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It had not been the longest day in Grian’s life. He could think of dozens worse. Crammed dark rooms that stank of death, icy night when the cold Boatem air made him shiver hard enough to bite his own tongue, and training drills lasting well past seventy hours and left him aching for weeks.
That was not the case for Pearl and Mumbo.
The two half-siblings were amicable on an average day, but this morning you would not have known they were raised separately with how they had held one another. Pearl in Mumbo’s arms, Mumbo enveloped in Pearl’s moth wings, both of them shaking like fledglings in a hurricane.
Moments later Mumbo had been led away, the realisation that he was the new King in all but title dawning on him only when Prime Minister Impulse had hesitated and bowed to him before informing him that the cabinet was awaiting Mumbo’s presence.
Grian had been left with Pearl to see her through the day - night - whatever . The point was this: he had not seen Mumbo since the early hours of the evening, mere minutes after he had been informed of his parents and brother’s accident. As he stepped into the sitting room adjacent to his bed chambers, the prince looked at least a decade older.
Grian’s feathers stood on end until his whole back itched. It seemed impossible that there were any parts of his heart left to break at this point, yet there was that familiar twinge in his chest.
Grian stepped forward and pulled him into a tight hug, Mumbo immediately hiding his face against Grian’s neck.
“How is Pearl?” The words were muffled against his collar, but Grian understood just fine.
The words ‘as is to be expected’ died on his tongue. Mumbo was prone to letting his thoughts run away from him on the best of days.
“She’s grieving, but she’ll manage.”
Mumbo pushed on Grian’s shoulder, barely applying enough pressure to be felt.
“Should I go and see her?” He asked - begging, Grian realised, for an easy answer. “Only I’ve just been named her guardian, seeing as she won’t come of age for another four months, and I’m not sure if that means… do I need to be there to comfort her?”
Possibly, had he been in any state to do so, Grian thought. As it were Mumbo looked as if he might be sick, or pass out at any second, and seeing him might in fact make Pearl feel far worse than she already did.
“Have you eaten?” Grian asked.
Mumbo stared at him for several long moments, his brow furrowed as if in deep concentration, before he offered a slow nod.
“Between talking about Pearl and talking about the coronation I think there was… some kind of bread?”
Grian nodded back, squeezing Mumbo’s hand between his own. “Let’s get you something else, okay?” He stepped backwards, fumbling blindly through the fruit bowl and picking out a ripe plum.
Mumbo accepted it, dutifully sinking his fangs into the juicy flesh. It was all he can do not to fixate on just how empty Mumbo’s eyes are.
Grian could not help but move slowly as he poured a glass of water from a pitcher on the table, feeling as if he is being regarded by a skittish prey animal one wrong move from fleeing.
“Here,” he offered, taking the pit of the fruit and offering the glass instead, only realising he had wiped the sugary fruit juice on his trousers after the fact.
Mumbo must be reaching the end of his tether. After a single sip that barely made a noticeable difference in the contents of the glass, he handed it back to Grian, letting his hands fall still in his lap.
“Did you know that I have cousins?” Mumbo asked, the suddenness of the question being nearly enough to startle Grian. “Six of them, in fact. My mother has- had two brothers.”
“ I wasn’t aware, no,” Grian admitted, sitting down on the chaise next to Mumbo. Though he himself managed to ignore the itch to reach out, it appeared his subconscious had other plans, as he immediately stretched his wing to cover Mumbo.
“Not one of them eligible to inherit, of course. Seeing as her brothers didn’t… I mean, after neither of them opposed her father, how could she have left them in the line of succession? So it’s just me, in actuality.”
Oh, that was where this was headed. Well, Grian had hoped to have this conversation a little later, perhaps tomorrow, but if Mumbo wanted it over with now…
“Mumbo, let me stop you there,” he asked, thinking it better to take control of the conversation himself so he would not need to hear Mumbo telling him to leave. “I know we’d talked about… a lot of things. But circumstances have changed, so whatever you need to do, I won't-”
“Marry me?”
