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The moment Rafayel stepped out and closed the door behind him, Talia shifted her attention to the only other person remaining in the room.
“So.”
Sylus returned her speculative gaze with some measure of amusement. He had been aware of her scrutiny since he had followed Rafayel into the celebrated soprano’s dressing room. So far, they had limited their interactions to harmless small talks and polite nothings. Then she had asked her nephew to retrieve her shawl from her manager—and here they were.
“To be honest, when Rafayel told me that he was bringing someone to the concert, I didn’t think it would be anyone like you,” Talia spoke again, her voice still pleasant despite the implication not-quite-hidden between her words.
“Indeed?” Sylus kept his tone on similar footings, mild and noncommittal. “What kind of person did you have in mind?”
“Certainly not the ruler of N109 Zone.”
He allowed himself a faint smile in response. “Someone less dangerous, then? Less riddled with risks?”
Talia made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “Not that. He has always been attracted to risks. Always spent way too much time flirting and toying with dangerous things since he was but a child. It’s a bad habit of his, and I don’t imagine he’s grown out of it even now. All the same…” She paused, the weight of her gaze pressing in on him. “He usually knows better than to risk himself too far.”
“And you think he’s risking himself too far right now?”
“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?”
Sylus would have scoffed at that, but managed to restrain himself just in time—out of circumspection, perhaps, or something a lot less complicated, like respect. Their chess match was only just beginning. That she was a worthy opponent had been obvious from the moment he had stepped into the room and met her gaze.
For one, she wasn’t afraid of him. This fact alone put her in an entirely different league, one that had admitted only a very select few over the course of his long, long life. Then again, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Rafayel had mentioned in passing that his aunt had been one of the strongest sirens in Lemuria, second only to him in term of magical prowess and extent of abilities. Sitting in front of her now, Sylus found absolutely no reason to doubt him.
“If you’re referring to the fact that I came here with him today,” he finally responded, “it doesn’t really mean anything.”
“No?” She spoke softly, but her expression went from pleasant to icy in the span of one breath. “If that is how you feel, then I will have to ask you to leave. Now.”
Sylus felt the force of her voice like a punch to the chest, pushing air out of his lungs. It took every bit of his self-restraint to keep his calm and remain seated where he was instead of resorting to a counterattack at once. “I don’t think that is for you to decide,” he said instead.
“You mean it’s none of my business?” She shot him a smile, all sharpness and teeth. “Perhaps, but I will make it mine anyway. You will not approach my nephew again, or I promise you this, I will rip your sanity apart.”
This time, her words did not come as a punch, but a slow heavy drip that pushed into his head. For a moment, Sylus saw a glimpse of what she must have been at the height of her prowess, a creature so formidable that countless minds bowed to her will. A part of him was tempted to see what she was actually capable of, how sirens could drive someone to the threshold of sanity and beyond. It would have been an interesting experiment.
Except for one tiny factor that had become suddenly and startlingly obvious. All things considered, he was not prepared to risk losing the person who had come to matter to him so much, just to satisfy a bit of curiosity.
“You misunderstood me.” He kept his voice steady, a lone, unbending rock under her constant onslaught. “When I said it doesn’t really mean anything, what I meant was I couldn’t trust myself not to read more into it. I don’t know what he actually feels about… our arrangement.”
Talia’s expression did not change. “That sounds more like evasion to me.”
“It isn’t,” he said coolly, folding his hands on his lap. It was only then that he pushed back, allowing his Evol to caress the fabric and dimension of the room in a susurrus of violence. “You may or may not believe me—that is your right, and to be honest I care little. But you will not interfere. You will not come between us, or my sanity will be the least of your worry.”
Her lips twitched, a flash of amusement more than anything else. “Withdraw your power, please.”
Sylus did, and only because she had said ‘please’. “As long as we understand each other,” he replied, the evenness of his tone hiding none of the dangerous maelstrom lurking underneath.
She offered him an olive branch in the shape of a disarming smile, the likeness of which Sylus had seen at least a thousand times on her nephew’s face. Sirens. “I cannot say that I’m convinced, yet, but I will let him decide and make his own mistake.”
