Vanth lifted his eyes at me, still cold like the deepest hell. “Have I been tactless?”

Was he implying I was the one who'd insulted him somehow? Never mind.

“No, you're right. I want to find that fucker, too. See if they still wanna summon anything when I'm done with them.”

He looked at my hands. Only then did I realize I was digging my nails into my palms.

“Looks like I’ve let myself get carried away,” I said.

Vanth took one of my brown hands on his long pale fingers, lifted it to his lips, and kissed my palm. It tickled.

Well, I'd slept with enough guys to see my share of weirdos. I didn't have much room to pass judgement. What really mattered was that he apparently still wanted to fuck me, and I had to seize that chance.

I lowered my head, but then lifted only my eyes to him. Never let it be said I’m bad at this thing. “Your Illustrious Highness, you keep doing that to someone and they might get ideas.”

Vanth released my hand. “Would that be too bad?”

You’d think he was still discussing our livestock, but I wasn’t fooled.

“For me? Absolutely not. I wouldn’t presume of knowing what it means for Your Illustrious Highness, though.” I looked away and cleared my throat. See, it’s no good to have nothing but bait. The bait must lead somewhere. “We both want that necromancer dead. Don’t you think we should work together?”

He cut the thread with the sewing kit scissors. Amateur move. Every adult I knew simply snapped the thread with their fingers. “I’m listening.”

Now Vanth was being reasonable. Go figure.

“I think we should bait them. Or rather, I should be the bait. Draw them someplace big. Someplace I could draw attention to myself without it being suspicious. Then, when they close in to finish the job, we finish them. How’s that sound?”

I could’ve sworn his eyes gleamed with something very much like admiration. “Quite good. Don't you have to fly to Vorsa?”

“Oh, I see.” I made a show of pondering this. “We could try to draw them out in High Tomenedra. It has one of the closest airports.”

“Then we’ll do just that.”

“Now we need a way to communicate,” I said.

Vanth leaned closer, holding my head in both his hands as delicately as he would've held a captured bird. I swallowed. Surely he could feel my pulse racing at the end of his fingertips. His eyes were, I thought, brown; but in the moonslight they looked like the deepest dark pools. He scared me, and for that I wanted him.

I tilted my head and kissed his palm.

His hand closed around a fistful of hair in the back of my neck, yanking my head up. His lips hit mine, less like a man than a hungry beast. I clung to his neck with both arms. He pushed me down on the cot. He was all around me, all I could see and smell and touch. I threw a leg over his waist, pressing him closer. He pinned my hands above my head; my cock hardened. I couldn’t have shaken him off if I tried. I didn’t want to admit it even to myself, but I knew. All I could do was breathe and let him feast.

Finally he broke the kiss. A thread of saliva stretched between our lips for one second.

“You've tasted me and I've tasted you.” He spoke in a low rumble I felt across my skin more than heard. Did he sound indifferent before? Now he sounded like he was ready to push me on my hands and knees on the grimy floor of a bar restroom and fuck me raw. My cock gave a jolt right against his hip. “For the services you have rendered upon me, I will protect your life with my own. This I swear on the Underworld.”

Before I could find any words, he slid a hand between us and stroked my cock fast and rough. It strained against my pants, rock-hard and ember-hot. My leg dropped away from him.

“Will you come in your pants like a virgin?” His lips brushed my ear. His breath felt scorching, his voice low and mocking. It made my cock so uncomfortably hard I couldn’t stand it. I tried to rub myself against his hand. Vanth laughed. “Oh, you’re like a cat in heat, humping any man who’ll look at you. I bet you want to be fucked. Don’t you?”

The sheer humiliation of it made my pulse thunder on my ears.

“Won’t you disappoint me, though?” he went on. “You’re so desperate, I bet you’ll cream yourself the moment I enter you. What shall I do, then? How shall I teach you a lesson?”

Oh, he'd be so good at it. I let out a soft little whimper through tight lips, not trusting myself to speak out.

“I should make you beg for my cock before I let you touch it. You want that, don’t you?”

Words had escaped me, but I didn’t need them with my body doing the speaking, head thrown back and legs splayed open.

