to deserve your eyes

Something like serendipity is weaving Lolth’s web lately. The first strand: a careless warrior lumbering in from Melee Magthere last tenday and letting him overhear the password for the wards on Master Do’Urden’s door. The second strand: coming into possession of the knowledge that the mercenary Jarlaxle is visiting Sorcere tonight. And the third: Pharaun this morning, asking him to steal some mysterious powder of Nalfein’s.

“You’ll know it when you see it,” breathed into his ear when he asks for specifics, a hand shading too tight around his throat. “I only want a look at it.”

He chose to go. He could’ve said no, and though Pharaun can choke him, he can’t kill him; not with Vizaeth’s name carved over his heart. So Vizaeth kissed him back and made his lip bleed, waited until he was sure Nalfein would be gone from his quarters to greet his Bregan D’aerthe bedmate, then took his newly acquired password and slipped inside.

Nalfein’s rooms hold neither the heady scent of dragonsblood nor the sense of watchful presence that Pharaun’s do. Their softness remains as unsettling as ever; such gentleness is only the camouflage of a carnivorous plant Vizaeth has yet to provoke to feasting. He hurries to the apothecary closet and takes a quick inventory of the shelves. Nothing stands out as unusual, just ordinary components. Some a little pricey, but none he—or Pharaun—couldn’t find in Sorcere’s regular stores. Whatever this powder is, it must be something rare for Pharaun to want it without asking.

No, that’s not true. Vizaeth trails his fingers over the scratches and stains on Nalfein’s workbench. It could be perfectly ordinary and Pharaun would want it without asking. Asking gives the person you ask far too much power—they know what you want, and have the ability to deny you it. You make yourself a willing victim when you ask.

Rare, ordinary—whatever it is, it isn’t here, which means it’s hidden somewhere else. Vizaeth returns to the main room, idly rubbing at his armlet. Where would Nalfein keep something precious? Not somewhere obvious the way Pharaun would, daring someone to find it, in a place so brazen no-one would ever think to look there, and if they did, they’d meet enchanted traps and poisoned needles. Nalfein, on the other hand, is a subtle creature. Plays things close. He’d keep anything valuable near to his heart, so to reach it you’d have to get uncomfortably intimate.

Vizaeth heads for the bedroom.

The wall-lamps are dark, but he doesn’t try to light them. For all he knows, they’re alarmed to tattle on unwarranted use, and though his arcane senses can’t feel any such magic, he also missed the wards on Nalfein’s door the first time he visited. Caution serves better here than sight. Besides, the darkness is comfortable.

He creeps on silent feet, trying to get a sense of where secrets might hide. His skin prickles, breath hot in the back of his throat. He likes being in rooms like this; unseen, uninvited, deep in the vulnerable core of another person’s space. Taking a part of them they never even knew they had to give.

The bed is an extravagant comfort, but not, he decides, where he ought to look. Nalfein wouldn’t take reverie with a pile of treasures crammed into or under his mattress, and the couch is discarded for similar reasons. Closet and nightstand aren’t intimate enough, but the vanity…now that holds promise. Bruises and scars aren’t the only things cosmetics can conceal.

Scattered pots of makeup and vials of perfume intermingle before the mirror in various states of use. Vizaeth runs two fingers through a pat of silvery powder, glimmering like the rancid moonlight in the World Above. It’s pretty, but surely not what Pharaun wants.

The rest of his rummaging delivers nothing but a faceful of too-sweet perfume that makes him grimace. Whatever he’s in search of, it isn’t here, and he’s running out of places to look.

A foot scuffs on stone. Vizaeth whirls, seeking the source of the sound. No lights on in the main room, no-one visible in here with him—wait, there; a faint silvery glow, so subtle he didn’t notice it before, marking the outline of a second door standing slightly ajar on the far side of the bedroom. Vizaeth approaches cautiously, wondering if he’s about to be accosted by Nalfein’s familiar. It wouldn’t surprise him if the fox had her own bedchamber next to her Master’s.

