Page 114 of Dragon Slayer

“Spread myself and bend over?”

“If you would only behave yourself!” Val shouted.

Belatedly, he realized that he’d come to a halt, and that several doves had been startled into flight by his outburst. A duo of gardeners looked over, curious…concerned once they spotted the source of the disturbance. A few weeks before, Val would have thought they hurriedly ducked their heads to avoid drawing Vlad’s attention. But maybe, now, they didn’t want to make eye contact with the sultan’s boy whore.

Val stared at a topiary shaped like an eagle in flight and blinked back the burn of threatening tears. He took a few steadying breaths. When he spoke, he was surprised by the evenness of his tone. “I am trying,” he said quietly, “to help you, brother. I can’t change what’s happened. This is – this is what I have to do now. But if you can learn to be even a little conciliatory, to bite your tongue, and attend your lessons, then perhaps I could soften Mehmet toward you. Over time. I’m trying to help you, Vlad.”

When he dared to look his way, Vlad was sneering at him. His eyes flashed in the sunlight,cold. “I don’t want any help bought on your back, Radu.” That name; the sting of it. “Keep me out of your bedroom games.” And he turned and walked away, shoulders set.

Val watched him go, lungs hitching and stuttering inside his chest.He hates me, he thought. He’d known it for a long time now, but somehow the evidence always hurt like a fresh wound.

“Your grace?” Arslan asked.

He hates me…and maybe I should hate him, too.

“It’s alright, Arslan,” he sighed. “Let’s go back. I don’t want to be late for my lessons.”

~*~

Mehmet was passionately obsessed with Alexander the Great. His upbringing in Macedon, his childhood exploits; his parents, and his friendships, and his purported bisexuality. His valor in battle, his golden beauty, his conquest and expansion. As weeks bled into months, and Val was kept on as concubine and bedwarmer, and, more and more often, listening ear, the sultan began to speak more freely in the evenings. After he’d ravished Val, when the candles burned low, he picked up the cup of wine on the bedside table and propped up against the pillows. Waxed lyrical about his hero, gesturing with his hands, voice warming to that of an excited young man.

“We are kindred spirits,” he said, lifting his cup, smile bittersweet. “Or, we would be, if we’d lived in the same age.”

Val, lying on his side, arms around a pillow, tried to shift his hips in a way that didn’t aggravate the bruises there. “You admire him greatly.”

Mehmet’s gaze flashed down to his, hazy with pleasure and wine. “What’s not to admire? The most valiant, inventive, inspiring warrior in all of history. A man would be a foolnotto admire him.”

Val knew well not to needle his master. He’d been slapped once, across the face, for making what he’d meant to be an innocent remark; a moment of weakness, feeling sorry for himself. Mehmet bore the faintest of scars along the crest of one shoulder, the place where, during his duel with Vlad years before, the bone had shattered, and portions of it had come through the skin. Just a silver line, but as Val knelt on the cool tiles beside the bath, he’d passed a fingertip along the mark and known a moment’s deep satisfaction; Vlad had inflicted that wound. Every time Mehmet saw it in the mirror, he’d be forced to think of the Wallachian prince he’d been unable to best in the ring.

Mehmet had stilled; the story he’d been telling had cut off mid-sentence. “What is it?” A warning in his voice, one that Val had been too absorbed to heed.

“This.” He traced the scar again. “This is from my brother. When he bested you.”

Mehmet had caught his wrist and half-dragged him into the tub. His other hand had cracked against his cheek. Hard enough that he saw stars; hard enough that a red mark lingered there for hours.

He hadn’t made a mistake like that since. But. Sometimes he tested his boundaries. Times like now, when his ass was sore and his throat ached and he knew that he couldn’t get away. Moments when Mehmet compared himself to a man who’d never mistreated a hostage.

“Alexander had golden hair, though,” he murmured, pressing the words into the pillow.

Mehmet heard him, though. There was no getting around vampire hearing. He stilled, and a little of the color drained from his face. “Yes.” Voice flat. “He was.” He reached with his free hand to push his hair back, the sweaty tangles that kept falling forward over his face. His rings caught the light; Val knew the texture of each of those rings intimately. “Do you wish I was golden, then? Like Alexander? Likeyou?”

“You’re very handsome,” Val said, by rote.

Mehmet bared his teeth in a semblance of a smile. “Ah, handsome. But handsome isn’t beautiful.”

“Handsome is a kind of beautiful.” Val clutched his pillow tighter.

Mehmet chuckled. “It’s not the same thing, pet. You’re far too clever not to know that.”

“Beautiful is for pets,” Val amended. “Handsome is for kings. For sultans.”

His brittle smile softened, truer now. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” He drained off his wine and slid down to lie against the pillows. When he reached for Val, Val went willingly, knowing that he must. He let the sultan pull him up flush to his side, his arm around him, so that Val’s face lay in the hollow of his scarred shoulder. “I frustrate myself sometimes,” he admitted. “Wanting to be Alexander.”

Val hummed a neutral sound.

“It’s only–” His hand tightened on Val’s waist; Val could feel the energy running through him. Some of it was vampirism, but mostly it was true passion. “There’s been no one like him since. There were the Romans. Your people, I suppose.” He chuckled, and this time the tightening of his hand was possessive, taunting ages and emperors past.Oh, mighty Rome, now I have you in my bed, my teeth marks in your neck. “They accomplished the impossible. But nothing was quite so impossible as Alexander, was it?”

Val kept silent, his thoughts unspoken. Chief among them: Mehmet was in love with Alexander. Or at least the idea of him. But a Roman golden boy would suffice for the time being.

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