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The hunt was a glorious success. Three noble stags, a pair of roe deer, a young boar, and three hares - luxurious trophies worthy of the king’s own table. Vash, feeling a pleasant ache in his muscles, rode at the head of the detachment on his faithful companion Pela - a rescued mustang he had won in his teenage years, back when he and Nai had no voice in this land. Abandoned, restless street urchins. Vash, no matter how much his brother tried to pull him back into the shadows, could not walk past the festival of violent amusements and the torment of a poor animal they were trying to break by force. On that day, he revealed a miracle to the non-believing simpletons: the power of tenderness and patience, rather than violence and malice. That was when he gained a spiritual sister.
A wild horse who, like him, had known the cruelty of the world but had retained her inner freedom and pride. Vash didn't tame her; he became her hope and friend, sharing her path. Both were outcasts who chose the path of good, despite everything in this world. At least, that's what Vash liked to think.
The sun was already dipping toward the horizon, gilding the dust above the road. The soldiers behind him conversed in half-whispers, sharing their impatience to return to the embraces of their lovers, eloquently boasting to them of a fruitful hunt, awaiting a crumb of affection and approval in the scent of their beloveds.
The horses snorted and rhythmically tossed their heads, as if laughing at the enamored ballads they had to listen to on every hunt, without exception. Vash couldn't help but chuckle at this. Ah, the love and warmth of home. He was already mentally stripping off his heavy armor, anticipating how Nai, as usual, would rush to embrace him, burying his nose in his neck like a puppy missing its master. The thought brought a faint, indulgent smile.
The forest ended abruptly. The road sloped downward, and the detachment stretched out. Vash held back his chestnut mare, letting the wagon with the spoils pass. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a sudden movement - shadows darted from the roadside bushes. Filthy, hunched figures leapt out to cut them off, clutching clubs, jagged knives, or simply heavy stones.
Bandits? In their own lands? In broad daylight?
Vash's warriors reacted faster than he could assess the situation and think. These were the best killers assigned to him by his dear brother, men trained not to hesitate. Men who knew that any thrust demanded an immediate, lethal response.
"NO!"
The scream tore from Vash's throat too late. He launched himself from the saddle, trying to dismount as quickly as possible, but his foot got caught in the stirrup, threatening a fall into the mud below. He managed to catch himself with his arm, saving his face from a mud bath, and yanked his foot again, frantically counting the seconds in a panic. But the moment he freed himself and prepared to dash toward the people, his face was merely showered with red drops.
His hand hovered over the pommel of his sword just as a stranger's blade completed its arc.
It was all over in a few beats of his heart.
On the dusty road, in the golden rays, beneath the horses' hooves, four figures lay dead. Skinny, in rags, with ribs protruding through tattered shirts. The one closest to him wore rotting leather wrappings instead of boots, through which toes, blue from the cold, poked out. Their faces hadn't yet taken on a corpse-like pallor, but hunger had left its terrible mark on them long ago. Sunken cheeks, hollow eyes, gray, sickly skin instead of a healthy flush.
Blood. It flowed quickly, greedily soaking into the dry road pebbles and clumps of soil, coagulating into dark clots on the stones.
Vash stared at them with unseeing eyes. These were not robbers. Not mercenaries, not heretics, as Nai called them. They were simple peasants. Hungry, desperate people from the conquered lands. Those whose harvests had been taken by his brother's war, whose last morsel of bread had been stripped away by extortions. They hadn't come out onto the road for gold, they came for meat, out of vital necessity. For that very deer carcass that now lay in the wagon, drenched in their own blood.
"Your Holiness...!"
"Are you alright? We took care of it in a flash. No one even had time to squeak."
Someone from the guard touched his sleeve. Only one soldier was allowed to touch him without permission. A seasoned, long-widowed hunter and his mentor.
"Vash."
