To heal a Rogue

JOHANN

I sat with my head in my hands longer than I wanted to admit, running the whole night back through my mind like I could somehow edit it into something cleaner.

Maybe Sterling had been right. Rogues didn’t stand for anything larger than their own skins, and I’d bet the entire evening on men who folded the second the plan required an ounce of sacrifice from anyone but me. There wasn’t much I could do about it now except sit here and hope the whole mess didn’t collapse on my head before morning.

The second phone buzzed against the desk, and I ignored it. It buzzed again a minute later, and I ignored that too. By the third time, I gave in and snatched it up.

"Hello," I said. "What do you want? I happen to be fairly busy right now."

"When do we get the gift of the bite?"

I closed my eyes. "Goddess. You people are insufferable. The day isn’t even finished yet."

That set him off.

"We killed for you," he snapped. "We sacrificed one of our own for this cause. If you think for one second you can play us, you’ve got another thing coming. We’ll tell the whole Kingdom exactly what kind of man you are. Don’t test us."

Something cold slid down my spine at that.

"Calm down," I said, working to keep my voice level. "You’ll get it. You’ll get it. I promise."

"We’re past mutual understanding and respect now," he said. "Give us the bite by tomorrow, or we start singing like canaries."

The line went dead before I could answer.

I swore under my breath and threw the phone onto the desk, hard enough that it skidded and nearly went off the edge. My hands weren’t steady when I picked up the other one and dialed my mother.

She answered on the second ring.

"How did it go," she said. "Was it a success? I have been trying to reach out to Sterling but that bastard wouldn’t pick."

"It might have been." I dragged a hand down my face. "Lysander was shot. Should have bled out in front of the entire court. Except that girl turns out to be a healer. A god-damned healer, Mother. What am I even supposed to do with that? His entire rule is going to look blessed now instead of cursed. And it doesn’t help that the rogues have started threatening me directly."

Silence stretched long enough that I thought the call had dropped.

"A healer," she said finally. "What girl? What girl are you talking about?"

"The one everyone blamed for father’s murder."

More silence. I could practically hear her rearranging everything she thought she knew.

"Don’t worry about the rogues," she said. "I’ll handle them."

"There’s something else too," I said. "The rogue who attacked Lysander tonight. He was arrested. Not killed, like I expected. What if he talks?"

"What the fuck, Johann." Her voice cracked sharp through the phone, sharper than I’d heard from her in years. "That’s fucked. I expected better than this from you. You were supposed to think through every way this could go wrong. Why didn’t you?"

"Don’t put this on me right now," I said, my own voice climbing to match hers. "You kept secrets from me my entire life. So tell me something, Mother. You said it yourself, if I don’t take that throne, I die a slow, agonizing death the day I hit a certain age. Do you know when that is?"

She didn’t answer.

"Next week," I said. "It’s next week, Mother. I’m afraid. Of course I wasn’t thinking clearly tonight. Sue me for it."

Something in her seemed to crumble on the other end.

"Baby," she said, quieter now. "I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I’m your mother. I only ever wanted the best for you." A pause followed, and I heard something wet catch in her throat before she pushed past it. "Don’t worry about any of it. I’ll handle most of this myself. I promise you that."

"But aren’t you sick," I said. "Aren’t you supposed to be resting, not cleaning up after my mistakes?"

"I’ve been sick for a long time now, Johann," she said. "I’ll be fine."

I didn’t believe her. I wasn’t sure she believed herself either. But I let the silence hang there anyway, both of us pretending the lie was solid enough to stand on, because neither of us had anything better to offer the other tonight.

***

BONNIE

"About the night children thing," Lysander said into the dark. "What my uncle told you. I figured it out."

I turned my head toward him. "What is it?"

"It’s the one secret I’ll have to keep from you," he said. "I’m sorry."

"You could’ve just kept quiet about it entirely," I said. "Not even mentioned it existed. Then I wouldn’t have cared. Now for some reason, it will be on my mind."

"Yikes. Part of why I brought it up was because I didn’t want it sitting on your mind," he said.

He then shifted in the chair again, and the old wood groaned under him.

"Is it uncomfortable?" I asked.

"I’m sure it’ll do wonders for my spine."

The thought crossed my mind before I could stop it, and I hated that it did, hated it the way you hate a splinter you can feel but can’t quite reach.

"You should come back to the bed," I said.

His eyes opened. "Really?"

"As long as you’re not weird about it."

He was up and crossing the room before I’d finished the sentence, and I pulled a pillow from behind my head and set it down the middle of the mattress like a wall that actually meant something.

