Page 115 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
When St. Sebastian landed at DFW and walked out of the gate into a milling crowd of smiling, hugging, cheek-kissing Martinezes, he’d already left everything of himself behind, scattering it like ash over the ocean.
On the flight over, he’d put in his earbuds, opened the window shade, and over the darkened water, he’d dropped every part of himself into the waves. He cradled the St. Sebastian who stole a wedding kiss for himself in his palms and then let that boy slip through his fingers down to the ocean floor.
The St. Sebastian who fell in love, the St. Sebastian who’d dared to imagine a future of filth and fun with an arrogant, gossipy princeling who loved to draw and bite. The St. Sebastian who’d dared to take something he thought was for the taking. His laughter, his longings, his undeniable hunger for trouble—
Gone. All of it dropped down, down, down, to be crushed by the pressure and boiled by furious vents in the deep.
These alone he kept: the silver stud in his lip to remind him what he’d lost, and his name.
Well, half of his name at least, because he didn’t deserve to be called after a saint who’d chased death twice, he didn’t deserve a martyr’s halo. He didn’t deserve the name of someone protected by death, someone who welcomed it, who danced with it. Despite his mother’s hope, he was no living example that death intertwined seamlessly with life.
Six cowardly, death-fearing steps had robbed him of all of that.
And so when he was pulled into a huge hug of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, and he heard his name coming at him from every angle, he knew what he had to do, he knew the last part of himself to fling away and never look at again.
“It’s Saint now,” he told them. “Just Saint. Nothing else.”
Chapter 32
St. Sebastian
Present Day
* * *
For the first morning in years of mornings, I wake up with hope.
Auden’s bed is soft and pillowy and big, and Sir James Frazer is stretched out next to me, snoring gently and twitching his massive paws. Outside is a sky the color of the Virgin’s robe, with the distant swell of greenish moor reaching up to kiss its hem, and everything seems so warm and happy that even I am charmed by it.
I’m even more, ah, charmed, when I stretch and feel aches everywhere aches can live. My muscles, my hands, my knees. My cock, sore from orgasming over and over, my arse for even more obvious reasons. The bite mark on my chest has darkened to a purple so royal and beautiful that I reach for my phone and take a picture. I’m going to take a picture of it every day so that I can know it in every color, every shade, and then when it fades, I’ll make Auden give me a new one.
It’s thinking of Auden, and then of Poe, that finally makes me sit up. Sir James gives a whine at this, not ready for naptime to be over, until I scratch his ears and he settles his head back onto the blankets with a contented sigh.
“Sorry,” I tell him. “But I need to go to my place and get some of my things, and I can’t do that without breaking the snuggle trust.”
I’m going to get my things so I can move in.
Holy shit.
I’m going to live at Thornchapel.
For my entire life, Thornchapel had been the unattainable, the perfect representation of everything I didn’t have and everything I’d never be. Even after the others came to stay and I was slowly invited into their ranks, I still felt apart from them, from this place. It never even occurred to me to ask to move in, or even stay here on anything more than an occasional basis, because Thornchapel was like Poe or Auden—so far above me that hoping for it was a kind of insanity.
Except I do have Poe. I do have Auden.
And now I have Thornchapel too.
I’m going to live here with the people I love, I tell myself in wondering awe. I’ll get to spend my days following Poe around and watching her smile. I’ll get bitten and bruised by Auden whenever I want. The three of us will be together in bed, and there will no longer be anything between us. No more secrets, no lies, no conditions. Just two subs and their flop-haired Dom. Just a priest and a priestess and a king.
Happily ever after.
Pressing on the bruise over my heart, I allow myself a few more minutes of near-giddy hope and anticipation, and then I make myself climb out of bed. Auden and Poe left for Exeter this morning to get Poe emergency contraception, and I want to have my essentials packed and back here when they return, so that we can—
Well, I don’t know, actually. Start, I guess. So that we can start this new, perfect life right away.
I wave away thoughts of the practical (should I actually move out of the semi or should I hold onto it and use it as a sort of storage unit? Also how ridiculous my old car is going to look parked in the gleaming new garage Auden’s built?) and get dressed. I’d woken to Auden moving quietly through the ruins, having already cleaned up after the entire group and ferried most of the supplies and rubbish back to the house, and then we’d all gathered as many blankets and pillows as we could and stumbled blearily home. I was too tired and sore to even contemplate anything other than sleep, and so I toppled right into Auden’s bed the minute I walked inside. The last thing I remember is Auden and Poe brushing my temple with goodbye kisses, and Poe joking that she was going to go find an antidote for my magic Beltane jizz.
I was too sleepy to laugh then, but I laugh a little now as I pull on my shirt and also flush a little, remembering how tight and slick her body had been for me. How fucking with a bare cock felt like dirty, potent magic, and how shockingly and crudely satisfying it felt to leave my orgasm inside her.
