He blinked, laughed, and let his eyes fall to dark hoods as he joined her on the bed.
* * *
When they were alone in the turret room, Charles showed Timothy some of what he had learned to do that day.
Timothy had produced a bottle of a wine he described as “one I never thought I’d see again and still can’t understand how I am now,” and they were sipping it straight from the bottle, swapping it back and forth as Charles gave a more personal rehash of what he’d done through the day than what he’d told in the study. With Timothy he let himself tell it all, how nervous he’d been, how he had fumbled so much but how Madeline had been so good about it and so patient. He spoke excitedly of the things he’d shown her, things she hadn’t known but he somehow had. He demonstrated the trick of moving things in and out of the Void, which made Timothy laugh with delight, and that laugh in turn made Charles smile, his heart bursting inside him as he bent down and kissed Timothy first firmly, then softly on the lips.
Then for a while, there was no talking at all.
He reached back and stayed Timothy when he would have withdrawn from him, and it made him feel good and safe when Timothy remained where he was, going slowly soft inside him as he wrapped his arms around Charles, pulling him back against his chest. Charles settled in deeper and threaded Timothy’s fingers through his own.
“What is your name?” he asked. “Your real name—because I will never believe anyone in Catal named you Timothy or Fielding.”
Charles both felt and heard Timothy’s chuckle, and shut his eyes in pleasure as Timothy kissed the back of his neck. “Raturjula Naike.”
Charles tried it out several times. “It’s a bit of a mouthful, but it’s pretty.”
There was mischief in Timothy’s voice as he said, “It means ‘the beautiful opening.’”
“That’s…nice,” Charles said, though privately he was thinking it was a bit odd.
“It’s a very specific sort of opening.” He trailed his hand down Charles’s side, then over his hip and back around to where they were joined. “
Quite
specific.”
Charles held still, certain he had to be misunderstanding him, but as Timothy stroked him lightly against the side of his
own
expanded opening, he made a gurgling sound of protest. “They did not. They would never. No one would.”
“I always thought I escaped lightly. My favorite playmate was named ‘Iron Cock.’”
Timothy was laughing, and Charles thought,
He’s having me on, and I bought the entire gag
, but when he glanced over his shoulder and gave Timothy a withering look, Timothy sobered—mostly—and pulled his hand back from between them and held it up in the air. “I swear, quiera. That is my name, and that is what it means.”
“But how can you
laugh
?” Charles demanded. “The very thought of walking through your life having to answer to ‘Beautiful Anus’—”
“I have tried to tell you. It is different in Catal. I will admit it gave me some difficulty at first in the gardens, because my name was my mark from the lot, but I would not choose a new one like the others. It was who I was, and I made it my own.” He sighed. “Once I was in the Etsian-Catalian army, however, I decided my point had been made and that nothing would be served by being the literal butt of everyone’s jokes, and so I became Timothy Fielding. And it serves me well in my own mind: Raturjula was before, and Timothy is after.” He draped his arm back over Charles’s side and ran his fingers idly over his hip. “Though, now that we are speaking of it, I remember that the ghost called me Raturjula D’lor when she first met me.”
“What does the D’lor mean?” Charles asked, bracing for another something lewd.
Timothy’s hand paused on Charles’s hip. “That’s the odd thing. It’s a sort of Catalian honorific—far higher than I can even feign to claim—but it’s not the male honorific. It’s the feminine.”
“I can vouch for the penis, if it comes to that,” Charles quipped. He felt his stomach dance when Timothy laughed before kissing Charles’s face as he slid over him again, their sexes nudging one another. Timothy settled over him, smiling as he placed little kisses on Charles’s nose and trailed his fingers across Charles’s face. The sex was wonderful, but this—this easiness, this lightness and laughing… Charles never wanted it to end.
“When this is over,” Timothy said, tucking a rogue hair behind Charles’s ear, his voice low and rich and velvet, “when you and your sister have taught each other enough to find the way to the sea, to either defeat this demon or leave it all behind—when this happens, quiera, I am going to take you to Catal. I cannot take you to the palace because it is gone. But someday, when the war is over, I will take you to the ruins. I never thought I wanted to see it again, but I find now that I would, with you.”
