’t ask, then he didn’t have to fight or fear the answer. Neither yes nor no was the answer he desired.
All good choices and all good outcomes had disappeared years before, caught and released on one choked gasp of Rei’s lips.
Madness. That was what had brought him this far. There was no other road now.
The Merchari might call. They might demand to know where he was. Upper management would be wanting reports. Under agents would be wanting to make contact. If only his entire life would disappear like so much smoke and leave him in these moments. These moments and Rei . . .
“The black phone,” Sevastyan whispered. “If Zǐqì calls . . .”
“I’ll bring you the phone,” Ellisandre said.
Sevastyan’s muscles relaxed a fraction. Ellisandre bound his right foot and ankle to the upper thigh of the same leg and started to do the same with his left side. Ellisandre’s hands passed confidently over places none but Rei had touched in years.
He should give them Rei. He should walk away and embrace the dark. Exist alone in the place he belonged, his soul more opaque than a moonless night.
The Merchari would never let Rei disappear. They would never let Sevastyan sunder himself from their web.
Ellisandre smoothed their palms over Sevastyan’s bound legs. They stood and crouched at his side, helping him kneel on pillows. The ropes pressed into his skin. Welcome pressure. Grounding. They bound him inside his body.
He could do nothing. Not run. Only speak, if he was willing . . .
He wasn’t. Words had never made anything less painful.
Ellisandre was moving around the room. Water ran in the bathroom. The shower. Cloth rustled, moved, settled. Sevastyan’s ears strained to hear beyond those soft sounds. There was nothing. Soundproofing went both ways.
Ellisandre moved toward him. Bare thighs brushed Sevastyan’s upper arms. Ellisandre’s hands settled on his shoulders. They folded themselves down over his knees, the backs of their thighs resting against the sides of his, their bare chest brushing past his face.
“Elli,” he gasped. They were bare. Naked. Even though he couldn’t see them, he shook. “You . . .”
Ellisandre’s hands cupped his face. “You went away, beautiful boy.”
He blinked back tears behind the blindfold. “Your clothes.”
“You know me better than anyone, Vast.”
“You don’t know me.”
Ellisandre kissed his cheek beneath his eye, still holding his face in both their hands. “You listened to me die, Vast. That’s more than any other.”
“Why?” Sevastyan gasped. “Did you never think I would rather have ended with you than lived the life I’ve lived?”
“The man you are now would rather have died. The boy you were then was still claimed.
“I’m still claimed now!” Sevastyan struggled to breathe through the pain in his chest and tears in his eyes. The bridge of his nose burned with the force of suppressed anguish.
“The claim has cracked.” Ellisandre continued touching him, their tone so certain. How could they know?
“It’s going to finish me, Elli,” Sevastyan rasped. “The only parts that remain are the ones you have. Don’t . . . don’t give them back.”
“Never.”
Sevastyan dropped his head against Ellisandre’s chest. It was strong, had always been solid. Ripcord slender like a model, but dense with depth that spoke to the power sheathed inside. Their biology had never given them much in the way of softness.
“I told you to find me on the other side,” Ellisandre said. “Here you are.”
“I’m not on the other side.” Sevastyan pushed against Ellisandre with his head, needing to feel them resist. “Not like you.”
“Tell me you want to stay.”
“Gods.” Sevastyan pressed his eyes together, more tears falling down to kiss their dissolution in the threads of the scarf around his head. “Ten years, Elli. You don’t know me.” He reared back, breaking contact.
Ellisandre caught him with their fist in his hair. They held him, head bent back, throat arched and unprotected, exposed like an offering for slaughter.
“I know you.” Ellisandre’s lips were so close to his neck they brushed the hair on his skin. There was displeasure in every syllable. Displeasure and pride.
Sevastyan shivered. Danger wrapped in the body of an androgynous god, that was his deity, the one he had knelt for, the one he was crossing.
“How could you?” he whispered. “I don’t know myself.”
Ellisandre struck him across the face, still holding him by his hair. “If you didn’t know yourself, you wouldn’t loathe yourself.”
The sting of the open palm strike sparked across Sevastyan’s jaw and cheekbone. He swallowed through the strum of shrieking nerves. He could not rub away the sensation. That was what it meant to be bound. Every sensation was magnified. Unrelieved.
Ellisandre pressed their palm to where they had struck him. He leaned into their touch. Between their skin and his, heat built and lingered. When Ellisandre’s fingers loosened, he turned his head, pressing his lips to their hand.
“What broke you, Vast?”
“Me. I broke me.”
Ellisandre was quiet. They stood, no part touching Sevastyan. He slumped forward, letting the binding have him. That was the beauty of ropes. You could fall apart in them.
“I don’t believe you,” Ellisandre whispered. “But you believe yourself.”
They touched him then, fingers in his hair, gentle, thoughtful. Sevastyan’s center of gravity turned toward the touch without a conscious thought.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t keep you, Vast.”
Hope and pain blossomed together like a red flower through his chest. The hope died as soon as it bloomed. He said nothing.
They spoke again. “Tell me how long you have.”
“Until tonight.”
“Until tonight, then. I will give you a reason to come back.”
“I thought you wouldn’t want to see me, not with a prior claim.”
“Ten years, Sevastyan.” Ellisandre knelt over his thighs again, their naked body draped over his, their arms gliding over his shoulders, fingers gripping at the ropes decorating his back. “There’s been no one else, beautiful boy.”
No one else? Longing mixed with grief for Ellisandre’s loneliness. He pushed it away. He was going to say something he shouldn’t. Make promises he couldn’t keep.
“No one else willing to be shot before they knelt?”
Ellisandre laughed softly, almost as if they were weeping. Their fingers were on his face again. He lifted his head, letting them play with the scarf over his eyes. “No. You might not understand, my mad Rus. Bullets aren’t valentines.”
“They are, if they’re yours.”
Ellisandre cradled Sevastyan’s face between their palms as if they already owned him.
“Every time you came to me, every instance in which you gave up your freedom, you would have given me anything I was willing to take. Whatever has happened to you, wherever you have been, I could have taken that from you.”
“I would have let you.” Words came too easily. Truth was too close.
“For a while,” Ellisandre touched their forehead to his, still holding his cheeks between their hands. Their belly brushed against his ribs. He breathed in and out, willing more of his skin to touch theirs. “We still believed then.”
“And now?”
“Now I know that if I had kept you, we would only have had different regrets.”
“I’ve never regretted you.”
Ellisandre’s voice came softly. “You should have hated me.”
Sevastyan’s body tightened. “I can hate you and want you.”
Ellisandre laughed with sounds dipped in irony. “Tell me more of this hate.”
He could try, but he couldn’t remember it any longer. The hate had all burned away, washed away by the blood on Rei’s thighs. “Tell me why you’re willing to touch me.”