#erhys

Splayed across rich fabrics, the Autumn heiress moans beneath Azriel's touch. Against her scarred hands, the plush skin of Eris's thighs feels like something holy. A flush reddens her cheeks as Azriel strokes. Legs twitch against her. Sometimes she thinks that Eris might be her deliverance. An amber gaze meets hers, and burning eyes flash with a silent command. Imperious as a goddess, even now. How can she deny her this offering? She lays her lips upon that bud of supple flesh—warm enough to light a fire in Azriel's core—and like a starved acolyte, drinks of the divine.

Azris | Voyeur

In the privacy of his chambers, Eris slips out of his robe with careful precision, angling his nude body with intention. He selects, from the wood-carved wardrobe, a vial of fine amber oil. Reclining atop his bed, he dabs the oil on his fingertips and massages it into his skin. Foot to leg to inner thigh, he touches himself tenderly. Slowly. His back arches with arousal, and with an exaggerated sigh, he prepares to stroke himself. But first— "I know how you like to watch, Shadowsinger, but you can come out now," he croons. "If you care to join."

Erhys | Kneel

"You heard me," Eris says, arrogant voice burning with the authority of a high lord's heir. "Kneel." And though Rhys, an heir in his own right, could deny him with ease, he obliges. "Alright Vanserra," he smirks. "I'll play your game." Rhys teases at Eris's trousers, unlacing them with deft fingers. The evidence of his arousal strains against the fabric, hardens at Rhys's touch as he guides it free. Amusing, how he thinks he's in control, Rhys thinks with a grin as he slides his mouth around Eris's cock. Soon enough I’ll bring him to his knees, begging for more.

Erislain | Quiet

"We have to be quiet," Elain whispers as she pulls Eris into the storeroom. Quiet. Because this cliffside fortress that her sister calls home belongs, in every sense but name, to Rhysand. Because being caught in flagrante delicto during a Starfall celebration is a mortifying prospect for one as conscious of her image as Elain. Because she would not wish to be discovered with the likes of him. "You needn't worry about me, little rose," he condescends. "But mind yourself." She huffs, unimpressed—but reeking of arousal. It is this that leads Eris to decide: he will make her scream.

‘You have a knack for wandering,’ he says. And one for killing. He’d seen him earlier, tearing through the skies, a creature bearing tremendous fury and spiteful violence. Rhysand fights like he loves and hates. ‘I believe your tents are on the other side of the valley.’

He shrugs, hands tucked into the pockets of his leathers, strapped tight to his body like they were molded to him. ‘Then I’m in the right place.’

Eris is not in the mood for this. On this night, where it was his strategy that brought them the win, he thinks the Mother could afford him some peace. Certainly, he is not wont to entertain someone, nor to speak of Mor.

‘If you mean to talk of plans from here—’

‘I don’t.’

‘Then if you’re here to berate me—’

‘I’m not.’

A foul indignation overcomes him. He yanks at the tie in his hair, pulling at tangled strands curling into waves. ‘Has the battle turned you stupid? Do strings of words of length frighten you?’ He expects a smile, wry or amused, but it doesn’t come; he is only staring, his jaw tight, watching him carefully.

‘My father is sending me to the Middle tomorrow. To Amarantha’s front.’

Eris, scowling, flings his hair tie to his bed, a torrid contraption of slats which hurt his back, and sits. He starts to work the buckles of his armour undone.

‘Then he wants you dead,’ he tells him. ‘And he wants you to suffer.’

A pause seems to go through Rhys. Eris’ breastplate loosens, leaving him in a sweat-stained undershirt—and perhaps if Rhysand was not used to war, he would consider the sight undignified—so he starts on his greaves, boots, every sheet of silver he wears. The relief is instant. Weight lifted. But there is something heavy here under the tent canvas.

‘I was afraid you would say that.’

Eris eyes him, his hand stilled on a stubborn tie at his bracers. ‘I hope it is no shock to you.’ Strong heirs mean worried fathers and paranoid High Lords, seeking to step on them now. It’s simple logic to stay pliable. To hide the nature of the power within them, to conceal the threat without telling mistruths. He knows Rhysand has the cunning for it, but he is arrogant, Eris has heard from his very mouth a thousand times the proof, and confidence breeds failure. Impatience brings mistakes. Mistakes either in adolescence or adulthood spell corrections given, or death. The ideations of fathers are no mystery to him now.

