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Hush, beloved. It doesn't matter to me
how many summers I live to return:
this one summer we have entered eternity.
The White Lily
I call you,
father and master: all around,
my companions are falling, thinking
you do not see. How
can they know you see
unless you save us?
In the summer twilight, are you
close enough to hear
your child's terror? Or
are you not my father,
you who raised me?
The Gold Lily
Luise Gluck
It had been a carnage.
Sérge, Henri, everybody.
They were outnumbered, even before the eikon arrived.
By the end of the day they had piled up the bodies and the Sisters of the Greagorian Cult had officiated the Passing.
They would be carried on wings of light for eternity.
Sermons and songs, none that were valid to the deaf ears of the bereaved families.
Sylvestre had not seen fit to send more reinforcements.
Their courage would remain on the lips and in the hearts of those loyal to the Empire.
Once again he had left his son alone, to die.
Terence wanted to pluck the petals of that delicate flower with the white curved petals, one by one. But Dion cared about it, so Terence changed the water in the jar and placed it gently on the wooden table. As soon as he got up from the bed on which they had lain, making love with desperate fury and soul-tearing tenderness, he had only the woolen blanket wrapped around his naked body, as he got up to rekindle the dim fire of the small brazier crackling in the prince's silent tent.
He could still taste his lips, the silken texture of his skin over toned muscles, the sounds of his voluptuousness that, in the intensity of his abandonment, he had learned not to hold back, for him to hear, and him alone.
When, at the height of pleasure, he had thrown back his beautiful head exposing to his kisses the snow-white skin of his neck, where it pulsed, maddening, his life.
Everything in them screamed that this was it, a moment of truth.
They were where they wanted to be.
Often, tears would gather in their eyes.
These moments, however fleeting, represented the web of meaning of his days, something so pure and extraordinary that it escaped even the bite of termites.
My greatest happiness is the sound your voice makes, calling to me even in despair.
"We will never be ourselves" he whispered, as his white hands closed in a fleeting caress on that damned flower.
"We will never be free" his soft lips, drawn by Greagor herself, curved under the pearly moonlight, describing a sad bow. A wistful smile, closing the deferential resignation of his dark eyes.
"So we lose, then?"
Yet your voice always reaches me. And I answer constantly, and my anger passes, as winter passes, leaving only a vague, elusive memory of cold and undisclosed things.
"I cannot stop being who I am."
His skin, every inch of which he had kissed, of a warm golden pallor in the sun, now, at night, retained the opalescence of the demigod that had lodged there and seemed to glow dimly. The prince peered at his face, taking his time, tilting his blond head to one side, like a deer listening to the wind. Only he could have that wistful and exciting smile at the same time, only he could be so beautiful and strong, effortlessly forgetting it.
He lifted the same hand that had gripped Sérge's fingers before death loosened its grip on him.
They had had no more reinforcements. It had been carnage.
Dion had hidden from everyone, but Terence knew that afterward he had cried.
Cursing himself for failing to protect them, cursing everyone, maybe even Terence himself, except the person he was supposed to curse. The Emperor.
His fingers slid over Terence's jaw line, over his lips, behind his ears and then down to the back of his head, curling over a handful of short brown hair. Terence was run through by a shiver. Dion kept his gaze anchored on his. Serious, liquid, full of tenderness.
"But I can't stop loving you either."
A kiss, light as a feather.
"Forgive my selfishness."
He slipped into his arms as naturally as water fills an alcove. Their bodies had always matched perfectly: his head on Terence's shoulder, so abandoned that he felt all its adored weight.
His arms around him, protecting and watching over and loving a relic.
"You are the least selfish person I know. And if you are, then I am immensely so. Because my heart accepts everything, but at the same time..."
It yearns for more. Much more.
Dion clutched tighter to him, with a moan, as if he wanted to penetrate inside his flesh and cancel all the boundaries between them.
So we lose, then?
Terence knew and he knew. That he would be first, and always, of the Empire, of his people, of his father. He could not do otherwise. He could not be otherwise, or the fabric of light of which he was made of would fall apart. He loved him too much to ask such a thing of him.
And at the same time…
"Terence"
At the same time he wanted to break the golden chains that anchored him and have him just for himself.
"Terence of my soul. Wind beneath my wings. You, the only one to whom I surrendered my heart. You alone, forever."
And Terence knew this was true, too.
Dion spoke as if he were crying, but his eyes were dry, years of cruel discipline of spirit. Terence took his hand. In their dance of love and death, Dion's words imprinted themselves like a firebrand. Measured, never excessive, never redundant, clear of tenderness and passion.
"I know, and I cannot comprehend my good fortune." he smiled, though tears burned on the edge of his eyelashes.
This, it was more true than anything.
"In the next life, perhaps, we will be reborn as vine growers on the Norvent plain. Tenants of the brothel. Shepherds." Dion dreamed, and smiled.
"In this and other lives, I only know that I will love you until I die. And then again. And again, until the end of the eternal return of my days, if Greagor likes."
Dion was silent for a few moments. The dark night was crossed by the distant screech of a wyvern. From the window, the fresh scent of the darkest hour, the hour before dawn.
"I forbid you to die before me."
Dion whispered then, in his prince-and-commander voice, as his hand trembled in Terence's and his eyes became glassy as he contemplated a nameless terror with the face of Terence's absence. The image of Dion's lifeless body, claimed by stone, calcified his future and imprisoned Terence's heart in a grip of panic and pain.
He waited until he could speak again.
"At your command."
He said.
Dion kissed his neck and then one cheek.
"Thank you."
Terence brushed his treated forearm: under the bandages, he felt the hardness of petrified skin, his condemnation, his choice made flesh.
We lose, then. At the same time, my love, we win.