The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil (33 page)

And then, abruptly, the spells were gone.

Charles had seen Emily Elliott come into town, and he’d seen the magistrate’s idiot of a son harass her, and he’d seen Timothy rescue her. That had made him smile. Which had been a mistake, because then Smith had come over to see, and the next thing Charles knew, Smith was out the door and down the alley. Charles’s fingers had dug into the windowsill as Smith had cut on Stephen; he didn’t much care for the little prick, no, but he didn’t like to see his brother enchanted and cut, either.

But then Smith had stumbled, and then Emily had stabbed him—and as the knife went in, Smith went down.

And so did all the spells.

For a moment, Charles was too stunned to move. He could feel the slack in his bonds, but he didn’t trust it, thinking it had to be a trap. But when Smith stayed down and the spells remained impotent, Charles realized it was true. He was free. He didn’t know how long it would last or if he could really get away, but right now, in this moment, he was free.

And Timothy Fielding was still in town.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Charles fumbled into his clothes and ran out of the inn.

He felt strange on the street. The sun was too bright, and the air hurt his lungs. He didn’t know where he was going, and the looks people gave him made him feel shamed and low. He had to look terrible, worse than he ever had. His clothes were dirty and wrinkled, and his face… He reached up and touched his sunken cheeks. Then he tried to straighten, to at least give himself posture, but he was so weak, so tired. He didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t know how far he could go, but he was going to go as far as he could.

He was going to find Timothy, if he could manage it.

But Timothy was nowhere to be found, and instead, Charles ended up walking directly into the path of his grandfather’s passing coach.

When he spied it, Charles moved back out of the way so fast he might have had springs on his feet, but it was too late. The coach slowed, the curtain at the window moved aside, and his grandfather’s cold, gray face appeared in its place. A footman hopped down and wordlessly opened the door. Charles didn’t even consider waiting or resisting or even outright running away. Trembling, sweating, and barely breathing, he removed his hat and held it protectively over his heart as he hunched his shoulders and stepped inside.

The interior of the carriage was close and hot. It smelled of expensive fabric and his grandfather’s snuff, and it felt to Charles like a foot in the center of his chest. The carriage began to roll on again, and as the silence lengthened, the temperature increased. Charles pressed his hat tighter against his body, feeling small and sick, waiting for it to begin.

“You offensive, shoddy twit.”

Charles shut his eyes and swallowed on a throat thick and dry.

Whitby snorted in derision. “
Cowardly
on top of it all, I see. Sitting there, sniveling, practically pissing yourself. You disgust me. To think
my
blood spawned such as you. And now, on top of your buggering and simpering and moaning like a bitch for anyone who will tickle between your legs, now you think to betray your own House, to make a mockery of us. What, exactly, did you hope to accomplish?”

Charles said nothing, only tried to make himself smaller in the seat.

Whitby rapped Charles’s knees hard with his cane. “Answer me, boy. Honor me in
this
, at least. Tell me why you are such a failure to me. Is it deliberate? Are you simply stupid and misguided in your zeal? Which is it, boy?” When Charles said nothing, he slapped his cane against Charles’s leg again, harder this time, making him jump and crush his hat further against his chest. “Answer me!”

Charles bent himself double and took the third blow and the fourth and the string of furious cursing, but he did not answer. He couldn’t. The realization made him feel dull and strange and stupid, and in fact the beating was oddly grounding, a sort of calmer, less sexual feeling than he had when Smith abused him. What’s happened to me? he wondered, sad and distant, as if watching himself from far away. How did I ever come to this version of myself? How did I ever become such a worthless, pathetic waste of a man? But there was no answer, so he simply stayed quiet, distancing himself again, so well that he didn’t notice at first when the beating stopped, didn’t even notice the carriage had come to a stop until the door opened and his grandfather was shoving him out.

“Go,” Whitby growled. He leaned out of the carriage, his thin white hair wild, his spittle catching in the corner of his mouth. “Go. Get out of my sight. Go fuck your little master. You can rot with him, you worthless little pike. I wash my hands of you, blood kin or not. I’d rather see the Elliotts win than have the House fall to such as you. Though, I suppose—”

He reached into his pocket and tossed something small and black at Charles, who caught it before he realized what it was. He lifted the metal up in his hand and felt a strange, fuzzy feeling come across his mind. It was a pistol.

