Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The heavy oak doors to Sesshoumaru’s chambers shuddered under an insistent assault, the irksome sound shattering the evening’s quiet. From his perch on the balcony, the young prince lifted his gaze. The familiar, unforgiving cadence of fist against wood tightened his jaw. It was a summons he could not ignore. “Enter,” he said.

The door creaked inward. He turned from the sprawling vista of the capital, settling his eyes on the unwanted guest. Though his expression remained impassive, a subtle inclination of his head acknowledged the King’s arrival. “Father,” he intoned, his hands resting on the cold stone of the balustrade. 

A year had passed since his return to King’s Landing, a year under the same roof as his sire, yet the chill of the North still clung to their every interaction. A constant reminder of a separation that had lasted half a decade. Both father and son had grown unaccustomed to each other’s presence. 

Inu Taishou crossed the room with a warrior’s stride, the weight of his age and his crown evident in the heavy set of his shoulders. “Good even, my son,” he greeted, settling beside Sesshoumaru as he reached the balcony. His gaze drifted over the city, hands clasped behind his back. “I was hoping to speak with you at tonight’s feast, but as always, you remain elusive. I looked away for a moment, and you were nowhere to be seen.” 

A slight thinning of the lips was the only outward sign of Sesshoumaru’s displeasure. The unspoken reprimand was evident to him. “I am not fond of the crowded affairs of the court, Father. You are aware of my distaste for such events.” The counter was delivered evenly. His preference for the solitude of his quarters over the clamor of the Red Keep was far from a novelty. Still, it was a habit his father seemed eternally determined to challenge.

“Indeed, I am,” Inu Taishou conceded. He turned from the city to his son. “It is no matter. We shall speak here, then. Or have you no time for your old father?” 

Sesshoumaru’s eyes flickered sideways, the King’s subtle plot to appeal to his guilt too obvious to go unnoticed. After everything and perhaps despite himself, he was not entirely immune to it. “I have time to spare. What is it that you wish to discuss?” 

There was a thoughtful pause, then—as if his father were quietly assessing him. "You returned from the North a year ago. The matter that led you there was... unpleasant, I realize. For everyone involved." The words were uttered with deliberate care, but that only made them all the more unnerving. "I hope you understand I sent you away moved not by spite or anger, but necessity. There was unrest in the court. House Velaryon was demanding justice be served." 

Sesshoumaru’s expression remained stoic as he recalled the events that led to his enforced absence. The training yard, the clash of steel, the crimson stain on the packed earth. His cousin’s face, contorted in pain, flashed before his inner eye. Though the sting of his father’s judgment lingered, a cold understanding of the political realities of the kingdom tempered his resentment.

“The motives behind your decision are clear to me,” he spoke, a flat statement, devoid of warmth. “House Velaryon was owed restitutions for their slain member. It was your duty as King to ensure they would be made.” A sliver of ice betrayed his otherwise composed demeanor. Banishment, however temporary, had been a bitter reminder of his perceived failings, and winter had not been kind to him.

“They are clear, you say?” A certain skepticism clung to the question. When it was only met with a sullen silence, a muscle twitched in the King’s jaw. His gaze briefly wavered. “It did not seem so, at the time. I am aware you were unhappy with me. You made no secret of it.” 

A subtle rigidity stiffened Sesshoumaru’s spine, the turn of the conversation scraping against the raw edges of old wounds. Whispers of their confrontation in the Great Hall still snaked through the court, even nowadays. “I found it unfair to be sent away on account of a single incident,” he admitted, reluctantly. “I understand now it was not my place to question your decision. The North taught me many things.” 

Though the proud set of his jaw remained, a hard-won discipline allowed him to keep his feelings under wraps, no matter how overwhelming. He had learned, in the harsh cold of winter, that at times conceding was inevitable. At least in the presence of those whose authority he acknowledged, however grudgingly. 

“I hoped it would,” Inu Taishou confessed, a flicker of approval in his stern golden eyes. Memory softened the hard lines of his face. “I myself spent many years in the region, a ward in my youth. It is not without its hardships. The people are cold, and the weather… Well, the weather is a beast all its own. One gains a different perspective, though, when standing alone at the edge of the world. I learned humility—a lesson the southrons often forget in their sun-drenched arrogance."

A faint, almost imperceptible scoff escaped Sesshoumaru’s lips, a ghost of a smirk playing on the sharp angles of his mouth. He found the notion ridiculous. The North was a land of stark survival, where pride was often the only shield against the relentless elements and the wary gazes of strangers. Yet, his father spoke with a conviction that brooked no arguments. 

“Winter is, indeed, a season of harshness.” Sesshoumaru’s attention shifted to his own hands, as if he could still feel the phantom sting of frost on his skin. “It strips everything from you.” The memory of endless, starless nights in a draughty keep, longing for the warmth of family and the sights of his youth, was a brand even now he carried. Humility felt a distant cousin to the cold, hard resilience it had demanded.

Inu Taishou’s brow furrowed, seeming disquieted by the remark, for some reason. “You were different upon your return,” he mused, as if speaking to himself. “Even as a babe, you were not given to… expressing yourself, the way other children did. Silent as a grave, you were. Wouldn’t speak a peep, wouldn’t share a flicker of what went on behind those molten gold eyes with neither me nor your mother. We fretted over it often.” 

Sesshoumaru had heard the tale from his mother countless times—the King’s taciturn broodings, the unnerving stillness of the nursery, the hushed whispers of healers wondering at the child who offered no cries to the world. The struggles later on, when he learned how to walk, play, and even gesture, but not to speak. He’d uttered his first word at age four, and his mother had wept from joy. As the seasons turned, Sesshoumaru favored silence more often than not, though, offering only curt nods, blank stares, and noncommittal sounds. 

“Now you do speak,” Inu Taishou said, the assertion tinged with a strange yearning, “yet you choose not to. You withdraw from me, from your lady mother, from the members of the court. I reach for you, time and again, but my hand grasps only air. Whatever shadow plagues your mind, you keep it locked away.” 

Sesshoumaru’s expression hardened. He could hear the tremor of concern in the King’s voice, the desire to understand what had shifted in the core of him. The articulation of it remained shrouded in a fog of his own making. How could he give voice to feelings that even within his own heart remained formless and undefined?

“Nothing plagues my mind, Father,” he declared, the lie rolling easily off his tongue. “Frivolous conversation holds no interest for me, that is all.” 

Disappointment flickered across Inu Taishou’s face, a wounded resignation in his heavy sigh. He did not press. Straight answers from the Crown Prince had always been rare. “You frequent the training yards,” he observed, charting a different course. “Since your return, I hear the clang of steel from dawn till dusk. The sword, it seems, holds greater allure than the company of men. Your skill with it is… remarkable. They say no blade in Westeros sings a deadlier song.” 

A hint of something akin to warmth stirred within Sesshoumaru. The King’s praise, so rarely offered, was not a boon to scoff at. The countless hours spent in the training yard, the sweat and the strain, the relentless pursuit of mastery—it was a solitary endeavor, but one he always welcomed. To hear it acknowledged by his estranged father was gratifying, even now. He straightened his shoulders, a subtle shift in his posture. 

"The blade is not just a weapon," he stated, allowing a shadow of truth to breach his usual reserve, "it is an extension of the swordsman. To master it is to come closer to perfecting one's own self." 

“You welcome a challenge—that is common in a man your age.” Inu Taishou’s eyes gleamed, sharp and knowing. “I’ve noted your preference for sparring with knights. Kingsguard, the Lord Commander foremost among them. Worthy opponents of your skill.” He seemed bemused then, his brow knitting slightly. “So you’ll forgive my bewilderment when word first reached my ears that you were engaging in, ah... practice bouts with Inuyasha." 

The mention of the half-blood, in that context, was enough to sour Sesshoumaru’s mood. He froze, a subtle tension rippling through his frame. Though his face remained a carefully sculpted mask, the hard line of his jaw hinted at displeasure. This was a subject he would rather leave buried. "What of it?" He asked, his tone harsher than it had been a moment ago. 

Though his youngest was not there to hear, Inu Taishou seemed to choose his next words with caution. “Inuyasha is very eager about learning the art of the sword. Passionate, one might even say. He dreams of donning the white cloak of the Kingsguard, though I have often cautioned his mother to temper such aspirations. It is no secret that his technique, at its most generous assessment, is unrefined. " 

There was no sting of harshness, no hint of paternal disappointment in the King's voice. Unlike many in the Red Keep, who often spoke of Inuyasha's clumsy efforts with a thinly veiled disdain, he offered only a factual observation. Natural talent was a gift the boy simply did not possess. "Well, you will understand my initial confusion as to why you would suddenly seek out such a decidedly... unremarkable opponent for your practice."

Sesshoumaru’s eyes darkened at his father’s blunt assessment. Inuyasha’s lack of grace with a blade was a truth readily apparent, though one he hadn’t truly dwelled upon. He had always approached their bouts as a mere diversion, a way to while away idle hours. “It is of no consequence to me,” he said, and although he affected an air of indifference, a subtle defensiveness colored his tone. “He is… decent enough. For a means to pass the time.” 

"Decent enough," Inu Taishou repeated, unable to hide his skepticism. "Well, my curiosity was piqued, to say the least. I took it upon myself to visit the training yard, to witness this pastime of yours. I confess I was not pleased by what unfolded before my eyes. It was no contest. A slaughter, plain and simple. The manner in which you wielded your steel against him was brutal, without a hint of mercy. Pitiful to behold. And yet," a grudging note entered the King's tone, "the boy kept rising, each time battered and bruised, refusing to yield until his body finally betrayed his stubborn spirit. He possesses a certain tenacity, I will grant him that."

Sesshoumaru's gaze darted away. Briefly, shame crossed his features, though it was quickly suppressed. Ruthlessness on the battlefield was the norm for him, but being reprimanded for his handling of Inuyasha stung in a way he hadn't anticipated. The bastard's stubborn refusal to yield had always been a thorn in his side, yet a grudging respect also lay there, buried deep. 

"The bastard desired to spar.” He stood his ground, unwilling to admit to any wrongdoing. "And I saw no reason to offer him less than my full measure." 

"No, you did not," Inu Taishou agreed, a sharper retort held firmly in check. "I allowed this matter to continue because I didn’t wish to further humiliate Inuyasha. However, it became abundantly clear that your brutal handling of him in the yard was not born of any desire to instruct, nor was it some misplaced attempt at bonding with your half-brother. The animosity between you two is an old thing.”

He drew in a heavy breath, and he suddenly appeared old and weathered, his usual vitality diminished. “I held no illusions that your time in the North would have softened that ancient discord. Inuyasha can be a  bloody nuisance, I know it well. He possesses a rare talent for rubbing folk the wrong way." 

A fleeting smile touched the King's lips, only to vanish as quickly as it came. "I surmised that these violent encounters were merely a means for you to vent your frustrations. Regardless, I held my peace. Even when I was first informed that you had broken his arm during sparring, I stilled my hand. But when these incidents became a constant refrain, I knew I could remain silent no longer."

A muscle in Sesshoumaru's jaw clenched. Broken limbs were unfortunate byproducts of his superior skill. Never deliberate. Brief moments when his control slipped. Confessions of such lapses were beyond him, especially to his sire. His youthful disdain for Inuyasha, a creature of lesser blood and unwavering insolence, had only festered in the days of his banishment. He’d been so easily discarded, while the bastard had been allowed to remain in the Red Keep, by the King’s side. 

Still, a faint, unwelcome prick of guilt lingered every time he felt the bones break beneath his grasp. "If my actions so displeased you," he countered, his voice edged with defensive steel, "why this belated intervention? Why speak of it only now?" 

“Something seemed to shift,” Inu Taishou replied easily, forsaking any embellishment. “Your encounters in the yard were frequent, yet the earlier savagery was gone. No further injuries were reported, and Inuyasha seemed content with his progress. I held my tongue, deeming the matter resolved. Perhaps that was an error in judgment."

A single, elegant eyebrow arched on Sesshoumaru's face. Inuyasha, ever the witless fool, would likely find satisfaction in the most negligible trace of improvement. "You speak as if he has achieved some grand feat," he remarked, a smirk briefly tugging at the corner of his mouth. "He remains a lamentable excuse for a swordsman."

Inu Taishou held his son's stare for a long moment, a subtle downturn to his mouth. "Indeed," he conceded, without bitterness, "but his satisfaction brought me a measure of my own."

A silence descended between them, broken only by the whisper of the night wind. Inu Taishou looked away, considering the cityscape, bleeding into the inky darkness of the late hour. His gaze then lifted, drawn to the sky above, a blaze of stars black as velvet. "My Blood," he asked, seeming almost introspective, "is there anything in this world that you hold… precious enough to protect?"

Sesshoumaru closed his eyes briefly, struggling to conceal the flare of his irritation. His father’s strange musings never failed to put a damper on his mood. "Protect?" he repeated, the word tasting foreign on his tongue. He’d taken on the role of protector often enough, though not of anything that truly held his regard. It took him some time to find an answer that wouldn’t cause offense. “I protect what duty demands of me. The stability of the Realm, the keen edge of my blade, the honor of my House. These are the only matters that concern me.” 

Inu Taishou seemed unsurprised by his well-curated reply. A weary acceptance seemed etched into the lines around his eyes. “It is not customary for a King’s bastard, sired on foreign soil by a courtesan, to reside within the Red Keep’s halls. I know you are aware of this.” He paused, his eyes distant, as if recalling a long-past storm. Sesshoumaru couldn’t help but find it cynical. 

“It was a scandal—the day I brought Izayoi here from Essos, heavy with child. Your mother offered me nothing but silence for many moons. The Small Council murmured their displeasure like vipers in the rushes. I did not let that sway me. Tradition demanded I send her away with a purse of coin and be done with it, but I could not bring myself to do so. She was a maiden the night we knew each other—a lady of noble birth brought low by her father's failed rebellion in the sands of Meereen. It was my belief that both she and the child she carried—my child—deserved more than the cruel hand of custom."

Sesshoumaru’s fists curled, overwhelmed by a fleeting storm of feeling. The slight committed against his mother was an old wound, one that after more than a decade hadn’t healed. Ever since he’d held an equal amount of respect and resentment for the man before him. "I know the story," he said, not a hint of inflection in his voice. "I just fail to see its relevance."

“Inuyasha holds no claim to a title, to neither my riches nor my lands. He cannot even bear my name,” Inu Taishou murmured, his face contorted by self-reproach. “Waters he is called. I am ashamed of myself every time I hear it. Your mother wouldn’t forgive such a transgression were I to legitimize him, and her fury would be just. It would be a blemish upon her honor.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, listless and heavy-eyed. He appeared annoyed, but not by his firstborn. “I am a flawed man, a slave to my own impulses and follies, but for that, Inuyasha bears no fault. The court whispers that I have bestowed upon him more than his due, yet in my heart, I feel a debt owed, not the other way around.” There was a cold determination to his father’s stance then, an unguarded softness to his gaze that spoke of devotion. “My name I cannot grant him, but so long as breath fills my lungs, he shall have my protection."

A knot tightened in Sesshoumaru's gut. The circumstances of Inuyasha's birth had always been known to him, yet the recounting still twisted within him like a cold blade. To hear his father speak of him with such tender affection was a spit in the face, almost unbearable. He clenched his jaw, forcing down the sharp retort that clawed at his throat. "And what of me, Father?" he asked, remembering the cold bite of winter and the moons of endless night. "What am I owed?"

“You are my heir, Prince of Dragonstone,” Inu Taishou reminded him, not unkindly. “The blood of Old Valyria flows strongest in your veins. My lands, my titles, all shall be yours. And when I pass from this mortal coil, it is you who will sit on the Iron Throne.” Despite his gentle words, a keenness lined his father’s tone, as if he were struggling to understand, even now. “Is that not enough to satisfy your ambition?" 

A coldness settled upon Sesshoumaru’s chest, the weight as familiar as it was draining. Though he no longer lacked the capacity to bring forward his grievances, it seemed as if his father remained deaf to them. There was a reason he rarely felt the need to voice them. To be unbound by duty or expectation was a futile yearning, and certainly not one the old King would understand. Since the moment of his birth, or perhaps even before that, he had been chosen. Inuyasha, cast aside. For him to be envious of the bastard was illogical, and he knew it.

A resentful longing stirred within him at the thought of his half-brother. “No,” he replied tightly, “I’ve no need for more than what is rightfully mine.”

Inu Taishou closed the distance between them, his hand, calloused from years of wielding a longsword and the scaled hide of dragon reins, settling on the nape of Sesshoumaru’s neck. A rare, unguarded gesture. "I know these words ring hollow to your ears, and perhaps the blame lies with me," he said, earnestly, “but my affection for you is no less than what I bear for Inuyasha. You are my son, my firstborn, the future of my bloodline. Let no shadow of doubt cloud that truth." 

Sesshoumaru struggled not to grimace at his presumption, as if hollow declarations were enough to bridge the chasm that had grown between them. His father’s rare expressions of care filled him with both warmth and unease. Yet, he remained still beneath the touch. The press of flesh had rarely been a comfort for him, despite neither his father nor mother having ever withheld it while he was growing up. The reasons were a mystery even to him. "I understand, Father," he replied, longing for him to step away.

Inu Taishou inclined his head, and the hand at his nape tightened almost imperceptibly. A jolt of tension ran through Sesshoumaru’s frame. “But hear this, Young Dragon,” the King said, his gaze locking onto his son’s with a strange intensity, "Inuyasha may lack the privilege of trueborn status and stand unequal to you in name, yet that grants you no leave to do with him as you will."

Sesshoumaru bristled at his father’s unspoken threat. He didn’t excel at blindly following commands, particularly concerning the half-blood, and it chafed at his pride. He had the sense to school his features into a mask of indifference, though. “Get to the heart of it. To what end do these words serve?” he demanded, raising his head in defiance. “He is your bastard, not mine. He’s not my concern.” 

Inu Taishou drew a long breath, seeming struck by his firstborn’s nerve. “Is that your truth?” he countered, shaking his head in disbelief. “Why is it then that you seem to concern yourself with him so jealously?” Slowly, he released his hold on Sesshoumaru’s neck, yet remained standing near. "You speak rightly, of course. He is baseborn, and you… you are the scion of the dragon kings, the heir to the Iron Throne. You were raised separately for a reason.”

A shadow of melancholy then fell over his features. "Though my own heart might have wished otherwise, no duty bound you to forge kinship with him. The choice to keep him at arm's length was yours to make, freely. Yet, that is not the path you have chosen." There was an edge of accusation to the statement, and Sesshoumaru shivered, despite himself.

This unwelcome turn in the conversation had him on edge. Beneath his unease, though, a cold, simmering fury prevailed. He had always moved in the shadows regarding Inuyasha, ensuring his father remained blissfully unaware, yet now, the keen eyes of the King pierced through his carefully crafted mask. "What is it that you are trying to say, Father?" he asked, evenly. His first instinct was to recoil, to put distance between himself and this unsettling scrutiny, but he quelled the urge, planting his feet firmly.

