Chapter Twenty-Three #3
You know as well as I that the king’s advisor has been the true leader of the kingdom for centuries now; it is clear the gods have no investment in who is doing the actual ruling.
Let them choose who they want to serve their hedonistic fantasies, but let it be just that: a role of sacrificial servant.
Let’s do away with this archaic model of government and allow the most competent leader, not the prettiest face, to be king.
You spent your career fighting against injustice and ineptitude.
Yorith supported you in these endeavors.
Had he not been so blinded by his faith, he would have understood the validity of no longer putting the fate of the kingdom into the hands of those least interested in it.
Do not let the vision of a blind man prevent you from seeing the opportunity for a prosperous future.
Well regards and wishes for your health,
Lyrian of the Aedus Estate
Ethyr sank to his heels as he read, and when he finished he sat staring blankly at the scroll as though the words would magically transform to something else.
Kiaro stood several paces away; a dark, unassuming presence.
“Do you know what this letter says?” Ethyr asked quietly.
“I can imagine,” Kiaro responded ambivalently.
“Because you’ve been watching Lyrian too?” Ethyr looked up at him. He took Kiaro’s lack of response to be affirmative. “How can you call this a mortal affair? It directly involves the gods.”
“It does not.”
“He wants to get rid of all say the gods have in who is king!”
Kiaro met his gaze coolly. “The gods never intended to be the decider of kings.”
Ethyr stared. “What? What do you mean?”
“They were simply choosing someone to represent the kingdom’s faith.
It was humans who took the gods’ choice as their leader,” Kiaro explained.
“Many opposed this, and there was fighting between different factions. The civilized gods naturally defended the person they chose, which mortals took to mean they approved of this form of government. But even the supporters quickly realized the problems with this method of ascendancy, and so the council and advisor positions were formed to help the king govern regardless of their experience in doing so.”
“The positions Lyrian also wants eliminated,” Ethyr said. According to Malor, anyway.
“Humans are always changing, evolving, inventing. If they wish to change how their society works, we will let them. It is no use fighting against that which the universe has decided to be.”
Ethyr looked back down at the paper. Uneducated peasant from a backwater village. Sacrificial servant. Pretty face.
“He’s not wrong,” Ethyr murmured.
“Meddling in mortal affairs always brings unexpected consequences,” Kiaro told him. “You should not let yourself be drawn into this.”
“What are you talking about?” Ethyr cried, getting to his feet.
“I’m the reason all this is happening! I let Lyrian kill Yorith, I let him become advisor, I’ve let him take over everything!
” Ethyr crushed the scroll in his fist, the heat of his face stinging in his eyes.
“I should have listened to you,” he said tearfully. He should have listened to them all.
“No,” Kiaro whispered. His voice was so quiet it was hardly audible over the crackling fire, yet the force of it was so dark it suffocated every light and sound from the room.
“I should have protected you. I shouldn’t have let you get so involved, you always—” He closed his mouth abruptly, but the darkness of the room didn’t lift.
Ethyr stared, trying to decipher the black look in his eyes, but the god turned and strode out to the balcony.
Ethyr dropped the scroll and followed, but couldn’t get himself to step over the threshold. He expected Kiaro to transform and fly away, but instead he gripped the railing, staring into the moonless night like he could see the waterfall through it.
“You tried to warn me,” Ethyr reminded him.
Kiaro’s grip tightened, fingers digging against the marble like they could claw into it. “It wasn’t good enough,” he said, voice trembling as though he were holding up an enormous weight.
Silence hung between them, punctuated by the faint sounds of insects under the roar of the waterfall.
There was a tension coiling around Kiaro, as though he could snap at any moment, like a feral dog forced into chains.
With the other gods, sometimes it was easy to forget they weren’t human.
But Kiaro could never be mistaken for anything less than what he was.
Ethyr swallowed his unease and forced himself to step forward into the open air of the balcony, closer to the god.
Why did he feel like he could soothe him? And yet he was too scared to touch him.
Kiaro pried his fingers from the balcony and reached into his sleeve, pulling out a black feather.
In the next second it transformed into a mass in his palms, like a knot of burnt roots, and it took a long moment for Ethyr to recognize it.
