SIXTEEN

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I awoke to a hand on my manhood.

While hardly a stranger to that sort of contact, having it happen before I was fully awake was far from the usual order of things. I started, and couldn’t entirely keep myself from flinching. The hand wasn’t directly against my flesh, but was fondling me through my bedroll; looking down, I saw white fur, following it upwards to its attached shoulder and beyond.

Rebecca gave me a somewhat wan smile, fingertips tracing the ridge that was rising in the cloth, and pressed her free hand against my cheek, all fondness and tender concern. In that moment, though, all the worries of the prior night came crashing back upon me. All the fretting, all the guilt, all the overwhelmed inadequacy. I remembered the pain I’d felt from her, the stillness with which she’d sat apart, and the impenetrable shell her mind had been when I’d returned. I remembered being desperate to make an apology, and returning too late for her to receive it.

In that moment, under her gaze, I knew how the mouse felt, cornered by the weasel.

Her hand grew still upon me, just giving me a simple, warm squeeze through the fabric. “You looked so lonely,” she said by way of explanation.

Lonely. I couldn’t remember in any detail what I’d dreamt since finally slipping into oblivion, sometime after midnight, but lonely – and cold – seemed to describe it well. And yet… “It’s of no consequence,” I said, pushing myself up to sit beside her.

“Edmond…” Her hand turned, cupping under my jaw. “Why are you so distant? Did I do something, say something, that sat poorly with you?”

Another flash of guilt made me turn my head away. “Nothing you’ve no right and reason for.”

“That’s no true answer,” she objected, but she let her hand fall from my muzzle all the same. In the midst of the silence that ensued, her other hand moved first to my thigh, then drew away entirely, as though stung.

But still she waited for details. After all she’d lost, she wanted to know what troubled me.

“You’ve worse to mind than my petty worries,” I said. My throat felt tight; it was hard to keep my voice steady, and the strain of doing so ached.

“Edmond, no.” She seized my shoulders, shaking them. “Please, no. You’re the best chance we have of unravelling this entire mess, Edmond. All I need to do is survive – and everyone here, especially you, has been making that an easier prospect to bear all the time. You, we need to function – good heavens, we cannot afford to have you tearing yourself apart simply because you haven’t gone through as much as I have!”

I could hardly focus on her words, could hardly tell one apart from the next. All I could concentrate upon was a resurgence of the crushing dread from the night before, a bleak realization that this woman, who’d suffered and lost so much already, depended upon me to recover what she could. And I, whose main loss was in not having a comfortable bed and a solid roof, was falling entirely to pieces. The very realization of it, of my own weakness and fragility, was as a millstone pressing down upon me. I couldn’t focus upon any sight or sound, couldn’t even gather any thought but that of my own failure. I was distantly aware of motion – of shaking, then of movement nearby – but it meant nothing to me.

All I was left with was failure and regret.

And then, with the next breath I drew, acrid fumes seared my nose, throat, and lungs, dragging me violently back to full, choking awareness as I recoiled from the source of it.

Strong arms held me as I shivered and coughed, trying to restore some sense of equilibrium. Jacob’s arms; there was no mistaking the medic’s heft against me. The source of the burning sensation revealed itself to be a small flask of some kind; Rebecca put a stopper back upon it and –

Rebecca…

Even as I tried to focus upon her, Jacob spun me around, gripping my shoulder with one hand and my jaw with the other, forcing me to look up at him, instead. “No,” he said, his tone flat, firm, undeniable. “Not until you get hold of yourself. Stay with me, or it’ll be the smelling salts again.”

Even the thought of that vile concoction was enough to make me wrinkle my nose and cringe. “Heavens above, what was that horrible brew?”

“Never mind that. Listen to me, Edmond – something’s gone awry in your mind, more sudden and more severe than anything I’ve been taught. Rebecca says you were fretting over her past; Nancy confirmed it. Whatever pain you’ve been feeling, Edmond, it isn’t real, and it certainly isn’t yours.”

“Not real?” I repeated, not daring to speak above a whisper. “But… but I felt it. It was so strong…”

“I think,” said Elizabeth’s voice in a rueful tone, “this may be something of why the High Court’s telepath only attends private sessions, and then only briefly.”

It was rather crowded in this little tent; that in itself was rather stifling. But Jacob was competent, he knew his work. If he said I needed to stay calm… then I would try.

Words were not easy to shape, but I tried explaining what I’d felt. The haunting loss, the emptiness. The smallness of my own troubles. The realization that I was crumbling so much more under so much less…

“Hold there,” Rebecca said. “You felt what I’d gone through, you said.”

“I… thought so.” I couldn’t imagine what else it had been, with my attention on her at the time as it had been.

“So you weren’t suffering any less.”

That… wasn’t a thought that had occurred to me.