“You believe yourself unseen,” rather than enraged, Inu Taishou appeared unnerved by his attempts at deceit, “yet your secrets are not as well-kept as you imagine.” 

A glacial dread seeped into Sesshoumaru's veins, yet he refused to let it show. He couldn’t be certain how much his father knew or what conclusion he might have drawn from his findings. To confirm or deny anything felt like stepping onto treacherous ice. “You speak in riddles.” Affecting annoyance was almost second nature by now. “I’ve no idea what you mean.”

“Spare me the pretense of ignorance. It’s offensive,” Inu Taishou replied. He spoke with the weariness of someone familiar with this predictable pattern of denial.

Sesshoumaru’s heart beat like a trapped bird, but his lips remained sealed. He would not yield to the turbulent surge of his feelings, would not confess to any hidden bond with the half-blood. Weakness of that kind should be beyond his endurance. He could admit it to no one, least of all the King. Uncertainty gnawed at him, though, a feeling of exposure he had never known before. 

Inu Taishou, at least, offered him the small mercy of looking away. “It did strike me as odd when it was brought to my notice that you were spending time together outside the training yard. Hunting parties, walks in the Godswood, sails along the coast. I was led to believe that you had found some manner of understanding, if not outright companionship, in each other.” A subtle downturn of the lips betrayed his disappointment. Sesshoumaru did not allow himself to cower. 

“I was gladdened by it, truth be told. I dared to hope you were finally lowering your guard with someone, and though Inuyasha was an unexpected choice, a part of me was relieved. The boy can be obstinate, no manners whatsoever, and his general company is often trying. I am not blind to his faults. Yet, beneath that rough exterior lies a good heart. I had hoped his presence might… ease your burdens."

Sesshoumaru offered no reply. There was a sliver of truth to his father’s assumptions, but it was not mere companionship that he sought, time and again, from Inuyasha. Even in the days of his youth, he’d felt nothing but discontent amidst the fangs of courtly life and his noble peers. Inuyasha remained the singular exception, despite his many irritating traits. It was most unseemly, of course. Sesshoumaru was not ready to articulate what it was he felt for him, not even in the privacy of his own thoughts. To voice it before his father was unthinkable. He knew, with a cold sort of certainty, that the King would never understand. 

“Clearly, I was mistaken. I didn’t realize what was unfolding before my eyes. I do not feel solely responsible for that oversight. I mean, what reason had I to suspect such a thing?" Inu Taishou murmured, almost as if speaking to himself. He cleared his throat, a subtle shift in his posture betraying discomfort. Sesshoumaru caught his brief, sidelong glance, but he quickly looked away. 

“Your disinterest in the company of maidens has been apparent to me since you were but a lad,” he spoke, carefully. “I did not begrudge it, as you were always sensible and discreet with these matters. Inuyasha, however… I confess that came as a surprise. While he has failed to capture the attention of the high-born, the serving girls seem quite taken with him.”

At last, his indiscretions came to light. A flush warmed Sesshoumaru’s ears. He’d always known, in a distant corner of himself, that no secret could long remain hidden from the King. Still, to be finally confronted with it struck him with a force he hadn’t foreseen. There was no protestation of innocence, no excuse mitigating enough, no way to unravel the intricate web he had woven around the members of his own household. The threads seemed to be slipping through his grasp.

"That is, perhaps, the crux of my unease," Inu Taishou admitted quietly.

A single brow arched on Sesshoumaru’s face, an uncertain curiosity breaking through his composure. The possibility of extricating himself from this unwelcome inquisition might have dwindled to nothing, yet he was intrigued nonetheless. “Why?” he asked, neither denial nor confirmation. 

“Inuyasha is barely a man, sixteen summers come and gone. Impressionable, easily misled. And you and I both know that his sense is often lacking.” The words were chosen deliberately and with great care. Sesshoumaru knew the King couldn’t bring himself to call his youngest dim, even if he thought it often. "Perhaps the truth is obscured for you by the constant friction between you, that enduring animosity that was evident even in your youth. Inuyasha's challenges, his constant need to test you, are not born of hatred, nor from any delusion of superiority." 

A pale gleam appeared in Inu Taishou’s eyes, barely concealed by the shadows framing his grave features. "He does it because he looks up to you. He seeks your approval. He has always yearned for your notice, followed in your wake since his first steps, despite the consistent coldness of your regard. I cannot claim to understand what path led you to involve yourself with him in this manner. But I fear Inuyasha may have simply yielded to your advances in a misguided attempt to gain your favor. To please you in the only way you’d allow."

Sesshoumaru’s heart sank at the implication, a cold dread washing over him. He had never been blind to the unequal footing between Inuyasha and himself. The uneven hand fate had dealt them, the gulf between the high and the low, the disparity of their ages—it was always on the edge of his awareness. To think Inuyasha might have entrusted himself to him for any reason other than his own volition was unsettling. “Do you consider me capable of… forcing myself on him?” he asked, slowly, unsure if he wanted to know the answer. 

Inu Taishou’s throat worked visibly as he paused, gathering his thoughts. “I want to believe you wouldn’t,” he said, at last. “I cannot dismiss the possibility that you might have exploited his affections, however unknowingly. And I remain uncertain whether Inuyasha truly comprehends the weight of his actions."

Sesshoumaru shook his head minutely, barely refraining from lashing out. Even now, he was convinced Inuyasha was not unaware, as his father implied. The notion that the boy might have sought his bed in a desperate bid for his notice, the brother who had only ever offered him disdain, was plausible enough to bring him pause, though. He felt tainted, all of a sudden. The already delicate affair seemed to take a darker form. Strangely, the thought of Inuyasha willingly surrendering for the wrong reasons felt far more abhorrent to him than that of resistance overcome by force. Guilt clawed at him with the ferocity of a rabid wolf. 

As usual, his silence persisted. Inu Taishou regarded him for a long moment, his eyes searching. “Have you no words to offer?”

Sesshoumaru inhaled deeply, striving for balance, yet it kept escaping his grasp. “What purpose would further words serve? The tale you spin is plain enough. He, the unwary fawn, lured from the shelter of the thicket. Me, the nefarious beast who’s ensnared the youngblood you so adore!” 

“Why must you turn my meaning? I’ve made no such claims!” Inu Taishou's head moved in a sharp, weary motion, his patience finally fraying. “Why this reluctance to be forthright? Must you always obscure the truth? Stand in the light, and unveil for me your reasons! What led to this?” 

Sesshoumaru’s first impulse was deflection. The prospect of dissecting this entanglement, of allowing his father to peer into the unwelcome stirrings within him, was distasteful. He recognized the futility of it, though. “My inclinations led me thus,” he stated plainly. It felt innocuous enough, but perhaps a flicker of something darker had betrayed him—a tightening of his jaw, a shadow falling over his features—for a storm gathered in the King’s gaze.

“Do not be obtuse! That is not the heart of my inquiry!” Inu Taishou’s restraint, at last, ebbed away. He seized his son by the shoulders, his fingers digging in, barely suppressing the urge to shake him. A furious heat flushed his face, his questioning unleashed in High Valyrian, as if wary of being overheard. "I wish to know why you lie with your kin, your father's get! A babe you watched crawl and whom you ever claimed to loathe! How did such a thing even take root in your mind? What is it that you seek from these encounters?"  

Sesshoumaru’s teeth gritted at his father’s forceful grip. He had never before witnessed such fury from him. Determined to betray no hint of discomfort, he willed his body to remain rigid. The right words eluded him, as was often the case. Any flimsy veil of reason he might’ve offered seemed hollow and insufficient. "I…"  he began, his throat constricting. "I cannot say."

Inu Taishou went abruptly still, apprehension momentarily quelling his anger."Do you make sport of him? Is it your pleasure to see him disgraced?" he asked, his voice strained, the tremor scarcely contained. There laid the core of his fear. 

Sesshoumaru blinked slowly, a sensation akin to sickness overtaking him. "That is a foul suggestion,” he replied, coldly. Subjugation was not and had never been the root. The idea of his touch being a source of shame for Inuyasha was hurtful. 

"Then why?" Inu Taishou's hands framed his face, the grip firm, almost bruising. "Tell me the reason, by the Mother’s mercy!” 

Sesshoumaru’s eyes squeezed shut. The raw plea in his father’s gaze was disarming, a sight he was ill-equipped to face. “I desired him,” he confessed, a quiet breath against the night’s chill. A frown grazed his brow, as if he himself could not understand it. “What else would you have me say?”

“You desired him,” Inu Taishou echoed flatly, a weary disbelief. It was a simple enough declaration, yet it seemed to leave a bitter taste in his father's mouth. Sesshoumaru wasn’t sure what else he’d been expecting. Perhaps the notion of an already fragile fraternal bond being defiled for something as base as lust was inherently repellent to him. "And your urges held such dominion over you that you could not resist?"

A cold trepidation washed over Sesshoumaru as he became aware of the sheer inadequacy of his admission. Every fiber of his being recoiled, urging him to retract the damning words. Yet, the truth, however humiliating, was too evident to deny. "Yes," he conceded.

“I see,” Inu Taishou murmured, still scrutinizing him, as if searching for answers in his silence. "Have you ever troubled yourself to look beneath the surface of this wanting?" he finally asked, somewhat hesitant. 

Sesshoumaru didn’t know how to answer that question. The ‘why’ hadn’t held his interest, too consumed with the feelings themselves to allow for introspection. He groped for footing, unsuccessfully. It was, by its very nature, untethered to reason. What he sought time and again was the boy in his most unguarded state—stripped bare of his usual prickles, skin flushed with a feverish heat, wild and untamed as a captured stag, his tongue loosened to a raw longing he wouldn’t confess to in the light. “No, I haven’t,” was all he could muster.

"Are your intentions as base as the rutting of animals?" His father looked ashen and drawn, a man bracing for ill news. “Is it whimsical in nature? Do you seek him out for the mere carnality of the act, and nothing else?” 

The crude summation of his feelings left Sesshoumaru with a visceral sense of defilement. His father made it sound as though it were vile and degrading, and it wasn’t. Though their bloodlines diverged at the womb, the same sigil marked them as kin, and the laws of virtue demanded a deeper reason. For the King to imply that wasn’t the case made him feel unclean. 

“No… it’s not about the carnality of it,” he spoke, eyes averted. 

“What is it, then? Why won’t you speak of it?” Inu Taishou questioned, with such softness one had to strain to hear. “Does your eye hold no regard for his spirit, only his form? Does your desire know no tenderness, no affection? Tell me I’m mistaken. Shed some light upon this darkness.” 

Sesshoumaru turned his back on his father, searching for a brief reprieve. His bond with Inuyasha had been a tangled thread ever since he could remember, further knotted by the chasm of years apart. Kin, yet not truly so. Brothers in name, strangers in truth. Forced to endure each other’s presence at courtly gatherings, yet kept asunder in private by the venom of their mothers. 

The pull he felt towards Inuyasha in the moons since his return was a beast stranger still—riveting and utterly foreign, searing as Dragonfire. The half-blood was no mere vessel for his hollow yearning, though. He was something far greater. Though their shared youth held no true warmth in his memory, Inuyasha possessed a familiarity that the vipers of the court, ever poised to strike, could never offer. A semblance of safety, almost. 

"I cannot name it," he admitted, his gaze fixed on the cold stone floor. “I simply… require his presence.” 

When Sesshoumaru finally turned to meet his father’s gaze, he found no understanding there, only a familiar, unimpressed scrutiny. 

“Even in your boyhood, sentiment was a weakness you scorned. It seems that much remains true.” Inu Taishou was unable to hide his frustration as he approached the battlements, his hands gripping the chilled stone. "You are not ignorant of the ancient customs of House Targaryen. The blood of the dragon has mingled for millennia now, since the days of Old Valyria."

A subtle shift in Sesshoumaru's posture indicated his curiosity. The workings of his father's mind remained a persistent enigma for him. “What is your meaning?”

“These unions serve to maintain the integrity of our lineage, to prevent the dilution of the dragon's blood through mingling with the Westerosi. They are levers of power, their final aim the conception of a pureblooded Targaryen." Sesshoumaru was versed in this lore, and Inu Taishou was well aware of it. The reiteration held a pointed intent. "You grasp the distinction here, do you not?" his father pressed.

Sesshoumaru offered only a curt nod, though a sudden dryness gripped his throat. The variance was starkly apparent. Setting aside the matter of his bastardy, Inuyasha was a male—not a high-born maiden to be wed and bedded for the sake of bearing his heirs.

“It is not to be taken lightly when two dragons wed, doubly so when brother takes sister. This is no mere alliance between houses, no coupling of strangers met at the altar or after a fleeting courtship. This is a bond between kin, raised under the same roof, sharing the warmth of the same parents, their affections predating any formal arrangement. Love should be the bedrock of such a union. True love. Kind love. Enduring love." 

Sesshoumaru felt a sharp ache in his chest as his father's grave eyes locked onto his in the gloom. The prickly thorn of disillusionment was not hard to detect. Two dragons had indeed wed in this very household—his own parents—yet their bond seemed devoid of such tenderness. Perhaps that very lack fueled his father's apprehension. “Though you've sprung from different wombs, and marriage is by law forbidden, I must know if the feelings you harbor for him are untainted."

The words refused to pass Sesshoumaru's lips, lodging in his throat. He drank down his reluctance and tried again. “I... care for him.” He’d not yet named the creature stirring within his own breast, but that at least was a truth he had conceded to and come to terms with, albeit still with a tremor of fear. “I do not wish to harm him.” 

A visible weight seemed to lift from Inu Taishou's shoulders, his posture relaxing slightly. “And you’re not saying this merely to appease me?”

A prickle of irritation darkened Sesshoumaru’s countenance, for how could his father insist on further questioning him? The rawness of being laid bare, the sting of paternal meddling, was already affronting enough as it was. The game of shadows was over, and there was no sense in prolonging it. Yet, a further question lingered, sharp and insistent. “And if I was?” 

Inu Taishou faltered, suddenly seeming unsure. "Should I perceive your affections as impure or your bond as a threat to either of you, I would be compelled to end it swiftly." He looked away, unable to hold his firstborn's challenging stare. “Inuyasha would be sent as a ward to the Lords of Highgarden. You are my heir. Your place is here, in the capital, by my side. Should I be forced to separate you, it is he who would be removed.” 

Sesshoumaru was gripped by a sudden vertigo. He strained to envision it. The half-blood, spirited away, never to be held again, leaving behind only the disquieting stirrings of a phantom limb. It would not be the harshness of the North, not the relentless trials of winter. Still, he imagined him alone in a strange household, severed from all he knew, away from his mother’s presence, from himself—and a raw ache bloomed within him. “You would see him gone?” he asked, knowing he had no right to, and still feeling betrayed. 

“I do not wish it so,” Inu Taishou conceded, quietly. He bore the mark of something akin to shame. “Inuyasha would not understand. To have him think I seek to be rid of him would pain me. Yet I will act if you force my hand.”

A savage snarl threatened to tear from Sesshoumaru's core, every foul epithet he knew clamoring to be unleashed. The last vestiges of his control held him fast. Open defiance of the King's will was treason, a line he no longer dared cross. The Iron Throne would one day be his, but that day was not this. A single indiscretion now, and he would be left alone in a sea of smiling masks and hidden daggers. The very notion hollowed him out. “I’d never forgive you,” he said, his confession heavy with a premonitory grief. “I’d be diminished in his absence.”

His father stilled, then, a subtle mellowness spreading across his usually severe features. “Would it leave an ache were fate to draw you apart?”

A raw, visceral hatred surged through Sesshoumaru. He loathed his father for extracting these shameful avowals, for delighting in his frailty. For acting as though he had any right to the secrets of his heart after forsaking him to winter’s unforgiving embrace for half a decade. “Yes.” 

The King seemed to draw some reassurance from that one, single word, as if it confirmed some inner conviction. He rested a hand upon Sesshoumaru's shoulder. “Inuyasha fancies himself more hardened than he is. He too masks his true feelings with a cold and uncivil facade. I am his father, though. I see through his glamours." Inu Taishou's face drew close, a pointed finger raised in gentle admonishment. "He’s softhearted. Do not mistreat him."

A familiar annoyance prickled at Sesshoumaru. Despite his many faults and often trying behaviors, it was true—Inuyasha's spirit bore no malice. He had, for a time, imagined it a secret, unearthed only by him. Recently, he’d come to find it was a stark reality evident to others, and yet he’d remained blind to it. He didn’t think of his half-brother as unblooded, exactly, but he awakened in him a guarding instinct at times. Perhaps for this very reason, the memory of their earlier practice bouts now brought him shame. 

"I will not," he promised, but not to his father.

“Good. I will be very unhappy with you if you do.” There was a shift then, and any trace of filial warmth waned in his father's bearing. He donned before him once again the face of the Realm's Protector. “I also trust you understand that as the heir apparent, I expect you to take a wife and ensure the blood of the dragon prevails. Whatever ties bind you to him hold no sway in such matters. Let him be brought to this understanding with gentleness and without delay.”

Sesshoumaru gave no outward indication of unease at the mention of a wife, for that dread was no stranger to him. He knew his private affairs with the half-blood were to be dealt with in secrecy, as it had been with any who'd drawn his eye before. Reminders were unnecessary. He offered a curt acknowledgment, his tongue heavy and strange upon his palate. A long season had passed since he’d last felt this way.

Inu Taishou offered a brief inclination of the head, a sign of his accord. “Ah, a thought occurs…,” he trailed off, as if recalling a minor detail. “The women are not to be troubled with this—neither your mother nor his. It’d be a pain I’d rather not deal with.” A meaningful stare was directed at Sesshoumaru. “Tread carefully.”

He felt a burden lift. The idea of his mother discovering such affair and feeling slighted was disquieting. He knew her cruel intellect would weave a tale of him ensnared by foes, a hare caught in the viper's coil. 

“I choose to trust your judgment. So long as you are certain this is his desire,” the King spoke with a studied cadence, "act as you see fit." 

Sesshoumaru’s eyes lingered on his father’s retreating form as the chamber doors closed, a strange sense of foreboding gripping his heart. The night deepened, heavy and lulling, but he wouldn’t stir. He stood as one who had spoken treason unawares, the words foreign to his own tongue, their meaning yet to settle. The secret unveiled and acknowledged by their sire now felt real in a way it hadn't before. 

The urge to find Inuyasha and hold him, to confirm his affections were neither feigned nor coerced, and ensure their father’s threat of separation would not come to pass, banished any thought of sleep that night. For the days that followed, Sesshoumaru found himself unable to speak.

