I startled as I moved around and touched water, finding myself in a pool of some sort.
A long, recessed pool crafted from black stone.
What the—I was sitting against one of the edges in a relaxed position, shirtless and in just a pair of black swim trunks.
“Well? Be my good youngling and answer me. Is it to your liking?”
I swung my head as Ruxnoth materialized over on the side opposite me, upon a shimmering deep blue ornate piece offurniture that seemed to be a blend of a pool lounger and a throne. Deeply odd.
Almost as odd as him relaxing there half-naked, all that long jet-black hair flowing around him, his chest on full display with those blue fissures all over his skin. His thighs were spread wide in his sleek black pants as he watched me with unnerving interest.
I cleared my throat. “It’s not exactly a locale, is it? It’s a manifestation. Some sort of phantasmal plane—a dreamscape.”
“Ah, deflection. A classic, if not disappointingly pedestrian, tactic when one is unnerved.”
“I’m not unnerved by you.”
His lips quirked. “Yes, I know.”
“Then what was—”
“I wanted you to recognize that fact.”
“No. You were concerned I’d see you like my family and their close allies do, those who know about you and Sanctus. When you let me go, you knew it was a risk, and you’re checking that you gambled correctly.”
His eyes lit up. “I have missed you, miraculous boy.”
“Message received by the fact that you brought me here.”
“Alas, that wasn’t for my benefit.”
“What are you talking about? You didn’t pull me here to tell me something, to check in?” And to make sure I was still on his side—from his perspective at least.
“I brought you here because you need me.” He rose from his throne-lounger oddity, and strode—well, more like glided—toward the very edge of the pool. “The cravings are becoming too much to bear, are they not?”
I swallowed thickly. “That’s not—”
“The cold is worsening. You require my assistance to ease your pain.”
“No,” I ground out, finding it a struggle to keep eye contact.
I wasn’t exactly known for my ability to lie believably.
I didn’t like it. It tasted wrong.
But with everything that had happened, I’d come to learn in harsh and almost forced ways that there was a version of it that I could actually manage.
Much like him.
Just obviously not quite on his level. I didn’t exactly have centuries at my back. Nor did it come naturally to me or sit well with me.
Well, not when it came to direct lies, like the one I’d just uttered.
But keeping certain things buried—or tangled—was something I could do, though. That I’d had to do a little of ever since he’d infected me. And because of all the complicated dangerous stakes it had brought along with it, all the awful revelations.
I sucked in a breath as he stepped out onto the water’s edge, then… walked on it.
Father had been right about his god complex. Jeez.
