Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.
Author's Note: It's M for a reason, kiddies. Graphicness ahead, mostly in the second chapter. Please enjoy.
What He Will Never Know
Chapter One: Spice and Corpses
"'I only wanted to be free,' he repeats, this time a hopeless exhale. This time with the knowledge that there may be no such thing." - Madness, blood and freedom. The story of Jowan's dark descent.
Jowan remembers the first time he split his skin open in a darkened, stale alcove of Kinloch Hold. He holds the knife close to the inside of his forearm, sleeve rolled up over his elbow, the tip of the blade pressed shakily against his flesh. He swallows tightly, eyes fixed on the cool steel along his arm. His own ragged breathing is deafening in the silence around him.
Jowan strains his ears for any footfalls or voices. There is nothing but his own delirious panting and racing heart. He swears he can feel the organ thudding in his ears. He licks his lips and narrows his eyes in the dense shadow behind a book shelf. Having shifted the small northern shelf of the library just so, and having pushed the desk further out into the corridor, Jowan has created an unseen corner of darkness beneath the tower stairs. It is cramped, and smells of wet stone and mold. But if he braces himself against the back of the stone stairs, he is invisible to patrolling templars.
At least, from sight.
Jowan's fingers flex against the hilt of the blade once more, counting out the seconds until the next patrol makes its way through the corridor alongside the library. The trembling mage can't risk the templar sensing his blood magic. So he holds still. Counts the breaths. Closes his eyes and listens.
A solitary, short chuckle. And then the soft tread of steel boots. A second voice, nonchalant and the slightest bit gravelly. The two passing templars laugh in unison then.
Jowan's jaw clenches at the sound, his body reflexively tightening, preparing. He has only known pain to follow that sound. But then their voices are receding, their footfalls growing faint. And Jowan knows he has only eight minutes before another templar presence is in range of sensing his magic.
He blinks furiously, eyes trained on his unbroken skin, fingers clenching tightly against the haft of his blade. Suddenly, the weight of his decision is like a rock in his gut, dragging him down, pulling him deeper.
He urges his hand to press the blade down but nothing happens.
He is stricken with panic.
Jowan whips his head up, blinking frantically through the darkness. He can see a weak shaft of moonlight breaking across the empty corridor up ahead from a thin slit in the Tower stone. It plays like music on his mind, softening and peaceful.
But everything in him is raging.
He chokes out a gurgle of frustration, half blind fear and half self-resentment. He grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut. Tries to focus on what's important. What's needed and unquestionable and constant. Tries to remind himself of the why.
He sees straw hair behind his closed lids. Amber eyes and thin lips.
It is not Lily his mind grasps for.
Jowan's eyes shoot open and he steadies his quaking hold of the knife. He remembers the strangling air in the Tower. The constant, lingering threat of terror and brutality and worse. Oh, so much worse that he thinks death might be a blessing.
But not Tranquility.
Never that.
Because then he couldn't reach for straw hair or smile into amber eyes or imagine thin, pale lips pressed against his.
Empty.
Caged.
Alone.
Jowan knows he cannot stay imprisoned any longer. Not by them. Not even by her.
He twists his wrist sharply and the dagger cuts deep, scraping along his smooth, previously unmarked forearm. The sharp pain is startling at first, but he has felt worse, and soon it is only a faint memory.
Because then there is only blood.
Blood and magic and dark whispers he thinks he might recognize from dreams. From the shadowy corners of his mind he shares with no one.
Like silken fingers through his thoughts. Soothing. But aching. Distant. Just out of reach.
They beckon.
Jowan blinks through the Fade-touched fog and stares at the cold grey stones beneath his feet to focus. And then he smells it. The blood. It streams in thin rivulets down the length of his arm. His eyes lock to the red stream and he pulls a deep breath in. There is a warm spice to the air, like musk and oak. But beneath it there is a sour tang, like the dead rat corpses he would find in the cellar tunnels. His nostrils burn in delirium.