Grian was halfway through wishing Mumbo would make this breakup easier on him by not interrupting when he realised what he had actually said.
“Will you marry me? Please?” Mumbo repeated when Grian’s stuttering mind did not come up with a reasonable response to such an absurd proposition.
“Mumbo, I… Oh, stars, that’s so kind of you… No, we can’t… I want to Mumbo, I really do, but… Gah,” he ground his teeth while Mumbo continued to look at him like a lost puppy.
“You’re engaged, Mumbo,” Grian reminded him. “You have an elven…” he trailed off. Grian was not as well versed in elven culture as he was vampiric, all he knew was they had a different approach to gender than the one Grian was raised with, and that Mumbo’s betrothed fell somewhere beyond the scope of the two he considered standard.
“I believe he prefers the honorific ‘prince’,” Mumbo supplied. “And he might be very lovely, but he isn’t the one I want.”
Mumbo took Grian’s left hand in his, the callouses of Grian’s hand no doubt rough against the other’s satin-soft skin. He had to resist the urge to pull away.
He had always known this… whatever he had with Mumbo was dangerous, but he had not realised the extent until now. Mumbo was bright as the sun, and if Grian had his way the whole world should revolve around him just the same. He would move every mountain in Boatem one stone at a time if Mumbo asked, would walk to the ends of the earth for him, but this…
“Mumbo, we can’t,” he said softly. “You know we can’t.”
“I think you’ll find that as King I can do exactly what I want.” There was something petulant in how Mumbo spoke, like a child denied their favourite toy. “I’ll change the laws. My mother did it, made it so vampires and non-vampires could marry. Who is to say I can’t do the same? Why shouldn’t two men be allowed to marry?”
Where Grian came from, what little he remembered of it anyway, such a union would not have been frowned upon. The hazy faces of two women swam through his mind, one with a melodious voice that sang him to sleep every night, the other with the brightest red hair you could imagine. His mothers, presumably.
And until this morning Grian might have dreamt of that himself. To watch Mumbo come into himself and flourish under Prime Minister Impulse’s tutelage, perhaps. To see him when the last of the gangliness left his limbs, and he began to hold his head high through pride and not just because the virtue of a rigid posture had been drilled into him by his parents. To hold his hand openly in the cool air of the night, and retreat to their chambers rather than simply Mumbo’s on long, days when the sun kept the vampire inside.
“That’s a good idea,” Grian praised, kissing the back of Mumbo’s hand. “You should do that when the time is right. But that’s not why I can’t marry you. I don’t need to be a King or even a politician to know that if you break your engagement you turn the whole country of Vex against you, and Boatem alongside.”
“Sod them,” Mumbo said with far more passion than Grian had thought him capable of mustering after the day he had had. Of all the times to develop a taste for fighting… “We can fix that together. Who is to say the prince even wants to leave Vex? I would hate leaving my whole life behind just to marry someone I have only met once.”
The problem with royals, Grian thought, was that no one ever bothered to teach them how to handle rejection.
Mumbo was doing his best, at least somewhat aware of the concept due to his unique gift in the realm of mind control, but even so, he failed to realise the basic fact of life that most of the time you could not have exactly what you wanted.
“No,” Grian repeated more firmly, letting go of Mumbo’s hand.
“Please,” Mumbo begged. “I want you.”
“I refuse to be the reason you start a war.”
“But, Grian-”
“Mumbo!”
The newly named King of Boatem flinched away from the lashing of Grian’s tongue.
“Mumbo,” he repeated, gentler this time. “We always knew this might happen. We need to handle it maturely to make sure there are no ripples in the water so early into your reign… I will leave the court to make it easier for you if that’s what it takes.”
Mumbo wailed. That was the only word Grian could think of to describe the sound of anguish the other made, his face twisting into something a little too far to the left of ‘human’.
