Sevastyan
Sevastyan’s stomach churned. Yesterday he had waited on his knees for his goddex to judge him.
How could he speak the answers they now demanded?
And even if he did, how was he to speak something that had been learned like breathing?
The way one walked down the hall, the sense of command and deference that sorted men into the owned and the owning.
He worshipped at Ellisandre’s feet. He belonged to them.
It was not the same.
There was safety in worship.
There was only utility and perhaps passing fondness in ownership.
And then there was the tangled web of oaths and survival binding him to Rei and Rei to him.
“Tomorrow. I can show you tomorrow,” Sevastyan said.
Ellisandre nodded. They started to rise. The soft light of the side table light played across their bare shoulders, showing how tight the muscles were held. They moved smoothly, but their face was turned away.
Rei’s hand gripped Sevastyan’s thigh and drew back.
Sevastyan leaned forward, grasping Ellisandre’s wrist.
Ellisandre stopped. For a moment, they were all frozen.
“Bal, I’m giving you space. Your boy needs you.”
Sevastyan tried to speak. Rei moved clumsily to the side, Lisa reaching out and helping him move towards the opposite edge.
“Goddex.”
Ellisandre turned around. For the first time, Sevastyan realized there were tears standing in Ellisandre’s eyes.
“Elli.”
Ellisandre sank onto the edge of the mattress, turning their face away once again. Their free hand fisted against their bare and scarred thigh. “I swear, Vast, I didn’t wait a decade to still lose you because I don’t understand. Deities are only divine when they are worshipped.”
Sevastyan pulled. Ellisandre fell towards him, their shoulders landing on his thighs. He parted his legs and reached for them until they cooperated, lying between his knees. They looked up at him.
He touched their face. They needed him. It was here, spread out. All their marks. No armor. No theater. These were their hands, hands that had killed and saved. Hands that had drawn his blood and mended his marks. Lips that had sundered the muscles of his heart and shown him paradise.
Ellisandre. Utterly Human. Utterly fiendish. Utterly divine.
A myth of contradiction, a narrative that wouldn’t stay on one path.
He touched his fingers to their face. Traced lines down their throat, touched the scar on their shoulder, traced a line over their shoulder. And all the while they lay still, eyes on his face. On the other side of the bed Rei and Lisa were deeply still.
“It’s not a set of rules,” Sevastyan whispered.
“It’s acknowledgement. Lisa and Rei’s lives are in my hands. They breathe at my will and my pleasure. They exist like my luggage or my clothes. No one else wears them without my consent. No one interferes with my use. But I can grant access, grant privilege. According to the rules of my world,
I could tell them to serve you as my goddex. They have no choice. They would not say a word. It would be the simplest way to meld you into my world.”
“How lonely,” Ellisandre whispered. “To be surrounded by nothing but luggage and tools.”
“Lonely, yes. Which is why some property is allowed to become pets, living creatures allotted a modicum of expression and want, granted the privilege of occasionally seeking comfort and desire, sometimes even speech. They are trained to be useful, to be companions,
to be intelligent like a human but pliable and submissive as a hound.”
Breath gusted in and out from Ellisandre’s lips. Sevastyan caressed them, mapping their outline. The power of his position over them, over Lisa and Rei filled him up from the inside, fissuring over his skin like electricity.
“Rei is more than a pet,” Sevastyan whispered. “He gives me everything and maintains his own beating heart. And Lisa, Lisa is the wolf they failed to domesticate yet love to watch roam behind a high fence, congratulating themselves on such beauty and wildness held down beneath them.”
Lisa stirred. Sevastyan didn’t look away from Ellisandre.
“I am worthy of divine retribution,” Sevastyan whispered.
“But if you will not judge me, then I am the lord on a quest of vengeance. Lisa is my canine knight that will rise up when I loose him upon my enemies. Rei is my light and my memory. And you are my goddex, the power that will open the ears of kings and smite those who would hinder me.
Your temples will be my safe harbor and the place I rest when my labor is done. As your supplicant, all that I have is yours. Under your mercy and your care.”
Ellisandre moved, reaching up, grabbing his neck and pulling him down under them, so that they straddled his waist and gripped him by his hair. He went willingly, lying flat for them as they tossed the pillow to the side, grabbing the gun revealed beneath it and setting it on the bedside table.
This was where he wanted to be, under Ellisandre’s fire and fury.