Chapter Text

The clamor of the commons rose all around them—a din of whoops and hollers, crude jests, and ceaseless prattle. The air hung heavy with the loathsome reek of stale ale, cheap wine, and the unwashed musk of a hundred sweating bodies. Sesshoumaru found himself struggling to suppress a sneer of revulsion. A head of him, the lordlings walked, bantering and talking amongst themselves, heedless of the throng. True to his nature, he had fallen back to the rear of the small party he’d been compelled to escort.

He let their easy chatter wash over him, discerning mere scraps and the witless points of their japes. It was the usual fare. The ample bosoms of serving girls, the favors of camp followers, and the bloodlines of their horses. Such discourse was beneath him, and he knew any comment he might have offered would surely be taken as a slight. His eyes remained forward, unseeing of the lewd mirth of the others as they spoke of the wenches they intended to visit later at the brothel. He was already plotting his escape.

The half-blood trailed a few paces behind, seeming as disinclined as Sesshoumaru to engage with the pack of northerners. A rare sullenness shadowed his features, his mouth set in a grim downturn, arms crossed tight across his chest. It was an expression he wore often in the company of highborn lords. From the periphery of his vision, Sesshoumaru watched him.

“What of you, bastard?” The Stark boy demanded, an unpleasant smirk twisting his lips as he halted mid-road. “Ever been to a pleasure house before?”

The question seemed to catch Inuyasha unawares. His interactions with the heir of Winterfell had been few during his time in the capital, yet contemptuous enough to immediately set him on edge. “That I have," he replied.

Lord Kouga’s smirk stretched further. The Karstark brothers, Ginta and Hakkaku, snorted with contempt. Loyal hounds, as always. 

“Hear that, lads? We've got ourselves an expert here, then. Perhaps you've some favored hovel to suggest?” A thin vein of mockery ran through the northerner's voice. Sesshoumaru's muscles coiled subtly, but he gave no outward sign, his features a carefully wrought mask.

“Crow’s Nest gets many. Red Keep lords go there much.” Inuyasha’s reply came without a trace of hesitation. Though he knew he was being scorned, he refused to rise to it. He had learned better than to disparage a lord before witnesses, particularly one of Kouga Stark's standing.

Rough laughter erupted from the Karstark brothers, as it always did whenever the rhoticity of the half-blood's Meereenese accent grew particularly pronounced. “Is that so?” one of them scoffed. "And what of the women? Are they worth the coin?" the other asked. Sesshoumaru could scarcely tell them apart.

A frown creased Inuyasha's face, and he hesitated briefly. His gaze darted to Sesshoumaru for a fleeting instant, then returned swiftly to the Karstarks. “Proper women, yes,” he said, offering a lazy shrug. “No like the common sort."

Lord Kouga's eyes gleamed, his lips curling into a predatory grin. He’d found simple game. “Well, it's settled, then. Who else would know the scent of silks and coin better than you? A born authority on the matter, some would say.”

Sesshoumaru blinked minutely, wondering if he'd misheard. When he turned, he saw the bastard's face flush crimson, his hands balled into hard knots at his sides. No blush of discomfort, but a flush of fury. No man or woman in the capital was ignorant to the fact that Izayoi Naqiz, his mother, was the King’s courtesan.

"Think you well, Stark,” Inuyasha warned, stepping forward with purpose. “Ere words leave your mouth.”

"Else what, boy?" Lord Kouga retorted, matching the half-blood's stride. He puffed out his chest, his head tilting in challenge. "What will you do?”

Inuyasha held his gaze, unwilling to yield. For a long moment they stood there, locked in a silent contest. Fleetingly, Sesshoumaru considered what, if anything, was required of him. By principle, he refused to intervene in any scuffle the half-blood might find himself embroiled in. It would mean to demean himself, to lend weight in a squabble of lads. Inaction, too, bore consequences, though.

Sesshoumaru knew well the tensions such a beating would incite. Even on the slim chance the bastard were to prevail, shaming Winterfell's heir in Flea Bottom, of all places, would invite discord with the North. His father's wrath would be great. Fortunately, a rare moment of thought seemed to claim Inuyasha. He drew a long breath, and as it escaped him, his usual fire seemed to fade, replaced by a deflated look.

“Crow's Nest’s south from Silk Street, near the great road. ‘Tis hard to not find it.” Inuyasha bit the words off, his teeth almost grinding. An unspoken dismissal, crafted to avoid open insult.

Lord Kouga fixed him with a stare, the smirk never leaving his lips, quietly reveling in small, petty victory. Suddenly, he slung an arm around Inuyasha's shoulders—the gesture rough and less than friendly. "Well, I'm no local. You'll take us there, won't you, bastard-boy? Keep the peace, now."

Inuyasha went rigid at the touch, his shoulders tensing, but he held his tongue. Though his desire to do so was plain, he did not shove him off. “As say you, m’lord. Keep the peace.” Despite his attempt at compliance, the scorn in his tone was much too evident. Lord Kouga's grip on his shoulders remained firm as they began to walk down the street, no doubt towards Crow's Nest. Ginta and Hakkaku fell in behind them.

The hour is nigh. Seize it! Sesshoumaru's mind provided, watching the small party vanish into the throng, blissfully unaware he wasn't following. It was the opportunity he'd bided his time for all day, since they'd first departed the tourney grounds. He might well hie back to the Red Keep, avoiding a dreadful gathering and devising an inoffensive excuse come morrow.

Naturally, Inuyasha was bound to endure a miserable eve. Sesshoumaru had to wonder how much more humiliation Kouga Stark might inflict upon him before he grew weary of his small-minded shows of strength. Lamentable, he thought, spinning on his heel to turn back the way he came. It was a perfect scheme, most alluring for its simplicity. Sesshoumaru stopped short, though, his gaze sweeping over the masses, yet seeing nothing of their faces. He reminded himself, as so often before, that he was no keeper to the half-blood.

With a scowl, he muttered a curse and set off after the others.

The brothel's entrance, an ornate, unlabeled door, gave way to a hushed vestibule, plagued by the cloying fragrances of foreign oils and common summerwine. Inside, crimson velvet drapes swallowed the city's clamor, and sconces cast a warm glow upon richly carved timber. Plush carpets muffled footsteps as patrons shifted within. A quiet drone of voices and the discordant notes of a lute permeated the air. The sight of it all filled Sesshoumaru with an immediate disquiet. He had never set foot into a pleasure house before.

His eyes drifted through the vestibule, taking in the lavish decor and the figures strewn about. The place reeked of the worst excesses of man, and he had to force down the instinctive curl of his lip. Though the chambers' curtains were drawn tight, the scent of coupling still reached him, sharp and pungent. He could find no sight of the northerners amidst the press, nor the bastard’s familiar face.

At last, Sesshoumaru caught sight of the group, settled at a table not far from the serving counter. Inuyasha appeared distinctly ill at ease, the Stark boy's arm still stubbornly laid across his shoulders. There was no fondness to the touch. It was meant to rile him, to stir him to anger—and the half-blood was striving not to give him the satisfaction. An unwelcome heat rose within Sesshoumaru. He approached the table, a swiftness to his stride he hoped went unseen.

"Well, look who graces us with his presence, after all! I thought you'd slipped away without a farewell, as you are wont to do." Lord Stark remarked with a smirk.

Sesshoumaru stared back at him, no warmth nor favor to his gaze. He spared a fleeting glance for Inuyasha, who sat taut and rigid on the bench, his face a mask of irritation. The sight, one that often-stirred cruel amusement, brought him no pleasure now. He seated himself without a word. Lord Kouga regarded him with a faint frown. "Your silver tongue never fails to astound, my prince."

The northerners were deep in talk of the region's fine weather and the high quality of a summerwine Sesshoumaru deemed plain and unremarkable, when Inuyasha said in Valyrian, "He's a proper prick, this one." His words were softly spoken, despite his certain knowledge that none of the lordlings would understand. "How you tolerate him is beyond my ken."

Sesshoumaru offered no reply at first, feigning deep interest in Ginta's and Hakkaku's pointless tales. He was overly conscious of Lord Kouga's hand on the half-blood's shoulder, and the self-satisfied grin that would not fade. His reply came at last, his gaze never leaving the northerners. "My regard for him is no greater than your own. He tests tempers for sport.”

One of the Karstark brothers frowned, his gaze shifting between Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru. "What was that tongue you spoke?" It was the faint perplexity of one who had never encountered the harsh cadence of Valyrian speech.

The intrusion only seemed to further sour Inuyasha's mood. “I tell him this summerwine’s thin, like water from a chamber pot. Not that rich, good ale you drink in North-lands." A barefaced lie, plain for all to see. The northerners roared with laughter, grating and offensive to Sesshoumaru.

"It was Valyrian they spoke," the Stark boy said as he leaned back on the bench, finally freeing the half-blood from his grip. Sesshoumaru felt a tension leave him at once. “The tongue of old Targaryen kings. No surprise you've never heard it spoken so far North." Lord Kouga gave Inuyasha a curious glance then. “I'd scarcely have guessed a bastard would master such words."

A telling clench of the jaw revealed Inuyasha’s ill temper. “Mother mine’s Meereenese. Valyrian’s her true tongue.” He spoke it plainly, yet with a hint of challenge, as if to goad Lord Kouga into response. As expected, the lord obliged.

"Right, they still speak Valyrian in the Slaver Cities, don't they?" he drawled, lazily scratching his neck. "Low Valyrian."

His words carried a stinging implication, a deliberate taunt. Inuyasha fixed him with a cold glare, yet he did not dispute the truth. “’Tis so.”

"I, of course, speak no word of it. One presumes there’s a marked distinction between them, though. The High and the Low,” Lord Kouga mused, waving his cup between Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha. "Do you always grasp the other's meaning?"

Sesshoumaru stiffened at the question, despite himself. “We do,” he managed, his fingers clenching beneath the table's edge to keep them still. A hint of reluctance colored his tone as he conceded, “Mostly.”

The half-blood looked poised to speak, but instead reached for his cup and took a long draught of summerwine. The conversation turned to other matters, then. Sesshoumaru resumed his customary silence. Where the northerners were concerned, Inuyasha showed no greater enthusiasm for company. Though Ginta and Hakkaku tried their hand at conversation, his replies were short and plain, lacking all warmth. Sesshoumaru regretted dragging him along after the tourney.

It had struck him as sensible enough, with the lordlings and the half-blood sharing a similar age. He saw the foolishness of it, now. Had the circumstances been otherwise, he’d have counted crude jesting as naught, nor found it aggravating, for it was common enough amongst young lads. There was a faint wrongness to it, though, when one stood, by accepted custom, without leave to answer in kind.

Eventually, a comely redhead with a mischievous smile lured the Stark boy away. The Karstark brothers were not long in following, disappearing behind a red curtain with a single whore linking both their arms. Sesshoumaru's mouth curled disdainfully. Always a matched set.

At last, only the half-blood and he remained at the table. A thick, uneasy silence settled between them. Sesshoumaru examined the ruby liquid in his cup with a strange intensity, refusing to lift his gaze. The night’s events sat poorly with him. He wondered, quite suddenly, why he had held his tongue. It would have cost him little to silence the mockery without causing a stir. The general clamor of the vestibule served only to further annoy. He yearned to be gone, beyond the confines of the brothel and far from the stench of Flea Bottom. He said none of it aloud.

"Were you in Winterfell long?” Inuyasha drawled, slouching in his chair and resting his booted feet on the tabletop, legs crossed. He appeared decidedly more at ease now than he had a moment ago. As had come to be expected when they were alone, he spoke in Valyrian. “While you were up North?"

Sesshoumaru stared at him for a long moment. He realized, with a frown, the trap he had sprung upon himself. He was alone with the half-blood, deep within the walls of a whorehouse. A sennight had passed, and yet his father’s forewarnings wouldn’t leave him. The wrathful demands for answers, the scorn he could not disguise, the way he’d pleaded, time and again, for Sesshoumaru to assure him his entanglement with the bastard was not corrupt in nature. He doubted the King would be much pleased, were he to see them now.

"But a handful of moons," he replied, at last.

"Bet that was a grand time, freezing your arse off in some broken-down holdfast, with only Kouga and his half-witted hounds for company,” Inuyasha said, only the ghost of a smirk tugging at his mouth. “Small wonder you didn’t tarry.”

"There was nothing there to capture my interest.” Sesshoumaru paused briefly, as if considering his words. It came to him, then, that no one of true standing would hear, so he spoke bluntly, “and that Stark lad is a bore beyond all endurance."

Inuyasha grimaced, but chose not to comment further. "Where did your days find you, then, if not at Winterfell?” He laced his hands behind his head, his eyes only slightly heavy with slumber.

It struck Sesshoumaru how readily he slipped into comfort, despite their surroundings. The sight, oddly, brought him a measure of ease, too. He could look the half-blood in the face now—an indulgence he'd been denied whilst seated with the northerners.

“I was at the Wall for most of it,” he said, reluctantly.

Inuyasha blinked, a faint frown etching his brow. "What in the Seven Hells were you doing there?" The question came out with a subtle note of disdain. Sesshoumaru had always been tight-lipped on this matter when he was near, and it was clear to him then his father had treated in much the same manner.

"There was a duty to perform." He was loath to share the details. Though the King had striven to keep it quiet, the reasons why he’d been sent North were widely known. Only a select few were privy to his whereabouts and deeds during that time, though. Not a truth to be unburdened upon a bastard boy of eleven summers, by the time of his departure.

Sesshoumaru averted his gaze. "The Lord Commander of the Night's Watch is an old friend to our father. He was of a mind I could benefit from his wisdom."

Inuyasha considered him with a long, measuring gaze, before a scoff of disbelief broke from him. He suddenly appeared much vexed. "Well, that's a sorry fate. I've heard naught but dreadful tales of that place."

Sesshoumaru ached to snap that he should be silent—that he was a callow, pampered green boy who knew nothing. What understanding could the half-blood have of life on the very rim of the world, with only empty white and ominous silences as far as the eye could discern? No comfort to be found, but the quiet crackling of the hearth and the unceasing demand to sharpen one's senses. Where the weak hearted swiftly perished in the cold, and every corridor was haunted by slayers, rapists, and rogues.

He did not speak it, though. The trials he'd endured there had forged him hard and ruthless, and it was no memory he cared to revisit, least of all in this place.

"'It’s not so ill," he settled for, at last.

"If you say so," Inuyasha muttered, unconvinced, as he refilled his cup. He paused for a moment, as if a thought had just struck him. “Did you ever go beyond it?”

For a moment, Sesshoumaru's countenance went slack, as though he'd suddenly lost all sense of place. A memory flared before his inner-eye—a glimpse of endless snow, a glacial grip about his wrist, the deafening rend of ice in the far distance, the foul odor of death. Under the table, his knuckles whitened.

"Indeed," he said, voice carefully stripped of all feeling. "I did."

"They say all sorts of terrors lurk beyond the Wall," Inuyasha spoke with a touch of jest, as though he were unearthing old nursery rhymes, lost to childhood memory. "Beasts of elder days. Wights and giants and grumpkins."

Sesshoumaru knew no mirth at the mention of such creatures. Common sense urged him to dismiss it, to assure the half-blood that his fanciful notions were but lies and old wives' tales. He said nothing, though, for even a year since his return to the capital, a shadow of doubt remained. Inuyasha's eyes narrowed slightly, as if wondering what offense he'd committed, this time. He appeared to understand this was a matter best left undisturbed.

"Well... you stand here now," he said, and a faint smile played on his features. A rare thing, neither caustic nor sharp. "With no dead things, no grumpkins, no White Walkers to plague you. You may well keep your balls warm, and your boots dry, and see to the cost of my summerwine."

Sesshoumaru felt an overwhelming urge to seize the half-blood, to hold him tight, to press his nose into the hollow of his neck. He wished to be elsewhere, away from the throng of eyes, the ceaseless noise, the vile stench of spirits, sweat, and depravity. A moment’s folly, instantly quelled. His half-brother appeared blissfully unaware of the swift change in his mood.

“Certainly,” he muttered, draining a good portion of his cup.

“Have you been here before?” Inuyasha asked with an airy tone, though the answer must have been plain to him. This was not the kind of den a man of Sesshoumaru's inclinations would frequent. Were he any other, he would have gripped his sword-hilt, prepared to repay the mockery with cold steel. He understood Inuyasha incapable of crafting so intricate an insult, though.

"No, there's naught in this hall that stirs my curiosity,” he said, without a flicker of concern. No danger lay in the truth, for the bastard had lost any advantage to use such revelation against him. He'd seen to that himself. “You have, I presume?"

Inuyasha shifted, a hint of discomfort in his bearing. “I have.”

Sesshoumaru had misjudged his own fortitude—the answer bit deeper than expected. He banished the foul, obscene imaginings it elicited before they could wholly form. The notion of Inuyasha seeking comfort in a pleasure house felt wrong. He knew himself well enough to name the emotion— the same that at times took hold when serving girls were spoken of within his hearing—but something else lay beneath it, less easily defined.  

"How often, then?" He asked, his voice a silken thread.

“Is little I come, and not for why you think,” Inuyasha replied, his features darkening. When no others were about, Sesshoumaru’s use of the Common Tongue with him was a clear sign of his displeasure. As though he sought to make them strangers once more. He knew the bastard felt shame for his broken speech, and it made for easy retaliation.

He remained unmoved, giving no hint of truce. “To what end, if not?” His words, though meant to be firm, carried an unintended edge. To nurse grievance for such faint dalliances was foolish, unprecedented for a threadbare affair never truly set by word. He could not master himself, though. Anger had ever been the very marrow of his bones. Certainly, a simpler knot to untangle than his current bind, and of longer acquaintance.

"'Tis a fine place for…” Inuyasha hesitated, grappling for the proper word. A sight well-known to any Andal who kept his company, and few did. “… silent thought?"

Sesshoumaru’s lips thinned. There was nothing he could discern in such a place worthy of his contemplation. It was a den built for men to cast off restraint, to forget their stations and their pride for the lure of quick delights. It rang false to his ears. “To ponder,” he supplied, without kindness. “A whorehouse?”

Inuyasha held his gaze, a peculiar shift crossing his features. He opened his mouth, as if to speak, then snapped it shut. His mind seemed far away, in a manner seldom seen. A subtle change came over him then, as though his resolve had hardened. He looked about the room, as if seeking a particular face.

"You, there!” He called, his hand lifted aloft. “Yes, you! Come!”

A sudden pallor claimed Sesshoumaru's face as he watched the wench draw near.

“Good even, m’lords,” the wench said, her head inclined in deference. Sesshoumaru’s true standing was concealed from her by common leather breeches, sullied by ride, blood, and the tourney's mud. Hers was laid bare starkly before him, though. Her long, silver-gold hair spilled about her as she bowed. She observed the drained bottle, then offered, "More wine?"

Inuyasha held her gaze for a stretch, then said, “If please you.”

