Page 5 of The Stars and the Stage
Another apology.
Diego felt this one like the kiss of a flame, no pain left, only anger, sharp and harsh and fueled by every moment they’d spent together: the long hours in the theater room, leaning against each other as they worked through lines that their high school’s audience would never appreciate, rocks thrown at each other’s windows until one night Diego’s had cracked, lounging together at the lake on long summer days, laughing about bad poetry, and racing, disgusting and sunburnt, to the arcade after to drink vodka from soda cups and fight over the Pac-Man machine.
They were children’s sentiments from an era Diego wouldn’t have returned to even if they could. But they should have been happy, lighthearted memories. The man standing before them had changed that.
Diego could feel Valentine’s presence at their back, waiting and watching, judging how to move forward with this new act Diego had thrown the event into. With all the speed and agility their vampirism granted, Diego drew the blade from within Valentine’s sheath. They pointed it casually at Maddox, and strode forward, one perfectly placed step at a time.
Maddox continued to kneel. He bowed his head, but his gaze did not leave Diego, hot and fierce and utterly infuriating.
Diego slipped the tip of the sword beneath his chin. They lifted. The room went deadly quiet as Maddox swallowed against the metal. Slowly, he bared his throat to Diego.
At this distance, only a sword length between them, Diego caught his familiar scent, the oaky musk deeper and fuller than last time they’d been this close. He’d held pliers in his sweaty, shaking hands then, his voice cracking on every word:“Maybe if you pull them out.”
It hadn’t mattered that vampires could retract their fangs at will, that Diego was still mostly the same as they had been, just with a garlic allergy, an inability to stand the sun, and a necessity for blood. When they’d shoved him away, their new strength had sent him crashing through the shelves at his back with a disturbing thud. They’d been too hungry not to immediately fixate on the scent of his blood on the wood.
“Fuck—I didn’t mean to do that,”they’d managed to say, and“I can help,”fangs baring in the knowledge that their mouth could heal just as much as it could hurt.
But Maddox had fled all the same, screaming at them like they were the monster. For nearly two years after, they’d believed they were, believed their tragic life was worth so little that they’d found a painful solace in the thought of ending it. Only this place—its insistence that they were loved, desired, valued—had finally brought back their self-confidence. They had a role to fill here tonight, a fiction to keep putting on.
But Diego didn’t feel like acting anymore. They felt like driving in the point of their blade, waiting for the pain to spill across Maddox’s face, for him to know the betrayal they had suffered ten years ago. But they suspected that would hurt them both just as much.
If Maddox had signed up for this event though, donned a costume and everything, that meant he knew the safe words. Diego could push him. They could push him, and eventually he’d break. Then he’d leave, for good this time, and give Diego’s heart the space to heal all over again.
They pushed the sword blade just a little harder, a little deeper, and tugged a hair upward.
The room gasped.
Maddox’s shock and fear was delicious for the full moment it lasted, before the shame hit Diego and they withdrew the sword in a dramatic swoop. Maddox gingerly fingered the shallow cut that now dragged beneath the point of his chin. It came away red. The mere sight of it mesmerized Diego, like his absence from their life had given their soul ten years to carve him a bigger space in it, to hone every sense to his being.
This had been a mistake.
Somehow Maddox himself was making it worse by not flinching away from Diego’s obvious craving, by leaning in where ten years ago he’d jerked back, screaming as he fled. This time, he held his bloodied finger out, a soft expression on his face. “Would you accept a taste, my lord?”
Diego snorted, trying to cover up their yearning. Too little, too late. “Your blood is fit only for the gutter rats.”
“My lord, give him a chance,” Lissette called, and a little purr came into her voice as she added, “Or I might.”
That got a laugh from the crowd, not easing the tension but rather turning it electric.
The silver fox shouted, “Yes, let him prove himself.”
“Do your worst, we’ll see if he can take it,” another human echoed.
They were right, of course. As much as Diego wanted to turn Maddox out, thevampire lordimmediately kicking such a willing human contestant from the game wouldn’t go over well—especially after Diego had just fabricated them an elaborate history. No one else here could know it was all mostly real. No one but Serina, anyway. Fuck, Diego would have to chat with her later.
They turned, slowly, drawing one finger along the blade of their borrowed sword. “I suppose I have to play by my own rules.” They bared their fangs, watching for even a hint of hesitation from their long-lost betrayer. “Do you accept my challenges, Prince Maddox?”
“I do,” Maddox breathed.
Diego smiled, sharp as the weapon in their hands. “Then strip.”
3
Diego had never seen their crowd so singularly engaged. The club liked to provide the outline of a story for those too intimidated or inexperienced to form their own, but at its core their events were about providing a space for people to play out their personal fantasies. Tonight, though, as Maddox rose to his feet and stoically unpinned his outer cloak, the room was enthralled with him and with each step Diego took as they circled like a predator.
Maddox obediently folded his cloak and handed it to a waiting Valentine, then shrugged out of his suit jacket. As his undershirt followed, Diego’s lungs caught. They tried not to stare, not to follow the lines of every toned muscle. This was their Maddy, yet he was a brand-new canvas too, their skinny theater boy’s bony limbs now thick and solid, his abs defined, with a trail of dark hair that snaked beneath his pant line in a way that made Diego wonder, absently, what else might have changed.
Atop the musculature, his skin bore new marks. The few light blemishes might have been recently healed scrapes. A tattoo of an inverted crown dripped black blood down his ribs. Just behind his left shoulder lay a mangled scar. Diego knew that one. Their fingers moved without consent, touching it so lightly that Maddox visibly shivered.
