Chapter Fourteen
For days, Ashenivir had been quiet and withdrawn. Rizeth didn’t push. Didn’t pry. Told himself to be patient, give Ashenivir space. But tonight he’d had to cut their scene short when the withdrawal had wormed its way into the sex, and Ashenivir hadn’t whined, hadn’t pouted, hadn’t uttered a word of complaint, only gone dreadfully and terrifyingly silent.
Rizeth perched at the edge of the bath, so hot the air hung heavy with steam, untangling Ashenivir’s hair as he slumped in the water, tracing absent patterns with alternating fingers.
“Your studies are going well, I see,” he said, to fill the awful quiet.
“Mm.”
“Your analysis of Daern’s work is quite exhaustive—though your handwriting could use improvement.”
“You were reading my notes?” Ashenivir glanced up, brows drawn. Annoyance or exhaustion? Rizeth couldn’t tell.
“You will leave them lying around the apartment.”
“Sorry.” His head dropped again, his voice still horribly flat. “I’ll try not to.”
Tangles gone from his hair but not his mind. Rizeth re-braided it, afraid that if he stopped touching him, Ashenivir would fade even further into this fugue that had consumed him. He didn’t dare reach into the mark—for one thing he didn’t need to, it was obvious something was wrong; and for another he dreaded what he might find there.
Ashenivir allowed himself to be dried and dressed, then picked mechanically at his food. Rizeth wished he’d gone out to get them dinner; one of the brightly spiced curries Ashenivir had grown to enjoy during their stay, something with colour and flavour, instead of his own bland offering. Tea with lemon and ginger, the last of the ridiculously shaped chocolates Verin had brought the last time she’d visited, even putting him on his knees and reading to him—nothing.
“Has Master Tethras published the next part of your serial?” Rizeth asked at last, desperate. Ashenivir shrugged.
“I haven’t checked.”
“You might ask Miss Shemov; she doubtless keeps well abreast of such things.”
“Probably.”
Rizeth wanted to grab him, shake him—he’d have gotten on his own knees and begged if he’d thought it would do any good.
In the hopes a change of scenery would bring life—or at least sentences of more than five words—back to him, Rizeth made him leave the apartment and take a walk up onto the city wall. A glittering blanket of spring stars hung above dark water dotted with the silhouettes of dozens of ships, the night clear and cool. Specks of orange lamplight bobbed prettily in the gloom.
Ashenivir stared blankly out over the harbour. No questions, no thoughts on the stars, the sea, the ships, and Rizeth, never one to talk without purpose, found himself wanting to fill the silence. He’d grown so used to Ashenivir’s voice that not having it put the world off-balance.
Whatever this was, it was eating him up inside. He couldn’t order it out of him, but as his Master, it was Rizeth’s responsibility to ensure his safety, in more than just the physical. Regardless of his feelings for Ashenivir, here and now he had to find a way to help him through this—before he got so lost in it he couldn’t find a way back.
Ashenivir hugged his elbows as they made their way back to the Southern Ward. He had no idea how long they’d stood out on the wall. He supposed he was cold—probably he should have put his cloak on. Maybe Rizeth had told him to and he just hadn’t heard.
Side by side in silence they walked, and he ached to take Rizeth’s hand. To find some sort of anchor there against the tumult that had consumed him since he’d gone to the Haven. He’d nearly gone to find River the day after, needing to talk to someone, but ended up wandering the city for hours instead, a black knot of indecision in his stomach. River had told Cain, and it had been fine. River had told Cain, but they’d been together, their dynamic was a part of their relationship, and all he had with Rizeth was the dynamic.
The moment that part of himself was out there, he could never take it back. If Rizeth didn’t like it, he had every right not to want to keep on with him. To be angry that Ashenivir had lied to him, because he wasn’t supposed to lie, and he wasn’t supposed to keep secrets; he was supposed to ask for help and look after his Master’s property, and this was the opposite of that, but how could he say it when Rizeth could never un-know the truth, and his knowing might mean losing everything—
“—shenivir.”
