Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/4879906.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      World_of_Warcraft
  Relationship:
      Wrathion/Anduin_Wrynn
  Character:
      Wrathion, Anduin_Wrynn
  Additional Tags:
      Dubious_Consent, Consent_Issues, Imprisonment, Angst, Stockholm_Syndrome,
      Dubiously_Consensual_Blow_Jobs, Oral_Sex, Anal_Fingering, Anal_Sex,
      Suicidal_Thoughts, Unofficial_Sequel
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-09-30 Words: 20690
****** before i end my day ******
by alternatedoom
Summary
     A completely unofficial, porny sequel. I won't put spoilers for the
     amazing story that brought this fic about, but go read it before
     reading this.
Notes
     1. Once in a great while one stumbles on genfic with such great
     characterization and premise one longs for porn based off it. Feeling
     lazy, I prompted for this on the kink meme hoping to get someone else
     to write it for me, but with no immediate takers, I futzed about with
     the idea myself. This was the result.
     2. Anduin's age is unspecified in this story, but as thornmallow set
     "a thousand armies" towards the end of MoP, and as I imagined Anduin
     as 17 while writing, I'm slapping an underage warning on this one.
     3. Thanks to GW for the readthrough.
     4. May 11, 2016: Added three sentences of body commentary I chickened
     out on when I first posted this story.
See the end of the work for more notes
  This work was inspired by
      a_thousand_armies_couldn't_keep_me_out by thornmallow
Wrathion left with his bodyguards in the direction of Anduin's bedroom, leaving
Anduin alone with the vacant-eyed guards. His every muscle frozen, Anduin
couldn't have said how much time passed before Wrathion came back and gestured
his servants to bring Anduin. They shut Anduin in his bedchamber.
The paralysis wore off within minutes, and the first thing he did was try the
doorknob, but although there was no external lock on Anduin's door, he was
unable to turn the knob, though he tried until it hurt his hand.
They left him alone, and he didn't see Wrathion for thirteen days. He didn't
see anyone for thirteen days, for he felt Wrathion's staring mindslaves didn't
quite count. He studied their faces and found no evidence of the individuals
they'd been. He tried to cleanse their minds with the Light, but nothing seemed
to happen. He tried using mind control, and he got for his trouble a slowly
turned head and a hideous, dead, pulled-strings smile that made him back away
in utter horror.
Anduin knew a levitation spell that used the Light to float things--a quill, a
weapon, a book, his body. Wielding it took a certain amount of concentration,
but he was sure in his faith and more than willing to trust his life to the
Light. He had a thought to leap from the tower and descend on the wind to
freedom, but he quickly discovered that though the windows in his room let
fresh air in when he swung them inwards, an invisible barrier prevented him
from so much as reaching his hand outside.
He shouted for help until his throat turned hoarse, but Stormwind's people were
far, far below, and none of the citizens nor soldiers going about their
business appeared to hear him. The city seemed much the same as ever. Anduin
glimpsed no signs of counter-insurgency against Wrathion, nor did he hear any
calls to revolution. Anduin didn't allow himself to wallow in self-pity long,
but he felt abandoned. For all that Wrathion believed the people loved him, it
seemed he'd been forgotten quickly enough.
He slept much and often, for there was little else to do. His chambers since
childhood consisted of a small bedroom with a bed and a desk and a chair, a
slightly larger dressing room with his wardrobe and his bookshelf and his other
possessions, and a tiny privy. He found himself drifting often from one room to
the other.
He had a number of books, but when he sat to read, he found he couldn't focus
on the printed black words. He had ink and parchment, but all he did was score
the days the way prisoners did in stories on the walls of their cells, four
lines and a slanted slash through them, each to a count of five. He sat at his
desk and found he had nothing else to write.
Anduin thought often of his father. He'd been so sullen when his father made
the decision to ship him back to Stormwind. An optimist through and through,
Anduin had not dreamed it might be the last time he would see his sole
surviving parent. Anduin's guilt and regret cut to the bone, and he knew he
would have to live with their echoes for the rest of his life.
He spent much of his time awake kneeling by his bed, praying for guidance and
for strength. His faith comforted and soothed him, but it was not enough. Being
so alone was misery. He'd been emotionally isolated growing up, but the
intoxicating tastes of freedom and friendship and connection in Pandaria had
spoiled him for handling solitary confinement of this sort. If not for
Pandaria, he thought he might be coping far better. With aplomb, even.
Fleeting thoughts of ending his life on his own terms would likely not have
come until much later, but for him noting the dagger secreted in the bottom of
his wardrobe was gone. He'd noticed Fearbreaker was absent from his desk at
once, but it took him a couple of hours to think to check for his other
weapons. His bow was gone. Missing too was the set of beautifully weighted
throwing knives he'd kept in his desk, a long-ago gift from Bolvar. His trays
of food arrived without sharp cutlery, the meat already cut into small bites.
The missing weapons were enough to make him consider how he would seek to end
his life had he the wish to do so. But those thoughts were never serious and
certainly never lasting. Despite the unhappiness of his situation, Anduin had
no desire to die.
In stories, a prince could be locked up by an evil wizard or court sorcerer for
years, could be held in a tower or a pit and never see another face and still
hold himself together, be strong and remain clear of mind and purpose, biding
his time until the day he could make his heroic escape. But those stories never
talked about the immense boredom, or the crushing loneliness, in a way that
meaningfully conveyed either experience. For tales by necessity glossed over
dull, hard travails in but a sentence or two. Anduin found the reality did not
live up to the romantic fictional ideal, and he feared he did not live up to
the lofty ideal either, for he could hardly stand the isolation.
He still changed his clothes and put on his boots every morning, in case he had
an unexpected opportunity to escape. He still wore his mother's locket.
*
When Wrathion finally opened his bedroom door, Anduin was on his knees by his
bed after a long session of prayer, his forehead resting on his folded hands
against the mattress. Anduin glanced up, expecting the vacant eyes of a guard,
and then scrambled to his feet, all the equanimity from his meditation
evaporating in the space of a second. Wrathion came a step into the room and
eyed him up and down, as if deciding whether Anduin was going to try anything.
"Prince Anduin. Are you ready to offer me your formal surrender?"
If he answered no, would Wrathion step out and close the door on him for
another indeterminate period of time? "No," Anduin forced himself to say.
Wrathion didn't seem surprised, and to Anduin's immense relief, he didn't
immediately leave. "How are you doing?" Wrathion asked carefully.
Anduin stared at him in disbelief. "How do you think I'm doing?"
Wrathion sighed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I would have visited you sooner, but
there have been pressing matters requiring my attention. Are you comfortable,
at least?"
"No, I'm not comfortable! Wrathion, how can you do this to me?" It was a
foolish thing to say, but the words came out fast and desperate as the torrent
of feeling inside him. He and Wrathion had been friends; for Wrathion to be
destroying him like this, day by day, hour by hour, was still almost too
painful to believe.
"It's a matter of priorities," Wrathion said quietly. His look was dark, but
then a corner of his mouth turned up, his expression shifting into something
earnest, almost hungry. "I don't want to do this to you. I would like to have
you on my side."
"Good luck with that," Anduin said, suddenly coldly angry, his mood swinging in
a heartbeat. He was overwrought, some part of him knew, his moods revolving
violently. "I'll never be on your side. You're more of a monster than your
father was. At least he was mad."
Anduin had thought up no barbs more potent than that during his thirteen days
trapped, but Wrathion only smiled and clapped a hand over his breast as though
his heart was pierced. "Ouch." The smile softened his distant manner a touch,
and Anduin was reminded more of how he used to be in the Tavern, when they were
still friends. Though Wrathion seemed more tired than he had ever been back
then. "My father tried to destroy this world. I am acting to protect it. They
are quite opposite purposes, I assure you. But I can see why your perspective
would not leave much room to be kind to me." Wrathion looked genuinely
regretful. "I do have one threat to issue, and that should please you if you
want to make unfortunate comparisons between myself and my father. If you
attempt to wield the Light against me while I visit you in here, I will shatter
all the mana in your body."
"Would that... kill me?" Anduin asked slowly.
Wrathion shook his head. "No, but it will be agonizing for several hours and
you won't be able to do anything about it."
Anduin wasn't about to try an attack; Wrathion's magic had broken his spellwork
as though Anduin's faith in the Light was a child's toy. "Are you going to keep
me in here forever?" Some part of him inwardly cringed to hear how young the
question made him sound. Part of him was too miserable to care.
Wrathion must have judged him and decided the situation safe enough, for he
shut the door and came within arm's reach without further hesitation. "While
your indefinite detention is not my first choice, I certainly can and I
probably must unless you reconsider my request."
"Please... Wrathion. I'm going--I'm losing my mind in here. Please," he begged,
and hated himself for it. If it had been anyone else he might have been able to
maintain a cool demeanor, but it wasn't anyone else. It was Wrathion.
Wrathion took his hand, holding it a bit too tightly, and offered him a tiny
smile. "I'm here now. I'm here to keep you from losing your mind."
He looked at Wrathion in despair.
Wrathion tugged him over to the bed and sat down next to him. The choice of
where to sit was one of necessity; Anduin had only the one chair in his
bedroom, the one at his desk, and he had broken one of the legs trying to smash
the invisible barrier over the windows. Wrathion glanced at the lower half of
the chair for a moment. "Why is it you have only one chair?"
"I don't often entertain in my bedchambers," Anduin said, his voice flat and
deadened.
Wrathion smiled briefly. "No, I suppose you wouldn't." With a small lift of his
index finger he indicated Anduin's dressing room. "I only wondered because you
have a number of games for two in there." He hadn't yet let go of Anduin's
hand. Anduin thought about pulling away, but in truth it felt nice to touch and
be touched, even though it was Wrathion. Anduin felt almost like he'd forgotten
the feel of human skin against his own, and Wrathion did a good, if unusually
warm, approximation of human skin.
Wrathion turned and searched his face. "Have you at least thought about what I
said?"
With an effort, Anduin composed himself, sitting up straight and with resolve
in his shoulders. He felt wretched, but his voice came out firm. "Yes, and my
position has not changed."
Wrathion sighed at him. "You've always claimed to want peace. Is it truly so
important to you to wield unfettered power yourself?"
Anduin glared at the dragon and finally yanked his hand back. "You know it's
not about that. I just don't care to be the pawn of an illegitimate dictator."
Anduin had deliberately flung it as an insult, but Wrathion didn't seem
offended in the least. "Anduin, you've been a pawn all your life. What would
change? It was half your SI:7 code name, for goodness' sake." Wrathion's tone
was light, and he watched Anduin closely, his red-glowing eyes intent like a
cat waiting beside a hole for mice.
"They gave me that code name when I was a small child," Anduin said sharply.
"And you're a man now, and your people need you." Wrathion's eyes moved over
him, still watchful.
Didn't Wrathion know him better than to try stroking his ego? "No, you need
me," Anduin said, cool and accusing. "To be a puppet monarch. I won't do it."
Wrathion dropped all pretense as his eyes bored into Anduin's. "There you're
wrong. I don't need you at all. You could save some of your peoples' lives and
make my work easier, yes. But Azeroth will be united whether you choose to be a
part of it or not." Wrathion stood, his movements elegant as always, and walked
towards the door. "It's late. I'll let you get back to your prayers."
Anduin leapt to his feet, nearly stumbling in his urgency as he caught up to
Wrathion by the door. Anduin reached out, but held back from actually grasping
at any part of Wrathion. "No--no! You just got here! Wrathion, I've been alone
for days!"
Wrathion had shown his true colors, and despite his outburst, Anduin didn't
expect his former friend to show any particular care for his plight. Yet his
frantic denial seemed to hearten the dragon, and Wrathion flashed a small,
gratified smile at him. "You wish my company then? All right. Shall we start a
game? Jihui?"
The thought of Jihui with Wrathion... all their matches at the Veiled Stair,
their sharp points of disagreement, their teasingly traded insults, their
intense and strangely satisfying friendship, or whatever it had been... Anduin
lost his tenuous hold on himself and covered his face with his hands. Enforced
isolation for two weeks seemed to have somehow robbed him of both his emotional
stability and his self-control. He couldn't keep the tears in check, but with
an effort he swallowed, unclenched the muscles in his face and lowered his
hands to speak.
He never met Wrathion's gaze or managed any words, because suddenly Wrathion
was holding him. Anduin's whole body tensed but he could not pull away when he
tried, and then he was crying in Wrathion's arms as he'd only previously done
in his father's and Bolvar's, and only a few times. His whole life Anduin had
been forced to be strong. He allowed himself to lean in, dropped his chin and
cried on Wrathion's shoulder for a few moments before he began fighting to get
free, pushing and trying to pull away, hitting his fists into Wrathion's back
and digging his fingers into Wrathion's warm sides when all else failed. For
Wrathion, of course, was the reason behind all the reasons he cried. If he'd
been able to get his arms up, threats or no threats, he would have thrown a
ball of holy fire into Wrathion's face, or wrapped his hands around Wrathion's
throat and squeezed.
But Wrathion's tight embrace was unyielding.
