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“Sorry,” said the prince, holding up hands of placation. “It was beautiful. Really. It’s just...”
“What!?”
“You really don’t have the first clue about yourself, do you?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You, Mr. Savair! You chase me down like a horny dog for over a month. On your first day in my city, you create a reason to find me naked and wet. Today is the first day you’ve not spoken to me in that ridiculous, high-pitched voice. The way you posture and pose like a model in the Garden of Plenty. You think that’s the real you?”
“Unlike some, Your Highness, I am comfortable with who I am.”
“And that is your true self, then? Someone who pursues what he wants at all costs? A heartless animal who just fucks without emotion? Without any connection or passion or need for something more?”
“Yes, what of it?”
Calix’s eyes glowed with deepest sympathy. “Then why do you sing about true love with such sadness?”
All air left Aurelius.
Flashes shot through his memory.
The image of a familiar bedroom.
Of a boy he had known since childhood, their hands entwined. Of whispering the words he’d been so scared to say—the words he’d worked up the courage for weeks and months and years to finally fucking say! Because they had to be said! Because if they stayed trapped inside for even one second longer, he feared he might be torn in two!
And the final flash, seared across his memory like a cruel bolt of lightning, of the silence that followed.
Aurelius turned from the prince, hiding the shameful tear running down his cheek.
Calix grabbed at his hand. He jerked Aurelius around until they were eye to eye again, two beams of gold hunting inside him. “Who was the boy that made you hurt so?”
The images rose again.
No! I was a fool. I was weak! That kind of thing doesn’t happen to people like me!
Aurelius tried to wrench free, but Calix held on, sending them both rolling down the vineyard side of the hill, coming to a stop beside the knotted trunk of a vine.
Aurelius was laying on his back, the sky hidden by the huge form of Calix overtop. The prince’s eyes were flowing with tears now—frantic, desperate tears, which fell onto Aurelius like warm rain.
“Don’t you see?” said Calix. “Don’t you know that you deserve so much more than those faceless fucks. That there is so much more inside you! You hide it, but it is there! You deserve the passion you lock away!”
In his peripheral vision, as if growing directly out from the man’s temples, he saw the shining, semitranslucent glow of two twisted horns. “And I can give it to you.”
With the slowest of movements, Calix pressed his lips against his own.
And the world exploded.
A thousand sun’s worth of heat burned at every point inside him. A million volcanoes erupted in blistered fury. His body felt like a living immolation, consumed with a fire he wanted to stoke. A fire he wished could burn hotter still. To never burn out! And in those blissful licks of flame, he felt it. He felt it!
Mesti!
Ardor!
Ondo!
Vatic!
Rina!