He started, nearly tripping over his own stupid feet. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Rizeth.
“I’m sorry. I was…thinking.”
“You have been thinking,” Rizeth said, “for days.”
Ashenivir counted cobbles, concentrating on getting his heels to click on the centre of each stone. His thoughts flung themselves back and forth across his mind like some unhinged metronome. Ask me. Don’t ask me. Ask me. Don’t ask me. Please, please, make a choice for me!
“You went to the shrine,” Rizeth said, and the metronome snapped in half. “You had no other reason to have been where you were on the High Road, and you were similarly upset in Neverwinter Wood—though not nearly so consumed by whatever it is that troubles you.”
“I can’t—”
“—talk about it, I know. And I cannot help if you will not tell me the cause.”
Ashenivir dug his nails into his palms. Why couldn’t Rizeth just ask him outright, demand an answer plainly? This wasn’t like asking for some new scene, he wasn’t playing at false humiliation, he couldn’t do this. He finally looked up, his tongue a leaden weight in his mouth, knowing he was going to hide inside his fear again—until he saw the concern on his Master’s face. The concern that had been there, he realised, since the day he’d run from the shrine.
Every scene, every meal, every trivial question about serials and studies; all of it had been his Master trying to reach him, whilst he waited for Ashenivir to find the words to explain what was wrong. Rizeth would never force an answer out of him. To speak would be his choice, the same way everything else was.
“Before the Arcanum,” he said, hardly able to hear himself over the thunder of his heartbeat, “I used to live at the Shrine of the Dark Maiden.”
“You were a priest of Eilistraee?”
“No.” Ashenivir took a deep, shaking breath. “I was a priestess.”
He never knew her name, the woman who came to dance that day. He wasn’t even supposed to be in the Chamber of the Moon—acolytes were meant to be in meditations at that time, but he’d slipped away.
Meditations didn’t clear his mind lately. Nothing did. His skin was always too tight, his concentration in pieces, his grace shattered, and in frustration he’d come to beg the Goddess for help. Knelt at Eilistraee's stone feet, he’d been so lost in his whispered pleas that he’d only known he had company when he heard footsteps behind him.
“Follow my steps,” the priestess had said. “Come with me into truth.”
He’d tucked himself into the shadow of the statue and watched the magic dance with them, wrapping around a body that incited an incomprehensible jealousy deep in the pit of his stomach and transform it, shimmer by shimmer, into one like that which he was stuck with.
The two women embraced when the dance was done. She was crying, the one who’d changed. Crying and thanking the priestess over and over and over. He’d stared at her and pressed his hands hard to his chest; a tic he hadn’t meant to start and now couldn’t stop, wishing for everything to be gone, for his form to fall away and leave him in peace.
The priestess had come to him in the shadows and helped him to his feet.
“Acolyte Zauvym, isn’t it?” she’d said. “You ought to get back to meditations.”
“What was that?” He had to know. He didn’t know why, but he had to. “That dance—I’ve never seen it before.”
“The changedance,” she’d said, and that one word had shaped the rest of his life.
It had taken months to navigate the maelstrom in his head. Months of uncertainty, stumbling through dance after dance, skipping meditations, crying himself to sleep almost every night until Keszriin was worried so sick she threatened to bring her Matron down on him. So he’d screwed up every scrap of meagre courage he possessed and gone to find the priestess again.
“The changedance,” he’d asked, “does it…does it work the other way?”
“It does.”
“Is that allowed?”
And she’d smiled, and taken his hands very gently, saying, “Of course it is, beloved. Would you like to dance it with me?”
Sweet terror, acid longing. He’d clutched her hands too tightly and nodded. She’d led him into the Chamber of the Moon, just the two of them in the quiet hall, with the Dark Lady’s stone eyes and carved smile watching over them.
“Will it hurt?” he’d whispered.
“If it’s what you want, it will feel like joy.”