“Grian, please, don’t go. I’ll be good, I’ll marry the prince if that is what you want, but I can’t do this alone. Don’t go ,” Mumbo begged.
Grian had only barely registered, with alarm, what tone that was when something washed over him. Suddenly the very idea of leaving made every fibre in Grian’s body tense up, every part of his heart seize painfully.
“I won’t go,” he heard himself say somewhere far away, floating along the stream as he was. Whatever Mumbo wanted.
Mumbo flew back and Grian had to steady himself against the plush couch so he could stand and follow.
“I did not mean to do that,” Mumbo told him. “You don’t have to, okay? You never have to. Stop. You can stop following that command .”
Like a puppet with its string cut, Grian stumbled into Mumbo’s waiting arms. The tide rescinded, leaving him cold and directionless.
“I’m sorry,” Mumbo told him again, only holding on to Grian for as long as it took him to find his footing. “I didn’t mean for that to happen, you have to believe me. I would never force you to stay. If you want to leave you can do so. I’ll give you anything you might need. Money, a place to go to, a title if that’s what you want.”
“I know, Mumbo,” Grian said, rubbing his head until the last of the fog cleared. Mumbo’s control of his abilities was spotty at best, but usually, Grian was the one exception. “Give me a moment.”
“Do you need anything?” Mumbo asked, already reaching out for the same glass of water Grian had offered him a few minutes ago.
Grian sat back down, trying to locate the loose threads of the thoughts he had been having before Mumbo lost control.
Mumbo had asked him not to leave, but why had he wanted to do so in the first place? Because Mumbo was going to end up dead as dust if he kept insisting on this notion of destroying Boatem’s alliance with its most powerful ally all for the sake of marrying his personal guard, a commoner without a home or even a single family member to speak of.
Why had they been talking about marriage?
Grief hit him again. Though Grian had only ever seen the late Queen and her husband as his employers, and though the Crown Prince had rarely had time to even acknowledge Grian’s existence, they had still been good people. More importantly Mumbo and Pearl, doubtless the most important people in Grian’s life, were aching with grief at their loss.
Despite the best attempts of his mother to teach him control, Mumbo’s talent for mind control had always been far too strong for him to handle when his emotions ran over.
“I’m okay. Upset, but okay,” he told Mumbo with a sigh. “And you?”
Mumbo edged closer to him, but remained standing, shifting nervously between his feet.
“Fine,” he said, as if that were not the most obvious lie he could have told.
Grian peered up at him, trying to convey as much scepticism in one look as was humanly possible. Evidently, it worked, as Mumbo continued to admit:
“Not fine. But I can’t… I can’t find the words.”
“Use the ones you have?” Grian requested. He needed to hear this explained from Mumbo’s point of view - a chill ran down his spine at the thought of how easily he had buckled under Mumbo’s mind control, however accidental it might have been.
“I’m terrified. I don’t know how to be King or how to be Pearl’s guardian, I don’t want to marry someone else when the love of my life is right here, and now I am losing control as well. I love you too much to hold it all inside, but if this is what comes out, maybe I should let you go.”
Grian sighed, beckoning Mumbo closer. There was a conversation to be had here, but now was not the time for it.
“I’m still upset about the mind control,” he warned. “But not with you. And I’m not going anywhere.”
Mumbo bent over to hug him, melting into Grian’s waiting arms. Grian’s face was pressed against Mumbo’s solar plexus. Vampires’ hearts beat slow, and yet Grian stayed long enough to hear Mumbo’s beat several times.
“You’re too tall,” Grian complained, as he so often did, wings batting at Mumbo’s sides.
Mumbo laughed, then hummed against Grian’s scalp, an endearing - if poor - attempt at imitating an Avian lover’s trill. He responded in kind anyway, delighting at how Mumbo’s hold on him tightened.
“I would have married you, you know,” he admitted. “In any other world than this one.”
