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Days, weeks or maybe months? The never-ending darkness that filled the cave made it impossible to tell how much time Jean-François had spent here. His only companion was the ever running underground river that served as the most excellent prison bars for his kith. The sole way to freedom blocked by a current, crossing which equaled death. And Jean-François didn't want to die.
Yet, sometimes when his immortal body trembled in dire need of blood, he caught himself contemplating giving up. Ending the hunger. Ending the pursuit of forever. It would be a quick death. His body dissolving into ash that would be flushed by the river he oh so hated. It would be as if he never existed. No trace of him left in this world. Apart from the art he would leave behind. The countless paintings of his empress. His creator. His mother. But not a single image of him.
The screech of the lock brought him back to the present. Although his mouth ran dry, his eyes useless in the total darkness of the cave, limbs derived of strength to move, yet through the fog of hunger, after he didn't know how long, he could feel it. The delicious breeze of blood. Not the mortal one, no. But blood nonetheless.
He inhaled the scent as if by this single motion he could sedate the hunger. The thirst roared in him like the most ferocious beast demanding to be fed.
He could hear the door creek open, yet no light brightened the darkness.
He couldn't see the person on the other side of the river, but the scent of their blood was familiar. It belonged to the very vampire whose place in this cell Jean-François had been forced to take.
“Mademoiselle Castia,” he said. Long weeks of solitude turned his throat into a painful desert, every word like a flick of a knife against his vocal folds. However, he still held on to the remaining shreds of pride.
“For what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” He managed to breath out, the last word almost lost to the flowing current.
The answer never came. But, through the splashes and the simmer of ever running water, he could hear a sound so well known to him. A clank against a stone. A glass bottle full of liquid put down gently to the ground.
Jean-François didn't allow himself to wish. To imagine the content sealed inside it. The promise of relief for his starving body and fatigued mind.
“Be aware, sinner,” Liathe's haunting voice echoed through the cell, “It's not my pity that brought it to you. I'm only a messenger. I would gladly see you rot completely.”
If his heart was still beating, Jean-François was sure it would have skipped a beat. There was only one person left walking this damned earth apart from the woman on the other side of the river who could consider Jean-François as more than a random face in fleeting memories. A person he shared laughs and cries with. A person with whom, if this world was constructed differently, he could possibly create a bond of friendship.
Gabriel de León.
The very person who jailed him in this cave. With parting words that haunted Jean-François’ every solitary moment.
“You said you wanted forever, coldblood.”
“Use it wisely.”
Up to this point, the forever the silversaint gifted him was nothing but humiliation, hunger and pain. The thoughts of ending it all. The promise of liberation from the shackles of existence, of the endless torture.
He remained quiet, too afraid the Liathe would retreat with the bottle that could bring him at least a moment of relief.
Even if they weren't separated by the river, he wouldn't be able to stop her. In the state he was in he couldn't face the monster sealed into a body even younger than his own.
So he stayed motionless, eyes staring into the nothingness hiding the vampire on the other shore.
Then something flew across the prison waters. Jean-François was too fatigued to run after it. For a horrifying moment he imagined the glass smashing against the stone, its revered contents spilling out and seeping into the ground.
Yet, whatever the object was, it landed with a screeching clank of metal somewhere on his left. A sigh of relief escaped his chapped lips.
He waited for Celeste to speak. He expected a mockery, a curse, what an abomination he was. Instead, he heard her retreat, the heavy door locked away a moment later. Her footsteps gradually faded as she climbed up the staircase.
He was alone again. But this time adding a flicker of hope that he dared to light up. Slowly, with his body screaming in malnourished agony, he crawled in the direction of an object the Liathe left him. He pawned across the cold stone, searching. Hoping. The running water drumming in his head.
Then he found it. Hands skimmed over the mysterious object. It was cool in touch, smoothed out and firm.
He sobbed at the realization of what he was holding.
A flask.
His grip trembled as he tried to open it up, elevated by hope yet trying to restrain his shaking hands, too afraid of spilling even a single drop.
Finally, after agonizing moments of futile attempts, he managed to unscrew the cap. The scent hit him instantly. The rich aroma spread around him, overtaking the damp, still air of the cave.
He drank in big mouthfuls, warm blood settled in his stomach and, for the first time in ages, Jean-François felt the tension slowly leaving his body. Muscles regaining enough strength for him to move and slide down the cold, jagged wall without much pain.
Celene visited him three more times. Each time leaving behind another flask filled with still warm blood. Jean-François wondered who volunteered to provide it.
Those few doses gifted him the blessing of undisturbed sleep, trembling in his body subsided to a twitch of limb here and there. He was still far from his prime, but at least he seized contemplating the annihilation in the cold waters speeding a few steps away.