“You are so sure that he is making a mistake,” Sylus said dryly.
“Not at all.” She shrugged, seemingly at ease now. “But like I said, he has always been attracted to dangerous things. Nine times out of ten, he finds regret in the end.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t.” Her smile sharpened into something more real, at once more enchanting and more dangerous. “Because I will tell you this. Over the course of eight hundred years, you are the only one he has ever brought to meet me.”
For a second, Sylus failed to register her words or their meaning, so incredible they were. The moment they sank in, he blinked, the only outward sign of a sudden supernova of joy intertwined so tightly with incredulity like a binary star inside his chest. She watched him, the triumphant glee in her eyes tempered only by what must be affection for her nephew.
That was when Sylus realised that he liked her very much—and yes, it turned out that he did care what she thought about him and said nephew.
When the door finally swung open and admitted Rafayel in the flesh, they were still watching, measuring each other.
“Nobody’s seen your shawl,” Rafayel announced, a note of complaint in his voice. “I’ve looked everywhere. Asked everyone I met too.”
Talia raised her face and smiled sweetly at him. “I guess I must have left it at home.”
“Riiight.” Rafayel rolled his eyes and proceeded to drape himself across the sofa, legs stretched over Sylus’ lap. “So. What were you two talking about that was so important that you had to send me out of the room?”
“Who said it was important?” Talia asked innocently, just as Sylus declared, “It wasn’t anything important.”
A smirk slowly graced the curve of Rafayel’s lips. “Listen to that. How in sync the two of you are now. I’m almost jealous.”
“Well, your aunt is a very beautiful woman,” Sylus said mildly, knowing full well that he was dipping his toe into very dangerous waters. He was not disappointed when Rafayel narrowed his eyes at him.
“You want to shut up right now,” Rafayel said in a low, sweet voice that concealed none of the warning dripping from every syllable. Sylus smiled in return. He was wondering if he should heed the order or disobey it entirely, maybe push his luck even further and try to goad another reaction out of the sea god. He loved it when he could do just that, collecting all those jewel-bright moments like a string of necklace—prickly annoyance, mild exasperation, mad jealousy, unbridled joy, mostly because each could serve as proof that perhaps, just perhaps, a god could care.
Before he could come to a decision, however, Talia had interrupted. “Alright, you two, I have a couple of things to do before the show starts in fifteen minutes,” she announced, rising to her feet and arranging the fall of her dazzling pearl-coloured dress. “Be good and refrain from doing funny things on my couch, will you? Or destroying my dressing room, for that matter.”
Rafayel’s smile was brilliant in its gilded innocence. “No promises.”
She made the sound of a deep exaggerated sigh and departed with a shake of her head.
Sylus found himself breathing a little easier as soon as the door had closed behind her. The sense of relief did not last long. Her scrutiny had been replaced by Rafayel’s no less intent stare, his eyes dark and accusing.
Sylus suppressed an instinctive sigh. “Now what?”
“I don’t know how he actually feels about our arrangement? Really?”
Sylus made a sound through his nose, mostly because the accusation had caught him off guard. “It’s very impolite to eavesdrop on other people’s conversation,” he said instead, sidestepping the insinuation entirely.
“Not when the subject of conversation is yourself.”
“That’s worse, actually. And the eavesdropper usually regrets it in the end.”
Rafayel did not blink, holding his gaze. “Am I about to regret it?”
“You tell me.” Sylus rested a hand on Rafayel’s knee, stroking slowly with the tip of his middle finger. Rafayel’s legs twitched. They never ceased to be sensitive, even after so long living on two feet instead of gliding in water.
“Didn’t you hear a word she said?” There was a catch in Rafayel’s voice, but it was too faint to merit any notice. Sylus duly ignored it.
“She said plenty.”
“That you’re the only one I ever brought to meet her?”