All his grace had come rushing back as she guided him into a dance like none he’d ever known. The steps, though he’d never learned them, flowed fluid and easy through his limbs. The song that spilled from her mouth sank deep into his bones, bringing with it a relief he’d been too afraid to need. Shimmer by shimmer, step by step, until he was gone and then he was there, really and truly there at long last.
When it was over, he’d looked down at himself and something had welled up inside him, a rush of some great, overwhelming euphoria. His entire life opened up anew, and he felt for the first time how wonderful it was to be elven, to be drow, and have so many years ahead of him.
This was Eilistraee’s miracle, and he would never need another.
They were outside the apartment by the time he finished. Ashenivir had no idea if he’d been at all coherent, and Rizeth hadn’t said a word the entire time.
“I’ve been afraid ever since,” he finished. “To go back. I miss it, I miss it so much, and I know it won’t undo it—dancing, I mean—I know it won’t, but I’ve been so scared that it will, and it’s been so long, and I hate that I’m still so stupid about this.”
His voice cracked on the words. He pressed the heel of his hand to his mouth, not sure if he wanted to be sick or to scream. Rizeth’s fingers wrapped around his wrist and slowly tugged it down.
“You are not stupid,” he said.
“I am, it’s a stupid fear to have because it’s not true.”
“Fear very rarely cares for truth.”
Such conviction in his voice—Ashenivir almost believed him. He swallowed through the pinprick tightness of his throat, willing himself not to start crying. Rizeth’s thumb stroked the inside of his wrist just the once, and his will failed entirely.
“Come along, apprentice,” Rizeth said. “A hot drink will do you good.”
It was easier to breathe inside the apartment, but Ashenivir couldn’t relax. He paced the floor, restless, at once overfull and empty of everything. Cold heat surged in waves through his chest, and he knew whatever reverie he managed tonight would be a wreck. He stopped only when Rizeth handed him a steaming mug, and that almost made him want to cry again, because it was too sweet, almost too hot, and Rizeth had never, ever gotten it wrong. Ashenivir leaned against the cold glass of the balcony door, trying to calm the feverish rush of his heart.
“This is what upset you in Neverwinter Wood?” Rizeth asked. Ashenivir nodded. “This is what you could not talk about, even back at the Arcanum?”
Ashenivir nodded again, and he frowned.
“You told me then your Matron had reasons to be disappointed in you—do not tell me this is why?”
The mug fell from his hands and shattered. Ashenivir cursed, the prestidigitation thick and clumsy on his tongue, then cursed again as Rizeth cast the spell perfectly.
“Dance it again.” He shoved away from the glass, his voice too high, uneven and shaking. “Dance it again, that’s what she said. Where’s my daughter, what have you done with her—get back in that shrine and dance it again!”
She’d been so upset, his joy too small to stand against the tidal wave of her grief and anger.
“Only it wasn’t her daughter she wanted, I was never that—I was first priestess of House Zauvym, what did she want another son for?” Ashenivir flung up his hands in a wild shrug. “I was so terrified of what she’d do when she found out, I hid with Keszriin for a year. And even then I thought…I thought maybe it wouldn’t matter, because I was happy, shouldn’t she be happy for me too?”
“What happened?” Rizeth asked quietly.
“You never asked why I came to the Arcanum so much later than anyone else,” Ashenivir said. “You never made me have to lie to you about that.”
“It was never something that mattered.”
Anger he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in decades thrummed beneath his skin—he’d fly apart like a broken doll any moment, shatter himself across the apartment.
“After she found out, Matron Zauvym brought me home and I stayed at the Zauvym estate until Nilaena was old enough to take my place as an acolyte. That was when our mother sent me to the Arcanum.”
Rizeth’s jaw tensed. “She forbade you to leave?”
“Not exactly. She let me see Keszriin, who persuaded her to allow me out. She’d convinced herself I hid with Keszriin because I was in love with her, and if I happened to marry a daughter of House Eilist’tra, well, that would make up for the damage I’d done to House Zauvym, wouldn’t it?” A bitter laugh escaped him, strangled, monstrous. “If she’d known what I was doing, whose beds I was in…she really would have locked me up and thrown away the key.”