Rhysand leans against the desk, which creaks against the strain of him, and says, ‘I think I just needed someone else to say it.’

‘Oh—’ the tie finally comes undone and the bracer falls to the bed—‘and I’ve been given the gracious pleasure of stating the obvious to you. I feel so grateful. Let me get down on my knees and play supplicant, shall I? To what do I owe this greatest honour of enlightening your eminence?’ He throws the bracer to the corner of the room, then his greaves and the rest, letting them crash together, knowing he’ll need them reforged anyway.

This too elicits no grin, nor even a narrowing of the eyes or a grimacing curl of a lip. Just: ‘I think you are the only person here I trust not to be licking his boots, and we were friends once.’

Now that does make him laugh. Bitter and honest. ‘You and yours have made it very clear that we are not friends, Rhysand.’ After Mor, how can they be?

‘Perhaps it was simpler when we were children.’

It was not. For neither of them was being a boy an easily done thing, and the lie would be kind if coming from someone who did not know.

A hum. ‘We haven’t been children for a long time.’

And it’s quick, Eris almost misses it, but he is prone to notice the small things. Rhysand’s eyes dip over his body, down and up to scan his face. ‘No. We haven’t.’ Oh yes, that too is the same, the way Rhysand looks. Unapologetically. Shamelessly, in much the way that Eris finds the action of doing the same compulsively shameful. The idea of allowing hands to follow the eye compulsively disgusting. The idea of being touched by male caresses compulsively repulsive. ‘Do you still have it?’

‘Do you think my father would liked to have seen it? No. I burnt it off.’ His ankle still itches, like the ink there wishes to scratch through his skin, to work as a dark smudge on broken flesh.

‘That’s more his style, I suppose.’

x

Eris had made him watch.

The bay hounds had sent yowls throughout the woods, yapping and snarling, until him and his brothers had come upon the scene. A wild boar trapped amongst the thicket, worrying at the pack of four as they snapped at it, desperate for some kind of escape, until one got its maw by the neck and clamped, held it down, waited for them to arrive. The panicked squealing, he can still hear ringing in his skull. Lucien can taste it: the horrid fear of a kingswine brought unnaturally to heel.

It died with little resistance, the hound did well, and Eris told him to look when he pushed his knife through its flesh, along the throat and spurting red. Dead in an instant, the last cry cut short as it writhed and fell still, gentled into the land of milk and honey by the mercy of the Mother who guided his brother’s pitying hand. He had Etienne carry it back to their tents and sent the others to gather greens or whatever other game they wished, like they were creatures needing to satiate a bloodlust before they could be fae again.

What kind of creature would he be, he wonders, if some evil witch cursed him so like in the books?

A firebird—to see the world from overhead and fly away when he pleased. A fox perhaps—like his mother, she likes foxes. Or a dragon—to eat those who displeased him, though that’s rather more like Eris, who he thinks would make a good dragon. He wears enough gold. Not a boar, in any case.

Catching him staring away with the nymphs, considering this, Eris calls him into his tent, knife in hand. The boar is there, on the table covered in bloodied cloth, still dead.

‘You’ve never seen it done have you?’ he asks. ‘The skinning of a boar.’

He shakes his head. ‘I don’t think I want to, Eris.’

His brother sighs and beckons him round the table, so he has to look into its glassy, brown eyes and see the drool of blood dribbled down its tusk. ‘Father will ask you to do it on the Equinox.’ Just the thought makes him feel ill. ‘You won’t get to say no.’

So it is, but Lucien has a plan to disappear for the day. To run the night before—after all, Eris has taught him how to rough it in these forests with only a tent and a knife—all the way to the Court’s eastern shores to see the dolphins his mother told him about, and return a few days after. Father will be angry, but this is no different than usual. However, he can’t tell Eris, because Eris will catch him, so he acquiesces with a nod and his brother begins.

‘It is easy,’ he tells him, making a very precise cut along the boar’s abdomen, stopping just short of its tail, ‘to kill a boar, given the right circumstances. Avoid nicking the organs, you see?’ Dirtying clean hands, he starts to pull them away, intestines and offal, which casts the smell of metal into the tent. ‘But yes, it is easy. It takes perhaps some patience, well-trained, loyal dogs, and good conditions. Some luck. Do it enough and you’ll come away unscathed. Sometimes the unexpected happens—’ he glances at him with a sly smile—‘sometimes you get a smart boar, but so long as it dies before you do, it’s a success.’