"Do not cross this line," I said.

"I’m not exactly the calmest sleeper," he said, settling in on his side of it.

"I knew you’d make me regret this somehow."

"Okay. Okay. I’m sorry."

He tugged his side of the duvet up, and I turned onto my other side so I wouldn’t have to look at him while I tried to fall asleep. I could feel him watching anyway. I didn’t need to see it to know.

"It’ll be very hard for me to sleep," I said, "if you keep staring at me like I’m prey. Turn the other way."

"Sorry."

I heard the rustle of him shifting, and when I glanced back, barely, but just enough to check, he actually had turned, his back to me now, shoulders rising and falling slow.

Something close to a laugh caught in my throat before I swallowed it down.

I faced forward again, closed my eyes, and waited for sleep to find me, which, given everything the day had thrown at me, felt like asking for entirely too much.

***

The dark behind my eyes dissolved without warning.

I was standing in a room I didn’t recognize, and Lysander was already there, which was the only orientation I needed. Just him, close enough that the warmth of him reached me before he did, his eyes already doing that thing where they saw too much.

He crossed to me and I didn’t move back.

His hands found my face the way hands found things they had been reaching for a long time, both palms warm against my jaw, and he looked at me for one long moment before he kissed me. There was nothing tentative in it. His mouth moved against mine like a decision already made, and I felt myself open to it before I had time to form a position on the matter, my hands finding his chest, the lapels of his jacket, something to grip.

He kissed me until my lips were swollen with it. Until I was making sounds into his mouth that I wouldn’t have recognized as myself in daylight.

When he pulled back it was only enough to breathe.

His hands moved to my throat, my collarbone, tracing the line of me with a deliberateness that felt like inventory. Like he was accounting for every inch. I reached for his jacket and he let me push it off his shoulders. His shirt followed and I pressed my palms to his chest and felt the difference again, that specific quality underneath the warmth, the body that had decided to be solid as a courtesy, and it should have been strange and it wasn’t.

He walked me back until my knees hit something and then I was down and he was over me, his mouth finding my neck, the spot below my ear, the curve of my shoulder where he had bitten me before. I felt the ghost of that bite move through me all over again and my spine lifted off the mattress.

His hands worked my clothes away without rushing any of it. He kissed each thing he uncovered, my collarbone, my sternum, the soft skin of my ribs. By the time his mouth closed over my breast I was already past managing what sounds I made. He sucked hard and I arched into him, my hand pressing the back of his head, keeping him there, and when he moved to my other breast and his fingers replaced his mouth on the first, the dual sensation scattered every coherent thought I had been attempting.

He looked up at me.

Those impossible green eyes, the gold bleeding in at the edges, fixed on my face.

"More?" he said.

"Yes." There was no hesitation. None.

He moved lower.

He kissed down my stomach and I felt every single one, a slow deliberate trail that built anticipation until I was trembling before he even arrived. When he finally put his mouth on me I stopped trying to be quiet. His tongue worked in strokes that built on each other, finding the precise rhythm my body gave itself away to, and my thighs closed around his head and my hand went to his hair and pressed him down and I heard myself say his name in a register I didn’t use in ordinary life.

He took his time. That was what undid me. The patience of it, the complete unhurried focus, like he had nowhere else to be and no interest in being there. I rode his face without shame and the pleasure coiled tighter and tighter until it had nowhere left to go.

I came with my hand pressed over my own mouth, my whole body seized and flooding, and he worked me through every wave of it until I was shaking and oversensitive and pulling at his hair to bring him back up.

He came back up and kissed me. I tasted myself on his tongue and kissed him back harder.

My hand found him between us, hard and wanting, and I wrapped my fingers around him and stroked once and felt his whole body respond, the sharp exhale, his hips pressing forward. I worked him slowly and his mouth found my ear and his breath against it made every hair on my body stand up.

I got my lips to his jaw.

"I need you inside me," I said. "Now."

He took my leg and lifted it over his shoulder in one smooth movement and pressed into me.

The stretch was complete and extraordinary and we both went still for a breath. Before he continued moving. The rhythm he set was not gentle and the headboard registered its objection loudly and continuously and I didn’t care. I held onto him and took every stroke and the sounds coming out of me were past managing. His mouth found my throat, my breast, my jaw. His thumb worked my clit in tight circles and I felt myself climbing again, impossibly fast.

When his lips dropped to my throat, that was when I realized this was a dream. I was having a sex dream about Lysander.

The thought however did not stay for long because the second that registered, his fangs broke through.

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