Murchaud kissed his mouth again, quickly, guiltily, before Kit could jerk away. And then, the Elf‑knight straddled Kit’s belly, with the heat of flesh on flesh, his weight like stones. Peine forte et dure.This time, Kit could not silence the sound that rose in his throat. Murchaud swallowed it, kissed it away. He settled over Kit’s hips, toes dug under Kit’s thighs, and must have laid the knife aside, because the next touch was the flat of both hands upon Kit’s breast. The brands on Kit’s sides burned so hot Kit thought they must blister, knife slashes trickling blood across Kit’s ribs to soak into the coverlet.
“For Christ’s sake,” Kit snarled, “get it overwith.”
He felt a small, cruel joy when Murchaud flinched hard enough to shake the bed, but then the Elf‑knight drew himself back and said “As you wish it,” and that was a small kind of victory. Until Murchaud wrapped a rough, calloused hand around Kit’s prick and began, with abrupt motions, to manipulate it.
Every touch was irritation, and the longer it continued the more Kit’s rage grew. It started in his belly, a small uncomfortable coal, and grew swiftly to a venom that would not be contained; he cursed and whimpered and heaped abuse. He used the name of God like a whip, and felt the Fae Prince shudder under it and continue, while Mehiel struggled in Kit’s breast like a fox in a snare’s sharp jaws.
Kit visualized the tumble of crimson fur rolling, tail flagging like a banner against the snow. Not much Longer, sweet Mehiel. Soon we part company. Soon you go home.
And as for Kit? He supposed he had a destination, too.
Kit thought they would tear him apart between them, the angel and the Faerie Prince. He was grateful for the bindings, which let him thrash however he would and yet held him secure. He was grateful for Murchaud’s hands that held him likewise, and with a strength and negligence that carried no remembrance of Baines’ sick mock‑gentleness. And he was grateful for his unstopped mouth, for the freedom to blaspheme and beg even when he knew the efforts would be ignored.
He thought it would grow easier to bear, the Prince’s touch, that in the darkness it would be all he had to focus on and he would learn to withstand it, as he had Baines’ damned iron bridle. But he grew instead angrier and fiercer, an unstoppered wrath that would not be silenced again. Murchaud, meanwhile, was thorough and remorseless, and Kit wept when his body at last surrendered, arching himself to the touch, scrabbling against the bonds.
Murchaud tarried for a moment, ducked to kiss the bloody scar on Kit’s thigh with a mouth that was wet and hot, and then kissed each of the other three ruined brands in turn. It was a farewell, and that was all it was. And Kit, to his shame, fought and wailed like an orphaned child. It was well he was bound, or he should have used his fists against Murchaud.
When the Prince at last placed pillows beneath Kit and knelt between his thighs, placing the dagger upon his breast, Kit’s gratefulness swelled. The straw tick crunched under the Elf‑knight’s knees; his flanks were warm against the insides of Kit’s thighs as Kit bent his legs, taking the slack from the bonds. “I have thy freedom in my hand.”
Kit “wasn’t sure how he found his voice, but find it he did and made it firm to support his lover’s hand. “Finish it.”
“So mote it be,” Murchaud said, and pressed the dagger to the center of the brand upon Kit’s breast. “The Fae should know better than to love mortal men.”
He leaned into the dagger as he rose into Kit.
The dagger slid through Kit’s heart like a serpent’s tongue, slick and easy. He feltthe force of it, felt the gallant muscle striving to beat, shredding itself on the ice‑cold blade. He might have screamed, but all he could manage was a breathless whine that he meant for a sorry sort of joke: Consummatum est.And then the darkness was no longer merely the darkness behind the blindfold, but encompassing and deep and edged with penetrating cold.
And thou’lt go to Lucifer after all, but shed of the thing he wished of thee.
Kit’s last thought through the pain was that he was glad–so glad–that he could not see Murchaud’s face as he died.
Murchaud, who pulled the dagger free and gathered Kit close to his breast, while the sharp heat of blood spread between them and Kit felt warm arms and stickiness and the wetness that might be an elf‑Prince weeping all recede on a river of dark, as he remembered something long forgotten–that he had come this way before, not once but twice, in Deptford and at Rheims.
Pure white light enfolded him and he smiled at the lie. It would not be Heaven awaiting beyond that gate, but there was something to be said for the refinement of that deception. Some must come this way, Kit imagined, who did not honestly know what to expect.
Imagine their disillusionment.
And then Mehiel’s falcon‑cry of a voice that was not a voice, and his eyes like living suns as he bowed down in the space that was not a space and spread his wings before a Kit who was not Kit. Kit who was whole, and who was not in pain. «God is good. I shall not be able to save thee again, poet.»
Farewell, Mehiel,Kit answered. I expected no salvation. I expect we shall not meet in Heaven, Angel of the Lord.
«Thy life thrice,» the angel answered. «Rheims, Deptford, Hy Brйаsil. Be healed one last time, child, and may our paths cross nevermore.» Barred black and gold, the bright wings blurred, and Kit stepped back, or dreamed he did.
«Consummatum est!»Mehiel shouted. And rose. And was gone.
“Consummatum est,” Kit whispered. He opened his eyes, lashes sticky with his own red blood, and cursed because his hands were bound and he could not bury them in Murchaud’s hair.
There was a scar in the center of the scar in the center of his breast and another on his back between the shoulder blades and to the left of his spine, where Murchaud’s weight had driven the blade through his body and into the featherbed. Beside the witch’s mark, in fact, and just opposite it.
And there was blood: so very much blood, indeed. Blood through the ticking and onto the floor.
Blood, and blood only. That was all.
Epilogue
“I hate” she altered with an end,
That followed it as gentle day
Doth follow night, who like a fiend
From heav’n to hell is flown away
“I hate “from hate away she threw
And saved my life saying, “not you.”
–William Shakespeare, Sonnet 45
April 22, 1616
Annie helped Will lean back in the pillow‑upholstered chair as he finished coughing. He was weak, too weak. He couldn’t get air into his lungs and the fever that burned him wasn’t even strong enough to grant the surcease of delirium, just the misery of aches and sweat.
He thought it was a natural sickness, at least. We’ve seen an end to the Promethean plagues. That’d something. And something I’ve lived this long, with Kit’s help and Morgan’s.
And who would have thought ‘twould not be the damned palsy after all?
Annie soothed his forehead with a cloth, her grayed brow wrinkled with concern. Will opened his eyes as a second shadow fell across him. Kit, bringing a basin cool from the well.
Will sighed. “Was ever man so unworthy, so well loved?”
“Unworthy?” Kit scoffed. “Who’s worthy of love? It makes us worthy by loving, I wot.”
Annie said nothing, but Will knew the twisted mouth she gave Kit for approval.