And then something is building in his core. Tight and shifting. A constricted knot of energy that begins to seep out into his limbs, through the broad length of his shoulders, the slow outstretching arms, all the way to his fingertips. It pulses through him, as though every nerve is alight with magic, every pore is suffused with his mana. Until he is full of it.
His whole body, emanating power he has never felt before, never even dared to hope for.
His eyes glaze over in a reverent awe. His mouth hangs agape. Blood drips unfettered to the cold stone below. He curls his fingers into fists and breathes his first breath of air that doesn't feel beaten or enslaved or powerless.
Jowan can taste his freedom in the air.
Like spice and corpses.
He vows to never been enslaved again.
The first time Jowan had seen Nasir Surana, he didn't think she looked like much, certainly not pretty. Her quickly flitting eyes were always keen, always observing, small and amber. Her cheek bones were especially gaunt when she first arrived at the tower, and she cradled her arms around her thin elven form so that he couldn't quite make out the jutting bones of her hips or the sunken arc of her collarbone. Her dull blonde hair was pulled back into a low bun, thin strips of the coarse strands falling into her face. She didn't utter a word for many days upon her arrival, her lips pinched in a perpetual purse as though words were always on her tongue but kept hidden from the world by the cage of her teeth. He might have forgotten about her were it not for the intense heat of her magic when he first brushed past her. There was power there even he could sense.
The kind of power he needs now.
Nasir folds her arms over her chest and stares at Jowan, her brows in a low furrow over her eyes. "You want me to what?" she breathes tersely.
Jowan glances around the empty chapel and edges closer toward her. Nasir's fingers tighten in their hold of her arms. His eyes soften at the sight. Reaching up hesitantly, he plants his hands along her arms and sighs. His eyes plead with her.
"Help me take back my freedom," he whispers.
Nasir draws a heavy breath in but doesn't speak.
Lily steps up beside Jowan, her hand falling along his shoulder. "Please, Nasir," she implores softly. "You know they will take him for the Rite of Tranquility. Could you allow that to happen to your friend?"
"Of course not," the elven mage snaps, and then quiets. She lets out a long, slow breath, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose.
Jowan's hands fall back to his sides.
"Jowan, you must know I only want the best for you," Nasir whispers haltingly, her eyes closed, hand over her face.
Jowan swallows and waits for more. He feels Lily squeeze his shoulder reassuringly.
Nasir drops her hand and looks back up to him. "Is this truly what you want?"
How he wishes to tell her. To show her. To make her see what he truly wants.
It isn't Lily.
But he is tired of being a prisoner, even if it is to her.
When he doesn't answer, Nasir steps closer, so that she can peer up into his eyes, so that he can smell her in the sparse air between them.
Like pine and coriander.
He breathes deep and reminds himself to get out. Get out and away and as far as he can go. Into the hills. Over oceans and mountains. Anywhere but here. Anywhere that isn't suffocating.
He knows she will never look at him with anything but friendship in her eyes. And he doesn't know when he had begun to need more.
"It's what we want," Lily affirms, sliding her hand from Jowan's shoulder to link around his own. She leans into him and sends a brilliant smile his way.
Nasir raises her brows to Jowan expectantly.
He nods, voice broken in his throat. He swallows thickly, his hand tightening around Lily's. "It's what I need, Nasir."
She watches him in silence for many moments. The candlelight flickers over her face so that there are shadows beneath her eyes he has never seen before. Her cheeks are gaunt once more, her lips thinned in a contemplative purse.
But she has never been so beautiful.
She nods, once, swiftly, her eyes shifting to the corner of the chapel, her hands rubbing up and down her arms. "Then I will help you."
Jowan's smile is shaky but uncontrollable. His relief rushes from him in a single wave of breath.
Lily sighs excitedly beside him.
When he opens his mouth to thank Nasir she is already speaking, her arms dropping from their hold of her, her back straightening. "Just meet me outside my quarters an hour after evening meal. We'll figure it out from there." She is already moving for the door. Already out of his reach.