Vanth dropped a soft, delicate kiss on my cheek and let me go. I gulped air as if I'd almost drowned. The disappointment hit me like a slap. Even more shameful than coming in my pants was to be discarded so easily, and even worse, liking it. My cheeks burned. I sat up, smoothing my shirt. My hard-on was still noticeable if you cared to look, but Vanth didn’t. You'd think he hadn't moved from his corner of the cot.

He looked at me with catlike indifference, took his mirror and lipstick out of his jacket pocket, and started reapplying his makeup. “I'll fuck you when I want to.”

Oh, so we were at when, weren’t we?

“That's not what I was wondering.”

“Oh?”

“You know what I mean! You just oathed yourself to me.”

“Can't I?”

What a strange thing to say, even for a man like him. Nobody throws oaths around for any old reason. And a Rellian aristocrat doesn't oath himself to a brown Dorontean farmer. He hadn't even bothered to set any limitations on it. Now he had to protect me as long as he lived. And if he couldn’t, he’d die with me. Did he really want that?

He wouldn't oath himself to me out of the kindness of his heart, that was for sure.

My mouth was dry, so I poured myself another bowl of chicha morada. I needed something stronger, but it was probably for the best that I didn’t have it.

Vanth chopped off part of that loose curl with the scissors from the sewing kit. This, I realized, was the answer to my request for communication. Silently, he passed the scissors on to me. My hair yielded a much shorter lock. Vanth entwined them together. A spell vibrated in the air around his fingers. The strands of hair wrapped themselves so tightly around each other, you couldn't have pulled them apart. He cut the blended locks in two and gave me one. It sat warm on my hand. For the time being, I wrapped it on my hankie.

“Don't wait till you're in danger to call me.” He stood up, and I instantly followed him, or he'd tower over me even more. “Anything else?”

“Nothing I can think of.”

“I’ll take my leave, then.”

“I'll show you out.”

The summer night was balmy, but helped cool my head. Valentino's motorcycle had been taken away; Vanth's still awaited under an espinillo. The twins hovered over it; when they saw him coming they ran to the front door.

Vanth stood next to his motorcycle. “Come here.”

The twins stayed where they were.

Vanth lifted the motorcycle keys up in one hand, as if to show them it wasn't anything dangerous, and threw them at the nearest twin, who was Sol. She caught them in both hands and didn’t move.

“It's fine,” I said. “He's with me, remember? Just be careful.”

The allure of the contraption proved to be too powerful in the end. Sol sat on the motorcycle as Vanth told her about whatever a clutch does. Luna stood next to me, not daring to go closer. Soon, Vanth had to put a patient hand on Sol’s arm so she wouldn’t drive off before his lecture was done.

So he was capable of being reasonable after all. How strange.

Finally, Vanth made sure she’d put the helmet on. Satisfied, he took a step back, never looking away from her. Sol kickstarted the machine and was off. I too followed her with my eyes.

She stopped where the dirt path started and turned over her shoulder. “You saw me, right? I can ride this thing!”

“Don't get cocky,” I said.

She kicked the motorcycle again, speeding around the farmhouse with a small puff of dust chasing after her.

“Well, fuck.”

“She’ll come back. In one piece, most likely,” Vanth said. He looked at Luna. She glued herself to my side, something she hadn’t done in years. “You sewed that dress yourself, didn’t you.”

We all sewed our clothes at home, and weaved and dyed them many of them too, though the wool was spun by the machines at El Meandro. But Luna, who liked to look good, had taken to saving the best scraps she could find and arranging them as best she saw fit. Lately she’d grown proud of her skills.

And now, a beautiful rich man had walked in and pointed out she was wearing scraps after all. Luna shrunk herself even more.

I cleared my throat. “Yes, she’s pretty skilled!”

“Indeed.” Vanth looked into the distance, where Sol was coming from. “Far more than myself. That design shows quite a good eye for aesthetics, I’d say.”

Luna gripped my sleeve.

Luckily, Sol came back soon after. After making sure we’d all seen her, though, she was ready to keep going. I actually had to chase her off the motorcycle so her sister could give it a try.

“I'm fine,” Luna said. “I probably won’t get it right. I might even break it.”

