PART II | Chapter XV
2:15 | Roads Less Traveled
Blood stained the whole of Baisyl’s left shoulder, as well as a noteworthy swath across his front, painting a number of his once gold buttons a deep, lethal mix of mottled black and red. Despite this, he held his body like not a speck of it was his, as if the battle had raged on around him but he came through spotless and unscarred, marked only by the fails of others. The untouchable eye of the storm.
And then there were his eyes—like an ocean burning or a forest caught under a tidal wave—alive like green-blue fire that rippled with challenge and magic.
How could anyone look him dead on and
not believe that his body weaved spells like a spider spun silk and that a single drop of a poison curse from his tongue might corrode a village in its wake?
Kedean had seen kings and emperors, sultans and warlords—men who sat in their thrones and loomed larger than life—men who defined their very existence around perpetuating the notion that they sat above and beyond all others. Baisyl wielded that self-same ‘I
own you, now bow before me’ presence with a master’s skill, donning it as effortlessly as common men pulled cloaks over their shoulders, and for a moment even Kedean forgot the man was bluffing.
The next second, as he reeled in his grip on reality, he was convinced they would both be burned alive. Surely, there was no
way-
“Sir! Sir, sir…” An out of breath man, clearly having just run the length of the wagon train from the head to where they were, stalled by a man Kedean recognized as a close friend of the head merchant of the train, Tuphon. “Sir, there are wood elves…wood elves at the forefront! They wish to speak with our leaders…”
The addressed man drew his eyes quickly over the gathered crowd, anxious and assessing, before finally coming to rest a wary glance on Baisyl. Baisyl tilted his head in turn, quirking an eyebrow as if to communicate a silent, ‘
Well, what will it be?’ and Kedean watched with startled, rapt fascination as silent fire licked lazily, out of nowhere, over Baisyl’s fingertips—gathering in his palm like a loyal pet when he lifted it.
“Really, gentleman,” he drawled idly, “…while I might have all day, my patience isn’t in quite so much abundance as my time…”
An illusion. It had to be an illusion. He’d said he could conjure illusions, right? What was it he’d said exactly?
Kedean wished he remembered, and wished his charge hadn’t moved quite so far out of his reach, because any second now, they were going to see through the guise, attack, bind them up, and-
“A-alright, alright! Just…get the dragon witch whatever he wants and get those two out of here,” the man in charge snapped, waving his hands skyward and away as if to physically rid himself of the situation by shooing them off, and Baisyl smirked—like a fox trotting off with a bellyful of baby chickens. “We don’t need elves thinking we’re housing war criminals on top of everything else…go!”
And a half an hour later, a pristine white stallion and a chestnut mare trot in time together, their twin hoofbeats cutting a fresh path through ingrown weeds over a forgotten trail.
Leaves of various shapes and sizes cast tangled, indistinct shadows on the passersby underneath, the occasional trickle of a drizzled, misty rain joining them and falling in interspersed bursts. A curtain of trees had long ago swallowed up all evidence of their original caravan, and yet, Kedean still found himself blinking every few minutes in stubborn disbelief at the rich, red-brown mane under his fingers, as if at any moment, the sleek, powerful mare he now rode truly would turn out to be some figment of his wild imagination gone renegade and disappear appropriately.
“You look like a child tasting sugar for the first time,” his charge cut in breezily, drawing him from his musings, and Kedean looked up.
Baisyl rode several feet to his right, completely at ease atop his equally impressive, young snowy stallion; purebreds, the both of them, surely—made for nobility, not pack animals—and Kedean drew his eyes over his charge.
He rode as smoothly as his brother, as if he belonged on the beast and it became a part of him the instant he mounted. Despite his injuries, he held his head high and his chin aloft, the rain making his dark hair cling wetly to the pale column of his throat like slick wet fingers. Only subtle things betrayed his weariness to Kedean in ways he hadn’t dared allow before the eyes of their previous audience: the way every now and then his brows pinched a fraction closer together or the way the set of his jaw intermittently tightened; even the way his hands occasionally sharply tensed their grip so that his knuckles paled.