When she is gone from the room, Lily turns Jowan to her and embraces him. He lets himself relax into the touch.
"I knew she would help us," the initiate whispers against his shoulder. His fingers splay against her back. "She is a dear friend."
"Yes," he breathes into her hair. "Yes, she is."
Lily pulls from him, keeping her hands around his waist, her eyes peering brilliantly up toward his. "You'll be free, Jowan. Just like you always wanted. And we will be free together."
"I love you," he says, hoping she cannot sense the lie in it.
She blushes and drops her gaze to the floor. "And I love you," she whispers, her smile slowly breaking across her features.
He pulls her back into his embrace, threads his fingers through her short, brown strands. He pretends it is straw hair he strokes. He imagines it is a thin, lithe body pressed to his. He imagines it is pine and coriander that floods his nostrils and not candle wax and cedar.
He imagines that Lily is the escape he has wished for all these long years.
Jowan can feel the building power in the templar guards blocking their path from the phylactery chamber. Beside him, Lily and Nasir tense in response. Irving is shaking his head, his eyes sad and decided. He holds a hand to his forehead as though in pain.
As though he were the one in pain.
Jowan finds an unexpected rage flaring to life within him. He braces his feet in the stone and begins to pull the mana slowly into his palm. Nasir's hand on his arm startles him. He turns to her, finds her eyes hard and regretful on his, finds the warmth of her fingers not comforting but urgent. She shakes her head, so minutely he might not have caught it if he weren't completely and utterly in love with every miniscule detail of her form.
Irving sighs and it draws Jowan's attention. "I had hoped for better from you," he says.
Jowan glances to the First Enchanter and finds his eyes on Nasir, not him. He curls his hands into fists and takes a bold step forward. The templars reach instinctively for their swords, hands stilling on the hilts at their belts. "She is not at fault, First Enchanter. I am. I convinced her to help me." Jowan's voice is sure and purposeful for the first time he can ever remember.
Irving's eyes flit to the young man. "No one has ever made Nasir Surana do anything she hadn't already wanted to do." He says it like a sigh. Like a burden.
Nasir drops her gaze from the First Enchanter, her body going slack.
"No," Irving continues. "There is blame enough for the three of you."
Lily's hand is suddenly on Jowan's arm, her fingers flexing tightly in his robes and he can feel her trembling even from here. "Please," she whispers. "We only wanted freedom."
"And you shall have it," Irving answers, his voice a low promise, a cheerless admission. His eyes bore into Jowan's.
Jowan has only a moment for the words to set in before the templars first move against them. He doesn't think. Doesn't hesitate. Doesn't do anything but reach instinctively for the dagger at his waist and bring it to his palm. "No!" he screams, his voice catching in his throat, a hoarse cry.
And then the corridor is splashed in blood.
This he knows. This he has come to understand. To find comfort in. The faint smell of spice and corpses. The warm gush along his palm that promises power. Control. Freedom. The slick river of blood that pulses along his flesh, enflamed with mana. The dark whispers that curl along his mind, soothing and enticing all at once.
He has forgotten what fear feels like when his flesh is ripped open.
The Fade is like a song he can't quite remember, a memory he can't quite recall, a touch he can't quite reclaim. It is always there. Lingering at the edges of his mind. Calling to him in a language only the Maker knows. Ever present. Ever ethereal. But it is only when his blood is shed in sacrifice and his mind desperate in its yearning that the Fade seems to come alive.
It is all around him then. A dense fog that seems to buffer his buoyant body. A cascading wave of energy and magic that wisps around him. He is everything and nothing all at once. He is powerful and powerless all at once. He is the world and its people and the air they breathe all at once. He is all this but a prisoner.
Jowan's eyes flood a threatening black and he pulls his hands back in a curling wave before surging them forward, his magic rushing through his limbs in an overwhelming euphoria that breaks from his palms like a wall of blood. It crashes into the templars and First Enchanter with a force that knocks them back several feet. They are thrown into the stone wall of the corridor, their bodies flailing and then suddenly limp. It is a sickening crunch of bones that echoes throughout the hall, and then steady, deafening silence.
