Wren could barely see through his tears as Talamayas dragged him through the numerous portals of the Sols. With the antimagic pillars, there was no other way to return to the castle but through the maze of transportation spells that dodged around them.

Talamayas likely gained joy from the sands burning his feet, arms, and face as he stumbled behind his unbreakable grip. There was no way for him to fight Tala with Vice hanging around so close, and he'd rather be conscious for this than walk in as a lump of flesh. If Tala was going to turn on him, he'd better do it to his face.

It felt more like a domestic scene than him struggling with a vampire that was going to torture him as they entered the castle. Wren met Shan's startled expression as he spat something vile at Tala, and he felt immediately self-conscious. It quieted him as dozens of eyes peeked at him, some coming out of their rooms to see the commotion and others slipping from the gathering areas. All of them ogled him, like he was the one making a scene, instead of Tala who was dragging him across the floor.

Fuck Tala's loyal house and Wren's outsider status.

Thanks to the guilt and presence of others, Wren continued all the way to Tala's room in silence, but he couldn't stop the tears from dripping down his chin. At first, he didn't know why he was in Tala's room and not the dungeons, but then Tala turned his nearly boiling dark crimson eyes on him and hissed. Tala tossed him back first on the bed, and before Wren could even sit himself up, the man was on top of him. Fangs bared, hands crushing his shoulders to the bed, and with a hiss of rage, Talamayas sank his fangs into his throat.

Wren only got out a gasp of surprise and terror. All these years, Tala had said his blood was tainted in heinous magic and would corrupt him, so he'd spilled it on the ground but never tasted it. The mages saying that he had no right of ownership under vampire law was correct, and it seemed that Tala wasn't okay with that. Since the man wasn't fucking him, this was the only option.

Pain seared into his throat as Talamayas clutched it with his mouth and kept Wren's hands constrained so he couldn't fight back with magic. Like he could anyway. He was so weak that it didn't take much for him to stop fighting and relax back into the haze of blood loss. Tears leaked out of the side of his eyes as he realized this was the last time he was going to see the light of day. Tala's room was not a stone's throw from the dungeons and he knew where he was going to wake as a sob shook him.

Some delusional part of him thought he felt Tala's fangs loosen ever so slightly when he'd made the noise, but he knew the man didn't care about his pain. This was the end for him, and Tala would have to drag him unconscious because he sure as hell would never go willingly. Darkness came for him, and he lifted his hand one last time, unshackled and free, but it fell away as he sank under.

~

His eyes snapped open to complete darkness and the Sol magic around him was so potent that he choked on his breath. It swallowed him, pressuring him down, and he couldn't handle any more torture. It was too much and he wept, bitter tears that he couldn't stop with his hands. He nearly took his tongue off with his teeth when a gruff voice sounded behind him.

"God damn, Wren, I'll leave." Talamayas voice echoed from the shadows and it took him a long hard moment of the man shifting away from him to realize that he wasn't in the dungeons.

Trailing his hand out onto the surface he was lying on, he found it soft, like the bed he'd slept in for the last year, and he was having a hard time making sense of all this. Why hadn't Tala thrown him back in the dungeons? Especially after he'd tried to run from him and begged for his death over being forced to come back here. This didn't make sense.

"I don't understand," Wren rasped, shakily sitting himself up in the bed, his eyes adjusting enough to make out Talamayas' outline, dim red eyes, and the furniture he was used to. This was Tala's room, no doubt about it.

"Understand what?" Talamayas growled at him, pain staining his tone under the hostility and exhaustion that dealing with him had wrought.

"Anything," Wren sputtered, turning around as if the walls would reach out and drag him out of this weird dream back into reality. Nothing was greater than the fear that he'd wake in the pits of the dungeon, covered in grime and death and abandoned by his people and his torturer alike.

Tala's hand moved, and Wren jerked back, but he only rubbed his face, inhaled heavily, and let out his breath in an even stream of air. "Ask, Wren. Anything you don't understand, I will do my best to explain." Tala's voice sounded gentle and it tore a bit of his heart with it. Why? The man didn't even bother to feign such things for his people, so why for him?

"Why am I not in the dungeons?" The words were hard to say, as if doing so would end him up there. That, or perhaps Tala would chuckle, saying he'd wanted him conscious to enjoy his fear as he dragged him down the hundred steps into his nightmares.

"Why..." Tala's words cut off and he clenched his teeth. "Is that why you refused to come home?"

