“You see?” Pip turned to Grim. “I saved Professor Xsing.”
Grim yawned. “No doubt. Well, come along. The humans are just about dead on their feet.”
“Dead?” Pip yelped.
“A figure of speech, puppy. It means tired. What are they teaching them in linguistics these days?” Grim stalked back toward the front of the house.
Darien laughed and scooped Pip up, nuzzling against his soft ear. “You’re the best, Pip.”
Silas beat back the impulse to say what am I, chopped liver? He was not going to start being jealous of a man’s familiar. But still, he wanted time alone with Darien and the chance to have Darien’s mouth up against his skin. “Let’s go sort out beds and get some rest. Morning will come sooner than we’d like.”
***
Darien sighed and stretched out luxuriously in their bed. The sheets might not have the silkiness of the fabrics on Home, but the mattress was wonderful, the pillows smelled of Silas, and the blankets lay warm and cozy across his shoulders. He squinted up at Silas in the light of the bedside lamp. “Come on. Aren’t you tired?”
“Yes.” Silas did up the last button of his pajama top, but still stood looking toward the door.
Darien had gone to bed naked and hoped Silas would do the same, but there were a dozen reasons Silas might’ve opted for nightclothes, from cold knees to house guests to wanting extra armor after being vulnerable. Darien was too tired to puzzle it out. He flipped open a corner of the covers. “Come to bed.”
Silas sighed, bent and turned out the lamp, then slid in beside him under the covers. In the dimness, Darien could see he lay flat on his back, eyes open, staring up at the ceiling. Darien wiggled close enough to get an arm across Silas’s chest and tucked his face against Silas’s shoulder. “Holy Jesus and all the little pink saints, I’m soooo glad to be home.”
“Indeed.”
“And in a room with a real door, with no one who has three legs and doesn’t understand sex wandering in unexpectedly.”
“Are you bigoted against three legs?”
Silas’s words sounded like a clumsy deflection, and the fact that he made an effort rang a little alarm bell in Darien’s head. He squeezed his eyes a few times to push back the hovering exhaustion. “Nope. Just fond of privacy when I’m in a bed with you.”
Silas gave Darien’s hair a clumsy pat but said nothing.
Hmmm. Darien eased his hand lower down Silas’s chest, snagging the elastic waist of his pajamas with one finger.
“What are you doing?’ Silas asked.
“Celebrating.”
“What?”
“Access. Whoever invented elastic should be a millionaire.”
“I’m sure he is.”
“Or she.”
Silas chuckled. “Sometimes I can’t follow your mind round the bends, but I’m glad you’re here.”
“Are you saying I’ve gone round the bend?” Darien slid his hand under the cotton fabric and brushed Silas’s soft shaft. “Too tired? Or something on your mind?”
There was a long silence. Darien expected Silas to say he was simply tired, which, to be fair, would have a ring of truth. But eventually Silas murmured, “What did you see, when you were in my head? Or my dreams, or memories, or wherever we were?”
“Only the parts when you were there too. I didn’t tromp round being a voyeur, if that’s what worries you.”
A whole-body shudder shook Silas. “I knew there was something… lurking, on the tip of my mental tongue. But I had no idea they’d hidden it from me deliberately.”
“They didn’t deserve you,” Darien said fiercely. “Coldwell and Norlington. Not your loyalty or your trust or—”
“Shh.” Silas raised a hand and cradled Darien’s head closer. “Thank you. And thank you for coming after me. I was lost, somehow, trying to do what I was told and wait in the dark and keep the secret. I don’t know if I’d have gotten free on my own.”
“I bet you would’ve.”
“I was so glad to see you. Even before I remembered who you were, when I thought you were a stranger I needed to keep at a distance, I still felt glad. My heart trusted you, even when my mind didn’t know why.”
Darien kissed the flannel lapel under his lips. “Why did they do it, though? Why bind you to secrecy and… everything? The spells? The wall?”
“Some of that happened later, after Coldwell died. I think…” Silas paused. “You have to realize that Norlington was both greedy and not brave. I imagine at first, they kept Lyyll a secret out of ambition. They no doubt loved knowing something Ferngold didn’t. He was younger than them, and yet had power over them, and no doubt enjoyed pointing that out. It would’ve rankled. Here was an opportunity, a secret and a power they’d never imagined, if they could figure out what to do with it.”
“Good thing they didn’t think about using it to bring over demons.”
Silas choked. “Yes. Although neither of them was that dark, especially Coldwell. He hated demons. Selling the technique to other darker sorcerers? Well, we can be grateful that never occurred to Norlington after my mast— after Coldwell was dead, or we’d have had that invasion a decade earlier.”
“You think it was Norlington who built that brick wall in the cellar?”
“I’m sure of it. When Coldwell was on his deathbed, when they taught me the magics involved, they were still arguing about where that gate went, and whether they should let Lyyll back through if she would promise to back up whatever story they came up with.”
“Story?”
“To explain why they’d waited so long to tell their local council about a new and dramatic magical phenomenon. Norlington had some kind of past transgression hanging over him. He used to say, ‘The council would love to be rid of me at last,’ whenever they talked about coming clean to Locke and Ferngold and the rest.”
“I can’t imagine Lyyll telling a lie.” Perhaps the Yyygrdiil could hide the truth as well as any human, but there’d been an openness about her that seemed totally honest.
“No. And Norlington was afraid of her. I’d bet that after Coldwell died, fear gradually overcame his greed and he bricked up the gate.”
“And left the whole mess to you in his will.”
“Yes. I imagine he wanted the posthumous credit for amazing new magic, without taking any of the risks. Which he didn’t get, because he tied my forgetting spell to the life of the gate, not just his own, and the gate kept on running off the Veil energies and Lyyll’s, long after he was dead. And so I never remembered it was there.”
“Serves him right.” Darien threw a leg across Silas’s thighs for good measure. “How bad can you make him look, when you report all this to the council?”
Silas gave a rusty chuckle. “Oh, I think I can manage that quite well.”
Darien lifted his head to press a kiss against Silas’s neck where the pulse beat steady under his jaw. He wanted to say he was sorry again, for the past Silas had been dragged back into, but perhaps Silas would prefer to move on. “What comes next, do you think?”
“We need to track down the dark sorcerers who created those other long-term gates.”