There is only the dark whisper of something feral and alluring in Jowan's ear.
"Jowan."
He blinks back into consciousness at Lily's voice. It is a jagged whisper, lodged tight in her throat, as though she had forced it to air with unfathomable effort.
He glances toward her and finds her inching back from him, her hands held against her chest in fright. Her mouth hangs agape, shuddering in her attempt to speak, eyes wide and unblinking. "You…you…" She can get nothing else out.
Jowan swallows tightly and pulls his hands back, holding them before him as he looks down at the bloody palms. He flicks his gaze to the unconscious bodies along the wall, and then back to his palms. Words swell in his chest he thinks might be pointless. But he tries anyway. "Lily, I…" he croaks, swallows, tries again. "I did what I had to." He blinks again, the faint whisper of the Fade falling from his mind, his palms burning now in a comforting reminder of mortality. "I did what I had to for us," he urges, eyes shifting back to hers now. "For freedom."
One of Lily's hands slinks up her collar and to her throat, her eyes never leaving his. "You're a blood mage," she whispers scathingly, like the words are acid on her tongue.
"No," he challenges, suddenly firm, suddenly certain. He takes a step toward her but stops as she stumbles back, bracing herself against the wall. "No, I…I…"
"You are," he hears behind him.
Jowan's breath catches in his throat. His words fail him. He closes his eyes to Nasir's voice behind him and hopes desperately, achingly – like he has never hoped for before – that this is but an illusion of the Fade.
"You're a blood mage," she repeats behind him.
And he knows it is real. The way her breath catches on the words, the way they tumble from her pale, thin lips like a curse. The way she doesn't need to say anything else to break him.
He does not need to see her face to know the anguish that lines it. But he turns anyway. Hesitantly. Slowly. He braces his palms against his robes and tries uselessly to wipe the blood.
Nasir's eyes are trained on his when he meets her gaze.
They are eyes he has never seen before.
Her lip is caught between her teeth, her brows knitted almost painfully together. He can see the tremble lining her jaw from where he stands. She takes a staggering breath in, pulling her staff closer to her body as though for protection.
The thought nearly brings him to tears.
Nasir closes her eyes and shakes her head, tears pooling unnoticed in the corners of her lids. "Jowan, how…how could you?" It is a desperate whisper, a quaking disbelief.
He opens his mouth but it is a hoarse croak that leaves him. His hands reach toward her. His bloody, dirty hands.
She curls her shoulders in on herself.
Jowan stops. He swallows thickly, hands slowly coming back to his sides. "I…I couldn't let them take me," is all he can manage.
"I would have helped you!" she almost screams, her voice raw. "You know that. You know I wouldn't have let them take you." Nasir brushes a tangled strand of blonde back from her cheek.
Jowan closes his eyes, feels the aching breath pooling in his chest. "I know you would have failed," he whispers in a sigh. Resigned. Regretful.
Nasir's mouth opens and then promptly closes.
When Jowan can hear nothing but her thick, heavy breaths, he opens his eyes, finds her arms cradling herself, her gaze shifted to the far wall where Irving's body lays prostrate. "This place has been nothing but a prison for me, Nasir."
Her eyes flick hesitantly back toward his.
He looks down at his slashed palms once more. "There was no way of getting out alive, getting out whole."
"So you became this?" she spits, harsh and cutting. "This…this…" Her face screws up in betrayal.
"This monster?" he finishes for her, because he knows the words she won't say. He knows how they sling sharp, cutting shame because he has already said them himself. Already cursed and lamented his own weakness. Already held the weight of his treachery in his hands and felt it pool slick and warm like a small river.
He wonders if maybe he wouldn't be better off dead.
But then he hears it. That faint, deadly whisper in the back of his consciousness. That keening beckon of forces dark and unfathomable. Exhilarating. Enthralling. The blood in his veins flares to life. Demons he has no name for slither through his consciousness.