“Then I’m gonna ride it again,” Sol said.

I tugged her braid. “Didn't you hear me? Don't get cocky!”

“You can just sit on her if you'd prefer to.” Vanth said.

“Her?” Luna took a couple of tentative steps forward.

“I call her Melanthe. You can call her anything you want.”

Luna sat cautiously astride the motorcycle, gripping the handlebars, as Vanth explained things to her.

Sol stood in the other side of the motorcycle. “Do something, you're boring.”

“Leave her alone.” I tried to pull her braid again, but she dodged me. “She let you have your turn.”

Luna put the helmet on. “Don't stand in the way.”

Sol wisely moved aside, and so did I. Luna kickstarted the motorcycle, sitting rigidly as it rolled away. She was several steps away from the path when she stopped, so suddenly she almost toppled to the ground before she managed to prop herself up on one foot. Vanth exhaled in relief at the exact same time as me. We stood side by side in silence as Luna grew more confident and took a short lap down the path, though not as far as her sister had.

“Now it's my turn,” Sol said.

“Your turn to let His Illustrious Highness have his motorcycle back.” I shooed them into the farmhouse before returning to him. I took him around the espinillo, so that we wouldn’t be easily seen from inside the main building. “Will you stay for dinner?”

“I appreciate your offer, but I've already had dinner.”

“Oh, yeah... Vorsa's in the future, isn't it. Well, I suppose your siblings are waiting for you. Or are yours cousins, too?”

“One sibling. Am I supposed to believe that was a wild guess?”

“Of course not. You behave like the brother that's always looking after the li'l one.”

He didn't say anything, so I took that as agreement.

Come next spring the tree would be perfumed with its poofy yellow flowers. Would I even be home by then? I didn't want to think about it. Everything was so uncertain. At least I knew I wouldn't cry. I’d stopped crying since the last time I came back from Vorsa.

Vanth grabbed my arm and turned me around to face him. “Do you think it's wise to ignore me?”

I loved the hint of menace threading between his words, the quiet warning of his thumb pressing down on my wrist. I didn't really like that he could make me melt so easily. With other guys, I fucked them and that was it. With him, there was no walking away. That was new.

“Not ignoring you, just thinking of something more unpleasant.”

He released me. “That's saying something.”

“See, that puts me in a tight spot. Do I say you're wrong, or do I agree you're unpleasant? I'm gonna say nothing.”

He smiled, sort of. “I appreciate your honesty. You can get away with that when you're cute.”

“Ah, but are you talking about me or you?”

“It's flattering that you'd consider me an option, but praising yourself is unsightly, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

He looked away, as if there was something interesting over the roof. I checked. There was nothing.

“You worry about your family, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I mean, how can I know the necromancer won't send anything else at them? What if they think I’m still around?”

He crouched and wrote something on the dirt. It wasn't any script I recognized. The letters skittered away like bugs when you lift a stone.

“A protective circle.” Vanth stood up, wiping his dusty finger on his own hankie. Surprisingly, it was just a regular white hankie. “Nothing from the Underworld will attack them in the night. It should last one cycle of the moons.”

That’s about two months and a half. Even with the added power of the silver noon, that was way longer than I’d expect from an off-the-cuff spell. The King of the Dying Sun sure was something.

“Honestly? Just for that, you can do anything you want with me. Just ask.”

“Don't bother being thankful simply because I did my job.” He leaned in closer. “You already belong to me, beautiful. Payment has no meaning between us. I’ll take what I want to, when I want to. That’s all.”

His words sank into me. If he was just another man, I would’ve told him whatever he wanted to hear and thought nothing of it. Begging for his cock? I’d done that for the price of a dinner and a hotel room for the night. If I was out before the other guy woke up, then I was out. If he didn’t even got my name, then he didn’t.

That wasn’t an option anymore.

Vanth didn’t seem to be in a hurry to hear me say anything, though. I would give him this: he didn’t seem insecure. That was something I felt thankful for, at least. Not having to waste my time propping a fragile ego up.

He held my hand and lifted it to his lips, not breaking eye contact. An uncomfortably pleasant weight settled in my chest.

Had he noticed I liked that kind of stuff? No, he likely just lucked out.