Second Sight

Title: Second Sight
Author: MakaiKitty
Rating: NC-17 (overall)
Category: Original Fantasy, "Strings of Fate" storyline, Direct sequel to "Perceived Perceptions", An Eye of the Beholder Book
Pairing: Liam/Jasim, Tamall/Danne, Others
Warnings: Slash, M/M, Anal, Oral, Daemon Sex, Blood-play, BDSM, Violence, Mentions of past child abuse/rape, Angst, Language, Death
Distribution: My website, My LJ and any LJs I choose to post at, AFF.net, and FicWad. All of my accounts are under the user name MakaiKitty. If you'd like to use it just let me know.
Disclaimer: The characters, daemon realms, and situations in this story are all original and belong solely to MakaiKitty. Please don't steal, borrow, take, or otherwise use anything from my fics.
Updates: Just join my YahooGroup to be informed of any updates to this or any of my other fics - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/makaikittyfics
Status: Work In Progress/Novel Length

Author's Notes: Thought I was dead, didn't you? As we all know, RL gets in the way sometimes, but I'm back and updating again. As I've said before, this is just a rough cut, but here's the newest chapter. Just finished tonight. Let me know what you all think?

Second Sight
Book II in the Eye of the Beholder Series

Chapter Nine: Regret and Consequence

Liam could cry, if only his warrior’s pride didn’t prevent it. He couldn’t remember the last time that his head had hurt so badly, or his stomach been such an unimaginable mess, but in truth it was his honor that felt the most battered. He remembered everything that had happened the night before, no matter the state of his mind or his sobriety at the time, and he wasn’t sure that he could easily forgive himself for what he had done.

Oh, the boy had seemed willing enough, certainly, but there had been something in the desperate, wild blue eyes as they’d moved together against the bedding that told Liam just how wrong he had been to lay with the half-breed. He doubted that Jasim would admit to it, of course, or put more weight upon what they had done than a commonplace ploy to annoy his father, but deep down he knew that he had done wrong by his young charge in submitting to the boy’s advances and his body’s needs the night before. And now he was to spend the next three weeks never more than a foot away from him at any given time. He had no idea how he was going to manage.

A knock at his door was answered with a groan, and Liam suffered a fleeting urge to pull the blankets up over his head and hide from whoever it was that was trying to get his attention. Then the door was opened without a word, one way or the other, and the choice was taken from him.

“Breakfast, m’lord.”

Another groan was the best that he could manage.

“I’ll leave it here on the table, sir.” Although the words were delivered with a tone of utmost respect, and the door was closed quietly after the servant had left the food, as she’d said that she would, Liam had the distinct impression that he was being laughed at silently as she made her way down the hallway. One look at the mirror in the corner of the room once he had found the will to sit up told him that had the serving woman looked in on him she might well have been unable to keep the laughter silent.

His dark purple hair, kept long in front and trimmed short in back, was sticking out at odd angles and the side of his face was tinted a bright pink from being pressed so long and so hard into his pillow. He was thankful for the distorted view that he was receiving from eyes still unfocussed, but he feared that it was the last blessing he would receive for a while to come. Any morning begun in such a state did not bode well for the day ahead.

***
Once dressed, his skin clean and his hair once again presentable, belly full with a traditional Paaragorian breakfast of grilled tandor fish and candied sea kelp, Liam made his way cautiously towards the high lord’s audience chamber. He knew that the not-king would be waiting there for him. The problem was, his son was most likely to be there as well.

Liam resisted the urge to hang his head, hiding his eyes behind the longer strands of hair that hung in front of his face, and he forced himself to tilt his chin up and hold his shoulders back as he entered the huge chamber for the first time that day. As expected the high lord was seated in his ornate throne, the center of attention, a guard and a few choice advisors surrounding him, talking quietly, presumably about matters of state or something of the sort. Also as expected, Jasim stood nearby his father, leaning against a wall behind the throne, looking bored but exceedingly more composed than Liam remembered seeing him last. The boy’s bright blue hair was feathery and unkempt, lending a wild air to his whole being, his slender frame encased in tight, dark fabrics, completely in contrast to the flowing, airy clothing that his fellow Paaragorians wore. He was every bit as stunning as Liam remembered, his mind not having been muddled enough to allow him to miss the young daemon’s beauty the night before, but it was still an unwelcomed sight when vibrant blue eyes caught upon his entrance and lit up with dark joy.