And it just feels so damn good.
So good he thinks they might have been wrong all these years.
It's the blood that makes him righteous.
Nasir narrows her eyes at Jowan. "This is not the way, my friend."
He wonders how she can still shame him so. How she can still stir this rending, terrible need in him. Even when he has already tasted his own glory in the bitter blood on his tongue. "It will have to be my way," he says. He cannot stop the break in his voice.
And he knows she doesn't believe him.
He can hardly believe himself. It is all slipping away so quickly, so intangibly. He has never felt so powerless as when Nasir Surana stared him down with betrayal in her gaze. Never felt so ensnared as when her hard amber eyes held him in accusation. He thinks he can see the gathering wetness of tears along her lids from where he stands.
"I promised myself I'd be free," he begins again, his voice heavy, shoulders sagging. "Free from this place, from this curse of magic, from…" He stops, voice catching. He gulps the words down, finds new ones, ones that won't bring to light the shameful, cowering parts of him that drown him at night. He finds his voice. "Free from the desperation and indignity and constant terror of this Maker-forsaken place, this absolute shit hole of a Tower," he seethes through clenched teeth. He finds the salt sting of tears along his own eyes. "I mean, dammit Nasir, couldn't you tell? Couldn't you tell that I was dying more every day? Every damn day. Just…trapped and beaten and…Maker, there aren't words for the fear I've been living with. But you would never know. You couldn't. Because this has never been a prison for you."
Nasir blinks in confusion at him, her mouth curving down into a sharp frown at his words.
But he doesn't stop. Couldn't stop. Not if it meant his sanity, or his freedom, or even her love. He has lost all these already. And he could never stop. "Magic has always come so naturally to you, so easily. You've always been Irving's favorite, even when he wouldn't say it aloud. We all knew, regardless. We always knew. How could we not? How could we not notice the absolute power emanating from you? The way you capture every gaze in a room, without even trying, without even knowing. This tower worships you, it loves you, I lov- " he stops then, his voice halting painfully in his throat as he catches himself. But it isn't fast enough.
Nasir's eyes widen in the blaring silence that follows. It is only Lily's low moan of denial – or fear or heartbreak (Jowan isn't entirely sure) – that bleeds into the silence.
Nasir's arms slip from their hold around her. She stares blankly at him, chest rising heavily with her suddenly labored breaths.
Jowan doesn't think it could get much worse. His bloody hands. His unsalvageable soul. His shredded heart lying on the floor between them. The stark silence that breathes of won't and couldn't and too much space.
Maker, too much fucking space between them. And not enough air.
So he clamps his mouth shut. Grinds his teeth as he pulls a shaking breath through his nostrils. Curls his hands into fists at his side and feels the slick warmth of blood gush between his calloused fingers. He is just so tired of looking at freedom from the dark, shuttered confines of this cage he calls fear. So he clears his throat and tries for words once more. Tries to make her understand why he needs this.
Why he may as well just be flesh for the crows without it.
"You've never been a prisoner, Nasir. Even here. Even in the presence of such brutality and desperation. You could never understand. Not until the walls are closing in around you and the air is suddenly gone from the room. Not until you're standing in my place and utterly terrified of tomorrow."
Her elven face is pinched tight with pain, her lip quivering slightly. "Jowan…"
"I'm sorry that I brought you into this. Truly I am." He takes a brave step closer and quietly revels in the knowledge that she doesn't retreat. He brings a slow, hesitant hand to her cheek. "I would never wish such a fate on you. You," he chokes, face softening with the light of love he has kept hidden for years. "You, least of all," he finishes on a shaky breath.
Nasir's mouth slips open but no words form. She does not try to remove his hand from her cheek.
"Even still," Jowan continues, steeling himself, his hand dropping from the warmth of her cheek. "You have helped me gain some semblance of freedom. And it is all I could ask for."