“I would go anywhere with you,” Charles said, reaching up to touch his face.
Timothy caught his fingers and kissed them before continuing. “Then I will take you south, where it is never cold but always lush and rich, where we will pluck our dinner from the trees and feed it to one another on a misty shore. We will make our house on the hills above the white sand, and we will stay there, making love like nothing this world has ever seen. We will walk into the towns and trade with our neighbors, and not a one of them will care if you are li or
lon
or something new entirely. And when the war is over, won at last, we will dance together in the great Plaza of the Sun.”
Charles was so spellbound he could barely breathe, let alone speak. “Yes,” he whispered. “All of it—yes.”
Timothy bent and took Charles’s mouth in a tender kiss. “Speaking of yes.” He kissed him again and again, moving his fingers against Charles’s neck in that way that made him tingle all over. Then he pulled back, nuzzled Charles’s nose, then finished speaking. “You have, perhaps, heard of this humble tradition we have in my country, something you call a Catalian Ceremony.” He looked into Charles’s eyes, but he was just a tiny bit self-conscious when he said, “Should there come a time when you feel you are ready, I would like to perform it with you.”
“I’m ready now,” Charles said, not self-conscious at all.
The next kiss took some time.
“It takes many hours and some supplies,” Timothy whispered, a bit breathless, when he at last lifted his head again. “We cannot start tonight, for you must rest. But with a bit of planning and a conference with your sister—” He smiled. “What would you say about tomorrow?”
“I love tomorrow,” Charles answered.
They made love three more times before they surrendered to sleep in each other’s arms. But they went to very different places in their dreams, guided by very different forces. For as they and all the others slept, one rose who had been waiting, patiently and for a long, long time.
And though the dome of magic held strong, as the sun let its first fingers slide over the horizon, far below the tower, in the heart of the abbey, someone opened a door.
Chapter Thirteen
dah’kiel
darkness
Through darkness they will see they are nothing but one.
Through the door they shed shadows and return to the sun.
Timothy dreamed of a beautiful lady, the most beautiful he had ever seen.
He had been sitting in the darkness with Charles, whispering and laughing quietly as they fed each other pieces of bread and cheese over a golden tablecloth spread across the ground. Except there was no ground. There was only darkness all around them. There were no stars above.
He did not notice the lady immediately; he was so focused on Charles, on talking him into trying the peppered
nun
cheese, that at first he did not realize she had arrived. He turned from his picnic to acknowledge her, but when he saw her face, he paused, stunned by her beauty. She wore a veil, a thin blue sheet that rippled when she moved, but even despite the cover, she was stunning. This was no ghost. This was the real woman, and she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Timothy could not speak for the sight of her.
She smiled and held out her hand to him. Her skin was a translucent blue that shimmered in the dark, and he could see her skin was also dusted with gold. He realized she was the tall ghost from the abbey, the one from the tower, and the golden lady from the inn. It was as if all those ghosts had been mere shards of this one woman, but here she was whole. Real. She was more real to him now than she had ever been.
“Welcome, Raturjula.”
She spoke, but her lips did not move. The words simply arrived, fully formed, in Timothy’s head.
“It is good to see you so healthy and strong.”
Timothy wanted to touch her. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to put his hand in hers. His heart was beating hard against his chest, and he could not decide if he wanted to laugh or cry.
“You are the ghost,” he said, “but—do I know you? From somewhere else?”
“We have known each other always. But it has been necessary for you to forget me for a while. I am happy to see you return, to know you again.”
She still held out her hand, but she lifted it now, reaching slowly for his face.
Timothy still wanted her to touch him, but he drew back. He was not yet ready.
“Who are you? Why do you come to me now? Why were you one of the ghosts? Are you—are you all the ghosts?”
