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When he was small, Arram Draper was as easy as any other little creature to pet and be friends with, in Ozorne’s opinion. The Carthaki prince didn’t like other boys, as a rule, and held himself aloof from all save Varice by custom. But, when Varice dragged Arram in on the ribbon of her silky affection, Ozorne found it very possible to let her keep him, and then to begin to like the little thing himself for his own charms.
Small, young, powerful, impossible Arram, their shared protege. It irked Ozorne, yes, that the younger mage threatened to outshow his own Gift. Arram went to it so joyfully, damn him. Ozorne had seen him gather lightning snakes and talk to gods. He could roar with frustration at the thought of all that Arram’s power could do. It was like he’d been complaining to Chioke – what a war mage Arram might be!
Still, it was hard to dislike the kid, with his funny earnestness, dark untidy hair, and soft, moony, calf-like eyes. Arram made himself so sweetly available, submitting his great power to older adepts. He generally did what Ozorne instructed him, as well. Perhaps, one day, Ozorne would be the one to wield Arram’s great Gift like a pair of sparkling gloves.
It was a striking thought.
*
Ozorne had come when he heard that Arram was back from the front, where he’d been helping control illness and infection as part of his independent studies with the University.
His little friend was getting taller, Ozorne noticed. Not so small now.
Arram seemed tired, or more than tired – drained to his bones, thinned out, bloodless beneath the deep tones of his skin. It wasn’t long before he retreated back to his bed in their room, and passed into a heavy sleep, not even managing to remove his hair tie before he was out.
Ozorne sat on his own bed opposite and rubbed a finger over the carnelian on the third finger of his right hand – the ring to reveal auras. He saw Arram’s like a corona of negative space, the dark-flashing Gift active and roiling around his head and hands.
Arram’s Gift glittered like lightning and starfire as he slept, and Ozorne’s palms nearly itched from the desire to touch it.
His own bronze-gold magical aura sparked up, and Arram started as if he’d received a static shock, sitting up in his bed.
Their auras did not mesh, but clashed and flared. It was thrilling; it was painful.
Arram gasped. “Ozorne? What is it?”
Ozorne withdrew, not speaking.
Then the prince reached out to ruffle the dark head, removing the still-in-position hair tie after he’d mussed the hair. “Nothing,” he said. “It’s all right. Go back to sleep.”
*
“Sit down. I want to try it.”
Timorous Staghorn bit his lip. “Cosmas said we must not. He only told us about it in the first place so it wouldn’t happen accidentally. Pretty sure that means we’re not supposed to try it.”
How tiresome. Ozorne frowned at him.
The blond quailed, but did not acquiesce. “Very well, then,” Ozorne said, beckoning an arrogant finger, “Arram. Come here and sit down.” This one, he knew, was less likely to refuse him – and more likely to be too curious for his own good.
Arram tumbled predictably, gracelessly down to the indicated cushion, his newly-lengthened limbs awkward and coltish. He was taller than Ozorne, now, but it didn’t give him a sense of presence. If anything, Arram seemed less prepossessing as he grew longer.
A possessive heat lanced through Ozorne's body as Arram bent his face upward in a gesture of submissive offer. His young friend had grown so sweetly obedient to Ozorne’s will and command.
What a delight, to have the greatest power in their cohort at his beck and call.
“I want to experiment. Let’s learn a little more about ensorcelment.”
Reckless, he took a seat across, and looked into Draper's eyes with all his focus and power, just as he'd been warned never to do.
Arram’s eyes looked black most of the time, but if you shifted your angle of view you could catch little iridescent flecks of green and silvergold shot through the darkness of his irises.
Ozorne watched the pupils dilate, growing wider, opening to him like peeled-back flower petals. He felt mesmerized, dizzy with the pull of Arram’s eyes. They were dark wells into darkness, a long empty fall into night.
He was not, he realized, winning the war of wills. His power flailed, eruptive, struggling, but Arram’s gaze was so soft, so warm, that he wanted, more and more, himself to bend and submit.
That, he knew, could not be.
His hand, heavy with rings, cracked across Arram’s high cheekbone, leaving bloody marks and contusions that would become bruises by the morning. He’d have to get Varice to bring a salve for it, speed up his healing.
“Maybe they’re right about you, Arram,” he said, panting, teeth bared. “Maybe you really do mostly need to learn some control.” He turned on his heel and stalked away, leaving Arram downcast and sheepish, hunched in on himself, hair in his lacerated face.
*
“Please, oh – please –”
“What do you want?” Ozorne asked with a smile. He ran a finger around the reddened flesh at Arram's wrists where the ties pressed.
Arram moaned wordlessly. He hung, panting, between the bedposts, disheveled and shining with sweat and pathetically lovely. “Ungh -”
Ozorne teased him, “Really, Draper, what's become of that silver tongue? You'll never get what you want if you don't learn to beg for it prettily.”
Arram gasped, shivered, swallowed convulsively, controlled his breathing with a visible effort. “Please touch me,” he said. His cock, dark with blood and desire, spasmed as Ozorne brought a finger close to its wet tip, pulled back again to purse his lips.
“I don't know,” he said slowly, feigning consideration. Then, going for the knife twist – had he known he intended to do that? – “What of poor dear Varice? You really are being very wicked to betray the poor girl so, rutting with another lover. Behind her back!”
