Sugar Hearts

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Sugar Hearts

Chapter Four

At first, Marzi thought that he’d drowned. Consciousness washed over him in slow waves, cresting and receding, tugging at the heavy, unresponsive thing his mind had become. Alternately, it threw him toward brief moments of awakening, and then pulled him back, like the tide playing with a beached corpse. Sometimes, he heard snippets of conversation. Smelled something sweet, like the extracts Pepper used in her candies. And sometimes hands clutched at him, and he was choking, air and liquid gurgling in his throat as he struggled to breathe. But always, before he could summon the strength to speak, or even open his eyes, the waves dragged him back into oblivion.

Until, finally, he heard something that wasn’t a voice. Music. But not the strange songs of fallen angels that he’d listened to when sitting with Kale. This was more familiar than that. It was Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Snowflakes”.

With a surge of effort, Marzi forced his eyes open. He was lying in an unfamiliar bed, with splashes of different colored light falling down onto him from some indeterminate source. When he twisted his head to the side, he could see a chair next to the bed, with his velvet coat draped over its back, and his pants neatly folded on its seat. So -- he hadn’t died after all. Or, if he had, and this was heaven, he’d seriously underestimated his chances of getting in.

Then Kale appeared in his line of vision, and Marzi abandoned all thoughts of heaven.

“Ah, Marzipan Penicandey. You’re back with us.”

Marzi tried to answer, but his mouth was dry, and his words cracked and crumbled to dust before he could speak them.

Fortunately, Kale seemed to understand. Lifting a carafe from a nearby table, he poured some of its golden liquid into a glass, and as he did so, Marzi recognized the sweet, slightly fruity scent that had occasionally penetrated his delirium. Then Kale sat on the edge of the bed, and offered the glass to Marzi. “Drink this. It will save us the trouble of trying to get it down your throat without drowning you.”

Despite his body’s protests, Marzi pulled himself up a little, resting his back against the bed’s headboard. And that was when he realized where the patches of colored light were coming from. Both the headboard and footboard were made from metal arches, and a rainbow’s assortment of glass had been set in them, so that they resembled cathedral windows. As Marzi’s mind struggled to process this strange contradiction, Kale smiled.

“My own small blasphemy. A petty thing, really, but it amuses me.”

And I have come here, Marzi thought, to worship in the church of a demon’s bed.

“Drink,” Kale repeated, pressing the glass into Marzi’s hand. “Or do did you lose your trust in me after the last time I offered you a beverage?”

“It’s not a matter of trust.” Marzi gulped down the golden liquid, which was thick and sweet, like melted lollipops. “It’s a matter of surrender.”

Kale moved to take the glass, but this time his hand lingered, stroking the tips of Marzi’s fingers. And even that slight contact made Marzi shudder with desire.

“You know a great deal about surrender, Marzipan Penicandey. I was beginning to think I would never find a man who could prove himself my equal.”

Marzi raised his eyebrow. “Is that what you want? An equal?”

“Do you find that so hard to believe?” Kale tilted his head, and a patch of red light caught his hair, turning it the color of blood and burning battlefields. “Look at me. Do you think I want some brat, forever whining and testing my patience? Do you think I want a weak man, who only belongs to me because he has no choice?”

“No.”

“I want a man who is my match. But who, for whatever reason, desires the other side of the mirror.”

“And I want power,” Marzi whispered. “I want something to make me special.”

“What power I have, I give to you. All that I command is at your disposal.”

Marzi’s eyes flicked downward, afraid to look at Kale, as another man might be afraid to stare into the blazing sun. What do you say to the devil when he makes you an offer you can’t refuse? “I have nothing to give you in return.”

“You’ve already given me what I wanted.”

“Which is?”

“You said it yourself. Surrender.”

Kale took the empty glass from Marzi’s hand and hurled it at the wall, where it shattered in a blizzard of bright shards. Then, he gripped Marzi’s wrists, pressing them down against the mattress as he loomed over the young man. “And Marzipan Penicandey? You already are special. Never forget that.”

Staring up at Kale, Marzi felt his pulse begin to race. He might not have demon blood, but there was something flammable in his veins, something which responded to Kale like gasoline responds to a lit match. Softly, he moaned. And Kale answered his call by leaning closer, and kissing him.

Bliss. Fiery, feverish, bliss. Marzi arched beneath Kale, rising to meet the kiss with all of his body. By now, Kale’s grip on his wrists had grown painful in its intensity, but Marzi would no more have struggled against it than he would have tried to stop breathing. Instead, he opened his mouth, allowing Kale’s tongue to flicker and slither around his own. When the kiss finally ended, Marzi could feel his heart pounding like a fist inside his ribcage. “Take me...” he begged.

But Kale shook his head. “When you’re ready.”

“I’m ready now.”

“Not yet.” Gently, Kale hooked a strand of Marzi’s hair, and rubbed it between his fingers, as if trying to find some true color beneath all the dye jobs. “When the time comes, you’ll know.”

Marzi opened his mouth to protest, but snapped it shut before any words escaped. Surrender. Right. Except that, compared to accepting Kale not fucking him, it had been easy to accept the possibility of death.

Smiling, Kale rose to his feet. “In any case, you should rest now.”

“How long have I been unconscious?”

“Two days.”

Two days! Marzi snapped into a sitting position. But the sudden motion stirred fresh waves of dizziness, and he slumped forward, just barely managing to catch his face in his hands. “Pepper,” he groaned. “She’ll be worried. I need to talk to her.”

“You’re not in the condition to talk to anyone.” Effortlessly, Kale pushed him back down onto the bed. “We nearly lost you, you know. Your biochemistry is a rather unpredictable thing – too many lingering traces of your sister’s magic.”

Marzi managed a weak smile. “Well, you know what they say. If you can’t be the enchanter, it’s nice to at least be enchanted.”

“That may be true. But you deserve better enchantments than these.” Kale crossed over to where Marzi’s coat hung off the back of the chair, and he reached into its pocket. Pulling out the box of candies, he removed the lid, and eyed the remaining contents with obvious disdain. “Petty narcotics for the rich. Your sister may have true power, but she’s squandering it.”

“She’s just—“ Marzi attempted to protest.

But Kale ignored him. Without looking at Marzi, he turned the box upside down, allowing the sugar sticks, hallucinogenic rum ball, and remaining powder to fall to the floor. Then he crushed each piece beneath his boot. “No more of this, Marzipan Penicandey. Not for you. You want to be enchanted? Then I’ll show you what true enchantment feels like.”

“Alright,” Marzi whispered. An instant later, Kale pinned Marzi’s wrists over his head, before kissing him again. And, as Marzi’s blood ignited, burning bright and wild, he knew. Knew what true enchantment feels like.