They had been half rebellion and half need, his early escapes. Finally able to experience desire on his own terms, sex the one thing entirely beyond his mother’s control, a growing sense of what he wanted and his search for those who could give it to him had sent him too frequently into arms he shouldn’t have been in.
“She was the one who did not accept your lack of interest,” Rizeth said.
“All that matters is the legacy of House Zauvym,” Ashenivir spat. “How will I ever further that if I only lie with men?”
“There are ways—”
“I know there are ways!” He hadn’t meant to shout, and cringed at his own voice. “She doesn’t care! I’m an embarrassment and a failure and she hates me!”
He flung a hand out and frost went crawling up the wall—it fractalled over his map of Waterdeep and the paper cracked, falling in pieces to the floor. What a childish thing to do, throwing magic because he couldn’t get a hold of his feelings. How pathetic to pitch a fit like this—
And then there was Rizeth, taking his hand, lowering his arm, and Ashenivir collapsed against him.
“She hates me.” His voice shook, tears and anger both. “I ruined her perfect plan for her perfect family, and she’s never, ever forgiven me for it.”
Rizeth’s arms wrapped around him, one hand stroking his hair. Ashenivir’s shoulders heaved as great, wracking sobs stole his breath. He clutched at Rizeth’s shirt, certain that without it he’d simply fall to the floor and never get back up, and in the back of his mind all he could hear was the echo of his mother’s voice, strained with anguish that his happiness had come at the cost of her own.
“I still love her,” he choked out. “I worked so hard at the Arcanum to make her proud of me again, and I know she doesn’t care about me, just what I can be for our House, but I still love her.” He shook his head. “I’m such an idiot.”
Rizeth held him tighter. “If anyone is an idiot in this circumstance, it is Matron Zauvym.”
“She thinks I killed her daughter.”
“And the way she is acting is killing her son.” Rizeth drew back. He cupped Ashenivir’s cheek, swiping away tear tracks with his thumb. “I cannot stand seeing you hurt like this.”
He didn’t mind. All of this; all the secrets, the mess, the pain, and he didn’t mind. And of course he didn’t, Ashenivir thought, staring up at him and finally able to take a full breath. Of course he doesn’t mind, he’s my Master.
Rizeth frowned down at him. “If I ever meet your Matron…”
“I don’t think that would end well,” Ashenivir said. “She didn’t like my coming to the surface with you.”
“I do not believe her opinions hold much weight with me.”
Ashenivir managed something in the vicinity of a smile at that. Rizeth returned it, and kissed him very softly—Ashenivir melted against him, fell into the anchor of his mouth and his hands, and wondered what he’d ever been afraid of. He let out a shaky sigh when Rizeth broke away.
“Come with me.” Rizeth took his hand, the command in his voice the gentlest iron Ashenivir had ever needed. “Come with me now, Ra’soltha.”
“Yes, Master,” Ashenivir said, and went gratefully with him into the bedroom.
Candlelight bathed them both in a warm glow. Rizeth caught his hands as he started to undress and, without a word, stripped him down himself, piece by piece, slowly, as though he knew how close Ashenivir had come to flying apart. When he was bidden to lay down, he chose Rizeth’s bed, where the manacles still hung from the scene they’d cut short earlier.
“Will you tie me up, Master? Please?” It had worked so well the last time, carried him far away from all the unwanted memories visiting the Haven had conjured. Rizeth knelt over him, shirtsleeves rolled up, collar loose.
“Not tonight,” he said, and leaned down to press a slow, lingering kiss to Ashenivir’s mouth. “Lie still, Ra’soltha.”
Rizeth kissed along his jaw, down his neck, each press of lips deliberate, controlled—Ashenivir sighed. Even if he wouldn’t be allowed to float out of his head under the rope, his Master’s mouth set him free in its own way. Rizeth continued over his collarbone, out to his shoulder and back, then down his chest, grazing his teeth over each nipple in turn. Ashenivir let out a soft moan, eyes fluttering closed.