A loud slam of the doors shutting down startled him awake. Vampires couldn't dream. Jean-François knew it as well as any other of his kith did. Yet the sign in front of him quickly undermined his conviction.
For the first time in what Jean-François could only assume were months, the deep dark of the cave gave away to a gentle simmer of a candle lamp. It's light dancing lazily on the bumpy stone walls.
Jean-François' eyes, accustomed to the absolute darkness, refused to focus on the sign on the other side of the river.
He blinked rapidly, vision blurry with bloody tears.
“It looks like your forever doesn't treat you well, Marquis.”
Jean-François winced at the voice, he recognized immediately. He listened to it for hours, a story that, in his own twisted way, he grew to care about. Just to realize he was fed with lies.
“You are the one to be thankful to for my current situation, Chevalier.”
The silversaint didn't argue. Jean-François followed the man with wary eyes as he entered further into the cave.
He watched as Gabriel took off his cloak. The sound of a metal clasp hitting the stone ground thundered across the cave. Jean-François didn't dare to avert his gaze, equally guided by longing as well as fear.
He wondered if Gabriel descended to this prison of his to execute him. Those few doses of blood similar to the animal being stuffed before the kill.
Yet the small part of him, the one set aside and overshadowed by the deception and violence, made him wish for the silversaint to come closer. So, after so much time with his own body that offered nothing but coldness, he could sample the warmth of a living man. His skin tingled at the possibility of it.
He was awaiting the unknown. Too weakened to stand a chance against the Black Lion. Trapped between the walls of ancient stone and the freezing water. He watched as Gabriel approached the shore.
Then he jumped and Jean-François gasped at the grace of it. The man of legends, flying across the river with the ease of a trained warrior.
At last they were but a few feet from each other. Gabriel straightened up, his long dark hair spilling around his face, now concealed in a grim shadow. The faint light of the lamp left behind on the other side of the river, not enough to fully scatter the dark.
“Please.” He didn't know if it was a plea to spare his life or end it as painlessly as possible.
He awaited the blow to the face, a stab to the chest, a slash to his neck. Yet, none of those came. Instead, a big, calloused hand cupped his cheek, fingers smearing the streak of a bloody tear. Jean-François didn't realize he was crying.
“If I spared you,” Gabriel's voice was uneasily gentle. He spoke with the tone Jean-François knew too well from their time together. The silversaint used it when he had talked about Patience and Astrid. His daughter and his wife. People he loved and valued more than anything in this wretched world.
“What would you do with your freedom?”
“I-” the answer died on his tongue. Because what would he do? Margot and her court were dead, the Priorem of the five bloodlines turned to ashes. How many vampires had been slain since then?
He felt it then. The fear of the outside world changing. What would he do? What would become of him? Alone, a target of humanity's newly resurrected fury, with the power of the sun back to its long-lost strength.
During a day he would have to cower in the shadows, trading one prison for another. He would get killed. With a bit of luck, it would take some time but it would happen nonetheless.
So what difference did it make if he stayed rotting in this cell, or out in the world? Here he was condemned to the hate of just the silversaint and the Liathe. Out there, thousands of people were grieving the loss of their loved ones, their homes, entire lives destroyed by the never-ending thirst of the dead.
Maybe dying here, in this cage, forgotten by the world, wasn't the worst it could get?
“I-, I don't know,” he finally breathed out. Tears running down his face. Gabriel looked at him, his expression oddly gentle.
“I missed you, coldblood,” the silversaint muttered and Jean-François blinked at him, the weight of Gabriel's words not settling right in his tired mind.
He didn't have time to answer as Gabriel cupped his other cheek, and leaned towards him, foreheads touching. A warmth of living flesh against the coldness of the dead.
Jean-François could feel the man’s hot breath on his skin. Their mouths so close, it would require just a little tilt of his head to join them — something Jean-François imagined since their very first night at the top of the tower.
Although fully healed now, he could still feel the ghost of pain in his groin. The scorching touch that annihilated the skin, boiled the blood and made the Marquis scream. The desire he had felt was now tainted. The deceit that came after adding to the pile.
“You locked me here, Gabriel,” his voice was shaking, but the anger and resentment he had cultivated since their last meeting did not emerge with enough force as he would have liked.
“You threw me over this river and left me here to rot.” He put his trembling hands around silversaint's wrists, trying and failing to shove him away. But how could his malnourished body stand a chance against the Black Lion.
Yet, Gabriel retreated, eyes focused on what Jean-François could assume was a pity sight of the once elegant and refined Marquis of the blood Chastain.
“At least you are safe here,” Gabriel said.
Jean-François scoffed, his chocolate eyes locking with those of storm-grey.
“How thoughtful of you, Chevalier. Nothing but gratitude for my part.”
Silence stretched between them, while the bloody streaks on his cheeks dried out and cracked.