It’s not a fox’s den. It’s a small atrium, the glow coming from somewhere in the ceiling, and in that glow, Nalfein dances.

He’s naked, with his hair spilling down his back and his arms moving with liquid grace as he twists through a flowing sequence of calligraphic forms. Vizaeth’s hands knot at his sides. Nalfein Do’Urden is slight of limb and pretty of feature, and there is no theft in the curve of his thighs, nothing stolen about the delicate structure of his wrists or his ribs, and they’re not so different in size, Vizaeth thinks, as the scar bisecting his chest throbs hungrily. Not so different at all.

Nalfein comes to a halt, one hand raised to the light, head back, all his weight on one hip. Sweat glistens on the backs of his knees and the hollow at the base of his raised arm and the sound that comes out of Vizaeth’s mouth isn’t one he intends to make, nor one he thought he actually made until Nalfein whips around, staring straight at him.

He can’t move. He’s about to be disintegrated or expelled, and all he can do is stand there thinking it’s not fair, he didn’t even kill anyone for that body with a sick, violent heat boiling under his skin.

But all Nalfein says is, “There’s a dressing gown on the vanity chair.”

Wordless and somehow alive, Vizaeth mostly manages not to trip over his own feet as he collects the blackwork robe, holding it out as if it—or Nalfein—might bite him. Nalfein fastens it tight around himself. “Did you need something, apprentice Thaezyr?”

“I…” His mouth is bone dry. He stares at the floor, wishing he could fall into the fractal patterns of its webbed mosaic. Serendipity’s weaving has snared him, as Lolth’s fickle fortunes are wont to do. He should’ve picked another night to look for Pharaun’s dust.

“Vizaeth.” He looks up at Nalfein’s voice. “The truth, please.”

Always the damn truth with Master Do’Urden; always with trust and explanations—sometimes it’s hard to believe he’s really a drow. At Vizaeth’s continued failure to respond, Nalfein sighs, ushering him out of the atrium.

“I believe I asked you to knock before visiting,” he says, dropping smoothly into the vanity chair. “How did you get past the wards?”

Vizaeth stays silent.

“Let me rephrase: how did you get the password to bypass my wards?”

“I saw a warrior use it,” Vizaeth mutters. No disappointed sigh this time, just a glance at the vanity. Vizaeth rubs his silver-stained fingers on the skirts of his robe.

“Do you do this often?” Nalfein asks. “Sneak into your teacher’s rooms and rifle through their things?”

“I’ve only done it twice.”

It’s not like other apprentices don’t get into places they shouldn’t, and it’s not his fault Nalfein hid in a secret room to dance naked where anyone could spy on him.

The door to the main chamber clicks open, suspiciously loud, followed by the thump of heels and too-cheerful humming. Nalfein eyes Vizaeth, searching for something. He apparently finds it, for a faint amusement takes shape on his face. “I didn’t know you took such an interest in my love life.”

“I don’t,” Vizaeth snaps, viciously annoyed that the memory of Nalfein and Jarlaxle entangled together chooses this moment to surface. His scars ache as if Pharaun’s carving him apart.

“Right,” Nalfein says, with a distinct lack of belief. “Would you like to meet him, or just dig through my closet for his shirts?”

Being teased is a thousand times worse than being disintegrated. Vizaeth’s face heats, but when else will he get a chance like this, to see the notorious head of Bregan D’aerthe up close? He nods. Nalfein, seemingly pleased at that, gestures for him to stay put, and heads out to greet his visitor.

---

Vizaeth is a poor Menzoberranyr; he has no patience. A few murmured exchanges so low even his keen ears can’t make out more than the suggestion of words are enough to make him tire of waiting, and he moves into the doorway so he can see the main room, and be seen in return. He expects to catch Nalfein in some sort of clinch with Jarlaxle, distracted by pawing mercenary hands—he’s not expecting there to be three people there, and for one of them to be a fucking halfbreed.