Of course, Varice knew full well what Arram did with the Emperor's Heir; Ozorne had informed her of it, and she had bitten her lip and then smiled and given the appropriate polite acquiescence. In front of Arram. Clever girl. Not nearly as soft or unassuming as she looked.
Not so his Arram, all fire and passion. Arram had bitten his full lower lip until it had bled. Ozorne knew, because he had tasted the blood there, later.
Arram cared so much about things that it was exhausting just to watch him – but that, too, Ozorne could find use for. Had done, before now. And would again, he was sure, in time.
“Ozorne,” Arram begged with charming fervor, “no, you – please, please touch me – only you -”
Ozorne let his hand fall heavily over the hot velvety hardness of Arram's prick, firm and masterful. Arram almost shouted as sensation overwhelmed him, his dark eyes rolling back in his head.
It was good to have mastery, fully confirmed in sweat and blood. It was that, and not mere sexual pleasure, that Ozorne believed brought him over the edge in turn.
*
“Come now, dear,” Ozorne crooned as he rocked Arram in his lap. The mage's lanky limbs fell haphazard and limp, and his dark head rested close against Ozorne's chest. Arrams's eyes were closed, his breathing ragged. “Come, and say you love us.”
Arram shuddered in his arms, a full-body convulsion that traveled up and down the considerable length of him in repeating waves. It was a flinch magnified into a cascade of bootless attempts at distance.
Ozorne clutched Arram closer, clasping him hard enough to bruise. “Don't fight it. You'll feel much better once you stop. You know you love us more than that, dear, you know you do. You wouldn't refuse us such a little thing.”
“I won't,” Arram sighed against Ozorne's shoulder. “I won't do it.”
“Not say you love us? Oh, but I think you shall,” Ozorne purred. Arram should be feeling the drugs by now, a leadenness in his veins, a creeping susceptibility and desire to please … not to mention the impact of the Empty Room on so Gifted a mage ….
Arram hitched against him with a little sob, and Ozorne petted through his tangled hair.
“I love you,” Arram mumbled against the fine white linen of Ozorne's shirt. His Tyran accent bled through, unusual, a throwback to childhood schooldays, and Ozorne's smile broadened. “I love you. I won't. You're mad.”
Still resisting, but not for long.
“I think you will, dear.” His hand traced the gaunt edge of Arram's face, the cords of tension in his neck, the vulnerability of the pulse underneath the skin of his throat. “Come now. Just do this one little thing for me.”
Arram fought for breath, lassitude overcoming him; he grew more pliant in Ozorne's arms, heavy and boneless and relaxed. “Just this one little thing. The gods aren’t watching, they don’t care.” He turned Arram over, arranging him until he was laid out to best advantage, all his peculiar prettiness on display.
He reached down to unfasten Arram's trousers. Arram only turned his face to the stone floor, still and silent as a tomb.
It was to frustrate Emperor Ozorne, in future, that he had no authentic memory of Arram’s screams from that time. He’d had to recreate them with puppets, instead, making dolls of Arram beg and cry in his palm before he beat them down into wailings and torment. The sound was less sweet, he knew, than the real thing would have been.
*
The girl was sweet enough. Unpolished and rough around the edges, but that would wear off as she gained experience. Ozorne could see easily enough how she'd charmed his oh-so-earnest scholar. Who had not changed a bit, despite his change of name.
Dear little Veralidaine, the Emperor-Mage thought as he returned to the glitter and gilt of his imperial ballroom, how little you know of your teacher's qualities. I wonder if you will be pleasantly surprised by them, should you both live to learn more of each other. Somehow, he thought not.
But of course Draper was taken with her – that sort of gormless ignorance had always been attractive to him. Beneath his breath Ozorne murmured, too soft for the girl to hear, “Playing at being the master, my pet?”
Draper – Numair Salmalin now, sweet Hag's tits, Arram, could you come up with nothing better? – looked up as Ozorne reentered the room, his jaw tight and his features set. Yes, pet, Ozorne thought, I've seen her, and spoken to her, and she was charmed by me, and you are powerless to prevent it. Eat shame, traitor.
Draper’s dark eyes, when they met Ozorne's, were iron over glass: outwardly strong, resentful, unyielding, but also fragile. Something in them, Ozorne saw, cherishing it, was deeply shattered.
An attractive paradox of suffering, Ozorne reflected, admiring it. His boy had grown up so very pretty. Even taller now than he had been then, he looked more like a coltish youth at thirty than he had at twenty, but he was broader and more muscular than he’d been in their childhood.
And Ozorne didn’t need the carnelian ring anymore to view the snap and flare of the erstwhile Arram Draper’s great Gift.
Reaching out with a tendril of his power, Ozorne allowed himself to remotely caress the line of that hard jaw, touching that other Gift once more with the familiar electric shock of attraction and repulsion, connection and severing.
He caught the hitch in Draper's breath, but only because he was looking for it. The other mage gave no other outward sign of their game of cat and mouse.
Ozorne smiled inwardly, remembering that he’d signed off on Varice’s menu, including the honeyed dormice. How very apt. He was quite prepared to enjoy the inexorable closing of his traps around the traitor and all his people: the pretty little student, the cursed smooth-faced Northern Master, even Varice, if she chose to throw in with Draper’s party. Sooner or later, Ozorne was more than confident, he would have them all exactly where he wanted them, in the palm of his hand, subjugated to his absolute will. No power, not even the gods, could save Arram Draper now.