Sharply, Kedean realized that wanted to see Baisyl as he was before his curse, before all the events of late. He wanted to see the Baisyl that his brothers had known growing up, the one that knew no limits, no rules, no defeat, and no reservations. No hard-earned lessons of personal limitations and life’s uncountable inevitable injustices.
If this was the face of Baisyl battered, facing the elements and fighting the current for his life, what did he look like at ease, in his own territory where he knew all the rules of the game and changed them at will should he ever see fit?
“You realize,” Baisyl spoke up again, equally neutrally, “…that riding becomes considerably less comfortable with you dragging your eyes over me like that…”
Kedean angled his head forward. “Your…escape tactics,” he said after an extended pause, “…were incredibly reckless.”
“And yet we escaped.”
Kedean pursed his lips at the direct, dismissive way Baisyl threw the words out there, as if there hadn’t been a thousand possible ways the situation could have gone sour. “And if we hadn’t?” he challenged. “If they’d called your bluff?”
Baisyl spared him a glance. “Would it really have been so much worse than whatever fate we’d have met if we’d dropped to our knees and accepted their condemnation with open arms?”
Another pause ensued.
After which, Baisyl continued, “By acting immediately, it looked as though I transformed intentionally, an impressive feat in and of itself. They were salesmen and peasants, not warriors, and they weren’t looking for a fight other than to extract some revenge and peace of mind from an easy target. As soon as the costs outweighed the benefits…”
“So you saw no chance of failure.”
Baisyl scoffed. “There is always a chance of failure,” he answered point blank. “Only a fool thinks he can never lose, but it is also my experience that even if you can’t always win…you might as well always be confident that you will.” He smiled wryly. “It rarely hurts your chances, in any case.”
As far as Kedean could tell, it was a philosophy Baisyl lived by.
“So…” His charge’s smile took on a coyer, teasing look that Kedean recognized all too well by now, and he metaphorically braced himself, “…in that story of yours, if I’m the fair princess in distress…does that make you my designated noble merchant savior?”
Dancing green eyes met his from under a canopy of wet lashes, accented by a playful smirk, and Kedean found himself hard pressed to connect the look with the sharp, domineering face of Baisyl’s bluff less than an hour before.
“I…suppose that depends, milord,” he answered, and Baisyl’s eyebrows arched neatly.
“On…?”
“On, ah…” Kedean cleared his throat, “…on whether or not we…” He frowned, and his charge’s lips curled up, growing more devilish by the second.
“Whether or not we decide to fall
desperately in love with each other?” Baisyl quoted perfectly—Kedean wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d batted his eyelashes for extra flare and emphasis—and he
knew his charge was teasing.
It still made his heart race to a panicked rhythm.
“Baisyl-”
“Oh, no, I know,” Baisyl cut him off, waving a hand dismissively—and then masking a wince when this caused him pain—and Kedean forced his lips shut to keep from commenting. “I understand completely. It would be an incredibly foolish thing to do. Possibly among the most foolish possible courses of action for us to take at this point, in fact…” He spoke the last portion more softly, making Kedean wonder again at how effortlessly his charge changed faces, shifting his mood entirely. When Baisyl looked his way, a sudden unexpected depth in his expression hit Kedean as hard as his teasing—if not more so. “That was more or less what you meant to say, was it not?”
“It…”
Damn him for that look.
And those eyes.
“Ah…” Kedean swallowed his pulse. “It…yes,” he answered finally, hoping it sounded less cracked and dry to Baisyl’s ears than it felt in his throat. “More or less…that is, definitely incredibly…foolish…”
“Mm…” Baisyl nodded crisply, as if they’d just signed off a business deal, not barely scraped through a verging on very personal conversation. “Very well,” he agreed. “Absolutely no falling in love…sounds simple enough. But…” His look turned abruptly more mischievous in a way that got under Kedean’s skin so readily it worried him, “…I do hope you’ll consent to continuing to sleep with me and taking me under you properly at some point in the reasonably near future, hm?”
Kedean wondered what consequences he’d face for dragging his charge off his horse and taking him half-dressed against the nearest tree.
Deciding that that might not be entirely appropriate, he cleared his throat instead.
