Chapter 22: Look at Me
Dorian woke to light already on the wall and the sound of the door opening, then closing. He had slept a few hours. Too few, but they had done their work. The injury was better. The swelling had gone down, and the sharper pain had dulled. He was still tired, but no longer half-delirious.
An old shaved-headed woman crossed to the table and set down a tray of food. A dark pain pendant swung once against her plain green dress as she moved.
“You are awake,” she said.
“In the legal sense.”
She turned from the table to his bed. “Stand. Strip.”
Dorian sat up more slowly than he would have liked. “A charming place. Firm boundaries. Clear expectations.”
She waited calmly.
Her inspection was quick and practical. She examined the injury to his groin with clinical indifference. Dorian’s mouth tightened once. She placed two fingers low against his belly and murmured a short spell. Pain shifted first, drawn aside in a dull thread. Then came a cooler pulse that settled deep under the skin.
“You heal,” she concluded, and handed him the guest robe and sandals.
“A crushing disappointment.” Dorian accepted them with poor grace.
She ignored him, gathered his damp clothes, and turned to go. “Rest. Eat.”
Dorian was propped against the pillows with a book from the drawer open in his hands when the knock came. He looked up.
Toren stepped inside and stopped. Relief crossed his face before he could hide it. Dorian was upright, awake, and irritatingly intact.
“Dorian,” he said.
Dorian glanced at the page. “A second healer in one morning feels excessive. Even for this place.”
That nearly made Toren laugh. Nearly. He crossed the room at once.
“She’s alive,” he said. “Weak, but alive.”
Dorian closed the book over one finger. “Yes. I had hoped that might be the case.”
Toren looked at him. “Aren said you saved her.”
Then he moved before sense could stop him. He bent and kissed Dorian.
Dorian sighed and let the book fall onto the blanket. “Oh, excellent. Another bad idea.”
“Quiet.” Toren kissed him again.
Dorian kissed him back before thought could interfere. Toren climbed into his lap, one hand sliding into Dorian’s hair.
Corvell, you are an idiot. His arm came round Toren’s waist anyway.
For a few seconds, Toren gave in completely. His fingers moved from Dorian’s chin to his throat, then lower over scarred skin. Dorian closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of herbs, damp cloth, and monastery salve.
Then pain cut through. He went still.
Toren drew back. “You’re hurt.”
“Your powers of observation remain profoundly annoying.”
“How badly?”
“Badly enough to resent your interest.”
Toren shifted off Dorian’s lap at once, suddenly shy. “Sorry. You need to rest.”
That made Dorian smile. “This monastery appears to run almost entirely on orders.”
Toren’s mouth twitched. “Then here is another one. Liana is awake. Aren said you can see her now.”
That settled Dorian at once. He rose more slowly than pride allowed and followed Toren out.
The monastery corridors were as before: old timber, shaped roots, narrow galleries worn smooth by long use.
Liana was awake when Dorian entered. She lay propped against the blankets, pale and still weak, but no longer lost in that terrible half-silence from the night before. Her eyes found him at once.
“Well,” she said faintly, “they let anyone in here.”
Dorian stopped beside the bed. “I gather standards have collapsed.”
She looked at him more closely. “You look dreadful.”
“I was making an effort not to outshine the patients.”
A flicker touched the corner of her mouth. Nearly a smile, but too weak to last. He studied her properly. Some colour had returned, her breathing easier now. The worst had pulled back a little.
Good.
“You gave us trouble,” he said.
She kept her eyes on him. “For once, I got to be the difficult one.”
For a little while, neither of them said much. Then Liana shifted one hand against the blanket and said quietly, “Thank you.”
Dorian looked at her face for a moment. Her sincerity was irritatingly inconvenient.
“Yes,” he said. “You are welcome. After everything, it seemed only fair to keep you alive.”
This time she smiled, faint and crooked with exhaustion. “You are insufferable.”
“And still useful when required.”
“Barely.”
From Liana, that was nearly tenderness.
