"This can't possibly be pleasant to you," Wren said, lying flat on his back, arms crossed over his chest in the dark.

The decision to live out a day as he used to in order to facilitate his memories returning was awkward and confusing, especially when Wren had insisted upon the same sleeping arrangements they'd had before. Anything to get his damn memories back and make this make sense.

Without his mage robes, he felt near naked lying in a bed anywhere near Talamayas Sol, but it was too hot to be wearing anything but the thin, skin-tight shirt the Sols had offered him. Sweat ran his skin, but he kept the thin white sheet over his lower half so the vampire wasn't tempted. They'd offered him shorts too, but he'd be damned if they thought he was wearing the equivalent of grey tighty-whitey boxers around a fiend like Talamayas.

A few candles lit the eastern wall of the storeroom they occupied, so Wren could see Talamayas, but the place was dim at best, buried in shelves, papers, and bins of scrolls. When Wren turned, Talamayas was on his side, his hands tucked under his face, and his red eyes open just a sliver to watch him. His dark hair made his forehead look like it had teeth, and the long black tail of it wriggled over his side and fell down between them.

"It is most pleasant," Talamayas said, unmoving as he kept to the furthest edge of the small bed to give Wren space. If one could call this stale graham cracker covered in poorly fitted sheets a bed. For supposed rulers of their people, their normal accommodations were quite shabby.

"Is that why you're refusing to lose consciousness, the enjoyment of staring at me while you're half dead? Certainly not fearing I'll kill you as soon as your eyes close," Wren taunted, but it fell short of its mark as Talamayas continued on with that tepid smile.

"You're not the type to kill a man in his sleep, before or after losing your memories. There would be no satisfaction in ending me unless I knew it was you," Talamayas said practically, and Wren hated that the vampire was right. That didn't mean he knew him though, only that he understood a grand mage's desire for true vengeance.

"You are not touching me," Wren said, having expected the man to do something after the way he'd demanded Wren fuck him in the hall. Anything really. For Talamayas Sol to sit still, it took a myriad of chains and spell bindings. The man didn't do calm nor stationary, and Wren knew he would relish devouring his mouth again. And Wren couldn't even say he wouldn't like it.

"My touch would make you uncomfortable," Talamayas said simply, like it made sense for him to consider Wren's feelings when doing anything. "I don't want you to leave, so I am happy to just sleep near your side. The caress of your magic against my body is enough comfort for me. I know you don't understand right now, but those nights when I didn't know where you were or what they were doing to you were the worst. I would have given anything to trade places, suffer anything in your place, even die if you might be spared."

"Can it. You're not wooing me into your arms." Wren growled, forcing a chuckle out of the gigantic man.

Laughter shook every muscle Talamayas had, and sweat beaded Wren's brow as he thought about how they must have been together. Wren was muscled and toned, honed for battle and gifted with an intellect most men could only dream of, but he was the size of a normal man. Average height, medium build, nothing that could contend with the sheer amount of tanned muscle stacked on Talamayas Sol. And the man didn't know how to wear a shirt, so he just flaunted it with every word and movement.

"Can I ask you something?" Wren decided to broach it even though the man might shut him down.

"Anything," Talamayas eyes opened an increment so that he could hold conscious conversation rather than fade off.

"When we..." Wren ran his hands up through his hair, obscuring his face with his fingers so it was easier to say. "When we fucked, did I enjoy it?" The silence lasted so long that Wren was forced to drop his arms back, and he found a slaphappy smile crookedly lifting Talamayas' lips.

"Well, I'm shitty with interpreting emotions, but you told me that you enjoyed it, and your body certainly got something out of it." The way Talamayas worded it came across as if he didn't think Wren should have liked what he did to him. That didn't bode well, and Wren sighed, rolling away from the man to stare out at the rows of books stuffed into shelves.

"So I just bit the pillow and took it?" Wren whispered because it was too demoralizing to ask for specifics. Thinking about lying under this man as he broke him for his pleasure made him sick, and he wasn't sure why he was even here still.

None of this could be real.

"I never forced you into a position you did not like, Wren," Talamayas answered, carefully choosing his words in a way that didn't say no. "Sometimes we just lay in bed together, touching one another until we faded into sleep, and others ended with our lips moving against each other. Your pleasure drove mine, as mine did yours, so sometimes I laid you on your back and dropped my mouth between your legs, enjoying your hands in my hair as I pleasured you. Others, we didn't waste time on pretending it was anything more than lustful fucking, barely getting the tops of our pants out of the way before I buried myself so deep in you that half the castle knew what we were doing."

Wren's face colored, and he wished the dim lights could keep the knowledge from Talamayas, but he knew better. He'd been asking for an affirmation or denial, not a graphically detailed schematic of their lusts. Their. A groan rolled from his mouth as he tried to imagine himself fucking a vampire in any position, let alone where others could hear him and know how low he'd sank.

"Did you do it to me in the dungeons when you tortured me?" Wren tried to change the subject, to remind himself that this man was deranged.

"Never," the word came so harshly from Talamayas' mouth that Wren flinched before shirking back from the danger in the man's red eyes and the glint of his fangs under his scowl. "Wren, I never forced nor coerced you to do anything sexual with me."

