Chapter 11: A Dangerous Trust
The horse’s gait was a steady, rhythmic sway that did nothing to calm the riot in Gavriel’s blood. Malik rode behind him, close, his chest a warm line against Gavriel’s back, his thighs firm against Gavriel’s hips. The hillside was a blur of gold and violet, the sweet, honeyed scent of wildflowers thick in the cooling air, but Gavriel could only smell the faint spice of Malik’s skin, could only feel the deliberate, teasing shift of Malik’s body with every other step the horse took.
A soft, deliberate grind pressed against the base of Gavriel’s spine.
He swallowed, his fingers tightening on the reins. The heat pooled low in his stomach, immediate and undeniable. Everything from Malik’s voice, to his eyes, to those clever fingers had him thirsting for the half-breed like a desert aching for rain. It was a primal, humbling need that made his head feel light. But this realization also sent a tight knot to his stomach, a cold counterweight to the warmth spreading through his groin.
He couldn’t reconcile it. The man who spoke of the Dark Elven King like a saint, with that reverent, grateful tone—the same man who was now making him hard with a lazy roll of his hips.
“You’re quiet,” Malik murmured, his breath a feather-light touch against Gavriel’s ear. “Still thinking about the council’s blathering? I’d have thought the open sky would clear your head.”
Gavriel focused on the path ahead, on the river’s distant murmur. “My head is clear.”
It wasn’t. It was full of static and suspicion. The word ‘grateful’ had left Malik’s lips before when speaking of Darrius’s so-called charity, and it had sat sourly with him then, too. There was nothing Gavriel had seen in Darrius that spoke of kindness. He’d often heard his brothers boasting over the heads the Elven King had hung from his walls, and how, despite being elven, Darrius had a very mortal hunger for power. Elves were supposed to be guardians of the woods, beings that were unified and just. But Darrius seemed eager to sever elven ties with his own people. And those that turned on their own should never be trusted.
Another slow, circling press. Gavriel bit the inside of his cheek, trying to stop his growing erection by focusing on that very thought. He shouldn’t fool around with Mal, not now that he could tell how fond he was of Darrius. It was a line, somehow. A betrayal of a principle he couldn’t quite name.
“Clearly,” Malik said, a smile in his voice. His hands, which had been resting lightly on his own thighs, slid forward to splay across Gavriel’s stomach, pulling him back just an inch more firmly into contact. “Your body tells a different story, princeling. It’s practically singing.”
“Don’t,” Gavriel said, the word coming out strained.
“Don’t what?” Malik’s tone was innocent, but his hands didn’t move. “The horse moves. I move. It’s simple physics.”
“You know what you’re doing.”
“Do I?” Malik’s lips brushed the shell of his ear. “I’m just enjoying the ride. The flowers. The company. Is that a crime?”
Gavriel didn’t answer. He was fighting a war on two fronts: the liquid heat Malik was stoking in his veins, and the cold, creeping dread that this—this addiction—was being used. That he was a naive prince being charmingly manipulated by a creature who owed his loyalty to a tyrant. The stories of the stables, of Malik’s easy seduction, now felt like warnings he’d been too blissfully deaf to hear.
Malik’s teasing stilled, though his closeness remained. The playful air around him shifted, grew quieter, more observant. “Something is wrong,” he stated, no longer a question. “It’s not the council. You were annoyed leaving the chamber, but you’re… coiled now. Like a spring. What happened between the courtyard and here?”
The directness threw him. Gavriel was used to evasion, to courtly dances of words. Malik often played that game too, but he could also slice through pretense with unnerving accuracy. Gavriel chose a fragment of the truth. “You speak of King Darrius with such reverence.”
A pause. The only sounds were the horse’s hoofbeats and the distant water.
“And?” Malik prompted, his voice carefully neutral.
“And I’ve heard stories. My brothers boast of the heads on his walls. They call him a butcher who plays at politics.”
Malik’s laugh was a short, sharp exhale against Gavriel’s neck. It held no humor. “Your brothers would know all about butchers who play at politics, wouldn’t they? They dine with them every night.”
