Chapter Twenty-Seven #3
“Were you trying to scare me?” he asked, voice coming out a bit rough.
She smiled faintly. “I was curious to see what you would do. Mage Warriors are, traditionally, the hardest to seduce.”
“I would certainly have preferred not to do that in front of all my colleagues,” Cormal muttered.
He’d just made out with someone in front of them. He’d preferred having the moral high ground, thank you very much.
“I was quite sure that you would try to burn me if you came back to yourself.”
“I meant it when I said I would do what I could to help Kinan. He doesn’t deserve any of this.”
Her eyes shifted to Kinan, and her voice was more wondering now. “Truly, I would not have thought it possible. Energy is meant to be contained or consumed. What happened exactly?”
Though it still didn’t sound like she knew more than they did, there was a chance she would have insight the rest of them lacked.
They resumed their seats, Cormal insisting that he felt fine now, and they went through the story of what had happened with the wraiths, with Princess Larenia, and, finally, with Perian.
Yannoma made considering noises a few times but let them finish the whole story.
“I still would not have said it was possible, but—” She eyed Kinan once more.
“You and your sister must love one another very much. You managed to tie yourselves together, though I can’t imagine how, and it was just enough to keep you here, an…
extension of her, if you will, despite the fact that you didn’t have a physical form of your own. ”
“Will what I did last?” Perian asked anxiously.
She glanced at him and then back at Kinan. Finally, she said, “I cannot say for certain. But I think not.”
Cormal stiffened, and Kinan’s face was a mask, trying to give nothing away.
“Can I keep doing it, then?” Perian demanded. “If… if he seems to be fading or something?”
“…Perhaps,” she conceded after a moment.
Trill asked, “But I’m right that he will always be threatened by demons?”
“Oh, yes,” she answered immediately. “Wraiths, nightmares, carnalions. Even the lesser demons will be attracted to so much exposed energy. Unlike the other demons, they cannot draw it out without harming the living host, but there is no living host to get in the way. The energy is simply… available.”
Fire and water. It was everything Cormal didn’t want to hear. Well, it sounded like Perian might be able to keep helping Kinan, and Cormal knew that he would, but it wasn’t… it wasn’t at all what he’d hoped for.
“You said that energy is meant to be contained. Is there nothing that can be done to get his body back?” Cormal asked desperately.
“Nothing that I am aware of.” She considered for a moment. “Well, perhaps a Life Mage could direct his energy into a new host.” Her smile wasn’t particularly nice. “Of course, you’d need a newly dead body for that.”
There was an explosion of sound around the room as they took that idea in. No way to get Kinan’s body back, but they might be able to put him in another one?
“How sure are you that it would work?” Cormal demanded.
“I am entirely uncertain. To my knowledge, the situation has never occurred before.”
“Whoa, we can’t just find a dead body!” Molun protested. “Where would you even look?”
Brannal asked the practical question. “If the body died of natural causes, would the Prince be safe in it?”
Yannoma shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“Well, what if someone was fatally injured but then Perian or Trill healed them afterwards?” Molun asked.
“For it to have any hope of working, they could not be long dead,” Yannoma said.
Perian turned to look at Molun. “You mean I could have saved them but didn’t because we wanted the body?”
Molun made a face. “Oh, no, of course not—”
“We shouldn’t be hasty,” Arvus said, his voice a calm rumble in the somewhat frantic room.
Trill, Brannal, and Perian all started talking at once.
There was another option, though, wasn’t there? There was almost no chance they would be able to find the body they needed through any random chain of events. No, they’d either need to kill someone, which no one in this room was prepared to do, or—
How weird would it be for Kinan to have a body again but have it not be his? He’d carried his sense of self with him through all this time of being energy. His body had grown with him, and now he wouldn’t have that?
But he’d be able to touch again. Surely, they could figure everything else out—the Queen, the succession, all of it—if Kinan were whole.
Cormal swallowed and turned to Yannoma. “I volunteer.”
The room went eerily silent.
“What?” Brannal demanded.
“I volunteer,” Cormal repeated, not looking away from Yannoma, though he could feel the weight of everyone’s eyes on him. “I’m young and healthy, and we both know that you can drain me. Take my energy out so that Perian and Trill can put Kinan’s energy in.”
There was another brief moment of silence, and then the room exploded in exclamations and protests.
He didn’t try to parse any of it, because all that mattered was if Yannoma would actually do this and allow Cormal to help make Kinan whole.
Correction. She wasn’t quite all that mattered.
Because one voice rose above the others and silenced them.
“No!”
It was so loud that they all fell silent and turned.
Kinan’s fists were clenched, and there was a terrible expression on his face.
“Absolutely not.” His voice was harsh. Cormal had never heard him speak like that.
His chest was heaving in short, sharp pants.
“I categorically refuse. I will not do it, and you will not speak of it again!”
He shot one last look at Cormal, rigid and furious, and then turned and strode out of the room. And Cormal knew just how upset he was, because he went right through the wall.
Cormal cursed. He turned to Yannoma. “Thank you for the idea. I’ll go talk to him.”