He heard his name through the heavy ringing in his ears and, with wooden movements, lifted his head, looking up into Roberto's hazel eyes. For a moment, he felt like a little boy again, ready to burst into tears from his first failure on a foray with the man. He felt a distinct prickling in his nose and eyelids, looking out from under his brows into those ever-guiding and calming eyes.
"...I."
A wheeze pierced his dulled hearing, and Vash, with a crunch that hurt from its suddenness, turned his head toward the source of the sound. One of the fallen men coughed, still alive. Very young, almost a boy. The eldest of the children, forced to take a risk for his family?
Vash sprang up with newfound strength and rushed to the youth, dropping to his knees right into a puddle of someone else's blood. Through pink bubbles on his lips, the boy tried to say something, looking straight at Vash, who had rushed to his side. There was no hatred in his eyes. Only a plea. Or, perhaps, a question. So many questions.
The boy wheezed, clutching his slashed stomach with his hands, from which warm, slippery entrails spilled out. Vash followed his gaze and covered the boy's hands with his own, pointlessly, helplessly. The blood gushed harder, flooding his palms, his wrists, splashing onto his face, his chest, even down his collar.
"Hush, hush. It's alright."
Vash muttered as if in a feverish delirium, not knowing what he was saying.
"Just a moment... I'll..."
But the boy could no longer hear. His body went limp, his eyes glazed over, remaining open and fixed on the pinkening evening sky.
Vash sat on his knees in the cooling blood, staring unblinkingly at how life slipped away before it could even bloom, before it could experience all the taste and joy of this world. His neck grew numb, lowering his head, forcing him to look at his hands. Warm, salty, thick. Human blood. Not animal blood, which he was used to shedding with ritual farewells and gratitude to nature, but human.
The smell hit his nostrils: heavy, metallic, cloying-sweet. It mixed with the smell of dust, horse sweat, and Vash's own terror; it ate into his skin, soaked into his clothes, and settled on his tongue with a copper tang.
The soldiers bustled around, calmed the horses, talked among themselves. Someone was already busily dragging the bodies to the shoulder of the road, someone spat, calling the dead "hungry dogs," for which they immediately received a shushing in response, not wanting to further worsen the situation their representative found himself in. For them, it was just a job. Another skirmish, another victory. For Vash, the world had just split in two.
He didn't remember how he got up. How Roberto sat him in the saddle, encouraging him with fatherly pats on the back. How the detachment moved on, toward the castle. His head was empty. Only this hollow, ringing nothingness, in which one phrase beat pointlessly, like a spell: "They were hungry. They wanted to eat. They wanted to survive. They just wanted to live, like us."
Everything blurred before his eyes. Salty drops on his lips - either tears or someone else's blood. His feet found their own way into the main hall through the labyrinths of corridors. To his brother. To the place where it was always safe, where it smelled of home. Where he could close his eyes and for at least a moment stop being the one who had just allowed a child to be killed.
He pushed the heavy door of the hall and crossed the threshold, without removing his armor, without loosening the straps. Splattered with blood, with empty eyes carrying the echo of someone else's last breath.
Nai lunged toward the door the moment he heard footsteps. His heart skipped a beat, then fluttered somewhere in his throat like a wild bird. His dear, beloved brother had returned. But the smell... the smell that burst into the hall along with Vash made Nai stumble for a moment.
It was still the same familiar, maddening scent of Vash, but now it was spiced with something else. Something piquant, thick, pulsing with primal power. Blood. Not animal, no. Human. Hot, salty, soaked in the fear and agony of the victim. The scent of triumph, the scent of a predator. The scent of someone who had finally taken up a sword not for hunting, but to kill someone similar in appearance, but not in spirit. They were above any human.
Vash stood, staring straight ahead with unseeing eyes, trembling slightly. The blood on his cheekbone slowly dripped to his chin. Nai flew to him faster than his dignity usually allowed. His arms opened on their own for the familiar embrace, to bury his face in his neck, to inhale, to calm himself and his brother. But the moment his face touched Vash's hot, damp skin, the world exploded.