Mumbo knelt in front of him, Grian’s hand in his and resting in Grian’s lap.
“How do Avians marry?”
Grian’s hesitancy proved to be answer enough, it would seem. Mumbo must be used to it by now - just another thing Grian did not remember about his own people.
“I can tell you what we do,” Mumbo suggested instead.
“…Is this another blood thing?”
Mumbo sputtered.
“Hmph. Well… we’re vampires, love, what do you expect?”
Grian made no attempt to contain his laughter.
Mumbo’s hands were steady as they turned Grian’s, familiar index finger trailing over his wrist at what was no doubt his artery.
“To start someone from the clergy would read our family trees aloud, so everyone gathered would know what ancestral bloodlines are joining.”
“And to ensure there aren’t too many overlaps, I imagine. I know what you noblemen are like,” Grian teased.
Among his most endearing features was the fact that Mumbo blushed so completely, travelling up from his neck and all the way to the pointed tips of his ears.
“Yes, quite.” he cleared his throat. “So, erh, if no one gathered has any objections you perform the blood ritual.”
Mumbo tugged on Grian’s arm, bringing it to his lips. Grian shivered, needing to remind himself that vampires were, generally speaking, colder than other sapients.
“Here,” Mumbo said, kissing Grian’s pulse point. “That is where I would drink from. Left wrist is preferable. You would do the same, thus sealing our connection.”
Grian could feel the heat rising to his cheeks, his voice barely carrying his next words. “I thought drinking other vampires' blood was practically forbidden. Isn’t it supposed to be taboo or something?”
“Feeding on other vampires is,” Mumbo agreed. “This isn’t feeding though. If- when I have children I will let them drink my blood to welcome them into the family. It’s the same principle, just applied a little differently.”
The reminder that Mumbo would presently be married off to someone else and be expected to produce heirs with all due haste sent cracks running through the delicate moment.
“Bloodline to bloodline,” Mumbo finished.
“Bloodline to bloodline,” Grian said, echoing the common vampire saying. He cleared his throat, offering Mumbo a hand up. “Would that be all?”
Mumbo sit next to him, shooting a long glance over his shoulder at the closed curtains that kept the sun at bay.
“We would need to do it in view of the moon. Royal weddings usually take place on the full moon, but for most people that sort of thing wouldn’t matter. After that there is some exchange of gifts, papers to sign, and that’s about it. Marriage sealed. The blood ritual is the important part, really.”
A best passed.
“The next full moon is three weeks away,” Mumbo told him.
“Mumbo-” Grian started.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean for us,” Mumbo hastened to add. “I meant that I might be getting married in as little as three weeks.”
Grian had known it was coming, but it still broke his heart. Mumbo might need him and love him now, but Grian could not help but resent Mumbo’s future spouse for the day Mumbo would inevitably realise he had more in common with them than he ever would Grian.
“So soon?”
Of course, he had suspected Mumbo’s sudden interest in marriage was to do with the imminent arrival of his future spouse, but Grian had not realised it was that imminent. He had expected a few months to prepare himself at least.
“The summons go out tomorrow evening… can’t have a monarchy of one, you know.” Mumbo’s laugh was a nervous one, without any heart in it. “I could still tell them not to send it.”
Instead of repeating his rejection for the third time, Grian simply placed a hand on Mumbo’s knee and offered a gentle squeeze.
“Would it make me a terrible fiancé if I pretend it is our wedding I am planning? I think it will… I don’t think I can bring myself to care, Grian. I want it to be you.”
Grian allowed himself to picture it. Mumbo’s would look resplendent, though he would certainly be uncomfortable in the layers upon layers of regalia he would have to wear. He would surely seize the first opportunity to take the jacket off.
Grian’s dress uniform was the best clothes he owned, but perhaps marrying a King would get you the privilege of a nice suit added to the state budget? He would even endure a day without the safety of his armour for the sake of how Mumbo would look at him as they were bound together for life. Mumbo would be smiling at him again, just as Grian would be wholly unable to contain his own happiness.