Two days later, Liana was walking the monastery again, recovered enough to argue but not enough to escape supervision. Toren stayed close.
Dorian healed faster than was sensible and grew bored even faster. Once he could move freely again, he sent a messenger to the Great Council Office in Old Town Mossgrove with a report on the Veyran base.
Then he found the library.
Most of its books were written in an archaic language he barely understood, which would have appalled his old tutor. The few texts on the Drommala offered only vague nonsense about “magical rhythm”. No maps. No coordinates. Useless.
One afternoon he passed a side chamber and noticed smoke slipping beneath the door. At the same moment, something faint caught at him.
A reflective trace.
Not a mirror. Something thinner. Barely recognisable.
He opened the door by instinct.
“It is not a fire,” Aren said from within. “You may come in.”
The room impressed Dorian at once. Glass, brass, neat rows of instruments, every surface ordered with the same severe precision as the monk himself. Far more advanced than he had expected from a forest monastery.
Aren glanced up from the bench. “You look disappointed.”
“I had hoped for disaster,” Dorian said. “Instead I find competence. Very unfair.”
He traced the weak pull to Aren’s desk: an almost empty jar of navy-blue liquid beside prepared fragments of flesh sealed beneath thin glass.
Dorian’s expression sharpened. “What are they?”
“The dead Drommala’s blood and tissue.” Aren adjusted a brass clamp with careful fingers. “You may feel more outside, near my garden.”
“Your garden.”
“Yes.”
“Of course. Why would a pain monastery not keep a garden full of suspicious reflective traces?”
Aren smiled faintly. “You may ask it while trying not to touch anything.”
Then his gaze dropped to Dorian’s hand. “Your ring is fascinating.”
Dorian looked at it. “Yes. A rare little convenience.”
“For mirror work?”
“Yes. It was my father’s. It makes blood easier to draw and helps restore it afterwards.”
“How do other Walkers manage?”
“Blades. Needles. Whatever gets the blood out quickly enough. Some methods are merely unpleasant. Some are barbaric. My ring spares me a fair amount of suffering, so in that respect I am lucky.”
“And restoring blood?”
“Whatever a Walker can find or afford. Elixirs. Ironberries. Artifacts. Devices. Some mirrors are greedy enough to drain a man half to death for the privilege of opening them.”
Aren studied the ring. “But this was not made for ordinary people.”
“No.” Dorian turned it once on his finger. “Not truly. It can steady them. Keep them alive a little longer.”
“As it did with Liana.”
“Long enough to stop her dying before I reached you.”
Aren was silent for a moment. “She is steady now. Stubborn already. She can leave tomorrow.”
Dorian nodded.
Aren made a brief gesture and returned to his work, which was monastery language for dismissal.
Night had gone quiet over the Pain Monastery. Dorian lay on the bed with a book open in one hand, pretending to read while his thoughts kept straying to tomorrow’s road. More irritating still was the silence of the Mirror Calls.
The door opened with the smallest scrape of wood. Toren stepped inside and closed it behind him. His gaze found Dorian at once and did not waver.
Dorian lowered the book. “Toren,” he said, “do they not teach knocking in the forests, or was this meant to be a surprise?”
Toren crossed the room without answering. He climbed onto the bed, leaned down, and kissed him. Dorian’s breath caught despite himself. For a moment he let it happen, tasting the faint bitterness of monastery tea, feeling the tremor in Toren’s hand where it rested against his chest.
Then Dorian caught Toren’s wrist, careful but certain. “You are about to make a poor decision. Again,” he said. “I am not someone you should want.”
Toren did not look away. “I know,” he said. “It is still my choice.”
Dorian watched Toren for a moment, considering, then drew him down, face to face. His fingers traced Toren’s cheek, then the line of his throat, slower over bare skin. Toren’s breathing hitched. Dorian’s hand slipped beneath the robe to find warmth. Toren answered with gentle hands, touching Dorian as though trying to remember what he had missed.
Toren’s hands nearly undid Dorian’s control. Dorian paused. “You can stop me now,” he said, voice rough. “I mean it.”