The rebuke was swift and precise. Gavriel flinched.
“You think gratitude is the same as approval?” Malik continued, his voice lower now, stripped of its lighthearted lilt. “You think because I am grateful not to be rotting in a ditch somewhere, that I am blind to the color of the hand that pulled me out? You mortals and your absolutes. It’s exhausting.”
Gavriel turned his head slightly, trying to see Malik’s face, but could only see the fall of silver hair from the corner of his eye. “Is that what he did? Pulled you from a ditch?”
Malik’s arms tightened around him for a moment, not in affection, but in something that felt like intensity. “He gave me a place. When no other would. Not the light elves, who saw a half-breed abomination. Not the humans, who saw a pretty novelty. Does that make him a saint? No. It makes him a pragmatist. And it makes me alive.” He pressed his forehead between Gavriel’s shoulder blades.
This. The word hung in the flower-scented air. This attraction. This tension. This thing between them that was part game, part need, and now, part mistrust.
Gavriel’s arousal had faded, cooled by the sudden rawness in Malik’s voice. The conflict didn’t leave, though; it just changed shape, becoming heavier, more complex. He didn’t know what to say. He’d wanted to push Malik away, to erect a barrier of principle, and instead he’d stumbled into a glimpse of a history that made his own sheltered life seem shamefully small.
He placed one of his hands over Malik’s where it lay on his stomach. A silent, clumsy apology. Malik didn’t pull away. He didn’t move closer.
He didn’t move closer. The silence stretched, filled only by the river’s whisper and the crunch of hooves on the path. Then Malik let out a soft sigh, the tension in his arms melting away as if he’d decided to drop a heavy weight.
“Anyway,” he said, his voice deliberately bright, brushing his lips against Gavriel’s shoulder. “In truth, I’m happier now because of Darrius. I get to have riding lessons with handsome princes. It’s a definite improvement over the ditch.”
He said it like a joke, a clear attempt to lift the mood he himself had darkened. Gavriel grew quiet. The words landed wrong. They twisted the knot in his stomach tighter. King Darrius had gifted him Malik for a season, a living being presented like a prized hound or a fine sword. He had accepted the offer with a flush of foolish excitement, never once considering what it meant for the person handed over.
It troubled him, knowing Malik was treated like an object, a token in a political game. And that people like him, as Mal had just said, didn’t ever have many choices. Gavriel pondered how much Mal must have suffered, what other ditches he’d been pulled from, but he didn’t ask further. He felt he had no right to dig up those wounds for his own understanding.
Mal grew quiet behind him, the false levity evaporating. After a few minutes, he guided their horse off the main path with a gentle nudge. They entered a wide, grassy opening ringed by ancient, twisted hawthorns, the last of the sun painting the field in molten gold. He stopped Oak with a soft click of his tongue.
Gavriel looked out at the serene scene, the wildflowers bowing in the breeze. Then he felt Malik move. The hand that had been resting on Gavriel’s stomach slid slowly, deliberately, from his knee, up the sensitive inner line of his thigh, stopping just short of his hip. The light touch through the fabric of his trousers sent an immediate wave of goosebumps over Gavriel’s skin. His breath hitched.
Mal studied the side of his face, his green eyes searching. “I don’t owe you anything for last night,” he said suddenly, his voice low and devoid of its usual playful melody.
The statement was so abrupt, so clinical, it felt like a slap. Gavriel grew uncomfortable, the warmth of the touch now clashing with the coldness of the words. As Malik’s hand began to move back down his thigh, Gavriel acted. He slid from the saddle, his boots hitting the soft earth with a dull thud, putting necessary distance between them.
He turned, frowning up at Malik, who sat poised and watchful atop the patient horse. “I’ve never thought of what happened last night as a transaction,” Gavriel said, his voice firmer than he felt. “And what happened… it’s not that I expected you to owe me anything.”
