Ellisandre
Ellisandre drew their boy in. He needed to be close.
Settling him between their feet was not enough but it was better.
His hair drew them first. Long, straight, loose.
It slid through their fingers, golden silk.
How better to claim and clean him than to leave their art twisted into him?
Their fingers moved through his lengths, parting and plaiting, weaving flat French braids against his scalp, smooth enough that he could lay his head down without discomfort.
Ten braids in all, five starting at his face and moving back to the edge of his crown, then braided to the ends, and five more starting beneath the first five, braided down and plaited to the last length.
As the braids took form, so did their thoughts, the riddle of their boy untangling and the vision of what road they needed to travel revealing itself.
His shoulders were rocks beneath their hands. They slid their palms over them, lifting his arms and moving their hands from his shoulder to his fingers, mapping him.
“You belong to me, Sevastyan Sollunae. When this is over, you will change your name. I do not care what name you use for business, but on paper, in all legal ways, you will belong to me.” They lowered his arm and stood, circling him, hand on his neck, maintaining contact.
“You kneel for no one besides me,” Ellisandre said.
“You are mine. You lie still for no other to cut your flesh and leave their mark.”
They stroked his face. “You are mine. Raska does not have my leave to taint you. She will die, choking on her own blood, before she sullies you. The list of those who have claim on you is short. Her name is not present.”
Ellisandre sat on the couch and took Sevastyan’s chin in the tips of their fingers, lifting his gaze.
“Play her, Vast. Use her to destroy her and her ilk. You are the prince on this battlefield. You are born of yourself. The man you are today is not her creation. What she sees is the illusion you cast, with powers you have wrought of yourself.
She sought to bring forth into the world a tool and a puppet. The gateway she cast gave birth to a spirit beyond her reckoning, a force of its own owning. You. A man she has never corrupted, a double agent who has played against an older, more powerful opponent from the moment he could speak.”
“I feel corrupted,” Sevastyan whispered.
They were too far away. Closeness was required.
Now. They pushed the coffee table away and sank down to the floor, back to the couch for support.
They drew Sevastyan with them, parting their legs to make space and bringing his back flush with their chest.
His whole form was laid out for them like this, his ear near their mouth if they wished to speak.
Hand over his eyes, their arm cradled his head against their neck where he could hear their pulse.
All that strength of him breathed and pulsed under their palm, all the height and power laid out against them.
Their free hand ran over his chest, down his stomach, and up his thighs.
His clothes were between them and his skin, still necessary, as if the cloth were holding their boy in this form and without their shielding he might fly apart into a hundred thousand atoms across the universe.
They stroked the places where she had laid hands on their boy.
His naval, the first place they had been connected, his thighs where she had sat, his hand, wrist, and forearms, the inside of his arm where she’d leaned against him, his chest where her shoulder had touched.
With each pass they imagined they were gathering up the dark miasma of her presence and sweeping it away, sending it into the nether where it could no longer touch the man in their arms.
The angle of the sun against the window changed as they sat there, their hand still moving, cleansing, claiming. Sevastyan’s muscles released, one by one, until he was a heavy weight against them, his eyes closed, no longer in need of a hand over his face.
“Let’s shower.” They urged Sevastyan up.
They took his clothes piece by piece, still stroking his body, wiping away even more memory of her touch.
He stood, eyes closed, swaying lightly, letting them move him as they would.
It was the same under the water. His head came down and rested on their shoulder, arms hanging limp.
Such a weight, a sweet, warm weight. Years and years apart and now he was here, slumped against them, needing and trusting.
They washed his hair, his face, his neck, his limbs, between his legs.
Their fingers dragged over his hole and all he did in response was to spread his stance.
They ran their fingers back, sinking in, careful of the fact that all the lubricant they had was soap and water. He groaned against their neck.
Ellisandre pressed a kiss against his shoulder and finished cleaning him there and everywhere.
They rinsed themselves briefly and wrapped towels around them both, leading him to the bed and laying him out on it.
His eyes were closed still, but he was awake and aware.
They didn’t hide their movements through the rooms, gathering what was needed.
They’d never done something like this before.
