Shadows Return

laughed softly and released Seregil. “Even after all these years, and all that’s befallen me, I’m still tempted. You should be flattered.”
    “I suppose I am, Master.” Seregil forced the lie out, shaping it with a grudging sincerity. Let Ilar think he’d been moved by something other than disgust.
    Perhaps the act rang true. Ilar grabbed him by the arms and pulled Seregil into his lap as if he were still the green young boy he’d been that long-ago summer. Seregil kept himself pliant and unresisting as Ilar ran greedy hands over his face, shoulders, and chest, then pulled him close to breathe in the scent of his hair.
    And for one brief, traitorous moment, Seregil’s body remembered that touch.
    Suddenly Ilar pushed Seregil from his lap. He landed on his ass and the bastard gave him a push with one oiled foot, sending Seregil onto his back.
    “Feh! It’s like handling a corpse. Do you think you’ll win me over like that?” Ilar barked an order and one of the men outside came in and handed him the whip.
    Seregil cowered on the rug, one hand on the wet patch of carpet where the oil had spilled, as Ilar rained blows down on his bowed back and shoulders. “Forgive me, Master! I didn’t dare presume. Do you want—?”
Forgive me, Alec.
“Do you want me tonight?”
    With a bitter laugh, Ilar threw the whip down and pulled up the hem of his robe, letting Seregil see the ruin there. “What use would I have for you, like this?”
    Seregil couldn’t suppress a shudder of sympathy; everything had been taken from Ilar. He had nothing left between his legs but scars.
    “Oh, Master!” Still not ready to give up the game, he carefully placed a hand on the man’s thigh, just below the hip. “You wouldn’t be my first eunuch.”
    Ilar stepped back and dropped his robe, but for just an instant Seregil caught the fleeting glimpse of a naked emotion in those hazel eyes: want.
    “Really?” Ilar sneered. “What an interesting life you’ve led, being free all these years. Would you play the clever whore for me, too, for the sake of that half-breed of yours? Or are you planning to insinuate yourself into my bed so you can strangle me there?”
    Seregil sat back on his heels and met his tormentor eye to eye, unflinching. “I gave you my word, Master Ilar: My life for his. I won’t harm you as long as he remains alive.”
    And once again, he saw that hesitation, that hint of vulnerability. And once again, it passed.
    Ilar shook his head and put his clothing back in order. “No? Well, perhaps I will consider your very generous offer, but not tonight.”
    He picked up the whip and went to the door. “Oh, and to answer your earlier question, Master Yhakobin is generously setting me up in a house of my own, once he’s achieved success. Freedmen with a patron like mine live very, very well here. You’ll be my very first slave, an ornament for my household. So enjoy your glimpses of your talimenios while you can.”
    Seregil remained on his knees for some time, surrounded by the overpowering smell of roses. Time was growing short. He silently thanked the Four that Ilar had revealed as much as he had. It stuck in his throat, to play the broken, docile slave, but tonight’s work made it all worthwhile.
    Now, to learn how long he had.
             
    The scent of the oil clung to Seregil’s hands even after he’d scrubbed them in the basin. It pervaded his dreams as he lay in the dark, chasing sleep.
    Wild white roses were blooming along the river by his father’s encampment that summer. Ilar had plucked one for him the first time they’d kissed. He carefully broke off the thorns and tucked it behind Seregil’s ear.
    “You’re lovely.”
    “I’m not. You just want to kiss me again.”
    “You are, and I do.”
    And he had.
    Seregil handed him a rose, but instead it was a dagger and he plunged it into Ilar’s beautiful throat, as unerringly as he had with the Haman he’d killed…
    Now it was the young Haman lying at his feet. Moonlight turned the blood black on the dead man’s skin and clothing, and his hair was like a halo of snow. And Ilar was there in the shadows, sobbing, with blood running down his thighs…No, it was Alec. They’d gelded Alec! And something pale and frightening was struggling beneath the bushes, rustling in the dead leaves…
    Seregil sat up in the darkness and put a hand to his cheek. He was crying. But for whom?
    The sound of the rustling leaves came again, startling him