Jasim had been examining his short, tapered nails, not particularly listening to any of the rubbish that his father’s men were going on about, bored out of his mind until the moment that the doors opened to admit his most recent lover. Their eyes met briefly before Liam hastily looked away, and Jasim couldn’t help but call out to him, alerting everyone in the room to his presence.

“Morning, Lover.”

If the greeting was meant to shock or unnerve anyone aside from Liam then it failed in its task. Jasim’s father, Lord Tournkin, didn’t even look up from the scroll that he was perusing, and the men around him either ignored the comment completely or gave minute and disapproving shakes of their heads before going back to the conversation that had hardly been interrupted. It may have been his imagination, but Liam thought that the guard standing behind the high lord might have given him a brief but pitying look, although he was too busy trying not to flinch at the other man’s voice to give anyone else much notice.

“Good morning,” Liam forced himself to keep his voice level, hastily adding, when he saw Lord Tournkin’s raised brow, “everyone.”

He was not blushing, Liam assured himself, resolutely refusing to look at Jasim anymore. Warriors who were battle tested, who took charge of the entire royal guard, who survived the reign of King Samuel the Fierce, did not blush at the mere memory of a meaningless sexual encounter. He only hoped that it was true. But when, after a long and silent moment, he risked a glance at Jasim and found the boy smirking suggestively at him, he feared that it was not.

“Good morning,” Sammir called out, gliding into the room with a too-bright smile on his pale green face, breaking the tension that had threatened to further unnerve Liam. “Lovely day for a journey, don’t you agree? The Gods must be smiling on you all.”

“Yes,” Lord Tournkin asked no one in particular, although it still seemed somehow directed towards his son, “when are you leaving?”

“Before midday,” Liam answered, when it seemed that Jasim would not or could not give his father an immediate answer. “I’d like to make camp in the forest by nightfall.”

Lord Tournkin nodded once, curtly, and said, “I’ll send a troupe of six men with you. They should provide adequate protection until you reach the pass in the Nontok Mountains.”

Liam felt an involuntary rush of anger at that suggestion, quick to point out that he was more than capable of protecting himself and one other daemon on a ride that should take less than a month through well trod paths.

“Let it never be said,” Tournkin answered, his voice making it obvious that he would broker no arguments, and that he did not send the men so much for their protection as to satisfy some misplaced sense of propriety, “by your king that I do not look after my allies.”

Liam was not happy about the envoy, certain that they would only complicate the journey, but he bowed to the high lord none the less as he made to leave the audience chamber. He knew, from long years at the old king’s side in his own kingdom, that men like Lord Tournkin were not dissuaded once they had something in their minds. The men would go with him, no matter if he gave his consent.

As he made good his retreat, lest he say something that he should not, Liam thought of what Sammir had said. If Sammir honestly thought that the Gods were smiling on the journey then Liam was sure, at least in his case, it must be with truly malicious smiles indeed.

***
“At least you know how to ride,” Liam said to Jasim as he checked the saddle on the boy’s mount, a sturdy animal that, although much smaller than his own steed, he deemed to be adequate for the journey ahead.

“Oh, he can ride alright,” it was spoken quietly, but everyone in the small stable had heard, as they were surely intended to. Jasim’s bark of laughter was certainly the loudest, although Liam thought that it surely could not be the merriest. He, of course, remained silent. For more reasons than one.

The animals had been sent ahead first, and now Liam, Jasim, Sammir, the captain of the high lord’s personal guard and six of his men stood a short distance from the shore at a small stable, Paaragora a bright glimmer on the distant horizon. Sammir was there to see them off, Lord Tournkin presumably having better things to do than see his son for possibly the last time in what could be years, and it did not help Liam’s opinion of the man. His list of reasons for wanting to leave the small island were growing by the day, and he was more than ready to be gone from the place forever. Even if it did mean some very long days on the road with Jasim.

“A moment, Captain,” the man who led the high lord’s personal guard, a daemon in shades of deep blues, skin so dark that the light reflecting off of the sea made him glow in rainbow arcs of color if looked at with a certain inclination of ones head, inclined his head towards a clearing a short distance away, “if you would?”

Liam patted the animal on the flank, tugging at a leather strap one last time, and followed after the other captain silently. He’d not had much interaction with his Paaragorian counterpart, but from one captain to the other he knew that he owed the man the respect of hearing him out, whatever it was that he might have to say. Although, if he turned out to be half as pompous or arrogant as the other members of the royal court that he had met, then he worried that he might have to apologize to Cristopher for breaking his word about being nice to the locals. Then again, soldier to soldier, the other man might understand a good punch to the face if he got out of line.