“Do us all a favor,” Whitby purred. “Find just enough spine to use it. On yourself or Smith—it’s all the same to me. It’s likely optimistic to think you have balls enough for even this, but damn the Goddess for her witchery! You cannot push the blood down forever.” He curled his lip at Charles, made one more sound of disgust, then shut the door.

The coach rolled away, leaving Charles standing there in a quiet, narrow alley, a loaded pistol in his hand. He stared down at it, dreamlike, and he thought he heard it whisper to him.

“Don’t think. Don’t stop. Just lift it. Lift it to your head, prime it, and pull it. Don’t think. Don’t slow down, don’t think, don’t think, just end this, end this, end this end this end this—”

Charles shut his eyes and lifted the pistol to his temple. But before he could so much as reach for the priming, a hand closed over his and stopped the pistol’s ascent. It was a slender, sun-browned hand, and just the sight of it made Charles sob.

Timothy.

“Hush,” the Catalian said. He slid his hand over the pistol and deftly took it away from Charles, then tossed it into a barrel of dirty water behind him.

Charles lifted both his hands, dropping his ruined hat so that he could push against Timothy’s chest, to try to make him go away. Oh, he wanted him, wanted him desperately, but how? What was the point? He needed to run; he needed to go. This would not help! But Fielding closed his hands around Charles’s wrists, keeping him from pulling away. Charles howled, shocking himself at the sound he made. He sounded like a wounded animal in a cage. He felt like one. He felt worse than one.

“Hush,” Timothy said again, maddeningly gentle, invitingly calm. He backed Charles slowly up against a wall, but he used it to support him rather than trap him. He kept firm hold of Charles’s wrists, but his long, thin thumbs reached up to brush soothingly over the backs of Charles’s hands. “Let it go. Let everything he said go.”

“Get away from me,” Charles whispered. His voice was hoarse and raw, and he felt the tears burning at his eyes.
Pathetic, sniveling fool
. A single sob escaped, and he shoved hard at Fielding.

But Timothy would not be moved. “You think I will watch that and simply leave?” He swore in Catalian, then took Charles’s chin in his hand and lifted it, forcing Charles’s attention to his face. His dark eyes were blazing. “I just stood here in the alley and watched that mathdu ghora insult you
tak, put, ud shora
, and then goad you into putting a bullet in your head.
Coward
.” Charles winced, then jolted when Timothy sighed and brushed a quick, gentling kiss across the bridge of his nose. “Not you, quiera. Your sorry excuse of a grandfather.”

Quiera
. Charles shut his eyes. “How did you find me?”

“I saw you running, and I came to follow you. I was almost to you when your grandfather caught you.” He brushed a hand over Charles’s collar, his fingers teasing against Charles’s skin. “He cannot kill you himself, or he would. You are his kin. I read the laws on gentry and bastards. They would have his head for it. So he tried this instead.”

“I’m such a fool,” Charles whispered. When Timothy’s hand brushed his neck again, reaching for his cheek in a soothing gesture, he jerked his face away. “Don’t.”

Timothy caught his chin again, but he didn’t force Charles’s head around. “You make this so complicated. You need comforting so badly I ache just looking at you, but you won’t take it. You let your grandfather assault you, but you won’t let me even touch you.”

“Because I don’t want to hurt you,” Charles whispered. “Smith has a spell on me. He has about fifty now, I think. Whatever we triggered that night in the abbey, the spell that made you freeze. He knows I tried to come to orgasm with someone, and he is furious that I won’t tell him who. He says you will never dare try again, not now. He’s done something to me, made me poison to you.” He looked into Timothy’s eyes, aching. “It’s true, I left to try and find you. But it was a foolish whim. I need to go. I need to go as far away from you as possible. I don’t know what the spell will do to you, and I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I can feel it,” Timothy said without concern. “It makes me feel ill. It is trying to push me away. I am ignoring it.”

Charles saw then how pale and nauseated Timothy looked, how his entire forehead was dripping with sweat. It made him want to cry. “Don’t—please!”

“I’m not leaving you. I won’t let you run this time,” Timothy said. But his voice was shaking a little.

