Saxton eased back in his chair and looked upward at the chandelier that hung so far above the floor. The fixture was a stunning specimen from Baccarat, made in the middle nineteenth century, with all of the leaded-glass crystals and careful workmanship one would expect.
He recalled it swinging from side to side subtly, the rainbow refractions of light twinkling all around the room.
How many nights ago had that been? How long since Qhuinn had serviced that Chosen directly above this room?
Nothing had been the same since.
"A broken-down car." Blay took a long swallow. "Just mechanical issues."
Is that why your leathers are wet, and there is blood down the front of your shirt? Saxton wondered.
And yet he kept the demand to himself.
He had become used to keeping things to himself.
Silence.
Blay finished his port and poured another with the kind of alacrity typically reserved for drunkards. Which he was not. "And...you?" the male said. "How's your work?"
"I'm finished. Well, nearly so."
Blay's blue eyes shot over. "Really? I thought you were going to be at this forever."
Saxton traced that face he knew so well. That stare he'd looked into for what seemed like a lifetime. Those lips he had spent hours locked onto.
The crushing sense of sadness he felt was as undeniable as the attraction that had brought him to this house, his job, his new life.
"So did I," he said after a moment. "I, too...thought it would last far longer than it did."
Blay stared down into his glass. "It's been how long since you started?"
"I don't...I can't remember." Saxton put a hand up and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "It does not matter."
More silence. In which Saxton was willing to bet the very breath in his lungs that Blaylock's mind had retreated to the other male, the one he loved like nobody else, his other half.
"So what was it?" Blay asked.
"I'm sorry?"
"Your project. All of this work." Blay motioned his glass around elegantly. "These books you've been poring over. If you're finished, you can tell me what it was all about now, right?"
Saxton briefly considered telling the truth...that there had been other, equally pressing and important things that he had been quiet on. Things that he had thought he could live with, but which, over time, had proven too heavy a burden to carry.
"You shall find out soon enough."
Blay nodded, but it was with that vital distraction that he had had since the very beginning. Except then he said, "I'm glad you're here."
Saxton's brows rose. "Indeed...?"
"Wrath should have a really good lawyer at his side."
Ah.
Saxton pushed his chair back and got to his feet. "Yes. How true."
It was with a strange feeling of fragility that he gathered his reams of papers. It certainly seemed, in this tense, sad moment, as though they were all that sustained him, these flimsy, yet powerful sheets with their countless words, each handwritten and crafted with care, contained neatly in their lines of text.
He did not know what he would do without them on a night like this.
He cleared his throat. "What plans have you for what little remains of the eve?"
As he waited for the reply, his heart pounded within his rib cage, because he, and he alone, seemed to realize that the assignment from the king wasn't the only thing that was ending tonight. Indeed, the baseless optimism that had sustained him in the initial stages of this love affair had decayed into a kind of desperation that had had him grasping at straws in an uncharacteristic way...but now, even that was gone.
It was ironic, really. Sex was but a transient physical connection - and there were many times in his life when that had been all he'd been looking for. Even with Blaylock, in the beginning, such had been the case. Over time, however, the heart had gotten involved, and that had left him where he was tonight.
At the end of the road.
"...work out."
Saxton shook himself. "I'm sorry?"
"I'm going to work out for a while."
After you've had a decanter of port? Saxton thought.
For a moment, he was tempted to push for precise details on the night, the minute whos and whats and wheres - as if they might unlock some sort of relief. But he knew better. Blay was a compassionate, kind soul, and torture was something he did only as part of his job when it was necessary.
There would be no relief coming, not from any combination of sex, conversing, or silence.
Feeling as though he were bracing himself, Saxton buttoned his double-breasted blazer up and checked that his cravat was in place. A passby of his pectoral revealed his pocket square was precisely arranged, but the French cuffs of his shirt need a sharp tug, and he took care of that promptly.
"I must needs take a break before I prepare to speak with the king. My shoulders are killing me from having been at that desk all night."
"Have a bath. It might loosen things up?"
"Yes. A bath."
"I'll see you later, then," Blay said as he poured himself another and came over.
Their mouths met in a brief kiss, after which Blay turned and strode out into the foyer, disappearing up the stairs to go change.
Saxton watched him depart. Even moved forward a couple of steps so that he could see those shitkickers, as the Brothers called them, ascend the grand staircase one step at a time.
Part of him was screaming to follow the male up into their bedroom and help him out of those clothes. Emotions aside, the physical sizzle between the two of them had always been strong, and he felt like he wanted to exploit that now.
Except even that Band-Aid was fraying.
Going over and pouring himself a sherry, he sipped it and went to sit before the fire. Fritz had refreshed the wood not long ago, and the flames were bright and active over the stack of logs.
This was going to hurt, Saxton thought. But it wasn't going to break him.
He would eventually get over this. Heal. Move on.
Hearts were broken all the time....
Wasn't there a song about that?
The question was, of course, when did he talk to Blaylock about it.
Chapter Nine
The sound of cross-country skis traveling over snow was a rhythmic rush, repeated at a quick clip.
The storm that had drifted down from the north had cleared after dawn, and the rising sun that shone beneath the lip of the departing cloud cover sliced through the forest to the sparkling ground.
To Sola Morte, the shafts of gold looked like blades.
Up ahead, her target presented itself like a Faberge egg sitting on a stand: The house on the Hudson River was an architectural showpiece, a cage of seemingly fragile girders holding stack upon stack of countless panels of glass. On all sides, reflections of the water and the nascent sun were like photographs captured by a true artist, the images frozen in the very construction of the home itself.