When he'd struggled for a good half minute, exhausted himself and gone slack in
Wrathion's arms, Wrathion suddenly confined him again to a black and crackling
field of magic, leaving him mostly frozen and entirely helpless. Wrathion's
guards had lifted him two weeks prior as if Anduin was encased in stone, but
Wrathion picked him up with an arm under his back and an arm under his knees.
Wrathion was evidently unhindered by the bindings of his own dark spell, moving
Anduin's dead weight easily as the magic still hissed around him. Cradling
Anduin's head to his chest, Wrathion carried him to the bed. "You feel tense as
strung wire, your Highness."
Was Wrathion planning to tuck him in to sleep like he was a child? "It's 'your
Majesty' now, since my father is dead," Anduin told him as Wrathion arranged
him facedown on his bed and released him from the paralysis, the dark crackling
of the air around him dissipating. Wrathion was not wrong, his every muscle
felt tight. Was Wrathion going to do... something else to him? Fearful, Anduin
felt his heart begin to pound. But Wrathion didn't start to undress him.
"It is the most appropriate honorific for you," Wrathion said, and he didn't
sound happy. "You will always be a prince, Anduin."
As in the throne room thirteen nights earlier, Wrathion took no chances. Smoky
black magic held Anduin's arms down as Wrathion clamped strong hands to either
side of his neck and began to massage his shoulders. Anduin hadn't felt simple
contact with another person in many days, far longer than Wrathion had been
keeping him a prisoner. Yet he didn't want Wrathion to touch him like this;
even over his clothing, this sort of touch contained far more intimacy than
they'd ever shared as friends, and to understate the case by miles, the
friendship was over.
And as always when Wrathion touched him he was too rough. His sharp elbows had
always nudged Anduin's ribs too hard, his clawed hands gripped too tightly, his
arm slung casually around Anduin's shoulders squeezed like a vice. So it was
unsurprising that Wrathion's fingers sank into the flesh of his neck a little
too intensely. Nevertheless, Anduin was hard-pressed to deny how good it felt
to have hands on him, oddly caring hands, and to his horror he began to
silently cry again into the softness of his bed.
Wrathion rubbed Anduin's rigid muscles through his clothes, massaging his back
and neck and his shoulders and his arms over a long time without saying
anything. Anduin moaned at times, sometimes from pleasure and sometimes because
Wrathion dug too hard into the muscle beneath his skin. But mostly Anduin
drifted on the simple sensation of being touched. He could remember Bolvar
rubbing a comforting hand in circles on his back after nightmares, but this
touch, while ostensibly similar, was entirely different. Then Wrathion turned
Anduin onto his back, and at the exact moment Anduin processed the coolness of
air against private, secret skin that should have been covered, without
speaking Wrathion took Anduin's cock into his mouth.
Under other circumstances, his first instinct might have been to jerk back and
scramble up the bed, but the langourous relaxation and his grief and exhaustion
lay heavy on him. He spared a fleeting half-second's thought for Wrathion's
mouthful of dagger-sharp teeth, but Anduin was already shamefully hard from the
long massage, he didn't know why, and at the heat and wetness and softness his
body betrayed him immediately. Instead of trying to pull away, he hissed out a
breath and instinctively tried to buck up into Wrathion's mouth, but Wrathion's
hands on his hips were heavy as stone and gripping twice as tightly. He heard
begging as he gave himself up to the sensation of Wrathion's lips sliding
confidently all the way down his shaft and realized the voice begging was his
own, saying the word please over and over again, please Wrathion, oh Wrathion
please. Please. He clenched his teeth to force himself to be silent. He didn't
know if he was pleading for Wrathion to stop or to give him more and let him
move.
After a time, Wrathion loosened his grip on Anduin, cautiously allowing him to
thrust up. Anduin twisted his fingers into his duvet and then he was fucking
Wrathion's mouth and it was sick, perfect bliss. He never knew anything could
feel so good.
His climax wasn't long in coming, and Anduin made no real effort to hold out.
Wrathion swallowed his pleasure and left Anduin clean, limp and shuddering all
over.
Wrathion made a strange face as he sat up, his eyes raised somewhere above
Anduin's head and one eye squinted half-closed. But when Wrathion went to roll
him back onto his stomach, Anduin knew what he intended and had the presence of
mind to say, in a croak: "No."
Wrathion left his hand on Anduin's hip for a moment, then stood and wiped his
mouth with the back of that same hand. "Goodnight, Prince Anduin," he said
evenly, and he took his leave.
*
Wrathion didn't return the following night, or the night after that, and once
again Anduin felt like he was losing himself, losing his grip on sanity. Would
Wrathion ever come back? Anduin was accustomed to being sheltered and feeling
isolated, but never like this. Wrathion's champions came in to deliver his
food, remove and replace his chamber pot, take away his worn clothing and set
clean garments into his wardrobe. They brought a tub and filled it with pails
of steaming water so he could bathe. They stared at him with flat, empty eyes.
Their quiet was eerie.
For so long he'd felt imprisoned when his father had confined him to the safety
of the keep. He'd had no idea what it truly was to be locked up. Even when
restricted to the castle, he'd had plenty of space and friendly, familiar faces
to see, even if only his guards'. It wasn't the ultimate freedom he'd craved
such as he'd had in Pandaria--to move around freely like a regular person
without the layer of separation caused by said guards trailing a step behind
him--but he could at least walk around. Enforced solitude in two small rooms
with only the mind-controlled coming in and out was entirely different. And he
was so bored. The ennui alone felt like a new level of hell, compounding the
terrible loneliness.
Anduin prayed often and looked out the window and tried not to think about what
had happened with Wrathion in his bed, but of course he could think of little
else. Wrathion wanted more from him than an official surrender from the nominal
head of the Alliance. He vaguely supposed he already knew that.
The third night, two of the guards brought a pair of chairs into his room, to
set on either side of the table in his dressing room. Anduin watched them and
said nothing.
*
When Wrathion came to his rooms that evening, Anduin had his chess board set
and ready for play on the table, and Wrathion smiled when he glanced through
the inner doorway and saw.
They played a match, and Wrathion beat him handily. Wrathion had always been a
nightmare with a fianchettoed bishop, and Anduin hadn't gone up against him in
chess in a long time. Anduin kept waiting for Wrathion to touch him again, but
Wrathion didn't so much as brush against his fingers as they reset the pieces
on the board. They began a second match, and Anduin's moves proved equally
poor.
"Your mind is not on the game," Wrathion chided, but he looked at Anduin keenly
for a moment.
"Forgive me, strangely I have a number of other things on my mind," Anduin
said. A sick, weak part of him wanted Wrathion to touch him, to take him in his
mouth again and make him forget for a time. He made an effort to concentrate on
their second match, and put up a slightly stronger effort.
"Better," Wrathion judged after checkmating him. "Will you surrender to me yet,
Prince Anduin?"
"No."
This time Wrathion seemed disappointed. "I don't know why you hold out. You
realize I hold almost all the cards."
He and Wrathion used to be fairly well-matched in chess, each winning and
losing about half the time. Maybe Wrathion won a little more often. But now
Anduin felt like he was trying to operate through a fog. "That means I still
have one or two."
"For all the good they do you locked in here."
Anduin met Wrathion's remote red eyes across the board.
Wrathion bested him three times, and only the second match did he put up an
even halfway decent fight.
When Wrathion stood to go, Anduin stood up too, shifting his weight awkwardly.
For the first time since he'd been taken prisoner, he felt disgraced. He could
not function. He had nothing interesting to say. He had little to say at all.
He shouldn't care what Wrathion thought of him any longer, but he found he did,
perhaps simply because Wrathion had the power of life or death over him. Or
perhaps because Wrathion provided his only contact with the outside world.
Perhaps he just didn't want to see his unhappiness with himself mirrored in
Wrathion's distant red eyes.
No words passed between them of the evening together several nights prior, and
Wrathion bid him goodnight and left without laying a finger on him. Anduin
couldn't fathom his own disappointment.
But he had plenty of time to think about it.
He prayed to the Light, meditated, thought it over, and came to the conclusion
that it wasn't specifically Wrathion's hands he wanted on him. He'd felt drawn
to Wrathion when they first met--Wrathion had seemed to him a delightfully
interesting person, and they had much in common. He'd even had a bit of a
crush. But Wrathion had killed his citizens, stolen his kingdom, probably
murdered his father, and taken him captive. Anduin only wanted the pleasure and
the release, the physical distraction, the comfort of the tactile sensations
again. But his jailer might as well have been the only other sentient creature
alive.
*
Wrathion came back the next night. Once again, Anduin found he could not focus
on the game.
"It's your move."
Anduin snapped back to attention and pushed a pawn forward. Wrathion had
already beaten him once, and Anduin could not possibly win this match. No hope
even of a stalemate. The best he could do was draw out his defeat for a few
more moves.
Wrathion sighed at him, picked up a black rook and eliminated Anduin's
remaining knight. "If you wish me to take you to bed again, you need only say
so."
Anduin froze with his hand on his king, guilty. "What?!"
"Your mind is obviously not on the game, as evidenced by your substandard play,
not that I mind winning repeatedly, and you keep glancing over towards your
bedchamber."
"I do not!"
"Yes, you have. At least five times since I've been in here." Wrathion checked
Anduin with his queen and nodded, satisfied both with his move and that his
guess was correct. "Are you too proud to ask?" He sounded truly curious. "Too
angry with me?"
Anduin's stomach felt light, and his cheeks colored, but he kept his chin up.
Yes, it was both those things. He hated how easily Wrathion could read him.
"Too afraid, maybe," he said, and because that too was the truth, it came out
with quiet dignity.
Wrathion looked at him intently. "I want you to cooperate with me. I do not
want you to fear me, Prince Anduin."
Anduin crossed his arms over his chest, his resentment an ocean between them.
"Wouldn't you fear the person who controlled whether you lived or died? And how
much suffering you would be forced to endure?"
His question appeared to hit uncomfortably close to home; Wrathion blinked at
him and then looked down at the chess board, covered with many more black
pieces than white ones. "I suppose I would," he admitted.
"And it's unseemly, don't you think? Since I'm your captive?"
"Yes. Unseemly." Wrathion raised his eyes consideringly and smiled. "A most
indecorous tryst. But if you want a repeat, I won't tell anyone if you won't."
"Let me think whom I'm going to tell," Anduin said, sarcastic. "Give me a
minute."
"You speak of suffering," Wrathion said, looking at him attentively. "I felt
your bedroom would be a good place to keep you, certainly better than the
stockade. I also inspected the dungeons underneath the keep and found them
vile. Unfit for an animal, let alone a prince, let alone a prince I happen to
like. I don't wish for you to suffer. I have tried to make you comfortable,
under the circumstances."
"Comfortable!?" Anduin laughed sourly. "Yes, well. I'm sure you could make it a
lot worse, but Wrathion, being locked up in here is ... it's the worst thing
that's ever happened to me." The words tumbled out.
Wrathion leaned forward in his chair, and his mood shifted suddenly, his voice
turning earnest. "I know, Anduin. I know, and I'm sorry."
"You keep saying you're sorry, but it doesn't mean anything," Anduin said,
nearly tasting his own bitterness in his mouth.
Wrathion looked at him, his expression pained. "Perhaps not, in the grander
scheme of things, but I mean every word. I know you feel like I've ruined your
life. And I know I have-- changed your life." Wrathion grimaced briefly. "I
know the life you anticipated has been a--a casualty. It's one of the reasons I
wanted to comfort you."
Anduin felt control slipping away from him. He was furious, he was resentful,
but he was so lonely. He was lost. "It was... comforting," Anduin admitted
finally, shamefully. "I guess."
"It felt good to you." Though Wrathion's smooth voice was detached and neutral,
Anduin thought he detected a peculiar hint of something more in Wrathion's
face, but he blinked and it was gone.
"Well, of course it felt good." Anduin felt his blush renew. "Sexual release
does, it's supposed to."
"Then allow me to console you again," Wrathion said, and Anduin lost his breath
as Wrathion stood and jerked him up into their first, rather sudden kiss,
upsetting the little table and scattering the chess pieces onto the floor.
Wrathion took no notice. Anduin's teeth clacked into Wrathion's sharp ones, and
Anduin felt every bit of his inexperience for a second, but Wrathion didn't
allow him to dwell on it, didn't even acknowledge the moment.
Wrathion's mouth was fervently hot against his, and tasted of burning, like
charred and blackened food. The taste and scent were strong and not altogether
pleasant, but not overwhelming. Wrathion kissed him with more passion than
Anduin would ever have thought Wrathion had in him, with his arrogant,
reserved, above-it-all attitude. Anduin couldn't really think about it, though.
Wrathion devouring his mouth was extremely distracting.
Wrathion seemed able to handle thought and a task and kissing him skillfully
all at once; he never paused in kissing Anduin as he unbuttoned Anduin's clean
white shirt.
When he got his hands on Anduin's bare chest, Wrathion began to slow down, his
kisses coming longer and more lingering. Wrathion stroked Anduin's nipples,
pulling back to watch his face. Anduin's nipples felt unusually sensitive under
Wrathion's fingers. "Funny, somehow I get the feeling this is about more
than... comforting me," Anduin said.
Wrathion didn't give him a straight answer, which was only too typical. "What
an imagination you have," he said teasingly. Wrathion palmed Anduin's cock
through his pants, and Anduin ceased asking after Wrathion's motivations.