“Legs apart,” Rizeth commanded quietly. He slid his hands up Ashenivir’s parted thighs, and trailed kisses over his stomach, a savouring sweep of tongue along the dip of his hipbone. “Good boy, stay like that for me.”
“Thank you, Master—” Ashenivir started, then gasped, eyes flying wide as Rizeth pressed a kiss to his cock. He shifted up onto his elbows, breath quickening. “Master, I…but you…”
Rizeth didn’t like this, didn’t do this—but he was doing it now, taking him in his mouth and dipping his head as Ashenivir had done for him countless times. He dragged his tongue slowly up the shaft as he pulled free, and Ashenivir whimpered.
“Tell me what feels good, xi’hum.” Rizeth brushed feather-light knuckles along the inside of his thigh. “Tell your Master what you like.”
Ashenivir fell back, shoving his hands into his hair for want of something to hold on to.
“Your tongue, Master, the way I do for you—yes, oh Goddess, like that, just like that.”
Those same teasing circles, the soft press of lips, exactly the motions he always used, and of course Rizeth got it right; his Master always paid attention. That gentle mouth continued, hot and wet and perfect, taking him a half-inch at a time, until it was the only thing tethering him to his body. He moaned as Rizeth hollowed his cheeks, ghosting his fingertips along the inner line of his thigh. When he glanced down, Rizeth met his eyes, and something incandescent ignited in his chest, a burst of starlight that set his heart aglow, turned his veins to fire.
“I want you inside me,” he begged, breathless. “Please, Master, I need you.”
A familiar whisper, then slick fingers slid into him, working steadily as Rizeth took him in his mouth once more. His hips twitched up, he couldn’t help it, and the hand on his thigh gripped him tight, that quiet strength he loved so much pinning him in place. He held as still as he could, his cries growing louder and louder with every pulse of Rizeth’s hand.
“Thank you, Master,” he gasped out, over and over, and hoped Rizeth knew it wasn’t just the sex he was thanking him for.
He came with a sharp cry, pulling his own hair so hard it sent a brilliant flash of pain across his scalp. Rizeth kissed him through the end of it, stroking over his shuddering arms, his heaving chest. He could taste himself on his Master’s lips, and when Rizeth sat back, he realised he was crying.
“I…I’m not upset,” he stuttered out. “I’m…it’s…I don’t…” The words tangled up, his thoughts too fogged to make them work.
Rizeth pulled him into his lap and held him close, one hand stroking in smooth, firm passes down his back. “I know. You did well, Ra’soltha.”
Ashenivir burrowed into him, even an inch apart feeling like too much.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I should have told you sooner.”
“You told me when you could,” Rizeth said. “There is nothing to be sorry for.”
His Master always took such good care of him. It didn’t matter what the hurt was, Rizeth always knew how to fix it, how to put him back together. Ashenivir looked up, and the corner of Rizeth’s mouth curved in a familiar, subtle smile. There was no more wonderful sight in all the world than his Master, no more needed touch than his hand. There was no-one else he wanted to be near quite so badly, and there never had been. A sweet terror fluttered in his chest, moths exploding out of his heart; spinning, spiralling, swirling right through him. If he spoke, they’d come spilling out of his mouth.
I love him, Ashenivir realised. I’ve loved him all this time.
“Take reverie,” Rizeth said. Ashenivir blinked. Had his thoughts shown on his face, as they usually did?
“Yes, Master.” His voice was ragged, comedown edged with moth wings he tried to bite back. Rizeth lay him down—his bed, but he lay Ashenivir down there anyway, and folded the blankets around him.
“Thank you for telling me,” he said.
“Thank you for staying,” Ashenivir replied. Rizeth stroked his hair back from his face, smiling softly.
“Where would I go?” he asked, and Ashenivir was too exhausted to answer. Rizeth blew out the candle and stood. “Rest well, Ra’soltha.”
The door clicked shut behind him, and Ashenivir closed his eyes, lashes damp with tears.
I love him, he thought. And then, just before reverie finally claimed his overwrought mind; how in Mystra’s name am I supposed to tell him?