A deep unease took hold of Sesshoumaru as her back turned from him. Inuyasha regarded him with an unsettling knowingness, yet his gaze held neither harshness nor ire. He drank from his cup then, emptying it in a single draught.

“Much of them here," he spoke lightly, and Sesshoumaru loathed his composure, the effortless nonchalance he displayed. The half-blood took no notice, though. He had eyes only for the wench, and none for him. “Small root from dragon tree. Targaryen whorechild.”

Suddenly, Sesshoumaru felt a fierce urge to lay hands upon the bastard, to knock him to the ground and beat him soundly, as he'd done so many times in the training yards. He longed for a glimpse of anger, a resentful scowl, to feel the heat of any emotion. Instead, he gripped his cup tighter. “And you’ve made their acquaintance?” His expression held, impassive, his voice neither warm nor cold.

“Never, no. I speak little word with them.” The half-blood said evenly. “I just watch. Is only girls here. Lads, they are… elsewhere. Some work black iron, some are fishermen, other beg the roads. Is many at the fighting pits."

At the bare mention of the pits, Sesshoumaru felt a sudden hollowness in his gut. The common folk spoke of their viciousness, the meager worth masters placed upon the young boys who shed blood there, some no older than ten summers. He could too easily conjure the vision of scrawny lads, mangled and gore-slicked, clawing at one another for the delight of the throng.

"Why do you watch them?" The question sprang unbidden.

Inuyasha ran his tongue over cracked lips, appearing to choose his words with great care. The wench returned then, setting the wine bottle upon the table with a smile that held more unease than mirth. Sesshoumaru swiftly looked away from her. She took her leave as quickly as she had come.

“’Tis unclear to me who put the seed.” The bastard's finger idly followed the edge of his cup. “Targaryen blood, for sure, but she does not remind me of no one. Another girl, yes… I don’t see her now. Maybe in a chamber, with some man of coin. She come from Velaryon kin. Lord Renji.” 

Sesshoumaru remained largely unimpressed by that revelation. Lord Renji had long bored a sullied name. “And how did you come by this knowledge?”

“Her eyes are blue,” Inuyasha replied, his shoulder rising dismissively. “Only dragon at King’s Landing with this look.”

Sesshoumaru could not say why the half-blood keeping such firm a grip on these matters unsettled him so, yet the unwelcome feeling coiled, concealed beneath his outward stillness. He found himself impressed, though he fought the feeling. Sharpness of sight was not a quality he would have attributed to Inuyasha.

“A fair assumption,” he said at length.

Inuyasha poured more summerwine into the empty cups, then slid one across the table to Sesshoumaru, a silent demand that he keep pace. “I was often crossed with father when I was a child.” The words came in Valyrian once more. Sesshoumaru could not discern whether the shift was an overture of peace, as was the half-blood’s wont, or if these thoughts simply defied his shallow grasp of the Common Tongue.

“Why I was shown such a different hand, I could not tell. Why the servants and the Septas and even the lords always trailed after you, naming you ‘Prince Sesshoumaru’, ‘heir apparent’, ‘dragon child’, when the only name I was ever given was ‘bastard’?” A quiet, shamefaced laugh escaped him. “I had no understanding of the word. Not in those days.”

Then the laugh gave way to a smile, but it was a thing of bitterness, sharp as a broken blade. Sesshoumaru felt a faint disquiet. "It ever puzzled me, father having two wives, and the deep scorn they held for one another. I was slow to grasp her true standing—my mother’s. And my own.”

The words went unspoken, yet Sesshoumaru understood. A courtesan, wedded to no man, and the ill-born child she bore.

“And when I did grasp it, a terrible rage seized me. Why would father deny me his name? Why wouldn’t he drape his cloak about my mother's shoulders? Why were we so undeserving of what Queen Inukimi and her son received so readily? All these whys, and no tongue would speak the answers.”

Sesshoumaru watched the half-blood in stony silence. He knew not what to say, or what move to make. A need rose within him to tell Inuyasha to let sleeping dogs lie, to give up seeking truths that would only wound him further, but the words would not come.

"Some lordlings dragged me here, for the first time, the day I saw fourteen summers. Old enough to know a woman, they claimed. I understood it later as a tangled jest between them, but not then.” The bastard's face contorted in a grimace of self-reproach, the awkwardness of a long-past folly rising fresh. "I could not... well, I could not lie with the girl. All I knew, staring at her, was the wail of a babe, and the fear: 'What would become of it? What manner of life would it have?' I had no name to pass on. No lands, no title, no nothing. I'd be no better than father. I fled the room as if the Seven Hells themselves were at my heels.”

A cold knot formed in Sesshoumaru's chest as he realized it had been scarcely two summers since. A slight rasp in his throat, then the bastard looked about the vestibule. "I lingered here a good long time, waiting for the lordlings to emerge. It was then that I first saw one of them—a whore with hair like spun silver."

Sesshoumaru understood, then. Why the sight of the whores failed to stir any concern within his half-brother. Why he knew the comings and goings of the other boys so well. Why he was so keenly aware of the different variances of misery where they dwelled, yet spoke so candidly of it. Sesshoumaru had always known the luxury of averting his gaze, of never having to walk paths where he would be forced amongst them— to have this thrust upon him.

The bastard didn’t shrink from it, though. He met the foul beast's gaze without falter, and ceaselessly, relentlessly, sought it out. Be it in the brothels, at the market stalls, by the water's edge, or within the very fighting pits. For this was no new understanding gained, nor a harsh reality he was made to face this day. It was the uncertain ground he had walked since birth. The truth seized Sesshoumaru’s chest, filling him with shame, pity, and guilt, and he knew only the desire to be gone from that place.

They had indeed known separate upbringings, and had not their mothers or accepted custom demanded it, the gap in their years alone would have left them with little to share. Still, they had lived within the same walls as they grew, ever aware of the other's presence.

Sesshoumaru had often watched him in the gardens, by himself, practicing cuts and thrusts with a wooden sword. He’d heard his wails when he barked a knee or tumbled from a tree's branch. Once or twice, he had chanced upon the scribbled parchments left carelessly about, from those times the maesters wrestled to teach him his letters. The notion that any might deem him as baseborn as a pit fighter or a bedwarmer brought a sudden prickle to his eyes.  

It was still, as it had always been, a matter he could not speak of aloud. He could only sit there, drinking from his cup, and hope whatever emotion had gripped him would not show itself upon his features. "What did you do, then?"

A simple shift in speech was enough to soften the half-blood’s rigid stance. “What else was there to do? I returned to the Red Keep.” He spoke it lightly, as though no explanation were needed. Perhaps it wasn’t. “I thought of the whore, as I sat in the carriage. And later, whilst breaking bread with my mother. She asked what troubled me, but I had no answer to give. I lay awake that night, still thinking of the whore. It dawned on me then… that father was generous.”

Sesshoumaru’s spirit balked at the words, but he kept it contained within himself. The bedrock of their every truce held many a layer, and not slandering their father in the bastard’s hearing was one of them.

Inuyasha seemed to mark his disagreement. “More so than is expected from men of his standing, at least,” he amended, albeit with ill grace. “He took me beneath his roof, raised me as his own. He would take to the gardens with me when I was a lad, and taught me much of life, and never failed to speak of his love. I scoffed at it then, but I didn’t that night. And I was never crossed with him again.”

Inuyasha's ease of manner almost concealed the truth in his words, and how that night remained fresh with him as if it had been but yesterday's moon. He wove the memory with such clarity that Sesshoumaru felt it become, in some strange way, his own. He stared at his half-brother, his heart a heavy stone in his chest, and loathed himself for the envy he felt, even then. “I see.”

“My anger was once great, but it has cooled now. I keep the peace with father.” No smile graced the half-blood’s face as he stared back, yet there was an openness to his expression Sesshoumaru took always for a blade, wielded to disarm. “With you as well… when you allow.”

Sesshoumaru knew himself for a petty fool, in that moment, and wondered why he had ever spoken the Common Tongue in the half-blood's presence. A twitch of the lips betrayed him, yet his gaze remained steady. “I scarcely allow.”

"Oh, well. I make the effort.” Inuyasha stretched his legs lazily beneath the table, his eyes half-lidded once more. Though the hour was not yet late, he appeared poised to depart. “Wrath has a cutting edge. Like a knife pressed to one's own flesh. Fail to lose your grip, and it will bleed you.”

Sesshoumaru had no answer for that, so he drained the last of his wine and offered only silence. Amongst the many things he failed to grasp about the half-blood, this one stood chief. His anger flared quick, but not as much as his penchant to forget the slight. It was unnerving at times. Even now, Inuyasha showed no affront. He'd grown to except Sesshomaru's strange silences, and never begrudged him for them, the way others did. 

"Can we slip away, do you think?” With a look of utter disinterest, Inuyasha watched the velvet curtains that had swallowed Lord Kouga and his hounds. “I doubt the northerners will return."

A moment’s distraction, and the chance presented itself. Sesshoumaru’s eyes wandered, tracing the half-blood’s shadow framed figure—the scarce glimpses of exposed skin, the play of lithe muscles beneath cloth, the way long silver hair draped so becomingly about him. He pondered on the press of flesh beneath his hand, whether it would be cool and yielding as ever, or if the room’s stifling heat had lent it a new warmth. A sudden, desperate urge to ascertain took hold of him.

He rose to depart, leaving the coin behind, and though he offered only a beckoning of the head, Inuyasha trailed after. Sesshoumaru would make a fine escort, if only for one, to see him returned to the Red Keep. Not to his own bedchambers, assuredly, but that held no sway. For the hour was indeed not late, and the wine served at Crow’s Nest was passable, yet lacked richness, and he possessed a finer store of his own. Let the King suspect what he might. Sesshoumaru knew the boy was willing, and trusted it would be voiced, the day he was not.

His designs threatened to unravel when Lord Kouga, as if by sorcery, simply appeared, where a moment before he was not. “Away so quickly, bastard?” He asked, a cruel smirk contorting his face, eyes dulled by drink and the pleasant stupor of lust freshly appeased. "There's a query I've carried for a time. Have you ever heard of a Meereenese knot?”

He slung an arm about Inuyasha's shoulders then. The bare implication was vile enough, but it was a fleeting glance at his half-brother’s despondent grimace that proved sufficient. Sesshoumaru felt a searing, wild heat fill him to bursting. The heir of Winterfell had the built and strength of an older lad, but he was a lad still, and his fabled swiftness failed him. Sesshoumaru seized him by the neck of his tunic and drove a fist into his face, felling him cold.

His body struck the flagstones with a heavy thud. The Karstark brothers could only stare, wide-eyed, their wits seemingly fled. Then they scrambled, tripping over their own feet to reach their master. He lay a shameful tangle at Sesshoumaru's feet, his face pressed to the ground as wenches and patrons whispered amongst themselves. Inuyasha clutched at his upper arm, his grip firm, as though seeking by instinct to halt what had already come to pass.

The northerners have traveled a great distance to be here. Be gracious, make them feel at home, his father had urged that morn, as they broke their fast. Sesshoumaru had agreed, though his teeth were ground, to make the effort. As was common when it came to the courtly dance of lords and kings, he'd made a complete botch of it.

As the Karstark brothers hauled the lord’s slack form onto the bench, a dull chagrin gnawed at Sesshoumaru, akin to that felt when a man, in his fury, forgets he deals with a boy. He'd not meant for the blow to carry such weight. Though unspoken, he read the question in the half-blood's gaze easily enough—why have you done this? Though he stiffened, Sesshoumaru bit back his sharp words. Instead, he laid a hand upon Inuyasha’s back, and drew him quietly from the pleasure house.

Chapter Text

Later that night, Sesshoumaru sat alone in his bedchambers, his hair still damp from washing away the reek of the tourney, the brothel, and Flea Bottom. A rap at his door drew a heavy sigh from him.

He was in no mood for company, yet called out, "Enter."

The door swung open to reveal the half-blood, a wary look upon his face. He offered only a clearing of the throat, lingering uneasily at the threshold, though entry had been granted. Sesshoumaru sat propped against the headboard. He raised a hand, beckoning him closer with a subtle crook of his fingers. Inuyasha glanced back, scanning the hallway for unwanted eyes, but seemed to find none. He shut the door and threw the bolt.

His movements were easy and unhurried as he eased himself onto the bed, the practiced grace of an act frequently performed. “Was there no one about to instruct you as a child?” He asked, his gaze fixed on Sesshoumaru's hair with a hint of judgement. “You'll fall ill with a cold, washing your hair at night like that.”

Sesshoumaru’s eyes tightened with irritation, though a strange, quiet contentment settled over him. The half-blood's closeness on the bed stole his every thought, especially now with no others about, all need for pretense shed. He longed to thread his fingers through that thick mass of silver hair, to pull just hard enough to force the head back, and bare the soft skin of the neck. He chose, instead, to offer a fitting retort. “Do you presume to instruct your elders?”

"I never presume, heir apparent." Inuyasha replied breezily, stretching out on the bed, hands pillowing his head. “A keen observation, nothing more.”

Though spoken with mirth, the mention of his designation in privacy earned a fleeting scowl from Sesshoumaru. His eyes drifted to the chamber's ceiling, unwilling to let it show. “Perhaps a maester's life would suit you. A mind so keen would surely be wasted elsewhere.”

“You mock your own kin? That’s not very princely of you,” the bastard reproached, though his tone held no sting. He found ease in a highborn’s bed as readily as he had in the confines of a brothel. A strange lad, to be sure.

Sesshoumaru regarded him in silence, a faint, amused curve to his lips. In his sleeping robes, Inuyasha appeared less sharp, his usual gruffness dulled. A need to lay a hand upon him rose, but Sesshoumaru resisted. He found pleasure in this barbed dance as well. “Why must you take it as mockery? It’s in fine jest.”

“Well, it’s hard to tell. You always wear such a grave face, even when you jest.” Inuyasha turned onto his side, propping his head with one hand to meet his gaze. “I’m learning to see past it, though.”

Sesshoumaru mirrored him, shifting so to look at him properly. He lifted a hand to Inuyasha's chin, his thumb tracing the sharp angle of the jawline, a touch he had yearned for all eve. “Are you, now?”

Inuyasha only hummed in affirmation. He neither moved away, nor offered a lean. “You were a stranger to me, fresh from the North. Perhaps you always were, even before you left.” His eyes flickered then, as they often did when this matter was broached, but a smirk still tugged at his mouth. “Couldn’t tell what your aim was, truth be told. Why you proved such a brute sometimes, and other times... less so. And when the pieces fell into place,” Inuyasha faltered, then a laugh escaped him, only mildly self-conscious. “No matter, you know what came after.”

Sesshoumaru frowned, his fingers moving of their own accord, tracing every line of the half-blood's face as if to commit them to memory, despite countless prior examinations. It was absurd, truly. To have a nameless bastard, still a boy in truth and a senseless one at that, striving to comprehend what his father, and mother, and even he himself never could. A terrible thought occurred, then.

“A stranger to your eyes, you say? And what do you believe you’ve found, beyond the veil of strangeness?" He murmured, unsure if he wanted to know.

Inuyasha paused, seeming hesitant all of a sudden. It took him a long moment to reply. “I once thought of you as… a dam, holding back a swollen lake,” he said, his brow furrowing faintly, as if remembering a past presumption he now deemed absurd. “It must take a great effort, I thought—to keep the waters from breaching. The valley is bound to flood, sooner or later. At times, it does.” A pointed end came to his voice then, his eyes sharpening briefly. He made no mention of the Stark boy, however, nor of the night's events.

“I don’t think of it as a dam anymore, though, but rather…” the half-blood went quiet for a while. His hands made uncertain gestures in the air, as if attempting to give shape to his thoughts. Sesshoumaru knew, without being told, that it was for his benefit. He was searching for the proper term in High Valyrian. Inuyasha’s features brightened when he finally did. “A dragon’s egg.”

Sesshoumaru knitted his brows with a faint distaste. “A dragon’s egg?”

"Yes," the half-blood replied, looking unspeakably pleased with himself. “The dragonling trashes and strains, yearning to be set loose, but the shell won’t give.”

Sesshoumaru felt the answer flow through him, as if the air between them had abruptly thickened into water. It dawned on him then why Inuyasha never took his silence as a slight, when all others invariably did. He braced for the breaking of peace then, for the raw sense of exposure that always preceded his rage, but it never came. It was a peculiar thing, truly. Decidedly unfamiliar. To be seen and known. When had this come to be?

The half-blood couldn’t always peer past his silence, of course, but he insisted on straining his gaze. More so than any other had done before him.

“This disgruntles me greatly,” Sesshoumaru said with a touch of irony. “I’ve always taken you for a fool, as does the King, and all others within these halls. Yet now you utter words with an unbecoming grace. I feel deceived.”

A grimace twisted Inuyasha's face, but no sharp retort came. He did look away, though, crossing his arms over his chest. “Easy to be thought a fool, when none comprehend the tongue you speak. Not even father does.”

The faint smirk upon Sesshoumaru’s lips slowly vanished. There was a time he'd thought the bastard and the King shared a perfect understanding. Perhaps they did once, when Inuyasha was a child. Nowadays, Inu Taishou remained steadfast in speaking only the Common Tongue within the household—a late, and perhaps regretful, attempt to make his youngest learn it properly. It was all for naught, as Inuyasha remained just as steadfast in only ever answering in Valyrian.

Even if that weren’t the case, Sesshoumaru sensed true understanding would never be had. Inuyasha also carried an accent when speaking in Valyrian, and used words and turns of phrase that at times escaped his grasp. He suspected the King faced much the same, judging by the mildly bewildered expressions he often wore around the boy. Sesshoumaru blamed the mother, naturally.

Izayoi was the reason Inuyasha spoke as he did, and the one who stubbornly refused to teach him the Westerosi speech as he grew, for it was a language she appeared to disdain. Even when she did speak it—and Sesshoumaru had heard her do so but a handful of times—it was in a strange, archaic dialect he could only surmise was spoken by Meereenese highborn. That had only twisted Inuyasha’s Common Tongue into an even more curious form.

The boy remained quiet now, his mouth downturned like a petulant child's. Sesshoumaru fought the urge to strike him, or perhaps kiss him, simply to wipe that look from his face. Instead, his hand traced the length of Inuyasha's back, settling on his waist to draw him near. With a slight shift, Sesshoumaru was behind him, chin coming to rest against his shoulder. "You've become a great nuisance."

"Have I? Good to know. It means you're not soon to tire of me." There was a new light in the half-blood's eyes as he turned to face him. He let his sleeping robe fall, laying bare the smooth expanse of his back.

Sesshoumaru's fingers traced the exposed skin, almost without meaning to. It was searing hot beneath his touch, burning like dragonfire. He pushed Inuyasha’s hair aside, and pressed a kiss to the nape of his neck. "I'll never tire of you, you little torment,” he murmured against the soft flesh.

