Marked by Death (Necromancer #1) - Kaje Harper Page 0,37

coarser and less tight.

Darien shook free of his hold and gripped the sink, staring into the mirror.

“Your eyes are the same,” Silas pointed out. “You’re the same. With a few surface changes.”

“I’m old!”

Fighting the clench of his heart, Silas scoffed. “You’re not old. You look my age.” Maybe a little over. Not much.

“Yeah. Old.” But the tiny twitch of Darien’s lips was a win.

Silas took it as permission to step up behind him and wrap both arms around him. Darien leaned back against him as they stared at their reflections together. Silas could feel heavy shivers wracking Darien’s body, and hugged him closer, trying to pass along his body warmth.

“I guess I have to live with it,” Darien whispered eventually. “You don’t think a healer…?”

“I can ask, but even they can’t stop time and aging.”

“I look like shit.”

“You look alive.” Silas pressed a kiss against Darien’s hair. “You look like a man who’s been through some hard times, and that’s only the truth.” He wracked his brain for more. “You look like the kind of man I’d go up to in a bar, and try to convince to come into the back room with me.”

“You have shit tastes, then.” Darien’s eyes met his in the glass. “And seriously, that’s where you go to meet men?”

“It’s safest. And my taste is excellent. I like a man my age who can handle himself.”

Darien shook his head, his hair brushing Silas’s chin.

“Yes.” Silas touched the gray streak at Darien’s temple. “This might be from the bit of power that let me deflect a demon’s strike.” Sliding his finger lower, he stroked the fine lines at the corner of Darien’s eye. “The power that kept my defenses from collapsing around me, there on that little hill. Do you have any idea how it felt, to know I’d met my match and had nothing left to fight with? That Grim and I were going to die there, and the demon would track you down and use you, maybe take you over and discard that hulk he was wearing? To be able to do nothing and then to feel all that power— all your gorgeous, glowing life force— thrust inside of me?”

He shuddered against Darien’s back, washed by the memory of fear and hope and panic, of wondering how high a price Darien might’ve paid to save them even as he took that gift and used it.

“That was freaky,” Darien said, his voice stronger. “My hands went into your back.”

“I didn’t see it. All I knew was we were going to die, and then you gave me the strength to defeat him. And I had to fight, with no time to even turn and see if you’d killed yourself to give me that chance.”

“Ease up, Silas, you’re squishing me.”

Silas forced his arms to relax. “Sorry. Just… I didn’t know what ripping all those bits free would do to you. That’s why I stopped after the first ghost. Would you lose memories? Bits of who you were? Would it kill you? Would it take your ability to walk or talk or see?” He looked slowly up Darien’s reflection, from the waistband of his plaid pants, over the thin lines of his chest, dusted with more hair than he’d seen on young Darien, up the still-firm column of his neck, stubble-darkened chin with no hint of gray, to still-full lips and the faint lines and clear brown eyes and tousled hair.

With his eyes locked on Darien’s, he pressed a kiss against his neck. “This? If you’ve lost ten, maybe fifteen years of your life, I’ll grieve that—” His voice choked because he would. Necromancers were long-lived, and he’d just started thinking it wasn’t a bad thing Darien was a decade younger. But still— “And it’s your right to be shaken, maybe angry.” He remembered then that part of the blame was his, and lowered his arms. “But this is so far from the worst it might’ve been.”

“True.” Darien looked himself over. “The marks are gone. The ghosts are gone?” The rise of his tone made it a question.

“Yes. If there’d been one left, I’d have seen it on the banks of the River. I’d see it now. They’re gone.”

Darien’s shoulders slumped. “So. I’ll take it. But right now, can you go out so I can piss in private?”

“Are you strong enough?” He held up his hands at Darien’s huffed breath. “Yes, of course. I’ll toss in a something for you to sleep in.”

“I can find something of mine.”