Severin had an audience in
attendance before he managed to get the bag open, this time. Finches, and
chickadees, and even a few woodpeckers, their checkered black and white feathers
fluttering like playing cards as they alighted on the snow in the gathering
crowd around him, looking up with expectant, black bead eyes, waiting for him.
The cardinals were his favorites, the males in their brightest red, and the
females in their muted browns and oranges, their rust tails, both genders
sporting the little feather hats for which they were named.
He set the bag down on the
ground, amidst his circle of supplicants, and unrolled the top. Everyone
started cheeping and chattering when they heard the waxed paper crackle. Sev
reached into it with gloved hands, and scooped black oil sunflower seed out
onto the snow.
The trick, Trina’s mother,
Rachel, had instructed him, was to spread it out, that way all the birds got to
eat at once and they didn’t have to squabble over the same pile together. So he
threw handfuls out in wide arcs, and the birds lifted into the air, the beating
of their small wings filling the quiet, as they rushed to follow its descent,
and feast.
He’d been at this for several
minutes, his breath steaming in the cold, repeatedly tossing the tail of his
scarf back over his shoulder each time it slipped, when he heard the crunch of
approaching footfalls behind him. A quick glance over his shoulder soothed the
sudden rushing of his pulse.
It was only Dante.
The tall, slender vampire was
dressed in a black wool coat, and under it, its collar tucked up around his
chin, a black turtleneck sweater. He’d been paging through magazines and
scrolling through websites, trying to instruct Sev in the finer points of
fashion; Sev now knew that Dante’s current outfit – that was the term, “outfit”
– was very chic, down to the tight black pants, and even, he suspected, the bright
red and black and fur snow boots. There were useful boots, and then there were
fashionable boots, and then there were boots that managed to be both.
“You have quite the fan club,”
Dante said as he drew alongside him, grinning out at the birds, all eating and warbling
happily. He was wearing his hair in its natural state these days, and the
slight breeze played with the dark curls, tugging them out from behind his ears
so he had to tuck it back.
“It’s because I feed them,” Sev
said.
“Ah, you do. But. Unless we’re
talking pigeons, wild birds don’t usually sit in attendance like this,” he
said, pointing to one lone cardinal, a bright male, who still sat on the ground
at Sev’s feet, head cocked, staring attentively. “Cardinals don’t do that.”
“They don’t?”
“No. But I’d say you’ve got a
fair bit of magic on your side. Talking to woodland creatures like a character
from a film.” When Sev glanced over at him, he found him still smiling – though
with an edge of sadness, gaze fixed somewhere out across the snow.
Sev laid down a careful handful
of seeds for the cardinal. “Is that why you’re not afraid of me? My magic?”
Dante’s head whipped toward him,
blue eyes wide. “Beg pardon?”
“You’re afraid of the others. I
can tell.”
Dante attempted a wobbly smile. “Well,
I wouldn’t say afraid, they aren’t…”
“But not Alexei. And not me.”
Dante stared at him, and Sev had
the chance to watch his face change. He was always watching people, as Lanny
had pointed out, and he was, because he didn’t know how else to better learn.
People in the real world were always saying things without words; with little
flicks of their fingers, and with facial twitches, and long sighs. It was a
language he was desperate to understand; one he didn’t feel enough confidence
in to participate yet.
Dante’s smile slowly faded; his
face grew tense, and his eyes stayed wide, unblinking. He sucked in a quick
breath before he spoke, and then it was only a whisper. “I fear I’m only useful
to them as an oddity. A dream-walker with a brain to pick.” He grimaced. “And
my brain’s been picked enough, I think.”
“But you and Alexei…” He’d seen
them; had watched Dante lay his head down on Alexei’s shoulder, and watched
Alexei finger-comb his hair in return; had seen the way they stood close, the
way their hands touched, in the way of the mated pairs here at the compound. “You’re
his boyfriend?”
A quiet smile. “Something like
that.” His head tipped, like one of the birds asking for seed. “Do you
understand?”
“Yes,” Sev said, right away, to
keep from asking questions – Lanny had also said he asked too many of those.
But there was one question he couldn’t hold back, one that came with a strange
fluttering in his stomach. “Does he kiss you?”
Dante’s brows lifted.
“The way he…kissed me?”
Dante’s expression softened, his
smile bringing out the faint lines around his eyes, this time. A look that warmed
him, immediately. “You still think of that, don’t you? That kiss?”
The warmth crawled up his neck,
and into his face, not too different from the banked magic of his fire. Sev
turned away, looking out at the birds, his chest tight, suddenly.