The implication hung there, ugly and wrong. It reduced the stables, the whispered secrets, the surprising vulnerability he’d seen in Malik’s eyes, to a ledger entry. He took a step closer through the tall grass. He reached up and gently placed his hand on Malik’s knee, a mirror of his own earlier gesture, but now an anchor, a point of contact amidst the confusing currents.
He reached up and gently placed his hand on Malik’s knee, a mirror of his own earlier gesture, but now an anchor, a point of contact amidst the confusing currents. The sun dipped, elongating the shadows of the hawthorns across the grass. Gavriel took a steadying breath, the scent of crushed wildflowers rising around his boots.
“What happened last night was… wonderful,” he began, the word feeling too small. “But it made me feel an entitlement to your attentions I don’t like.” He looked up, studying the emerald depths of Malik’s eyes, the fall of silver curls against a sharp cheekbone. The ancient, patient gaze watching him made shaping the difficult words even harder. “And aside from what happened between us, I wouldn’t treat any other servant above another.”
He could feel the solid muscle of Malik’s leg under his hand, utterly still. A horse snorted softly in the field.
“Servants are people. Elf included. So it didn’t seem right for me to simply accept you as a gift,” Gavriel continued, the words coming faster now. “To rob you of that humanity. I hate the objectification nobles put on people. I’ve seen it my whole life.” Malik stayed quiet, listening, his expression unreadable in the fading gold light. The absolute stillness was more unnerving than any interruption.
“I just want you to remember,” Gavriel said, his grip tightening slightly on the fabric of Malik’s trousers. “You’ll always have a choice, or a say, in anything so long as you’re under my charge.” He forced himself to hold that penetrating gaze. “And I’d much rather you not use the word ‘owe’ or ‘serve’ again. Not with me.”
He let go of Malik’s knee and exhaled, a nervous rush of air he hadn’t realized he was holding. He turned away, facing the darkening tree line, his shoulders tense. The confession tumbled out into the quiet.
“Last night was like nothing I’d ever felt,” he admitted to the shadows. “But that’s why it might not be a good idea. I’m not sure if I should…” He trailed off, wrestling with it. “People always think of me as the perfect, composed one. The earnest prince.” He glanced back over his shoulder, his profile etched against the twilight. “With you, I feel… adrenaline. And hunger. It doesn’t feel composed. It feels like falling.”
Behind him, there was a soft sound of leather and movement. Malik dismounted from the horse with that liquid, silent grace. Gavriel didn’t turn, bracing for a sly comment, a deft deflection, the familiar game to resume.
Instead, Malik’s footsteps whispered through the grass. He stopped just behind Gavriel, not touching him. The warmth of his body was a distinct presence in the cooling air. For a long moment, he said nothing. The river murmured below, a constant, gentle secret.
“Two hundred and sixty years,” Malik said, his voice low and devoid of any lightness. “And no one has ever said anything like that to me.”
He stepped around to face Gavriel. In the deep blue gloom, his features were softer, his eyes luminous. He reached out, not to pull Gavriel close, but to lightly tap a single finger against the center of Gavriel’s chest, right over his heart. The touch was brief, almost clinical.
“Your problem, princeling, isn’t the hunger,” he said, his mouth a solemn line. “It’s that you think feeling it makes you less than that perfect picture. It doesn’t. It just makes you real.” He dropped his hand, the ghost of a smile finally touching his lips, but it was weary. “And ‘real’ is a much harder thing to be.”
He turned and walked back to the horse, gathering the reins. “We should head back. Your perfect, composed brothers will wonder if the woods have eaten you.”
He began leading Oak back toward the path, not waiting. Gavriel stood rooted, the echo of that tap on his chest buzzing like a lodged heartbeat. The words settled in him, disarranging everything. Malik had not thanked him. He had not agreed. He had simply… reframed the entire battlefield.
Gavriel watched the slim, retreating figure for a three-count of his own pounding heart. Then he started after him, the fallen petals sticking to his boots, the hunger now a clear, acknowledged thing twisting warmly alongside the chill of his doubt.