Fireborn Read online

  There was no restful sleep for him that night.

  *~*~*

  The day dawned hot as hammered steel, the unrelenting light of the sun pouring molten from a cloudless sky. The entire city could be seen from the temple's highest point, a platform that jutted out from the eastern-facing side of the immense structure. From such a vantage, the massed people below were mere dots cast in shades of dun and white and pale gray.

  Thaniel stood in his ceremonial robes near the edge, gazing at his golden-shod sandals, eyes drooping while he tried not to think about what came next. This was what his life had been building up toward for the past four years.

  He knew as much as he'd been taught about the ceremony, but he still had no idea what to expect.

  When Thaniel had been younger, newly chosen, he'd asked when the god came during the ceremony. The priests who had been his tutors had exchanged inscrutable looks. Most had avoided the question. One had told him it was a metaphor; Thaniel's sacrifice was matched in the heavens. Another had told him a contradicting tale later—the proof of the god's sacrifice came after the ceremony. Birds, they had said. Thaniel would rise as a bird, spiraling directly up to heaven.

  It was the kind of answer that went hand-in-hand with take it on faith, and so Thaniel knew no more than he had before he'd asked.

  Droplets of water flicked the back of Thaniel's neck, hitting his skin beneath the bundled up dreadlocks that Sabine had tied up for him that morning, and he flinched.

  It was his cue, though; he had been anointed. Thaniel turned around. It was time for the penultimate moment of the ceremony.

  "Do you, Thaniel of South Haven, present yourself of your own free will for the altar as the gods' chosen?" Head Priest Anatole intoned.

  Thaniel bowed his head. "I do."

  "And have you, Thaniel of South Haven, remained pure of fleshly desires, taking no partner?"

  "I have," Thaniel croaked. It was true in the strictest sense.

  "Have you, Thaniel of South Haven, abstained from the love that a man forms with a partner?"

  "I have," Thaniel replied, thinking with a pang of Blaise. Close, he'd come so close. He could only hope his minor perfidy went unnoticed and unpunished by the gods.

  "And have you, Thaniel of South Haven, avoided any profane works upon your body, promised as it is to the gods' chosen?"

  Thaniel bowed his head. "I have," he agreed easily. He had never smoked, never drank, and there had been no tattoos or piercings placed on his body. He'd never cut his hair since being chosen, and he'd never acquired enough facial hair to shave. He was untouched.

  "The gods find this to be the most pleasing kind of willing offering," Anatole declared. There was a glint of sympathy in his eyes as he stepped off to the side, joining the head of a double row of priests who lined the path that led to the altar chamber. "Thaniel of South Haven, you may take the altar in order to offer yourself as promised."

  I accepted this, Thaniel told himself as he began the long walk from the far side of the ledge to the interior. I chose this. It will bring the rains again.

  It was the certainty that he was doing this for a higher cause that compelled his step. He thought of Blaise again, the way his friend might stand beside the fountain when it was filled up, and it brought a brief, trembling smile to his face. It can return again. At a price.

  Thaniel had wanted to make a difference and do something everyone would remember. There was a price to that, too.

  He passed beyond the line of priests and entered the interior of the temple's highest point on his own. The air was stifling inside, despite the fact that the altar chamber was nothing more than a slab of stone supported by four enormous columns at the four corners. The gap at Thaniel's back faced the east, the point of the sun's rising, and he faced the gap that afforded a view of the browned fields to the west. The sun would be at its highest point in the sky, Thaniel knew; the ceremony was very carefully timed.

  Thaniel paused for a moment, gazing into the distance and the fields beyond the city. They were brown and lying fallow, waiting for the rains to return. It was down to him now.

  He climbed the altar, tucking his legs as he had the night before when he'd seated himself on the wall with Blaise. He leaned his elbows on his knees and waited.

  Outside the open-air chamber, a ripple of heat distortion wafted across the south entrance. Thaniel wanted to turn his face away, but he was afraid not to look, strange as that seemed.

  A flash of red soared past the entrance, and Thaniel started. He shifted atop the altar, pulling his knees up as he squinted to get a better look.