Anger tainted Tala's voice, and Wren leaned back but there was nowhere to go but the headboard as Tala prowled in front of him. Tala didn't stop there but locked him in with a hand on either side of his head, dropping his livid, crimson eyes and his bared teeth to just in front of his face. This expression he'd seen so many times before the man ripped him apart, gaining pleasure from his suffering but also always so twisted with rage.

"Do... you... think... that... little... of... me?" Tala bit out each word as if forcing the sound was painful, and Wren's eyes widened in confusion.

"Little?" Wren asked, his hands trembling in front of him, shoved into his chest for fear of accidentally touching Tala and setting him off. "You love your people, Tala, and I took the most important one from you. I know I deserve it as much as you want to hurt me, so I don't understand why I'm still here."

"Was that all I was to you, an enemy held back by a piece of parchment?" Tala asked in a low growl that rang melancholy to Wren. "Go ahead then," Tala's voice dropped to a hiss, and dark magic flooded the room. "You have no shackles, so kill me, Wren Song."

Talamayas grabbed him by the collar and threw him off the bed. Something jabbed into Wren's side and he gasped for air as he tried to pick himself back up–only Tala was right there in front of him, and a foot took Wren in the side of the face. Wren rolled but couldn't bring himself back to his feet as Tala took the slow steps to his side.

"Come on, Mage. Fight! Isn't that all that was stopping you? Paper!" Tala screamed at him.

Wren grabbed the edge of a table to lift himself, but Tala tore it away, and Wren scrambled to the other side of the room to get away from him. Flame lit up the room and stoked his fear into full blown panic as Talamayas advanced on him.

"How long has it been since I burned you?" Tala cackled, and Wren looked for any way out of this room. There was none. Tala was firmly between him and the door, shoving him back into the room again and again. "You remember, don't you? The hiss of melting flesh, how it curls back off of you under my claws. I've clearly thought of nothing but that since you escaped my dungeons."

Talamayas sounded so angry about this all, but his eyes still brightened as he licked his lips and dropped to a knee in front of him. Bringing his fingers to his face, Tala ran his index finger across his cheek, and Wren whimpered as the flesh under it seared instantly. Then Tala used both hands to grab his chest with the same heat, and Wren screamed.

Magic formed under Wren in desperation to get Talamayas' hands off, to stop the smoke that rose form his clothes before it changed into charred flesh. Chains whipped out with his gasps of pain and crawled over Talamayas to pull his hands away from him. The control wasn't complete until they slithered up into Talamayas' eyes and drenched them in pitch–the dark magic bubbling up into them to protest the intrusion of light magic.

Everything stopped.

Of course it did.

Talamayas couldn't move while Wren had his magic inside of him, commanding him to his whims. Crimson glowed in the dark and black oozed out Tala's eyes, dripping down his cheeks to stain his chest. There wasn't even any fight in him, no struggle to free himself from his chains. Why wasn't Talamayas fighting his control?

This wasn't what he wanted.

He didn't want to kill Talamayas.

He'd just wanted to leave this life in peace. To avoid suffering in the bowels of hell until his body gave out. Why couldn't Tala have just taken the offer the mages had given him? It would have been justice to die at the man's hands, a karmic balancing of the scales to replace the life he'd taken away–one that hadn't fought back.

If it was between killing Tala and suffering until he found his peace, then there wasn't a real decision to be made. Wren's magic fell away, chain links broke back down into wisps of light magic, and the man fell on him. He'd forgotten what his spell did to vampires, strong or not, and Tala had already been weakened from all the fighting. Wren struggled to breathe from Talamayas' weight until the man dragged himself back a foot to collapse on the floor next to him.

Wren tried to get away before Talamayas got his bearings and retaliated, but he didn't make it far. Tala's hand snapped out Like a whip and grabbed his face, and he went down with a whine of terror. Trembling, he waited for the flames, but he instead found himself stuffed into Talamayas' chest.

"Don't leave again," Talamayas groaned, sounding barely conscious. Despite that, the man was using all of his strength to hold him to his body. "Please."

The word was followed by something he'd never heard from Talamayas before. If his face wasn't shoved into his chest, he'd say it was a sob, but there was no way to figure out how that was possible as he breathed against his tanned skin.

"I need you," Talamayas rasped, gaining strength as the effects of his light magic faded, but Wren wasn't sure what he was hearing. "I won't hurt you. Please, Wren. Stay with me." Talamayas passed out right there on the floor, and Wren was frozen against him. While Talamayas' grip had loosened, Wren wasn't sure he'd understood him right. Wren's own body was a brick from using his magic so close to having drained himself, and he faded off not long after, his face on Tala's chest

~

"Talamayas, sir, you've been in their half the night. Are you all right?" Shan's voice called through the door and woke Wren from his coma. His body was heavy and unhappy with him for using his magic against someone like Tala.

