What has he done?
What has he done?
It’s a simple answer, really. Anyone who might happen to open the door to that long-forgotten shed could figure it out quickly enough, between the clothes on the floor and the tangle of limbs. There’s no hiding it. There’s no denial, no pretending at a plausible excuse.
But moreover, Fray cannot so much as muster the proper fear this should command.
He knows he’s afraid. It’s just distant right now, buried under the bone-deep satisfaction and warming glow that still lingers in his gut, disguising the heavy fear somewhere under it. The … rightness. He curls further into Right, for the moment more interested in just a little more skin contact than anything else, Right’s fingers twine deeper into his hair in answer.
“You,” they say after a moment, thoughtfully, “were better at that than I thought you would be.”
Fray blinks at the expanse of gray skin his face is next to. He snorts. “So hard to believe?”
“It’s just that you’re such a stick in the mud about everything else.”
“I like sex. I’m good at it.”
“So you are,” they say, amusement ringing clear in their words. “Full of surprises, as always. Thank Lastai.”
“Who?”
“Goddess of good sex.”
Further unpleasantness forms in Fray’s stomach at the invocation of a deity. The real world is starting to creep back into focus.
Yet: he can’t bring himself to regret what he’s done. The part of him acting as barrier between his muted terror and his languid happiness, his profound new surety—the rightness of Right in his arms—gently hooks his leg around one of theirs, and presses his lips to their throat. They begin to make a sound he can only describe as purring.
Holy, he thinks as he looks at them, amazed. They must be holy.
There was no encore performance, but the two of them had spent another foggy half-hour flirting with the idea. Fray, in particular, had been lightly incensed at the questioning of his ability and for a time lay thinking of more tricks to impress them with. He had done this with Right’s ever-active hands ghosting over his body, half-interested in reawakening it. In the end, though, they both were simply too worn out from not one sort of strenuous exercise, but two.
Clothes are donned, shy smiles exchanged. As one they slip from the shed, and that of course is when reality comes crashing back on Fray. The first and only thing to draw his eye as they leave their makeshift burrow is the daylight gleam of the Blade of Saints.
He is awash with a sudden dizziness. The sword lies abandoned on the ground, amidst the gutted bodies of the … meazels, Right had called them. It is gore-splattered, lending an eerie pinkish hue to its light. Whether through some celestial magic or simply guilt, Fray would swear it was staring dead at him. He is transfixed by, frozen in a raw uncertainty. What happens if he goes to it? Picks it up, wipes away the blood? Can he even wield it? Will it know?
He is still too long. Right, ever the first to spot detail, says quietly, “The sword, eh?”
Slowly, Fray nods.
Right says, “I don’t suppose leaving it behind is an option.”
This is even more horrifying than fetching it. “No.”
“Mm.”
Together, they cross the distance to it. Each step seems to chew away at the deep comfort that had possessed Fray in the shed. Each echoing footstep of Right’s hooves feels like a box to the ears. By the time they reach the sword, Fray is all but empty of conviction. All he can think of is the cold displeasure in the Revealer’s voice and sickening pain of the collar being branded into his skin.
“I’m going to say something that might piss you off,” Right says blandly. Fray tilts his head in their direction, and they continue: “Watching you pray to that thing while it tortured you was one of the most disturbing sights I’ve ever seen.”
At once his mind leaps to defense of his god: they do not torture, they are no sadist, they love him. Above all else, they love him. It’s only his haggard throat and weary muscles that keep him from protesting. Instead he feels his shoulders roll in a shrug.
Right says, “Why do you follow it?”
This sets a new confusion among his thoughts, like a cat among pigeons. They bowl into one another. Because they are good. Because I can do more good with them than without them. Because it’s how I was raised.
But none of these are what he says. “Love.”
“Love?”
His throat is going to close permanently if he isn’t careful. Instead Fray returns to signing. “I am just a lowly man, yet the Revealer loves me. My natural thoughts are odious, but they forgive me and correct me.”
Right blinks their pretty eyes slowly, like they must process this answer with a somatic component. “What are your natural thoughts?”
“Not just mine. Everyone’s. Nothing but the divine can be inherently good, but all but beasts and the mindless are inherently drawn to evil. To serve only the self.”
The way Right looks at them suggests Fray has just presented them with a very large and untoward mathematics problem, possibly one in a foreign writing system. “What’s wrong,” they say, eventually, “with serving the self?”
“To put others first is the nature of the Revealer. I strive to be like them in all things.”
