Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Ethram does not wait around. He packs his satchel, grabs the folder, and storms from the university at a stride that has the halls clearing in front of him.
He only stops to buy a paper bag of dried persimmon slices, and he forces himself to eat slowly as his tram rattles along Holly Road.
The honeyed sweetness shocks him back to calmness.
Focusing on eating slowly brings his heart rate back down.
By the time he steps off the tram, he’s feeling almost half-way normal again.
The cool shade of the Polling Woods is a welcome embrace.
Sunlight dapples the path, birdsong all around, and usually it’s a quiet, solitary sort of walk through here.
Today, though, there is someone standing just beyond the first bend, leaning against an ancient oak.
He catches sight of pale hair before he can go tense about it.
Ky watches him approach. There is something in the way he looks Ethram head to toe, as if he’s checking him over, that makes Ethram bristle.
“What are you doing here?”
Ky makes a motion that might be a shrug, only just barely. He falls into step beside him. “I felt like something had happened.”
“Mm.”
Ky looks sidelong at him. From his height, such a look has significant weight. “Something did happen. Your mood is poor.”
That, Ethram thinks, is an understatement. The trees press close, a wash of shifting sunlight and pale green shade. Moss, and damp earth, and the slightly unpleasant scent of sun-heated water. The buzz of midges, somewhere beyond that. Esk seems very far away.
“Someone annoyed me.” He’s walking briskly, as if he can outrun his own mire of a mood. “That’s all.”
“That’s all,” says Ky, deeply unconvinced. He tugs Ethram to a stop, crowding up behind him. Runs a hand down Ethram’s arm, right to the wrist, and back again, pushing his sleeve with it. His hand nestles against the marks.
Ethram can’t help but shiver. It’s been a long day. His body can’t be trusted. “Do you always know when I’m in a bad mood?”
“Not unless I’m witnessing it,” muses Ky. He lifts Ethram’s arm to his mouth, and Ethram feels his lips skate along the marks, along the inside of his wrist. “This was different. Who grabbed you?”
In the kisses he presses, there is a faint hint of teeth. The aethergraphs slide through Ethram’s mind, and he shoves the thought aside. “How do you know that?”
“I just do,” says Ky, like that’s all the explanation he has. Maybe it is. “Are you hurt?”
“Other than my mood? No, it was just another professor. He got pushy.”
“He should not have,” says Ky, and there’s a low threat now, coiled under his words.
“He definitely should not have, but that is my problem.”
He’s nudged up against a tree before he really knows what is happening. It’s gentle but inescapable. Ky blocks him in, wrist still in his hand as he presses it against the trunk.
“You are a problem,” mutters Ky. His fingers stroke along Ethram’s wrist.
Like in the night, when the warmth and weight of Ky’s body keeps the worst thoughts at bay, the press of him eases the last of Ethram’s poor mood away. He reaches up, tugs Ky’s collar until their mouths meet.
Ky smiles through the kiss. “You taste of honey.”
Ethram doesn’t bother replying. He just kisses him deeper, presses their bodies closer. It’s an unwise place for it here, barely a step off the path. He’ll stop in just a moment.
Ky releases his hand, grabs his thighs and hoists him up, and then the kissing is easier. Ethram digs his hands into Ky’s hair, traces the shape of his faintly pointed ears, his jaw. Feels the aether under his skin, always there, a breath away.
He rests his head back against the tree. “Are you always holding that back?” he says after a moment. “The aether?”
“It’s not aether, exactly,” murmurs Ky. “It’s me. It’s what I am.”
“The man who grabbed at me ended up with aether burns.”
Ky’s smile grows. Ethram feels it against his cheek. “Good.”
“That should not be possible.”
He sets Ethram back down. Ethram goes with reluctance. The cottage is a fair walk away, and it has never seemed longer than now, with the sunlight sending Ky’s hair aglow.
“Don’t fear. You won’t go around burning people,” Ky says. “That was me, I think.”
“You burned someone through me?”
“It seems I did.” His smile is slight, but sharp. “I don’t like the thought of others touching you.”
“That’s a lot to unpack,” mutters Ethram.
He’s frowning, thinking of Mullins’ silvered hand and the aethergraphs and the way his own body had barely stayed together in the months after his burns.
They weren’t large burns, really, not compared to some burns that airguard gunners came back with.
But those burns were from ship aether or storm aether, and once Sabine had sat on the edge of his bed and told him that those were like being scalded with boiling water or a cooking flame, and what Ethram’s body had endured was more like a funeral pyre.