Charles cried out, then shoved at him. “Go!
Go
! I’m not worth it, you idiot! I’m not worth your death! I’m not worth what he will do to you!”

A sad, crooked smile spread over Timothy’s face. “That is terrifying to you, quiera, isn’t it? That someone might find you worthy enough to hurt themselves over. That you, in all your misery, might be worth trying to save, even at such a cost.”

“Just stop,” Charles whispered, his throat so thick he could barely choke out the words. “The other night—Goddess bless, it was amazing, like nothing—But it can’t, not with what I’ve done, not with Smith! You have to go! Go back with my brother,
go
—”

“No, quiera,” Timothy whispered, nuzzling him gently.

Charles tried to push against his chest, but he didn’t have the strength. He sobbed instead. “Why?”

“Because you are in pain,” Timothy whispered back. “It hurts to touch you, yes, but it hurts more to see you hurt yourself by keeping yourself from comfort.” Charles shut his eyes and swayed, his knees going as Timothy pressed a soft, sad kiss against his cheek. “This is delicious, this
rtjla li
, but it is not enough.”

Charles tasted the words in his mind.
Rtjla li
. They sounded sweet and beautiful. “What does that mean?” he asked in a whisper.

“The sweet love,” Timothy said. “A union unfinished. But that is not what I want from you.” He stroked Charles’s face. “
Ach, quiera moteari, ma lichera
,” he murmured, then let go of Charles’s wrists, cupped his face, and took his mouth with his own.

Charles sobbed. He cried, he wept, he came apart at every single seam as Timothy kissed him slowly, deeply, thoroughly, more tender than any other lover Charles had had, more sensual than the most practiced courtesan, which he supposed Timothy was. He felt the Catalian’s body responding, his sex growing hard against Charles’s own, the rough, regular friction of his subtle thrusts making silent promises of what lay beyond this kiss, what more this man could give him, what this man wanted very, very much to give him here and now. Delicious carnal images swam in Charles’s mind, memories of the night in the tower mixing with longings unfulfilled, and Charles sank into the kiss. He forgot his fear, his terror, his shame, and his misery, and he slid his hands up Timothy’s chest and around the back of his neck, drawing him even closer.

But Timothy broke the kiss at last, shaking, looking dizzy and sick. “
Shak d’rha
. Too much.” He touched the center of Charles’s chest. “Something there. I feel it. That is the source of what keeps me away.”

“It’s a charm,” Charles whispered, still gasping for breath. “Madeline gave it to me, but Smith did something to it, and now it’s bad.”

“You have to take it off,” Timothy said. “I can bear a great deal, but I cannot bear any more.” He swallowed his nausea, then let Charles see the heat and promise in his eyes. “Take it off, and we will continue as we were. If that is all that is keeping me away, remove it.”

Charles’s hand closed over the stone. He wanted to remove it. He didn’t want Smith and his games any longer, no matter what he had promised or how.
Maybe that will be enough. Maybe my will can be enough
. He wanted Timothy’s kiss and the music that was purring softly against the edges of his mind. But he couldn’t shift the charm. He drew it several inches upward from his chest, then felt the panic hit him, like someone pulling out the floor of the entire world. He let it fall back into place.

“I can’t,” he whispered, feeling dull and defeated. “I can’t take it off.”

Timothy brushed a kiss against his forehead. “You cannot stay like this. You must seek help.” He pulled back again and nodded to the end of the alley. “Go to the witch. You said she was your friend. She is wise and strong.” A cloud seemed to pass over his face as he added, “She might have need of you as well. Her sister is hiding something. I think the witch has spent herself too much in helping your half brother. Go to the witch, quiera. Go and heal yourself. Otherwise I must hurt myself to kiss you again.” His eyes turned sad, and he reached out to stroke Charles’s chin once more. “Let me go with you. Let me take you there.”

Charles wanted to let him. He wanted to let Timothy take his hand and lead him across the moor to Madeline. He should say no. But he was so tired of being alone. Right or wrong, he wanted Timothy to go with him.

But when he tried to open his mouth to say yes, he felt the shift. The spell, the deep spell, the binding spell was taking over, pulling darkness once more over his brain. Charles blinked, trying to get away from it, but then it tightened again, trying to bind him. Trying to find him.