Page 183 of Dragon Slayer

Val took his chin again; the boy winced but he held on, forcing eye contact. “It isnotyour fault,” Val said. “I should never have sent you alone down to the horse lines. I–” He took a ragged breath, fighting sharp pain in his chest. This poor sweet boy. So much already taken from him – his autonomy, his masculinity. And now his dignity. And his innocence.

Tears spilled down Arslan’s bruised cheeks, silent but steady, and he dropped his gaze, ashamed.

Val looked to Nestor. “Who?” he demanded.

The scribe bit his lip.

“Please, no,” Arslan sniffled.

“Hush.” Val put his arms around him and pulled him away from Nestor, into his own grip, tucked his face into his throat with a hand at the back of his head. “Who, Nestor? I want their names.”

Again, the scribe hesitated.

“They won’t hurt you in retaliation,” Val said. “They won’t hurt anyone ever again.”

Arslan looked up, eyes wide.

Val heard footsteps behind him.

Mehmet. He’d completely forgotten about Mehmet. Damn it.

He straightened and turned, finding the sultan behind him, arms folded, expression more curious than anything else. “It looks like someone ravished your slave.”

Val set his jaw.

Then Mehmet said, “What are you going to do about it?”

~*~

A warm day. The heat intensified the pungent stink of latrines, of unwashed soldiers on the march, of horse manure ripening in the sun. Even a tidy camp, such as this one, reeked.

Val strode with his sword at his hip, boots kicking up puffs of dust. Long strides, his shadow bobbing along head of him.

Mehmet walked beside him, and a foursome of janissaries tailed them.

The sultan hummed quietly to himself, unbothered.

Valseethed.

He held his jaw clenched tight, breathing harshly through his nose, despite the stench. His hands tightened into fists at his sides, over and over, fingers itching to claw, to scrape, to hurt. His fangs were descended; if he spoke to anyone, they would be clearly visible.

He didn’t care.

He’d left Arslan in Nestor-Iskander’s care. The scribe had found him by the picket lines, he’d said, and known right away that Val would want to see him for himself. He’d been right; just as he’d been right that Val would want to mete out punishment once he knew the perpetrators’ names. In the months since becoming Mehmet’s most trusted scribe, Nestor had grown fond of Arslan – as did everyone who interacted with the boy. Sweet, and lovely to look upon, shy, unfailingly proper – except when he was alone with Val and Val asked him to speak his mind. He was slender, finer-boned than other boys his age, because he’d been castrated.

Val was no fool. He knew the way eunuchs were used here amongst the Ottomans. They guarded the women, and they serviced the men – Mehmet had at least a dozen, hand-picked from conquered towns, young men kept in a sort of forever boyhood, with smooth cheeks, and delicate limbs. Val found the whole business disgusting – but he had his own problems. His own backside to guard, as it were. He couldn’t control the things Mehmet did outside of the bed and tents and rooms they shared.

But this.

This.

Arslan washis. Val had Mehmet’s word that he’d never try to touch him.

Val tightened his thighs around Mehmet’s hips, enjoying the way his pace stuttered, and his eyes and mouth opened with surprise just before Val flipped them over, and surprised him some more. He put one hand on the sultan’s throat, and with the other pulled the knife from beneath the pillow where he’d stashed it before, pressed its tip to the delicate skin just beneath Mehmet’s eye.

Mehmet panted, half from his interrupted exertion, half from shock. Voice admirably steady: “I’ll put you over my knee and beat you ‘til you bleed for this.”

Val growled at him, a proper vampire growl. His hair fell around them, a golden curtain closing them in together, face-to-face. Inside him, he felt Mehmet begin to flag. “Fine. I don’t care. But I’ll have your word on one thing.”

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