He moves onto the boar’s back, running the knife along its ribs and hind legs, skin and fur going with it. ‘It’s the after that’s hard,’ he continues. ‘Carrying it back if you’re exhausted. Knowing what to do when you’re suddenly faced with the carcass of a dead thing. Knowing where to put the knife, where to be soft and where to apply pressure—are you watching?’ He nods. He is, but the smell makes him grimace. ‘Good, keep looking. The front legs are complicated.’

To start, Eris cuts behind the boar’s knee, then makes quick work of the sinew and muscle, pushing through the tough parts as though he were sectioning off butter. Impressively, even Lucien admits, the piece of skin comes off in one. Then he moves to the tail, and does that perfectly too.

‘Will you remember all of that for the Equinox?’ Eris asks.

‘Probably not.’

A huffed, good-natured laugh. He is in a good mood now he’s slept, Lucien sees. ‘I’ll show you again closer to the time.’

Lucien thinks it’s better to leave the hunting and skinning of boars to his big brother.

x

Nothing to do but sit still and listen. Don’t fiddle with his collar, or the cuffs of his sleeves, hands in his lap, and pay attention. Look at everyone. Who is here? Who isn’t? Why not? How many exits are there and will he conjure his knife if something goes wrong? Be smart, Eris. You know how.

His father is talking about Hybern and slaves. The High Lord of the Night Court’s notice is acute, solely focused on the ideas being put forward so succinctly and precisely. His father means to bring an alliance; loyalty from the only Court which can rival their armies, building themselves on their eastern shore already in preparation—Eris is due to see them tomorrow to learn from them. He speaks as though there is no alternative but to listen, and there isn’t. Not for him. Not even while his back aches and stings and his legs itch to move.

Over there on the other side of the table, his counterpart, Rhysand, seems to find the overgrown cut of his fringe more interesting, and rests with his hands splayed against the cool, dark stone, tapping, occasionally scratching the back of his neck and playing with his pockets. His father does nothing; he entirely ignores him. Eris can’t.

Three hours of not talking has played on his concentration and his eyes drift. The boy has skin so tanned he must spend all his day out from under this mountain, basking in the sun, and he can see the thin scars along his forearms where he has pushed up his fine black shirt. His eyes—violet like stardust—sparkle and…

Stop. Focus.

‘Spring will provide them a foothold, of that there is no doubt,’ his father is saying. Yes, the High Lord there keeps slaves still, even personal ones to serve him, even ones to entertain him in bed when his lady wife will not. They say he has fair hair bleached with the tears of nymphs and has evil eyes, green as unfiltered faebane. He’s read about that. ‘They’ll take the Black Lands with no resistance.’

This seems to displease the High Lord. ‘Are you suggesting we invade before they get the opportunity, Beron? Start a war with them breathing down our necks?’ He picks at a piece of lint on his sleeve. ‘We’d be hounded from all sides.’

His father leans forward. ‘What will it matter when we have half the island?’

‘You cannot be serious.’

‘Entirely.’

The word is set on the table between them, and the High Lord frowns as though he can see it.

For the first time, he looks at his son. ‘Rhysand, leave us. Take Eris with you.’

Eris makes no effort to move, only to meet the High Lord eye-to-eye. Beside him, he can almost feel his father preen with pride for his gall. He might get a hand in his hair. A day to himself in the library. A chance to walk with his mother and her hound through the gardens.

‘Go on, Eris.’

He does.

Rhysand huffs and leads him from the room, his gait lazy and swaggering with his hands shoved into his pockets, his shoulders pulled forward. Eris wonders how an heir could have such terrible posture, and even worse manners. He doesn’t even let him step out into the corridor before him, or go to hold the door open for him.

Together, as the door clicks shut behind them and hides their fathers, they pause side-by-side. Rhysand looks at him. Eris looks back, his face cold as the carved walls enclosing them.

‘Your father would take us to war,’ he says neutrally.

Eris’ lips tip up. ‘So you are capable of listening.’

‘Only as much as you seem to be capable of staring at me.’ His head tilts. Some of his fringe flops over those violet eyes. ‘Did you think I didn’t notice?’

Eris is too practiced to blush. ‘I was simply trying to imagine what possessed you to grow your hair like that.’

A laugh. It sounds genuine. Then a narrowing of his eyes at the top of Eris’ head and the braid hanging by his cheek. ‘Pot. Kettle. Black.’ Eris, to his surprise, returns an incredulous scoff of his own. ‘Shall we? I happen to know where my father keeps his good brandy down here.’