  In the next instant, a high, piercing call reached his ears, and Thaniel's mouth tugged upward in a trembling smile. A cardinal was flying around the apex of the temple, possibly even his cardinal. He hadn't seen the bird that morning, and it had made him melancholy though he'd schooled himself to acceptance. There had been many 'lasts' in the past few days, after all.

  The flash of red returned as the bird doubled around, and Thaniel's eyes widened in shock as it flew into the temple.

  "What … no!" Thaniel exclaimed, lifting a hand to wave the bird off.

  The cardinal performed a dizzying circle around him, calling its sweet, high notes, and dropped to his hand, talons biting into his palm.

  "You shouldn't be here," Thaniel told the cardinal. He jerked his hand upward, trying to dislodge it and cast it into the air. The air was smothered and hot, making Thaniel's lungs pull in shallower, strained breaths. The priests had kindled the fires, and they would rush inward soon to consume him. He knew if the cardinal didn't leave now, it might not be able to fly away in a moment. "Fly, go away and be free!"

  Flapping awkwardly, the cardinal took wing. It turned its head and Thaniel thought it looked at him, dark, beady eye fixed on his, before it flew toward the eastern-facing entrance. He watched it depart, wistful.

  It was a good omen for a red bird to grace the temple during the ceremony, and Thaniel hoped that Anatole and the others saw it.

  In the wake of the cardinal's departure, he thought he saw a flicker of a face that wouldn't possibly be atop the temple, but it was eclipsed in the next instant by a tongue of flame licking up from the brush that had been piled in a circle around the chamber, each of the four entrances containing a line of tinder that led to another, lesser circle directly around the altar itself. The priests had kindled the flames and retreated, leaving Thaniel alone on the altar to await the end.

  The very air turned searing, and Thaniel fixed his eyes on a patch of blue sky that he could see beyond the fire roaring toward him on a track of dry tinder. Before he could blink, before he could reflexively jerk his hands up to cover his face as the fire billowed up around and toward him, the fire's progress stopped. The wall of flames stood just outside the altar but did not consume the brush piled high up to the very sides of it.

  Thaniel turned his head this way and that, realizing that the flames stood back from him on all sides.

  A heat shimmer distorted the central mass of flames when Thaniel looked toward the southern aperture again. As he watched, the ripple took shape and a human figure stepped forth from the blaze, wearing ceremonial robes that matched Thaniel's in every detail.

  "Blaise?" Thaniel exclaimed, shocked beyond all reason. "What are you doing here? The ceremony …"

  "I'm the other sacrifice, Thaniel," Blaise told him in rough-edged tones, huskier than Thaniel had ever heard him, as though he were on the verge of crying.

  "But that means …" Thaniel started again, only to cut himself off as Blaise lifted a hand, palm out.

  Thaniel's clothes burst into flames. He flinched but felt no heat lashing his skin. He watched in terrified fascination as Blaise's caught fire, too, and turned to ashes at his shapely bare feet. He stepped out of the smudged ring and walked closer.

  Numb, speechless, Thaniel watched. He was still trying to process the fact that Blaise, his only friend—Blaise, the one person he might have taken for his lo
ver if he'd been able—had arrived to lay himself down on the altar with Thaniel. No, he was the flame.

  "I bring heat, I bring the warmth and light … it's not only you, Thaniel," Blaise murmured, pacing around the altar and approaching. "My death brings the turning point. We launch the pivot of the seasons."

  "How … how do we die, then?" Thaniel managed, his voice croaking as Blaise's slender hand stroked over his bare knee. Blaise's downturned expression was absorbed on that single movement.

  When Blaise lifted his head, his eyes smoldered at Thaniel in the most sensuous look he'd ever been subjected to.

  "O-oh …" Thaniel faltered. "Together?"

  Blaise climbed atop the altar in a flash, his limbs moving in graceful tandem, and prowled atop Thaniel. "You and I create the true fire," he informed Thaniel in a throaty purr.

  Thaniel was alight with that touch and the overwhelming reality that he could have what he wanted now. His hands roamed over Blaise's bare shoulders, touching and seeking freely.

  "The sacrifice … I had to be pure for you," Thaniel realized.

  "Mm," Blaise responded, nuzzling at a patch of skin below Thaniel's ear that he'd never known to be so sensitive. "There's more than one kind of sacrifice."

