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The noises he’s making resolve into words, and when Arsene bends to hear them they chill him to the bone.
“I’m lost,” Nur gasps. “Burning. Dying. They’ve fled without me. Left me to suffer. So alone. Help me, help, help, help!”
His limbs shift restlessly. Is he seeing the future, or the past? Arsene tries to shake him awake again, but Nur whines and rolls away from him.
“Hurts. It hurts. I’m burning up.”
“Shh, now. It’s not real.” He kicks off his boots and kneels, feeling helpless. Damn it, he’s not cut out for this.
Nur begins to shiver, clawing at his own arms. Another wave of fear and revulsion hit Arsene. He swallows against the churn of his stomach. His primus instincts roar in his chest. He should leave and spare Nur the embarrassment of being found like this, but he can’t.
He lies down and wraps his arms tightly around Nur so he can’t hurt himself. The old pendant digs into his breastbone. Nurstruggles weakly and his distress projects like a beacon across the bond, sending Arsene’s heartbeat thudding all over the place. Even in the fight he wasn’t afraid like this. He pulls Nur’s shuddering form closer, and slowly the nightmare subsides.
Nur’s twitching and murmuring quiets. Arsene breathes deeply, trying to calm his own body.
“It’s just a dream,” he whispers again, stroking Nur’s chest with his thumb.
Nur’s breathing changes. He shifts in Arsene’s arms, not with distress this time, but waking. Arsene loosens his hold and Nur turns around awkwardly, rolling them both in the blankets.
“Not just a dream,” Nur mutters, his voice hoarse.
Arsene waits to be dismissed from his bed, but Nur only buries his face in Arsene’s chest. A fearful bloom of hot need opens in the cavity of his ribs.
“A premonition?” he wonders. Nur’s cheek is pressed into his heartbeat.
“No,” Nur says shortly. “A memory.”
Ah.
He puts his arms around Nur again, tentatively. Then, to his dismay, he feels hot tears soaking his shirt. Nur starts to shake again, minutely, his claws digging into Arsene’s sides.
“A memory of what?” Arsene says quietly. “Of him? The King?”
Nur chokes on a bitter laugh, squeezing Arsene’s ribs painfully. “No, angel. It’s a memory I’ve always had. Of burning and burning until I’m nothing but a shadow. Empty. A vessel for the King to fill with this cursed addiction.”
Arsene fumbles to drag Nur close again, entangling their limbs. The tang of tears on his tongue makes his primus howl, bereft. “I’m sorry.”
“And when he’d finished with me, he sent me away like I was nothing,” Nur mumbles into his chest.
A spark of anger shivers down his spine. “But you’re free of him.”
“You never wanted me, either. You wanted a real vergis.”
Arsene shudders.
He longs to deny it, so badly it burns his tongue. He wants to lay the truth at Nur’s feet, the need in him, the pull he’s felt since the day they met. But he can’t.
Soon their journeys will diverge. Where he would have once been relieved, now the knowledge stings cruelly. So he remains silent.
Instead of speaking, he holds Nur tightly as he can. The hollow clutches him and spills his ugly hurt into the cavity behind Arsene’s ribs, filling all the cracks until Arsene is consumed by him, until Nur’s sorrow is his own and his is nothing.
Chapter 25
NUR
Nur isunsurprised to experience raw humiliation when Arsene appears out of nowhere the next morning to ask if he needs help packing his tent.
“Definitely not,” he snaps, shaking the canvas a little too vigorously.
