Sevastyan
Sevastyan texted Ellisandre from the plane as it touched down in O’Hare outside of Chicago.
His goddex answered almost immediately.
He typed back as passengers around him stood up and started retrieving their luggage.
Customs was easy. He hailed a cab from the sidewalk outside of arrivals and sat in silence in the back seat.
The driver dropped him off near an entrance to the Pedway and he made his way through several buildings before breaking out on the street wearing a different overcoat and hat, his hair completely up and out of sight.
Ellisandre wasn’t yet there when he made it up to the Bolthole and past the two doors.
It felt different now, empty of Rei and Lisa.
Almost all signs that they had stayed there were gone.
He sank down on the couch, head in his hands, gaunt and empty on the inside.
If only Rei were there, and yet it was good that Rei had not traveled with him.
Raska could never lay eyes on his slave.
It would drive her mad, the fact that he showed affection to another.
If Rei was anything but terrified and subservient, she wouldn’t rest until the threat to her ownership was erased.
Touching him now, knowing that she was out there, that she was even thinking Sevastyan’s name, felt too close to putting Rei at risk of her machinations.
Except that Rei was already at risk. He was right then probably curled up against a sometimes benevolent monster who loved him for his helplessness.
And yet he missed Rei’s voice. He needed to lie on his back and talk with his hands in the air, letting Rei piece together all the parts of the puzzle, organizing his mind and making the world of chaos take on coherent shape and form.
He could do it for himself. His instincts were strong, but Rei always made the world clearer.
Rei would be able to weave Alexi’s vague words around Lisa’s future and Raska’s offer into a landscape with a road and a view, instead of mere gut impulses.
From his knees, Rei had learned to see more clearly than most.
While Sevastyan controlled their environment, on alert for threats and keeping together his image, Rei inhabited a place of total trust, his mind working through inference and meanings, linking facts across time and space into an organized web he communicated back with clarity.
Clarity was what Sevastyan was missing now.
When he had walked into the soirée he had felt nothing.
And at the breakfast, his own sense of self had been at arm’s length, but now it was all present, too close, too loud, too unreal, as if his skin were going to melt away and show something different, something he hadn’t yet managed to imagine.
The door creaked. Ellisandre stepped inside, looking more fem than he had seen them in weeks.
They were wrapped in the maroon coat, this time with a matching lip and soft smoky eyes.
There were small diamond pendants in their ears.
Their hat was large and made of suede, with an oversized bow.
They took it off, leaving it against the wall, and unwrapped their coat. Their eyes met. Neither spoke.
Beneath the coat, Ellisandre wore an ankle length wool skirt, appropriate to the temperatures outside. It was a wrap around and fastened at the waist with a wide belt. Their sweater had a bulky, softly rolled neck.
They reached into the bag beside their purse, and set a box on the low table in front of the couch. Inside were two coffees and warm ham and cheese croissants.
The two of them sat in silence while they both ate and drank.
Ellisandre sat near but not beside him, giving him space, filling up the room with their presence.
And that, more than the food, more than the caffeine, more than showers and changing clothes, started to shake Raska’s grip on Sevastyan’s psyche.
He set down the coffee and slid off the couch to his knees, hands on his thighs. “You said once if I needed punishment, you would punish me, if I needed a prison, you would be my prison. I need something else.”
“Name it,” Ellisandre whispered.
“I need to be clean.”
Ellisandre said nothing for a long moment. They set down their coffee beside his. “Outwardly, you are clean. Name that which requires cleansing.”
Sevastyan bowed his head. Only halting words answered his need to explain.
For all that he had done, the things through which he had put Rei, even Lisa, the acts he had witnessed, the lives he had taken, this was harder to say.
The words left his tongue one at a time, without grace, with barely form or cohesion.
The scent of his mother. The slide of her dress against his slacks, her fingers on his shirt.
Her demand.
It hung in the air above them, that final piece of the entire dripping, ugly morass.
“I will cleanse you,” Ellisandre said. “And I will go with you.”
Sevastyan raised his eyes. Ellisandre stared straight into him, their hands folded in front of them, their elbows on their knees leaning close. “I will cleanse you and I will go with you,” they repeated.