CHAPTER 8
C HAPTER 8
“W E’RE TOO CONSPICUOUS.”
At Seth’s words, Raider opened his eyes. He’d been letting the morning sunlight bleed through his closed eyelids while he leaned back against Seth, who was sitting on the temple step above him. Raider was between Seth’s legs with his hands on Seth’s knees. Seth’s hands were resting on Raider’s shoulders, and it was absolute fucking bliss. Or it had been.
“We’re fine,” Raider said. “If Malik and Rahim couldn’t find Julian in Aqarat, they won’t find us in Kastari, at least not for a few days. And Julian is savvier than you give him credit for. He’ll be back any minute with breakfast.”
“You and I stand out more than Julian. That’s why he’s getting breakfast, remember?”
“ You stand out more.”
“You think you don’t?”
Raider shrugged. “I look like everyone else here.”
“No,” Seth countered in a low, rough voice. “You don’t.”
Raider felt a smile play around his lips. He was starting to enjoy this conversation. “I don’t?”
Seth’s hands slid from Raider’s shoulders to his chest, inside his kaftan. If Raider had been a cat, he would have purred.
Seth said, “Atri herself would take you as her consort.”
It was Atri’s temple rearing high at their backs, her golden doors open for worshippers seeking her favor in love or asking blessings of beauty. She was patroness of art and music and all the finest things in life. The deep, romantic notes of a stringed barboud rolled softly through the open doorway. If Raider could stir any religious devotion in himself, it would be for her. But …
“I’m afraid she would find me rather unenthusiastic. Although in some stories, she takes a dual form, which I’ll admit I find rather intrig—”
Raider cut off when Seth’s fingers gripped his hair. He grinned, pleased to have needled Seth and delighted to feel that possessive, dominant grip. The low-simmering arousal that he always felt around Seth heated his groin.
Seth bent to bring his lips close to Raider’s ear and growled softly, sending a shiver down Raider’s spine, “Two days without my cock in your ass, and your thoughts are wandering?”
Raider’s cock stirred, his body heating deliciously at memories of having Seth inside him. Seth fucked so damn hard, so perfectly. Raider had wanted it last night, but Seth had been right to wait. They had both been too exhausted. Raider had fallen asleep at a play . He’d never done that before.
But this morning, after Seth had helped him stretch his stiff shoulder and back, when Raider had wanted it again, Adavasti, in cat form, had slipped under their doorway curtain and sat staring at them unpleasantly until Seth had said, “I guess it’s breakfast time.”
So here they were on Atri’s steps, flanked by two winged lionesses that stood stony guard over the early morning supplicants visiting her domed temple. One, a tall woman with tightly braided dark hair, whose sleeveless blue gown revealed fabulously muscled arms banded with gold arm rings, gave them a knowing smile as she mounted the steps. She was bearing a plate of ripe figs to offer the goddess.
When Raider tilted his head, Seth took the hint and nibbled along the side of his neck. Raider let a sound of pleasure hum in his throat. He said, “My thoughts rarely wander from having your cock in my ass. Sharing me with Atri was your idea.”
Seth nipped him. “It was not my idea, as you know perfectly well. It was a compliment. And if Atri wants you, she’ll have to go through me.”
“Careful, Seth. You say that right at her temple door.”
“When have you ever cared about the gods?”
“Oh, I used to. We’re just not on speaking terms these days. But you care. Isn’t that what matters?”
Seth’s grip on Raider’s hair tightened. “I’ll give her a present then. I won’t give her you.”
Raider turned his head to see Seth. He warned, only partly teasing, “Don’t anger her. She can be vengeful.”
Still with one hand in Raider’s hair, firm and dominating, Seth brought his other to Raider’s face and stroked tenderly along his cheek. Seth’s brilliant green eyes burned with all the intensity that Raider loved as he said in a gravelly voice, “I don’t think my love for you, possessive and greedy though it is, will anger her.”
Raider sucked in a breath. So much had happened since they had first spoken of love in that dark, difficult moment in the olive grove. There had not been time to speak of it again, not in the way they needed to. Raider still hadn’t found the right space inside himself for Seth’s words. He felt them in his chest, at the edge of his heart, but something kept them from sinking in.
Seth’s eyebrows twitched together, like he saw something in Raider’s face that Raider hadn’t meant for him to see. Raider’s heart started pounding as Seth’s lips parted to speak. But Seth didn’t get the chance because Julian arrived with breakfast. Raider could almost have thanked the gods.
Raider pulled away from Seth to walk down and meet Julian by one of the winged lionesses. The young arcanist, who had a large clay bowl in his hands, looked frazzled.
“Did you have trouble?” Raider asked.
“My Kastalan isn’t the best. I thought I asked for three bowls of farro and eggs, but I ended up with—”
Raider peered in at the contents. “One bowl of beef stew?”
Julian grimaced. “I’m not sure where I went wrong.”
Raider grinned, amused. Then his grin faltered as a terrible possibility occurred to him. “Please tell me you at least got the biscuits.”