“That … isn’t an answer,” Right says, half-laughing. “You’re going to have to try again.”
Fray falters, puzzling over how to convey this. “It’s better to be selfless than selfish.”
“Why?”
“Because … selflessness helps more people. Selfishness leads to—to—”
“Staying alive?” Fray frowns at them, yet Right truly seems nonplussed. “You can’t help anyone if you’re dead, either.”
“But imagine if you took that to its extreme. You could start to think yourself so important that your survival took priority over everyone else, no matter who.”
Slowly, Right says, “My survival does take priority over everyone else, though.” It is not haughty; it is not self-assured. It is almost gentle, like they worry being otherwise might cause structural damage. “Not because I’m important, I mean,” they continue, “but because I want to live.”
Fray is grateful he is signing, not speaking. He is not sure how his voice might add unintended meaning when he asks, “There’s nothing so important to you that you’d lay down your life for it?”
“My life is the most valuable thing I will ever possess. I don’t expect anyone else to feel like that. I think it would be strange if they did.” Right peers down at the sword that lies before them. “There’s probably things I would die for, but I don’t really know what they are. Hope I never have to find out.” They pause. “Are you going to tell your god about … ?”
A frigid thing crawls up Fray’s spine. Right mistakes his silence for consideration. “I’d rather you didn’t,” they say carefully, “on account of how they hate me.”
Fray grimaces. “Not hate. Just …”
He doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. He doesn’t. Instead he finds a new one. “Won’t let anything happen to you.”
“How, though?” Right asks in that hollow voice they sometimes have. “You’re beholden to it, aren’t you? Doesn’t your magic come from it?”
“If there was sin, it was mi—ine,” says Fray. He stoops to reclaim the Blade of Saints, shining at his feet. “I’ll face the consequences.”
As his fingers close around it, Right says, “I don’t want to be another sword for you to fall on, Fray.”
The words sting like winter wind. Fray stares down at the pommel, feeling the sword’s scant weight as he straightens. He can’t seem to bring himself to look up at Right. They go on. “I’ve never seen someone so eager to sacrifice themselves as you are. I don’t understand it.”
Fray wraps his other hand around the hilt. His eyes are stinging from the glare of the light spell on the blade. He lets himself close them, concentrating on keeping his face blank.
Slowly, he says, “I don’t either.” His throat sticks and catches, and he must cough and clear his throat unattractively to continue. “I can’t stop myself.”
He doesn’t need to open his eyes to know Right’s are on him. “Why?” asks Right.
“I … I don’t know.” It tastes vile in his mouth. “No, n, not true.” But he must try twice more to speak before he manages to find the words. Even these are barely adequate. He doesn’t know how to translate the whorls of thought to language. “Complicated. Have to sacrifice your whole self, for sainthood. Skin, voice, choice. Have to get rid of the old me, get rid of pride, vanity.” (He grimaces as he says this last word, well aware it is his most egregious sin.) “Becoming saint is to protect others. Any cost. You kill your old life at the altar, as proof.”
He adds, after a moment of reflection, “Saints don’t live long.”
The glow of the sword is making him dizzy. He plucks at the magic, trying to find a way to reduce its light. He manages, mostly, and nearly jumps out of his skin when he realizes Right is now right beside him.
“Why would you do that?” they ask. “What do you get out of it?”
Something about the question makes Fray have to go very still, finding himself having trouble even processing the question. “Not about what I get.”
“Then why?”
A strange, foreign anger bubbles inside him. He struggles to keep it deflated. “It’s—I’m empowered to do the Revealer’s work. To be able to do the work is the gift. The reward. I did it to honor the Great Revealer.”
His mouth tastes foul.
Right is unblinking, ears straight toward him. A bewilderment touches their face. “You’re lying,” they say. It is less accusatory than it is wondering. “Why are you lying?”
Fray grows tense under the intense eyes of his companion. “Not lying.”
“Double lying.” Right looks him over doubtfully. “You’ve never lied about your god before. Why this?”
“I’m not!”
Right looks at him. That’s all they do. Fray feels his cheeks growing hot, his gut clenching, somehow feeling more naked for being caught in a half-truth than he ever did with his clothes off in the shed. He hates this. He hates the sickening, pungent flavor of shame, and it floods him now: shame for his past behavior, for his dishonesty, for his cowardice. For a moment he is dizzy with it, so full of the stuff he feels more ill than he ever has, worse even than he did when Right shook him awake in that clearing.