"Piss off, Shan," Talamayas said, and Wren flinched as it was yelled right into his ear. "Sorry, didn't realize you were awake," Talamayas said more quietly, and Wren lifted his head to figure out where he was.

They were still on the floor, Wren noticed, and he was in the crook of Talamayas' arm, leaning against his chest. The room was a mess of shattered rock and wood, strewn documents, and toppled furniture. When his gaze wandered home to Tala, the man looked down at him with his normal jovial expression, but Wren could see how guarded it was.

"Should you really be wasting the night on the floor?" Wren asked, knowing the man had an entire house to manage and many were in need of him after such a large battle.

"I can't move," Talamayas answered with a sad laugh that turned into a whine of pain.

"Oh." Wren dropped his heavy head back onto Tala's chest with a groan of his own.

"We should really not fight," Talamayas whispered up to the ceiling. "I know I snapped at you, and I'm sorry for that." That was putting it lightly, but Wren couldn't say much about it. He'd never in his life heard Tala apologize.

"Did you mean what you said?" Wren asked, unsure if he wanted to know right now or not. They were both exhausted, but it wouldn't take more than a nod of Talamayas' chin for Vice to toss him downstairs. Wren highly doubted the man wasn't here.

"Which parts?" Tala asked honestly.

Every muscle in Wren's body tightened, and he took slow even breaths to gather the strength to ask. "That you wanted me to stay here, and not to hurt me."

"Of course I did, Wren. I don't know why you thought otherwise, but I can understand to a point where you might have gathered the misconception. I know it might not mean anything to you, but I... trusted you, parchment be damned. The battle was exhausting and all I wanted was to take you back with me, to sleep by your side until we both healed."

"I'm sorry," Wren said into Tala's chest. "I was weak and afraid of returning to the time before I had that thin shield of paper."

"I could have made you suffer still, Wren, had I wanted it," Talamayas said slowly, and Wren stiffened just from mention of it. "Even with the blood writ, I could have just refused you entry to my territory. You would have fallen into your sickness, alone, and there would have been no peace until the end of your days when you crumbled under the curse that I'd inflicted on you."

"I know that," Wren said. "I don't know why you didn't."

"Neither do I," Talamayas said, pulling Wren closer and squeezing a frightened squeak out of him. "I let you in as pure curiosity at first, unsure of why you'd returned when you finally had your freedom. I couldn't help myself, following you, learning about you, and through your awkward torture or me, we started sleeping side by side. At some point, it occurred to me that I didn't want you to leave, but I don't know when that became my reality. I think you conned me."

"Oh right." Wren chuckled and they both shared a pain inducing laugh together. "I can't say I ever fully trusted you, Talamayas. I'm not trying to be cruel in saying it, but I don't understand vampires, no matter how long I've lived side by side with the Sols. I had no idea of knowing if you wanted me around or were just possessively keeping me close until you found a way to throw me back into your dungeons. That isn't to say that I didn't like living here. Your people are kind to me when they have every reason not to be."

"They have reason," Talamayas said and Wren managed to tilt his head up to see his smile. "Even if you're thick as a brick, my people saw that I'd accepted you. You can hate it till the end of your days, but you're one of mine, Wren. The mages suggesting I kill you drew out every protective instinct I had to pull you away from them and keep you safe. I'm sorry I bit you, but when I realized I had no claim to you if another vampire were to attack you, I couldn't bare it any longer."

"You seem to be alive, despite insisting that my blood was poison," Wren said with his own smile, and Talamayas smacked the side of his face so hard that it stung and he whined.

"You're mine, Wren Song, like it or not. I will protect you as I would my own, and I expect you to not run from me like a chicken shit. I do use words, though flames usually serve me better. Speak to me, and I will listen, though I can't guarantee I won't snap at you."

"I thought we agreed no more fighting."

"We have no magic, so it'll be more like us struggling together at this point. Do you want to struggle with me? Luna Aurion said if I fucked you, it counts as owning you too, so roll over."

"Piss off, Tala," Wren ground out.

Talamayas smirked. "Now there is the asshole mage I like living with."

"You want me to be an asshole? Say no more. We can spend our time on the floor coming up with future ways to torment each other," Wren said to the ceiling, finally calming fully as he realized that nothing around here was going to change.

This could be home.

"That sounds like a fun time. How do you feel about scorpions?" Talamayas asked, waggling his fingers to look like bug's legs.

Never mind.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Word Count: 2988