“Yes, yes, they’re in my pocket.”
Raider took the bowl of stew from Julian and walked it up the steps to Seth, who raised an eyebrow.
“Nothing wrong with stew for breakfast,” Raider said.
“It is hard to eat without a spoon though,” Seth pointed out.
“Oh!” Julian fumbled amid the tattered folds of his yellow kaftan. He pulled out a wooden spoon and passed it to Seth.
Seth took a couple bites then handed the bowl to Raider. Raider took it then extended both hands to Julian, one offering the stew and the other empty and expectant.
Julian fished some sticky honey biscuits from his pocket and passed them to Raider, taking the bowl in exchange. Raider went to sit beside Seth on the steps while Julian sat a couple levels below. A stream of blue smoke slipped from Julian’s pack and solidified into a tabby cat.
Raider picked lint off his honey biscuits then shoved one into his mouth.
“You’re not just having sweets for breakfast,” Seth informed him as he accepted the bowl back from Julian.
“I don’t see why not.”
Seth extended the bowl toward Raider without taking a bite himself. Raider tried to ignore him, but Seth just held it there obnoxiously.
Raider sent him what he hoped was a withering look, but Seth remained stone faced. With a dramatic sigh, Raider took the bowl, spooned up a few bites, and shoved the thing back at Seth so he could enjoy his biscuits in peace.
“We need to make a plan,” Seth said after taking a bite of the stew. Passing it to Julian, he added, “And I need to know your intentions.”
“I have to go to Zarina,” Julian insisted. “She’s my only hope of exposing Kahzir and getting him out of the Arcanum.”
Seth looked hard at Julian. “I can’t let you take the book. I think you know why.”
Raider’s heart skipped. Shit. Were they really going to talk about this?
“I’ve, um, read the book, yes,” Julian admitted.
Seth pressed, “And you saw. Yesterday.”
Raider expected Julian to get uncomfortable, to stumble over a further admission. Instead, Julian looked at Raider with soft, sad brown eyes and said quietly, “I’m really sorry that happened to you. I didn’t know what to say yesterday, when I realized. I know it’s not enough, but … I’m really sorry.”
Raider looked away. The buildings blurred in the golden sunlight. He squinted.
Julian’s next words were to Seth. “Surely the empress, with the book, will understand the circumstances and know that the only culprit is Kahzir.”
“I won’t take that risk,” Seth told Julian. “If you want to try your luck with her, go ahead. Just give us a couple of days to get out of the city. I have a few ideas about where we can go.”
Raider snapped, “Seth, there’s no point in him going to Zarina without the book. Just let him have it.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Seth argued.
Raider’s heart twisted painfully as he realized what he needed to say. He hadn’t thought about it ahead of time, hadn’t planned this. But it was obvious how things had to be.
That was the trouble with living in the moment, not thinking about the future. You found yourself suddenly in the future—and unprepared. But what could ever have prepared him for this moment anyway? And if he’d known yesterday that it was his last day with Seth, how could it not have been tainted by despair?
So it was better not looking ahead. And only by not thinking past this moment, not thinking past what he needed to say, could Raider speak now. Because if he thought about tomorrow? If he imagined his life without Seth?
He would never be able to face it.
Even now, he had to retreat within himself to speak. “Until Kahzir is removed from the Arcanum, not only can Julian not go back there, you can’t either, Seth. I won’t let you spend your life on the run, in hiding. If Julian takes the book to Zarina, neither Rahim nor she nor Kahzir will have any reason to be after you.”
Seth looked confused. “But they’ll be after you .”
“I can vanish.”
Seth went completely still. He stared at Raider. Then he asked, “What the fuck are you saying?”
Raider got to his feet. He couldn’t say this sitting down. “I won’t let you give up your life for me. You would hate being a fugitive, disgraced and shamed. You would regret it. You would resent it. You might even hate me—and I would certainly hate myself every time I saw that regret in your eyes. I shouldn’t have walked out of Rahim’s dungeon with you. My head was fucked up and I wasn’t thinking. But I’m thinking now.”
Seth rose slowly to his feet. “Let me explain something to you.”
“Seth—”
“You got to speak. Now it’s my turn.”
Seth crowded into Raider with such intensity in his eyes and body that Raider found himself retreating up the steps, edging away until his back hit the wall of Atri’s temple. Seth planted his hands on the wall on either side of Raider, caging him there.
“My eyes are open,” Seth told him, “and I’m not closing them again. I see you. As you are . Kind. Giving. Self-sacrificing to a fucking fault. So damn beautiful in so many ways that sometimes I can’t breathe when I look at you. My heart is given, and I’m never taking it back. I love you. I love your laugh and your smile and all your outrageous charm. I love how you see things. I love how you do things. I love how much shit you give me all the time. I love being with you. I love you . My mind is made up, and I’m not changing it. I choose you. I am with you. I belong to you, and you fucking belong to me—until you say silver.”
Silver. That was the word Raider had given Seth, a word he could speak during sex that meant no , that meant stop .
