The Forbidden Section #20

Akira would have liked to say he did something spectacularly and unprecedentedly powerful in the blur that followed. Maybe came into a magical inheritance he didn’t know he had even. As it was, he blinked at the stranger – not Eiran, not Eiran, not Eiran – preoccupied with a quiet airless ‘oh’ and putting a hand to his stomach.

Apparently, being stabbed hurt a lot more than duelling practice.

He sank down the tree as his knees embarrassingly buckled beneath him.

The stranger stood over him, panting, the knife still clutched in one hand. It was slick with blood. Akira’s blood. He sliced into the tree above Akira’s head and it took Akira a second to realise the bastard was carving out ritual markings.

And Akira, well, even hazy he recognised them. He was the goddamn motherfucking expert on blood rituals, even if he was apparently a bit shit at getting stabbed.

The stranger not-stranger was planning to mind control him. Even through the pain and the blood leaking past his fingers, Akira made a sound that could probably only be called indignant. It was the kind of mind control designed for magical creatures, beasts and things generally considered lesser. He didn’t know if that was a deliberate insult if this idiot simply didn’t know his blood rituals, which was almost more offensive given the circumstances. If someone was going to do dark magic on him, he’d think they’d at least have the decency to do it properly.

So, no, he didn’t come out with any great magical attack but he did kick the fucker where it hurt. Hard enough that the stranger staggered back from the tree. Hard enough that the ritual markings went wrong with a slice off in the wrong direction. Then Akira had dropped a hand to his warpkey back to Shadow Haven and vanished.

He landed on the front step with another gasp of agony, feeling a bone break at the clumsy landing. Black spots popped in his vision. He tried to summon some sanity to maybe cry for help, but his tongue felt thick and it was all he could do not to pass out right that second.

He decided to lay on the step, in the quickly cold-growing haze of it all, even as a small part of his brain kindly pointed out that he was dying and should probably do something anything move now.

Really, though. Who stabbed someone in the gut and then did a mind-control ritual? It wasn’t even a necromancy ritual intended to take over Akira’s corpse. He’d just be dead with no brain to follow orders. Bloody insulting. Unless the stranger had planned to heal him? In which case Akira was only dying because he ran away because no thank you on being a mindless meat slab sleeper agent. That would be a twist of fate.

He was distantly aware that he could feel Eiran’s magic more than before. He wasn’t sure if he was shaking or if the ground was rattling beneath him like it had done that time Eiran truly and properly lost his temper.

Eiran, he was sure, wouldn’t have messed up an enslavement ritual. Eiran was competent.

“Stay with me. Akira, for the – stay with me.”

There were hands desperate on his pulse, clamping painfully to put pressure on his stomach.

When Akira regained consciousness, he was laying in an unfamiliar bed and dizzy with either blood loss or the way that the Dark Lord’s magic was boiling. He suspected the latter, because for being stabbed, he felt really quite remarkably good.

He watched Eiran pace on the other side of the room, his hair a wild mess from where he’d combed his fingers through it. The man’s expression was murderous.. It was more endearing than it should have been, so it was possibly a more accurate assessment that Akira was on the remarkably good healing potions. Their eyes met and Eiran stopped dead. He all but teleported to Akira’s side the second he realised he was awake.

“Where am I?”

“Where-“ Eiran’s teeth ground together. “What happened?”

Akira glanced around the room with some curiosity. “Am I in your bedroom?”

“Akira. Please.”

“If you wanted me in your bed,” Akira snickered, “you could have just said.”

Eiran closed his eyes, and Akira decided that maybe the new game was ‘if I had the patience of a saint.’ He blew out a steadying breath. “Yes,” he said. “You’re in my bedroom. I’ve given you healing potions – you’re going to be alright.”

“It smells like you.”

Something flickered across Eiran’s face, not quite amusement, but – something. Relief, perhaps. Oxygen-less, all-consuming relief.

“You were stabbed. Can you tell me what happened? You were at the Quinfell manor, yes?”

“It’s nice.”

“Being stabbed?”

“The bed.” Akira snuggled a little further into the sheets, only to wince as a stab of pain went through him. Moving. Not as jazzy fun. “I’ve never been in your bedroom before. You said it’s off limits.”

“You’re hallucinating it. It’s a fever dream from the spectacular healing potions you’re very lucky I stock.”

