It was the last thing Rahil expected. It shouldn’t have been. It was only reasonable, only fair, and yet… Rahil swallowed against the lump forming in his throat and released a shaky breath. His limbs tried to turn to putty beneath the weight of his conflicting emotions, but he managed to jumpstart his brain fast enough to respond with, “Explain it to me, and we’ll see?”
Merc nodded. “I’m trying to make a metal that will lessen the effects of vampirism without the pain or burning that holy silver causes. It’snotto sell, either. It’s to aid in research that will create productsforvampires.” The emotion in his voice was so unusual that it took Rahil a moment to parse it—it was love, he thought. Love, and pain. “This could be the first step in giving vampires agency over their bodies. That’s my hope, anyway. It might turn into nothing.” Merc rubbed his palm across his cheek to fiddle with a tiny piece of metal in his ear: a little gray earring, small and round. “I’m partnering with a brilliant scientist on this, one I know is not a stranger to helping people who have no one else to turn to. He’s done a lot of good for a number of nonhumans, and wants to believe this will be good too, if we can make it work.”
A lot of good. It soundedtoogood to be true: just one piece of metal for one honest scientist to better the lives of vampires. But it was a piece of metal designed as a more humane version of holy silver, and while the research field might have been a place where that was necessary, Rahil could easily see it pitched in other settings: anywhere it might be nice to eliminate a vampire’s unnatural abilities without receiving judgement from the more compassionate public. But, it was justonepiece. Chances were, no one who might hold those views would ever see it.
This felt like too manyifs andands, and frankly, that was not what Rahil had risked tangling himself in Mercer’s trap for. It seemed callous, though, to ask if the alternative to helping was being kicked out. How selfish was it to potentially risk the future of his community for one more day standing in this shed?
But what if the potential truly was for salvation instead of sacrifice...
As though he could read Rahil’s mind, Merc asked, “I can show you the kinds of experimentation it will take to produce such a metal, and then you can decide?”
How was he supposed to say no to that? Rahil shrugged, as though his beautiful torturer hadn’t offered him exactly what his body was begging for. “I suppose I can submit to that.”
“Good. Then I’ll begin.” Merc nodded solemnly to himself.
Rahil watched Merc with a mixture of anticipation and horror as the smith drew from his lockbox a larger holy silver charm, then a full bar of the terrible metal. He could feel his arm hair standing on edge, like his very cells could sense the pain and terror this substance had caused his race for thousands of years, those horrors reinvigorated as new generations of vampires lost contact with their community’s elders and their cautionary knowledge. But that pain didn’t befallhim. As Merc touched the metal to Rahil’s skin, soft tingles raced up his arms.
Rahil made the mistake of wondering what sensation they might produce if pressed to other regions of his body and his dick raised a nearly literal hand to volunteer.
Merc watched Rahil’s expression, and when Rahil smiled, he nodded slowly and placed the holy silver into line with his other tools. Then, he got to work. Rahil couldn’t tell exactly what Merc was trying to accomplish, but he seemed confident as he cupped Rahil’s arm, pressing different metals—including the holy silver—to Rahil’s skin before changing them slightly: heating and blending and cooling, dipping them in a series of liquids or sparking a current through them. He jotted notes between each new iteration, his brow furrowed.
Despite losing himself in thought for minutes at a time, he was clearly keeping an eye on Rahil’s reactions, switching out his arms and adjusting his bonds just as Rahil started to ache. With his focus so complete and his strong hands delicately working Rahil’s limbs, his thick muscles flexing and trembles running through the heft around them, Rahil was mesmerized by him. Merc aimed his attention like a looming storm, intense and certain. Every waft of his sweet, earthen fragrance made Rahil’s mouth water, and every professional brush of his skin against Rahil’s sent as many tingles through him as the strongest iterations of holy silver. Though breathtaking he was—and as much as Rahil knew he’d promised to be quiet—watching him work only made Rahil more and more confused.
As Merc chewed on the end of his pen, staring hard at Rahil’s skin for no obvious reason—certainly no sexual one, anyway—Rahil finally broke the quiet. “What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know.” Merc withdrew his pen from between his lips; no bite marks, but the barrel glistened. He narrowed his eyes and dragged his thumb across the back of Rahil’s arm. “At this point, I’m just trying to understand you.”