But Raider couldn’t say it, even if maybe he should—because he couldn’t think. He could only feel, and what he felt was a breath-stealing pain in his heart as Seth’s words gripped it tight and, just a little bit, worked their way inside. He gasped when the pain was too much. Tears spilled down his cheeks.
Seth took Raider’s face in both hands. His thumbs swiped those tears away, but more fell. Seth’s face crumpled and he leaned in to kiss Raider. There was passion behind it, but it was mostly tender. It was love and caring, and it nearly broke Raider into a thousand pieces.
Raider wrapped his arms around Seth and buried his face against Seth’s neck. “I love you, too,” he said desperately. “I’m just …”
Seth waited a moment, then, with his arms now wrapped around Raider, his hands stroking Raider’s back, he asked quietly, “What, baby?”
“I’m afraid, Seth. For you. For us.”
“I know.”
Raider let out a shuddering breath, dizzied as half the fear left him, as though he’d only needed to say it. Not just say it. Say it to Seth . Who took those words and held them—held him —until he believed that maybe, just maybe, everything would be okay.
But it wasn’t, of course. Nothing was okay.
“Um,” Julian said from the bottom of the steps. “I hate to interrupt, but I think we have a problem.”
Seth and Raider drew apart, both following the direction of Julian’s gaze.
“Shit,” Seth muttered.
Four of Rahim’s men, identifiable by their pointed bronze helmets and leather breastplates, were hustling down the main street toward the temple. Raider spotted two more moving along another avenue. How the hell had they been found so quickly?
With Seth on his heels, Raider raced to where he’d left his pack and scimitar on the steps. “Follow me!” he shouted then darted back up the steps and into the temple.
Their pounding footsteps echoed in the vast, vaulted chamber. Startled supplicants looked up from their prayers before the laden offering table, where pink lotus flowers made a garden amid the offerings of fruit and gold and tiny clay figurines.
A statue of Atri astride a maned lion towered above these riches. She wore her crown of golden bovine horns and a necklace of snakes. Robes of sultry purple draped her otherwise nude figure.
The red-robed priestess who had been playing the barboud leaped from her cushion to shout angrily at Raider and the others. Raider shouted his apologies as he raced past the shrine.
Whipping aside the curtain that separated a storage room from the main chamber, Raider hurried past a rich clutter of past offerings and two more red-robed priestesses who were no more pleased than the barboud player had been.
Raider flung open the back door—and skidded to a stop.
Seth, not expecting this, slammed into him from behind and sent him flying down the back steps. Raider tumbled straight into the path of a gleaming scimitar that kissed his throat. He froze.
His eyes lifted from muscled female thighs to a skirt of gold-studded leather strips, a quicksilver whip coiled at the hip, and a breastplate of intricate, filigreed gold over one of articulated leather. A muscled female arm, banded with gold rings, held the gleaming scimitar steady.
Raider took in the face that he hadn’t paid enough attention to when he’d been with Seth on the temple’s front steps. That face, strong and proud and enjoying his recognition, was framed now by a golden helmet worn only by the empress’s personal guard. The Hammer. Four more golden-armored figures, all male, flanked her.
Seth’s chakram came whizzing through the air. The scimitar lifted from Raider’s neck to deflect the razor-sharp weapon. Raider scrambled back as Seth’s sword shinnnged from its scabbard.
Seth leaped down the steps to Raider’s side, catching the chakram on its return and wielding his sword with his left hand. Seth parried several strikes from the female warrior and whipped his chakram across a man’s golden breastplate, slicing it open.
Quicksilver cascaded down Raider’s left arm to his fingertips. He caught the female warrior’s scimitar in his quicksilver grip as he yanked his own scimitar from its scabbard. The woman made an expert twist to attempt freeing her blade, but he clamped his fist. Her sword snapped.
As she staggered back, Raider made a quick scan of the scene. More guards ranged up the street behind the five members of the imperial Hammer, and Rahim’s men came pouring through the temple’s back door. One of them grabbed Julian and threw him to the ground—but then had to contend with Adavasti. In his true form, the ifrit clapped his tiny hands together. A gout of flame sprang up between them. Raider saw no more. He spun to find Seth.
Eyes blazing with fury and determination, the Curator kicked one of the Hammer full in the chest and sent the man flying back. Then a whip, quicksilver bright, flashed toward Seth and coiled fast and tight around his neck.
As the female warrior yanked Seth off his feet, Raider tackled her. He wrenched the whip from her hand—and she flipped him over her head. Raider slammed to the ground on his back. He was halfway up when something stung his neck. It was so small a sting he barely noticed it. Then the sky spun and flipped. The ground came slamming up into him.
Raider swiped at his neck, dislodging a thin dart. He rolled his head, searching for Seth. His hearing had already gone out, but he saw Seth’s mouth open in a shout. He saw the silvery arcane net spin through the air. Seth’s head whipped toward it, but he had no time to react before it swallowed him.
On the temple steps, Julian was pinned to the ground, and Adavasti was trapped in a globe of glass.
Then darkness took him.