Page 47 of Captive
"Now," Boarstaff's command left no room for argument.
"Leave us." No room for argument in his tone. "Post guards at the thresholds."
The guards withdrew, their boots scraping against the ancient floor as they took up positions at both entrances. The heavy door thudded shut, leaving Sebastian alone with the warchief.
Boarstaff knelt beside him, his eyes searching Sebastian's face. "You volunteered information that could harm your family. Why?"
The question caught Sebastian off guard. He'd expected suspicion, not genuine curiosity. "It seemed important," Sebastian admitted.
"Important to whom?" Boarstaff pressed, watching him with that penetrating gaze that seemed to see past artificial components to the being beneath.
Sebastian closed his eyes, seeking an answer that felt true. "To me." The realization surprised him. "I don't want more deaths on my conscience. Not when I could prevent them."
He opened his eyes to find Boarstaff studying him with that penetrating gaze. The warchief nodded, as if Sebastian had confirmed something he already suspected. "How does it feel? This change affecting you?"
Sebastian tried to find words for sensations he'd never been designed to process.
"Clearer," he said finally. "With each hour, my thoughts are less regulated. I feel stronger, not in body but in mind. More in control, even as my mechanical parts continue to fail." He struggled with concepts his education had never prepared him to express. "It's like discovering vision after centuries of controlled blindness. Overwhelming, but true."
Boarstaff drew his knife, the blade glinting in the crystal light. "Drink." The command was soft but carried the weight of authority.
Sebastian's fangs descended at the scent, and he shifted against his restraints with obvious discomfort. "This would be easier," he said, voice rougher with need, "if I weren't bound like this. My range of movement is limited."
"The bindings stay," Boarstaff replied, though something in his tone suggested he was considering the request. "For now."
"And the knife," Sebastian continued, his gaze fixed on Boarstaff's wrist, "isn't strictly necessary anymore. I have ways of accessing what I need without requiring you to cut yourself each time."
Boarstaff paused, understanding the implication. Sebastian's fangs had evolved beyond the weapons of his former self, becoming something more natural, more precise. "You're suggesting I simply offer my wrist directly."
"I'm suggesting," Sebastian said carefully, "that we acknowledge what this has become. These aren't the desperate feedings of a captured enemy anymore. We both know that."
The moment hung between them, weighted with implications neither had fully voiced. Boarstaff set the knife aside, moving closer until he knelt beside Sebastian. "Show me you can maintain control."
Sebastian's breathing steadied by deliberate effort. When Boarstaff offered his wrist, Sebastian leaned forward as far as his restraints allowed, taking what was offered with careful reverence. The feeding was gentle, controlled - not the desperate hunger of their early encounters, but something that spoke of choice rather than mere necessity. Boarstaff's free hand moved almost absently to thread through Sebastian's hair, fingers combing through the dark strands as he fed.
"Better?" Boarstaff asked quietly when Sebastian finished, his hand sliding from Sebastian's hair to rest against his throat, thumb tracing the seam where brass met flesh at his collar.
"Much," Sebastian admitted, leaning into the touch despite his bonds. "The bindings aren't just restraints anymore, are they? They're guides. But I'm learning to guide myself now."
Boarstaff's hand remained against Sebastian's throat, feeling the pulse of transformed metal beneath his fingers. "Perhaps it's time todiscuss what comes next. What you're becoming, and what that means for both of us."
Another horn signal reached them from above, the guards changing shifts, the endless vigilance of a settlement under constant threat. Except Sebastian heard more than tactical information in the sound. He caught undertones of worry, of weariness, of stubborn determination to protect what mattered despite overwhelming odds.
"The choice before you isn't between predator and prey," Boarstaff continued, his hand moving to cup Sebastian's jaw. "It's between hiding from your nature and learning to master it. Between staying what Cornelius made you and becoming something new."
"It feels like waking up," Sebastian continued, struggling to explain the shift. "Like discovering there was always more to what we were, more than what my modifications allowed us to be. Each time you feed me, the clarity increases. The world becomes more real."
Boarstaff offered his wrist again without hesitation. "Choose, Sebastian. Truth or hiding. Strength or safety."
The weight of that choice settled heavily on Sebastian. Everything he'd been taught screamed against that moment, against possibilities that violated all Cornelius had built. The safest path lay in clinging to the remnants of his enhanced parts, to what remained of the precision that had defined his entire existence.
But safety had never been what he truly wanted. Even before his capture, he'd been planning to betray the careful order to save a child who still clutched a wooden doll. He'd already chosen a path beyond blind obedience.
"I choose to learn," Sebastian said, his voice steady and certain.
A moment of silence passed between them, then Sebastian's mouth quirked into something that might have been a smile. "Now, can I have my hands free and can I put on some pants?"
Boarstaff chuckled, a warm sound that echoed softly in the crystal-lit chamber. He touched Sebastian's shoulder as he rose to his feet. "Perhaps in time."