He let Wrathion seduce him again, knowing full well this time where it was
going. Wrathion disrobed him by hand, one garment at a time, and then planted
light kisses all over the front of his naked body. Then Wrathion caught sight
of Anduin's back reflected in the mirror, and Anduin saw him stare for a
moment. With a hand on his shoulder Wrathion spun Anduin around to look at the
handful of mottled bruises on his back. The discolorations from Wrathion's too-
intense massage had been purplish and plentiful and were just beginning to
fade. They looked ghastly, Anduin thought, overtop his mural of scars. Next to
his knee, his back had gotten the worst of the lasting visible damage from the
Divine Bell. Wrathion said nothing, but traced with a finger around the edge of
a bruise. Anduin stood still for the inspection, not knowing what else to do.
After a moment Wrathion turned him back around and looked him in the eye for a
few long seconds, his expression unreadable.
"You mortals are so fragile," Wrathion said softly.
Anduin shook his head. "You dragons are so rough," Anduin replied, but his
voice came out gravelly, his larynx failing him like it had suddenly rusted in
his throat.
Wrathion kissed him again before toppling him backwards into the bed. Looking
up at Wrathion looming above him, Anduin felt a wave of desire pass over him, a
feeling of tingling anticipation, his senses alive for the first time in four
days and nights.
Wrathion bound his wrists to the bed with black magic, settled between his legs
and took Anduin's cock smoothly in his mouth. But he didn't suck, and he didn't
let Anduin move his hips. He simply held Anduin's cock in his mouth and went
perfectly still, and he pressed Anduin's pelvis down so Anduin too was still.
Anduin felt himself harden fully and fast in Wrathion's slippery mouth. He
lifted his head and stared down at the top of Wrathion's turban. Wrathion was
obviously feeling playful. Anduin sighed and rolled his eyes to hide his
embarrassment, not that Wrathion could see, as his hips tried to flex and again
failed, and he felt his cock twitch in its hot, wet prison. "Gods, Wrathion, do
you have to torment me every which way? Do it or don't do it, please."
Wrathion's answer was immediate and nonverbal--he slid his lips up Anduin's
cock and descended back down with the slightest turn of his chin translating to
a breathtaking twist of his mouth, and he removed his hands so Anduin could
thrust.
Wrathion released his wrists from the magical bindings partway through, but
Anduin was a little afraid to touch him. He wound his hands in his duvet again,
squeezing twin handfuls of the fabric.
Anduin held off his climax a bit this time, wanting to savor the feeling of
Wrathion's lips and tongue and all that suction on his dick, all the delicious
sensations he'd never realized were on offer; Anduin had explored his body well
and often, but Wrathion's mouth felt entire worlds better than anything he
could do to himself. He wanted to make Wrathion work him longer, enjoying too
the illusion of control. Anduin felt sure Wrathion would suck him up and down
til Wrathion brought him to his pleasure, however long it took.
But soon enough, again Anduin came in Wrathion's mouth, sweating and writhing,
and again Wrathion put a hand on his hip to roll him onto his stomach.
"No," he whispered, more unsure than ever whether Wrathion would listen. But
no--Wrathion was many things, but surely Wrathion wouldn't take him by force.
And he was right about that, at least. Wrathion removed his hand and leaned
down to put his mouth next to Anduin's ear. "You know, I would never have
expected you'd be a selfish lover," Wrathion murmured.
Anduin shivered a little to have that silky voice speak so closely into his
ear. "I never expected you to usurp my kingdom and make me your prisoner," he
said flatly, and added, "I guess everybody got surprised."
"Touché," Wrathion said, smiling. He straightened and lazily ran a hand over
Anduin's hip and down the front of his bare thigh. "If you continue to refuse
me, perhaps I'll grow bored with you," he said lightly.
"Also, I don't think you're considered lovers when one party keeps the other in
a cage," Anduin told him, ignoring Wrathion's last remark, but cold fingers of
fear and a terrible, familiar weariness settled into his chest despite
Wrathion's teasing tone. He had no real desire to offer Wrathion the reciprocal
pleasure of his body, but if Wrathion ceased to visit him, he knew he would
entirely lose himself, lose his mind. And--he wanted more than simple visits.
If he was going to be locked up like an animal, he wanted more than awkward,
frustrating conversation and depressingly lopsided games. In his current
predicament, Wrathion's hands and mouth were nigh on addictive. Anduin felt his
cheeks flush at the realization, and for a second he thought he might be sick.
As the feeling passed, he groped ineptly with one hand for the sheet to cover
himself.
Wrathion nodded, smirking slightly, and reached over and pulled both sheet and
duvet as one over Anduin's body, flapping them down into place and smoothing
them over him. "As you say. Not lovers. Warden and prisoner. Unseemly.
Goodnight, Prince Anduin."
Anduin picked up the chess set the next morning but couldn't remember where all
Wrathion's pieces went, so he set the board anew.
*
The next time he came into Anduin's room, without asking Wrathion magically
removed Anduin's clothes and fixed him to the wall with bands of humming dark
magic encircling Anduin's upper arms. As Anduin squirmed, Wrathion put his
hands on Anduin's thighs and slid gracefully down to his knees.
Wrathion slipped his black tongue from his mouth and touched the wet, pointed
end to the slit in the tip of Anduin's cock. Anduin was already hard and
leaking just from Wrathion undressing and restraining him, like even after just
a couple of orgasms this way, his body knew what was coming and wanted it
badly. Wrathion ran his lower lip under the head of Anduin's cock, then slid
his flat tongue deeply beneath Anduin's foreskin, and Anduin almost lost it.
"Oh Light," Anduin mumbled, and he thrust his hips forward, but Wrathion held
back for a second, letting his tongue drop perpendicular to the floor and
looking up at Anduin smugly. If Wrathion had waited any longer, Anduin would
have been embarrassed about his desperation again, but the pause lasted only
the barest moment. Wrathion opened his mouth and leaned forward, letting Anduin
slide his dick all the way inside. Anduin couldn't move his upper arms, but his
hands and forearms were free, and he found his earlier caution was gone. He
reached out and knocked Wrathion's turban off the dragon's human head,
enmeshing his fingers in Wrathion's wavy black hair. Wrathion allowed it,
though he eyed Anduin from below, pausing for a second with his mouth full and
his cheeks hollowed.
Wrathion carefully kept his lips pulled down over his teeth and bobbed his head
while he let Anduin set the pace, pumping in and out of his mouth. Wrathion
took Anduin's cock deep into his throat on Anduin's instrokes and sucked firmly
on his outstrokes. Anduin had difficulty staying quiet, and soon enough he
stopped bothering to try. Wrathion's mouth was the finest, wettest luxury he'd
ever felt.
Anduin sagged in his magical bonds and against the wall as his orgasm came over
him. His knees felt weak, close to buckling. "Let me down," he said unsteadily.
"Please." He'd masturbated on his feet before, and he'd never thought standing
for climax was all that comfortable. This peak had been particularly powerful,
and the floor where he stood seemed as good a place to collapse as any.
Wrathion finished swallowing and rose, with a gesture freeing Anduin's upper
arms. Wrathion picked up his turban and stood even as Anduin sank to the floor.
"You look... sated," Wrathion said, sounding as if he was pleased with himself.
Anduin tilted his neck up, letting the back of his head gently hit the wall.
"Where did you learn to do that?" Anduin asked, still recovering his breath,
still riding the aftershocks and enjoying the blissed-out feeling.
"The basics of sexual understanding were input into my brain when I was still
in the egg," Wrathion said, and he ran three fingers around his dark lips,
wiping away saliva and traces of come as he added, "The finer points of my
technique were picked up from a long and graphic conversation with Madam Goya."
Anduin blinked up at him, because while the question had not been completely
rhetorical, he had not expected a response delivered with such straightforward
precision, nor such a bizarre answer. "Madam Goya? Are you serious?"
"Yes. There are few things you can't buy from her, and with complete
discretion, for the right price."
Anduin thought of Madam Goya's furred, striped, proper but playful face. He'd
known she didn't go by 'madam' for nothing; he'd known a trade in flesh and
pleasure went on upstairs in her black market establishment. But surely she
herself didn't-- and surely Wrathion hadn't-- "Just a... just conversation?"
"Quite." Wrathion seemed amused.
Anduin was having trouble processing it. "And she charged you for this long and
graphic sharing of information, and you paid her?"
"Of course. A small fortune." Wrathion grinned down at him, and in a practiced
motion he pulled his turban back on, tucking and smoothing his hair underneath
it. "I do hope it was worth it."
Coin meant nothing to Wrathion; the dragon was just teasing him, he thought.
Still jumbled in a weak pile of limbs on the floor, Anduin blushed. When he
didn't say anything more, Wrathion said, "Come to bed."
Wrathion went and lay down on his back on Anduin's bed, and after a moment
Anduin dragged himself together and joined him. Anduin pulled the sheet up and
over himself, because he felt strange being naked while Wrathion was still
fully dressed, and they lay together looking up at the ceiling in silence for a
time.
At length Wrathion rolled onto his side, facing Anduin. "You should join me,
Prince Anduin," Wrathion said, laying a hand on the sheet over Anduin's chest.
"I swear to you, I have the best interests of this world at heart."
Anduin remained still and silent.
"I am forging the peace you've always wanted," Wrathion continued. "Once my
work is complete, there will be no more wars until the war that cannot be
avoided." Wrathion's hand slid down slowly, finding Anduin's cock again and
stroking him gently with the sheet a soft, thin barrier between them.
Anduin exhaled, feeling himself stiffening again, and he shifted his hips under
Wrathion's hand.
Wrathion got him hard again and this time, when Wrathion placed a hand on his
hip to turn Anduin onto his stomach, Anduin didn't deny him, and he couldn't
even have said why. Partly because he was aroused, partly because he wasn't
ready for Wrathion to leave yet, partly because while he was afraid of what
Wrathion would do to him in bed, he was more fearful of what might happen if he
kept refusing Wrathion both of the things he was after.
Wrathion touched him with a bit more gentleness than his usual, kissing him and
preparing him. At first, Anduin didn't like the feeling of Wrathion's slickened
finger pressing in his ass. The sensation started out as uncomfortable and
progressed to painful when Wrathion added another slender finger, and because
it was his asshole everything happening there felt dirty. The whole exercise
seemed unnatural and lewd, and a sick wave of shame passed through his stomach.
But as they went on, the physical discomfort of the stretching faded away. His
renewed desire granted the salaciousness a certain appeal, and after a while of
Wrathion's long fingers teasing him open and playing inside him, the fullness
started to feel good, started to feel erotic. He could not deny that when the
pain faded away, there was more sheer feeling in his ass than he would have
thought possible, and there was a place inside him that shook him to the core
when Wrathion's fingers pressed there. Soon he was pushing back onto Wrathion's
fingers and moaning openly.
He had a second, stronger surge of shame when he thought about the fact that it
was his father's probable killer he was letting do these things to him,
debauching him this way, but he pushed it from his mind.
Wrathion must have magically undressed himself too, for all of a sudden
Wrathion's body was naked and pressed to his. Wrathion took him lying on his
belly, entering him steadily and moving inside him hard. The cock wedged inside
Anduin stung in the beginning, but it didn't hurt as much as he'd feared, and
he adjusted to the feeling quickly enough. Wrathion whispered things at first,
broken-sounding phrases like I'm sorry and I didn't want for it to be this way
and I had to, Anduin as though he sought absolution. Wrathion ran fingers over
his scalp and kissed the back of his neck, damp with sweat and achingly
sensitive. There was no other choice.
Anduin didn't know he was crying until he turned his head and realized the
pillow was wet under his eyes. You're so good, Anduin.
Wrathion rather abruptly stopped whispering and just fucked him. Wrathion
pulled him up and back and set him on his knees, snaking an arm around to
stroke Anduin in time with his thrusts. Trapped between Wrathion's hand and
what felt like an extremely sizeable endowment, Anduin came quickly. Just a few
moments after that, as though he'd only been waiting for Anduin, Wrathion
pushed all the way inside him and climaxed, his whole body trembling and his
breaths short in Anduin's ear, and his come was hot enough to leave a burning
sensation that made Anduin cry out. Wrathion nuzzled his ear.
Wrathion kissed him afterwards, aggressively, for a long time. Anduin wasn't
sure he wanted to kiss Wrathion back, but he found himself doing just that, his
stomach in knots, Wrathion's tongue dominating his mouth. Wrathion tasted like
smoke and burned things.
Wrathion kissed him and kissed him, broke off and got up and poured a glass of
water. Anduin turned his head, curious to see Wrathion without clothes.
Wrathion's cock was not as enormous as it had felt pushing into him; Wrathion
was only a bit larger than he himself was. Wrathion took a sip and brought
Anduin the glass of water, lay back down and kissed him more after he drank.
Wrathion held him, and Anduin let him. Wrathion left only a few hours before
dawn.
Anduin thought he might need to heal his nether region the next morning, for
though he felt no lasting pain, he could still feel the echoing sensation of
what he'd done with Wrathion the night before, and he'd heard jokes about men
using each other in this way and being injured sufficient to limp in the days
following. But he had a bowel movement and everything seemed normal. He saw no
signs of blood. Still, the sensation whenever he moved wouldn't let him forget
or pretend.