Everyone was staring at him, and he couldn’t even begin to understand their expressions.
“Cormal—” Brannal started.
Shaking his head, Cormal was already turning for the door. “Leave it with me.”
He started in their room and had to check virtually the whole house before he headed outside and finally found Kinan perched on a flat rock by the river, staring into the water.
He didn’t react to Cormal’s approach or to him coming to stand next to him.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Cormal finally said.
Kinan’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t say anything.
“It sounds like our best chance,” he tried next.
Kinan whirled on him, suddenly on his feet in a move that wouldn’t have been possible if he were flesh and blood. He was clenching his fists again, tension in every line of his body.
His voice was sharp and high. “Killing you sounds like our best chance.”
“You need—” Cormal started.
“What?” Kinan shouted. “What do I need? To be normal? Was everything you said before a load of nonsense? There’s something so wrong with me that you have to die to fix it?”
“No, of course not,” Cormal protested. “That’s not what I meant at all.”
The words were practically sneered. “What did you mean?”
Cormal had never heard Kinan like this before.
“I swore I would do anything to help you fix this.”
He scoffed, his eyes flashing. “The ultimate sacrifice for your prince.”
“No!” Cormal said, starting to get annoyed. “Kinan, I want you to be happy!”
His voice was flat. “And you think killing you would make me happy.”
“Of course not,” Cormal said again. “But if it’s the only option that we have…”
“You call that an option?” Kinan said, voice thick with scorn. “If it worked, then for every single second of every single day, I would possess your body knowing that I killed you to get it.”
“You wouldn’t—” Cormal started.
Kinan’s gaze skewered him. His voice trembled. “I would have your hands and your face and you would be gone forever. That’s my worst nightmare.”
“Oh, Kinan.”
And finally, Cormal understood. For seven years, Kinan hadn’t been able to touch anyone. He’d already been living a nightmare, and Cormal had managed to offer him something worse.
“I’m so sorry,” Cormal breathed. “I want so much to make this better for you. But I didn’t—I don’t ever want to hurt you. I’m sorry.”
Kinan’s gray eyes were swimming with tears. “I couldn’t bear it, Cormal, truly I couldn’t.”
Cormal shook his head. “No, I see that you couldn’t. I’m sorry for suggesting it.”
“Truly?” he asked, voice small. “You’ll let it go? You swear? I can’t—”
He cut off, voice choked, and never had Cormal wished more to be able to touch him. He stepped closer to him instead, so that there were only a couple of inches between them, and stared into his eyes.
“I swear to you, Kinan, I won’t plan or suggest it again. I’ll let everyone else know it’s not an option. I’m sorry I hurt you. It was never my intention.”
Kinan’s voice was wet but his tone had a trace of teasing in it. “You’re an idiot.”
Cormal admitted, “It might not have been my smartest moment.”
“How could you ever think that I’d pick a body over you?” Kinan asked.
Cormal sucked in a sharp breath.
Kinan looked a little despairing. “Cormal, I love you. I will happily spend the rest of my life like this if I get to keep you.”
A full-body shiver raced through Cormal. It was his turn to blink back tears.
“I love you, too, Kinan. I want so badly to help you that I sometimes lose track of the cost.”
“Idiot,” Kinan repeated.
Cormal did his best to run his fingers down the side of Kinan’s face, approximating a caress.
“You knew that already, didn’t you?”
Kinan snorted, and he finally looked like he was mostly relaxing. “True.”
“You want to sit here for a little while?” Cormal offered.
Kinan nodded, and the two of them sat down on the rock together. They were quiet for several minutes, but it was mostly companionable, no longer stretched to the breaking point.
Kinan broke the silence. “You’re not going to let me do this in the future, are you?”
“What?”
He gestured around him. “Just being out here in nature like this. What if there’s a demon?”
“Oh,” Cormal said a bit blankly as he understood.
He kind of wanted to hurry Kinan back inside now.
“Well, I confess, I was a lot more reassured when I thought that nothing could touch you. But this just means that you’re vulnerable again, if in a slightly different way from someone else.
Truthfully, you’ve never had the freedoms of those not born to your position.
I’d want to make sure you have more protection.
But I’m sure we can still come up with a few places that you can go. Maybe not sneak off on our own?”
He shot Kinan a look with a tentative smile, hoping to share the humor, but the other man’s face was tight.
“Did I cause the attack, do you think?”
“What?
“At my secret place. Molun. Did the demons come for me?”
“Oh!” Cormal said, truly startled. That had never occurred to him. “I don’t think there’s any way of knowing for sure.”
“She said all demons would be attracted to me.”
“But no other demon attack in the country was caused by you. They happen on their own all the time.”
“But—”
Cormal realized Kinan wasn’t going to be able to simply let this go.
“If you’re really concerned, then I suggest apologizing. It helps more than I thought it would.”
Nudging him with an elbow, Kinan said, “Told you.”
Cormal smiled at him, glad to see some of his equilibrium restored.
They lapsed into comfortable silence again, staring out at the water together. Cormal would have given all of this up for Kinan, but he was so much happier to get to keep it.