Oh, how he loved this man, how wonderful it would be to spend a lifetime being his.
An idea struck him, one so sweet he could not taste the bitterness of guilt.
Grian was supposed to be the reasonable one out of the two of them, the one who understood that no one could truly have everything they wanted.
But maybe just this once…
“Meet me in the gardens in a week,” he pleaded. “Just before dawn, after the palace has gone quiet, but before the Moon goes down. Just the two of us and the Moon. No clergy, no family trees, no full moon. Legally you would be free to marry another, but we would know.”
One last hurrah. Nothing that would tie Mumbo down, but rather something that would mean the world to the two of them.
Mumbo’s breath hitched.
“I… you would do that?”
“Something for me to have when I have to watch you marry someone else,” Grian admitted.
Mumbo was a solid weight against his side, leaning closer and wrapping an arm around him.
“I hadn’t considered that,” he admitted.
Grian turned his head and nuzzled against him, the soft velvet of Mumbo’s waistcoat catching on his stubble.
“We won’t be married,” Grian said. “But I will still be yours, for as long as you are able to have me.”
“I will be yours as well, for all of my days.” Mumbo promised. “Why wait a week? We should do it tonight, as soon as the moon rises. ”
Grian cupped his cheek and strained his neck to keep his wing around Mumbo and kiss the corner of his lips at the same time.
“Because you need rest, you spoon,” Grian chided gently. “And because I want to be sure you aren’t rushing into it because of… everything.”
Until today, anything like this that would solidify their commitment to one another had only been a far-flung dream. And although he might not be asking for Mumbo’s actual hand, Grian could not bear the thought of his lover waking up in a few days' time, when the worst of the haze of grief had passed, looking at him with regret.
“I know what I’m doing,” Mumbo protested. “Please, love? I know it won’t make a difference to you, but if I am to keep you at arm's length for the rest of my life, please let me hold you in whatever time we have left.”
Be the sensible one , Grian reminded himself as his heart threatened to take over and suggest the two of them simply run away together.
“Five days, then.”
“Three,” Mumbo countered. “That gives us another ten days as… as us .”
Three days. It fell nicely in the grey area where Grian knew he ought to push it further, but could not bring himself to care. Three days of Mumbo wanting him was more than enough, right? They had spoken of impossible dreams of marriage in the small hours of the night, before, surely he wasn’t taking advantage…
How could it be bad that Grian wanted so badly to give Mumbo what he wanted, to make him happy for as long as circumstance would let them?
“Three days,” he agreed. “At dusk.”
Mumbo smiled at him, and for the first time all day, it looked as if he meant it.
—
Grian would never marry. He had known this for years, ever since he fell so hard for Mumbo ìt had left him permanently grounded.
He did not wear the Avian jewellery that was supposed to have been passed to him by his parents, a tradition he only knew from books. His mate would not take to the sky with him, like every instinct of his demanded. There were no witnesses, no sun above, and no birds to join in his song.
None of that mattered.
He wore his usual uniform so as to not raise suspicion, though he had at least tried to tame his messy hair and worn his best cloak overtop. Mumbo’s hand was in his when he lead the way to the grand oak tree overlooking the garden. The new moon smiled down at them.
Mumbo was radiant as ever, even in his mourning grey. Had he dressed with Grian’s propensity for shiny things in mind, or did he simply wear his best jewellery because it made him feel good in his own skin? His hands were as restless as ever, but with attention for nothing but Grian. Holding his hand, his waist, his shoulder, brushing over the newly preened feathers of Grian’s wings. It was exhilarating.
“You look lovely,” Mumbo told him, hidden from prying eyes at the base of a tree Grian knew he had dreamed of climbing as a child. “Would you care to spend your life with me?”
