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“Then show me.” It would be so easy to kiss Perl now and Kerik doesn’t doubt that Perl would let him. But he does not.
“Show you how?” Perl whispers. He wants to be kissed, Kerik is certain. When he kissed Kerik to satisfy The Queen’s demanding, he had not been kissed for a hundred years. It makes Kerik's head spin with how much he must desire it.
“Show me how I ought to kneel before you,” Kerik says. “Get on your knees before me, thrall.”
Perl gasps softly, given over now to desire. Protests gone. He cannot resist this. Cannot deny his need forever.
He slides from the bed onto the floor at Kerik’s feet. He looks up at Kerik for a moment with such wild, blatant desire on his face it takes Kerik’s breath. He has never seen Perl like this. Perl with his icy control gone. The true Perl. The one he hides with formal language and cautious movement.
“Master,” Perl says so quietly Kerik barely hears, but he sees how Perl's lips move over the word, caressing it. Kerik does not think he could ever make the word ‘Master’ sound like that, sound like ‘lover’. Perl holds Kerik’s gaze for a moment more before he bows his head. He is good at this. Not just good. He is perfect at this. Far more beautiful on his knees than Kerik. Than Seridil. Than any thrall Kerik has seen in Vylenor. It is so delicious and so plain on his face. He is aching with desire for it.
Kerik looks at Perl’s white hair, the tiny scrap of his white neck that is revealed above the high collar of his jerkin.
“Very nice,” Kerik says, his own voice heavy with desire. “But let me make you perfect.”
Kerik unfastens the leather collar from around his own neck. Thinking as he does it, that this collar once belonged to Perl. Was once a collar he wore while he knelt for those who were willing to play such a transgressive game with him.
He reaches out and unfastens the laces at the back of Perl’s jerkin. Perl reaches up and grasps Kerik’s hand, “No, I…”
Kerik makes a soft growling noise and shakes free of Perl’s grip, pulling the laces of the jerkin open roughly, eager to see Perl’s body. The jerkin opens into two pieces and falls away. Beneath it Perl wears a thin shirt of white silk. On his back, through this fabric, Kerik can see two dark lines running parallel to his spine. His wings. His wings where they sit inside his body when he is not wearing them.
But strange as those ridges are, Kerik only looks at them for a moment, most of his attention is drawn to something else.
The scar around Perl’s neck.
How is your neck?
The scar is an inch wide. Red like a burn. Like Perl has been branded there. A collar of reddened skin. Kerik touches it. it is rough, where all the rest of Perl’s skin, his back and chest, is pale; milk-white and flawless, like the skin on his hands and face. “What is this?”
Perl looks up. “I told you. I was lowered with iron as punishment for what I did with Seridil.”
“And what,” Kerik says, swallowing, “is lowering with iron.”
Perl’s voice is cool now. His breathy lust gone. He speaks as if he is simply relating some old tale. “A punishment for fae. A humiliation. One is strapped to an iron frame, displayed. Iron is painful for us to touch. So it is often used to punish. Standing with iron wrapped around wrists, ankles, thighs, waist and neck.”
“Did it hurt?” Kerik says. It seems a ludicrous question as soon as he has uttered it, but Perl had said it was meant more to humiliate. But if that were truly the case, how did he get such a mark on his neck?
“The iron burns when it is first put in place. But it subsides.”
“And the marks. Do you have these marks in other places? Is that why you cover all of your skin.”
Perl shakes his head. “No. The marks from the time I spent in the lowering frame were not permanent. However because of the nature of my crimes I was made to wear the collar for a while after I was released.”
Kerik trails his hand over the skin at Perl’s neck. “How long?” he says roughly. “How long did it take to do this?”
“A year,” Perl says blankly.
“You were made to wear a collar that burned you for a year?” Even the Rose Court, Kerik thinks, would find that extreme.
“Correct.”
“And is this why you left? Why you have been gone for a century? Because they did that to you.”
“No, that was…” Perl stops. “No. I took my deserved punishment and returned to my life in Vylenor. I did not leave over that.”
Kerik wonders what Perl is not saying, but he knows well when Perl does not want to speak further. He feels tender. He leans close and kisses the back of Perl’s neck.
Perl shivers.