*
Wrathion came back to him the next night, and the night after that.
*
The first time Wrathion fucked Anduin on his back, vulnerable with his legs
open and back like a woman's and his face exposed, Wrathion's hand warm and
smooth and terrifyingly strong around his shaft, Anduin managed to hold himself
together. Wrathion's smoking eyes gazed down at him alluringly, raking up and
down over Anduin like he was the only thing that existed in the world.
Anduin was the only one sweating. Though Anduin's perspiration clung to the
dragon where their bodies pressed together, the moisture on Wrathion's skin
evaporated quickly.
Wrathion reached climax first, and he didn't break eye contact. Anduin met his
eyes, his stomach twisted in nerves and uncertainty, watching Wrathion come
with that intense focus upon him. Anduin tried not to show his discomfort when
Wrathion spurted inside him, and he held in his cry but couldn't quite hide the
wince. Wrathion watched him and kissed him, his hands running over Anduin's
inner thighs making a welcome distraction.
After easing out of him, Wrathion resumed rubbing Anduin's cock with his hand.
Anduin found there was something terribly intimate about someone else jerking
him off. For one thing, simply stroking his dick with one hand was something
Anduin could do by himself, so there was arguably no reason for someone else to
do that to him... except possibly for how different it felt when it was
somebody else's hand. For another thing, unlike when Wrathion took Anduin in
his mouth, their faces were close together, and Wrathion was watching him.
Anduin was hyperaware of his every utterance, facial expression, and movement.
He closed his eyes and turned his face away and still orgasmed in short order,
even knowing he was the object of Wrathion's scrutiny.
"I have to go away for a few days," Wrathion told him after he wiped his hand
off atop the rumpled duvet. The smell of sex and Wrathion's charred, smoky
scent clung to Anduin's sheets and comforter now, always, except for a few
hours, once a week, after the blank-faced guards entered to change the
bedclothes.
Anduin stared at him and tried to keep his composure. "Where are you going?"
Wrathion smiled at him gently, idly tracing a looping line over his chest.
"World peace doesn't just happen on its own, my dear prince. Peace must be
maintained. Nourished and encouraged."
Anduin stared at him a moment, not understanding, and his lips parted as the
realization came to him. "You're putting down uprisings," he said in
wonderment, and then he almost laughed. "Hmm. Some peace," he mocked.
Wrathion scowled at him and dropped his hand. He magically redressed himself
the same way he shifted forms, from naked to fully clad in the space of a blink
or a heartbeat, and he rose to pour a glass of water.
"Anduin, I have told you. There was no other way."
"No. Stop saying that, it's not true." Anduin's voice shook with bitterness.
"This is the way you decided to make it."
Wrathion said nothing, and when he sat back down on the bed and reached for
Anduin, Anduin pulled away, thinking about Wrathion killing his father, for
that was surely what must have happened. And he was willingly letting Wrathion
fuck him every night, now. More than letting, welcoming it, wanting it.
He wept after Wrathion shut the door.
He was so alone.
*
Six long days and nights passed before Wrathion came back. Anduin couldn't stop
himself getting up and embracing Wrathion gratefully when the door swung open
and he saw who darkened his doorway. He clenched his fists, digging his
fingernails into the soft flesh of his palms to stop himself crying again.
Wrathion held him a long time, until Anduin pulled away. His eyes stayed dry.
He would take such small victories.
But Anduin had missed Wrathion's presence. Wrathion was his captor. His
betrayer. Wrathion had likely orphaned him. And yet Anduin had missed his
company.
Their bodies came together, Anduin's hands moving over Wrathion's human form
with almost frenzied want. Wrathion answered his desperate touches with
caresses of his own and many kisses, bending his head to Anduin's chest, his
long clawed fingers threading through Anduin's hair.
A few minutes after they finished coming together into his sheets, Anduin
rolled over in bed, rested his head against Wrathion's shoulder, and asked,
"Will you tell me what's going on?"
Wrathion pursed his lips, giving off a vague unwillingness.
"You said you hoped I'd come around. I can't buy into the price you're paying
for peace if you won't keep me informed."
Wrathion turned his head an inch to eye him. Wrathion seemed wary of him, which
Anduin felt to be a strange inversion of the dynamic that could naturally be
expected. "What do you want to know?"
Anduin dropped his eyes to the puckered, textured skin of Wrathion's nipple and
thought about that. What he really wanted to know was who was resisting. If he
could only get Wrathion to start sharing, he thought, the floodgates would open
and all kinds of information would come out; Wrathion had always loved to hear
himself talk. "General stuff. Where did you go? What's going on in the world?
Who lives, who've you killed, who's collaborating with your rule?"
Wrathion smiled at Anduin, as if seeing through him now. "Well. I went to
Eversong Woods. The sin'dorei are among my best servants," Wrathion said. "They
saw reason immediately. Lor'themar was not pleased with Garrosh's rash actions,
and he wants survival for his people. The goblins were simple to manage as
well, some extravagant bribes with this hand and some veiled threats with this
hand and the trade princes and all the cartels were mine, no changes in
leadership necessary. The ogre clans would follow a kitten if it could manage a
show of force, and the orcs are more insular in their preferences, but they too
respect strength. The pandaren do not like my methods, but they appreciate the
peace. They were never terribly happy to have your father and Garrosh prodding
them to choose sides, to have family fighting family and slaying each other in
a war the Horde and Alliance brought to their shores." Wrathion paused. "The
dwarves and the tauren and most of the rest are... mmm ... perhaps not thrilled
by my leadership, but cooperating."
Anduin rearranged his head on Wrathion's upper arm. Though Wrathion never
seemed to perspire, the heat that poured off him left Anduin extra sweaty where
their skins touched, and the one side of Anduin's face and head was more than
damp. "So who's giving you trouble, then?"
Wrathion scowled faintly. "Tyrande and Sylvanas, chiefly. The kaldorei turned
back the Legion once before, so I've been extraordinarily lenient with her, but
we will come to a crossroads soon. And... various exiles and their splinter
groups. Vol'jin and Sylvanas are chief among them. They've gone to ground with
pockets of their people here and there. Many, most even, of the forsaken stayed
loyal to her. And she and Vol'jin are in league, though they are unlikely
bedfellows. Also I'm quite sure Vol'jin has been in touch with Tyrande."
Wrathion's grimace solidified. "If I could do it over again, I'd take the
Undercity earlier. Sylvanas is unpredictable and far too smart. She knew she
had nothing to gain by holding the city, as I'd demonstrated an ability to
infiltrate or storm essentially anywhere, so she abandoned it, and now her
followers are spread out everywhere from Dun Morogh to Eversong Woods, the
Undercity is full of spies among those who remain, and Sylvanas herself is
impossible to find."
So strange. Anduin thought of what he knew of Sylvanas. It wasn't much, but...
"She's a survivor, and my father once said her loyalties are few. I'd have
guessed she'd be your chief lieutenant."
"She doesn't like my champions," was all Wrathion said, and after a moment he
met Anduin's eyes, a shade defensively.
Anduin nodded, keeping his face expressionless.
Wrathion looked at him, sighed, and broke eye contact. "There are a few dwarves
being pesky, and some sin'dorei reportedly led by a teacher are causing trouble
in Eversong Woods. Some of your own people are proving frustrating, but I will
hunt them down soon enough. The especially provincial peoples--the vyrkul, the
naga, the quilboar, the gnolls, all those I will deal with at my leisure."
Anduin smothered a laugh. "You think you can get the gnolls to do your
bidding?"
Wrathion turned his face again to look at him seriously, their faces close
enough that Anduin could smell the burned, smoky scent of his breath. "They
will, or I'll crush them. We will need every sword, every spell, from every
sentient creature in this world. All our focus must be directed to where it
matters. Petulant, partisan nonsense will not be tolerated. Azeroth doesn't
have the time."
Anduin let that hang in the air for a moment before he asked the question he
dreaded. "Who's dead?"
Wrathion smoothed a hand over his hairless, dusky chest, turned his face up to
the ceiling again, and closed his eyes. "Let's not dwell on our losses, hm?"
"Wrathion." Anduin stared hard at him in profile.
"Mm?"
"Tell me."
"I've told you a great deal already." Wrathion paused, and then, "Thrall is
dead. His mate keeps trying to have me assassinated, it's tiresome. I'll be
killing her next."
Wrathion was so sinister when he spoke casually of death, Anduin wondered how
he'd ever been so beguiled by him. "Is Jaina dead?"
Wrathion said nothing. "Wrathion, please tell me."
The dragon didn't open his eyes, but after a moment he answered. "No, she's not
dead." Wrathion said no more, and Anduin felt the phrasing itself was
informative.
"Not dead... yet?"
Wrathion slitted his ember-red eyes open and slanted his head to the side to
look down at him, waiting almost expectantly. Wrathion wanted him to figure it
out.
"She's... she's your prisoner?" Anduin thought it through another few moments.
There was another possibility he was missing... and then with a mental click he
put it together. Some of your own people are proving frustrating-- "She's a
rebel. You're hunting her," he breathed.
Wrathion nodded approvingly and rolled onto his side to face Anduin. "The Kirin
Tor fractured, and a number left Dalaran to stand against me, led by
Proudmoore. Your brain isn't rotting away as badly as I'd feared."
"Gee, thanks," Anduin muttered.
"Proudmoore's proving nearly as much of a headache as Tyrande and Sylvanas,
because every time I close in, they teleport away. Usually far away." Wrathion
looked past him, and a cold light grew in his red eyes. "But I have a plan. It
won't be long now before I eviscerate them."
Anduin swallowed. He wanted to say more, but he didn't want to be drawn into an
argument. There was more he wanted to know. "How about Wyll?"
Wrathion's forehead furrowed in a slight frown. "I don't know who that is."
"My personal valet."
"Ah. Yes, I remember. You mentioned him at some point." Wrathion's frown
deepened. "I don't know."
"Your guards probably killed him, then, the night of your coup." Anduin's heart
hurt. "He would have tried to get to me." Anduin had known Wyll all his life;
the gray-haired, loyal servant had rarely been far. Anduin closed his eyes for
a minute and breathed slowly in and out, and he managed to keep the tears that
threatened at bay.
"I'm sorry," Wrathion said, and took his hand. Wrathion's hand was warm and
comforting. Anduin didn't know how Wrathion's hands could possibly be
comforting, responsible for so much death as they were.
Anduin was silent for a time, but when he spoke again, his voice was steady.
"Who else are you keeping prisoner?"
Wrathion suddenly let go of his hand and rolled over on top of him, perching up
on Anduin's hips. Anduin shifted at the sudden weight on his pelvis. Anduin
opened his eyes and observed Wrathion faintly smirking down at him. "Jealous?"
Wrathion asked him, the single word emerging slowly.
Sometimes Anduin couldn't believe the things that came out of Wrathion's mouth.
It was as if the minutes-ago proclamation that he was going to hunt down and
murder Jaina hadn't even happened, as if he hadn't just been told he'd probably
heedlessly killed someone for whom Anduin cared. He could only respond on
Wrathion's level--crisply and emotionlessly. "I suppose that depends on how
many of us you're fucking," Anduin said, voice blunt.
Wrathion's smile widened. "Such language, Prince Anduin! Since you ask, I will
tell you that I have found it much more efficient to kill the ones who don't
cooperate. Execute one or two difficult leaders in front of an audience, choose
a moderately distressed member of said audience, inquire as to their
willingness to work with you. Nine times out of ten, your new commander stands
before you. But I have taken one uncooperative dignitary captive."
Despite his half-deduction, half-guess about the status of Lady Jaina, Anduin
thought for a moment: who's that? before he realized.
"It's for the best, I think," Wrathion went on, with another small, teasing
smile. "I have found keeping prisoners to be a lot of work."
Anduin stared at him, and after a moment Wrathion's smile curdled. Anduin
cleared his throat and found his voice. "'Moderately distressed'? Not the most
distressed, presumably the one who will fear you most?"
"The most distressed after witnessing such an execution are typically family or
lovers or close friends," Wrathion explained, patient with him as always. "I've
no interest in the extra risks posed by a servant with a personal vendetta. I
merely want someone who wishes to live to see tomorrow. And the next day."
"And you say you don't want me to be afraid of you," Anduin murmured.
Wrathion looked down at Anduin's body as though admiring him. "Well," Wrathion
said, lightly scraping his claws over Anduin's naked chest. "Not very afraid,
anyway."
*
During one of Wrathion's longer absences, Right came into his room.
Anduin straightened, looking at her mistrustfully. Wrathion's two bodyguards
did not have the sigil over their foreheads, and their eyes were aware and
alive. At least some of his Blacktalons genuinely believed in what Wrathion was
doing, enough to see his plans through with him of their own free will. It
sickened Anduin. He wondered how many more there were.
"Prince Anduin." Right was armed with daggers at her hips. Anduin glanced at
them, wondering if he could grab one. Right didn't bow, but inclined her head
respectfully. "His Majesty sent me to rub your shoulders and back in his
absence."
Anduin blanched, speechless, and when he regained himself, he drew back on the
bed until his back hit the wall. "Absolutely not. Do not touch me."
