19. Changes
Changes
Ididn’t have sex with Alluin. He didn’t offer, and I didn’t ask.
But I did drag my bedroll next to his, embarrassed and yearning and not able to look at him, and when Alluin came up behind me and tugged them together so that they overlapped, I had to fight not to burst into tears all over again.
I went to bed with my limbs tangled with his, knowing I didn’t deserve any of it and so overwhelmingly grateful that he wanted to keep me anyway that I turned into a needy, clingy mess.
Dain didn’t say anything the next morning when he returned from his full-moon ramblings, but he looked fucking smug as he poked the fire up. I would have gotten up, but Alluin dropped one heavy arm around me, put his mouth next to my ear, and told me in a voice that brooked no disagreement, “Stay.”
I stayed. I also definitely smelled like desire, because there was nothing like Alluin using his General Xilsatra voice on me to turn me into a useless horny mess, but Dain had enough sense to keep his mouth shut about it, for which I was deeply grateful.
I’d spent a long time rotting in my own guilt, and one night curled up with Alluin didn’t fix the damage.
But Alluin wasn’t the sort of person to give up a war after one battle.
He was the master strategist, after all.
Once he’d figured out what was wrong with me, he’d taken me apart with military precision, and he seemed fully prepared to wage as long of a campaign as it took to rescue me from the mire.
That care came in a lot of forms. Flowers and exotic plants, both cut and potted, placed in my room and the places I brooded.
A six-page letter handed to me one evening, the prose and calligraphy as formal as always, the backs of the pages left blank and a gentle but uncompromising “write me back, Zhiolas” his farewell for the night.
Social events, both small and large, where Alluin introduced me to people I knew he’d only become acquainted with so that he could give them to me.
Slowly but surely, the muck of guilt that had permeated every corner of my life started to peel away.
Even though we lived in the same house, Alluin and I started exchanging letters again, leaning into one of the few ways we knew how to share our hearts.
I started meditating again, using the things I’d been taught to handle the soul-damage and battle fatigue from the foxen in order to manage the scarring that had been left on my heart when my beloved boy-prince had been so brutally attacked.
At Alluin’s prodding, I went out into the field again, taking several months to ride out with some of the companies and squads of my battalion.
Being a field soldier felt wrong at first, but by the end of the first fortnight, I felt like someone had pulled an infected thorn out of my side.
I hadn’t been built for backstabbing palace politics or city life.
I loved adventure—loved the new. Routine had coagulated around me, choking me like an insect in amber, and every day in the field left me feeling more and more like a butterfly breaking out of its chrysalis.
Coming back to Alluin’s house didn’t feel like coming home.
It felt like returning to a cage, and in one flare of horrible clarity, I realized that in my desire to be better, I’d put the noose around my own neck.
I’d thrown away the happiness I’d shared with Alluin and instead built my life around trying to be worthy of him and worthy of Dain, forcing myself to conform to what was expected of an elegant, respectable army commander—to act at all times as if I was the courtier I knew I was supposed to be.
I wasn’t a courtier. I wasn’t even respectable.
I was the son of merchants, a common soldier risen to the rank of commander by skill and charm.
My poetry was laughable; my penmanship, deplorable.
I liked to laugh, play games, gamble, and get drunk.
I was a social butterfly. I was a rake, for fuck’s sake, beautiful and flirtatious and all too willing to have fun.
All of that had fallen by the wayside. When was the last time I’d even had sex?
Maybe Dain was right about me. That was a horrible thought.
My whole body throbbed when I thought of what it would be like to finally, properly kiss Alluin, let alone indulge any of a thousand other fantasies that were so deeply-ingrained in my psyche that I regularly dreamed about them.
Alluin fucking me, Alluin sucking me off, Alluin looking at me with that stern general’s stare as he put me on my knees and told me to take his cock out…
Yet the entire problem was that I couldn’t make myself live in Alluin’s world—that I wasn’t the sort of man someone like him had as a paramour. I wasn’t lordly. My behavior didn’t even approach exemplary. I was a soldier, godsdammit, and I was good at it.
