Epilogue
The Zagreus Den never really slept, but there were times in the middle of the night when most parts of the sprawling compound were silent and where only the occasional sigh or moan of activities behind closed doors interrupted the silence.
Those sounds always made Brutus smile. They were proof that the Den was accomplishing its purpose and that its inhabitants were enjoying each other freely in a way they simply could not in the rest of the world.
Soft, pleasurable sounds were not the ones that woke him deep in the night, however. What roused him from his sleep was a painful moan and thumping from the room adjacent to his.
Tight tension gripped Brutus’s gut, and he rolled quickly out of bed, reached for the silken robe draped across a chair near the window, and threw it on as he headed to the small door at the side of his bedchamber.
He knocked first, then said, “Lord Fabian, are you well?”
The thumping and moaning stopped suddenly.
It was not a good sign. Without being able to see into the room, Brutus was certain the silence had descended out of fear rather than curiosity or any other emotion.
He pressed his lips together and frowned, then did something he would not have done without permission under any other circumstances.
He turned the handle and entered the adjacent room without gaining its inhabitant’s permission.
As he’d feared, Lord Fabian had retreated to the far corner of the room, where he’d sunk into a trembling ball, his face hidden against his knees.
The clothing the poor young man had been given the day before, when Greer and Penny had brought him to The Zagreus Den, was disheveled and torn in places.
The bandage that the Den’s resident doctor had wrapped around Fabian’s ankle after treating it for wounds that were just short of festering was half unwound as well, as if Fabian had tried to take it off.
Perhaps even more upsetting was the state of the room itself.
Brutus had ordered the young nobleman to be installed in what had once been a dressing room attached to his larger bedchamber.
He wanted to be close to Fabian as he recovered from his ordeal, because he feared the recovery would be long and painful. And judging by the room, he was right.
The bed had been stripped and the mattress pushed askew.
The drawers of the table beside the bed had been wrenched open and their meager contents scattered.
The wardrobe doors stood open and the fresh, clean clothing Brutus had ordered brought up for Fabian was scattered across the floor.
Every vase and decoration in the room had been upended, a corner of the carpet was turned up, and the curtains over the window hung askew.
It was a lucky thing that the single lantern that sat on the bedside table hadn’t been upset, igniting the entire room.
“Lord Fabian?” Brutus asked, approaching the young man cautiously. “Are you well? Can I help you?”
With sudden, feral intensity, Fabian snapped his head up and glared at Brutus, baring his teeth. “Where is it?” he demanded, struggling with his long, weak limbs to stand. “Where are you keeping it? I need it!”
He launched himself across the room at Brutus, grabbing tightly to the front of his robe with a sob.
For a moment, Brutus was lost in a memory. A summer day over a year before. A walk in Hyde Park. A beautiful young man who had picked up his handkerchief and run after him to return it. Their hands had touched. Attraction had flashed in the young man’s eyes. They’d both smiled.
What should have been a moment of kindness had turned into an invitation to walk.
Their walk had lasted more than an hour.
Fabian had introduced himself, and in the sweetest, clumsiest way, attempted to charm and perhaps even seduce Brutus as he asked discreetly about his preferences and where men like them might be able to find company.
Brutus had been utterly infatuated in an instant. He’d retraced his steps to Hyde Park more times than he wanted to admit in the hope of meeting Fabian again. Fabian must have done the same. They encountered each other once or twice a fortnight for months, building on their acquaintance each time.
It had been lovely and innocent. Well, in practice. Brutus’s thoughts hadn’t been innocent at all. Fabian had opened up to him, and he’d shared a few things in return.
And then Fabian had disappeared.
It had taken mere days for Brutus to discover what had become of him.
The rage he’d felt upon learning his brother had singled Fabian out and captured him still burned in Brutus’s entire being.
It had taken him months to trace where Hammond had put Fabian and even longer to puzzle out how to rescue him.
Brutus’s rage burned even hotter now, as he clasped close the rail-thin, trembling form of the handsome young man he’d lost his heart to.
“What have they done to you?” he sighed against Fabian’s tousled hair, trying to hold and soothe the man.
Fabian groaned in Brutus’s embrace, then backed away with a jerk. “I need it,” he said, eyes wide and bloodshot. “I cannot stand to feel this way any longer. You have to give it to me.”
“What do you need, love?” Brutus asked, even though he already knew.
Fabian stared at him, almost unseeing, then burst into a pitiful sob and shook so hard Brutus thought he might shake apart. His nose streamed as well as his eyes as he wailed, “Laudanum. Opium. I don’t know what it was. I don’t want it, but I need it.”
He launched himself at Brutus again, panting as if he’d run the length of England and clawing at Brutus’s chest.
“Please. I’ll do anything. Please!” Fabian wept. “You can have my arse, I don’t care. Do you want me to suck your cock?” He dropped to his knees and tore at Brutus’s robe. “Anything,” he moaned. “Just please give it to me.”
Brutus’s heart felt as if it would shatter. He dropped to his knees beside Fabian, clutching the panicked young man tightly, then fell back onto his arse so he could hold Fabian and rock him.
“I don’t have anything like that here,” he told the poor man honestly. “Opiates of all kinds are forbidden within The Zagreus Den.”
“No!” Fabian wailed, struggling against Brutus. He didn’t have the strength to break away from him, though.
“I’m sorry, love,” Brutus sighed, rocking to calm himself as well as Fabian. “I’m so sorry they did this to you. But if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll make you better, I swear it. I’ll make you better, and then I’ll find the men who did this to you and I’ll kill them.”
I hope you’ve enjoyed Greer and Penny’s story of love and adventure! It was so much fun to write something filled with action and peril.
The story of The Zagreus Den isn’t over yet by far!
Now that Lord Fabian has been saved, can he be healed, both inside and out?
Brutus is determined to restore the young man he once walked through Hyde Park with, but will the sins of his past catch up with him and push the two apart?
And what happens when Fabian’s father, who sold him to Hammond in the first place, learns of his whereabouts?
Find out next in The Founder’s Treasure.