Right gazed at him. "I will relay your refusal to his Majesty."
"You do that," Anduin said grimly.
He had a question to ask, and at first he wasn't certain he truly wanted to put
it to her, but he decided he had little to lose. "Why do you serve him?"
"My reasons are my own," Right said in her sweet, accented voice. She paused,
as if unsure whether she should say more, and then she added, "But you should
serve him because his Majesty is going to save this world."
"You honestly believe that," he said.
"Completely," Right answered without hesitation.
Anduin said nothing, and after a moment Right nodded to him and left.
*
The single marked-up parchment, the record of his captivity, displayed many
small black lines. Anduin had no calendar in his room, so he didn't know what
month it was, but snow fell outside on Stormwind in slow white drifts. With the
lines in neat groups of five, the days were easy to count, but tallying them
seemed to have grown pointless.
One night Wrathion returned to find him lying on the floor on one side of his
chilly dressing room, just for a little variety. Wrathion came to stand next to
him, the curling toes of his boots almost touching Anduin's side. "What are you
doing down there?"
"Enjoying a change of scenery," he said listlessly.
"You really are holding up well," Wrathion said. Anduin couldn't even discern
whether it was sarcasm.
He blinked up at Wrathion, remembering a complaint from days before. "Why would
you think I would let Right touch me?"
Wrathion shrugged. "I thought, why not? She is my representative. Her mind is
bound to me, her consciousness serves as an extension of my own. I could give
her directions of just how to touch you from a continent away. I could watch
you through her eyes, hear you and tell her what to say to you. I thought it
would be a reasonable way to be together when I'm away from you longer than I
would like to be."
Anduin didn't know what to say to that. "That is ... that's messed up. I get
lonely when you're not here," he told Wrathion absently, because he had no
reason anymore to dissemble or pretend otherwise. "But it's weird and unsavory
enough that I let you have sex with me, nevermind your 'representative.'"
"Unsavory, my. That seems a step down from 'unseemly,' dear prince." Wrathion
crouched down next to him. "I didn't actually have in mind anything involving
your prick. I agree that would be a bit extreme, and Right isn't that kind of
employee. I have a better idea. Let me fashion you a bloodgem so you can
communicate with me directly wh--"
Anduin's focus came back suddenly and sharply, and he cut Wrathion off through
gritted teeth, because he'd heard enough without the question being finished.
"No."
"I don't wish for you to be lonely," Wrathion said simply.
Anduin covered his face with his hands and rubbed his eyes, then slid his hands
down to his cheeks. "If you didn't want me to be lonely, you wouldn't keep me
locked in here alone."
Wrathion's lips quirked. "If I did want you to be lonely, I wouldn't visit you
anymore."
Although in Wrathion's absence Anduin had started to feel a painfully waxing
longing for his return, Anduin still wasn't sure he wanted Wrathion, exactly.
But he desperately wanted Wrathion's hands on him, Wrathion's arms around him.
He desperately wanted to come again into the perfect wet heat of Wrathion's
mouth. Nothing else he could do in his new life as a hostage felt a fraction as
good, and there was nothing else he could lose himself in so completely. He had
so few options. He had nothing to do. He had nothing.
Except Wrathion.
He dropped his hands from his face. The floor felt hard under him suddenly.
"Can we..." he glanced to the bed through the open door.
Anduin didn't want to finish asking it as a question. Getting the idea across
physically seemed safer than putting it to words. Like if he was forced to ask
it out loud, somehow his defeat would be total. He reached out and tentatively,
lightly stroked the taut, flat muscles below Wrathion's chest.
Wrathion smiled at him and acquiesced, offering him a hand and pulling him up
into a kiss.
When Anduin was alone, he felt like he was slowly dying. Under Wrathion's
hands, though the feeling never lasted, Anduin felt as though he thrived.
Anduin willingly spread for him, shameless now, and Wrathion kissed him for a
long time after the sex was over.
*
One day Anduin was eating lunch when he realized he wasn't sure if he'd
recorded the day.
He pulled out the sheet of parchment and looked at it. There were three black
strikes in the most recent group, but that didn't help Anduin. The passage of
his time was blurring together. He had a clear memory of recently drawing a
black line, but he couldn't recall if he'd drawn it that morning or the day
before. Should he make another line? Would it be better to overestimate, or
underestimate the days of his captivity?
He thought about that for a long time, and he made no more marks on the
parchment that day or any day after.
At some point Anduin had stopped bothering to don his boots in the morning.
Gradually, as the season changed and the weather warmed, winter renewed by
spring, he stopped wearing more than pants, whether asleep or awake. There was
little point in doing otherwise. Wrathion only took them off him. No one else
sentient ever saw him. And he began to doubt anyone ever would again. He ceased
wearing even his mother's locket, leaving it coiled away in his desk.
*
Wrathion didn't give up on trying to convince him. Anduin usually tried to
restrain himself, to remain aloof and ignore Wrathion's attempts at persuasion,
but Wrathion had always been skilled at baiting him. One night, lying together
on his bed, Anduin lost his patience and had an outburst. "I won't say yes," he
snapped. "Why don't you just kill me?"
Wrathion's watchful, waiting expression softened into an expression that was
almost hurt. "Because I care about you."
Anduin laughed, and it came out mocking. "Right."
"I do," Wrathion insisted. He turned on his side to look steadily at Anduin,
and his fingers fluttered over Anduin's lips thoughtfully, tickling faintly, as
though he could draw Anduin's resentment out through the delicate flesh and
flick it away like so much dead skin. "Mm. I'm not sure you realize... I had
thought to torture you until you agreed to do as I've requested. The dungeons
under this keep have a truly astonishing array of torture devices, did you know
that? There are layers of dust over everything, and most of the metal ones are
rusty, so I suppose your father didn't use them. There are rats down there. I
don't know what they even find to eat. Perhaps only each other. I hadn't
decided whether to torture you myself or delegate it to someone more
experienced."
Wrathion was silent for a moment.
"And yet, somehow, I haven't gotten around to having you brought down there.
Instead I work every day towards peace, and spend time I could be sleeping or
working visiting you in here and ... well." Wrathion gave him a knowing,
charming smile. He'd taken his sweet time that night sucking Anduin off,
teasing Anduin with his mouth, licking and kissing the head of his cock and
pleasurably stroking Anduin's balls with warm, thankfully gentle fingers. "I
daresay most conquerors are not so dainty with the rulers they depose."
Anduin flushed faintly. Even after all this time and an awful lot of sex,
Wrathion could still elicit a blush. He could not argue with Wrathion's words,
either. Wrathion was ... good to him, for an enemy, for someone who'd destroyed
his life, for someone who could be so monstrously cold.
"You know..." Wrathion murmured even more softly, fingertips still skimming
Andiun's lips light as butterfly wings. "Back at the Veiled Stair, when I still
thought I might side with the Horde, one of my earlier plans involved taking
you prisoner. The most valuable hostage the Alliance had to offer, and I could
scarcely keep you out of my bedroom, you visited me so much. It would have been
the easiest thing in the world."
A sharp pang went through Anduin's chest at the memory. It was true. Though he
hadn't trusted Wrathion an inch, he'd enjoyed his company and visited him
often, squeezing in time together whenever the dragon wasn't busy engaging his
neverending parade of champions-cum-mindslaves, and sometimes even when he was.
He'd had enough of the sensation on his lips; he pushed Wrathion's fingers off
his mouth and rubbed his lips to make the tickled feeling subside. "Oh yes, and
your scheme clearly evolved a great deal over time." He rolled his eyes around
the walls and ceiling of his prison to make his point, and to hide how much the
betrayal hurt, even now, after all this time and much, much more intimacy.
"I changed it. I -- well, I'd already changed it. An even earlier plan, quickly
discarded because I discovered I did not want to pluck you like a flower to
conclude Stormwind's clear line of succession, perhaps hand your body over to
Garrosh Hellscream for a bit of morale-boosting desecration... in the event I
decided to side with the Horde, of course." Rarely had Anduin heard the dragon
speak so aimlessly about his internal life. "I thought the Horde would win, you
know. I was prepared to do anything to make sure someone did. But I was not
prepared for the effect you had on me... or how much I took to you." Wrathion
said it diffidently, his lips curling around the admission like it was
weakness.
Anduin had become accustomed to assassination attempts early in his boyhood,
but it chilled him to hear Wrathion so dispassionately discuss murdering him at
the Tavern like it would have been nothing. "I liked you too," Anduin
whispered.
Wrathion briefly passed a warm hand over Anduin's bare chest before pulling
away and sitting up, leaning back against the headboard. "And here we are. So I
won't give up on you now. You could serve the cause of peace. If you do as I
ask, you could still save many lives."
"Why haven't you just made me one of your brain-dead --- things? And forced
me?" His voice broke.
"Have you even been listening to me, Prince Anduin?" Wrathion closed his eyes,
dropped his chin for a moment, and pressed fingers into the center of his
forehead as though he had a headache. Then he looked hard at Anduin. "Is that
what you want?"
"No." Anduin suddenly was overwhelmingly afraid, and he looked away and
squeezed his own eyes shut. He should not have asked that. "No."
*
Anduin got sick, as sick as he'd ever been in his life. He slept restlessly,
alternating sweats and chills. He felt dizzy when he stood, and could barely
manage to stand and walk to and from the privy, where he vomited until his
stomach was empty and then dry heaved. He stumbled back to bed with an effort.
Wrathion came in and sighed when he saw him shuddering in his bed. Wrathion sat
at his side and stroked his hair. "You too?" he said.
Anduin couldn't answer.
"It's all right. Half the city's ill," he said, and patted Anduin's hip.
"You'll be fine."
Anduin whimpered at him, because he couldn't compose any words just then. He
didn't want to be alone, but Wrathion kissed his damp forehead and left him.
The passage of time meant nothing to Anduin, so it could have been fifteen
minutes or fifteen hours later that one of Wrathion's guards, a night elf, came
in to bend over him and spoon broth into his mouth. Anduin couldn't stand to
look in her glazed-over eyes. She seemed as the living dead to him, gruesome
and grotesque. So he jerked his head to the side, causing the hot droplets to
splash over his chin. The elf brought another spoonful to his mouth, and
another and another, dribbling over him, but Anduin shoved at her as best he
could and thrashed away. He didn't want them near him. He didn't want anything
to do with them. He cried and sweat and shivered, and at some point Wrathion
returned.
"Gods, Anduin," Wrathion's voice came, a little bit gentle and a little bit
annoyed. "Settle down. You're too sick to be this difficult."
The bed shifted, and when Anduin blinked his eyes open, Wrathion sat above him
holding the bowl of broth. Wrathion momentarily eyed the untouched pitcher of
water on his desk and the clean, empty glass beside it.
Wrathion refocused on him. "You need to drink this," Wrathion said, sounding
intense for a second. "You're dehydrated."
Anduin made an undignified, unhappy sound.
"Shh." Anduin saw Left over Wrathion's shoulder, and Wrathion turned and said
something to her. "Open your mouth," Wrathion said, turning back, and Anduin
unthinkingly, obediently parted his lips. Wrathion tipped the spoon up, and a
bit of salty chicken broth went hot into Anduin's mouth and trickled down his
parched throat. "You're going to be fine," Wrathion said, but just for a second
there was an unmistakable note of worry and fear in his voice before he
returned to chatty normalcy. "Though I can't believe you're making me nurse you
myself. That night elf is an experienced healer, you realize. Millennia of
experience. Whereas I have a world to rule and have never tended a sick person
in my life." He poured another tiny spoonful of steaming liquid into Anduin's
mouth, carefully. "Will you accept broth from Right?"
Anduin didn't answer, couldn't answer, could scarcely think. He closed his eyes
and let Wrathion deposit small spoonfuls of broth into his mouth.
His blankets were pulled back overtop him, and then he got too hot again.
Someone, and it couldn't have been Wrathion, because his hands were full, lay a
cool wet washcloth over Anduin's feverish brow. Anduin thought it must be his
father.
Anduin cried out to him, but his father made no answer.
*
Wrathion came back more times to spoon-feed him broth, but they blurred
together and Anduin wasn't sure of anything until his fever broke. After that,
he was fine, if immensely hungry, but otherwise as if he'd never been ill. He
probably would not have asked Wrathion for more food, but he didn't need to
make that decision. For a few days his trays came to his room more heavily
laden than they had been.
The illness that had swept through Stormwind like wildfire had a death toll of
almost three hundred people within a week, Wrathion told him. Mostly the old
and the very young, but some hale and healthy persons too. The upside was that
no one seemed to contract it twice.
"I wasn't too worried about you, though," Wrathion informed him, examining his
claws. "You walked away from two tons of mogu artifact dropped on you."
*
One night, Wrathion sat up in bed and let out a deep, sighing breath. "Anduin,
are you awake?"
Anduin was drowsing, drifting off after sex despite an extensive sleep the
previous night and all that morning. "Yeah?"
"I feel I must warn you that this will be your last chance to avert a
catastrophic number of deaths. You can speak on my behalf to Tyrande
Whisperwind, or millions will perish in what amounts to the blink of an eye."
Anduin found himself fully awake in a hurry. He felt his eye involuntarily
twitch. "Millions? Wrathion, what are you going to do?"