I shook off Jacob’s hand from my muzzle, took a breath, and turned to face her. She gazed back at me – I could see Elizabeth past her shoulder, but for the moment, I kept my attention on Rebecca, on the worry writ large on her muzzle, on her whiskers that drooped to either side of her muzzle, on her ears pressing back against her head.

I looked deeper, and I saw the grief – shock and awe at the fire over Weston House; the horrible epiphany that it was no accidental blaze; the sinking realization of the true cost of that fire. The sudden, sick horror on learning that the Queen and her family had been killed, and that the horrendous fate of those in Weston House had been secondary. The terror for her own life; the realization that she needed to hold together, to get away, or the triumph of this unseen, unknown enemy would be complete. Weeks on the road, working hard, struggling to keep the grief at bay…

Weeks…

Realization made me sink back against Jacob’s arm, shivering, closing my eyes. “Oh, hells. It’s thrice I’ve been a fool.” I forced myself to draw breath; now, the bodies around felt even more confining. “I… I think I will manage, now. Might we have a moment, to… to finish?”

There was a brief silence; then Jacob, with one last pat to my shoulder, released me and drew away. I heard him slip out of the tent, heard Elizabeth follow in his wake; heard Rebecca’s slow, measured breathing, not far from me. I tried to put my thoughts back in order.

“Edmond,” she said at last, “what happened?”

“I wasn’t feeling anything less than you’d gone through,” I admitted. “You were right there. In that one moment, last night, I felt all of it. Every last measure of it, from these past few weeks, all at once.” I shook my head. “I thought myself a weak fool, to be feeling weary with only a bit of discomfort on my tally. I didn’t even notice that I was feeling that pain, just by being aware of it.”

“Nancy said… you doubted yourself.”

“How could I not? I was coming apart, under, I thought, a strain that ought to be insignificant compared to what anyone else here was going through.”

“Edmond.” She leaned toward me, taking my hands in hers. “I know you’re being asked to do a great many things that you’ve never had to do before. That you may not have had any idea that you could do. And we’re asking much of it without even remotely enough chance to train and prepare. But trust in this: you have been strong. Stronger than you know.”

“How do you figure?” I asked. In the wake of that crushing despair, some touchstone, some reassurance, would be a precious thing.

“Because.” She brushed her lips against mine. “From the first night, you’ve followed me without hesitation. That sort of loyalty cannot possibly come from a weak heart.”

I wanted to believe her; I tried to believe her. It was not her words, though, but the conviction behind them – the belief, no, the knowledge of the truth lying under what she said – that finally chased away the lingering shadows of doubt.

Truly, this was a remarkable woman. With her inspiration, even common men could become heroes.

And this was a woman who respected me. Liked me.

Desired me.

The intensity of that desire made my breath catch.

She was upon me, then, her fingers running through my fur, her breath hot against my throat. For a moment I reached for her in turn, but then I knew: this time, she did not want me to pleasure her. She didn’t even wish to pleasure herself with me, as she had done that night so long ago – had it not even been two months?

No, she wanted my pleasure.

She was already dressed for the day, and so she would remain; I was still unclad, however, as I had been when I bedded down. She was protected, or insulated, from my touch, but hers was faced with no such impediment. She touched me here, stroked me there; she trailed kisses along the length of my rigid manhood, and bathed its crown with light strokes of her tongue. Every sound I made, however stifled, caught her ear; every motion, however slight, drew her attention.

From the first touch upon me, it couldn’t have been more than two exquisite minutes before I felt my pleasure surging. She spurred it on, with stroke and caress and with the quick lapping of her tongue, stroking over the head of my manhood even as my seed rushed out of me. She drank my essence down until I had no more to give, and she let not a single drop escape.

The intensity of it all left me trembling, sprawled atop my bedroll, gasping for breath. It wasn’t quite the excess I’d known with Helen, so intense as to send me into oblivion; no, I was if anything more aware than usual of the surface beneath me, of the flattened brush under the layers of cloth. Of the warm breath that caressed my bare skin, that stirred the fine hairs on my pouch and the longer, thicker ones on my thighs. Of the warmth of her body near mine. And, most importantly, of the delight she drew from my pleasure.

Practical concerns meant that it couldn’t last; we needed to break camp and get walking. It was past sunrise already. Once I had enough focus to move, I started reaching for my clothing.

It was as I was fastening my cloak that I finally worked up the nerve to say, “I’m sorry.”

She peered over her shoulder at me, quizzical. “Whatever for?”

“I ought to have spoken to you last night. I should not have left you to yourself, only to go off with someone else.”

“Hush, Edmond.” She planted a light kiss on my nose. “I was worried for you.”

“And that is why I should have said something.”

She looked at me a few moments more, then reached over to grip my shoulder. “I want to forgive you, Edmond, but truly I don’t see anything to forgive. You’ve more than exceeded anything I could possibly ask of you; simply stay yourself, and keep on as you have been, and I’ll be satisfied many times over.”

Slowly, with gravity, I nodded. With that, perhaps I could be content.

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