  Thaniel gave a short laugh, verging on hysterical. He was lying on an altar in the middle of a chain of fire that couldn't touch him, while a god nibbled on his neck preparing to make love to him. It wasn't exactly how he'd visualized the culmination of the ceremony. "Then, you wanted to know how I feel—"

  "Mm," Blaise uttered again, and chained tiny kisses from the base of Thaniel's ear and along his jaw. "I had to know if you felt the same, Thaniel."

  "The same as …" Thaniel murmured, still disjointed, wondering if he was dreaming this ending as the fire consumed him.

  "Whether you care for me as I for you," Blaise told him directly. His eyes, amber-brown to Thaniel before, were an unreal shade of fiery gold now. He followed up his statement with a kiss placed directly to Thaniel's lips.

  For a moment, all Thaniel could do was remain lax and unresponsive to Blaise's mouth. He was frozen in that moment of disbelief, where he couldn't believe this was being brought to him, that Blaise was his, as much as he was for Blaise. When Blaise's mouth began to retreat from his, a flicker of doubt surfacing in the golden eyes, Thaniel chased it with his own and made an effort to show Blaise how very much he wanted to share that with him.

  Blaise's lips curved against his and Thaniel was bowled onto his back when Blaise surged over him, pinning him to the warm, unyielding surface of the altar. Firm, intoxicating kisses were lavished on him, and Thaniel did his best to keep up, returning each one with another, and another.

  They were already naked, bare skin pressed to an expanse of glorious, bare skin. There were no barriers between them, and Thaniel found himself rubbing up against Blaise as a knee nudged apart his legs, leaving room for Blaise to settle between his thighs.

  Thaniel was coming up hard and wanted to put a hand down there to hide it. He might have twitched in that direction, but Blaise caught his wrist, lifted it, and pressed a kiss to it before placing it on the altar and tangling their fingers together.

  "I've never …" Thaniel began, self-conscious, as his hips rose and pressed him against Blaise in a manner both unsubtle and unmistakable.

  "I know," Blaise breathed, "I want that … I want to be your first, Thaniel; won't you let me?"

  "I want it," Thaniel latched onto that, because it was true. Ever since the near miss of their kiss, Thaniel had been yearning for something that was too late, something he'd never been meant to have. Now Blaise was spreading him bare, every part of him, and Thaniel very much wanted to be taken as he'd never imagined he would. "I want you, Blaise. Yes."

  Blaise's eyes flared with a hungry light, and as he bent his head to kiss Thaniel again, Thaniel realized that was what lust looked like. He reached up to play his hands over Blaise's neck and shoulders as he was kissed, parting his lips to the gentle intrusion of Blaise's tongue. It kindled new heat in his belly, and he nudged his lips against Blaise's in response, matching his movement.

  "Perfect," Blaise murmured against the corner of his mouth, and placed a kiss there.

  Thaniel lifted his chin to capture more kisses and was glad to find Blaise had plenty more for him.

  They unraveled and opened to one another with kisses first, hands touching and stroking in comfort zones. Blaise seemed to know the places where Thaniel wanted to be touched. He skimmed his fingers along Thaniel's collarbones, caressed down to grasp his bicep near the join of his elbow, and brushed lips against his earlobe. These were places Thaniel would never have thought of as erogenous zones before Blaise put his hands there.

  The kisses started out light, brief flicks of tongue and the plush meeting and parting of lips, and deepened into a full exploration. Thaniel was emboldened by the way Blaise delved into his mouth and set him at ease with simple touches. It made him lift up against Blaise's body; as he got more turned on, he was the one seeking more.

  "We create the fire between us," Thaniel gasped out in a moment when Blaise lifted his mouth from his to trail down his neck. "You and me."

  "I'll show you fire," Blaise promised, sucking kisses into the hollow of his throat.

  "I'm ready," Thaniel told him, moving his hips up in small circles. His cock was firm against Blaise's stomach, and he was unashamed about that now, because he could feel Blaise's against his belly as well.

  Blaise reared up over him, propped on arms and one knee, his eyes surveying Thaniel intimately from eyes to the parts of him that brought heat of another kind to Thaniel's face. He was beyond shame but not embarrassment, apparently.