"A shattering act of complete and utter devastation. I can't tell you,
obviously, exactly what. But you can trust me now and work with me, or live
with the consequences, which I will not conceal from you."
"I, while your prisoner, get to live with the consequences of your actions.
Right, that seems fair."
"Prince Anduin. Listen to me." Wrathion's face was wistful. "I've no wish to
see you eaten alive by guilt and regret because you chose not to prevent what's
to come. But you're going to hate what I'm planning to do. You will never
forgive me, and you may never forgive yourself. So I wanted to make it
perfectly clear to you what is at stake." Wrathion waited for a response,
watching him.
"I'm already never going to forgive you," Anduin told him almost automatically.
Wrathion sighed, rose to pour them a glass of water, and after instantly
restoring his clothing he said the words Anduin always dreaded. "I'll be gone
for a few days. Maybe a week."
Anduin felt like he was floating. Closed in as he was, day after day, even his
clearest memories had started to seem hazy, his father's scarred face with his
thoughtful blue eyes, same as the ones he could still view in the mirror,
Jaina's warm smile, Wyll's creaky, respectful voice, all as though through a
screen slowly coalesced and thickening. All he did anymore was think on what he
had lost, think vaguely on what lay before him, sleep, stare at the ceiling and
wait for nightfall. Evening was when Wrathion would come to him to kiss him and
touch him and fuck him and sometimes try to persuade Anduin of his rightness.
They played chess when Wrathion's time permitted, for Anduin flatly refused to
play Jihui. Except when Wrathion went away. Then he was entirely alone.
All his muscles felt weak from disuse, and he couldn't bear the overfamiliar
walls of his cloistered bedroom any longer. Pleading with Wrathion not to leave
him would accomplish a sum total of nothing. Wrathion put his responsibilities
as a dictator first. Anduin couldn't even think about Tyrande or what Wrathion
had said about millions dying. In that moment, it was beyond contemplation.
Instead, Anduin rose on an elbow, swallowed, and asked something he'd been
thinking about requesting for a week or so, for the next time Wrathion
announced a leave. "Will you take me with you?"
"By continuing to refuse my extremely reasonable requests, you've forced me to
hold you prisoner. Prisoners stay in their cells," Wrathion told him, and his
eyes drifted to the window as he said: "If you worked with me, if you spoke to
Tyrande and your people, I could give you a bit more freedom, perhaps." He
leaned down and brushed Anduin's hair, now long enough to tie back, out of his
face. "If you were my consort, I would keep you with me."
Anduin let his head and shoulders sink back down onto the bed. He lay there and
felt as though he was spinning through space and time, though he knew he was
lying quite still. He couldn't be left alone anymore. He couldn't. Every day he
felt himself dimming like a dying light. And Wrathion was threatening to kill
millions, and offering him the chance to prevent some untold bloodshed?
Wrathion suddenly seemed to intuit that he was gaining the upper hand, that
Anduin was weakening. He leaned forward, the red glow of his eyes hungry,
sensing Anduin wavering like a shark scenting blood in the water. He took
Anduin's left hand in both of his as though he were about to propose marriage,
which, Anduin supposed, in a way he just had. "Make a statement formalizing
your surrender and supporting the peace I've brought. Say yes, and I'll arrange
it within the hour. Speak to Tyrande on my behalf, save countless lives, and if
you don't want to, you never have to see the inside of this room again."
Because they would be sleeping together in his father's royal chambers upon
their return, Anduin had no doubt. "I think it would be safer to be your
prisoner than your consort when you're inevitably deposed," he said, hedging.
Wrathion smiled. "Not a chance of that."
"Tyrants never last," Anduin said tremulously, his certitude all a ruin. If
ever a tyrant could rule forever, he thought, it would be Wrathion, who knew so
much of history, who knew all the tricks, who had so many plans and such
sprawling, dark power, a master manipulator who saw through people like they
were made of glass.
"Anduin, my sweet child of a monarchy, seizing control of this world might make
me a dictator, but it does not make me a tyrant."
Anduin was unmoved, and his surety returned as he said: "Rulers are made
tyrants when they enslave people as you have."
By now it was an old argument, but Wrathion evidently hadn't tired of having
it. "I employ such measures as must be used. Such options as I have. I'm not a
despot any more than your father was, and I have brought peace as he never did.
A vast majority in this new order are entirely free. Those who aren't did
choose freely to work with me. And most in this world are tired of war and want
peace." Wrathion added, sounding annoyed, "The ones who don't are partisan
troublemakers unable to recognize a good thing when it stands before them
halting the endless destruction."
"'The people I enslaved originally chose to work with me' is not a great
argument for getting me to work with you."
"I know," Wrathion said, sighing. "But I told you, I won't do anything like
that to you."
"Even though I'm a partisan troublemaker? Or would be, if I could?" Anduin's
fingers were growing numb in Wrathion's hands. If Wrathion was telling the
truth, and Anduin could prevent what sounded like a genocide... didn't he have
to? How could he not? But how often did Wrathion tell the truth? Wrathion was a
consummate liar--why did Anduin feel inclined to believe him?
Because you know he'll do it, his mind whispered.
"You're making no trouble in here, save for using up more than your fair share
of Azeroth's most precious resource, which is of course my time." The statement
could have been an admonition, but Wrathion said it with such a strangely
gentle smile, it was teasing. "No, you're merely a partisan... dissident. But
you're my partisan dissident," Wrathion added, and his voice was full of sad
affection. He dropped Anduin's hand; he seemed to have given up trying to
persuade for the moment, for the night. He sighed again. "Just know that you
don't have to be."
Anduin flexed his fingers to get the blood flowing again as he shook his head
stubbornly. "It won't last forever."
"What does?" With inexpressible melancholy in his expression, Wrathion touched
his cheek and along his hairline with relative tenderness. "I'll see you soon.
No more than eight days, I promise."
"W-wait." Anduin's tears fell onto his arm, but so many days alone had
propelled him beyond the shame of showing such weakness, and after he coughed
once he managed a voice that didn't shake. So many things to say. I hate you. I
love you. You're a monster. Please don't leave me alone anymore. "I'll do it,"
he whispered.
Wrathion kissed him and embraced him. Wrathion pulled him back down on the bed,
gripping Anduin's upper arms so tightly they hurt, and his sharp-toothed smile
blazed with triumph.
*
Though the hour was late, Wrathion decreed he would address a group of
Stormwind's citizens immediately. Before Wrathion led him forth from his
bedroom, he pulled Anduin's feet into his lap. Anduin thought it odd, but
Wrathion was looking at him affectionately, so he didn't question it, and only
gazed back at Wrathion steadily.
Thus Anduin didn't see when Wrathion sliced a cut in his palm, and only knew
something was amiss when suddenly Wrathion was smearing his own blood in a
circle around Anduin's right ankle. His blood burned on Anduin's skin, and
Anduin hissed in pain. He tried to yank his leg back, but Wrathion was far too
strong. Wrathion never looked away from him, holding his eyes apologetically as
he placed both hands around Anduin's ankle, murmuring a spell. When Wrathion
pulled his hands away, a slim onyx bracelet encircled Anduin's ankle, covered
with runes that gleamed even darker, an inky and more concentrated black. All
traces of Wrathion's blood had vanished. The bracelet had no fastening, no
hinge or clasp. As Anduin watched the bracelet itself seemed to smoke away and
dissolve into thin air, and then it was gone as if it had never been at all.
Anduin stared at his entirely normal-looking ankle, unhappy and a bit angry. "I
didn't want this," he said through clenched teeth.
"I know," Wrathion said, and he slid Anduin's feet off his lap and over the
side of the bed. "Consider it a sign of my great respect for your
resourcefulness," he said quietly.
Anduin frowned down at his ankle and bit back the heated reply that came to his
lips. He didn't want to meet Wrathion's eyes just then. To be magically, bodily
bound to Wrathion... it was a lesser version of the thing he feared most, and
it stirred up all his resentment and lingering anger.
"Don't try to run," Wrathion warned him. Anduin wasn't sure whether Wrathion
meant it literally, but he wasn't about to ask. Wrathion handed him his boots,
and Wrathion took his hand as they walked out of Anduin's bedroom and prison.
Before heading to the throne room, Wrathion wordlessly led him up a flight of
stairs and pulled him outside, behind a parapet overlooking the front of the
castle.
After months of his muscles in disuse, the familiar cut-stone stairs were hard
on his legs, but the experience that awaited him was worth the tired pain that
blossomed quickly in his thighs and calves as Wrathion pulled him up the steps.
Anduin stood outside in the moonlight for the first time in months, near to
tears with the beauty of standing beneath the night sky, as opposed to looking
out at it, and having second thoughts about his decision. The spring night had
a breeze that rushed over his skin like a familiar, cherished whisper, and as
he stood in the blessedly cool air and saw the group of his citizens he was to
address streaming up the stairs into the keep, their faces blurred by the
darkness, his choice to buy the end of his solitary confinement and possibly
many lives (or not) at this price seemed foolish and weak. He was the rightful
king, no matter what Wrathion said, even if he'd not been coronated, even if he
would never be coronated. But what a terribly weak king he would be if he did
what Wrathion demanded.
Anduin had loved his father, and though he'd always known it was his future,
he'd never greatly desired to rule. He didn't crave power, and he didn't relish
facing these dire choices, or feeling the heavy weight of such responsibility.
It was daunting to steer the future of so many. But it was his destiny. It was
what he'd been born to do.
He stood at the waist-high stone in the beautiful moonlight and briefly thought
about trying to leap from the balcony, but he didn't truly want that end. And
of course Wrathion was right there watching him look down at the people and up
at the star-kissed night sky.
When Wrathion took his hand again and led him back inside, Anduin was still
undecided about what he would say. He could tell the truth, even if Wrathion
killed him afterwards. Murdering him halfway through a rousing call to
revolution would not maintain the appearances Wrathion so desired. Anduin did
not want to go back to his cell, but he could face his fate, whatever it was,
as bravely as possible. He just didn't know what he should do. He didn't want
to be part of Wrathion's big picture. But if Wrathion planned an avoidable
genocide, Anduin had to stop it.
But then too there was the 'if.' Wrathion simply could not be trusted.
Wrathion stopped in the doorway of the throne room to murmur in his ear as
Anduin's eyes traveled over the throng of Stormwind's people inside. Anduin
could feel the warmth of their collected bodies pouring over him like a wave.
"A carefully sized crowd, you can see. Well cordoned off in here, unarmed, for
your safety of course, and with many of my people around them at the doors.
Stray from the script, and you sign their death warrants."
Anduin turned his head and stared at Wrathion. He felt ill, because it was like
Wrathion had read his mind. Wrathion looked at him with shrewd red eyes. "I
know you well, Anduin Wrynn," the dragon said. "Better than you think. Ponder
that any time you might entertain disloyal thoughts." He leaned in and chastely
kissed Anduin's limp, pallid lips, and added, "When you speak, stand in front
of your father's throne with me. Do not sit."
Anduin allowed Wrathion to draw him forward. Wrathion's grip was tight as it
had ever felt, with what Anduin supposed was excitement.
The blood had been scrubbed clean from the floor of the throne room and the
steps of the Lion Seat, of course. No one would ever know so many bodies had
sprawled there in violent death.
Anduin faced the citizens who'd come or been commanded to come to hear him.
Several hundred of them stood awaiting his words. Anduin felt frozen to have so
many eyes on him after so long alone, and he had to force himself to speak.
Thankfully the training he'd had to public speaking returned to him quickly
once he began to talk. Anduin said he was expected to say, if with brevity and
not with any particular passion. Wrathion dropped his hold on him while Anduin
spoke but remained standing close. He looked at Wrathion halfway through and
received an encouraging nod and a small, pleased smile. Anduin spoke words of
peace, of surrender, and of preparation for the future as he relinquished his
kingdom. The crowd seemed subdued, the people listening very quietly.
*
As he'd guessed, Wrathion brought him to his father's chambers afterwards.
Wrathion was elated, intoxicated with his success or with Anduin's submission,
or perhaps they were fully one and the same. "You did so well," Wrathion said
warmly and appreciatively, and he caressed Anduin's back as they walked. "I
knew you would come around. When we return from Darnassus, you can speak to
another assembly."
Anduin didn't know that he wanted to speak to another assembly, but he didn't
argue.
His father's chambers were, in a way, a much more disturbing place to be than
Anduin's own bedroom. Wrathion left Left and Right outside, but seven guards
with Wrathion's sigil on their brows waited in his father's chambers to watch
over them. Wrathion immediately reached for him and started unfastening
Anduin's belt.
Anduin tried to pull away. "What are you doing?!" he hissed. "We can't... with
them right there."
Wrathion didn't pause in undressing him, even escalating by ripping through
Anduin's tunic with sharp black fingernails as Anduin looked at him
beseechingly. "We can. They are the perfect guards. Their loyalty is complete,
their silence assured." He ran his hands over Anduin's shoulders. "Get on your
knees on the bed."
