Page 196 of Dragon Slayer

“No.”

But he’d put his arms around the young man Mehmet shoved toward him, warm, and sweaty, and his pulse so, so tempting, and he’d sunk his fangs into his neck. Live blood, intoxicating, dizzying. Mehmet had pulled him in a night-black alley behind a shop, after, and fucked him up against a wall, a handful of cooling blood used to ease the way.

Val woke the next morning with a pounding head, and couldn’t eat any food, sick to his stomach over what he’d done. He was the puppet of a monster, but he couldn’t allow himself to become one as well.

He tried to refuse, after that, but there was always some threat, some elegantly-dropped hint about his brother. And so Val went, and he hated it, and one night Mehmet was recognized, and the sultan stabbed the man to death right there in the street, so that word would not get out.

“Have you learned anything?” Val asked, tone cutting, as he pushed back his hood and went to wash his face at the basin by the window. They were back in the palace now, in the royal apartments, and he wanted the scent of the street off of himself. “Is this little experiment finally over?”

Mehmet didn’t seem to hear the disdain in his voice. He sank down on the edge of the bed, gaze fixed on the middle distance. “They are…not in agreement.”

“About you?” Val snorted and wiped his face with a length of toweling. “Did you expect them to be? A ruled people are never in agreement about their ruler.” Except for the fact that most of themhatedthat ruler; they just disagreed on the reasons why.

“They want me to take Rum. Some of them do. It will be a victory for not just me, but our entire people. But…” He shook his head. “They think me a heretic.” He blinked and his gaze focused, lifted to Val. “They know that we are lovers, Radu.”

Val bit back his kneejerk response – it would only get him slapped. He said, “It’s not as if you’re subtle about it, dear.” He gestured to the room around them. “We’re together nearly every night. I’m by your side always. And,” he dared to say, “you keep collecting young boys and stashing them with your harem. What did youwantpeople to think?”

“It’s none of their business.”

“You’re their sultan. Everything you do is their business.”

Mehmet growled quietly, and glanced away.

Val dampened a cloth and went to stand in front of him. Took his chin in-hand and began to wipe the dirt from his face. “Did you think they’d call you Alexander?” he asked. “You’re only a hero in your own mind, Mehmet.”

The sultan reached up, a sudden burst of speed, and caught Val’s wrist. He turned a glowing, furious look up at him. “That’s a bold thing for you to say.”

“Hmm, yes. Shall you impale me? As you did Captain Rizzo?”

Mehmet struck out, a vicious slap aimed for Val’s face.

But now it was Val’s turn to catch his wrist, to hold him off. His heart beat wildly in his chest, frightened by his own daring, but he kept his face smooth, his voice serene. “If you want your people to think of you differently, perhaps you should behave differently.”

They held a moment, tense; Val’s pulse beat in his ears as if someone was knocking on the bedchamber door.

And then Mehmet released him, and a smile broke across his face, and Val’s knees went weak with relief.

“You’re always honest with me, aren’t you, Radu?”

“I make every effort to be, yes.” Val resumed cleaning the sultan’s face, and he allowed it this time.

Mehmet sighed. “No one else is.”

“Then it’s a good thing you have me, then.”

“Yes. A very good thing.”

~*~

Val rose before dawn the next morning, left the sultan snoring, dressed simply, and went out for a walk in the gardens.

A sharply cold, but still morning, all the garden’s delights rimed with hoary white frost. Steam issue from the rooftop vents in the bath houses, and from the seraglio; bright crystal stalactites dripped off the spouts and edges of frozen fountains, water chiming lightly as it began to thaw and trickle, gleaming as the first pale light washed across the palace grounds.

Val could enjoy none of its beauty. Though pulsing with energy, healthy and strong from last night’s feast of live blood, sickness and shame weighed heavy in his belly. He’d killed a man last night; an innocent commoner. Did he have a family? Children? His blood gave Val strength, an indulgence taken by a spoiled, rich prince. That’s what he was, wasn’t he? Even if he wore a choking silver collar of ownership, even if his fate was not his own, he was still a pampered royal pet.

Lost in the troubling reflection of his own culpability in Mehmet’s overused power, he nearly tripped over the neat little figure sitting on a curved iron bench along the path.

He pulled up short, embarrassed by his own startlement, and glanced down to find a plump, gray-bearded man smoking a hookah pipe, expression serene.

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