Something horribly sickening shakes up the back of Eris’ neck at the mere thought of it. That he would even suggest doing something so—

‘Relax,’ Rhysand says, waving his hand as though he had suggested a spot of tea, ‘they’ll never know.’

This, Eris knows, is a lie.

But he follows him, curious, if nothing else, about where this boy might take him in this place he knows only from whispered murmurs of hellish parties and quick, unplanned violence. Rhysand seems not to be the sort who would enjoy either, but first impressions are so deceiving. He leads him through labyrinthine halls, passing by empty rooms which darken into shadow as he walks by. In response, Eris’ own magic seems to try to brighten the fires in the faelights, but it makes little difference. Eventually, they find a staircase. Rhysand takes the steps two at a time. Eris doesn’t bother. Rhysand is taller than him in any case.

At the top, he moves eagerly to the end of the corridor, marked with an almighty, dark-grey door. A hand finds the handle and, a wink tossed over behind him with a grin while he watches a fair distance away, he shoulder-barges it open. ‘See,’ he says, ‘not even locked.’

It’s a study, lined with dusted bookshelves and furnished well with a fireplace—unlit—and armchairs facing the desk, a grand bureau made from mahogany, adorned with scattered papers marked in blue ink. Rhys rounds it confidently, humming a tune to himself. Eris assesses the books, history, strategy, marked lineages and tales of cartographers on the Continent, and it dawns on him: Rhysand means to make him think they are in his father’s private study, at the heart of his administration, but he does not think he would be so stupid, nor that the High Lord would leave such a place unlocked and unwarded. Does he think Eris is dull enough to believe such a thing would happen? It is enjoyable to have something else to think on. The stinging of his back fades a little.

‘You like to read then?’ A question asked as he rummages through the desk drawers.

Why would he want him to think that?

‘Doesn’t everyone?’

Perhaps there is more to him. Perhaps he is a schemer.

That earns him Rhysand’s head popping up from below the desk for a moment. ‘Some people can’t read, you know.’

‘It can take time, Rhysand,’ he snipes, a steady, comfortable tone. ‘I’m sure you’ll get there with some perseverance.’

‘I can read, asshole. A-ha!’ First comes his face, then a clink as he produces two glasses and a nearly full bottle of reddish-brown liquor. ‘Wait,’ he says, ‘Eris, how old are you?’

He raises a brow at him. ‘Thirteen.’

‘Oh, phew, me too. You have had a drink before then?’

Insulting. He shoots him a withering stare. ‘Of course.’ Watered down wine at dinner. A sip of his father’s glass when he does something truly commendable.

The drink is poured, far more than the knuckles of whiskey Eris has seen his father partake in. Rhysand hands him a glass and, in the clumsy, adolescent way he seems to do a lot of things, their fingers, his, quite cold, brush.

‘To your health,’ Rhys says, holding his glass out for a cheers over the desk between them.

Eris smiles a pleasant thing. ‘Mother guide you ’til you’re ash in the wind.’

‘Poetic.’

He rolls his eyes, clinks his glass against Rhys’, and manages not to gag when the brandy burns the back of his throat.

They start, he swears, very civilised, sat in the armchairs, playing at asking each other important questions (How do you find the current state of Summer’s tariffs are affecting you? Heard that there was unrest in Rask again. For or against the rebels?), their legs crossed and sipping at their glasses as though they knew how to savour the quality of the drink. It lasts perhaps half an hour.

Now, they’re sitting on the floor—Eris doesn’t remember lighting the fire, in fact he had vowed to himself he wouldn’t let Rhys know how easily he could do so, and failed utterly, but he does commit to memory the look of delight on Rhys’ face like he’d performed a circus trick (Do you have circuses here? What? No. What do you mean circuses?)—and they have taken their jackets off. Rhys has undone the top buttons of his shirt and Eris felt inclined to do the same. The bottle is half-empty when Eris plucks up the courage to ask: ‘How did you get those scars?’

He’s been eyeing Rhys’ forearms for a long time, trying to see if he could work out who had inflicted the thin marks of a blade drawn across skin in such a harmless place.

Rhys, yes, Rhys because apparently his friends call him Rhys and that’s what they are now, makes a face, violet eyes all bleary when he casts them away to find the bottle. ‘Training,’ he says, flippant. ‘Don’t you train?’