A moan caught in the half-blood's throat, his form growing taut as Sesshoumaru's sharp nails skimmed a nipple. “Why did you strike the northerner? It was a foolish thing to do. You're supposed to be the one with sense."

Sesshoumaru scowled, although he knew the question would come, sooner or later. Muscle and sinew moved beneath his touch like a living thing, clearing his mind of all else. Speech proved a hardship yet again, with something so inviting and warm resting so near. His tongue felt swollen and clumsy. “He'd been a strain on my patience for a long season,” he managed, at last. “Think of it no more.”

Though his true reasons must have been evident to him, Inuyasha did not press the matter. Sesshoumaru let his hand wander farther down. It grazed tender skin, tracing the hard ridges and muscles of the half-blood’s midriff. He did it without thought, only becoming aware of it when his fingers trailed all the way down, and his mind strayed from the conversation. "He deserved a sound beating, to put some respect in him," he heard himself say.

“Respect for a bastard?” Inuyasha laughed then, a little breathless, and Sesshoumaru felt him hardening against his palm. “That is rich.”

Seemingly unbothered by its dampness, the half-blood threaded his fingers through Sesshoumaru’s hair as it spilled about them. “Father will be very unhappy. I doubt he wishes for quarrel with the North. Not that he shares his mind with me.”

Sesshoumaru gave a soft hum. He shifted his attention to the heated skin beneath his hand, tightening his grip only to hear the gasp it would elicit. A strange thing it was, how readily he now touched and was touched in return, when before such a liberty would have been beyond thought, and likely unwelcome. "Let him fume."

Though the shift separated him from the touch he craved, Inuyasha turned about, halting an inch away from Sesshoumaru’s face. He would tease and tempt with ease, yet seldom led. Such restraint was not born out of shyness. The mere act of being pursued seemed to inflate the half-blood’s ego, but that never prevented Sesshoumaru from pursuing. It was different tonight, for some reason.

The need to lean forward and press his mouth against those parted lips was as familiar as it was overpowering, but he held fast, simply staring at the boy in silence. Inuyasha frowned mildly, confused, awaiting a kiss that was not given.  Sesshoumaru remained unmoving. The King's meddling, though a source of great chagrin, had left a mark upon him.

Are your intentions as base as the rutting of animals? Does your desire know no tenderness, no affection?

Sesshoumaru found no ease in tenderness, for it tasted more of frailty than strength. Affection, stripped of complexity, was a mystery he now faced for the very first time. Both in the North and amidst the court, it was ever burdened by expectation and unspoken rules of conduct. A coldness so measured was, or at least should be, unwarranted between blood relations. Especially when it came to one with no true standing, who could not benefit in any way from stabbing him in the back. It might be that, more than any other thing, what brought them to this.

It ran deeper than mere wanting or simple convenience, though. Sesshoumaru was aware of it, though he was not yet prepared to name it, nor was he certain he ever would be. He cared for the half-blood. Through the haze of envy and wrath, despite what custom dictated, and his mother's endless efforts to prevent it, he had always held a warmth for him. That begrudging fondness a dragon felt for a dragonling nipping at its tail. There had never been permission, or even occasion to show it, and now that there was, he didn’t quite know how.

"Are you playing the coy maiden with me, then?” Inuyasha asked, a smile pressed against Sesshoumaru’s lips. “That’s unbecoming of you, heir apparent.”

Sesshoumaru arched a brow in judgment, and the half-blood found himself on his back amidst the silks, shoved with a strength greater than intended. His mirthful smile give way to something else. Speech never came naturally to Sesshoumaru, but the yearning that had festered in his chest, swollen and on the verge of spilling forth, had to find a way out.

"Will you have me plead for it?” Inuyasha bat his long lashes, and the artifice of it was clear. For one who'd known only serving girls before, he slipped into this part with remarkable ease. “Come now, a kiss."

He was not wont to deny the half-blood these days, so Sesshoumaru bent and did his will. Inuyasha's arms wrapped around his shoulders, and a pleased rumble rose from deep within his throat. It was a kiss of raw need, heavy with a frustration that had long simmered, now brought to a furious boil. Scarcely a few hours under rein. It shouldn’t ache as much as it did. Sesshoumaru deepened the kiss, pressing down until Inuyasha lay fully trapped beneath him. A satisfied moan tore from him as the well-known scent flooded his senses.

Inuyasha drew back, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. His fingers tightened on Sesshoumaru's sleeping robes, pulling with clear intent to shed the garment. “I hate you." The words came out in a strained whisper. There was a time Sesshoumaru might have regarded them with gravity.

A soft shift of silk reached his ears as Inuyasha pulled apart the robe's upper half, followed by a rush of cold air against his skin. A trail of fire spread across his back beneath the touch of fingers. "Do you, now?"

"Yes," Inuyasha replied, his breath warm against Sesshoumaru's ear. “Before you, I'd never known a man's touch. Had never even considered such a thing. But now I've known it, and I hunger for it, always. What face have I left to lie with a woman?"

Though Sesshoumaru should have dismissed such teasing with disdain, its brazen lack of shame stirred something within him. "And you place the blame upon me?" he rasped, leaning forward to capture the half-blood's mouth once more.

"Yes, most certainly." Inuyasha shed his lower garments. He laid back upon the mattress and parted his thighs, inviting Sesshoumaru between them. "I was a proper young lad, with no strangeness to word or gesture. Could have taken a wife, and fathered her a clutch of bonny silver-haired babes. The sort any lowborn girl would kill to have, even if no name was given. More’s the pity. You returned from the North, drew me into your web, and passed your strangeness onto me."

A low laugh broke from him, and Sesshoumaru buried his nose in the crook of his neck, pressing kisses to the soft, warm skin. The thought of a wife or babes brought no jealous pangs, for it was a petty emotion to entertain when the boy lay willing and eager beneath his weight. "I drew you into no web," he mumbled, a note of reproach in his voice. “You walked into it, and none compelled you.”

"That I did," Inuyasha said, a false weariness in his voice. "Could not resist, I fear."

He was unfazed when Sesshoumaru's hands descended to his backside. He felt the play of muscles beneath his palm, taut then pliant. “Why must you paint me as a wicked ensnarer?” He murmured, kneading the tender flesh. The smooth, hot skin yielded easily. Perhaps the playful accusation wouldn't have stung so keenly, had another not laid the same charge against him so recently, with no hint of play.

“Not wicked then,” Inuyasha replied, a kiss landing on Sesshoumaru's jaw. “Persistent? Yes. And rather ill-mannered, for a prince."

"Persistent," Sesshoumaru echoed, his grip tightening until white showed on the soft skin. The half-blood gasped, though not from pain, his back arching away from the mattress. A jolt ran through him at the sight, and he was quick to shed his lower garments as well. “I can prove even more persistent.”

“Yes, please.” Inuyasha bared a sharp-toothed smile at him, a deep flush creeping up his neck and across his chest. "I'm very fond of your persistence."

He spun about then, no hesitation, no fear as he exposed his naked form to Sesshoumaru’s eyes. That simple act, seemingly without meaning, always awoke something within his breast that felt ancient and primal. His hand went to a drawer in the bedside table, and retrieved a jar of thick oil. He coated his hand with it, and settled behind the boy. Inuyasha went still underneath him, his spine growing stiff for a moment, then easing.

Sesshoumaru shivered with a feral need, spurred on by every moan and every yielding press of the half-blood's body into his touch. His gaze remained fixed on Inuyasha's face. The flush creeping across the bridge of his nose, the parted lips, the eyes wide and dark with want, locked on his own, despite the strain of the position. There had been an awkwardness to readying him, the first few times, and to many other things, but that had long since passed.

When he'd had his fill, Inuyasha pushed himself upright. He grabbed Sesshoumaru by the shoulders, prompting him to sit cross-legged on the bed so he might straddle him. "The blame is mine," he murmured, his nose brushing Sesshoumaru's ever so lightly. "The foolish wish of a foolish boy, who did not yet grasp the ways of the world."

His hands wandered to the half-blood's thighs, the familiar scent of him all-encompassing. The strange utterance cut through his daze, though, and a frown formed. “What wish would that be?”

"I was never given a dragon's egg, nor did I expect one. I knew, even then, that I was not like you, though the whys of it remained a mystery." Inuyasha's hand reached lower, then grasped him, shifting slightly to unite their forms. Though pleasure flared within Sesshoumaru, it was swallowed by a deeper flood of relief, comfort even. An undeniable sense of things being as they ought. “But it did not keep me from my dreams, from imagining how it would be. I am foolish, even now. I’ve ever longed for that which is not truly mine."

The reminder struck him like a sword to the breast, and his fingers clawed into Inuyasha's soft thighs, leaving white imprints behind. Even through the strain of pleasure, the boy ever spoke with ease. Though it rarely made sense, and less so in this moment, it filled him with an ache. "You're wrong," he hissed, the confession clawing from his throat. "It is yours."

"It is mine now," came the half-blood's reply, his voice steeped in that sly wit he wielded only for the sake of double meaning. "I always wanted to ride a dragon."

A gasp tore from Sesshoumaru as Inuyasha shifted his hips with slow intent. The fierce heat surrounding him tightened, drawing him deeper. He fell back against the sheets, his hands seizing the half-blood's hips. A moan caught in his throat before he managed to rasp, "A dragon, you say?"

"Yes," Inuyasha replied without shame. "A stubborn, fearsome, and large dragon."

A blush bloomed on Sesshoumaru’s face at the implication. He could not stifle the low snarl that rose within him, a wave of savage satisfaction sweeping him. He gripped tighter still, promising bruises on pale flesh. Unthinking, his body pressed forward, drawn by the delicious heat that enveloped him.

“Father still thinks of you as a sweet little lad. A child to be shielded from this world's cruelties.” The taunting, decidedly unwise, escaped him despite his better judgment. “He has the good sense to hold his tongue, yet it is plain as day in all he speaks of you. Surely you are aware of it?" Predictably, the half-blood made a sound of annoyance, and Sesshoumaru could not help but be charmed by it. "Well, he is grievously mistaken. It is clear to me at last."

"What in the Seven Hells is wrong with you?” Inuyasha fixed him with a glare, and still moving, took up a pillow, forcing it roughly against Sesshoumaru's face. "Speak no more of father while we do this deed!"

Sesshoumaru could not stop a huff of laughter, finding amusement despite the throes he was in. Fire racked his frame, and he doubted he could long survive it. "Forgive me. An unseemly remark," he offered, casting the pillow away.

"Mmn, I might grant forgiveness.” Inuyasha seized his hand, then pressed it between his own legs. “If you do my bidding."

Sesshoumaru eyed him through heavy-lidded eyes. “A bastard’s bidding?” Beyond a scoff, his voice was but a broken moan. His hand moved, guided by the half-blood's grip. He felt the wet heat against his palm, and the muscles in his stomach coiled tightly. With a pleased sigh, Inuyasha bent, pressing his lips to Sesshoumaru's chest. Yes, I’ll do your bidding, Sesshoumaru thought, feeling at the edge of a precipice. Anything, anything you want.

He remembered the King's ceaseless questioning then— the distaste and dread, the fear he'd sought to cloak with wrath, his desire to understand what had drawn them to each other. Sesshoumaru understood it well enough, though he'd been loath to speak of it with his sire. Inuyasha felt the sudden quickening of his pace, the ragged sharpness of his gasps, the bruising demand of his grasp, and he knew what it meant. He seized Sesshoumaru by the shoulders and halted, making to separate their forms.

It couldn’t be allowed. Without a thought, Sesshoumaru took the half-blood by the hips and turned them over. “Like seeks like,” he rasped, as his teeth closed on his brother's neck, unrelenting and unwilling to stop. “As fire beckons fire, so must you answer. Do not recoil. Dragons claim their blood."

A quiet whimper at his ear, and Sesshoumaru succumbed, yielding before an ancient summons. He drove himself deep within, over and over, until naught remained of the world but Inuyasha moaning his name, the wet noises of delight, and the burning heat that ever unfolded this joining. It felt almost painful to breathe, as though fire had devoured the air itself. He was struck by a sudden tremor, and the cruel grip of pleasure abruptly released him. Inuyasha went rigid beneath him, though he was still caught in a snare of his own. Tasting ashes on his tongue, Sesshoumaru slumped over the body beneath him.

The half-blood gave a low murmur of protest against his skin, still unfulfilled, solid and warm against Sesshoumaru's stomach. "This is how you mean to leave me, then, is it?" he grunted, sounding aggrieved. "That is not very kind."

His body was tired and sore, gasping faintly still, and it took a long moment before Sesshoumaru could speak. The urge to fall asleep, soothed by familiar warmth, was strong. There was something more, though, a calling far stronger. His hand found its way between Inuyasha's legs, his palm pressing gently against the flushed flesh. "Patience. I am not without a heart, entirely."

Dawn approached, and the gardens below lay hidden by a shroud of thick mist. Clad still in his sleeping robes, Sesshoumaru sat in a heavy chair of richly stained wood, his face uplifted to the velvet sky. Footsteps made him turn. Inuyasha stood by the door, his feet bare, hair still disheveled from a night's sleep. “You’ve a tournament in the morrow, do you not?” he asked, his voice easy as he settled himself on the balustrade. "If you don’t get your rest, your arse will be grass.”

Sesshoumaru’s gaze drifted down the length of him, noting the dark, loose cloth, and how it clung to his hips and thighs. He reached out and let his hand trail the curve of Inuyasha’s ribcage. "You mistake my measure, if you truly believe that."

“Mmn, you take no sleep, taste no food, and barely quit these chambers unless duty demands. Or you crave to pummel someone to dust at the training yards.” The half-blood's stare was pointed, yet his tone lacked any bite. “Persist as you do, and you'll dwindle to nothing but bone and air."

Sesshoumaru looked up at him with a mildly disapproving look. "So you speak, who are yourself but bone and air."

The retort left Inuyasha unperturbed. “That is a gross exaggeration.”

Sesshoumaru pinched him through his sleeping robes, earning himself a glare and a swift swat at his hand. “Let us reach an agreement, then. You will hold your tongue regarding my physique, and I shall merely cast a mild judgment upon your reclusive ways," Inuyasha said, arching his brow in a way he knew would vex him.

"I suppose we can arrange that." Sesshoumaru bent closer, his lips finding the displeased downturn of the half-blood's mouth.

Inuyasha went rigid, recoiling by instinct. “Are you mad? We'll be seen here!"

Undeterred, Sesshoumaru pressed closer, crowding the half-blood against the balustrade. Of late, the burden of sense had begun to weary him. “Let them see.” Though he held his ground, Inuyasha’s gaze flickered briefly to the adjoining balconies, his shoulders drawn tight. Sesshoumaru’s nose grazed the skin of his cheek, the comforting, known scent of him a welcome balm.

"Valonqar," he drawled, mildly put out with himself. The way they stood kept their eyes from meeting, and that was by design. Inuyasha did not flinch at the word the way he once had. Sesshoumaru reached for his hand then, gaze distant as his thumb traced the hard line of knuckles. He'd broken it once—a careless step too heavy, as the half-blood lay on the ground of the training yard, scrambling for his weapon. His throat felt suddenly tight.

"You're not as terrible with the blade as you once were." The dismantling of forts, the tentative attempt to reach out—it came without a strain, free of the shame that had bloomed under his father's condemning gaze. He wondered why he'd expected otherwise. "There is still hope for you."

For a long while, Inuyasha remained silent. His breaths were slow and measured as they stirred against Sesshoumaru’s face, and yet his heart beat a wild, uneven rhythm. He let out an irritated scoff, as if to ward off the sudden rush of emotion. "You're the first contestant to ride into the lists tomorrow morn, aren't you?" Inuyasha asked, with that quiet hint of pride he ever sought to conceal, and Sesshoumaru ever feigned ignorance of. "Get your rest. I would see you crush them to fine dust."

The day following the tournament, Sesshoumaru was called to the Small Council chambers. The King sat there alone, though that came as no surprise. He knew well what this summons was about.

Sesshoumaru walked into the chambers with a calm stride, no trace of hesitation upon him. A look of judgment shone in the King’s eyes, and no efforts were made to conceal it. Sesshoumaru halted before the table and inclined his head, although he knew it was unnecessary, with no witnesses about. The act of distancing ever chafed at the King when disguised as formality. He stood, awaiting acknowledgement, but his father remained quiet. Such silence never bode well.

"You are prompt, my son," Inu Taishou said, and if not anger, then a definite strain marred his tone that had been absent last they spoke.  

“Good afternoon, father,” Sesshoumaru replied, a greeting betraying no inflection. He watched the King’s face intently, as if trying to divine his next words. No stiffness was allowed to enter his posture.

“I dislike it very much when you simply stand and stare in silence. It is most unsettling," Inu Taishou spoke, a faint frown upon his brow. "Be seated."

Sesshoumaru took the opposite chair, an ill feeling in his gut that a dressing-down was imminent. Reprimands from the King had lessened with the years, but they were not entirely a thing of the past. He kept his hands upon his lap, unwilling to clench them into fists.

“My blood.” The endearment was spoken tenderly, as it usually was, but laced with an undeniable weariness. Inu Taishou almost appeared bemused. “A brothel?”

The muscles in Sesshoumaru's neck coiled tight, taut with tension. This worn-out disappointment cut deeper still than the sharp scolding he had braced himself for. He swallowed the barbed retort, “I had no desire to be there!”, certain it would make him sound like a childish fool.

"And not any brothel, but the Crow's Nest?" Inu Taishou spoke the name with undeniable disdain. "Why would you take the northerners to such a den?"

Sesshoumaru kept his tone polite, his gaze straight and measured. A dozen explanations stood ready on his tongue, but he chose the plainest. There was no point in making a grand thing of it. “So was their wish.”

“So was their wish,” the King echoed, his expression void of all compassion. His mouth was turned down in distaste. “So those lads, six name-days younger than yourself, simply brought you there by force, and you permitted it?"

The desire to snap and argue that the truth held more layers burned within him, but he felt his father's unforgiving eyes bore into him, and held his tongue. He muttered a reluctant "Yes," hoping to cut short the awkward talk. It proved a dashed hope.

“Lads have their ways. They drink themselves into stupors, lie with whores, and stumble into petty squabbles. It is the nature of things, these days, even for those of the noblest houses,” Inu Taishou conceded, though with a measure of reluctance. "But you are no longer a lad, Sesshoumaru. You ceased to be one many years past. This is ill-fitting for the heir apparent, and I believe you know it.”

The disapproval was there, plain to see. Yet it was lighter than he'd expected, almost gentle. Sesshoumaru's gut twisted, sensing that this mildness presaged a far harsher blow. This was a trial the North had not prepared him for.

“I doubt it will surprise you that Lord Stark was wroth, upon learning his heir had been led to Flea Bottom by your own hand, and that the whole night was spent in a house of ill-repute, ending with young Kouga being knocked cold. Matters are strained, to say the least.” The reproach in the King's gaze was evident, and Sesshoumaru might have been amused by it, were the situation otherwise. “You've given me much to contend with."