He’d seen Kiaro holding it once before, the first day he was offered to the gods.
“Do you know what this is?”
Ethyr tilted his head, leaning closer to see it. “No? What is it?”
Kiaro rested a hand over the top of it, drawing it close to his body. He held it like it was something more precious than his own heart. “Do you not feel it?”
“Feel it?” Ethyr asked, baffled. “Feel what?” Kiaro’s eyes flitted from staring unseeing at the railing to Ethyr, and he met the gaze, questioning. The god’s dark eyes searched his with a question of their own, as though looking for something else entirely.
“Is it important?” Ethyr finally, hesitantly, asked.
“Yes.”
He blinked, prying his gaze from Kiaro’s to inspect it more closely. “There’s a piece missing.” It was hard to tell amongst the tangle of roots, but one was definitely broken off at the end in a way none of the others were.
“Yes,” Kiaro said quietly. His eyes were blacker than the night. His jaw clenched. “There’s… something you should know.”
“What should I know?” Ethyr prompted when Kiaro became reticent again. He had gone very still, but it didn’t diminish the strange turbulence around him, the tension stringing his shoulders. He closed his eyes, black lashes accentuating the curve of his pale cheek.
When his eyes opened, the mass vanished. Kiaro turned to him. In the ambient firelight from the room, his eyes were gray again. Ethyr looked between them, waiting.
The arms wrapping around him took him by surprise, not giving him time to even consider what was happening.
He was drawn flush to Kiaro, squeezed to near suffocation, the god’s face nuzzled deep into the crook of Ethyr’s shoulder.
He couldn’t move; he could hardly breathe with his torso curved and pinned against the god.
He couldn’t think.
His mind was saturated with the feel of Kiaro, the solidity of his body, the pressure of his arms, the juts of his face digging into his neck.
His own cheek lay pressed to Kiaro’s shoulder, staring at the milky white of his throat so close to his nose it was just a blur of color.
It felt natural, as though he could grow into that space, into the shape of Kiaro, and live there.
He closed his eyes and lifted what he could of his arms. As soon as they touched Kiaro he released Ethyr like he’d been burnt, taking a few unbalanced steps back. Ethyr grabbed onto his wrist before he could get further; or worse, vanish altogether.
“Don’t,” he pleaded. Kiaro looked down at Ethyr’s hand and back to his face like a man caught in a crime. “Don’t let go.” His heart, his body, ached for the contact again. By the conflict on his face, so did Kiaro’s.
“Please,” Kiaro said, voice not even a whisper. “Please. I have no recourse against you.”
“I wish that were true.” If it was, maybe he could have felt Kiaro’s arms around him much sooner.
“You will hate me for this,” Kiaro whispered.
“I won’t.” Ethyr met his gaze, entreating.
He came forward all at once, the force behind his strides stumbling Ethyr back, and Kiaro’s mouth on his pushed him into the frame of the archway.
Its edges dug into the furrows of his shoulder blades as he tried to match lips with lips and tongue with tongue.
Hands gripped Ethyr’s head, fingers dug into his hair, the mass of Kiaro relentless and covering.
It was not kissing, it was devouring; like Kiaro would swallow his breath, his life, and his soul if he could.
He kissed him like a starving man at a feast.
An arm under his butt lifted him and Ethyr obligingly wrapped his legs around Kiaro’s hips, trying and failing to keep up with his kisses, uninterrupted as he carried Ethyr from the balcony to his bed.
He laid them both down, Ethyr’s back sinking into the cushion of blankets, Kiaro holding himself above him.
His eyes swept Ethyr’s face, eyebrows pulled together as though pained.
Starving desperation became fragile sorrow with startling speed.
A thumb brushed over Ethyr’s chin, across his lower lip, then glided up the side of his face with the gossamer touch of a feather, Kiaro’s gaze following.
Fingers tucked into his hair, wiped some locks from his temple in gentle, short strokes, before knuckles grazed back down the side of his face.
Kiaro’s eyes followed where he touched, not in admiration, not like the other gods looked at Ethyr, but as one might examine something precious to them that was lost.
Ethyr wouldn’t have believed that the trickster god could be so soft. Something in his touch cried out, ‘be tender with me, I am bruised.’