Chapter 41
Chapter Forty-One
L eander stood before Jarryn. It had taken days for the prince to even look at him, much less entertain a conversation.
During the weeks since returning to Saeren, many things had changed, and it almost seemed like something had disappeared during that time. Leander’s world had slowly been losing its colours.
Jarryn’s eyes remained cold. “Trust, once broken, is hard to mend,” his voice was edged with the betrayal he evidently felt so deeply.
“I know, but I deserve the chance.”
“You saved me, and I will be forever grateful. But I’m in this situation because of you, and that cannot just be forgotten, Leander.
” Jarryn said it in such a horribly soft way that spoke of true pain and anguish, a tone of voice that would have lent itself quite nicely to using physical skills instead of words.
He should be pounding at the wall with his fists to escape this mental turmoil.
Even Jarryn’s accompanying smile was such a fucking despondent manifestation that Leander wouldn’t have minded if, instead of the wall, he himself were the target of Jarryn’s fists.
The prince had far too much self-control for that to be the solution to his new problems, though.
Despite Leander’s sincere efforts at apologising, the chasm between them only seemed to widen.
“Is it because I told the lie, or because I kept the truth of it from you?” Leander’s question echoed in the strained silence, each attempt at speaking being met with a wall of silent resentment.
Jarryn did not reply.
Leander’s mind raced as he struggled to find something to say, as if expecting an epiphany to come to him and suddenly all would be well again. It didn’t come to him, though, and the silence that reigned was a reminder of their bond, only in its infancy, now severed.
It shattered his heart into a million pieces.
“I thought we agreed we were in this together.” When Jarryn finally spoke, his tone was coloured with bitterness.
But there was still a smile on the prince’s face. No, it was more like a smirk. That asinine one he used when speaking to other nobles, specifically the ones he didn’t like. A smile that was so detached from his eyes. It was a perfected mask that fooled everyone, including Leander… until recently.
Leander’s broken heart sank further, if that was even possible, as he realised the depth of the damage he had caused.
“I never meant for it to go this far,” implored Leander, desperation evident in his eyes. He was, as always when in front of Jarryn, unable to do anything but bare his soul completely to the other man.
“What other outcome could you possibly conceive happening as you kept your lie hidden from me for months ?” Jarryn asked, his tone taking on an incredulous quality.
He hesitated, trying to decide how to repair the damage of not only his words, but of his lie.
Jarryn sighed, rubbing his face with his hands in a rare show of frustration. “But the fact remains that you did. There aren’t enough sweet words in the world to take back that hurt.”
The prince lowered himself to sit in the chair next to his desk, falling silent and eyeing Leander despondently until he finally sighed again and looked away, a frown on his face as he tapped a stack of letters into order on the edge of his desk, ready to be sent out with the morning delivery.
“If you would just?—”
“Cut the act,” Jarryn’s voice was sharp, but his expression remained stoic, unwilling to yield to Leander’s pleading. “This conversation ends now.”
“Oh, bullshit!” Leander snapped, raising his arms in a violent gesture as something a little more potent than irritability flared hot and fast in his stomach. “You fucking mortals and your victim complexes!”
Jarryn froze mid-movement, but he did not look up.
Leander also went still. He immediately wondered if he had finally—finally—pushed the prince to his emotional limits of self-restraint…
and then, quickly following that th ought, there was a second thought, wondering if that had been his intention all along.
Because what he had done, what had he been given over those days of travel after leaving Saeren together?
A shared understanding, a connection he had never assumed possible, let alone sought it out. Was it something he ever wanted to let go?
Nine above, it might just be worth it.
Might be worth suffering through a flogging for.
He wondered if Jarryn was the type of man to dole out corporal punishment on those subordinates who had wronged him in some way.
Really, there was only one way for him to find out.
Leander didn’t like how they could have gone from such intimacy to this complete and utter division of who they had promised each other they would be.
The prince finally looked up, his crystalline gaze icy, hard, impenetrable.
“Care to elaborate on what you just said?” Jarryn said, in a calm, painfully cold, voice.
On any other day, in any other situation, it was a voice that would have made Leander run for the hills.
That might have been the solution… but not when he was stood in front of the man he loved, the man he implicitly trusted to come to a fair and agreeable solution.
“Please do enlighten me with, exactly , how my victim complex is shining through, Leander.”
Leander swallowed, wishing his temper hadn’t gotten the better of him. In no conceivable way was Jarryn at fault.
He was entirely culpable in this situation.
He had sort of accepted that .
But lashing out at Jarryn was the easiest, fastest way for Leander to displace his own shortcomings, which were now laid out for both to see with no small amount of shame.
“You shouldn’t have bought me. You shouldn’t have kissed me.
You shouldn’t have been so fucking perfect and irresistible to everyone. ”
Jarryn stared impassively at his slave, clearly waiting for more of an explanation from Leander, who was floundering, failing to stay afloat as the waves of emotion threatened to overcome him.
“I should never have done it. And you didn’t deserve what I did, I see that now, but…” he trailed off.
Jarryn knew the truth of his lie, but no one knew the reason behind it, and he had no doubt that Machus would have him flayed to within an inch of his life if he ever discovered that Leander had vocalised his machinations.
“I’m never going to get a straight answer out of you, am I?”
Leander hesitated, then shook his head mutely.
Jarryn sighed and turned bodily away, returning to work on his desk. “I don’t wish to have you in my sight. Leave.”
The demigod stared, he had been expecting that. “Where am I supposed to go?”
“Anywhere that isn’t here would be an excellent start. In the grand scheme of things, the possibilities for you are endless. Try not to get lost in the overwhelming abyss of choices.”