  "My Thaniel," Blaise murmured, stroking his front from neck to navel. He wore a small, proprietary smile. "I can say that now."

  "Yours," Thaniel agreed, breathless. It was driven home now with an intensity as never before. The gods' chosen. The reality of it was one god. He was chosen of the one in his arms, and if this was how he died, he'd have it no other way. "My Blaise."

  A brilliant smile was his response, and Blaise descended to nip at Thaniel's collarbone, smoothing away the small hurt with lips and tongue before mapping his way down in the same fashion. It made Thaniel cry out and writhe, but not pull away—never that. Everything that Blaise was doing to him felt too good.

  He stroked over Blaise's arms and shoulders, the parts of him that he could reach, to encourage him on though Blaise seemed to need no urging. Thaniel writhed in brief discomfort as Blaise's tongue dipped into his navel, licked around it, and he kept moving further down.

  "Wait," Thaniel said, breathless. He committed the blasphemy of reaching for Blaise's head to stop him when those fervent lips kissed their way to the crisp trail of hair at his groin. "Wait, no, are you …?"

  Blaise lifted his head to give Thaniel a quick, dizzying grin. "I want your first everything, Thaniel," he proclaimed before returning to the task before him, working Thaniel with the same lips and tongue that had undone him so skillfully everywhere else.

  Thaniel cried out and kept his eyes open wide as he gazed at Blaise's head bobbing between his legs. Such pleasure was far too blissful to have any earthly connection. So far as Thaniel was concerned, he was halfway to the heavens' court and Blaise was taking him there.

  It was so good he wanted it to last forever. Not only was there a mouth hot and wet moving over him, drawing up the most scintillating sensation he'd ever known, but it was Blaise on top of him, arms slung over his thighs, fingers kneading at his hips, and his lovely eyes gazing up at Thaniel through a fringe of red hair.

  That was the tipping point for Thaniel.

  With a choked cry, he flung up a hand, pressing the back of his wrist to one cheek in a clumsy attempt to anchor himself. If he didn't hold himself down, he was half convinced in the extremity of his pleasure, he would burn up and vanish on the air faster than the clothes Blaise had singed from their backs.

  He
lay back, panting, returning to himself slowly as Blaise hovered over him, looking equal parts expectant and anxious.

  "Good?" Blaise wanted to know.

  Thaniel held up a finger, still breathing heavily.

  Blaise's expression altered, becoming uncertain for the first time in Thaniel's recollection.

  "Was it …?" Blaise began.

  "Not good," Thaniel said with a small headshake.

  Blaise's eyes widened.

  "Incredible," Thaniel breathed. He reached up to tug Blaise down into his arms.

  Blaise laughed and lowered himself atop Thaniel, nuzzling along his jaw and bowling him over with lavish kisses. He sounded so happy, so delighted, that Thaniel couldn't help but laugh along with him, his chest drawn tight not from lack of air but disbelief at the wonder of Blaise in his arms. The sensations he drew from Thaniel were better than anything he could have imagined from the union he never thought he'd enjoy.

  "I want to make you feel as good," Thaniel confided, stroking Blaise's bare shoulder.

  Blaise shifted up from him to look him full in the face. "I take my pleasure from yours," he assured him, stroking a hand along Thaniel's collarbone. His expression transformed into coy anticipation. "And you will make me feel very, very good."

  Thaniel nodded, too transfixed with admiration for the young god above him to register any other response. "What can I do?" he inquired, breathless.

  "Kiss me," Blaise entreated, and the hands that he stroked over Thaniel's body kindled fresh fire, the burn of desire, where they passed.

  Thaniel nudged upward to close his lips over Blaise's, letting his eyes drift shut. The fire seemed like a distant memory, crackling well at bay, having nothing to do with them. The only thing that mattered was Blaise's arms around him, Blaise's scent thick in his nostrils, Blaise's body bare and moving against his. He pressed his tongue to the seam of Blaise's lips, and Blaise let him in.

  Their tongues twined and thrust, moving together as their bodies did. Blaise was hard against him, and Thaniel was torn between reaching down and touching him or pulling his mouth away to offer him anything that would give him the most pleasure.