“If…that’s what you want, milord,” he said.
Baisyl smirked. “Have you always been this well-behaved?”
Kedean blinked. “Well-behaved, milord?”
His charge opened his mouth, apparently thought better of it, and shut it again, flashing a grin instead. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” he said. “Left or right?”
“Left or…” A split in the road. Kedean glanced over the signs, threw another assessing look Baisyl’s way, and then made a decision. “Left. You need medical attention.”
“I need hot water and some clean linens,” Baisyl corrected, “not a healer.”
“Whatever the case,” Kedean persisted, “we should stop at the nearest town, rest at an inn, and see to your injuries. We can determine the best alternate route to Carthak from there.”
“But if we move quickly,” Baisyl insisted, “…we could keep ahead of the wagon train and wouldn’t have to worry about-”
“Carthak is the largest city between Ire and Brittaney,” Kedean cut in, trying not to let irritation seep into his tone. “There will be multiple roads that lead there and we aren’t going to risk your health for the sake of speed. If you fall sick-”
“-it won’t exactly heed you getting to your brother, will it?” Baisyl made his words bluntly tart, and Kedean scowled outright.
“My brother is young, strong, and healthy…and they have no reason to hurt him,” he argued. “I
will find him, but I don’t need added concern for you making things even more complicated-”
“So you are concerned for me?”
“Of course I’m concerned for you!” Kedean snapped it, harsher than he intended, and realized only after the words left his mouth that there was no ‘of course’ to the matter at all.
He should have put his brother first ages ago. What he’d said was true—he felt confident his brother would fare well enough on his own until he arrived—and yet, since he’d decided to forfeit his pay and seek Zyric instead of delivering Baisyl, he had no obligation toward the noble in the least.
And yet the thought of abandoning Baisyl turned his stomach.
His charge’s eyes examined him, his look curious and contemplative, and Kedean mentally swore. How the hell did this one man manage to make everything immensely more complicated by merely
existing in his presence?
“Just…go left,” he growled, and he swore he caught the corner of Baisyl’s lip twitching up in the second before he turned his head forward, hiding his expression.
“Yes, sir,” his charge replied, reigning his horse over to the left.
Kedean decided not to delve into working out whether or not the statement was laced with sarcasm. He’d take his victories where he found them.
They made it to the nearest town an hour before nightfall. The rain having stopped somewhere around midday, Baisyl was predictably sour by the time they got in—long since returned to his feminine state and unsurprisingly sore about the fact—and Kedean asked no questions when he reserved them a room with separate beds.
When his charge dragged out an unfamiliar bag of coins from his vest, though, and tossed the required amount of coppers onto the front counter from that supply, Kedean ventured his first brief, confused look. He waited until they started ascending the steps to their room before questioning.
“Baisyl-”
“Hn?”
“That money-”
“Those wolf-demon creature things,” his charge answered crisply, trying with only partial success to mask the way he grit his teeth with each fresh step. Kedean, figuring the gesture wouldn’t be appreciated, resisted the urge to offer assistance—with some difficulty. “The first one had a small coin pouch on him, and I figured you’d want to be…‘noble’ and…return our stolen sum, along with the horses, to your friend the wagon leader as soon as we reach Carthak.”
Baisyl looked relieved to reach the top of the steps, and Kedean eyed his charge with renewed interest. He
had felt guilty about stealing from Tuphon—or, about stealing in general, but especially from a man he knew—and yet, in lei of saving their lives, he’d seen no other obvious options. The fact that such things had even occurred to Baisyl amidst the heat of such an already tangled situation…
Then, another thought occurred to him.
Frowning, he asked, “Milord…if you had already attained sufficient sums to support us before the wagon train turned on us…why did you still demand gold? And three thousand aupels, at that…don’t you think that’s a bit-”
“Think of it this way…” A bolt clacked as Baisyl turned the key to their door, and hinges creaked a second later. “If I had stood up there, a bloodied wreck, in front of a bunch of furious, wronged peasants looking for a scapegoat, and asked them very nicely if they might kindly just lend us a couple of decent horses and let us be peacefully on our way without trouble…” He surprised Kedean by lingering in the doorway, resting his weight against the frame instead of moving and turning, enough to meet Kedean’s eyes, “…how many of them, do you guess, would have been intimidated?”