Anduin was too stunned and dismayed to argue, and he'd never seen Wrathion in
such a violently ecstatic mood. Wrathion mounted him in his father's bed after
only the quickest, most perfunctory preparation, and fucked him with rough
abandon. With his face pressed down in the sheets, Anduin could faintly smell
his father's scent under Wrathion's. Wrathion grasped Anduin's cock and stroked
him with a firm, juddering touch, but Anduin felt hyper-aware of the dead-eyed
guards around them, and even as he thrust into Wrathion's hand, because he
couldn't not, he knew he was not going to be able to reach climax.
Fucking him seemed to calm Wrathion down a few notches, closer to normalcy with
each slowing breath after he came, and when he pulled out and rolled off of
Anduin, he sighed with satisfaction.
"Will you be my consort then, Prince Anduin?"
Anduin gazed at him. Wrathion didn't appear particularly hopeful, or worried,
or excited, or any of the emotions Anduin would expect to see in a person
proposing a lifelong commitment with someone they for whom they cared. His face
contained no ardor and none of the rough passion from mere minutes before.
Wrathion looked disinterested, and his tone was as indifferent as though he was
asking whether Anduin would enjoy a slice of cake with his tea.
When Wrathion looked back at him, Anduin swiftly averted his eyes.
He reached down to delicately run a finger around his hole, which was still a
bit opened and leaking Wrathion's uncomfortably hot semen. He flexed the
muscles in the area, tightening the orifice closed. Anduin felt so tired. He
was still hard; he'd not orgasmed. He'd failed his people today, failed his
father and his fathers' fathers, failed the Alliance, possibly failed Azeroth
unlike any ruler before him. He still had no idea whether any of what Wrathion
had spoken about millions dying was the truth. It could be no wonder his voice
came out dispirited. "It's not enough for you that we're lovers?"
"Some time ago you disabused me of the notion that we're lovers, if you
recall," Wrathion reminded him. "Because I keep you in a cage, you said."
"And if I say yes to being your consort, are you going to let me out?"
"Of course not." Wrathion evinced a sympathetic expression as Anduin's face
fell further, and reached out to stroke Anduin's arm. "If I believed for a
second that I'd actually won you over, it would be different. As things
stand... I'll keep you by my side when I travel. You'll sleep in my rooms, and
I'll let you move around under guard. We'll take most of our meals together.
You won't be so alone."
"So I'll always be your prisoner first and foremost."
"Unless you have a change of heart." The wry twist of Wrathion's lips showed
how likely he thought that at this point.
"Do you love me?" Anduin asked dully, not sure how much he cared about the
answer, but mildly curious about Wrathion's motivations. Was it just for the
air of legitimacy from Anduin's title, to rule the dissolved Alliance and more
by right of consort as well as right of conquest? Or was it because he was so
sure the remnants of the Alliance would follow where Anduin urged, and if
Anduin was publicly his lover, surely he must truly be on Wrathion's side, so
for appearances' sake he wanted Anduin on his arm, or ... ?
"I suppose I do," Wrathion answered, knitting their fingers together, light and
dark. "As much as someone like me can love." He did not reciprocate the
question.
Anduin nodded dumbly, because he'd already given up. What else was there? It's
not like if he said no, Wrathion would let him go. But perhaps he could earn
Wrathion's trust and then...
And then... what? He had no idea.
"Do I have to do anything?"
Wrathion looked at him with hooded red eyes. "Nothing you're not already
doing." He studied Anduin for a moment. "Behave, I suppose. Support me
publicly."
In for a copper, in for a gold. Anduin's voice rasped as he answered. "Then
yes. I will."
Wrathion's smile was rueful as he nodded, and he reached over and wrapped his
warm hand back around Anduin's fading erection. Anduin closed his eyes and
rocked his hips, grateful to have his desire remembered. "Suck me, please," he
mumbled, and Wrathion slipped down the bed and began to oblige him.
Climax was a long time in coming under the dead eyes of Wrathion's guards.
Anduin finally pulled the sheet over his face to hide himself, because he was
struggling on the edge of orgasm for some time and suffering intrusive thoughts
about being watched by them. Added to that was his self-consciousness about how
long it was taking him to come, though Wrathion gave no sign he was tiring. And
despite how drained and sleepy Wrathion's skill always left him, despite how
weary he felt, with the ephemeral scent of his father clinging to the pillow
beneath his head, Anduin had trouble falling asleep that night.
*
The next morning felt surreal. Anduin woke up in his father's bed next to
Wrathion, who was still sleeping, his black hair rumpled, while seven sightless
guards stared down at them. Creeped out by all those glazed eyes on him, Anduin
remained lying down and waited for Wrathion to wake up. It didn't take long,
and when he woke, Wrathion roused fast. Wrathion's eyes blinked open and he
stretched, looked over at Anduin and smiled a little sadly. Wrathion shifted
from naked to dressed in a second, climbing out of bed fully garbed. "Your
clothes are in that wardrobe over there," Wrathion told him.
Anduin sat up slowly in bed as Wrathion accepted a small packet of letters from
a guard and sat down at the table, flipping through them.
Anduin got up, self-conscious of his nudity in front of the guards and not
wanting to show it, and went to the wardrobe that had been his mother's. He
opened it and sure enough, all of his clothes were inside. "Where are my
mother's things?" he asked blankly. After his mother's death, his father had
left all her garments as they were. Anduin had sometimes sneaked into his
father's room as a child just to sit inside a corner of this wardrobe and
deeply inhale the scent of his mother that lingered on her clothing.
"Your parents' possessions were moved to the other room," Wrathion answered,
glancing at him and unfolding one of the letters.
As Anduin dressed, more guards brought breakfast in and set it on a table off
to one side. Anduin tried to dress as quickly as he could without obviously
rushing.
"Tea?" Wrathion asked him without looking up.
"Please." Anduin looked at the covered dishes on the table and looked at
Wrathion, who was pouring tea with one hand and reading a letter at the same
time. "How has no one poisoned you yet?"
"I take due precautions." Wrathion lifted the dome off his plate and set it
aside, his eyes still on the letter in his hand. "Has it occurred to you you
eat very well for a prisoner?"
It had, actually. The food that came on his trays was the same rich fare and
generous portions he'd always been served, but his life was no longer active
and busy, and the mirror told he was not as slim as he'd been. His belly was
gently rounded, his chin softer, his cheeks a bit fuller. Wrathion had yet to
remark upon the change.
"Yes." Anduin went to the table and sat down across from Wrathion. "But I
thought that was simply you trying to keep me comfortable."
"Mm. That, and I made it known to the kitchens that you and I eat the same
dishes."
Anduin lifted the dome off his own plate. Normally, with his father, one of the
servers had done that for him, but Wrathion apparently didn't stand on
ceremony. It didn't bother Anduin any. The contents of his plate matched
Wrathion's: scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and sliced pears. "Was that for
mutually assured destruction?"
Wrathion smiled, his eyes still moving quickly as he read. "No, only my safety,
though I suppose the result would be the same if someone managed to slip poison
past my people." He took a bite of eggs, swallowed and added, "The chefs and
their loved ones eat the same things we do. My agents make sure of it. When I
travel, we eat only what we bring with us, or make arrangements to have the
cooks closely watched and eating the same dishes. So have no fear. You and I've
been consuming the same food for the better part of a year and we're still
alive." Wrathion finally put down the parchment and raised piercing red eyes to
his face, lifting an eyebrow. "Of course, the way you ask suggests you might
hope to poison me yourself now that you have some access to my food. Or poison
both of us, even."
Anduin hastily averted his eyes and shook his head. "No."
"Good. Do you know what you're going to say to Tyrande?"
Anduin inhaled deeply and let it out in a sigh. "Everything you've been saying
to me all this time?"
"That will do," Wrathion said. "Do I need to warn you what will happen if you
say or do anything amiss?"
Anduin shook his head again.
They ate in silence for a few minutes before Wrathion asked, brisk and
businesslike, "Would you like me to get you off before we go?"
Anduin colored, but more faintly than he might have some months prior, and he
glanced up, not completely certain he'd understood right.
"So you're relaxed," Wrathion said, looking at Anduin as though he were
suggesting something perfectly sensible.
"Okay," Anduin said, and he ate his eggs.
*
Tyrande was kind, and Anduin held her ancient eyes as he sat beside Wrathion
and made Wrathion's case for peace on his terms.
Wrathion kissed him when they returned to Stormwind, tangling his hands in
Anduin's hair, and kissed him again as they sat beside one another during their
evening meal that night, when Wrathion received word that the kaldorei would
answer to him and abide by his peace.
"I'm glad you trusted me," Wrathion said when they broke the kiss, draping a
jubilant arm around Anduin's shoulders and tightening Anduin against him like a
clamp. "This is your victory, too. Our first shared victory." Despite himself,
Anduin found Wrathion's sheer delight a bit contagious.
"I can't believe she listened to me," Anduin murmured, truly surprised.
"Anduin, my dear prince, you influenced me," Wrathion said fondly, letting go
of him and spearing a bite of bloody beef with his fork. "Of course Tyrande
listened to you. I told you she would. You have to listen to me more."
Anduin couldn't help but smile faintly at the praise and implicit criticism and
the affection all bundled together. "What were you going to do if she hadn't?"
"Since it will not come to pass, I think I would prefer not to tell you."
Anduin's mildly good mood faded in less than a second. "Wrathion." Anduin put a
hand on his arm and stared him down. "I deserve to know what I bought with my
surrender to you." Wrathion did not answer or look at him, and so he demanded
slowly and more intensely: "Tell me."
Wrathion glanced down at Anduin's hand as if considering reproving him, but
then he looked away and swallowed a bite and grimaced. "If you refused to speak
to her, and she refused to see sense, I was going to burn down Teldrassil and
everyone in it." He sighed.
Wrathion said more--phrases like terribly unfortunate, difficult to infiltrate,
how Darnassus is situated, making an example--but Anduin couldn't even process
the reasons he listed. Anduin could only stare at him. Wrathion was as bad as
Garrosh Hellscream... but shouting so wouldn't accomplish anything. Wrathion
fell silent after a few moments, perhaps at the look on his face.
Anduin opened his mouth with no idea what would come out. What he was thinking
about as his mind careened were the millions of lives Wrathion would have so
casually ended -- how could he kill a whole race of people and live with
himself? Yes, Wrathion was a black dragon, but he did seem to have a
conscience, even if he claimed Anduin himself had woken it.
What he said, rather disjointed from his foremost thoughts, was: "Wrathion,
Teldrassil is alive."
"And thanks to you, it still is," Wrathion said, sounding pleased.
"There are so many people there--and the druids--it's well protected. How would
you even do that?"
Wrathion tilted his head a little to the side and looked up at him from under
his thick black lashes, as if to say Anduin should know better than to doubt
him doing any manner of destruction he put his mind to, and he took another
bite of his nearly-raw meat.
*
Wrathion took him by mage portal to Ironforge. Walking at Wrathion's side,
Anduin's step faltered for a second, his heart seized up with dread, when he
realized they were heading to Moira's royal bedchambers. Wrathion glanced at
him but did not ask.
Moira's rooms were empty of her possessions and set for guests. Anduin felt a
discomfiting parallel. Moira had held him hostage once, but she had become a
friend. Wrathion had been his friend and now held him hostage. Anduin ran his
hands over the velvet bedspread that had been Moira's and wondered whether she
was dead or merely on Wrathion's extensive kill list. When he turned, he saw
Wrathion watching him with a line in his brow.
Wrathion's champions had discovered that Brandur Ironhammer, the paladin he'd
placed in charge of the dwarves, was aiding the underground collective of
dwarven rebels. A new commander was installed before they departed; Wrathion
came back to Moira's chambers flanked by Left and Right, and Right had
bloodstains on her knives and her gloves.
The night before they left, when Wrathion came back to their rooms, Anduin sat
on the velvet bedspread and asked, "Did you kill Moira?"
Wrathion looked at him, not unkindly. "Yes, Anduin. But I spared her son, if it
makes you feel any better." He sat next to Anduin and searched his face.
"You've tempered me in many ways, you know."
The comfort was marginal. But Anduin found he had no tears left in him. He lay
down and closed his eyes.
Wrathion took him to the Undercity after that. Anduin had never previously seen
the city of the forsaken, deep beneath the ruins of Lordaeron, and he did not
like it. The city was disturbingly empty, much of it abandoned seemingly
overnight--perhaps literally overnight, Anduin thought. He remembered too what
Wrathion had said about Sylvanas' spies, and he sensed many an eye on his back.
But Wrathion would not have the same problem he'd had in Ironforge; a dead elf
named Koltira was in charge. "I got him out of the dungeons," Wrathion said.
"He takes orders well."
*
They spent a week in Fairbreeze Village, and one night while Anduin lay on the
bed and read, one of Wrathion's mindslave mages came in and filled their large
bathtub with conjured water. Nothing was unusual about that, but ten minutes
later, Wrathion came back to their rooms soaked in blood, dried brown splotches
and red still-wet smears both, all over his clothes and face and hands. It
almost looked like he'd stood half under a blood waterfall, and in places the
redness was drenched thick enough that it still dripped slow to the floor.
Anduin's jaw fell at the sight of him, and he sat up in bed and stared.
"Have you been hunting down rebels, or eating elves?"
"Both, my dear," Wrathion purred, and the red-stained teeth in his self-
satisfied smile spoke volumes.