“Ah, that.” Sylus nodded. This time, he allowed a smile to slip through, but he couldn’t trust it just yet. Not just yet. “Who knows, maybe you just don’t have anyone else to go with you–”
“Unbelievable,” Rafayel hissed, sitting up and rising to his feet. He was angry, or hurt—not that it mattered, because Sylus suddenly realised that he could not bear either. He reached up, hand, arm, Evol, everything, until he had Rafayel safely in his arms and on his lap, resisting a little but nevertheless here.
“If you’re trying to be an asshole right now–”
“Don’t you remember what I said before that?” Sylus murmured, pressing the words into the deceptively delicate curve of Rafayel’s neck.
“You said plenty,” Rafayel bit back, echoing his earlier words.
Sylus couldn’t help but smile at that. “Fine. I deserve that one.”
“Yes, you do.”
“But you heard it, didn’t you? When I said I couldn’t trust myself not to read too much into it.”
Rafayel had gone absolutely still. Sylus secured the circle of his arms. Holding Rafayel always felt like having something that could threaten to explode at any moment in the most tender, most vulnerable part of himself. It was stupefying and terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time—not to mention thirteen kinds of stupid—except Sylus also knew that he did not want anything, anyone, different. Just this.
When Rafayel finally spoke, his voice shook a little. “What does that even mean?”
“It means,” Sylus said slowly, solemnly, “I would’ve fought your aunt to keep you.”
Rafayel scoffed. “You’d lose,” he declared, but it also sounded like he could be smiling.
“Are you taunting me?”
That was when Rafayel turned around and pushed him against the back of the sofa. His knees trapped Sylus’ hips between them, and he was smiling as he loomed over him, but the expression that sat on his face was neither playful nor teasing. It was cruel, terrible, magnificent, every bit of the god he actually was.
“You’re weak against sirens, remember?” Rafayel purred, the sunset glow of his eyes set ablaze by some unholy fire.
“Not just any siren,” Sylus felt compelled to point out. His hand settled on the curve of Rafayel’s ass, just to emphasise his point. He didn’t miss the dangerous flicker in Rafayel’s eyes, and felt a smirk rise to his lips in response.
“She’s hardly just any siren, I can assure you,” Rafayel said dryly.
“Maybe.” Sylus moved his hand, slow and caressing, up and down the silky material of Rafayel’s pants. “But my so-called weakness happens to apply only to one particular siren. I don’t think I will have any trouble with the rest.”
The amusement on Rafayel’s face sharpened into a smirk. “What conceit.”
“A sea god is in love with me,” Sylus said easily, as if this knowledge, this new certainty, were neither mind-blowing nor earth-shattering. “I think I’m entitled to be a little conceited.”
“When did I ever say I’m in love with you?”
Sylus grinned, triumphant. “You just did.”
Rafayel blinked, and then spluttered. “That totally doesn’t count–”
Sylus kissed him silent. Rafayel made a sound that was part indignation and part embarrassment, but in the end allowed himself to melt into the kiss—this being who could have destroyed the room, the whole opera house, the entire city block in fact, if he had so wished. Instead, he allowed Sylus to touch him, to hold him, to kiss him, to fuck him all soft and pliant when he felt like it.
To take his hand as they drifted, not quite side by side but always within sighting distance of each other, through the endless void that was immortality.
It took a special kind of idiot blinded by their own stubbornness and sense of self-preservation not to see it, but Sylus could be a little like that. Sometimes.
The sound of a bell interrupted his progress to make amends. Sylus made his reluctant retreat, saw the state he had left Rafayel’s lips in, and felt slightly more pleased with himself.
“The concert’s about to begin.”
“I thought you’re not interested in any other siren,” Rafayel pointed out, a touch accusing.
“I’m very much not, but your absence will be noted and I refuse to get in your aunt’s bad book so soon.”
Rafayel snorted but proceeded to remove himself from Sylus’ lap. For a moment, Sylus only watched him, fondness a heavy, stifling band around his ribcage, leaving him breathless.
Then Rafayel turned and cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Aren’t you coming?”
Always, he thought, felt the word spread and take root. One day, he would probably say it, once it had become an entire forest of certainties. But not just yet.
For now, he got up and fell into steps behind him, hand brushing the small of Rafayel’s back.
End