The creature looms over Nalfein and Jarlaxle both, a stretched-out thing, skin muddied the tell-tale brown of some surface faerie, hair in twin dirt-coloured braids beneath a black hat. Another quick, quiet exchange passes between the three of them, the halfbreed laughing, and then Nalfein says, loud and very clearly; “One of my students came to visit just before you arrived.”

Six eyes on him—five if he’s foolish enough to believe Jarlaxle’s eyepatch anything more than affectation—are two too few to be comfortable.

“Small bird, isn’t he?” the halfbreed says, throwing a half-grin at Nalfein as he drapes himself over Jarlaxle’s shoulders. “He’s smaller’n you, little fox.”

Nalfein ignores the disparaging pet name. “This is apprentice Thaezyr,” he says, by way of introduction.

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Jarlaxle says, shrugging the halfbreed off and sweeping his hat in an exaggerated bow. His lack of hair is unsettling; more so is the fact that it detracts not at all from the fine structure of his face. He wears his self-inflicted brand of independence the way Pharaun wears fine jewels, and the memory of how he looks unclothed and entangled with Nalfein squirms beneath the surface of Vizaeth’s thoughts, two unfairly formed bodies trapped inside his head.

“Ion Cithreth,” says the halfbreed, disrupting the simmering brew of envy. “Not that you care.” He bares his teeth wolfishly at Vizaeth’s glare. “What’s the matter, little bird? Never seen a half-faerie drow before?”

“Not one walking around like his blood isn’t tainted.”

“Pray tell, which half’s doing the tainting? Up top, they think it’s yours.”

“Ion,” Nalfein warns, the way he does when someone’s pushing too far in his alchemy class. “I don’t need a fight in here, stop picking one.”

“Fine.”

Ion plonks himself into a reading chair, obscenely long legs crossed at the ankle. It’s like watching a pig take a seat at the dinner table. Vizaeth turns to Nalfein.

“He shouldn’t be allowed to speak to—”

Nalfein raises a hand. “He’s going to, no matter what we say. And don’t bother with magic, he’s lousy with the Art.”

“This is Mizzrym’s little toy, right?” Ion says. Vizaeth’s nails dig into his palms.

“You’re not that lousy with the Art, Ion.” Nalfein fixes Vizaeth with a firm look. “Any questions, or can I spend time with my lovers in peace?”

Lovers. Plural. He can’t be including the halfbreed, surely? Vizaeth’s stomach turns. What an excellent scrap of gossip he’s found himself in possession of—not that anyone would believe it. And Pharaun isn’t going to accept it in place of the precious dust he wanted, and Vizaeth is damned if he’s leaving without what he came for.

“Phar—” he catches himself. “Master Mizzrym—”

“Call him Pharaun, I know this is a personal favour,” Nalfein says, sounding tired. “Which tome does he want this time?”

“Not a tome, dust. He wanted to look at it.”

The halfbreed lets out a bark of laughter. “Son of a bitch. What colour?”

“He was asking for something of Master Do’Urden’s,” Vizaeth says snippily.

Nalfein rubs his forehead. “No, he wasn’t. What colour?”

“He…he didn’t say.”

I’m going to strangle him. Keeping secrets again, trying to play Vizaeth for a fool; he should know better by now.

Ion leaps to his feet. “Then let’s go ask him! It’s been ages since I last saw Pharaun. I expect a very sour face.” He skips over to Nalfein’s desk, where he begins rummaging amongst its contents. “Oh, explain to the little bird,” he adds, glancing between Nalfein and Vizaeth, who scowls, annoyed that his confusion showed on his face enough for a halfbreed to read. Jarlaxle, meanwhile, looks only faintly amused by the whole exchange—is he Ion’s lover, too? Or only here for Nalfein? What kind of surface-cursed magic has the faerie-spawn ensnared two pureblooded drow with?