Toren shook his head, breath uneven. “I have been waiting since the forest.”
Dorian pressed a long kiss to Toren’s collarbone. Then he turned him until Toren lay on his side, back against Dorian’s chest. The smell of Aren’s wound oil lingered in the air. Toren recognised it at once. Dorian kissed the nape of his neck, then the curve of his shoulder, inhaling the forest boy’s scent of herbs and smoke. His oiled fingers moved with deliberate patience. Toren exhaled shakily, his hips moving back to meet Dorian’s arousal. Dorian didn’t rush. He kept going with the same precision until he felt that Toren was ready for him.
“You tell me if it is too much,” Dorian said, his voice breaking. He shifted forward and entered Toren slowly, by degrees, until he was fully inside him. The stretch drew a low, raw sound from Toren’s throat. The burn crowded out every other sensation at first. Dorian held still, lips brushing the shell of Toren’s ear, heart hammering against Toren’s spine. He let Toren settle first.
“Easy,” he whispered. “Breathe with me.”
He moved then in unhurried strokes, letting Toren adjust to the fullness, each glide measured and deep. Heat moved through Toren in slow, breaking waves. His fingers laced tightly with Dorian’s where they rested against his chest. Only when his breathing had steadied did Dorian ease Toren onto his back.
He lifted Toren’s leg onto his shoulder, kissed Toren’s inner thigh, watching the boy’s face the whole time, and sank deeper. Toren’s hands clutched at the sheets. Dorian moved faster with each breath, each thrust carrying him closer. He bent forward, folding Toren’s legs around his waist, holding him there. Their bodies pressed together, sweat gathering where skin met skin.
Dorian kissed him, slow and thorough, then drew back just enough to meet his eyes. “Look at me, Forest boy,” he murmured.
Toren did, his gaze wide and unguarded. Dorian adjusted the angle and found the spot that made Toren’s whole body catch.
Then he shifted his weight onto one arm and slid the other between them, stroking Toren’s length in time with each deepening thrust. The rhythm built, steady and insistent, until Toren’s breath fractured. His body arched, and a choked gasp broke against Dorian’s shoulder as release took him first, hot between them.
Dorian’s control slipped at once. He drove deep and stayed there, releasing inside Toren with a low, ragged breath.
They remained locked together, chests rising and falling. Dorian lowered Toren’s legs gently, then pulled him close, pressing soft kisses to Toren’s forehead and the corner of his mouth. Dorian reached for the folded cloth and wiped them both clean, his movements meticulous and tender.
You are an idiot, Dorian thought, sharp and devastated. You made the poor decision. Again. You should have sent him away the moment he opened the door. But here they were: Toren’s hands rested softly against Dorian’s chest, tracing the scars over his ribs. And the scent of Toren’s warm skin smothered every sensible instinct.
Tomorrow I am leaving. He is staying. That, at least, brought Dorian a little comfort.
The next morning, Dorian was already dressed when they gathered to leave. Liana still looked a little pale, but she was steady enough on her feet. Lucky waited nearby. Toren was there too, and Dorian assumed, quite reasonably, that he had come to see them off.
Then Aren arrived and said, as if discussing the weather, “Toren is going with you.”
A short silence settled. Then Toren blinked. “What?”
Aren did not look at him. “The runes have been retrieved. I need time to study them. The seed still requires further observation. I do not need you here any longer.”
Then his gaze shifted to Liana and Dorian. “You do need a healer. Neither of you is particularly good at staying alive. Toren goes.”
Useful enough, Dorian thought. Brutal as ever.
Toren looked between them, startled at first, then visibly trying not to look too pleased by it. Dorian, meanwhile, had the deeply unpleasant experience of realising that the night before had not been a farewell. It had simply been a badly timed decision.
“Be ready within the hour,” Aren said. Then he left.
Toren looked at Dorian, still caught between surprise and hope.
Dorian held his gaze for a moment, then said, “Well. That is rather surprising.”
Toren’s mouth twitched.
Dorian picked up his bag. “Do not smile. I have suffered enough.”