“I think it only fair to warn you,” the other man started without preamble as soon as they were out of earshot from the rest of their group, “about the boy.”

“Warn me about the boy?” Liam wanted to tell the man that he was about a day too late, but he held his tongue. “I’ll assume that you’re talking about my young charge?”

“Jasim,” the captain nodded his head. “He can be a real handful if you let him get out of line.”

“So I’ve seen,” Liam muttered under his breath, not daring to hope that the other soldier didn’t already know that he’d had the boy in hand, so to speak, already. Then, raising his voice to be heard by the other man, he added, “he’s just a boy, and we’ll only be on the road for a few weeks at the most, so I doubt that I have much to worry about.”

“He’s not just a boy, and you know it,” there was a smirk on the other man’s face that Liam instantly wanted to wipe off of his face with a well placed fist, but he held his hand with the greatest of efforts, “and a few weeks on the road is more than enough time for that child to drive any sane man mad.”

That was assuming that he was sane to begin with, Liam thought, mind wandering back to the night before. Only a man who’d taken leave of his sanity would have allowed the mess that his stay in Paaragora had become.

“There’s hardly a man in his father’s guard that Jasim hasn’t seduced at one time or another,” the captain assured him, conveniently failing to share rather or not he was one of those who’d fallen to Jasim’s charms in the past, “He’s a slut, plain and simple. No way around it. But he usually only does it to upset his father, to get attention, so you might be safe now that you’re free of the island. And, if not, then a good beating might just put the boy in his place.”

That caught Liam’s attention, where his mind had been wandering, unwillingly for the most part, back to the night before, and a single plum colored eyebrow shot up at the suggestion. Looking over at the much smaller daemon, predictably flirting with the guards who were helping him onto his mount, it seemed a bit extreme for a trained warrior to raise his hand to a city-breed member of the nobility. It would be far too easy to break him, given the way that a soldier knew how to batter a body’s defenses, and the thought that his counterpart thought such behavior acceptable made him place the man in a category alongside the high lord and his cabinet. It was not a good place to be, should Liam ever return to the small, glittering island, and he was suddenly keen on leaving the sea behind him once again.

“I will handle matters, if need be, in my own way,” Liam said simply, turning back to the animals and preparing to take to his own saddle. “Thank you for the suggestion, but we’ll be fine.”

The other captain looked skeptical, but said nothing.

“It is best not to talk of such unimportant matters anyway,” Liam told him, intending to end the conversation there and then, before anything was said that should not be, “We’re wasting daylight.”

“Unimportant matters,” the edge of the other man’s lips turned up as he spoke, obviously amused at what he saw a problem that Liam was ill-equipped to handle, “Then perhaps you wish to talk of other things? Would mercenaries on the road to Trovilla be more to your liking then?”

That caught Liam’s attention once again. His man back in Trovilla had told him of mercenaries hired by the insurgents of the south, and Balint had confirmed the rumors when they’d spoken via the mirrors, his second in command giving him the information along with his report of Trovilla, and now the captain spoke of it as well? He wondered if he should perhaps listen to the warnings, but that thought had no sooner passed through his consciousness as he dismissed it. If the rumors were true, and he had no reason to believe that they weren’t, then it was only Danne and Tamall that he had to worry about. Tamall he was not keen on facing, madness making an already deadly daemon an unpredictable killing machine. Besides, they had no real beef between them. He had been less than courteous to their young prince, but it was little more than bad manners, and he had nothing personal against the other man. Danne, on the other hand, still had much coming to him. They had a score or two to settle, things that had been left unsaid and undone when the golden haired mercenary had escaped their dungeon the previous spring, and he did not want to chance anyone getting in his way should their paths meet again.

“What have you heard?” Liam wondered.

“Only that the insurgents who cause trouble to the south have pooled their funds and bought an assassin.”

“Or two?”

The captain nodded, agreeing.

“There is word that the men they have hired are familiar to you and yours.”

It was Liam’s turn to nod.

“Will the six men be alright,” the other man asked, stepping back as Liam swung his leg up and around, taking to the saddle of his mount with practiced ease.

“Only if they’re smart enough to stay out of my way.”

TBC ...