“There’s very little to understand, frankly. I’m a pathetic mess who happens also to be breathtakingly gorgeous and relentlessly kind and a useless people-pleaser.” Which was probably why he hadn’t managed to kick Violet out of his life despite how bad an influence he was on the poor kid. Huh. Well, who needed a therapist when a hot craftsman was available with ropes and probing inquiries.
Merc’s lips quirked again. “I meant biologically. But thank you, that does clarify things.”
“Aw, well, biologically, I’m easily contained but rather hardier than I appear, and, again, breathtakingly gorgeous.” Rahil raised a brow. “What things did I clarify?”
“Useless people-pleaser.” Merc lifted his gaze long enough to give Rahil a little smile, deep in a way that caught Rahil off guard and made his heart flutter up into his throat. Merc’s next words only added to the effect, made worse, somehow, by the fact that he turned back to Rahil’s skin, gently holding his arm as he said, “Though your assistance is far from useless right now.”
“Ha.” Rahil tried to force the feeling away with a laugh. “Says the man who’s trying to understand me by staring hard enough.” Except that Rahil had been watching Merc all this time, watching him forge his metal like it was another part of himself and press his fingers to Rahil’s skin as if he could feel beyond Rahil’s flesh to something deeper. “Which is preposterous, you know, unless, by chance, you’re not human.”
Merc swallowed so slowly that Rahil would have missed it if he wasn’t staring. “Why would you say that?”
“You canmakeholy silver, for one. Not a lot of people know that its creation is more than a strongly-guarded secret. You need a specialtouchfor it, one found originally in a few places across Europe, a number of African tribes, and the Aboriginal people,” Rahil explained. Merc’s brow lifted and his mouth opened, but Rahil caught him before he could ask the question, a little smirk on his lips as he said, “I’ve been a vampire for more of my life than I haven’t. I’ve learned things. And I’ve been staring at you for too many hours not to see the effect you have on your creations. It’s almost as humbling as the effect you have on me.”
Merc swallowed a second time, his strong neck undulating, but he held Rahil’s gaze, and Rahil held it right back. When Merc breathed out, he seemed to relax. “I’m what often gets called a fairy or fae, in Western cultures.”
Rahil hadn’t been quite sure that was the right term for them, but it made sense. “One of the more privileged nonhumans.”
“Iamlucky enough to be from a lineage that, in recent years, has been ignored by a lot of the cruelty that targets vampires and werewolves, but it hasn’t always been like this,” Merc said. “Do you know why it’s calledholysilver? Because the Catholic Church of the Dark Ages produced it, back when vampires were half myth, and all myths were half real. Fairies were the only ones who could make it, and we did not make it because we wanted to. We fought the stealing of our children and the indoctrination and the bondage until the industrial revolution, and then…” He shook his head. “Our perceived freedom has come at the cost of my ancestors assimilating until our sense of community and culture has been all but extinguished. I’m what some people call a last generation.”
Rahil could hear the pain in Merc’s voice, and he knew—even if it wasn’t his own story—that it was real, and deep, and traumatizing, because the story of his own ancestors was only so different; the same worn trope packaged in a new plot. He knew what alast generationmeant, too, but only from a long life of picking up rumors of nonhumans wherever he could. “Your genetics are so mixed that your biological children with a human would no longer be fae.”
Merc shot Rahil a scowl, like the warning pin of a cat’s ears. “All my children wouldalwaysbe fae, because they’remine.”
“Of course. You know far more of this than I do,” Rahil conceded.
Merc’s anger dwindled out with a sigh. “You’re not entirely wrong, though. Biological children of last generation fae don’t have the same capacity for minor material alteration—that being what we call the spark, and humans once called magic, though we now know it’s no more magical than a vampire’s transformation. Occasionally, their inability to access the spark… harms them; causes fatigue, heart palpitations, seizures, and eventually neuropathy and organ failure. For most of history, the more severe cases of it have been fatal.” He twisted his pen around in one hand as he spoke, clicking the point in and out in rapid succession. With a shaky inhale, he shook his head. “Why am I telling you all this?”
“Because I’m a good listener?” Despite the teasing edge to his words, Rahil spoke gently—Merc certainly seemed to need it. And Rahil didn’t blame him. He knew what it was like to watch his children suffer in ways he could do little about, and if he had known to expect that going into parenthood, he wasn’t sure he would have chosen that path. He still wasn’t sure he deserved to have survived it.
Merc broke the layers of tension with a snort. “It’s certainly better than your flirting.”
