Page 106 of Dragon Slayer

Val scrambled to his feet and fled. The sultan wasn’t fast enough to catch him this time, and he ducked out through the double doors into the garden.

~*~

The moon was waning, but Val could see well in the dark. He moved quick and quiet, keeping low behind the boxwoods, staying to the shadows cast by topiaries and ornamental trees. He could have hidden from a human, but Mehmet could track him by scent. So he went straight for the herbs, and plucked rosemary and lavender and mint, rubbed it over the pulse points at his wrists and throat. Stuffed it into his kaftan.

He tore at his hair, yanking out the bells and casting them into the shrubs. Threw his slippers as far as he could throw them – a decoy, hopefully – and proceeded on bare feet, silent now.

He felt his heartbeat in hismouth; if he coughed, he thought it might spill out onto the gravel of the path, black and pulsing. His fear was so overwhelming that he couldn’t process it; he was numb now, focused only on hiding, getting away, getting safe. With first light would come the sultan’s sobering…and his punishment. They would be killed for sure now – both of them. All this time he’d thought it would be Vlad’s petulance that doomed them, but no, it was his own childish fear of sodomy that would do them in. If possible, Vlad would hate him even more.

He envisioned his brother’s face as they waited on the top of the wall, as executioners sharpened the long spikes they would be impaled upon.

Congratulations, Vlad’s voice said in his head now.You’re still going to get fucked, only with a spear instead of the sultan’s cock. Which is worse?

Tears filled his eyes, and he blinked them away and kept running.

He’d become an expert at dodging guards and nighttime garden-walkers; the gardens were vast, but no obstacle for his regular endurance. Tonight, though, as his adrenaline waned – sustained for too long already – and exhaustion set its hooks in him, he knew he had to stop.

He found a tall apple tree with far-flung branches, and shimmied up it. Rested in the crotch of two wide branches, tucked up and hidden beneath the leaves, and let his flushed face rest against the cool, rough bark.

He breathed through his mouth for long minutes, trying to will his heartbeat slower. The breeze tugged at his loose hair, a gentle sigh through the branches all around him. His cramping muscles unclenched by degrees. Alone, untouched. Alive.

Sleep beckoned, and he let it claim him.

He dream-walked.

His mother sat on her favorite bench in her own garden, the dark close around her, a light shawl all that shielded her from the chill, her hands white-knuckled on its edges. Her bench rested on top of a low hill at the palace’s base, and the land sloped down, so that she could see across the moat and toward the moonglow-silvered roofs of the houses in Tîrgoviste.

“Mama?”

In the first moment, when she turned to him, she couldn’t hide the grief etched into her face. Loose pieces of hair haloed a countenance drawn tight with deep sadness.

“My darling,” she whispered, and held out her hand.

Val settled on the bench beside her, as well he could in his projection form, and she leaned in close, even though his edges smoked and wisped away into the night.

They sat a moment, together in this one small way they could be. Until Val felt tears threaten. He wanted to be real; for his mother to put her arm around him and wipe his tears away with her thumb that smelled of herbs, and kiss his hair. Tell him that she would make it all better.

“Mama?”

Her hands twitched on the edges of her shawl; she wanted to be able to touch, too.

“Have you ever…” It was an impossible thing to ask.

“Have I ever…what?” She sat up straighter. “What is it, darling?”

He would give anything not to reveal this about himself – that he was the kind of boy that men wanted to grope, and fondle, and seek pleasure in. That he was weak, so much weaker than his brothers, warriors both. They were worthy princes, honors to their Roman heritage, and he was only beautiful.

But fear closed around his throat like a fist, and he wanted to know. Needed to. If there was some way to grit his teeth and get through this thing that was being demanded of him.

“Have you – has anyone ever…forced you–” He choked on the words. Saying this to his mother had to be some kind of sin.

She stared at him a long moment, when he couldn’t say anything else, and then she understood, eyes flying wide and white, shiny in the moonlight. “Who?” She tried to grab him, his shoulders turning to mist beneath her touch. She growled, but it was a despairing sound. Halfway to a sob. “Val, who? Who – did someone – who would – oh,love…”

He was snatched away from her.

Back in his body, his eyes flew open, and in that first moment of disorientation, he knew only that it was still dark, and that he lay hugging a tree branch, and that someone’s warm hand rested on his ankle. He gave a shout of surprise and sat up.

It was a small tree, decorative, and the sturdiest branches, one of which Val straddled, hung low enough that Mehmet could stand below and reach to touch him – which he was doing now. The pearlescent light of dawn suffused the misty garden, and by its light, Val could see the black stain of blood on the sultan’s kaftan, dry now; no doubt the wound had already healed.

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