With what is coming from across the gulf between them and Hybern, even over the seas from the Continent, of course he trains. He’ll be General one day, his father has already told him.

He lies and says, ‘No,’ with a scoff.

Rhys suddenly seems to pin him still with only a glance, as though he could sniff it out, read his mind, but it softens, too much, like—pity—when he takes another sip from him glass. ‘Where are yours from then?’

‘Pardon?’

Another strange glance. ‘Your scars,’ he says. Then he reaches over, his hand quietly tugging the seam of his shirt to the side, exposing the pale flesh of his collarbone, marred with puckered pink and brown, bubbled burns. ‘They certainly aren’t from a blade.’

But Eris doesn’t really hear him. Not the brandy or Rhys’ company dulls the sting anymore.

You know why I must do this, don’t you, Eris?

Yes, father.

To teach you how to behave. You understand this, don’t you?

Of course, father.

And what have you learnt today?

He presses on the burn until he cries. Don’t lie.

That’s right. Don’t lie. It’s only relief when he eases the pressure, that which becomes a warm, gentle hand pulling up his chin to look on his kindly face, the other at the back of his neck, rubbing soothing circles there with his thumb. When he eases himself down to press a kiss to his brow, his cheeks, his face, his neck, his shoulders, over the wound to lap and clear away the blood and gore. Clean again. You’re my good boy, Eris. I hope I haven’t upset you so.

He shakes his head, but the tears still drop to the floor. Of course not, father.

No, of course not. You know I’d never want to upset you.

Anger yanks him from the memory, but not enough, no, not enough because his back burns still, and not his own fury, no, not his. Rhys’ eyes, so full of starlight, have darkened with the room, barely illuminated by the fire now raging beside them, and he is looking at him murderously. ‘Your father—’

My sweet boy, you’ll keep our secret, won’t you?

Of course I will, father.

Instinct rears and his body moves without him checking it. His hand wrenches Rhys’ away from him by the wrist, pulling a hiss from him, as he pushes him firmly, onto his back and near the hearth’s blazing heat, knocking over the bottle of brandy as he does. In an instant, he thinks and in his other hand comes his knife, pulled from the world between worlds, and he braces it right against Rhys’ neck, close enough for blood to well along the edge when he presses him down. Rhys doesn’t try to fight back, but Eris wants him to. Just for this moment. It never comes.

‘How?’ he spits. ‘You—it’s impossible.’ It’s as though he could see inside his head, like he could draw out the scene and sit in it… oh. Oh. ‘You’re a daemati.’

Mother spare him, he’s a daemati.

Rhys doesn’t deny it. It’s all the confirmation Eris needs.

He says instead, his voice so irritatingly soft, ‘Your father beats you.’

No.

‘No—’

‘Eris—’

He pushes the knife as far as he can without really hurting him, and something satisfied settles in his chest when he watches Rhys’ throat bob. ‘You will tell no one,’ he snarls. ‘Swear it or I’ll kill you here and turn you to ash.’

‘Eris.’

‘Swear it.’

‘Only if you’ll do the same,’ he bites back. ‘I’ll swear not to tell anyone if you don’t tell anyone about me.’

Half a second. A bad decision, because what he knows he can’t, shouldn’t, hide from his father, but it’s the only one to make.

‘Fine.’

‘On three?’

He nods.

‘One.’

‘Two.’

‘Three.’

And then together: ‘I swear not to tell anyone.’

There it is, the bargain struck, his first, which tingles along his leg and settles at his ankle, where no doubt he’ll have the black ink of a Night Court bargain tattoo. That too, he has read about—and been warned not to do.

But, even with it, he feels entirely, utterly wild. His chest heaves and his head is dazed from the brandy and the blood. Even when he pulls the knife away from Rhys’ throat and lets him sit up, it’s almost exhilarating. Exhausting, that too, but gods. He feels very alive. And Rhys is looking at him with some kind of awe or fear or both like he were a kind of god with his life in his hands.

Isn’t that the role of a god? To be merciful when needed, to know when death is that very same mercy? To teach and hold and harm when necessary?

Rhys blinks it away, but Eris will remember.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, eyes wide, tracing the cut, strangely starting to heal.

Eris lets go of his knife and it vanishes. ‘For what?’

‘For—’ a shake of the head—‘for everything.’

‘I don’t need your sympathy.’

And why should he deserve it?