“Ion, in his infinite madness,” Nalfein says, “has concocted an alchemical powder that simulates the eyebite spell when burned. It comes in three colours, depending on the effect. Pharaun has been waiting for a chance to inspect it, and I imagine sent you because he somehow found out Ion would be visiting.”

Eyebite. A necromancy spell of no small power, and one Vizaeth has studied but not yet managed to learn. At least the halfbreed has the sense to choose a decent school of magic—and the chance to reprimand Pharaun with an audience is not an unattractive prospect.

“He’ll behave himself, he just loves showing off,” Nalfein tells Vizaeth in a low voice, while Ion outfits himself with a satchel and a spider-shaped censer. “Just try not to aggravate him. He’s not above personal demonstrations.”

Ion straightens, an overtall homunculus of a figure, the censer spilling a sprinkling of deep purple powder over the floor as it clinks against the buckle of his satchel. The eyebite powder? As Vizaeth follows him out of the door, he wonders which of the spell’s effects it reproduces, and if it’s the one Pharaun wanted him to steal.

The best way to find out, of course, is to throw it in his face.

---

“Why are you wearing a bloodletter armlet?”

It’s the first thing the halfbreed’s said to him since they left Nalfein’s quarters. He resists the urge to cover Pharaun’s gift with a hand, to hide it. They’re alone in the corridor, only ancient stone and low-burning sconces for company, and Ion’s too-sharp attention makes his skin crawl.

“I only ask,” Ion continues, “because Sorcere doesn’t teach blood magic. I’ve seen hundreds like it, but never in Menzoberranzan, and never so freshly used. Unless…you have been cleaning it, haven’t you?”

“Why do you care?”

“Because if you’re not cleaning the reservoir, you’re leaving latent magic to dry onto the armlet. It’ll corrode the metal. Also, there’s a very slight chance that if you let enough magic build up, the next spell you cast will go wild. You know, conjure a fog cloud when you mean to turn to mist?” His voice shades to sly condescension, as if Vizaeth couldn’t possibly know what wild magic is. “What have you been using it for?”

“Magic,” Vizaeth growls. “Now fuck off.”

“You’ve been using blood magic without realising it!” Ion drops to an exaggerated whisper, holding a finger to his lips. “It’s fine, I won’t tell. But it is illegal here, so I’d be careful how blatantly you do it.”

The halfbreed is baiting him. Picking and poking at every flaw he can find, and the worst part is he’s right. Vizaeth had no idea blood had its own school. He’d thought…he’d assumed he was broken. That his abilities were just a leftover from the ritual. His fingers itch towards the armlet, necromantic whispers clustering in the Weave—he guessed about the blood magic, what else will he guess? He will tell, he’s a faerie, they’re all treacherous liars, you need to keep him silent, you need to make him silent.

Vizaeth drops his hand. Nalfein’s warning of a personal demonstration sings louder than the impulses of his fear; he’s had enough magic demonstrated on him in the past few years. “Why’s it illegal?”

“Two reasons,” Ion says. “First off, using it in place of fundamentals can cause Weave Rot. The Art weaves in and out of us—skipping the basics can cause a tangle.”

“I already have a tangle,” Vizaeth mutters bitterly, then curses himself for giving Ion another scab to pick at.

“You have Weave Rot?” Ion sounds more intrigued than disgusted. Which might be worse. “Makes the second part a little less dire, then. The other reason is that it’s essentially necromancy of the living, using your own vitality in place of materials. Your first concern should be untangling that Weave Rot, though. Can’t fix that with blood magic.”

Endless meditations, breathing in and out and out and in and sitting for hours unpicking, unpicking, unpicking until he wants to scream. “Untangling it is taking forever.”

“Arach-Tinilith used to have a Weave Seamstress. Lidnolu. Does she still teach?”