“You don’t have to be
embarrassed,” Dante said. “It meant something to you, obviously. It was your
first, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Sev.” Something smooth and cool
touched his chin. He startled, but didn’t duck away from the touch as it turned
his head, and tipped it back, so he was looking up at Dante’s face again. It was
Dante’s gloved hand cupping his chin, the leather soft as it stroked along his
jaw. Dante’s gaze had grown heavy-lidded; his lips pink and damp like he’d licked
them. “May I?”
Sev didn’t know what he was
asking, not really. He thought that…that maybe…But his pulse jumped and
skittered, and the heat in his face was unbearable, and he couldn’t breathe,
and he nodded. Because whatever Dante wanted permission for, Sev wanted it,
too.
Ghost of a smile. “Sweetheart,
you’re blushing.” Then Dante kissed him.
It was soft. So soft. A gentle
press of lips to lips. Just before Dante pulled back, Sev felt a hot, warm
stroke of what he realized, with an inner jolt, was Dante’s tongue. He stood
rooted, stupefied, as the vampire smiled at him.
“And now you’ve had your second,”
Dante said. He kissed his forehead, a long, lingering moment, his breath warm
when it rustled through Sev’s hair. Then he stepped back, turned, and walked
back toward the guest house.
After a long moment, Sev
remembered to take a breath, a harsh, open-mouthed gasp. He glanced down, and
saw that a small flame had kindled in each palm. He closed his hands to fists, and
snuffed them out before he reached, wonderingly, to touch his lips with shaking
fingertips.
~*~
“What are you doing?”
Dante stood at the dressing
table of their borrowed room, clad in a velvet robe, barefoot straight from the
bath, combing his wet hair in front of the mirror. His reflection sought Alexei’s
and his brows lifted. “Grooming,” he said, with a small smile.
Alexei heeled the door shut and
came the rest of the way into the room. Dante had turned to face him by the
time he reached the dressing table, and lifted the comb in invitation. “I could
teach you sometime. We really must do something about that side-part you’ve
been wearing.
Alexei plucked the comb from his
hand and tossed it onto the bed.
“A bit rude.”
“I wanted to break it in fucking
half,” Alexei said. “I saw you today with Sev. What are you doing?”
“Ah.” Dante winced. “You aren’t…jealous,
are you? It was an overstep, and–”
“Jealous? Are you insane? He’s
eighteen” – he counted things off on his fingers – “he’s a mage, and, given
that he was raised as a lab animal, he’s not exactly well-adjusted. You can’t go
around kissing him.”
“You kissed him.”
“As a distraction! To help us
escape!”
“You might like to keep your
voice down.”
“Don’t tell–”
He didn’t realize he’d jabbed a
finger in Dante’s face until Dante had his hand enfolded in both of his.
Alexei’s anger winked out, just
like that, and was replaced with a hard wash of shame. Dante was still getting his
feet under him; was only just now sliding back into the smug, gently-mocking
persona that Alexei, truthfully, liked best.
“Shit,” Alexei muttered, shaking
loose, and plopped down on the end of the bed.
Dante waited a long moment, and
then joined him. “Would you like to know why I did it?”
Alexei sighed. “You’re restless
cooped up here?”
“Quite the opposite. I like it
here. It’s peaceful.” When Alexei glanced at him, he found Dante’s expression
to be a sincere one. “Sev asked about us. If I was your boyfriend. If you
kissed me.”
“He’s nosy.”
“He’s curious. Full of
questions, and hormones. And completely besotted with you.”
“What?” The words hit him like a
slap. A shockwave he didn’t want to examine closely – at all. He needed to
move, needed to walk away from that kind of assertion.
He tried to get up, but Dante
caught his wrist in a light grip.
“Lex.” Entreating.
He was helpless to that;
subsided back, even if he was breathing a little hard.
Dante laid a hand on the side of
his face, holding his gaze with a steady, serious one of his own. “I know you
see it – you’d be a fool not to, and you certainly aren’t that. Sev stares at
you – he leans toward you like a flower seeking sunlight. He’s eighteen, yes,
and fallen into the kind of hopeless love that cripples eighteen-year-olds the
world over. He doesn’t know that’s what happened; he isn’t writing your names
inside hearts in a notebook.”
“And you expect me to indulge
that? What, as a favor?”
“You don’t have to do anything
you don’t want to,” Dante said, softly. His gaze left Alexei shivering
internally. “But I think we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of his power. Given
what we’re facing, I can think of worse ideas than sealing a mage’s allegiance
with love.”
Alexei stared at him, breathing
harshly.
“Think on it,” Dante said, “that’s
all I’m saying.” He patted Alexei’s cheek and then stood. He picked up the comb,
and went back to the mirror, back to his hair, expression unbothered.
Alexei watched him a long
moment. When he swallowed, his throat ached. “I don’t want to hurt him.”
“Then don’t,” Dante said, as if
it were simple.
And maybe…maybe it was.
No comments:
Post a Comment