Page 23 of Forge the Blade

He blinked slowly. “Master.”

“You went away, Rei. You went away.” Sevastyan’s eyes were bloodshot. His face was wet.

Rei moved his fingers, touching Sevastyan’s tears. More slipped from his master’s eyes, running through Rei’s fingers and trickling down their intertwined hands.

“I’m here.”

Sevastyan closed his eyes, his shoulders shaking.

Tears spilled onto Rei’s cheeks. His master shouldn’t cry for him. He had to make this better. He raised his other hand. “I’m here.” He looked at Lisa. His fellow slave’s eyes were wide and frightened. He had his arms wrapped around himself. No answers there. Rei tilted his head back, looking at Ellisandre.

Shadows. Ellisandre’s face was full of shadows. Doubts. Questions. Fear. They were all afraid. All focused on him.

“I didn’t go away.”

“You went cold,” Lisa said. He paused and glanced at Ellisandre.

Ellisandre swallowed. “You wouldn’t respond. Only Sevastyan got you back.”

Sevastyan. Ellisandre. Sevastyan.

Sickness filled Rei from his belly, rising towards his stomach. His hand flexed against Sevastyan’s face. He looked up at his master. Then reached for him. Sevastyan pulled Rei off the floor and into his lap, burying his face in Rei’s shoulder. “Don’t do that, precious boy.”

Rei gripped Sevastyan’s shirt. There were words. He needed to find words. And he wanted to stay here, straddling Sevastyan’s lap and feeling his warmth and his arms squeezed painfully against his battered ribs until the sun burned out in the sky.

“Master,” Rei whispered.

“Yes?” Sevastyan said.

Rei reached for something, something that only touch, only the strangeness of the room, the smell of cedar and apple cider seemed to make possible. Reached for something from a time before. Something that memory and tears, that years of promises could carry.

Tears. Like he’d seen on his master’s face as he changed burned bandages on his face. Tears like Sevastyan had cried leaning over him in that bathroom in Russia after that day.

He spoke in Mandarin, the first language they had ever shared. “Am I still yours?”

Sevastyan’s chest expanded and collapsed and filled again beneath Rei. “总是”

Zǒng shì. His master repeated the word in every language they shared. “언제나”, eonjena “いつも/Itsumo. Stets. Always.”

Rei stroked Sevastyan’s face with his fingers.

Sevastyan reached up, cradling the back of Rei’s head. “I’ve always been Ellisandre’s. As long as you’ve been mine.”

Rei’s lungs moved in and out. He was trying to form thoughts through the thunder in his mind. “Are you mine? Are they yours?”

“I’m yours, Rei. They are mine. I don’t know how to belong to you and to them. But I always have.”

“You don’t have to know how to exist,” Rei whispered. “You just exist.” Like inhabiting space. Like following Sevastyan into danger. Like strangling a man to death. Like watching Jun and Geun, and Yoihei and Jaewoong dancing with Su-jin for all the world to see via little glass screens. Knowing was unnecessary. You fixed yourself on what had to be and then you became.

“I thought I needed to leave,” Rei whispered. “But I had to stay. You need me to stay, and Jun needs me to stay. And I had to let you go. I tried to let go, to stay and let go.”

“No,” Sevastyan rasped. He pulled Rei closer, if that was even possible. He brought their foreheads together. The air smelled of salt and water. “Rei. Don’t let go. I only came here, I only found Ellisandre so you wouldn’t let go.”

Rei closed his eyes, leaning into the weight of Sevastyan’s body. Even reaching down into the deepest part of his submission, of his desire to give, he couldn’t find the will to release Sevastyan. He fisted Sevastyan’s long hair, letting the strands press against the wounds in his palms. “I am your slave, but you are my master.”

“Yes,” Sevastyan breathed.

The world returned to equilibrium. The thunder in his thoughts quieted. He didn’t know how to exist in this new state any more than Sevastyan did. But he didn’t have to. Not yet. Five years and nothing had changed their dynamic like Ellisandre since that day. But all he had to do here and now was breathe.