Chapter Six

How Long Can You Stay?

~*~

 

 

 

As Abrizhen stood staring into the space Kazia had just occupied, Tamyn came forward and wrapped his arms around him, burying his face in the crook of Abrizhen's neck with a heavy sigh.

All the tension of the past hour drained out of Abrizhen and he returned Tamyn's embrace, pulling him close and stroking the long hair down his back.

“How long can you stay?” Tamyn asked, his voice muffled.

“Maybe another hour,” Abrizhen answered.

A pitiful “mmm” was heard from Tamyn.

“Who was it who made me go back in the first place?” Abrizhen teased.

“I know,” Tamyn sighed. “I can regret it now, can't I?”

“Tam, what's wrong?” Abrizhen murmured. “Did something else happen?”

Tamyn lifted his face to lean his cheek against Abrizhen's.

“We're helping clean the University,” he said. “I was in the library today. Our corner has been ruined.”

Abrizhen gave a sympathetic sigh and tightened his arms around Tamyn.

“I hadn't been back there all these years. Seeing it like that...”

“It's alright,” Abrizhen said softly. “They'll rebuild it.”

“It won't be the same though.”

“No,” Abrizhen said thoughtfully. “It can't be the same.”

He pressed a kiss into Tamyn's hair.

“But maybe it can be better.”

Tamyn leaned back to look at Abrizhen.

“Are we both talking about the library?” he asked with a light smile.

“Are we?”

“I should just take you to Thalesia right now,” Tamyn said. “We'd technically already be married there, so the King would have to let you stay.”

Abrizhen leaned back in surprise.

“How's that?”

Tamyn looked up with a somber face.

“In Thalesia you don't have to have any ceremony if you choose not to. You can just live together, and you're married.” He glanced around the room. “We lived together here, didn't we? I'd have to argue it in court, but I could have my family throw their weight behind us.”

“Are you proposing to me?” Abrizhen asked with a cheeky grin.

“I know it's not the most romantic...”

“Are you kidding?” Abrizhen laughed. “You want to abduct me back to your homeland in order to save me? What could be more romantic?”

Tamyn's smile returned.

“But, we separated,” Abrizhen added. “Does that matter?”

“You had to go home for a while to settle your family business,” Tamyn said in a crafty, dissembling tone. “That's not separating.”

“You've had others in the meantime,” Abrizhen slyly reminded him.

“I'm an inconstant scoundrel,” Tamyn said dramatically. “Infidelity isn't a crime. Anymore.”

“You would tarnish your own reputation like that for me?”

“Yes.”

“It sounds as if you've really been thinking this through,” Abrizhen laughed.

“I have.”

“I thought you wanted time?”

Tamyn shrugged his shoulders.

“Ideally,” he said, “but really I just want you.”

He held Abrizhen tightly again, returning his face to Abrizhen's shoulder.

“I'm stupid and I just want you.”

Abrizhen nuzzled his face into Tamyn's hair.

“I don't want to run,” he said lowly. “I don't want to take you from your life here. I don't want to leave Kazia again. What I do want is to give you the time you need, then marry you properly, and buy one of those country houses on the edge of town where I can raise some horses, and you can portal to the castle for work, and we can have Kazia over for dinner, and I'll take her riding - or she can just come live with us...”

“That's a beautiful dream,” Tamyn sighed.

“Not a dream,” Abrizhen said firmly. “A goal. That's what I'll be working for now.”

Tamyn nodded against his shoulder.

“And you,” Abrizhen said, his voice low and beginning to take on a velvety darkness, “are not stupid.”

He gathered the hair hanging at Tamyn's waist in one hand and gently pulled it down. When Tamyn's head lifted and tilted back, he pressed a warm and lingering kiss on his throat before releasing his hair and tightening the circle of his arms again.

“You are perfect, and I love you.”

His lips landed softly on Tamyn's, and he kissed him slowly and tenderly. Moving a hand to Tamyn's face, he felt the skin of his cheek beginning to warm as it flushed.

“Let's not waste our hour mourning the past,” he whispered as he began to pull Tamyn toward the bed. “Let's start working on our future.”

Tamyn gazed at him deeply, allowing himself to be led, and nodded.

“Maybe it can be better.”

~~~*~~~

Since “the incident”, as the bombing of the University had been titled, the Valeskan Embassy had added a heavier guard and closed its doors to walk-in visitors. This resulted in a near heart attack for the poor receptionist when Yilina suddenly appeared from the air in front of her in the quiet lobby.

Yilina disregarded the panic-stricken woman, giving a cursory wave of the Seal of Devratha as she swept past toward the lifts.

“The Ambassador's Suite,” she ordered the operator.

“I'm sorry, Madame,” he replied with a shallow bow. “The Ambassador is not in tonight.”

Yilina fixed him with an icy glare. “Where is he?”

“Apologies, I was not told.”

“I'll see the Embassy Manager, then.”

“Yes, Madame.”

The operator pulled the rope, and as the lift rose, he nervously assessed this apparent Alchemist, unusually attired in trousers, tall boots, and a long coat, armed to the teeth and giving off a haughty aura of frosty menace.

He was glad that she seemed intent on ignoring him altogether. He brought the lift to a halt at the floor housing the main offices and opened the gate.

“Straight across the hall, Madame,” he said.

Yilina flew through the gate without a word to him, across the hall, and through the closed double doors into a sizable ante-room. There was no one about, the secretary having retired for the night already, so she charged directly into the Manager's office.

He looked up from his desk in alarm.

“Where is Lord Devratha?” Yilina demanded, flashing the seal again.

The man looked askance at her and stammered for a moment.

“May I ask your name, please?” he said, regaining his composure.

“Madame Yilina Vysda,” she snapped, showing him a sneer when he didn't seem to recognize her name. “An agent of Prince Devratha,” she added with some hostility.

“Ah! Lord Devratha... there is a restaurant in the city that he frequents.”

“Frequents?” Yilina repeated, raising an eyebrow.

“He... likes to drink there,” the Manager said, “quite frequently.”

Yilina gave an exasperated sigh.

“Of course he does,” she said. “Does he meet anyone there?”

“This, I don't know,” the Manger said. “You could wait here to see if he returns tonight.”

“If?”

“Sometimes he sleeps overnight at the restaurant's inn.”

Yilina's expression clouded in a way that sent a chill up the Manager's spine.

“Tomorrow, send any guards that have accompanied him and any staff who have left premises with him to Vaksim Castle to be interviewed. I'll send an Alchemist to take them by portal.

From here on his father will want a full accounting of his movements and contacts – discreetly. Lord Devratha shouldn't know that you're gathering this information, and report only to me. Understood?”

“This...”

“This is a family matter, not a matter of national security, so you needn't enter any formal record.”

She leaned over the Manager's desk, drawing her face frighteningly close to his.

“Can I count on your discretion? You wouldn't want to upset Prince Devratha.”

“I understand, Madame,” the Manager said nervously.

Yilina stood and began straightening her clothes roughly as she turned away, seeming to immediately forget the Manager's existence.

“That idiot,” she hissed just before disappearing upon reaching the office door.

 

~~~*~~~