“I don’t know.” And he’s not about to ask his sisters. They find out he’s more damaged than he already was, he’ll wish he’d been drowned at birth. “What’s a Weave Seamstress, anyway?”

“A necromancer that can alter the flow of living Weave. I know a Myrkulite who can do it, but you’d have to let a plane-touched human interact with your inner Weave.”

Revolting. “Can’t I learn to do it myself?”

Ion stops. The sconces cast their shadows long on the wall, deep and dark beneath the brim of his hat. He studies Vizaeth for a long, long moment, before bending so their faces are painfully close. His eyes are mostly blue, a foul faerie shade, but there are flecks of true drow red in them, glowing in the gloom.

“You wanna live that badly, boy?”

“Yes,” Vizaeth says.

“What for?”

“Do I need a reason?”

“If you don’t have one, I s’pose you could always use mine.”

“And what’s that?”

Ion grins, white and wide. “Spite.”

Pity he’s a halfbreed. He might be halfway tolerable otherwise.

“If they tell you to bow, you look ‘em in the eye,” Ion recites like a prayer. “If they tell you to break, you break ‘em back. If they fuck you over for their own satisfaction, remind ‘em they still bleed. And if they want you dead, you give ‘em a few more decades to squirm.”

He unhooks his censer to let it swing between them, the adamantine spider clinging eternally to its delicate chain. “Drow exist to spite Corellon, why not spite them back?”

Drow exist to serve Lolth. But spite and treachery? That’s Her domain, no matter what blasphemous route the halfbreed took to reach it, and what She desires, Vizaeth desires also.

Ion reaches into his satchel. “And in case your favourite toy needs a reminder of how much of a blessing it is to see your face…” He withdraws a vial filled with deep black liquid, glimmering with a sickly green iridescence. Malice. A poison not so easily brewed—though for one who can turn a spell to a powder, perhaps it was nothing more than an idle afternoon’s work.

“There’s nothing like painful darkness to remind us what a gift our eyes are,” Ion says, holding out the vial. Vizaeth allows himself a thin smile and takes it, slipping it into a pocket of his robes.

Pharaun spends too much time not seeing what’s in front of him. Not comprehending the reality of his place in Vizaeth’s life. Perhaps all it will take to open his eyes is a little blindness.

---

Vizaeth steps through an echo of himself into Pharaun’s quarters. No Spider Mage at his side this time, none of Viconia’s foolish words lending him false confidence—just the promise of the malice and a heartbeat in the shape of his name beneath Pharaun’s ribs. Lamplight and familiar wards wash over him and both seem to flicker, unsettled by the knowledge of what’s to come.

“Cithreth! What a surprise! Master Do’Urden didn’t mention you’d be visiting.” Pharaun speaks too fast, too much strain in his smile. He didn’t even try to stop Ion walking in; not, Vizaeth thinks, that he could have. The halfbreed has no notion whatsoever of his place.

“Oh, but how else would you have known you could get a bite of fear from me?” Ion claims Pharaun’s armchair as boldly as he did Nalfein’s. “It is the orange eyebite you wanted, yes? Only you didn’t tell apprentice Thaezyr here the colour.”

Pharaun shoots a glance at Vizaeth, one hand going to his chest. “I think you’re mistaken,” he says, seating himself behind his desk. Sitting is a dismissal; putting oneself at a physical disadvantage says you are no threat to me. The tick-tick-tick of his nails on the polished wood makes a lie of his posturing.

“Oh?” Ion says, eyebrows high. “The boy insisted you sent him for something in Master Do’Urden’s rooms.”

“And you believed him?”

Repetition, repetition—it isn’t going to end the same way, Pharaun. Not this time.

“A regular fool lying about an alchemical compound wouldn’t know that suspension of nothic eye, when mixed with vitriols of divine miasma and Lolth’s candle, forms a dust. Much less that said dust would be of value.”

“Apprentice Thaezyr is no regular fool.”