I didn’t go home that night. I went and I slept in the woods—or, rather, I went and laid in the woods staring up at the stars as if they might deign to tell me what to do—and then I walked back to Alluin’s house, went inside to where he was sitting at the breakfast table, and said, all in a rush, “I want to get an apartment.”
He blinked up at me, looking bewildered.
My cheeks started heating and my ears dropped.
“It’s not that I don’t like you. It’s not that I don’t love you,” I said, starting to pace.
“But I can’t… I can’t keep living in your house, pretending that I’m like you.
I need to be able to fuck up. I need to be able to…
to… I don’t know. To buy stupid furniture and paint the walls a terrible color and instantly regret it, because I felt like doing it and I had every right to.
To bring home some random mortal while I’m shitfaced and wake up to discover her in my bed without having any idea of how we got there. ”
Alluin’s brows drew slowly together.
“I have to be able to make bad decisions, Lu,” I said, desperation creeping into my voice.
“I’ve been trying so hard to be the right kind of person, to be good enough, and I’m just not.
It’s ruining me. I feel like a plant trapped under a flagstone.
I know there’s sunlight. I know there is.
But I keep smothering pieces of myself so that I can be—”
“Zhiolas,” he said, cutting me off. “You don’t need to defend yourself to me.”
I stopped pacing and swallowed, the motion hurting because of how tight my throat was. “I know this surely isn’t what you want to hear,” I said in a low voice, my shoulders sagging. “I don’t… I just thought you should know.”
Alluin set his elbows on the table and laced his fingers together. “It’s alright, Zhi. You’re allowed to tell me things I don’t want to hear.” He hesitated for a moment, one ear turning as he listened to something outside, then added, “I’m deeply grateful that you told me, actually.”
My brows snapped together and I turned to frown at him. “Why?” I asked.
He huffed a laugh. “Do you truly need to ask?” he asked.
“I’m so often terrible at pinpointing emotions.
Sometimes it’s days before I realize why people are acting in ways that don’t make rational sense.
Ofttimes it’s months or years.” Alluin sighed through his nose and leaned back in his chair.
“I’m a general because of my brilliance at strategy and tactics with units, not because I’m a charismatic leader with an intuitive grasp of individuals.
If you were a battalion instead of a battalion commander, I wouldn’t be having this difficulty.
” His mouth flipped up into a rueful smile.
“I’ve been trying everything I could think of to help you.
It’s a relief to simply know what you need. ”
“Oh,” I said, going a bit wobbly. I walked up to the table and dropped into the other chair. “You’re not upset?”
“Ask me in a few days,” Alluin said drily.
“I’m certainly not upset at you. It’s not the flower’s fault a flagstone was dropped upon it.
” He looked away, wearing a moody expression.
“For what it’s worth, it was never my intention to smother you, nor to force you to conform to any sort of role.
I know I tend to be…staid, but I so greatly appreciate your levity and joy.
I never wanted to snuff that out. Never. ”
“Lu.” I reached out and took his hand when he looked back at me.
“I know.” I smiled at him, the stress of telling him fading away like fog in the sunlight.
“It’s not about you. I was fine until what happened, happened, and then…
” My throat worked as the turbid emotions rose.
As I remembered looking at the way I’d become entangled with Alluin’s life and deciding to excise myself like a cancer. “I don’t know. But I can’t stay here.”
He rested his chin on his hand, his ears tilted towards me.
“So get an apartment. Stand in the sun again. If you feel like you can’t make mistakes here, make them elsewhere.
But, Zhi?” Alluin’s lips slowly curled up into a smirk, an expression of such wickedness that my skin heated and happiness bloomed in my chest like the rising sun.
It had been so long since I’d seen that expression on his face.
“You’re not rid of me. Don’t ever forget that if you desire a companion in sin, you need only ask. ”