"Sure you didn't," Wren snapped, sitting up on the bed, clenching and unclenching his hands. "But is it coercion if I ask for it after decades of torture, Talamayas? If I beg you to fuck me because I've been chained so long that anything is preferable to that dungeon? Tell me Talamayas Sol, the first time that you bent me over and took what was left of my dignity, did I like it? Did I thank you for letting me out of my chains long enough to pleasure you, only to be tossed back into those dungeons until you wanted me again?"

"I have not and will never fuck you in the dungeons, Wren. You–"

"I what Talamayas? Tell me." The heat in Wren's eyes fell as Talamayas' hostility did.

"You still cannot enter them without trembling," Talamayas said to the sheets, still lying on his side with his arms now crossed against his chest. "Being down there fills you with such fear that you do not go down there for any reason. While we love each other now, you still remember what is was to be a prisoner, to spend every waking moment in fear of the pain only to fall into nightmares each time you lost consciousness. There was no rest for you there, and I would never think to force you into that place for something so shallow as sexual gratification."

Wren couldn't stand to be in the room with Talamayas anymore, with a man who had both tortured him yet held the capacity to care about him so deeply that it shook him. A man who fucked him but swore it had always been consensual. Like that wouldn't have taken a serious warping of Wren's mind and soul to even consider, let alone accept without some other motive. It was too much to process, and he tossed the covers over Talamayas just so he could slip out of the room unseen.

The piece of shit would follow.

No doubt.

But a moment alone was worth it.

It was a small moment as he ran right into Kopje Cinder in the hallways, a gruesome representation of what vampires did to mage kind. Scars littered the man's chest between the open sides of his upper mage attire. Without an undershirt, his chest was as bare as the rest of the men around here, but at least he'd bothered to cover his shoulders and back. Nicks and cuts littered him, marring his smooth, pale skin, and the worst of them all was the empty socket that used to house an eye. It had been burned out, the slash that took it stretching up through his eyebrow and down to the bottom of his nose at a shallow angle.

"Why do you stay here?" Wren asked with disgust, still breathing much too quickly in his frustration.

"Not much else place to go," Kopje said, his voice the deep timbre of a man who'd fought and lost as much as any other infiltrator class mage. "I manage the infiltrator training centers but mostly through other generals. The recruits take one look at me and think twice about fighting with or against vampires. I'm not too pretty anymore, at least not to them." Kopje ran his hand through the side of his short hair with a sigh.

"How can you stand to live among the same beasts who maimed you?" Wren hadn't gotten the answer he wanted, the reason why a grand mage who'd suffered at vampire hands would kneel at a vampire's feet. What benefit was there that was worth Kopje swallowing his Cinder pride? "I assume vampires took your eye."

"Yes." Kopje's response was curt, showing his distaste for the subject, yet Wren couldn't help but pry open his wounds for truth.

"Did Talamayas do it?" Wren asked bitterly, widening Kopje's gaze and stretching the hole all the more gruesomely. "I'm sure he'd get off on that, holding you down as he burst your eye like a fresh grape and reveling in the memory every time he saw you wandering these halls sightless."

The slap across Wren's face took him by surprise, and he touched his stinging cheek as he turned his head back to Kopje. The bitterness in his one mahogany eye ran a chill down Wren's neck and chest as Kopje sneered with all of his teeth.

"I burned my eye out," Kopje growled, Wren expecting that least of the many possibilities. "The Zehirs attacked the Void complex and murdered everyone in it, leaving me only because I was partially crushed by falling anti-magic walls and they thought me dead. My injuries were so severe that if I hadn't cauterized them, I'd have died. I almost did, and it was you who healed me, Wren, the Sols who took me in and gave me time to recuperate in safety. It was the Sols who fought against the vampires who sought to kill our kind, Talamayas who stood in defense of the peace mages and vampires could share.

"Have you ever considered that maybe you were the piece of shit, Wren? That Talamayas accepted you even with all your flaws and that kindness changed you into a better man? No one warped your damn mind or forced you to be with Talamayas. The Sols forgave you for what you were, for all you murdered, for the mother you took from them, and you want to stand here and spit in their face?"

"Kopje!" The snarl from the hallway had Kopje freezing with his mouth half open, still as death as Talamayas came down the hall and stood at Wren's side. The wall of muscle and rage made Wren feel smaller than he ever had, and not because of the size difference. "You do not speak to Wren like that."

"Wren was being a shit," Kopje argued, but he backed a step as flames hotter than even a Cinder could stand pushed him further.

"Wren is my mate, memories or not. You treat him with the same respect you would me in our home."

The words closed Kopje's mouth, and his thin lips tightened as he gave a shallow bow of concession. It was only a show because Kopje's eyes lit with flames of disgust as he grazed them over Wren before he turned to leave.

"Sorry about that," Talamayas said gently, touching Wren's shoulder like he hadn't just been spitting foul words about him even as Talamayas continued to care for him.

Wren jerked away from Talamayas' touch, heading down the halls until he found a door to this godforsaken castle. The sands blew across his face as he advanced without proper coverage, but he needed space right now, solitude and nothing but the serenity of nature as his grief swallowed him. It took half a desert, several dunes, and a descent into a rocky, cliffed area before he stopped, panting from exertion, anger, and frustration at this entire situation.

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Word Count:  2296