They all looked to the Queen.
“I believe it would be prudent to have you on hand,” she pronounced after a moment.
Perian was glad, even if he knew this wasn’t being permitted for him. He’d want the doctor close by if something happened to any of the people that Perian was… feeding from.
Nothing had ever gone wrong before, as far as he knew, but he hadn’t known he was doing it. Had it all been luck? Or was this something that he really could do instinctively, and it wouldn’t matter that he now knew about it and was way more nervous than he’d been before?
Everything was different now.
“Cormal will retrieve you when it is time,” the Queen decreed. “Larenia, it is time to leave. Now.”
Renny gave Perian another hug, but she finally allowed Cormal to open the door so that she could step out of the prison that Perian was trappedin.
And then he was alone again, staring down at the blankets he was wrapped in and wondering how this had become his life.
Well, it had always been his life, apparently, but he hadn’t known it. He’d thought it would be a little more difficult for Brannal to just… stop everything with Perian, but maybe that was just him being silly. He seemed to have known what Perian was, but maybe he hadn’treallythought about it. Maybe he hadn’t been one hundred percent certain. Only now everyone knew, now Perian had killed someone, and that appeared to be too much for Summus to handle.
How did it look, if Summus of the Mage Warriors had a carnalion for a lover?
Perian huffed to himself. It was like the plot of a bad novel, really. He could only imagine how other people were going to react. The position meant so much to Brannal, and of course he wanted to preserve it. Perian had just… hoped.
He managed, finally, to doze, though it was fitful and frequently interrupted. But he wasn’t used to sleeping on a pallet on the ground, and it was drafty in the dungeon, although the blankets helped. He was pretty sure these were not the standard blankets you got when you were in the dungeon.
But the blankets didn’t make up for the absence ofpeople, and Perian buried his face in his pillow and cried the tears that he hadn’t allowed himself to cry before. Because Brannal wouldn’t look at him, and Molun and Arvus must be so upset with him, and Cormal looked at him like he really did want to plunge his sword into his heart, and Perian… he still felt like Perian, it was just that his life had been utterly turned upside down.
He wasa carnalion. He was going to try to suck in a whole bunch of desire from he didn’t knowwhoBrannal could possibly convince to do this, and then he was going to try to bring Kee back from he didn’t even know what state.
It was probably a terrible idea, except… there didn’t seem to be anything else hecoulddo. His execution had been stayed, but he didn’t know for how long.
He supposed he could have tried to bargain or something, but that just felt dirty. He was helping Kee and Renny because he cared about them.
Was everyone wrong about carnalions? Were they all like Perian, misunderstood and struck down without question? Was Perian different for some reason? Was it because he’d been raised by his father instead of his, uh, carnalion parents?
Fire and water, his father wasn’t even his father, was he? That struck a blow that Perian felt pang through his heart. But he couldn’t be, could he, if Perian was a carnalion?Unless… could he have been one, too? But even as Perian had the thought, he was rejecting it. It felt like instinct, possibly those instincts Perian hadn’t known existed before. His father had been a handsome enough man, but he hadn’t had the attractive allure that they were taught that carnalions always had. ThatPerianhad.
No, everything in him told him that the man who’d raised him hadn’t been a carnalion, and that meant he wasn’t Perian’s father at all. How had he wound up with Perian? Based on the house of pleasure that he’d brought Perian to, the secluded estate that he’d set up, Perian was sure he’d known. But how? Why?
It was something Perian could never ask, because he was all alone in the world.
It had been so nice to have friends, to have a place that he felt like he belonged, even if he hadn’t figured out exactly what he was going to do.
Was that why he’d felt so awkward, because his body thought there was something he should be doing, but he hadn’t known how to do it?
Had it been right there on the edge of his understanding all this time, and he’d just been too stupid to see it?
Eyes closed to block out the dungeon, unable to sleep because he might be exhausted but his life was a shambles, Perian couldn’t help but conclude that obviously, he was an idiot. The more of his life that he reviewed, the more obvious it became that something was entirely wrong. How had he not asked more questions before the truth had slapped him across the face?
Almost literally.
The more he thought about it, the more clues there were, things that hadn’t entirely made sense that he hadn’t thought about before, because it was simply his life, and he hadn’t known any different.
How much he loved sex, and how it had felt when people got off around him. How his father had brought him to a safe place where he could have as much sex as he wanted. How his father had talked to him about demons and told him that carnalions were misunderstood. How Brannal had reacted to him, how he’d worked to keep Perianfed. He wasn’t sure which was worse: the idea that he really had seduced the other man against his will in some way and now it was wearing off, or the idea that he’d been aware of what Perian was and had been taking pains during their entire relationship to ensure Perian didn’t get out of control and hurtsomeone.
You wouldn’t want a starving carnalion in the castle, would you? But if you made sure that it had regular sex, even when you were gone, that there was someone that it could go to… well, that had to reduce the chances of anything going wrong, didn’t it?
Perian cried until he had no tears left to shed, until his face felt tight and puffy, no doubt not helped by the various blows it had received in the last few days.
He finally cried himself out, and he remembered to drink some water. He even managed to choke down a little bit of the bread and now cold soup that had been left for him at some point. He assumed that normal food was still necessary.