The scent hit his head, stripping away the remnants of reason. The blood on his temple, on his neck, behind his collar - it called, screamed, demanded. Nai couldn't hold back a hoarse groan. His nostrils flared, drawing in this intoxicating cocktail of his brother's pheromones and crimson power. He was no longer just smelling. His tongue slipped on its own over the salty skin, licking up a hot drop.
"Nai..."
Vash's voice was quiet, lost; it lacked its usual slight indulgence. Only confusion. But Nai heard in it only a call to action. He pressed in greedily, ran his tongue along the jawline, over the temple, taking in this intoxicating metallic cocktail. His large palm, clean of scars and scrapes, rested on Vash's cheek, stroking, pulling him closer, and Vash... Vash didn't recoil.
He buried his nose in that palm. His eyes closed. The trembling didn't pass, but something else was added to it. Something deep, animalistic, waking up inside him for the first time. The shock had knocked out all caution, torn away all the prohibitions his mind had built up over the years. And in this emptiness, in this aftershock of horror, only instincts remained. The most ancient and primitive.
Dangerous. Scary. Cold. Need protection. Need an alpha.
His body responded first, betraying the mind that screamed, "This is your brother! You can't!" Heat spread low in his stomach in a sweet, pulling ache. Vash felt a pulse run through him inside; where it had been untouched and sterile for years, it became wet. A little at first, then stronger. The fabric grew damp, sticking to his skin beneath the heavy layer of metal on top, sending waves of forbidden, frightening desire through his body.
It was monstrous. Wrong. It was exactly what his body had been waiting for.
It no longer smelled just of blood. The air now hung heavy with availability, readiness. Heat.
Nai froze for a moment, sniffing deeply. His pupils dilated so much they eclipsed his icy irises. He couldn't believe it. So many years of prayers, so many years of waiting, so many years of inhaling a teasing but inaccessible scent. And now, when Vash is covered in blood, lost, open... his brother, his God, his omega... Had bloomed.
Nai's mind clouded completely. Only one goal remained, burned into his consciousness. His hands gripped tighter, pressing Vash to himself so hard it became difficult to breathe. His tongue was no longer licking the blood; it greedily, possessively licked his neck, behind the ear, descending to the collarbone, to where his pulse beat frantically. He felt this new, mind-boggling scent emanating from his brother's body and growled with animal, inhuman joy.
Vash let out a sob, whether from horror or the rolling wave of heat that made his knees buckle. He hung in Nai's arms, clinging to his mantle, unable to either push him away or pull him closer. His body chose for him. And this body wanted only one thing - for his alpha, his brother, to finally do what he was created for.
Nai's hands were everywhere. Hot, impatient, trembling from long-restrained hunger and rising passion. He scooped Vash up into his arms only to immediately set him back on his feet, pressing his back against the nearest pillar. His lips never left his neck. Greedy, wet, they covered every inch of available skin with kisses and bites, while his fingers frantically fumbled over the armor, searching for clasps, straps, and buckles - everything that stood in the way of reaching the real Vash. Reaching his warmth and flesh. Reaching that very fertile, alluring depth, the scent of which drove him mad.
"Damn it..."
Nai exhaled into his collarbone, tugging at the leather strap near his shoulder. His fingers slipped, disobeying; haste made them clumsy. He needed to get this off. Right now, immediately. To feel beneath his palms the living skin, the trembling, the heat, the way Vash melted in his hands.
Vash threw his head back, striking the back of his head against the stone of the pillar. His eyes looked up into the high, vaulted, patterned ceiling. Only a sensation: wet, hot, insistent. His brother's tongue slid along his neck, descended lower, to where the blood pulsed in thin veins. Good. So good. His body responded and melted, pushing him to surrender.
And then Nai found his lips.