A touch of regret pricked Sesshoumaru. Though he held little love for his firstborn, Lord Stark was the one lord of the North he did not utterly scorn, and he was not glad to have caused him such grievances.

Inu Taishou leaned back in his chair, scrubbing a hand across his face. A tiredness seemed to cling to him, as it often did of late. "And as if that were not enough,” he said, and the disapproval in his voice was undeniable, no longer gentle, “you saw fit to bring your half-brother along.”

A wave of dread washed over Sesshoumaru at the bare mention of the half-blood. He suddenly found it crucial to keep his features utterly devoid of expression. Where this conversation led, he knew full well, and it brought him no pleasure. His fingers tightened and loosened upon his lap, the sharp points of his nails biting into soft flesh. "What of it?"

“Don't play the fool with me, my blood. It suits you ill." The King purposely avoided his gaze, which in itself was troubling enough. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Did I not tell you to tread carefully?”

A cold stone settled in Sesshoumaru's gut, the formless unease he knew so well abruptly hardening into fear. There was no rage in his father’s voice, and that absence proved far more unsettling than the alternative. “I recall you did,” Sesshoumaru replied, forcing an air of disinterest.

“Well, then.” The King drew a deep breath, as if to gird his resolve. He rubbed at the back of his neck, a troubled look upon him, elbows propped on the table. His face remained averted. At last, he lifted his gaze, and a distinct flicker of apprehension was plain to see. “I trust you did not lie with him there?”

Sesshoumaru could not suppress the surge of outrage that coursed through him. So fierce was the wrath that seized him, it took a moment for words to form upon his tongue, lest they emerge as a scream. “How dare you suggest I would do something so shameful?" He hissed, his jaw locked in a hard clench.

Inu Taishou cleared his throat, straightening in his chair once more. Though still unhappy, he did look distinctively relieved. He took his word for it, or at least appeared to. “I mean to speak plainly, and hope you take no offense,” he said, with no small measure of caution. “I can no longer say what you are capable of."

Sesshoumaru’s blood turned to ice in his veins, and though a wild anger flared within him, it came laced with shame. “You would question the honor of the heir apparent?” He asked, his lips curving into a tight, mirthless line.

“Can you fault me? A day past, I'd have sworn the likes of you would never grace a brothel’s doors, and yet here we stand.” Inu Taishou arched a brow, an emphasis to his every word, then looked away again. “And this affair with your half-brother… That was quite enough to astound a man, truth be told.”

“I do not deny the strangeness of my conduct, as of late.” Sesshoumaru had to force calm upon himself, fighting the urge to bring his fist down upon the table. He maintained his smile, though it was a harsh, unforgiving grimace. The wrath that had festered in the core of him for weeks past now threatened to burst forth. “I am not bereft of my senses though, should that be your veiled meaning."

“There is no veil upon my meaning. I speak as candidly to you as ever." Inu Taishou's stare was unyielding, boring into Sesshoumaru with cold intensity. “For what reason did you lay hands on Lord Stark’s son?”

The urge to roll his eyes was irresistible. He had hoped his father would not bring up the reasons. Of course, that was too much to ask for. “He was but schooled by my hand. A lesson in humility,” Sesshoumaru spoke, with the deliberate intent of provocation, for those very words had been uttered by the King in the Great Hall, nigh on six summers past.

“I see.” Inu Taishou offered no reaction to the barb. “Why was such schooling necessary at all? What insolence did he speak that so inflamed your temper?"

Sesshoumaru gritted his teeth, clenching his jaw so hard it almost hurt. His answer, whatever form it took, would bring him no joy. "Is it truly necessary to delve deeper, when insolence was openly uttered?"

For a brief moment, the hardness in the King's gaze yielded. His hands clasped, thumbs tracing restless circles on his knuckles. He seemed to be pondering how best to frame his question. “Was it an ill-remark?” The question was poised carefully. “About your inclinations?”

A blush of profound mortification spread across Sesshoumaru's face. He ought to have known the old King would leap to that conclusion. Few things stirred Sesshoumaru's wrath so swiftly amongst the highborn, and this one stood chief among them. Lying was tempting, an easy path to take, and still he replied, “No.”

A frown creased the King's brow. Leaving his high seat, he crossed to Sesshoumaru's side, taking a chair. "What was it, then?"

Sesshoumaru kept quiet, for the truth of it, once uttered, would surely sound absurd and foolish. There would be no escaping his father, and he sensed that any lies he spun would only lead him to a fouler end. He swallowed hard, then forced it out, and although his jaw was tight, his head remained unbowed. “He spoke crudely... about that woman."

Inu Taishou's brow furrowed further, failing to understand. “What woman?”

Sesshoumaru drew in a deep breath, then spoke, the admission emerging from him in a suppressed snarl. “The bastard’s mother.”

For a moment, the King seemed quite bereft of speech. All at once, his bearing became guarded, distant. "What was it that he said?"

Sesshoumaru hesitated. A vicious streak, one he struggled to master of late, compelled him to recount it with vivid detail. He knew it for the pettiness it was, though. “I do not wish to repeat it,” he settled for, at last.

“I imagine it was ill-mannered and vulgar.” The King's voice held more resignation than wrath. “Indeed, you are wise not to repeat it."

A long silence settled, thick and heavy, between father and son. Then, without warning, a laugh burst from Inu Taishou. Uncertain of his father's sudden mirth, Sesshoumaru cast him a sidelong look. There was a hint of incredulity to the sound, and he felt a prickle of offense, for reasons he could not name. “What is it that amuses you so?"

“Only you, and the manner of you. In every aspect." The King, to his credit, appeared a touch abashed. His eyes held a curious gleam, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. “No offense intended, of course."

Sesshoumaru stiffened, biting back the curse that sprang to his tongue. “I am certain there is none," he gnashed out. The need to flee these stifling chambers was nearly unbearable by now, but he forced himself to remain rooted.

“Why, it is amusing to see you so vexed, when you yourself are not wont to hold your tongue about that woman, given the slightest chance." Inu Taishou’s face betrayed no displeasure, as was customary when discussing this particular matter. He seemed, in fact, unspeakably pleased.

“I had not realized you marked my every word so closely,” Sesshoumaru answered with a blank face, no sharper retort coming to mind.

“Well, of course I do. You do not make it a habit to disparage a lady's honor, but then again, she is no lady, and you indeed disparage her often." The King's eyes became slits, a subtle sign of his disapproval, and yet a faint smile touched his lips. A treasonous impulse, hot and fierce, surged within Sesshoumaru to wipe that look from him with his fist. “Never within Inuyasha's hearing, though. I imagine that’s where the difference laid?”

Sesshoumaru did not speak, unwilling to give his father further cause for laughter. He plucked at his cuff, his gaze unnaturally intent upon the small movement. For a change, Inu Taishou seemed not to take offense at the lack of answer. “Oh, Young Dragon,” he said fondly. “You're like an onion to me. Each layer peeled brings tears to the eyes, yet I sense I draw near to the core of you, at last.”

A grimace twisted Sesshoumaru’s features, his teeth exposed in distaste. “It is a mercy that fate made you a king, and not a bard."

“Speaks one devoid of taste. Regardless of what he said, you must apologize to Lord Stark," Inu Taishou said lightly. The stern disapproval from before was gone. “The father, mind you. Not the son. That much clemency I offer, so be glad.”

Sesshoumaru did not complain, for he had guessed as much. Though he had no desire to meet with Stark or his ill-bred brat again, he knew he had little say in the matter. “And the Lord's spawn? Must he be present?"

“Only if you wish so, and I judge you do not," Inu Taishou replied with an easy air. The fondness in his eyes persisted.

Sesshoumaru regarded his father with a wary eye. “Am I dismissed, then?”

“By no means. There is a further matter I would raise, before you vanish into your lair to escape my presence like the very pox.” Discomfort returned to the King's expression, yet it was of a strange, new sort. He did not speak at once. “Something has been preying on my thoughts."

Sesshoumaru was gripped by a hollow ache of foreboding. He gave his assent, shoulders drawing inward, like a serpent tightening its coils before a greater beast. He had brought this upon himself. The truth of it was plain to him now, in a way it hadn’t been when he struck down the Stark lad, nor when he first entered the pleasure house, seeking the half-blood amidst the throng. His father had warned him, he had paid no heed, and now he would reap the bitter fruit.

Do not take him away, he thought, but didn't say.

The King's fingers tapped upon the table once more, a strange blankness to his expression Sesshoumaru found immediately unnerving. With his eyes fixed on the polished wood, Inu Taishou asked, “Are you the only man Inuyasha has known?”

A long, agonizing silence fell. Sesshoumaru shifted, crossing his legs, his mouth set in a grim line. The King’s face was a mask he could not penetrate. His voice, scarce more than a whisper, came forth as a venomous hiss. "Go to him and ask.”

The King seemed oddly put out by the suggestion. “That is a conversation I would rather avoid with him. He is known to be quite... unreserved in these matters, and I'd rather not be privy to all he might say." He finally looked up at Sesshoumaru, and there was an almost pleading edge to his expression. “Best to speak of it with you, as you are the oldest and most sensible between the two.” A thoughtful line appeared between the King’s brows then, as if reconsidering his statement. “Or at least you were once."

Sesshoumaru held his father's gaze for a long moment, as if considering him anew. “Why does this concern you so?”

“Well, it’s just…” Inu Taishou’s fingers picked at each other, his gaze lowered. A gesture unbecoming a king, Sesshoumaru couldn’t help but notice. “It sits poorly with me, is all. That I could discern it for one, but not for the other. That he might have kept such company, and I was none the wiser. It begs the question of what else escaped my notice."

Sesshoumaru had to avert his gaze. For all his reticence to speak of it plainly, the King had never reproached him for his nature, despite the inconveniences it carried. That in itself was a rarity that, he often reminded himself, shouldn't be taken for granted. A truthful word would not be his demise.

He recalled the ill ease of that moment, then—the half-blood's unusual quiet as he spoke of how, the uncertainty poorly masked by strained japes, the deliberate pauses in their coupling he found he could not begrudge. The doubt that remained with him in the aftermath, as he pondered if the lad had found pleasure, if it would be repeated. The sweet, wild rush of relief, when it was.

"I alone have been," Sesshoumaru declared, without adornment.

"You sound so certain of it," the King observed. “I’d rather not know the reason. These talks, in truth, are not to my liking.”

Sesshoumaru’s lips twitched. "Why, you’re the one who keeps prompting them.”

“Indeed, I am.” There was a gravity to his father's countenance that made Sesshoumaru’s brow furrow. “And you'll have to bear with my whims yet. Perhaps I owe you an apology for that. I grow old, you see. There are truths, or the absence thereof, that might yet steal my slumber."

Sesshoumaru offered no reply to such statement. Instead, he asked once more, “Am I dismissed, then?”

The King made a vague motion toward the door, ever uncharmed by his bluntness. “You may go.”

Sesshoumaru rose, and as he quit the Small Council chambers, a strange thought came to him. He'd missed the headsman's axe by a hair's breath.

Chapter Text

He came down to the bastard's door that night, only to find it secured against him. Sesshoumaru tried the lock anew, a scowl on his features, but it held firm. Stepping back, he regarded the marble door with no small degree of reproach. He was contemplating whether to retreat to his own quarters, pride wounded, when the door cracked open a sliver. Through the narrow gap, a lone golden eye peered up at him.

“Ah, it’s you,” Inuyasha murmured, a note of odd relief in his voice. He pulled the door wide, then retreated into the chamber, offering Sesshoumaru unspoken leave to enter. The bastard’s want of courtesy left him unperturbed. There was no need for such tiresome ceremonies when no others were about.

As he made his way inside, he sensed a strange disquiet in the air, a tautness that had been absent on his previous visit. Inuyasha sat upon the bed, unmoving in a way that was unlike him, his gaze fixed on the carpet and not on him. A subtle tension held his shoulders as Sesshoumaru settled beside him. He allowed no trace of hesitation to mar his features. From the half-blood, he had grown to anticipate a certain heedlessness, a sharp tongue perhaps, but never such silence.

Inuyasha appeared neither weighed down by sickness nor by the training yard's daily tolls, which wasn’t rare even these days. That only made the change in his demeanor all the more mystifying. Sesshoumaru’s gaze rose to the pale flesh of his neck, the very skin that had yielded so warm and pliant to his kiss scarce two nights past. What could have shifted?

“Did you speak with father?” Inuyasha asked, at length, eyes still on the carpet.

Sesshoumaru understood then, and felt his restlessness ease. For a moment, he considered telling a lie, hoping to avoid the talk he saw looming. It would serve no true purpose, though. Should he offer no answer, Inuyasha would doubtlessly go to their father himself for the truth, and the thought held little appeal. “Yes.”

Inuyasha's head still hung low, and the stillness proved intolerable. Sesshoumaru was the one who held his tongue. Never the half-blood. They ought to be bickering, trading barbs and jests, anything save this uneasy strain.

A subtle grimace touched Inuyasha's mouth. “Was he much wroth?”

"No." Sesshoumaru forced his tone to remain even, fighting the inherent bitterness that so often crept into his words when speaking of the King. Though he sensed Inuyasha craved further detail, he chose not to elaborate.

“Were harsh words spoken?” The half-blood posed his question, and Sesshoumaru gleaned the true meaning of it, somehow. Though neither of them discussed it aloud, least of all with him, Inuyasha knew that the chasm between the King and the Crown Prince was great. To be the one to further widen it sat poorly with him, it seemed. Sesshoumaru felt a warmth unfurl within him.

"No," he said quietly, unsure whether it was the truth he spoke or a lie.

Inuyasha appeared rather unconvinced, yet did not press the matter. Sesshoumaru regarded him for a long moment, then asked, "Why was the door locked?"

“Why, to keep folk out, obviously.” Inuyasha shrugged, a hint of a smirk playing on his mouth. His eyes remained untouched by mirth, though. “Why? Must my door always stand unlocked for you?"

Yes, Sesshoumaru thought, but didn’t say. Always.

He could sense, in some inexplicable way, that the boy was holding a secret. His mood would not be so bleak, otherwise. The half-blood’s lack of guile in hiding anything kept Sesshoumaru from fretting. Given time, the truth would out. His boots cast aside, he reclined upon the bed. Though smaller and less grand than his own, Inuyasha’s bedchambers held a quiet, almost comforting quality.

“You forgot your cloak here, when you last visited,” Inuyasha said lightly, lowering himself to lay beside him. “Do be wiser with your things. That is a sigil I am not allowed to bear. The maids will know it does not belong to me.”

Sesshoumaru let out a quiet huff of laughter, his eyes idly tracing the patterns on the bed hangings and the plain furnishings of the room. Even now, he was loath to confess this was a habit he had retained from those earlier, uncertain visits, when leaving some trifle behind guaranteed a reason to return. He could feel the warmth of Inuyasha’s form, undiminished by the garments that separated them.

“Sesshoumaru?” The half-blood shifted, settling against the bed's frame, seeming not to notice the way his nails worried at his fingers. Perhaps he saw no cause to conceal it. Sesshoumaru waited, granting the boy time to collect his wits. It's not as if he had pressing matters elsewhere. “Someone was here today.”

Sesshoumaru frowned, unsettled not by the words themselves but by the tone in which they were spoken. “Who?”

“I cannot say. They came whilst I was away.” Inuyasha glared about the chamber, his arms folded across his chest. His face wore a grave cast Sesshoumaru seldom saw. “I knew it at once. Things lay… amiss, not in their rightful spots. But nothing was stolen, although silver was left in plain sight.”

An unbidden chill crept up Sesshoumaru's spine. He had no liking for what he was hearing. "Who holds the keys to your chambers?" Already he was sifting through the faces of all who could possibly be blamed. One name rose unbidden in his thoughts, and he felt his face tighten with annoyance.

“Just the maids, but I’ve always left the door open. It was never a concern before. That’s why I locked it.” The half-blood cast him a sideways look, as if he knew it had been taken for an unspoken dismissal. Sesshoumaru himself favored such subtle acts, and often assumed others shared his wont. He fought against the urge to bristle. There were more pressing matters at hand.

His gaze darted to the door and back to the half-blood. A fresh wave of unease washed over him, at the thought of some stranger lurking in his chambers. “Why did you refrain from speaking of this?” he asked, no inflection to his tone.

There was an uneasy look about Inuyasha, then. "Figured I was fretting over naught, and you'd just laugh at me for it," he grumbled, reluctant.

Sesshoumaru's jaw tightened against his will, a line of displeasure deepening on his brow. While he had recently glimpsed flashes of brilliance in the boy, more often than not, good sense was a stranger to him. For a long moment, he wrestled his face into a semblance of calm.

"When such things occur, you are to speak of them to me," he commanded, seizing Inuyasha's jaw to hold his gaze. “Upon my very entrance. Am I understood?”

The half-blood shifted, discomfort returning, but born of a new cause. His features twisted unhappily, as they always did when he felt their father treated him like a child. Never before had Sesshoumaru seen such look aimed at himself.

"Fine," Inuyasha mumbled, his voice thick with ill grace.

Sesshoumaru felt the urge to snap, Mind your tone, but kept quiet. He had no wish for a quarrel, not with how troubled the half-blood appeared. Before withdrawing, his fingers grazed lightly across the vulnerable expanse of Inuyasha’s throat. His gaze lingered, and though the need arose, he refrained from leaning closer. There was something weighing on his mind.

A fortnight had passed, and still he wondered how the King came to know of their liaison. It had occurred to him that he might have grown careless, betrayed it in the manner of his conduct when amongst others with the half-blood. A gesture easily caught by eyes that had watched them both come of age, however apart. Perhaps the matter was more tangled than he’d first assumed.

"It's the Spider," Sesshoumaru spoke quietly, almost to himself. The name was uttered in the Common Tongue, as he only ever spoke it in that language.

Inuyasha’s brow furrowed, his gaze blank. “Uh?”

There was a brief pause, as Sesshoumaru sought the truest rendering. “The Spider,” he said once more, this time in Valyrian. "Lord Naraku, the Master of Whisperers. One of his little birds has flown into your lair."

The half-blood scowled, rubbing his arms as a shiver visibly seized him. “Well, my heart's singing now. Do you practice sounding like a crypt keeper, or does it just come natural to you?" He asked, voice tight.

The question was met with a withering look from Sesshoumaru. "Your mockery is unnecessary," he spat, despite himself. “I find no pleasure in it, either. I hold that man in great disfavor, more so when he meddles where he has no right."

“It was my chambers they broke into, and not yours. So maybe don't make it worse with your sinister talk, eh? My guts are already turning,” Inuyasha reproached.

“You’re proving quite irritating tonight.” Sesshoumaru halted, then spoke again, as an afterthought, "More so than it’s your custom.”