“I thought that locking you here would put my mind at ease.”
“And yet, here you are,” Jean-François couldn't help the note of relief in his voice.
Then, the unfathomable happened. Gabriel leaned in again. However, this time, instead of propping his forehead against Jean-François’, he tilted his head and dived straight for the vampire's lips.
Jean-François froze for one second. Two. Three. And he gave in to the kiss.
Gabriel tasted of Monét. He led through the kiss with the confidence of an experienced lover. His tongue poked at Jean-François’ fangs that ached after so much time without a possibility to bite. Their breaths mingled, vampire’s sighs swallowed by the warm heat. The dire need to puncture silversaint’s lip and finally taste him growing stronger with every second.
“Gabriel,” he moaned as the man traveled lower. Mouthing at his jaw and down his neck. Jean-François didn't have a pulse, but if he did it would hammer against Gabriel's lips, as it did so many times against his own when he fed on his thralls in the rumpled sheets of his boudoir.
He could feel fangs scraping with feathery lightness right where he wanted them to split the skin.
“Gabriel,” his voice barely an audible whisper, as he tilted his head further to the side, submitting himself to whatever would come next.
He yelped as Gabriel embraced his narrow waist and pulled him along, so now Jean-François was straddling the silversaint's thighs.
Then, finally, Gabriel sunk his fangs into the cool flesh of the vampire’s neck.
His long decades of decadency couldn’t possibly prepare him for the wave of pleasure that overtook him. He trembled all over, his back arched in an almost unnatural way, as Gabriel took his first mouthful.
Jean-François' perception instantly narrowed, sounds of humming water muffled by his own passionate moans. The cave’s darkness seemed to disperse in bursts of blinding light.
With each gulp the sensation grew louder, brighter. He clung to Gabriel’s shirt, smooth fabric crumpled in his desperate hands as he started rocking his hips against the silversaint. Each thrust sending a thrilling spark up his spine. He could feel the firm outline of Gabriel's cock underneath him. A mirror to his own desire. Would Gabriel allow him to bite in return?
He lost track of how much blood he gave away. His head slipped onto Gabriel's arm - keeping it up too big of an effort when his consciousness was slowly slipping away. Yet his body remained pliant to the pleasure of the Kiss.
Maybe that was the best way to go. Engulfed in the arms of a man he lusted for, his blood the parting gift that would flow in the silversaint's veins for weeks.
Soon after, Gabriel pulled away. Two scarlet trails seeped out of the punctures that would soon heal and leave no evidence.
Jean-François raised his head and instantly froze, taking in the view barely inches away. The silversaint's mouth and chin were smeared with glistening red. His blood.
With the world spiraling around him, he leaned in, licking away the remnants of the bite. Yet, the blood did nothing to his senses. Just like Gabriel said during their long hours in the cell at the top of the tower — you can’t steal what you already own.
Gabriel eased him back to the ground with such ease as if he was handling a doll, and stood up.
Panic rushed over Jean-François in an instant, his mind regaining enough sharpness to formulate one thought. The silversaint was leaving. He took what he wanted, and now he would lock the monster away. Again.
Jean-François was ready to beg. To throw his pride away. He would do whatever it took to be condemned to this endless darkness no more.
But then Gabriel started unbuttoning his shirt, slowly uncovering the artfulness of the aegis curling in silver trails across his upper body. He did not stop there. He unfastened his britches and pulled it down with no hesitation.
It was just as Jean-François thought. The silver gave away to the untouched, plain canvas stretching across his hips, down his massive thighs and lower. All this he could mark, bite, kiss. Then his eyes locked on Gabriel’s cock, his mind venturing back to all the lewd moments in his story the man unabashedly shared with him.
Jean-François took in the sight in front of him. The desire fueled him anew, just for him to waver a second later. Through the lustful fog still lingering after the Kiss, he went back to the last time he thought he would finally get what he wanted. And how this conviction left him with a dagger to his chest and his nethers mauled by the very hand that right now reached toward him.
Gabriel, who seemed to quickly grasp the reason behind the vampire's hesitation, stroked his fingers through Jean-François' golden locks, and muttered:
“No tricks this time, coldblood.”
The silversaint tucked gently his head and, after he encountered no resistance, he carefully guided him below his waist, where silver couldn't burn him.
Jean-François could feel the wild pulse underneath warm skin. A wild rhythm of pulse hidden beneath clear skin was everything Jean-François could hear. His fangs elongated at what was to come next.
“Drink,” Gabriel's command slammed through his head.
Jean-François did just that.
Silversaint's blood exploded into his mouth. Warm, rich, nothing like he ever tasted. His left hand clutched to Gabriel's thigh, nails carving red marks in their wake. With his right hand he reached for his prize, barely inches from his head, and he reveled at how the Black Lion’s body shuddered under his touch.