Softly, Right says, “Will you tell me the truth?”
Fray watches his own knuckles whiten as he clutches them tighter around the hilt. He swallows a lump in his throat that feels as big as a fist. He lifts his head to look Right in the eye, hoping the way his voice warps when he next speaks is not noticable as anything other than physical strain.
He says, “It’s all I’m good for,” and each word of it feels like pulling ticks from his flesh.
Right’s face changes. Fray has anticipated this, is not surprised by it. He cannot quite read it. Pity, he decides, craving a solid answer more than strict accuracy.
“I can fight. That’s all.” His shoulders roll in a stiff shrug as he struggles to keep his eyes on Right’s. “Only thing I’m good at, ever been good at. Swinging a s, sword.” Fray wets still-tender lips. “It’s all I know. Was expected to take sainthood. It’s … was always told it was why the Revealer caused me to be at Revar Ivae’ath. For sainthood.”
Right squints at him. “I thought you grew up there.”
Fray nods, trying to mete out his remaining words carefully. “Was a foundling. Infant.”
The way this makes their expression curdle bewilders him more than anything else. But they do not speak further, and so Fray sighs and looks back down at his sword. It used to bring him comfort. He doubles back on the thought, suddenly nervous, as he compares the comfort of his god’s love made steel against the comfort he had felt in Right’s arms. The two are not the same, and he does not like how the former fades beside the latter. He clears his throat as if that will drive it away. “That’s the truth,” he says. “Swordplay is all I’m good at. I had to take the path of the sss. Saint. Nothing else for me.”
“Did your god tell you that?” Right says as soon as he’s finished, like they’ve been waiting to cut in. “Don’t bristle. It’s not a trick question. Yes or no?”
Fray’s throat burns from overuse. He wants to sign, but can’t bring himself to release the sword. He shrugs, and when Right crosses their arms he struggles through the pain one more time. “Didn’t have to.”
Around them, the cursed shadows creep and whine, affronted by his sword’s light. Right could vanish into them in an instant, he thinks, and he almost wishes they would, that he could stop being made to answer questions as carefully aimed as their crossbow bolts. It would be easier. It would be easier, but then, he has always known his life would never be easy.
Right steps closer. They are well within his personal space, now, something still novel enough that it makes his breath hitch. Over their shoulder he can just see the tip of their tail twitching, the way it does when they’re thinking.
“Lying again,” they declare.
Fray stares at them, unfamiliar hurt welling up in his chest. He’s been perfectly honest. Before he can protest, they lace their fingers through the hair that falls from his plait, which is still messy after being pulled down in the shed and then hastily redone. “You said it yourself, didn’t you?” they say with a small smile. It’s sincere, even if it doesn’t quite reach their eyes. “Not an hour ago. You’re good at sex.”
It is so wholly not what Fray expected to be said to him that he can only look at them in helpless confusion. It may have been calculated, that reaction, for Right places their other hand over his, where it lays on the sword hilt. “I don’t mean to make fun,” they say, still with that not-quite smile. Their eyes have fallen to study the landscape of Fray’s collarbone. “That’s why I asked.” Their face hardens. “Whoever made you believe that all you’re good for is swordplay. That’s the liar. I don’t care if it was your mentor or your whole village or your—your god,” (they spit the word like a bloody tooth, fouler than any curse), “they’re a fucking liar.”
Fray tries to speak, and finds he is out of words. He makes a weak noise in his throat instead. Right is no longer smiling, instead considering his hand on his sword. When they start to peel it away, he lets them without a second thought. Their face gentles once more. “You’re not merely a weapon,” they say, ducking their head so that for a moment all Fray can see is the way their horns and hair gleam in the daylight glow. They look holy, just as they had in the shed. “You’re not just a sacrifical lamb. I won’t have you lay yourself on any altars for my sake. I refuse to.”
They lift their head in time to see Fray mouth their name, unable to speak it. He wants to tell them he won’t, that he’ll do whatever they ask of him, that he—that he won’t confess his actions to his god. That being near to Right, being with them, simply cannot be a sin. He wants to make his oath to them again, he wants to right all the ways he has wronged them.
But he can’t. He can only form their name on his lips, and entwine their fingers with his own as he chooses to hold their hand instead of the sword.
As he leans in to kiss them—a kiss more chaste but no less passionate than before—Right smiles, and lets him.
grayscale illustration of the kiss
Illustrated by Payne.