It wasn’t the sort of question that needed to be answered aloud.
“If I asked for too little,” Baisyl continued, “…they’d sense hesitance and doubt my ability to collect, wondering why I kept my demands so modest.” He pushed up off the doorframe, and stepped in, holding the door for Kedean. “If I asked for too much, the costs of taking a chance to stand against me might have outweighed the appeal of playing it safe…in the end, it was all, again, a gamble.” He shrugged, grimaced with apparent regret for the action, and tapped the door shut behind them.
When he made to lift a hand to his shoulder, Kedean caught his fingers instinctively, stalling them a second before they reached their destination. “Wait, don’t…touch that yet,” he advised. “If you won’t see a healer, at least let me have a look at it?” he offered. “We don’t want it getting infected.”
Baisyl blinked, cheeks faintly warm—probably startled by the sudden personal contact and abrupt inquiry—but he shook it off quickly. “You know medicine?”
“I know how to clean and dress a wound,” Kedean corrected without embellishment. “That hardly constitutes a knowledge of medicine…”
“Mm…and can you cook?”
Kedean frowned, glancing up from Baisyl’s shoulder to his face. “Cook?” he repeated. “What does that have to do with medicine?”
“Oh, it has nothing to do with medicine,” Baisyl admitted. “It just occurred to me that if you dance, tell stories, obey orders, dress minor injuries, cook meals, and otherwise know how to keep a man more or less out of trouble…you make quite the ideal wife, don’t you think?”
Kedean eyed his charge, silently impressed by his ability to keep a perfect straight face, and after a long moment of no movement, he said, “I’ll go downstairs and ask if they can bring up a basin of hot water…you can speed up the process by taking off your shirt and waiting for me on the bed.”
It took him a moment to realize why that particular choice of words turned Baisyl’s face the color of a sunset.
“I only need access to the damaged areas,” he clarified quickly. “You can cover your-”
“I—yes, I realize that’s what you…meant,” Baisyl cut in, his glance darting away. There was little in the room for his eyes to focus on, though: two beds, unfurnished hardwood flooring, and a single window through which the waning day poured in rich, red-orange light over the modest interior. “You may go down and fetch the water. I’ll…work on…prepping…”
Kedean didn’t press.
When he returned, he found Baisyl perched on the edge of the far bed as instructed, one leg tucked under him and the other hanging loose, both barefoot. His vest lay discarded off to the side, his hair braided back and out of the way making a dark red snake on the bedspread, and his fingers lingered at his shirt front, dallying with his buttons but making no progress as Kedean watched. When he shut the door behind him, Baisyl’s head darted up, fingers reactively tugging his shirt tighter closed before he registered Kedean’s identity fully and relaxed—somewhat.
Kedean set the basin on the floor by Baisyl’s feet, placing the clean linens for wrapping on the bed and stooping to wet the provided wash rag. All this, Baisyl watched with a silent combination of interest and apprehension. His fingers didn’t move, though.
“If you’re too uncomfortable,” Kedean said after a moment, “…I can let you try this on your own.” He found trying to read his charge’s shifting expressions something like trying to decipher a coded map. “It’s not that complicated, and it might be a bit awkward, but I could tell you what to-”
Baisyl huffed and moved.
In twenty seconds, he’d opened his shirt, shucked it over his shoulders and off, and folded his arms stubbornly back over his bare upper half. It pushed his breasts together and up, exposed ample swaths of soft vanilla skin, and showcased a petite waist and trim stomach of the sort most women only dreamed of having. As well as revealing a series of scattered gashes and caked blood on his shoulder, which of course was the important thing.
Kedean turned his eyes back to his washcloth.
“Alright,” he said, and soaked and wrung the rag one last time, “…feel free to tell me if you change your mind.”
Baisyl said nothing, and after tensing briefly when Kedean first made contact, he held cooperatively still, only flickers of change in his expression betraying any signs of pain or discomfort. He kept perfectly quiet.