The half-blood remained wholly unaffected. “I just found out the greatest spymaster of the Kingdom has taken an interest in my miserable hide. My temper has grown dark, and for good reason.”

Sesshoumaru hummed, leaning back against the headframe, observing the half-blood in silence. It became apparent to him then that he held no suspicion it was Inu Taishou who'd ordered him watched. A foolish notion, for the Spider, as a member of the Small Council, gave answer to none but the King himself. Then again, Inuyasha was ever short on good sense, and his fondness for their father ran much too deep. He lacked the malice to see through his ploys. Despite its folly, Sesshoumaru was unwilling to rectify that defect of character.

I speak as candidly to you as ever, the King had declared that morn. Misleading, indeed, but far from a lie. Not for the first time, Sesshoumaru found himself content for having withheld his trust.

"Grant him no more import than he merits," he said at last, stifling a sigh. “As his name suggests, he is naught but a bothersome pest. A man whose only skill lies in slithering through shadows. Let him not trouble your spirit.”

"My spirit is not troubled," the half-blood replied, looking decidedly offended. "Disturbed? Maybe, but not troubled.”

He averted his gaze then, and Sesshoumaru seized upon the opening. His fingers wrapped about a slender ankle, and he tugged, dragging the half-blood downwards to swiftly pin him beneath his weight. “Your spirit is, indeed, unburdened.” He leaned forward, near enough to sense the barest stirring of Inuyasha's breath upon his skin. “Yet I’ve a mind that if I were to bite deep and pierce flesh, your blood would feel cold upon my palate."

Inuyasha blinked up at him, a sudden caution entering his gaze. "Gods, that's a grim one. Do keep your bloodlust out of my chambers, heir apparent.”

Although he saw it coming, Sesshoumaru did nothing to prevent retaliation. The half-blood’s hands clamped on his wrists, and with a thrust of his hips, he flipped their positions. “Save it for the next fool who tries to unhorse you. It won you the lists yesterday, did it not?" A look of such smug satisfaction twisted his lips, one would think the tourney's victory was entirely his own doing. Perhaps it was, at least as the bastard understood it. He appeared much too pleased as he straddled Sesshoumaru’s chest, thighs braced against his sides. “Barely a challenge, it was. Made short work of every last one. I almost felt sorry for them.”

No struggle was offered, even as Sesshoumaru’s wrists were held fast against the bedding. “Almost, you say?” he made answer, his skin tingling against those callused hands. “Did you feast your eyes then, from your seat in the grandstand?”

“Champion of the joust,” Inuyasha replied smoothly, a faint twitch appearing at the corner of his mouth as he sidestepped the question. “You haven't ridden so high the ranks in many a moon, have you? Not for want of skill. You hold these tourneys in low regard, by your own word. ‘Small-minded-performances-for-commoner’s-delight’, as you so often call them. This one was different, though.”

“Was it?” Sesshoumaru whispered, his gaze locked upon those lips, watching their every subtle shift. How simple it would be to resist, to best the half-blood, and press him down anew. The very idea made his fingers curl.

“Yes,” Inuyasha murmured at his ear. “For I bade you humble them.”

A soft shiver traced the skin of his back. It was a novel sensation, to be so entirely at another's will. The reins of power were ever firmly in his grasp, except in these chambers, and that only on occasion. It was not the half-blood’s strength that kept him pinned, of course, and that knowledge, strangely, made this rare compliance all the more alluring.

“You bade me?” he breathed, with a hint of taunting and something darker.

“Grind them into the dust, I said—and you saw it done." A new quality had entered Inuyasha's voice, a peculiar light dancing in his eyes. It was a look of wonder, akin to one who had just found a power previously unknown. "Not a commoner's delight, this time, but a bastard's."

Sesshoumaru’s golden eyes bled to black, a shadow shifting within them. Although he lay unmoving, his frame was drawn and tight, as a predator poised to spring. “I've the sense we are speaking of vastly different delights,” he murmured, staring at the half-blood with an almost reptilian attention.

“Vastly different, yes.” Drawing near, Inuyasha pressed tender kisses against Sesshoumaru's bared throat. "I knew feelings that were wholly new to me, sitting in the stands all by my lonesome, with none to attend my need.”

Every point where their bodies met, every warm breath upon his skin, suddenly clouded Sesshoumaru’s senses. A searing heat bloomed within him. His chin came up, granting the half-blood leave to trace his lips lower. Deft fingers found the laces of his sleeping gown, working them loose.

Inuyasha pressed a single kiss to his bare stomach, then rested his head against it, staring up at him with mirthful eyes. His thumb slowly stroked the prominent bone of Sesshoumaru’s hip. The odd sensation struck him that he was being used for amusement, and yet he did not bristle the way he usually would. The half-blood’s touch was at once soft and claiming, and it left him feeling lightheaded.

"Let it not swell your pride," Inuyasha cautioned. “The day will come when I too take to the lists, and then you’ll face true peril. The champion's wreath will not be so easily won. At last, you'll meet your match.”

The bastard’s words, spoken with such fierce bravado, tore him back to the here and now. A faint snort escaped Sesshoumaru, more a caught breath than the scornful sound he'd meant to utter. It was a promise so preposterous, so insolent, so utterly unbound by reality, it should have struck him as ridiculous, and yet it didn’t. As he stared deep into those taunting golden eyes, it occurred to him that the boy did not believe his own boast—that it was but a cut of the razor-sharp dance they’d mastered over the moons, and he meant, in truth, only to vex. The hollow claim still gave him pause.

“You? A match for me?” Even to his own hearing, his voice was faint.

The boy did not seem to grasp the true weight of his jesting, or the sway it held over his kin. A fevered beat took Sesshoumaru’s heart as warm breath encompassed him. He felt the need to reach, to entwine his fingers in those silver strands, to hold the half-blood near and press him closer still, until he knew not whose skin was whose. At last one single, undivided creature. Inuyasha set his mouth upon the flushed, swollen flesh—then drew his tongue about its crown.

He had become so strikingly unreserved when performing this act, though he'd known naught of it until recently. The first attempt had proved rather ungainly. A great deal of fumbling, and teeth, and too much slobber. Inuyasha had seemed near ashamed, for failing to bring him properly to completion. A different sort of warmth had awakened within Sesshoumaru. So he held the half-blood close, and murmured into his ear, “Fret not over clumsy firsts, I’ll show you how a man is pleasured,” before turning them about and suiting action to word.

It remained an experience, to have him in this fashion. Both a fresh thrill and a thing near custom. His breaths came ragged, his chest heaving with each stir of the half-blood's warm tongue. “Do dream sweetly, you little torment,” he murmured, keenly aware of the slippery noises that pervaded the chamber.

“I give you my all, and you still make sport of me,” Inuyasha spoke, unperturbed, his breath warm upon the damp skin. “Bloody unseemly, that.”

A strangled laugh caught in Sesshoumaru's throat as the slick warmth enfolded him anew. His flesh seemed to tighten, becoming strained. He resisted the urge to shut his eyes, gaze fixed on that head of silver hair. “Shall I give you praise, then? Commend you for your efforts?” He whispered, and the half-blood dared to moan about him, as though he were the one tasting delight.

“Well, I’m not adverse to flattery,” he replied with a rough voice, granting a few swift strokes, before lowering himself once more.

He’ll be the death of me. Sesshoumaru knew it as he glanced down, body stretched tight with want, and saw Inuyasha's own pleasure plain upon his features. His eyes gleamed bright, his face crimsoned, cheeks hollowed out as he drew him deeper. The sweetness was almost pain, and to have it given by the half-blood, to have him so yielded, for all his want of grace, felt like a wager with the Stranger. A shudder ran through him, his form coiling like a viper as he threaded his fingers through soft, silvery locks.

"Yes, just so," he sighed, eyelids shuttering closed. "That's a fine lad."

Inuyasha made a soft sound about him, and perhaps it was the caress merely, or the words of approval so rarely spoken, that spurred him, but he quickened to a desperate pace. It kindled a fire within him, to think the boy reveled in the taste of him, in the sound of his voice, in his being near. Sesshoumaru shifted his hips, unthinking, thrusting when he was ever wont to lie still, and heard a strangled noise. He halted at once, sharp and sudden, the sound tearing him from the dark waters that had claimed him.

The heat that had wrapped him so cozily withdrew, yet he paid it no mind. He reached for the boy as he coughed into his fist, the wet sound unnervingly loud in the still chamber. Sesshoumaru offered a soothing rub to his back. A slight frown touched Inuyasha's brow when he cleared his throat, his hand going to the skin of his neck. He let go a breath, his shoulders slumping, then scowled.

“Just had to ram it bloody in, did you?” He asked, his gaze unforgiving as it fixed on Sesshoumaru. “You craven beast, you—”

Sesshoumaru surmised that the words that followed escaped his grasp so abysmally because they were but vile curses. Beyond his understanding, spoken as they were in Low Valyrian. He found enjoyment in it, rather than offense. The half-blood spoke to him as no other dared. Sesshoumaru kept stroking his back, where the skin proved hot and slick with sweat.

“I only took what you were so eager to offer. A shame that you could not endure,” he breathed against Inuyasha's ear, well aware of the effect his taunts would have. The half-blood gasped in outrage, then sprang to force him down anew, but this time Sesshoumaru did not permit it.

With a swift move, he secured Inuyasha’s wrists with one hand, pressing him against the bed. He settled over his middle, mindful not to bear his full weight. While less intriguing, this was the position they had always found natural. Sesshoumaru loosed the sash of his sleeping robe, gazing between his thighs. The tender flesh that had rested there now stirred, rising and flushing to a hue that never failed to whet his appetite.

"Why do you only stare so, hmm?” Inuyasha asked with a hint of irony, yet a breathlessness clung to the question. “Go on, it means no bite."

“You are overbold in your presumptions.” Sesshoumaru’s features remained unsmiling, despite his amusement. "Take no affront. It is pleasing to the eye, and to the touch as well. Easy to pleasure with my mouth,” he spoke low by the half-blood's ear, then gave the lobe a tender nip. Inuyasha shivered against him, and for once, no quick retort was given. “Though you must know it’s far from the most impressive my eyes have beheld, yes?”

Sesshoumaru was certain his taunting would spark an argument, which offered entertainment on occasion, but Inuyasha merely blinked up at him, as if wondering if he’d misheard. “Unthinkable,” he said thoughtfully, then a smirk, bordering on gleeful, played upon his lips. “The heir apparent spoke a jest of a man’s cock! None would ever believe it!”

Although he kept his eyes steady, a silent groan rose within Sesshoumaru. He brought it upon himself, in truth, for relentlessly pursuing a boy, when no shortage of men stood ready and eager. He often dismissed six summers as an inconsequential difference, yet they could also stretch like an abyss between them. It did not infuriate him as it once had, in the days of his youth. Back then, the half-blood’s childish antics had been odious and a never-ending source of irritation. Sesshoumaru was older now, though, hardened by the world in a manner once unknown to him, and he felt but a mild embarrassment.

Other times, he was plagued by a sense of wrongness. The same unease that had gnawed at him the night he was first confronted by the King, and when Kouga Stark lay a boneless sprawl at his feet, but more pointedly at moments like these—when an unwitting gesture or thoughtless comment from the half-blood served to remind him that he was, at heart, still a lad. Now and then, it would rankle at Sesshoumaru, though not always.

A peculiar pleasure lay in guiding him, in uttering words and performing acts the half-blood had never experienced before. He could not tire of it, and sometimes he pondered if that was what drew him back to him, more than all else. The primal satisfaction of knowing, and so often confirming himself the first. He did not wish to think of it as defilement, though the word would sometimes whisper through his thoughts during the act, without the expected sting of regret.

It is as it should be, for he wills it so, he thought that night as he brought their forms together anew, the flesh giving way readily for him, yielding despite the initial reluctance. It was the way of dragons to claim their own, and regardless of the womb that bore them, Inuyasha remained the only brother fate had given him. Sesshoumaru entertained the notion, at times, that it was simply meant to be.

As the half-blood seized him within, Sesshoumaru drew a deep, shuddering breath. He pressed himself further in, searching for the heat he knew awaited him. His hands trailed down fair, slender legs, then brought them high to rest upon his shoulders. It drew forth a strangled whimper, and Sesshoumaru found it sweet and gratifying. Thought fled him, leaving only the ragged gasps, the intimate lock of flesh, the slap of skin on skin filling the chamber.

He knew he ought not to surrender himself so fully, for the risk of being overheard was ever-present, even behind a bolted door. The urge was too strong to fight. Though their bodies were already impossibly entwined, he craved to press nearer still. Inuyasha wrapped his legs about him, as if he also yearned for a deeper closeness, and Sesshoumaru could not deny the fierce pride that swelled within him, knowing that none but he had ever pleased him so.

Indeed, he wills it, he thought as the half-blood gasped beneath him, moaning wetly against the skin of his neck. He needs it, as do I. He needs me.

Sesshoumaru dreamt of the Wall that night. A stark canvas of white stretching without end, cold blue eyes boring into his, and the chill grasp of a glacial hand on his wrist. He came awake, drenched in his own sweat, to the insistent shaking of his shoulders and Inuyasha hissing at his ear, “Sesshoumaru! Wake up!”

He jolted upright, disoriented, a fog still clinging to his senses. His mind, for a moment, was still gripped by the fading dream, caught in the clutches of an unseen terror. In the dim light, his gaze fell upon Inuyasha, and his frantic heart eased, the known lines of the boy’s face pulling him firmly to reality. "What is it?" he mumbled, his voice soft and hoarse from slumber.

Inuyasha kept quiet, his lips drawn into a tight line. He looked almost afraid, a rare sight that made Sesshoumaru falter. Fear had been a familiar sight on the half-blood's features, but only in his most tender age. Never now that he was a grown lad, nearing manhood. Even when he was frightened, his pride was too great to reveal it. There was no other name for what gleamed in Inuyasha's gaze as he faced the door to the adjoining solar, though.

Then Sesshoumaru heard it—the soft thud of footsteps, the creak of shelves, the rustle of things being shifted. "Someone's there," Inuyasha whispered, drawing closer as if by an impulse deeper than thought.

Sesshoumaru's heart began to pound again, all traces of sleep banished. He could hear the intruder rifling through belongings in the solar, seemingly unconcerned by discovery. His gaze flickered to Inuyasha, who wore the same grave cast he had earlier in the evening. That instinct to guard, so well-known to him by now, stirred within him. He knew, by some unspoken means, that the intruder did not frighten Inuyasha. What truly put fear in him was the thought of being discovered, with the Crown Prince sharing his bed, scarcely dressed, in the dead of night.

The faint rustling from beyond the door persisted, and Sesshoumaru's temper frayed further with every sound. How long would this intruder rummage about? What were they truly seeking? He reached for the things he had left upon the nightstand. His hand found the hilt of his sword, drawing it silently from its scabbard. After a brief hesitation, he moved towards the door in silent steps.

“Stay here,” he ordered, his tone brooking no debate.

"What is it you're doing?" The half-blood sprang from the bed, his hand stretched out as if to bar Sesshoumaru's way. “Do not go out! You cannot be seen here!”

Sesshoumaru halted, his hand on the door, and turned to glance at him. Though Inuyasha attempted to feign anger, he could discern, even by the faint light, that another emotion gripped him. It was unwelcome, this sensation in his breast, this merciless tug. Should their secret be laid bare, the bastard, not him, would carry the shame, and that much was clear to both.

"For this once, do as I command,” he spoke, his tone hushed as not to reach the ears of the stranger beyond the door. “Stay here.”

“Sure, I’m rooted to the floor.” Inuyasha seized his arm then, as if to drag him back into the chamber. Although he must have known he could not hope to prevail against his strength, that had never halted his efforts. “As you are, you idiot!”

Sesshoumaru felt a surge of irritation at the boy's refusal to obey. “You dare doubt my hand?” he hissed, his muscles coiling taut beneath Inuyasha's grasp. The urge was there, yet he did not allow himself to thrust him aside.

“I very much dare!” The half-blood grated, without a flicker of doubt. Sesshoumaru bristled, and he indeed tried to thrust him aside then, but Inuyasha's grip only strengthened. “Bloody hell, what demon rides you of late? You believe you'll set things right, but you'll only sour them more, as you did with Kouga Stark!"

A short, mirthless laugh broke from Sesshoumaru. He had endured enough of this within the Small Council chambers, and had no mind to do so again. His temper coiling tight, he reached up and pried the half-blood's fingers from his arm.

“I have had my fill of your insolence!" He muttered harshly, taking a step forward. "By what right do you presume to question my will, bastard?"

Inuyasha would not be bowed, as ever unyielding to intimidation. His countenance bore a tightness that had not been there moments before, though, evident even in the gloom. It felt a full season, or more, since the Crown Prince had last named him with such scorn. “I'll question your will whenever I damn well please, heir apparent,” he retorted sharply, and the title Sesshoumaru had come to understand as a grudging endearment now carried no trace of warmth. “That is, if you persist in behaving like a fool!"

Sesshoumaru’s jaw tensed, a muscle throbbing beneath the skin, as Inuyasha's defiant eyes locked on his own. He reminded himself, as so often before, that it was no man of sense he faced, but a headstrong boy. These chambers were not the training grounds, and even if they were, he could not bring himself to strike as he once had. For the bond that had united them then had shifted, and to bring violence into it now would be a different, fouler kind of wrong.

Still he extended a hand, seizing the half-blood's jaw. "Keep to your place," he murmured his threat in Westerosi speech. "Lest I remind you of it."

He knew, with grim certainty, that the half-blood was on the verge of shoving him away, of damning him to the Seven hells, of raising a hand to slap him. The familiar struggle to salvage the last shreds of his dignity, so effortlessly ripped apart by Sesshoumaru’s easy wrath. It did not come to be, though, for at that very instant, the solar's door unlatched and opened wide.

Before he even marked the movement, Sesshoumaru had already stepped in front of the half-blood, a barrier to shield him from sight. A fool’s impulse, which served no real purpose. Clad in dark, unassuming robes, the intruder stood unveiled, his hood cast back to reveal a face both pale and struck. He bore the humble slouch of a commoner, yet clean enough to wander the Red Keep's halls without drawing undue attention. Unremarkable features, neither young nor old. His wild eyes and slack jaw made it clear that he had expected to find the chambers unoccupied.

That held no sway, though, for his eyes had seen too much. Covered only by loose linen trousers, Sesshoumaru was bare from the waist up. A swift, uneasy look confirmed the half-blood wore only undergarments. His fingers clenched harder about his sword. Too stunned for words, the intruder's eyes darted from one to the other, until at last, he found his voice.

"My Prince. This is...” He stuttered, his face paling further. “I did not mean to..."

Sesshoumaru advanced a step, and the man recoiled at once. It seemed he possessed the good sense to understand that no silver tongue would extricate him from this predicament. With a sudden turn, he bolted from the chamber, his retreating footsteps ringing in the corridor.

