The guidelight had split into two when Edwin first entered the bedroom. Half had remained in the bracket in the hall, but the rest had followed him inside and found its place in an old-fashioned guidekeeper, a cylinder of amber glass with a bronze handle so that one could move it around the room by hand. The light was strong enough that there was barely a need to do so. When Edwin’s hand came near the keeper, the light flickered and brightened further, and a warm sensation spread up Edwin’s arm. It was a cousin to the sandpaper rasp that had heralded Robin’s danger in the lake, and also to the everyday itch of existing on Penhallick lands. At the same time it was nothing like either of them. It felt, too much, like power.
When he turned his gaze from the mirror to the windows, the curtain-ties unhooked themselves and the curtains gave a twitch towards their centre as if to ask: This? Is this what you want?
Edwin closed his eyes. If he told himself that the coaxing glow of magic was no more than something to be studied, he might be able to keep the enormity of the situation at bay. He knew a little about how estates could be, if they’d been inhabited for generations by an unbroken line of magicians. Stopped clocks were only the least of it. When he’d visited Cheetham Hall as a child, Jack and Elsie had competed in the ballroom to see who could flatter the floorboards into tilting beneath the other’s foot. Elsie would win far more often than not, and Jack would lie back on the floor and shout with begrudging laughter, curling his fingers wickedly until the rug twitched from beneath Edwin’s spectator feet and sent him sprawling as well. Jack Alston, a dark, wild boy with all the power of his inheritance at his command, and a family who loved him without question.
Edwin had learned to want him, then, and also to fold his resentment in that want like a glass shard in layers of tissue.
A knock came on the door, followed by Robin’s voice pitched low. “Edwin?”
“Come in.”
Robin’s hair was wet through, his own scrapes standing out stark on his freshly washed face, within which the hazel of his eyes shone like the surface of a lake. The dressing gown that had been found for him was dark green, quilted fabric tied with a black cord. He’d pushed up one sleeve, baring the curse to the air. He was rubbing over it with one thumb, hard enough to crease the skin.
Edwin nodded at it. “Is it . . .?”
“Just once, a few minutes ago,” said Robin. “I’m counting my stars that it didn’t go off when we were in the maze. So it really could have been worse.”
He’d said that when they first emerged. Just before—before.
“Yes,” Edwin said softly. “It could have been.”
“So are you glad I plunged in after you now?”
It was an impossible question, coming at the end of an impossible day, and Edwin’s emotions crowded him like birds trapped in a cage, beating and beating against his usual inability to express them. Strangest of all was the fact that for once he didn’t feel afraid. Perhaps his fear, like his magic, had a finite volume, and he’d drained it all in the maze. They’d both almost died. And even if they’d been half the world away, with no blood-pledge to hold Edwin responsible for keeping Robin alive, he’d still find the idea of Robin coming to further harm—unacceptable.
“No, I’m not glad,” he snapped, a wild and unstoppable lie. “I knew you would be nothing but trouble.”
Robin was smiling, because Robin didn’t know what was good for him. That was how he ended up like this, with the scratches on his face and his hands, and—and Edwin couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and tracing the worst of the scabbed red lines, half-flattered and half-guilty and all-over angry with the world for putting him here, now, richer than he’d been at the start of the day by one of the oldest magical properties in England and by this, Robin Blyth lifting his palms willingly to Edwin’s inspection, displaying the evidence that they’d both bled out of desperation today. Edwin was so angry it filled his skull like hot water. He couldn’t breathe past it.
“Edwin,” Robin said hoarsely, and Edwin pressed blindly forward and kissed him.
It was a bad angle. It was a bad kiss. Edwin hadn’t kissed anyone in years and it was like a language long unspoken in his mouth, coming out with the wrong cadences and with the grammar all askew. Robin’s lips were soft beneath his. Edwin let himself stay for a quick count of two, which was as long as it took for horrified self-preservation to overcome the impulse that had shoved him forward.
He pulled away. He tried to. He’d barely created a distance between them when Robin closed it again, fast enough that Edwin couldn’t focus on his face; couldn’t classify the expression there. Robin’s arms were tight around his back, wrapping him up, solid and inescapable. Once again it was exactly what Edwin needed. His body melted into it, need rising up through him like vines. And then Robin’s mouth was on his again, and all of a sudden the grammar of the thing fell into place.
Somehow Edwin’s back was against the wall, and they were still kissing. Robin was pressed in close enough that Edwin could feel Robin hardening against his hip. One of Robin’s hands brushed up into his hair, the other arm still snug in the small of Edwin’s back. Edwin realised he had no sodding clue what his own hands were doing—ah, there they were, holding on to Robin’s broad shoulders for dear life.
Robin sucked on Edwin’s lower lip and then drew away, pulling a sound from Edwin’s mouth along with it. Edwin froze, but Robin just made a kind of low growl and ducked his head. He mouthed at Edwin’s jaw, the side of his neck, heat and tongue and suction. Edwin’s cock hardened and he felt, rather than heard, the exhalation that was almost a sob of pleasure by the time it escaped his mouth.
Edwin moved his hands to Robin’s chest, and pushed. Gently, but firmly. Robin pulled back, and finally Edwin was able to look him in the face. Robin’s lips were wet and the lakes of his eyes gone dark, and he was staring at Edwin as though Edwin were an undiscovered wonder.
A thrill completely unlike magic chased from one end of Edwin’s spine to the other. He could feel that neediness threatening to overwhelm him. He wanted to collapse into it, to tilt back his head, to throw his body into feeling something that wasn’t pain or fatigue or tension. Pulling himself together in the face of that want was like dragging a weight uphill.
Edwin swallowed and put his hands at the sash that held Robin’s gown shut. “Can I—?”
“Yes,” Robin blurted. “God, yes.” He was still wearing drawers, beneath the gown, but nothing else. He leaned in and kept snatching kisses, hungry and disjointed, but stopped with a low moan when Edwin’s fingers closed around his cock.
It had been a long time since Edwin had done this for someone else. He experimented, gentle strokes alternating with firmer tugs, watching the way Robin’s throat moved as he swallowed, listening to the soft curses that emerged from his lips. Robin put a hand on the wall by Edwin’s shoulder and rested his weight there, giving Edwin just enough space to work his hand in between their bodies.
Edwin’s breath shuddered in his chest with the intoxicating smell of Robin’s skin. His eyes caught on small details: the evening shadow of Robin’s jaw. The trim at the collar of the gown, now gaping to reveal Robin’s chest. The action of his own hand now moving steadily back and forth along the thick shape of Robin’s cock, which was just beginning to leak at the tip.
Robin bent his head, looking down as well, and they bumped foreheads. Edwin hastily loosened his grip. “Sorry, is it—”
“Yes! Fuck, it’s—I—I want to see, is that all right?” Robin licked his lips and flicked his gaze down, then up again. “I like your hands. I like watching them.”
The easy vulnerability of the admission startled Edwin. But of course Robin was brave in this, as he was brave in everything else. Of course he’d throw himself that open without a second thought. If someone tried to mock him for what he wanted he’d probably just laugh.
The startlement was followed by a shy, deep flutter of pleasure. Edwin found himself smiling.
“Is that so,” he said. He still had his fingers crooked around Robin’s cock. It seemed like it would have been rude to release it, at this point.
Robin nodded, his eyes darkening further. “If you had any idea how distracting it is, when you do things with that string . . .”