Meant to burn to nothing more than ash. “Well, regardless. No one else will touch me.”
“No,” agrees Ky, and the promise is sealed.
The folder from Mullins has no more aethergraphs, thank the gods. Ethram takes it to the sofa, intending to stretch out, but Ky is already there. He looks up from his book, then shifts slightly.
“I’ll hardly fit,” says Ethram, even as he lets Ky tug him down.
He fits, just, and only because he’s wedged against Ky’s chest, with Ky’s knee against him and Ky’s other leg propped on the floor. It’s a ridiculous way to spend the evening.
It’s a lovely way to read, if only he weren’t reading such grim things.
The sickness he’d felt before doesn’t come again. It’s hard to summon when Ky is all around him. He’s wearing an olive-green jumper, a little scratchy and sheep-smelling, and Ethram blinks at it in the edges of his vision as he surfaces from the papers.
“You finished it,” he says, tugging at the cuff. “I hadn’t realised.”
“I did,” says Ky. “It kept my hands busy when I had to keep them to myself.”
Ethram laughs. “Is that so?”
Ky shifts underneath him. “These places,” he says, and Ethram hadn’t realised he’d been reading over his shoulder the whole while. “What happened?”
The document is a list of locations where the attacks have occurred, and the geologic compositions and locations of aether wells around them, and local storm history.
Ethram tells him that and then tells him about the attacks.
“I’m not intending to get involved. But I am concerned if people are poking into what occurred in the archives when you—or some aspect of you—were there, because I don’t want anything to bring them to my door. ”
“We’re safe here,” says Ky. “I’ve made it so.”
“I’ve thought myself safe before.” He sinks back, letting Ky take all of his weight. “Are there others like you out there?”
“Yes, and no.” He’s thoughtful. A touch apprehensive, perhaps. “I was one of many, once. I think that is true.”
“Many what?” Ethram tips his head back, sees the line of Ky’s jaw and the way it shifts like he is smiling. “Gods?”
“I think…I believe I was more of a waykeeper. A guardian. There were…strictures. Boundaries I could not cross. Things I was not to do.” He falls silent again. Then, “Maybe there were not so many like me. Most were smaller.”
Ethram can’t help but smirk. Ky notices, because of course he does.
“Less,” he corrects.
“I’m sure.” He lets the folder fall to the floor. “So you were a prince among gods?”
“Not quite,” he says, which is not a no. “It matters not. They’re gone, and somehow, I am not.”
“For what it is worth, I am glad you are here,” murmurs Ethram.
Ky runs a hand through Ethram’s hair, pushing against his scalp. He feels himself melt.
“Me too, my heart.” It’s so quiet he almost misses it.
They stay like that until the fire burns low, and then Ky takes them to bed, where Ethram thinks he might never do anything else ever again, because nothing could ever be as vital as the water-sweet taste of Ky’s lips and the way he whispers Ethram’s name against his mouth.
He wakes in the morning tucked under Ky’s chin, with Ky brushing a hand up and down the run of his back.
“Those attacks,” says Ky, as if there has been no space between their conversation on the couch last night and this morning. “They concern me.”
Ethram blinks in the pocket of shade made by Ky’s body.
The sunlight is warm across the bed. They’ve slept in.
He makes a noise that is an acknowledgement of some sort, but it comes out blearily.
His mind is slowly coalescing into consciousness, but it’s slow going.
His body is sore in a pleasant sort of way, and just as reluctant to wake as his thoughts are.
“If I remember rightfully that there were others like me,” Ky continues on, his hand tracking up, down, up again. A shiver chases across Ethram’s skin in his wake. “Then it follows that something happened to them.”
There is a leaden certainty in his voice. Something. Something that whittled him of his memory, his duties, his reason. Something that left him sleeping, no more than a wraith haunting the darkness.
“What are you saying?” he murmurs, far more blearily than he’d ever admit.
“I do not think those creatures are beasts. I think they were gods too, once. I think they are what is left when a god dies.”
The tracing hand stops. Ethram pulls himself into wakefulness, already irritated.
“You,” he says balefully, lifting himself onto one elbow. “Could you not have made me tea first?”
Ky’s smile is gentle. His gaze drifts across Ethram’s neck and chest, and he leans in to give him a soft morning kiss. “I can make you tea.”
“Yes, tea first.” Ethram pries himself up, swings his legs over the side of the bed. They protest the movement. “Then your horrifying theory of godly massacre.”