Grian reached up and stroked the smooth skin of Mumbo’s cheek.
“I would love nothing more.”
Mumbo’s gaze drifted towards Grian’s wrist.
“May I?” His fangs flashed as he spoke, ready to sink into soft flesh.
Grian shivered.
“There is still time for us to do this another way,” Mumbo said. “A handfasting, or an exchange of jewellery, perhaps?”
Grian steeled his nerves.
“I want to do this your way. Please.”
Mumbo’s red eyes fixated on him, presumably searching Grian’s face for signs of doubt. He smiled in the face of it.
“Okay.” Mumbo’s voice betrayed just how excited he was to finally be able to do this.
His hands moved over Grian’s cuffs and bracers with all the precision of a man used to working with delicate redstone, his touch feather-light and reverent. He met Grian’s gaze, holding it as he leaned down to kiss the delicate, sensitive skin of his wrist.
“I trust you,” Grian told him, despite the instinctual dread he could feel to the very marrow of his bones.
“I love you,” came Mumbo’s response.
The pain of Mumbo’s fang piercing his flesh was immediate, and it took everything in him not to tear his wrist away.
Grian had seen this done countless times before, but only now did he understand why anyone finding themselves on the wrong end of a vampire’s fangs would stop struggling so fast.
Warmth brushed over him, his heart spreading venom through his body with every beat. It felt like summer’s sun and like resting his head on his pillow after a long day’s work. Like the cakes Pearl or Mumbo would sneak him on his birthday and the cool water in the spring near his childhood village. Like the worshipful touch of a lover - of Mumbo - leaving him floating and sated in the small hours when there was nothing but the two of them.
Were it not for Mumbo’s eyes on him he might have panicked. It was too pleasant, and only now did he realise that Mumbo had been drinking his blood all the while he was floating on a cloud of bliss.
But Mumbo was looking at him with such love. This was not the monster that haunted his nightmares, he thought, but his lover granting him hitherto unknown joy. One more way Mumbo alone would be allowed to know Grian.
He took a step closer, raising Mumbo’s wrist to his lips. Vampires had instinctual ways of telling where to bite to find arterial blood, Grian was not so lucky. It was probably for the best, as opposite Mumbo’s bite, Grian’s would not close without the aid of potions and time.
He kissed Mumbo’s cool flesh one, two, three times, his knees nearly buckling when Mumbo moaned against his skin. He had to remind himself to keep a clear head for another few moments still.
Mumbo gasped when Grian’s comparatively flat teeth pressed against his flesh, eliciting a whine when they finally tore through the skin and filled Grian’s mouth with metallic-tasting blood. He had thought he might have to force himself not to gag at the foreign taste, but in fact, he found it easy to swallow his mouthful, it tasting far sweeter for being forbidden. He may not have Mumbo as he wanted, and his love may one day forget him, but when that cold day came Grian would have this moment.
The two of them left go of each other’s wrists, Grian’s wound closing as soon as Mumbo’s fangs slipped out of his flesh, Mumbo’s quickly cared for with a health potion they had brought for that very purpose.
It was impossible to distinguish where the dark red of Mumbo’s irises ended and his dark pupils began, though it did not matter for long, as he pulled Grian forcefully against himself and kissed him with rare passion.
The blood on their tongues mingled, Grian’s heart pumping faster with nothing but the utmost love as the man in his arms pulled him closer, surrounding him with his arms leaning over him.
“Mine,” Mumbo growled, only half intelligible where it was spoken against Grian’s lips.
“Mine,” Grian concurred, nails digging into Mumbo’s soft sides.
They would never marry. In as little as ten days Mumbo might be wed to another, their blood on his tongue and his on theirs. But Grian’s would be there too, forever mixed with Mumbo’s under the waxing eyes of the Moon.
It would be enough, Grian thought, lowering his lover to the ground and covering them both with his wings, with soft lips on his and a lovers’ trill in his chest.