As if in a fog, Vash didn't understand who reached for whom first. But his brother's lips were on his, hot, demanding, greedy. And Vash responded the way he shouldn't respond to his brother. His hands, which had just hung limply at his sides, rose on their own, clutching at Nai's royal mantle, pulling him closer, even closer, trying to merge into one. His fingers buried into the platinum hair at the nape of his neck, crushing it, clenching it into a fist, holding it in his rough power. He kissed Nai with the same hungry, desperate passion with which Nai answered him. Reason was silent, flooded by an avalanche of instincts, pheromones, of a forbidden desire pulsing in every cell. A tongue slipped into the other's mouth, meeting its counterpart, tangling in a wet, feverish dance. The taste of saliva, of metallic blood on the lips, of Nai himself, fresh and cold - everything mixed into an intoxicating cocktail that made his head spin.
Vash moaned into the kiss. Short, stifled, but Nai heard and growled in response, pressing his brother against the pillar with such force it seemed the stone would crack from his onslaught. His hand slid down his thigh, hiking up the edge of his jacket, reaching bare skin, stroking, squeezing, demanding more.
It lasted a moment or an eternity. Vash lost track of time.
Nai broke away from his lips only to bite into his neck again, covering it with new, even more possessive kisses, wanting to leave his marks everywhere, leaving no empty space. His tongue slid over the frantically beating vein, his teeth lightly bit the tender skin, and a wave of heat rolled through Vash's body, concentrating low in his stomach, making his hips jerk forward to meet him.
Vash threw his head back again, hitting the back of his head against the stone. His eyes opened. The ceiling again. Shadows danced in the torchlight on the patterns, making them come alive. Beautiful.
He lowered his gaze to the floor. It was clean as always. Stone slabs, smooth, polished by hundreds of working hands of servants. Not a spot, not a speck of dust. But Vash blinked, and something flickered in his eyes. Shadows crawled from the edges of his vision, thickening at his feet. He blinked again, harder, trying to shake off the delusion.
Blood.
It appeared from nowhere. In thin streams it crawled along the joints between the slabs, pooling into puddles at his boots. Right where it had just been clean, a crimson stain now spread, expanding, reaching sticky tentacles toward him.
Vash blinked rapidly, but the vision wouldn't leave. It only got worse. The stain grew, and from it, like the dead from cursed earth, outlines began to emerge. Arms. Legs. Bodies. A pile of dead bodies, heaped on top of each other, with glazed eyes, with slashed stomachs from which warm, steaming blood still oozed. The face of that boy. The skinny, starving boy who had looked at Vash before dying with only a mute question.
"No... no."
Vash exhaled.
His chest tightened so much he couldn't breathe. The heat that had flooded his body a moment ago receded in an icy wave, leaving behind only nausea and chilling horror. The scent of Nai, his pheromones and heat, all vanished, drowned out by one single scent - blood. The very same one from the sloping road. The one that had eaten into his pores, soaked his clothes, and now hallucinated from everywhere.
He shoved Nai.
Sharply, with all the strength he was capable of in this clouded state. Nai, not expecting resistance, staggered back, barely staying on his feet, and stared at his brother with eyes clouded by passion, breathing heavily, licking his lips, which still held the taste of desired flesh.
"Vash... What...?"
He began, but his voice cut off abruptly.
Vash stood, pressed with his back against the pillar, and covered his face with his hands. His shoulders shook in time with his chest, which heaved in ragged, shallow breaths. He didn't look at Nai. He seemed to see nothing at all.
Nai froze. Air burst noisily from his lungs; his head was still buzzing from the recent delusion, but through the veil of desire, the realization of what he had done began to break through. How he had lunged. What he had dared to allow himself.
He had been mistaken. He had taken the scent of blood for consent, for the blessing of his omega. For the very sign he had waited years for. But Vash wasn't in his right mind. He was lost, broken, didn't understand what he was doing. And Nai... Nai had pounced on him like a filthy, starving dog that caught the scent of a bitch in heat.
Terror entered his spine like an icy needle. Nai collapsed to his knees.