"But this…this is…" Nasir spreads her arms, encompassing the unconscious bodies behind her, the spray of blood along the stone floor, their quaking forms in the shadowed corridor. As though the world were in her arms. Everything they knew. Everything they could understand.
But this, Jowan couldn't say he understood this. The quiet moment of everything and nothing passing between them. The way his eyes follow the graceful line of her throat beneath her collar and then suddenly, without warning, the image of her soft flesh sliced open is flooding his mind.
More blood for his hands, for his deep pooling magic, for his needy, ravenous touch.
Jowan's eyes widen in sudden panic, his hands rising to brace on either side of his head, his mouth hanging open. All he can see for one blinding moment is the ruined flesh of her throat and all he can feel is the promising surge of power through his veins.
He must turn from her.
It takes him many long moments and many steadying breaths before he can lift his gaze. Hands falling slowly back to his sides, he turns first to Lily and finds that she has slumped down the stone wall and sits with her back braced against it, one hand seemingly permanently affixed to her throat, the other bunched in her skirts. Her eyes are glazed and downcast, tears already wetting the smooth paleness of her cheeks.
Something flickers inside him that feels achingly like regret. He reaches for the broken woman. "Lily," he breathes softly.
Her eyes flash to him and she tries to retreat further into the wall, her knuckles white in their grip, eyes unblinkingly wide as she whimpers her fear.
"Don't you touch her," Nasir threatens lowly behind him.
He stops. Straightens his back. Turns slowly toward the elven mage. There is hurt in his eyes he cannot keep from spilling forth.
She gulps, but keeps her staff trained on him.
"I would never harm her. Nor you," he whispers softly, his throat tightening with the words.
She only stares at him, tears hot along her lids, grip shaking on her staff.
Jowan sighs with his whole body, eyes flicking to the floor. "I only wanted to be free," he repeats, this time a hopeless exhale. This time with the knowledge that there may be no such thing.
Many moments of weighted silence pass between them.
Then, so softly he barely catches it, he can hear Nasir take a single, slow breath in, before she is speaking, her voice a halting rasp. "Then go."
He looks up at her, at her slack shoulders, her lowered staff. Her mouth is a tight line, her brows quaking over her unblinking eyes.
"Nasir," he begins, edging toward her.
"Don't make me say it again," she whispers raggedly, the tears finally breaking free of her lashes.
Jowan cannot know whether he will ever see her face again. And though it is shrouded in pain and distrust, he doesn't ever want to forget the way it looks this very moment. So he traces the curves of her lips and the dip of her cheekbones and the sharp angle of her knotted brow with his ardent eyes. He captures this image of her distant visage and buries it deep in his heart where even the whispers may not reach.
His love for her is his and his alone. Not to be perverted by this new and intoxicating power. This dangerous thrill of what he isn't so sure is any less a prison than where he comes from.
Nasir's mouth opens, trembling. Her fingers flex against her staff. "Run," she says. It is more a plea.
Jowan swallows tightly and keeps her steady gaze for a moment longer, until she breaks it to look back at the bloodied unconscious forms of the templars across from them. He nods, mostly to himself, fists shaking at his sides.
He turns back to Lily, his throat suddenly rife with things he wants to say, with words he knows should be said but she will not meet his eyes, and he doesn't even know whether she would believe them, so he settles for this: "I'm sorry."
She only whimpers, arms pulling her knees tighter to her chest, eyes squeezed shut in what Jowan can only imagine is terror but hopes beyond all else is understanding.
He doesn't even know what he means when he says it. For what wrong or what hurt it applies. He thinks maybe it is for everything. For a lot of things. Maybe for nothing.
Maybe for thinking "I'm sorry" could ever be enough.
Jowan sighs. He takes one last look at the small elven woman with her eyes boring into his. And then he is off down the corridor. His footsteps are loud and reverberating to his ears. The heavy pant of his breaths pounding in the silence. The laden rush of blood in his veins thunderous.
But above all else he hears her.
"Run," she says.
So he does.
But it isn't toward freedom.