“Of course he isn’t, he’s a fascinating little bird!” Ion bounds to his feet—his unpredictable energy disrupts the balance of Pharaun’s quarters, throwing the careful construct of its richness and power into delicious disarray. “What colour do you want?”

“I—”

“Here’s my deal,” Ion interrupts before Pharaun can actually answer him. Three vials leap from his satchel to his hand in the space of a blink, necks between his knuckles. “I’ll give you all three, plus you can have all fifteen pages of my research notes—to copy, not to keep—and all I ask in return is a nominal token, and pages seventy to eighty-five.”

“I am not giving you—”

Ion is at the desk, free hand slammed across Pharaun’s scattered papers. “I can always give you a first-hand experience of the violet dust,” he says. “I’m sure Thaezyr would love to see that.”

Eyebite has three effects it can inflict on a victim: put them to sleep, flood them with fear, or overwhelm them with pain and sickness. Given the threat, the violet dust must invoke one of the latter two, either of which Vizaeth would enjoy. Feel that bound heart race in panic, twist in agony, stutter with vomiting. Break it so he can be the one to put it back together and remind Pharaun who it is that really loves him, because who else would come to his aid if he cried out in suffering?

Pharaun’s lips press into a thin line. “Pages seventy to eighty-five—to copy, not to keep. And as for your nominal token…”

“The Teyachumyet token,” Ion says immediately.

“I paid squarely for—”

“I’m not negotiating, Pharaun. The totem, or you only get the notes. How is your Maztican Elvish these days?”

“Fine!” Pharaun spits. His hand has gone to his chest again, massaging the spot over his heart as if it burns. “Take the damned thing, darthiir. See to it you don’t abscond with any other trinkets while you’re robbing me blind.”

“You say, after sending an apprentice to steal my work.”

The eyebite vials drop to Pharaun’s desk with a soft clink. Ion abandons them without a backward glance. He strolls to one of the wall cabinets—there are many trinkets and totems and items of power ranging from middling to immense sealed behind the glass doors, but he doesn’t spend any time searching the shelves. He plucks up a hand-sized spider of white marble, whose nature and purpose are beyond Vizaeth’s knowledge, but neither of those things matter—what matters is that Pharaun looks absolutely furious.

“I’ll return tomorrow with my notes,” Ion says, tucking the spider into his bag. “And to copy the pages I requested. I’m glad we could come to an agreement.” His insincere smile takes on a sharp edge as he turns it on Vizaeth. “You taking your leave as well, apprentice?”

Pharaun stands, chair scraping harshly across the floor. “He’ll be staying, Cithreth.”

“As you say.” Ion holds Vizaeth’s gaze a moment more, then bows and makes his exit. As the door closes, wards locking back into place, Vizaeth feels none of the fear that choked him when the Spider Mage abandoned him here. Tonight, Pharaun’s the one who’s going to learn his place. Tonight, Vizaeth is the one with all the power.

Tonight, he isn’t even going to try to run.

---

“So now you’re bedding halfbreeds,” Pharaun says. “Is there anything you won’t let fuck you, or will I have a troglodyte in my quarters tomorrow night?”

He’s so beautiful when he’s angry. That flush of frustration and righteousness, the way his lip curls, his chin tilts; exactly the way a drow should look when insulted.

“Keep any more secrets when you send me to steal something, and it’ll be a demon in your bed,” Vizaeth says, hopping up to perch on the edge of Pharaun’s desk. He picks up the vial of violet powder, turning it in his fingers. “Did you want me caught or killed this time?”

“Both would have been a rather lovely treat.”

Pharaun snatches the vial away, then casts all three into a drawer and slams it shut. Vizaeth climbs properly onto the desk, kneeling forward to accept the hand that wraps around his throat.

“You can’t do anything to me,” he whispers. He lays his hand over Pharaun’s heart, pumping hard beneath fine embroidered silk. “You’re mine.”