Luckily, the majority of the damage was focused on one side. The bite wound went deeper than Kedean expected, an infection already fighting to set in, but most of the claw cuts were shallow and already starting to heal, and as increasingly more of the dried blood and buried grit washed away, Kedean found himself ever more impressed—and confused—by the state of the skin underneath.
While there weren’t that many deep incisions, most of those that looked to have been more severe originally appeared as though they’d had
days as opposed to hours to heal. Though it showed marks of injury, the skin looked well on its way to repairing itself. Curious, Kedean ran the warm rag gently along a similar such cut, carefully clearing away lingering bits of clotted blood and dirt. When he swept up close to the tail of it, edging along the base of Baisyl’s throat, his charge’s lashes flit once and he made his first, muted sound since the start.
Kedean made to withdraw. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt-” But fingers caught his hand, stilling him, and for a fraction of a second, he swore he saw a faint
glow envelope their combined fingers and light up along the cut.
Then, abruptly as if burnt, Baisyl’s face warmed like a teased ember and he jerked his hand back, the faint luminance dissipating the instant they broke contact. Eyes flicking back shut, he angled his head away and folded his hand back over his chest with the other.
“Baisyl-”
“You didn’t hurt me.” Deep orange rays of fading sunlight darkened the heat in Baisyl’s cheeks that wasn’t covered in shadow, a frown lingered on his lips and eyebrows, and his lashes didn’t lift.
“You’ve been healing yourself,” Kedean realized aloud.
“Not intentionally.”
He matched his charge’s frown. “With all due respect, milord…if magic exhausts you-”
“Only when I’m trying to control it,” Baisyl cut in. “Sometimes it…it leaks.”
“It…leaks,” Kedean repeated dubiously.
“Sometimes it acts on its own,” Baisyl clarified, sounding like a man cornered into making a confession—embarrassed, though Kedean couldn’t guess what for. “When I’m…when I lose my temper, or feel…threatened, or…” He trailed off. “The fact of the matter is, it doesn’t drain me when I don’t try to channel it or guide it. But I can’t…
control it, either…I can’t change it or redirect it, or…stop it.”
Oh.
Catching a sudden glimpse into Baisyl’s reasoning, Kedean glanced back to the evidence of his charge’s magic, the cut still under his fingers in particular. If Baisyl hated his female body because it made him feel weak and out of control, it stood to reason that he hated his magic for exactly the same reasons. He couldn’t control it. He had something potentially powerful running under his skin, but something powerful only when it worked completely of its own devices.
Without thinking, Kedean drew his finger up, gently, a fraction of an inch. This time when Baisyl shivered, he watched without withdrawing, holding his ground when the skin under his finger warmed to the touch and a soft, barely perceptible white glow encircled it.
“Baisyl…” He spoke softly and kept his hand moving, watching the light flicker and brighten, like a firefly adjusting as twilight gave way to night, “…do you feel threatened?” His charge shook his head, a quick flick of movement without a word of speech, and Kedean ran his hand down, closer to the main damage on Baisyl’s shoulder, the soft glow gathering and following in his path like a ripple in a tide pool. “Angry?”
Baisyl’s brows drew together, but again, he shook his head. “No…”
When the light reached more needing areas, it sank in, like sand falling into a crevice, and Kedean watched, nearly transfixed, as several small scrapes disappeared entirely and larger ones healed as if in rapid fast-forward before his eyes.
“But, milord…you’re glowing…”
Finally, Baisyl’s eyes opened. “I’m…what—? Oh…” For a second, Baisyl’s pulse jumped under his fingers, “…that, ah…don’t mind that, it’s just…” He reached up again, catching Kedean’s wrist this time as if to push him away, but when they touched, the magic danced and Baisyl made another muted sound—whether of pleasure or discontent Kedean couldn’t tell—and shivered, his lashes dripping back to half-mast.
“Baisyl…”
“On second thought,” his charge amended breathlessly, closing his knees tighter together and releasing his grip on Kedean’s wrist in favor of folding it back protectively over his chest, “…this might be slightly more complicated than I originally anticipated.”
Kedean blinked. “I’m sorry, what might be more complicated?”