Akira giggled, both at the deadpan and because yeah, he could tell. They really were very excellent. He’d never felt so…floaty.

Eiran sighed, not quite softening, but at least sitting on the edge of the really quite enormous bed. His fingers slid into Akira’s hair, stroking it back from his slightly clammy forehead.

“Tell me who hurt you.”

“So you can run off and hurt them?”

Eiran’s grip tightened, reflexively. “They deserve to be hurt very, very badly for hurting you.”

“But what if I want to watch? You’re not incompetent.”

“I can torture them long enough for you to recover before they die.”

Akira considered that not unreasonable argument with due seriousness, peering blearily up at the Dark Lord.

“Nah. No deal.”

“Akira.”

Akira giggled to himself again at the peak rage on Eiran’s face, perfectly complimented by his churning dangerous magic and the fact he did seem to quite sincerely want to slaughter someone, all masks of being anything other than himself dropped. And yet, there he was, sitting at Akira’s bedside. Akira felt like god. Maybe he’d died and ascended.

“I like this,” he said. “I could tell you that you have to kiss me for info. Or, oh, bring me pancakes in your bed!”

“That’s not usually how I interrogate people.”

“What,” Akira laughed harder, only to end up spasming in pain and suddenly very much not wanting to laugh at all. The colour drained from his face and Eiran’s hands were there, holding him steady, holding him a little too tight. He felt, suddenly, exhausted. A marionette with cut strings. “What,” Akira managed to finish, hoarsely, a bit more drained, “you gonna stab me?”

He could feel an annoying prickle of tears in his eyes.

Eiran’s magic couldn’t hide its spikes and punches, the way the rest of it coiled possessively around Akira like a human shield. It enveloped him on every side like Eiran’s black bed sheets that still smelled like him, and Eiran’s room which was more ordinary a bedroom than Akira had expected.

The Dark looked so, so furious. Maybe Akira should have been scared.

“Are you protecting someone?” the Dark Lord asked, voice a low growl. “Because if you think for a second-”

“I don’t know who it was.”

Eiran stopped.

Akira looked away, trying to find the thin protective coating of the healing potion, but the memories and the pain clawed a little too close to his brain. A little too unhealed. He pressed on.

“They said ‘long live the Dark Lord’. They were going to do the Sanguis Servus.”

All the lights in the building blew out.

It startled Akira’s gaze back.

In the shadows, Eiran pulled in long, careful breaths. He must have squeezed his eyes shut, trying to reign himself back, because when his eyes opened they shone like small suns with all the magic pooled in the iris, ready to tear cities apart.

He was utterly breath-taking.

There was a long, long silence. Then, perhaps Akira really was hallucinating, because Eiran shifted so he was no longer sitting down but laying down on the bed next to Akira. On top of the covers, jaw clenched like he wanted to rip someone’s throat out with his bare teeth, but still.

“…What are you doing?”

“You’re in my bed,” Eiran said. “It’s four in the morning and you’re clearly not in much of a position to talk about it off your head on healing potions.”

“How dare you, I know the Sanguis Servus when I see it.”

Eiran shot him a look. Akira couldn’t read it.

“You’ll be fully healed by morning,” Eiran said. “You’ll tell me what happened then.”

By morning. “Bloody hell, did you sacrifice a unicorn to save me, or something obscene?” Eiran really had pulled out all stops on the good stuff hadn’t he?

“Try and get some rest.”

“Did you think I was going to die on your door step?”

“Akira.”

“It would have been great for your wards. My noble sacrifice would not have been wasted.”

“Did you want me to stay or not?”

Akira…stopped talking. It struck him that obviously Eiran wasn’t actually just lying on the bed because it was some unearthly hour of the morning. The Dark Lord, as much as Akira had ever seen him, looked deeply uncomfortable.

Yet. There he was. An inch or two closer, and no sheets between them, and it could even constitute cuddling.

Akira shifted (gingerly, gingerly) nearer so he could curl against Eiran’s side. He’d blame that on the healing potions too. Eiran hesitated, before wrapping (gingerly, gingerly) an arm around him, careful not to jostle.

“Get some rest,” Eiran said. “You’re going to be okay.”

Akira wanted to stay awake, to enjoy the closeness while he had it, to marvel, but...

Well. Eiran’s horrific, apocalyptic, beautiful magic whispered against his senses.

He was safe. He’d made it home. He was going to be okay.

The healing potions pulled him back under.