Anduin was wordless for a second, watching Wrathion lick his lips and feeling
deeply distubed. Wrathion was eating people.
"The food here is perfectly good," Anduin said flatly. "Why would you do that?"
"Instinct," Wrathion said. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."
Anduin shook his head. "Who did you kill?"
Wrathion advanced on him in a way that made Anduin slightly nervous. He knew
Wrathion wouldn't hurt him, but his expression combined with all that spilled
blood gave Anduin a fight-or-flight feeling nevertheless. "The teacher I
mentioned, Antheol, and several of his apprentices, plus a dozen other
insurgents in hiding with him. Once we get rid of Sylvanas, we should have no
more trouble in this part of the world."
Wrathion magicked away Anduin's clothes and pushed him back down on the bed,
and he took Anduin without washing first and without fully undressing himself.
Wrathion kissed him and jerked him off and Anduin felt the coppery taste of
blood and smoke and death would never leave his mouth. Afterwards Wrathion
stood and went over to the large metal tub already filled with water. Anduin
followed more slowly. As they passed the mirror, Anduin saw a secondary imprint
of dried blood on his own face and chest.
"You got blood on me," he said irritably.
Wrathion gave a tiny shrug and an insincere smile. "Good thing we're taking a
bath, then."
Wrathion stirred the water with his free hand and breathed fire for a minute to
ready it, and Anduin backed away from the heat source, so strong was Wrathion's
flame. When Wrathion was satisfied with the temperature of the water, he picked
Anduin up and lifted him inside, then lithely hopped in himself.
The tub had unusually high sides, but he could have gotten in without any help.
But Anduin didn't complain. He immersed himself in the steaming water, came up,
and stared at Wrathion as the dragon washed. "Have you... eaten anyone I know?"
"Not tonight." Wrathion splashed a palmful of hot water over his lips and
cheeks and swiped at the smears of dried blood, dipping his chin beneath the
surface of the water and rubbing.
"Did you eat my father after you killed him?" Anduin asked it bluntly.
Wrathion, who still had some stubborn bloodstains clinging to his chin, lifted
his face above the water, looked at him tenderly and pushed some wet hair back
from Anduin's face. "No, Anduin."
*
Before returning to Stormwind, they went north and spent two days in Silvermoon
City. Anduin had exchanged one prison for another, slightly better prison;
Wrathion still left him alone for long periods of time, but only for hours, not
days, and there were at least new sights to see. Silvermoon was ageless and
beautiful. Wherever they traveled now, their rooms always had shelves of books,
often with volumes he'd never seen before, and Anduin began to read again when
he was alone with his guards.
He was becoming accustomed to the seven empty-eyed former Alliance champions
who took him everywhere Wrathion dictated he go. Anduin had hoped more than
anything to speak privately to some sentient beings who were not Wrathion's
Blacktalons and not mind-controlled, but he was never given the opportunity.
He walked into Sunfury Spire at Wrathion's side. The fabled pageantry of the
city of the blood elves had not changed with their shift in allegiances, and
Right gave his name to the herald on duty as Prince Anduin Wrynn, Prime Consort
of His Majesty the Black Prince. Right had a high, sweet voice, and a Stormwind
accent that made Anduin homesick for a time instead of a place.
Neither elf leader sported the blood sigil on his forehead. The grand
magister's lips were pressed together and he scarcely took his eyes off
Wrathion, but Regent Lord Theron looked at Anduin curiously. Anduin murmured
the proper formalities before Wrathion kissed him lightly and had him escorted
away like a child, under heavier than usual guard to their shared chambers.
Most blood elves steered well clear of Anduin and his guards, giving them a
wide berth. But the guards did not interfere when one elf caught up to them and
kept pace about four feet outside the tight circle they formed around Anduin as
they walked. The elf wore blue and brown armor in strappy leather and
chainmail, and his narrow features were framed by long, slickened blond hair
held in a flattering style by a headband. He exuded vitality and a keen
interest, and he was obviously more courageous than most, judging solely by his
open attempt to converse with Anduin.
"Prince Wrynn?" the elf called, making no attempt to get closer to him.
Anduin tried to get a better look at him past Wrathion's guards. "Yes?"
"Are you all right?"
Despite being spoken at a volume meant to carry, the question was voiced with
such gentleness and caring, Anduin nearly laughed, and he found he couldn't
dredge up an appropriate reply. Some of his diplomatic training had been wiped
out, it seemed, by his stay in isolation. "Not really," Anduin admitted. "Why
are you cooperating with him?"
He couldn't see the elf's eyes well at all, they kept bouncing in and out of
his vision behind the guards. "The sin'dorei are not so many that we can stand
against Stormwind and Orgrimmar, Ironforge and the Undercity and the Marked as
well," the elf called. The Marked. Anduin knew immediately to whom that
referred.
"Do you know how my father died?" The words rushed out. "Did Wrathion kill him
and Garrosh together?"
The elf shook his head slowly, as if he didn't know, and two things suddenly
happened at once: one of the guards veered and lunged, shot a hand out and
grabbed and lifted the elf by the throat, and Anduin felt a searing, red-hot
pain from the onyx bracelet that was suddenly back on his ankle. He fell to the
ground clawing at the skin under the burning bracelet, and the worgen guard
bent and picked him up and began to carry him. As he struggled with the
bracelet, its substance faded and the agony began to recede, though at no great
speed. Anduin summoned the Light to his hands and clutched his ankle, but the
healing power barely touched the pain from Wrathion's black magic. He saw the
elf, his dangling legs kicking, bury a knife to the hilt in his attacker's
breast, but the guard barely reacted. Then Anduin was turned around as he was
toted off, and he saw no more.
The guards brought him into a gracious set of sin'dorei chambers, dropping him
in a heap onto a large circular bed surrounded by gauzy curtains. As always,
they said nothing. Anduin righted himself, fumed for a few minutes, resenting
the indignity of it all, his ankle still throbbing and uncomfortable, and he
worried for the fate of the elf who'd approached him. After a time he selected
and cracked open a lavishly illustrated book that turned out to be a biography
of King Dath'remar Sunstrider. He lay back down on the silken duvet and began
to read, angrily.
He vented his spleen with Wrathion later, when the dragon came to their rooms.
"You hurt my ankle. I was just talking to him," Anduin said crossly, refusing
to look up from his book.
"I didn't let you out of your room so you could talk to strangers," Wrathion
told him, sitting down at the table and examining some messages he'd received.
He sounded amused by the whole thing, but there was some emotion underlying it
that Anduin couldn't quite pinpoint.
"Right," Anduin said sarcastically, and he got up and threw his book down and
began to pace like the caged, incensed animal he felt himself. "You let me out
so you could hold me prisoner in your room instead of mine, to take me places
so you can fuck me more conveniently with no pesky interruptions from the
murder you claim you have to do, yet still keep me from talking to anyone else
ever again."
The dragon looked up mid-tirade but waited for him to finish. "Anduin,"
Wrathion said with deadly quiet. "Come here."
Had he gone too far? It sounded like Wrathion was preparing to reprimand him,
or even punish him. Anduin thought about refusing, but something in Wrathion's
tone was not to be trifled with, so Anduin went to Wrathion's side and crossed
his arms over his chest, looking down with resentment to conceal his growing
tingle of apprehension.
The dragon stood. Wrathion kept his human body half an inch taller than
Anduin's, so they were of a height to easily look into one another's faces.
"You are my consort. Behave like it." Wrathion searched his eyes, making Anduin
want to turn away from the scrutiny. "If you prefer to simply be my prisoner,
say so."
Anduin didn't answer, and so after a few seconds, Wrathion went on in measured
tones. "Then this will be my only warning. If you undermine me, I will lock you
in the deepest dungeon under Stormwind until everyone but me has forgotten you
were ever alive."
Anduin knew Wrathion could and would do it, too, in a heartbeat. He had what
he'd most wanted from Anduin--his surrender, his kingdom, his blessing for
Wrathion's rule.
"I thought you were different from the rest of your family," Anduin said,
accusing despite his fear, despite his despair. His voice shook. "But you
turned out to be just like them."
"More fool you if you think so." The dragon took Anduin's wretched face in his
hands and punctuated his promise with a kiss on Anduin's cheek.
Then Wrathion sat back down and ignored him for the rest of the evening,
sitting at the table reading his letters and scratching out his own on thick
parchments, writing who knew what to Light knew who. Anduin returned to his
book, though he found it hard to concentrate on the words, beginning the same
paragraph repeatedly but never managing to finish it. He regretted his words.
His heart ached, and he felt oddly... guilty. Like he'd betrayed Wrathion's
trust. As though Wrathion trusted him at all. As though he owed Wrathion
anything.
It was galling, but he couldn't help how he felt. He knew, though, that by
keeping him secluded and being the only sentient face he ever saw for so long,
Wrathion had warped his ability to put the complexities of their relationship
in context. By design, Wrathion's importance to him was outsized.
Truly, their relationship was fucked up. But Anduin wondered how much more
broken he would be without it.
Of course, without Wrathion's feelings for him, he thought, he wouldn't even be
alive. Wrathion would have killed him long ago, along with all the others who
refused to collaborate with his plans for a new world.
Anduin closed his book, knelt down on the floor next to the bed, and began to
silently pray, as always now, for wisdom and for fortitude.
Anduin fell deeply into a prayerful trance, but when Wrathion finally
extinguished the brazier, Anduin stirred from his reflection. As was his habit,
Wrathion instantly undressed himself with a spell. What was different was the
way he slid into the other side of the bed without looking at Anduin, and
without speaking to him.
Anduin took a final long, calming breath, feeling comforted and refreshed by
the gentle brush of the Light, and he slipped out of his clothes and climbed
into bed next to Wrathion.
Wordlessly he ducked down under the sheet and took Wrathion's shaft in his
hand. The room was dark, so he conjured a bit of Light with his other hand to
see better. Wrathion's cock was both familiar and foreign. For all the times it
had been inside him, Anduin had never examined Wrathion's member up close. The
flesh was velvety soft and a few shades darker than the rest of his skin. The
heavy scent and the weight and the softness seemed like the essence of sex to
Anduin, and he shivered at the thought of what he was about to do.
Anduin gave his first, careful blowjob, trying to keep his lips tucked over his
teeth the way Wrathion did, and attempting to take Wrathion's cock into his
throat without gagging. He was not terribly successful. Wrathion said nothing
but put a hand to the side of his head, guiding him in a rhythm that must have
pleased him at least a little. Anduin licked a finger and carefully pushed the
first knuckle into Wrathion's asshole, moving his fingertip gently, because
that was something Wrathion sometimes did to him that he liked.
Anduin's jaw started to ache after a few minutes, and he segued to sucking the
first few inches of Wrathion's cock while jerking him off with one hand. His
arm grew tired, but he remained intent on what he'd begun until Wrathion's
stomach and thighs tensed and his balls tightened. Wrathion gripped a handful
of his hair and thrust up hard enough that Anduin's fingers slipped off,
Wrathion's cock going in far and gagging him. The back of Anduin's mouth and
throat were flooded with salty, bitter, burning hot liquid, making him choke
and cough and spit despite his intention to swallow. Semen tasted terrible,
nauseating even, and Wrathion's was hot enough that it felt almost scalding. He
couldn't get it out of his mouth fast enough.
But despite that, he still felt strangely proud to have made Wrathion come with
his mouth. How twisted he'd become, he thought. It was a wonder the Light still
answered his call. But his faith had never wavered, only his confidence in his
own purpose.
Almost shyly he emerged from under the sheet. Wrathion's eyes were closed, but
his arm was outstretched, so Anduin pillowed his head on Wrathion's bicep and
fell asleep.
*
Things between them were normal again the next morning; Wrathion seemed to have
forgiven him. Anduin thought he'd gotten away with his small, unplanned act of
defiance without any real consequences, but when they returned to Stormwind
that night, the elf to whom he'd spoken awaited him in his father's
bedchambers. From beneath the mark on his forehead, the elf looked at Anduin
with dead, empty eyes.
Without taking his gaze from the somehow sightless eyes of the blood elf,
though his own vision blurred with tears, Anduin lay down on the bed and wept
silently.
Wrathion sat behind him and put a hand on the small of his back, rubbing in
small circles, quite similar to the way Bolvar used to so many years ago. "I
couldn't have him talking, you know," he said.
Anduin had no answer, and Wrathion lay down behind him, drawing close. He
slipped an arm under Anduin's neck and wrapped warm arms tight around Anduin's
chest, his grace a torment and the only comfort Anduin could have.
Without any obvious signal of dismissal from Wrathion, the guard turned and
left the room. The others remained, and a few minutes later a replacement
entered and assumed the same spot against the wall. Anduin felt for a moment
like none of it was real, and he spoke as though he was in a dream.
"Wrathion... what do you even want from me?"
Wrathion's voice was muffled with his lips half against Anduin's neck, but
Anduin could understand him. "Just you."
They lay there together for a long time, Wrathion's slow exhalations warm
across the back and side of Anduin's neck, alternating with the feeling of cool
air when he inhaled, and Anduin eventually fell asleep.
When he woke, Wrathion was gone, and while he waited for Wrathion to return,
Anduin set the board for Jihui.
End Notes
     Edited August 2016 because I have been spelling Jihui wrong. Whoops.
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