At least.
Mercer checked the locks on his doors anyway, before returning to the shed to find Rahil hanging right where he’d left him. That was when the relief finally came, little and late, but the sight of someone whowasn’tout to get him helped somehow. And Rahilwasquite a sight.
His luscious hair curtained the sides of his slender jaw and his long neck before draping down his back, so silky that Mercer felt a tingle in his calloused hands at the thought of touching it. Every part of Rahil looked just as soft and lovely, from the exposed line of his slim shoulder down the long length of his torso. Even his fingers were delicate little things, like they were meant to be gently caressed and squeezed, his fingertips kissed.
Mercer banished the thoughts with a jolt of something very much like shame.
You won’t go to hell for thinking vaguely sensually about a consenting adult, he told himself, but as much as the knowledge was there, he couldn’t seem to fully internalize it. He’d worked through his bisexuality with tears and stress and a temporary denial of everything he’d once believed, but this odd impulse lingered, kept around by the idea that no one should have to worry about just how they were being ferried through someone else’s mind.
Not that Mercer cared if Rahil was ferrying images ofhisnaked body—he might as well, since it was the only sensual part of Mercer that he, or anyone else, was going to get.
“How are your fingers?” Mercer asked, still awkwardly holding the butcher knife. He had been intending to leave the vampire up there and out of the way until he was finished working—or it was dark enough for Rahil to leave—but he didn’t want him to suffer.
Rahil seemed oblivious to the numbness he’d announced earlier, though. His expression, Mercer noticed, was still layered in the fear he’d displayed upon William’s arrival, even now that the man was gone. Rahil swallowed once, curling his hand open and shut. His bound wrist twisted. “You make… holy silver.”
Oh, that would do it. He must have heard everything. “Not anymore. Never again.” Mercer finally set the knife back down, leaning against the counter. “It was… complicated.”
Rahil gave the tiniest snort, flicking his head in a way that made his hair flutter. “Yeah, making weapons that specifically hurt a marginalized community sounds really complicated indeed.”
“It wasn’t like that.” Mercer frowned. “I had a reason.”
“Do tell it, then?” Rahil drew back his lips, his fangs on full display. “You have a captive audience.”
Mercer’s expression deepened into a proper scowl. Why did he feel suddenly like the bad guy here? Hewasn’tthe bad guy. His stomach hurt again, and he had the creeping sensation of someone behind him so strongly that he had to remind himself not to turn around. He watched Rahil, and just Rahil, focusing on the pinch of his nose and the points of his fangs. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”
“Is that so?” Rahil snapped. “Can you be sure the metalyoucreated never burnedme?”
That made Mercer’s nausea churn all the worse. He drew a breath and let it out. If he was not the bad guy here, then he had the responsibility not toactlike one. “You’re right, Ican’tbe sure,” he admitted. “The holy silver I made has been used by others to harm a great many innocent people. And I regret that deeply. At the time, I genuinely believed that what I was doing was a net good for the world. Now I know otherwise, and I will never go back.” He dragged his gaze to meet Rahil’s. “Can you trust that, at least?”
Rahil stared at him, and the longer their eyes held, the more the vampire’s resolve seemed to weaken. Finally, he shrugged, looking away. “If you say you’re not in that business anymore, then you’re not.” His lips quirked weakly, and despite the expression still exposing the full length of one of his fangs, there was something soft, almost precious, about it. “Besides, you don’t have to worry whether your holy silver ever hurt me. I’m immune.”
Mercer swore he hadn’t heard the vampire right. “You’re what?” He leaned forward as he said it, staring at Rahil as if those long lashes and brilliant hazel eyes would tell him he was wrong.
But Rahil only smiled wider. “Holy silver doesn’t burn me.”
“Impossible.”
“Improbable, you mean.” Rahil waggled his fine, dark brows.
Mercer crossed his arms. “How does your body do it, if you’re so convinced…?”
“Who knows. I may be a hot commodity, but I’m not a lab rat. Do you still have some of the silver?”
Mercer’s heart skipped, his instincts telling him this had to be some sort of trap, but no, Rahil seemed casually arrogant still. “A few pieces of the final batch, perhaps.”
Rahil outright smirked. “Then do your worst, torturer.”
Something about this felt like a trap all the same, but Mercer was intrigued now. This vampire had ensnared himself in Mercer’s shed, and seemingly accepted the sins of Mercer’s past, only to claim that this mythical, precarious alloy—the one thing no one else in the region could make—was useless on him. Mercer had to see it for himself.
He had to feel it.
Slowly, like he could take this all back at any moment, he drew out his set of physical keys. He could feel Rahil’s eyes on him as he knelt beside the tool counter, quietly unlocking the large bottom drawer of its lower metal cabinet. The power of the holy silver thrummed against his skin, not destructive—not to him—but clearly emanating its vampire-burning rays.
The pieces he’d kept came in a variety of styles: a few weapons he’d meant to melt down at some point, chains of various thicknesses, a few charms, a ring, and a couple slabs he’d never gotten around to shaping before he’d given up the endeavor. Mercer withdrew the smallest charm, holding it by its cord.
Rahil didn’t react, even as Mercer stood and lifted it between them.
Odd. Mercer caught it between his fingertips, cautiously moving it towards the vampire’s face.