“The, ah…not falling…in…” Baisyl frowned, and instead of finishing the thought, when he looked up, he asked, “Are you nearly finished?”
Kedean waited, holding Baisyl’s gaze, a dozen questions itching on the tip of his tongue. Eventually, he pursed his lips and glanced back to the all-but-healed scars marking his charge’s shoulder.
“Nearly,” he said. “Your shoulder no longer needs bandaging, but I should wrap up your ankle…” Baisyl opened his mouth, “…and you can put your shirt back on.” He shut it again, his posture relaxing with relief. As Kedean knelt, careful not to cause any extra damage as he caught his charge’s ankle, he allowed himself to ask, “Do you intend to eventually explain in more detail, or should I just live with the facts and draw my own conclusions?”
He kept his eyes down as cloth shuffled above him—Baisyl re-donning his shirt—and at length his charge replied, “What do you want to know?”
Finished with a brief cleaning process, Kedean grabbed a strip of lightweight bandages; Baisyl’s ankle, like rest of his injuries, was already well on its way to healing and didn’t need much. “If you weren’t angry or afraid or desperate…why was your magic acting up? Why now?”
Baisyl took his time responding. By the time he did, Kedean had almost finished at his feet. “It acted up for the same reason our friend the esteemed fairy captain thought we were a mated pair…” Well, that was interesting. Unfortunately, instead of continuing on from there, Baisyl took a detour. “What do you know about magic, Mister Akuwa?”
“That it’s shiny, apparently,” Kedean quipped, finishing up with Baisyl’s ankle and leaning back to spare his charge a glance. At Baisyl’s look, he relented. “I know that most humans can’t use it, and that it draws off of…life energy. Not much,” he said in sum, “…and you may put your boots back on now.”
“Mm…” Baisyl wriggled his toes—cute little things; he had small feet in this body, “…soon.” Catching himself staring, Kedean frowned and looked away, dropping the washrag back in the basin and gathering all the unused borrowed materials back up. “Most mortals can’t use it
because it draws off of life energy,” his charge corrected after another moment, “…but, all living things have a magical signature, and some believe…that each signature has a shadow.”
Kedean glanced back.
“An ‘other half,’” Baisyl elaborated. “An answer, like the other face of the mirror, or the flip side of a coin…and these two halves…” He paused, and then grinned. “Guess.”
“They’re destined for each other,” Kedean filled in, and Baisyl smirked.
“More or less…sometimes the bond is stronger than others. Those who practice magic with significantly more skill can…I suppose you would say ‘see’ it, though I get the feeling it’s more like a sixth sense. They read the flow of magic in any case, and track where various threads lead and tie together. When the bond between shadows is especially strong, the two persons are supposedly ‘predetermined’ to fill some key role in one another’s lives, in some cases even driving them to wander, seeking a sort of ‘fill’ to the emptiness until they find whoever has the other half of their magical imprint…” This time when Baisyl trailed off, it seemed to be for good, and he shrugged. “Silly romantic dribble, if you ask me.”
“It sounds lonely,” Kedean said, quietly, before thinking about it, “…and…unfair.” When Baisyl’s eyebrows notched up as one, honestly surprised, Kedean felt himself blush and was silently grateful it wouldn’t show.
“Lonely?” Baisyl asked.
“What if you never find this person?”
“I suppose…” Baisyl admitted, “I never thought of it as a tragedy…but how is it unfair?”
Kedean frowned, looking away. At last, he shrugged. “If you go through your whole life feeling empty, it stands to reason that you’d
try to fill the void…try to love people, only to find again and again that you can’t. What happens if, eventually, someone falls in love with you? Someone who
isn’t this ‘predestined’ other half? No matter how hard you tried, no matter how much you wanted to…you wouldn’t be able to love them back, not properly. It wouldn’t feel right…”
A pause ensued.
Finally, Baisyl said, “You would be the one to pity the innocent but inauspicious and unwitting third party victim…”
Kedean pursed his lips. “What’s that supposed to mea-”
A finger tapped his lips, and Kedean froze instinctively; Baisyl’s eyes smiled as much as his mouth. “It means, my dear friend…that you are far too kind for your own good,” his charge assessed earnestly, amusement dancing in his expression. “Relax…” He drew his thumb in a half moon along the plain of Kedean’s cheek, and Kedean accordingly found relaxing impossible, “…it’s mostly superstitious nonsense anyway…”
“…mostly?”