“You think I won’t find a way to break a geas laid by an apprentice as incompetent as you?” Pharaun leans in close. “Your Weave is rotting, and so will your spell.”

“But it hasn’t yet.”

Pharaun’s eyes burn, dark and angry and red.

“It hasn’t yet,” he grits out, and pulls Vizaeth’s mouth to his.

Since the bathhouse, afflicted with desire is the only way Pharaun can hurt him. The geas doesn’t count it as retaliation if it is, technically, what Vizaeth wants. Typical of his lover to find the loophole.

Teeth sink into his lip, hard and then harder. He grunts in pain, grabbing fistfuls of Pharaun’s hair. Papers scatter and the balor incense burner thuds heavily to the floor, still smoking, as Pharaun wrestles him down over the desk, ripping carelessly at clothes he can’t afford to replace. The mending cantrip always seemed a waste of magic before. Lately, he’s gotten quite proficient with it.

“I am going to ruin you,” Pharaun purrs, hooking a nail into the chain between two of Vizaeth’s earrings. He tugs it taut. “I am going to rip you to pieces reputation first—not that you have much to rip, my worthless little love—and then I’m going to take you back down to that altar you let me gut you on—”

Vizaeth moans as Pharaun’s other hand palms his belly, pressing hard. Can’t ask for that again, it’d let Pharaun get too far around the geas and actually kill him.

“—and I’m going to take you apart piece by piece, starting with your tongue.” There’s a sudden sharp, ripping pain in his ear, and Vizaeth screams. Pharaun laughs.

“Should I send the parts to the people who care about you?” He holds up his hand; the earring posts and chain dangle, bloody, from his slim fingers. “Might not work, since I don’t think there are enough of those to account for how many pieces I’d need to make of you for all the trouble you’ve caused. Maybe I’ll just send the important ones—your Matron can have your head, and apprentice Dyrr can have your cock.”

The vial of malice is cold in Vizaeth’s pocket. Pharaun hasn’t noticed him reaching for it, too busy toying with his torn ear and groping at the hardness between his legs. “If you liked this less, Thaezyr, I wouldn’t be able to do it. You’ve no-one to blame but yourself.”

“I could say the same for you,” Vizaeth gasps, and smashes the vial into Pharaun’s face.

It shatters over the bridge of his nose, the poison thick and black and clinging. Pharaun recoils with a furious howl. The room spins wildly as Vizaeth shoves himself upright, an acrid smell overtaking the incense in the air, an underlying sweetness to the odour that reminds him of holy rites. The side of his head throbs. Warm blood trickles down his neck.

“You wretched boy,” Pharaun hisses. The malice drips down his cheeks, leaving necrotic-looking stains on his perfect skin. “You won’t survive Sorcere, I’ll make damned sure of that. You won’t survive another tenday!”

He swipes an arm out, flailing blindly as he scrubs frantically at his eyes. Inkwells and a half-drunk glass of something amber and alcoholic crash to the floor as Vizaeth scrambles away from his searching grasp. It’s not the overwhelming fear he could have inflicted with the eyebite powder, but the effect of the malice is equally powerful.

Pharaun catches his hip on the corner of the desk and curses, a foul mix of Drow and Abyssal threats. Mostly steady on his feet, Vizaeth reaches for the armlet. Doesn’t flinch at the familiar sting of its activation.

Pharaun’s head snaps towards him, lips pulled back in a snarl. “I felt that. Don’t try it, Thaezyr, I’m warning you.”

His eyes are filmed with black, wide and unseeing. Anger, yes—and fear. It’s taken such a lot to get Pharaun to crack even a little, let all those roiling emotions boil to the surface—Vizaeth wants to make that fracture widen. Dig his nails into their shared wound and tear it open.

Enchantment is his weakest school, but only without blood. The Weave hisses and crackles between his teeth, and blood slithers down his arm to coat his untrembling hand as he makes the pass, and Pharaun’s mind is his.