Leander made no effort to move, instead trying one final time and opening his mouth to speak .
“The order was a simple one, Leander. Obey it, or I will have you forcibly confined to one of the king’s cells again.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“I suggest you do not test me if you do not wish to discover exactly how far my displeasure extends, Leander.” He turned and stalked away.
Jarryn stalked everywhere nowadays; it was always obvious where he was when he moved about his apartments within Caisa’s royal household, and Leo kept out of the prince’s way.
But this could not go on, not when both were suffering so acutely.
He made enemies wherever he went, as far as Leander could tell. It was just his way, existing was enough to set people on edge, seeking—and finding—the worst in him.
Every word Jarryn spoke since they had returned to Saeren (which wasn’t a lot) was the truth—Leander had been painfully aware of this since having his divine domain bestowed upon him even more.
Lies were obvious, lies were second nature. The truth, while normally comforting in many ways, now broke him and no one was there to pick up the pieces. Leander was grappling with growing despair to rebuild what had been shattered, his every effort at reconciliation rebuffed.
After a moment, he headed over to the basin in the corner of his room and splashed water on his face. Leander then debated his next course of action.
The sensation of utter oppression hung constantly in the air like a dream where he was striving to run but his muscles wouldn’t listen to his brain. He had no idea what to do, no inkling of a solution to his problems. Leander had never cared for anything—or anyone—in the same way he did Jarryn.
To have and to lose it… it was just too much for his soul to suffer through. Leander, feeling the weight of yet another rejection, retreated in search of solitude.
But Leander was still Jarryn’s property, according to the laws of Saeren. Leander was positive that was the only reason the prince still tolerated his near constant proximity.
Navigating the corridors of Jarryn’s apartments within King Caisa’s palace, Leander could do little more than play the conversation over and over in his head. Words were easily forgotten, but Jarryn’s expression, his eyes , were images burned into his mind forever.
Leander took Jarryn’s earlier command to ‘leave’ as permission for him to remove himself from the property entirely. He needed to escape the suffocating space, where he was drowning in memories, the good ones irrevocably damaged by the bad.
Trudging a path through the palace, Leander avoided contact with anyone he passed.
There was only one person Leander wanted the company of right now: his eldest brother.
He left the palace and chose the shortest route to the Talius residence.
A slave let him in and he waited in one of the receiving rooms for Verin to appear.
“Leander, are you supposed to be here?”
The demigod shrugged.
“Is he still not speaking to you?”
“I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“Fair enough. Would you like a drink?”
Leander nodded and Verin approached the drinks cabinet and poured two exceedingly generous drams of whisky. He handed one over and took a swig of his own.
The demigod stared at his own tumbler of whisky but did not take a sip.
Ordinarily, Leander would drink until he would be skirting the boundary between drunk and obliterated.
He couldn’t bring himself to do that today.
“How are you doing?” Verin asked softly.
“What do you mean?”
Verin rolled his eyes and sighed, a long-suffering sound. “You were almost killed a mere fortnight ago. That is not something I expect you to just bounce back from. How are you doing?”
“Sometimes words can be more barbed, more detrimental to a person’s health than a physical attack,” Leander muttered bitterly. If he had to tot up all the bad things that had happened to him in the past year, his failed relationships with people would top the list, not any fear of pain or death.
“Yes, but you just said you didn’t want to talk about that. So let’s talk about this instead.” Verin sat down in one of the plush chairs in the room and gestured for Leander to do the same across from him.
“Okay. The bottom line is that I wasn’t killed.
And even if I had met my end on that night, what does it matter?
It happens to all of us at some point or another.
Death is the only thing we can all expect.
” He didn’t verbalise that sometimes he wished the end had come to him, better that than deal with this turmoil.
“Yes, we all can expect it, but not an untimely one. Death is the only thing every creature in existence shares, and our lives are ruled by our fear of it, for ourselves and our loved ones. You know that fear only too well, I’d wager.”
Leander made a noncommittal sound, agreeing but not really wanting to talk about his narrow escape from death either. He would process it soon, and no doubt with Verin, but not today.
“You don’t know what you’re living for until you know what you would die for,” Verin continued, eyeing his brother with evident concern etched onto his features.
Another vague noise escaped Leander.
“Why have you come here, then?”
“…What?” Leander had heard Verin perfectly well. Ordinarily, he would have undoubtedly skewered Leander for making him do something as inefficient as repeat himself. But how by the Nine was Leander supposed to begin to answer his question, even one as simple on the surface as the one he had posed?
“I needed to get away from the silence of Jarryn’s rooms and the subsequent loudness in my mind.”
Verin nodded his understanding.
“I turned Taskevi’s offer down two weeks ago and I can’t help but think that I made the wrong decision. What am I doing here, Verin?”
“Righting wrongs is what I believe you said.”
“And I’m failing.”
“Jarryn will come around. He just needs time,” Verin said softly, a frown creasing his forehead. Leander was well aware his brother was using Aesthesia to feel his pain. “I can help, if you want.”
“No, I deserve this. ”
“You would do well to disavow yourself of your self-loathing and masochistic tendencies, Leo. As I told you before, there is no cosmic reinforcement for our actions.”
“How would you know? Are you a god? Do you know what we do or do not care about?”
Verin smiled at Leander’s retaliation. “No, I am not.”
The pair stared at each other, until Leander finally spoke. “My personal life aside, I meant what I said about fixing my mistakes. This is bigger than just Jarryn and me. What do you need me to do?”
Verin placed his tumbler of whisky on the table and, leaning towards Leander, examined him both visually and Aesthesically, verifying the truth of his statement. “Are you certain?”
Leander didn’t even hesitate before he nodded forcefully.
“Good. Follow me.”