“I have always been with you, through your entire life as Raturjula D’lor, but you are only able to see me now.”
Her smile turned sad beneath the veil, and she lowered her hand.
“In the abbey you saw only my shades, and that part of me had to fade so you could shine. You saw a stronger shade of me at the inn and when you made love to Charles for the first time. But now you see all of me. We are all here now. We are in a space out of time. All the shards, in this moment, are returned. We have come back to claim you, so that you may claim him.”
In the distance, Timothy heard thunder. He turned to look, but he saw only darkness. “Where are we? What is this?”
“We are at the edge of all things, at the edge of the Veil, far, far beyond the Void. It is here we have been hiding, you and I, for ages and ages, and here where we must hide again. But this time we will not hide for long.”
“I don’t understand,” Timothy said.
“You must not fear. You will not be left alone. But now we must go. We must go and open the door.”
Timothy began to be nervous. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “And for the record, I’m not a highborn woman, so stop calling me D’lor. My name is
Raturjula Naike
. Tuja, if you wish to be familiar. Or Timothy Fielding, if you want to be current. But whoever you are, you don’t need to stay with me, because I am leaving as soon as I can with Charles—”
He turned, reaching for him, then felt his heart stop. Charles was gone.
Timothy whipped back to the veiled woman, reaching for his knife. “What have you done?”
She shook her head sadly.
“I have done nothing, Raturjula D’lor. You must come now, with me. It is time to open the door.”
“I’m
not a woman
!” Timothy shouted and brought his knife down the center of her veil, rending it in two. “And I’m not opening—”
He dropped his knife, crying out as the gossamer sheet parted, revealing the woman’s true face. She reached up with her gold-blue hands and separated it farther. This time when she spoke, it was with her mouth.
“We are each of us both man and woman, Mr. Fielding,” she said. “And yes, you will. You will come with me now, and you will open the door.”
Timothy sat frozen in shock, staring back at a face identical to his own.
* * *
Emily did not dream that she remembered, but she woke with a feeling of unease. She extricated herself carefully from Stephen’s arms and went to the window, but everything outside was calm and silent. Nothing was amiss in the study, and there were no sounds of alarm or distress anywhere in the tower.
She used the chamber pot as quickly and quietly as she could, then dumped it out the window. She was padding on stocking feet across the room to tuck it back beneath the table in the corner when she saw the ghost standing in the middle of the room.
“Oh, hello.” She looked down at the pot in her hand, then blushed and nodded to the table. “Just a moment, let me—” She hurried it away, then glanced back at the waiting ghost as she washed her hands. “You look as if you want something.”
“The locum must come with us now.”
The ghost looked almost anxious. It was not the tall ghost, and it lacked that one’s courage and composure.
Emily dried her hands on the skirts of her dress, frowning. “Locum?” Memory dawned. “Oh,
locum
. But—what do you mean? Go with you where?”
“Emily?” Stephen sat up from their pallet before the fire, rubbing the back of his head and squinting blearily. “Why are you singing?”
The ghost nodded to him.
“The consort is awake. The door will open soon. We must go. The locum and her consort must come with me now.”
Emily began to feel nervous. “Stephen, it wants us to go with it. But I can’t sort out why. It looks upset.”
He was standing now, tugging his clothes back into place. “If there’s trouble, we should wake the others.”
“No.”
The ghost sounded almost sharp now.
“Only the locum and the consort may come. You must come now. We are nearly out of time. The door opens. You must come.”
“What door is this?” Emily asked. “And why can’t we tell the others? Where is the tall ghost? Stephen’s right—”
The ghost swelled and rose up before her, looming, its already gaunt face stretching into a terrible, grotesque thing. Emily screamed, and Stephen ran to her side, but the ghost kept growing, its face twisting into a terrible scowl.
“You will come now.”
In the wall beside Emily and Stephen, a door into darkness formed as if the wall had merely been a mist concealing it. The ghost darted for them, its jaws expanding. This time both of them cried out, and they leaped together into the darkness.
Instantly the wall shut behind them.