Their stomach tightened a fraction at the thought of what they were about to do, but it felt right.
Right for the two of them, if not right for most.
Naked, Ellisandre straddled Sevastyan on the center of the bed.
They held up an ornamental knife, better than the fruit knife they’d used before in the urgency of the moment.
This one was something they had ordered years before from a craftsman they trusted.
The handle was cast in the form of the goddess Ishtar, a feminine figure with wings of a bird and claws in the place of human feet.
It had seemed fitting. She came from Mesopotamia, a goddess of both fertility and war, sexual love and disaster—an embodiment of both sides of a coin and thus complete.
It was fitting now, this duality. How often the mother goddesses of the world were also goddesses of death.
Beginning was one half of a portal that also embraced the ending.
If Ellisandre could, they would reap the life of Raska’s son now, and gift to existence the man that Sevastyan was without them in his blood.
But they were not such a goddex. They could not rebirth their lover. They could only lead him through transformation. So lead him they would. It was the sacred trust he had begged of them.
Sevastyan’s eyes were on them. They showed him the knife. He gazed at it and looked back to their face. There was nothing in his eyes or in the way his body lay beneath them that asked them to stop. He was waiting for them.
Ellisandre cut their own left palm.
Sevastyan’s body tensed under theirs. They smiled. He would have been still if they had cut him, but to see them cut themselves, he quailed.
They looked at what they had done. One slender, long shallow line across the breadth of their hand, that was all.
The sharpness of the blade was almost painless at first.
Vermillion life force rose to the surface, summoned by the parting of flesh.
They turned their hand upwards above Sevastyan, letting the blood pool.
They touched Sevastyan’s chest, above his heart with their uncut hand.
“You are born of yourself, Vast. If the line from which you come is corrupted, cut it off. If you are still breathing, still living, then the shape of fate may be changed. You have already changed the shape of your fate. To lie here, beneath me, you rewrote the stars.
Not every man will do such a thing, but you, Sevastyan, are made of myth and mettle, of art and grace. Your soul is tangled with mine and with Rei. You are touched by heaven and rebirth.”
They dipped into the pool in their palm with two fingers and laid the wet tips against Sevastyan’s breast.
They drew marks down his torso, across his cheek, over his thighs, touched each of his fingers, anointing him until the blood ran dry and their palm ached.
He lay still, his eyes fixed on them, the air barely entering and leaving his lungs.
Ellisandre pressed their cut palm to their lips long enough to stain them red and closed their wounded hand. They leaned down, their thighs framing Sevastyan’s chest, and set their mouth against his.
He rose from the bed, gripping at them, his mouth hungry. They grasped his braids with their undamaged hand and he wrapped thick arms around their waist, drinking redemption from their tongue.
Revelation flooded Ellisandre’s body. Sevastyan’s arms, strong, grasping, firm in ways they had never been in their youth, gripped them, pressed their belly against their boy’s chest.
He was clinging to them in a way that made them heady with power; his strength beneath them was glory and life and devastation.
Two sides of the same coin, like Ishtar, like all the myths, one step away from a tragedy, one step from a redemption; their beautiful, powerful, broken boy, their man drowning in his own pain and breathing life into those around him with the same lungs.
Ellisandre clasped Sevastyan’s head between their hands, kissing until their bodies were both gasping for air. His pale braids were streaked with vermillion, his skin anointed with Ellisandre’s life force.
Between them, his cock was hard and streaked with his own ointment. Ellisandre grasped it in their unwounded hand.
He groaned. “Please.” He let go, trying to turn. This was allowed. He stretched out on the bed, parting his thighs in invitation, showing them the gate into his body they had so recently cleaned.
So much of their boy was large and strong and round with muscle, but here, he was soft and pink.
Two pads of their fingers against his hole and he quivered.
Want erupted in their belly. They grasped the twin mounds of his buttocks and squeezed, rubbing them and parting them until he was straining to offer his body.
Tools. Tools were needed. Their boy was ready. They were ready.
Ellisandre went to the armoire. Their harness and cocks were laid out neatly in drawers. Blood smeared against the door. Gauze.