The domination clicks into place with a body-wide rush of pleasure, heightened by Pharaun’s attempts at resistance. He’d be free in moments if it weren’t for the blood magic; as it is, his struggles are as futile as they are erotic.

“Kneel,” Vizaeth says. It comes out raspy. He swallows. Wets his lips. “Get on your knees.”

Thump. Thump. There before him, Pharaun Mizzrym, willing as a sacrifice. Lolth’s serendipitous webs vibrate with approval. Vizaeth steps forwards and takes Pharaun’s face in his hands.

“I’m not trying,” he says. “I’m doing. Just like you do to me.” He traces Pharaun’s lips with his thumb. They’re so soft, painted today with deep, bruise-black purple. His eyes are done to match, the powder running in ruins down his cheeks, thinned with malice and blood. A few small shards of glass are embedded in his forehead. Vizaeth carefully plucks them out as he undoes his laces.

“It’s like you said; if I didn’t like this so much, you wouldn’t be able to do it.” The head of his cock falls against Pharaun’s lips. “Open.”

Heat pulses in his gut as Pharaun, still mentally clawing at him, does as he commands. He slides in on a held breath, pulse fluttering madly. Pharaun’s mouth is wet heat and close pressure, his throat even more so as Vizaeth works his way in deep. The spell doesn’t prevent unconscious reactions, and he lets out a reverent moan at the instinctive spasm of muscle around his cock. He tries a tentative thrust, biting his lip at the gag it draws, delighted by the rage in Pharaun’s poison-blind eyes. He can’t see or disobey, but he’s not mindless. He’s still there. Everything Vizaeth loves is still there.

“Lots of people tell you you’re beautiful, don’t they?” Vizaeth says as he starts to thrust in earnest. “It’s true. You are. You’re so beautiful, Pharaun, and I love you so much.”

He sinks a hand into Pharaun’s hair and rocks his hips harder. Choked sounds and drool slicking his cock, the press of a bound mind raging against his Weave, the ragged throb in his ear, the blood oozing down his arm—he squeezes his eyes shut, overwhelmed with sensation. Oh, now he understands why Pharaun does this to him. This bond goes deeper than a geas; this bond skips flesh and blood and goes straight to the soul.

His breath quickens, his hips stuttering. Orgasm slithers through his veins, insidious, racing to expel itself into the waiting receptacle of Pharaun’s mouth. Vizaeth grips him tightly, holding Pharaun’s head down on his twitching cock until every last drop of release has found its way home. He’s inside Pharaun now. Pharaun will change, just like he did.

He pulls free with a shaky sigh. Spit and cum dribble from Pharaun’s slack mouth—he hasn’t yet been told to close it. Vizaeth touches his chin and gently does it for him. “There,” he says. “Swallow me. I’m all yours.”

A thread of blood snaps.

“…make you…regret…” Pharaun forces out.

“How could I love you if you didn’t?” Vizaeth kisses his forehead. “But don’t try right away. You’re Menzoberranyr. Act like it.”

Another thread gives way. Pharaun spits, a messy glob of white and red. His eyes are starting to clear.

Vizaeth lays down, resting his head in Pharaun’s lap atop the swell of his arousal. “Stroke my hair,” he orders, whilst he still has control. Pharaun obeys, his motions jerky, fighting every step of the way. The domination will shatter soon, and maybe when the geas does the same, he’ll do as he’s threatened to, but what threat is it when dying at his hand is the way Vizaeth’s dreamed of ending for years?

He sighs, letting his eyes fall closed. The hurt will come later, for him, then for Pharaun, around and around and around. The pain is as inevitable as the love, as bound to it as he and Pharaun are to each other. And if Pharaun still fails to understand that? Well…

Vizaeth smiles as the fingers in his hair turn to nails raking gouges across his scalp. If Pharaun needs another reminder, it’s not as if a bite of fear will be hard to find.