“Well…” Baisyl let his hand drop, propping it behind him and tilting his head, “…different magical signatures
do react differently to one another, that’s for certain. My magic, as it happens, seems to be quite smitten with you…or at least, it reacts with ample ‘enthusiasm’ to your close proximity. It was that reaction, surely, that the captain picked up on…I merely find myself hard pressed to believe that that means I’m fated by the stars to roll over on my back and spread my legs for you for as long as we both shall live.”
Alcohol, right now, would be nice. Kedean shut his eyes. “I…can’t say I blame you for that sentiment, milord.”
“Mm,” Baisyl hummed his agreement. Then, “I suppose, no matter how far and out of the way this place is…they must serve
some form of intoxicating drink with their food, don’t you think?” he asked, a complete turnaround from the previous subject, and Kedean looked up, surprised. “What?” his charge retaliated at his look. “I’m sexually frustrated, the storm clouds look to have all but disappeared completely meaning I won’t be finding any relief any time soon, and I had half a bowl of wet…semen-rice for breakfast this morning and nothing since. I’m in desperate need of sustenance, and something to dull my mind and put me to sleep as fast as possible afterwards sounds pretty appealing at the moment…”
Alcohol for his already horny charge was not what he’d had in mind.
“I’m sure we can find some food…along with ale of some sort,” Kedean conceded. “I merely didn’t realize you drank, milord.”
“I don’t…but there’s a first time for everything,” Baisyl answered without hesitance and slung his second leg over the side of the bed, hopping down. When he spared Kedean a glance, he laughed. It was the only sound he made that sounded almost indistinguishable with or without the effect of the curse. “Mele, you look as though I just told you I was a virgin. I have sampled wines before,” he clarified. “I simply never developed a taste for alcohol…and certainly not of the peasant variety. Diluting my mind and making a fool of myself never appealed to me…”
“But it does now?” Kedean asked, standing.
“It…” Baisyl trailed off, looking up, and up, and frowning. “You really are too tall,” he observed.
In spite of himself, Kedean smiled. “You have my most sincere apologies, my lord.”
“Mm…I’m sure,” responded Baisyl. “In this case,” He reverted back to the previous topic, “it’s not so much the making a fool of myself bit as the diluting the mind and forgetting how dead people want me bit that’s appealing…besides, if I start dancing on tabletops and trying to seduce foul-smelling, crooked-toothed thugs, I’ll have you to save me, will I not?”
“I…would hope that it wouldn’t come to that,” Kedean admitted, “…but in the case that you do, yes, you may rest assured that I will do my best to protect your…feminine honour from the advances of the rabble.”
“Splendid.” Baisyl glanced about, located his boots, and set to putting them on. “Now, all that remains to be ensured…” Tug—one boot, “…is that
you don’t impregnate me…” Shift, tug—a second boot, “…and I foresee no grave mishaps on tonight’s agenda.”
Kedean watched his charge as he fastened his buckles and stood, red tresses falling behind him and hands settling on his hips. Rule number one: don’t impregnate the hourglass shaped nobleman with the teasing green eyes and come-hither pout—no matter how much he begged for it after two knock-backs of strong brandy or a half-pint of ale. Sure, that sounded simple enough.
What could possibly go wrong?
A/N: Did the last chapter suck, guys?? Was it confusing? Just boring? Weird? A thousand thanks go to Gslinger my only reviewer last chapter. *hug* And many apologies go out to everyone for making you wait so long for this chapter. Had a REALLY bad experience in China (serious enough that I'm now back in the states with my tuition and plane ticket home fully refunded by the program I was in). Hopefully this means I can get kina back on track now that I'm home but I'm still feeling a little...eh.
But, we'll see. Hopefully this chapter was more fun for you than last chapter. There is more serious M/M action
coming...it'll just take a little bit longer to get here, please have patience. *begs*