A resonant thud against the stone echoed beneath the vaulted ceiling. He fell prostrate, right at Vash's feet, grabbing his boots, his shins, pressing his forehead against the cold metal plates of the greaves, against his metal-protected knees.
"Forgive me..."
He exhaled hoarsely, pressing his face into his brother's legs, trembling.
"Forgive me, forgive me."
The words rained down, incoherent, desperate, full of such sincere, such all-consuming terror at his own audacity that they shattered against the emptiness in which Vash found himself.
"I made a mistake, I thought... you allowed it... you smelled... I'm a fool, I'm a mangy cur, I shouldn't have... Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me..."
He kissed the cold metal, kissed the hem of the jacket, kissed everything he could reach, begging, pleading, ready to tear open his own chest in proof of his repentance.
Vash heard him through a thick layer of cotton that filled his head and ears. The words came in fragments, failing to form meaning. He had just seen blood... dead children. He had just wanted... what? Care? An alpha? His brother? How low he had fallen. How deeply the shock had broken something important, rational, simply human within him. He had let his instincts take over. Had nearly allowed the irreparable to happen.
His gaze slowly focused on the platinum crown pressed to his knees. Nai, his cruel, incorrigible, selfish, and narcissistic, but beloved brother. Who was now trembling at his feet, begging for forgiveness for something Vash couldn't even fully comprehend.
A hand rose on its own. Heavy, it descended onto Nai's head, fingers burying into the soft platinum hair. Just a gesture, customary and familiar to them both. How many times in their childhood had he comforted his older brother like this? How many times had Nai fallen asleep, face buried in his lap, while Vash stroked his hair?
Nai froze. Held his breath, afraid to scare away this moment. His brother's hand on his head. Forgiveness... it had descended. He was afraid to move, afraid to breathe, only squeezed his eyes shut tighter, feeling them sting with approaching tears of relief.
He wanted to grab that hand. Squeeze it in his palms, press it to his cheek, kiss every finger, every knuckle, until the sun went down, until the next morning, forever. But he didn't dare. Certainly not now. He had already allowed himself too much. He would wait as long as it took to receive permission again.
Vash stared into the space above his brother's head. His eyes were empty. He forgave Nai, not really knowing what for. For lust? For being there when Vash was so weak that he was ready to accept this voluptuousness? What did it matter. Right now, he wanted only one thing - to leave. To be alone and wash this damned blood off himself. To forget the boy's face. To forget how his own body had betrayed him in his brother's arms.
"I forgive you."
His voice cracked, sounding hollow, as if echoing from a deep well, drowning in running water.
"Let go."
Nai raised his head so sharply that his cervical vertebrae cracked. In his eyes, surprised and wet, burned genuine sparks. Reverence. Adoration. Hope. He looked up at Vash like a descended deity, ready to fulfill any will.
But Vash wasn't looking at him. The face that was once eternally flushed and sun-kissed was unusually pale, gaunt, indifferent. His gaze was fixed somewhere straight through Nai; he didn't see this reverent plea, didn't notice this all-consuming love.
"I want to leave."
Vash added just as hollowly.
"I need... to be alone."
Nai's hands unclasped on their own. He was still kneeling, but no longer dared to hold on. The smile that had just begun to touch his lips faded before it could bloom. He watched as Vash pushed away from the pillar, as he took his first step, staggering, as he walked to the doors with a dead, mechanical gait, seeing nothing around him.
"Vash..."
Nai called with just his lips. His brother didn't turn around. The heavy forged gates cracked open, letting him into the twilight of the corridor, and clanged shut behind his back. Nai remained on his knees. In the middle of the empty hall, on the cold stone floor, where it had just been clean, but now, it seemed to him, a dirty imprint of this scene would remain forever. He stared at the closed gates behind which Vash had disappeared, and a cold, pulling emptiness grew in his chest. He had received forgiveness, but perhaps at the cost of everything.