Marked by Death (Necromancer #1) - Kaje Harper Page 0,42

a dish of tuna, and carried a tray up the stairs. The bedroom door thumped a bit, opening it with his hands full, but Darien didn’t stir. He lay curled up tight, his face buried in the pillows. Silas hated to wake him, but he didn’t put it past Ferngold to come looking, if they kept him waiting too long.

“Hey, Darien. Breakfast.” He set the tray on the nightstand, removing the old sticky glass. “Up you get.”

Darien mumbled something and curled tighter. Silas shook his shoulder lightly, and got whacked in the thigh as Darien yelped and thrashed, rolling over, arms swinging blindly.

“Hey, it’s me.” He grabbed Darien’s wrist in self-defense. “It’s Silas!”

Darien’s eyes popped open, pupils shot wide, and he pulled his hand free. “Silas? Ah, hell. Don’t do that.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Darien dragged a hand across his eyes. “Just bad dreams.” He pushed himself higher in the bed. “Did someone say breakfast?”

“Bread and cheese and milk.” Silas set the tray in his lap carefully. “Eat slowly. You don’t want to get sick.”

“No bacon?” Darien downed a couple of swallows of milk and frowned, lips twisting. “Maybe just as well.”

“Nauseated?” Silas took that thin wrist in his fingers and pressed over the right spot in firm circles.

“What—?” Darien stared down at their hands. “Hey, that’s helping.”

“It’s a pressure point.” Silas gave it another half a minute, then set Darien’s hand on the covers. “Try again.”

Darien was able to drink the milk, and after a brief bathroom break, came back and wolfed down the simple bread and cheese. Silas noticed Darien’s gaze was darting around, looking everywhere but at him. But whatever was going on, this wasn’t the moment to fix it. Instead, he took the time to spruce himself up, to comb and shave and put on a fresh shirt as Darien ate. Ferngold’s respect often hinged on stupid things like the straightness of a fellow’s tie pin.

When Darien set the plate aside, Silas said, “I need you to come downstairs with me and meet someone.”

Darien slid out of the bed again and stretched deliberately, the action hiking the hem of his pajama top enticingly, showing a flash of golden skin. “Now? Really?”

“Yes.” Silas managed to fake a stern voice. “And get dressed, neat as you can. Professor Ferngold is head of the local Practitioners’ Guild. He wants to see you.”

Darien’s moment of enticement vanished. He hugged his middle. “About my… magic?”

“About your ghosts. For now. He heard about them from Anya’s familiar.”

“But they’re gone.”

“And we need to show him that.” Silas turned to rummage in a drawer. He thought he had a pair of new underwear— yes. Probably a bit loose on Darien’s compact rump, but better than nothing. He tossed them onto the bed. “Here. Grab those. And these black socks. I’ll find you a shirt. Are any of your slacks dry?”

Darien glanced at the bathroom. “I don’t know…”

“I’ll look. You get those on. And this.” He pulled out a dress shirt from the back of the closet, a bit creased, but clean.

When he entered the bathroom, he was startled to find the mirror draped with a towel. Was there a portal attempt? He was urgently checking the glass for tampering spells before he realized— or maybe Darien just didn’t want to see himself. Damn it.

He urgently wanted to have more time to talk to Darien, to check and reassure him, not parade him in front of a knowledge-hungry sorcerer. Sometimes you can’t get what you want.

The clothes draped along the shower rod were mostly dry, but stained and threadbare. He wondered why. Darien should’ve been living better than that. His father had earned a decent living, back when, and they’d had clothes and books and toys. College might’ve been a stretch, but Darien shouldn’t have been in abject poverty.

Ask later.

He picked the slightly-less objectionable pair of slacks, still damp around the waistband, and brought them out. Darien was folding up the sleeves of the blue shirt to hide their length, his legs bare, rump snugly covered in Silas’s not-too-big briefs. He’d opened the curtain enough to let a stray sunbeam in, and it frosted the silver hair at his temple. Silas had an odd sense of rightness, of permanence, as if he’d watched this man get dressed in this room over and over for years.

He cleared his throat. “Here. Better than drowning in my pants.”

Even when fully dressed, Darien was far from a picture of respectability, but at least looked less like Silas had spent the