Though his first instinct was to pursue, Sesshoumaru held back. It was the black of night, and he stood scantily clad in the half-blood's chambers, a full wing's journey from his own. He had no cause to be anywhere near here at such late hour, and to give chase would only invite a clamor. Too many eyes, too many unknowns, and no explanation to give. He kept his gaze on the open door for a long moment, then his eyes drifted, settling on Inuyasha.

The boy appeared to share his reasoning, for he too refrained from pursuing. He settled upon the bed, drew a deep breath, and raked his hands through his hair. If this were to spread, Inuyasha knew the whispers that would follow him. Epithets akin to those the members of court used for Sesshoumaru, when his back was turned—Silver Flower, Prince of Silks, Maiden-King-to-be, and a host of others he would not trouble himself to recall.

Even that might be too kind a thought to hold. Those names were only ever uttered in hushed tones, never spoken openly lest they invite his wrath. Be it his princely standing, his unnatural strength, or his deadly talent with the sword, all served to ward him from public slander. Such were comforts the half-blood would never know. Waters was already a mark of shame, and now Sesshoumaru's indiscretions would only further disgrace him.

Something else came to mind, then. Epithets that were heard from the North to Dorne and across the Narrow Sea, yet none ever meant for him. The King’s Harlot, the Meereenese Whore, the Dragon’s Pleasure-Slave—throughout the Realms, the bastard’s mother bore many names.

Sesshoumaru sprinted from the chamber, sword gripped tight, in pursuit of the stranger. His footfalls rang out through the deserted passages, unsettlingly loud in the eerie silence. Though his heart drummed fierce against his breast, it was not from the effort of his run. He felt ill with worry and fear, and the fire of an unyielding rage. As he hastened through the Red Keep's shadowed halls, the bitter understading gripped him that he was treading in his father's footsteps—and he had never known such shame.

The intruder scurried from him like an alleyway rat, seeking a hidden crevice where none could be found. Driven onward by long, powerful strides, Sesshoumaru bridged the gap with effortless grace. Blood coursed through his veins like a tempest, seized by a furious, near-bestial draw. No servants were about, and he knew this was the time to finish it, before greater ruin fell upon him, and another. He sprang forth and hurled himself atop the intruder, tumbling to the ground in a knot of thrashing limbs.

The stranger shrieked and cowered, and it was clear to Sesshoumaru he possessed no fighter's heart. It was simple enough to bring him to heel, to shove him down and hold him fast by a knee in his quivering spine. Sesshoumaru hauled his head back, revealing the soft, unprotected skin of his gullet. No aid came for his cries and pleas. A peculiar calm had settled upon him, his thought rendered cold and sharp as the finest steel. Only the crushing weight of certainty remained, and the grim acceptance of the duty he would see performed. He set his sword against the intruder's throat and granted him a quick demise.

The blade bit deep and true, severing flesh with ease, blood spattering over his scarcely clad form. Sesshoumaru stared, unmoved, as the man gurgled and writhed, carried away by the crimson flow that had once granted him life. He knew no pang of regret, nor any sense of triumph. He regarded the empty passage, weighing his choices whilst seated upon the still-twitching corpse. A chill of dread slithered up his back, and the night's cold seemed to sharpen as warm blood trickled over his bare skin.

Sesshoumaru gazed upon the dead man, and though it felt as long as forever, it was surely no more than a breath or two. He heard the tread of feet, then. The half-blood approached, slow and hesitant, his face an unnerving mask as he took in the scene before him. Only the stark pallor of his countenance against the striking gold of his eyes gave away his fright.

The sight he must offer was not lost on Sesshoumaru. Stripped to linen trousers, he stood drenched in gore, his stained blade glinting in the moon's pale light. It made for an ill vision, one he would sooner Inuyasha had not laid eyes upon. At last, it became apparent to him. All along, Sesshoumaru had mistaken words for deeds, bluster for truth, and now he was forced to face his own foolishness. The bastard was unblooded. Within his breast, his heart still thrummed, but his features betrayed no emotion.

“You cannot be seen here.” A strange numbness claimed Sesshoumaru as he spoke, his ears keen to the rising whispers, the creak of opening doors, the hesitant footfalls drawing near. Inuyasha remained still. Although he appeared poised to speak, no words passed his lips. He would have cursed the half-blood's defiant spirit, that wont to defy his every command, yet the effort proved too great.

"Run along, Young Dragon," he urged, forcing himself to his feet. Though it was difficult to hold the half-blood's eyes whilst standing over a man he had just slain, Sesshoumaru held firm. “Back to your lair.”

Inuyasha stared in silence, his face void of all feeling, and Sesshoumaru felt a cold dread settle in his gut as he knew that look for what it was. The one that dogged him from the training yards to the Small Council chambers, down every cramped street of King's Landing, and lit the eyes of all at court from the day he slew his cousin. "I..." the half-blood started, but his voice failed him. Sesshoumaru saw the tight clench of his jaw, the strained bob of his throat as he swallowed. Whatever he meant to say, he kept it locked away, and fled back to his chambers.

Chapter Text

Less than a day's turning, and Sesshoumaru found himself back at the Small Council's chambers, facing the King's high seat. He was growing weary of these talks. The thought crossed his mind to claim a grave illness had seized him, to swoon from the grim events' burden, or merely to quit the room in a rage and never return. That would be as good as owning his guilt, though. Instead, he remained still and outwardly calm, his features revealing none of the storm brewing within, and met the King's gaze, fighting the urge to clench his teeth in annoyance.

Inu Taishou stared at him for a long moment, and Sesshoumaru noted, with a pang, that the soft gleam in his eyes, seen scarcely a few hours past, had vanished entirely. The King's favor, he realized, was a thing easily squandered.

"Why?” Inu Taishou spoke at last, the lines across his face contorted with gravity. “No pretense, no riddles, no obscuring. Only tell me... why?"

Silence was Sesshoumaru’s only answer. He knew, with a chilling certainty, that no framing of the truth would make the King comprehend. Inu Taishou let out a long breath and gripped the bridge of his nose, though no hint of surprise marred his countenance at the lack of response.

“My blood, you slew an unarmed man in the dark of night, and you will not speak his name nor offer a word of explanation,” he surmised, not without strain. “Surely you must grasp why I find this deeply unsettling, particularly when one considers... why, when one simply considers." Inu Taishou, at least, had the grace not to mention that other unfortunate affair.

Sesshoumaru knew full well the path his father's thoughts had taken, and though a part of him longed to deny it, to swear it was not as it seemed, his lips remained sealed. A reason beyond his ken held his tongue fast. An affliction encountered enough times in the past to know that, for this moment at least, he was incapable of speech. Even so, he would not stoop, but keep his head aloft.

“What ill deed did I commit in your making?" The question came, and Sesshoumaru found he could not abide the absence of fury, nor sorrow, nor the slightest hint of displeasure. "Such were not your ways, when you were a lad. The man you are now, for all my efforts, remains a persistent enigma. I cannot fathom why you’ve chosen this path, nor the impulses that drive your hand. This was not an honorable slaying, and you are as aware of it as I."

Sesshoumaru turned away from him, a knot forming in his throat. The accusation struck too close to the bone, and his annoyance curdled into that strange, well-known feeling so akin to shame. His father awoke in him feelings he neither understood nor held any fondness for, and it might well be why he shunned his company more often than not, nowadays.

“You are, indeed, not a lad anymore. I can no longer lay the blame for your deeds at the feet of youthful folly.” There was that look morphing the King’s expression again—the one that appeared whenever he cast his gaze upon Sesshoumaru and saw not the man he had grown into, but the boy he had once been.

“I cannot claim that you were ever easy. It was more than your silence, whether chosen or compelled. To be held, to be touched, was anathema to you. You would recoil from my hand, every time it neared, though I never raised it against you. When I sought to engage you in play, you would only set your toys in ordered heaps and stare at them. You wouldn't take to the gardens with me, for you loathed the mud, and the grass, and the chill, and you would weep your little eyes out until we returned to the Keep.”

Sesshoumaru felt a small measure of unease, as memories of those times resurfaced. When pressed, he'd assert he could not remember. He did recall trying to lurk out of sight, though, whenever the threat of a day spent outside loomed. The instinctive aversion to the press of flesh, for reasons unknown even to him. His father's fumbling attempts at childish games, met with a stark disinterest that Sesshoumaru could not conceal. Still, his father had never been moved to wrath, nor had he ever rebuked him for his perceived coldness, back when he was a lad. That reproach had only become evident with the years.

“My own father was not... well, he was forged in times of war. He was a cold, unyielding man. The workings of his mind remained ever a mystery. Your semblance to him is striking. Sometimes, frighteningly so.” Inu Taishou grew pensive, then, as if a sudden understanding had reached him for the first time. The finding offered no pleasure, it was clear.

“No great affection bound us. ‘He is the Protector of the Realm,’ my mother would always say. ‘He has no leisure for play-swords, nor for riding mounts, nor for old wives’ tales. He has a Kingdom to rule. Seven, in truth. I bore no resentment for it, back then. When you came into this world, a notion took hold, though. That I was not bound to be my father’s likeness.”

An odd stillness settled over the King's mien in that moment. Sesshoumaru entertained the notion, then, that there might have been more to Inu Taishou conveying Izayoi Naqiz, near her lying-in, from the sands of Meereen and all the way through the narrow sea to the Seven Kingdoms. An urge far less grand than the spurning of old ways, the odd bent of his duty, or the passion fueled infatuation he’d once taken for fact.

In his youth, Sesshoumaru had often considered his father and the bastard from a distance, seeing them at their games, hearing their laughter, or simply witnessing the easy warmth between them, and the gnawing thought would come that he was being replaced. A grim jest of fate, to find, after years of turning a blind eye, that his deepest fears were a reality. It settled neatly into place. Inuyasha, for all his faults and furies, had been a normal child.

“Though I scarce see my sire's likeness in myself, you are, without question, his very mirror,” Inu Taishou offered, his gaze averted, as if the sheer folly of his reasoning dawned on him only now. “So at some point, I imagine, I grew weary of it. My efforts to mold you into something foreign to your spirit, to compel you towards a bond you seemed to shun. Perhaps that was the ill deed I wrought.” He offered a tight, shamefaced smile. “Capitulation.”

A guttural twist seized Sesshoumaru, drawing his eyes to the balcony, fleeing his father’s scrutiny. It ought not wound him, to hear it laid so plainly. He shouldn’t care after so long a time, and yet he did, and it left him stripped bare and seething. He truly despised these talks.

“You were not given to violence, though. By any measure,” Inu Taishou declared with fervor, his forefinger jabbing roughly at the table. “Quiet you were, and sensible. Near to sweet, even. Appeared much too wise for your age, at times. I fail to understand how you came to be this way.”

The King’s musings dripped with an unmistakable contempt. It was a scorn he had held bridled since his return to the capital, yet one the Crown Prince had sensed, ever present, simmering beneath the exterior calm. Despite the unsettling heaviness that had taken root inside Sesshoumaru, an even stranger need to laugh rose. He'd worn many guises in his years, yet sweetness was never one of them. Though meant for the boy he was no more, he felt it verged on insult.

Inu Taishou fixed him with a long, unwavering stare. Then he bent forward, his face hovering uncomfortably close. “Why did you kill that man, Sesshoumaru?”

He met his father's questioning without a blink, almost defiant, his jaw clenching almost imperceptibly. This was a closeness he loathed, and the unwitting stiffening of his form spoke of it plainly. Met once again with silence, Inu Taishou, at long last, was moved to wrath. He clutched Sesshoumaru's shoulders and gave him a violent shake, his voice booming like thunder through the dim, hollow chambers.

“His throat cut, by your hand! Why deny the deed?! Why must you obscure your every act?! What lies beneath this silence?! Is it truly so monstrous, so black, that you cannot confess to your own father?!” Though menace lay in the King’s command, Sesshoumaru's keen ear caught the underlying strain of a plea. “Speak, damn you! For once in your life, just speak!"

Words failed Sesshoumaru once more. He could not fathom why speech was such a struggle. Why even now, after all these years, the King still managed to diminish him so. Sesshoumaru almost recoiled from his touch, but suppressed the instinct before it showed. “You told me to tread carefully!” He choked out, and pride swelled within him that his confession emerged in outrage, and not in any lesser form.

Inu Taishou halted, as if struck. His hold slackened but a touch. "What?"

Sesshoumaru swallowed hard, his thoughts a tangled web, his heart beating furiously against his bones. His father’s puzzled stare bore into him, but he held his ground, refusing to break the gaze or shed his wrath. “You told me to tread carefully,” he repeated, sharp and close to a hiss. “I did not.”

The King freed him, and he leaned back, resuming his seat. "It concerns your half-brother," he stated. Not a query, but a grim certainty. "What was it that happened?"

A faint sneer touched Sesshoumaru's mouth, his hands tightening into fists, only to loosen once more. It struck him as odd that his father had failed to discern it without aid. Of late, all paths seemed to lead back to Inuyasha.

“He was but a man cursed by ill luck,” Sesshoumaru admitted, without shame. He would not let his mind stray to the bastard, still drowsy with sleep and cowering against him on the bed, nor to the way he'd ran his fingers through his hair, clad only in undergarments, seeming terribly small in the gloom. The truth of it came out as a silken whisper. “He beheld a sight not meant for his eyes."

Inu Taishou remained silent for a long moment. Sesshoumaru found he no longer possessed the strength to look back. For the sake of them both, he hoped the King would not inquire about his careless tread. He could have, with less struggle, confessed that the killing stemmed from a failure to master his own flesh. It was a simpler matter, though. With what pretense could he reveal knowing the bastard uneasy, after the breach of his chambers, and that he had lingered, when his nature was always to vanish once the deed was done, so he wouldn’t be?

“Why did you wait so long to speak of it?” Inu Taishou demanded tersely. When Sesshoumaru remained quiet, a heavy, tired sigh left him. “There are moments, my son, when I think you relish fraying my nerves.”

A faint smirk tugged at the corner of Sesshoumaru's lips. Though his father's irritation should have brought him no joy, most of all now, he found a strange amusement in it. Provocation made for good concealment, as he himself couldn’t quite grasp why he was unable to voice it. "Perchance I do," he drawled, his tone light, for all the faint tremor of his hand. "You present opportunity with such ease."

"There is no jest in this," the King replied, unamused. He seemed far less wroth than but a moment past. “It brings me no joy, to be sure, but I understand the need to protect one's reputation, regardless of the blood spilt. You and I both know this city breeds vipers. And here I stood, believing..."

Inu Taishou faltered then, his meaning left hanging in the air. By some means, Sesshoumaru divined the suspicion. His father had believed he would give no cause for the intruder's death, because none existed. As he had done, that day amidst the yards. The wound, though old, still festered.

“I am no bloodthirsty beast, father,” he said, feigning an air of calmness he did not feel. “I take no pleasure in slaughter, for its own sake."

The King scrubbed a hand over his face, elbows resting heavily on the table. “There are times when a well-crafted lie serves better than silence,” he muttered, the sound dulled as if by cloth. “Holding your tongue, especially on affairs so grim, makes you appear... guilty, like a man with something terrible to hide. If you were too shamed to admit you were caught with your breeches about your ankles, you could have merely claimed the man sought to rob you. It would have kept me from this plight, and you from the ignominy of the truth.”

The outraged denial ‘That's not how it was!’ remained contained, for Sesshoumaru understood he would never be believed. He despised having to offer explanations, but what truly galled him was that his father's aggravation, at his person and his silence, was not misplaced. There was, however, a matter he held in even greater contempt. The King made to rise, surely intending at last to seek his rest, but Sesshoumaru's stark declaration halted him. "I’m unconcerned by idle talk."

A frown, heavy with thought, creased the King's forehead. "Is that so?"

"My reputation precedes me, father." A cutting smile touched Sesshoumaru's lips, clear even in the faint light, yet it spoke not of pride. “I know every vile whisper at my back. The Prince of Perfumes, the Maiden Dragon, the Unnatural, the Barren Heir, the Princess of Dragonstone. Do you imagine all these names have somehow escaped my notice?"

Sesshoumaru marked the quick, unbidden flush that touched his father's countenance before it vanished. A bitter satisfaction swelled within his breast, as though the cruel monikers he'd flung forth had, by some means, proven a victory. It was but a flicker, much as the swift glimpse of hurt his father betrayed.

"Men speak ill of their betters all the time," he stated, his voice flat and unyielding. “It is the way of things, and it will not bend. If they found no cause to mock your inclinations, they would seize upon some other fault to fashion a name for you. Every perceived failing, however slight, becomes a blade in their grasp. Indeed, your infamy precedes you. I too am infamous, and so is your mother, and every other in this household. Do not fancy yourself quite so unique."

Sesshoumaru bristled, then rose from his seat. “Do not presume me for a fooll! I am privy to every name the common folk whisper for you, for my mother, and for the bastard’s. The scandal that has branded you all so coarsely has but a single author, though,” he unleashed his accusation, keen and intended to wound. His father, as ever, showed no flinch. “To think I once blamed the miserable harpy, who endures the scorn of all Seven Kingdoms, for the slight of bedding a man her station dared not refuse. Was it even her will?”

A fury never seen before seized the King then, his nostrils flaring, and though he never had before, for once he gave no thought, and brought his hand down. The slap stayed Sesshoumaru's tongue for only a breath.

“Did you not bid me speak? Or have your yearnings shifted, now that my utterance offends your ears?" he challenged, advancing a step, his head unbowed. “Mistake not my intent. I spare no thought to the harpy, nor the dishonor you've cast upon her. Such is the grim fortune of high ladies, laid low by the idiocy of men. If you had not deflowered her, then another would have. The shame of your coupling is not for her to bear, nor for you, but for the son you refuse to name.”

The King's face warped with a fleeting agony, gone before it could truly settle. Never before, in Sesshoumaru's recollection, had such an expression graced his features, and all his bitter satisfaction crumbled to ash. “You will never make him trueborn, and not for the sake of my mother's honor, as you so love to proclaim. It is her fury you dread, and my own.” The truths, so long unsaid, were finally given voice, and almost immediately, his fury bled away.

“The unwavering protection you so readily extend is forsaken by your every act. There is no fidelity in your pledge, no sustenance to your duty. Your devotion is but an empty husk, even for those you claim to cherish most. You are a man of little strength.” A weariness settled over him, and gazing down, the King appeared to Sesshoumaru a meager, pathetic figure, and he wondered why he had ever longed for his affection. “Let the vipers of the court hiss in their foul nests. Their whispers mean nothing to me, for no matter what they choose to call me, I know my true name. I have one, but he doesn't.”

Sesshoumaru resumed his seat, feeling a slight chagrin for the raw display of feeling, though the pronouncements themselves remained unregretted. The King's shamefaced silence was a novelty he did not relish. “My shadow stretches before me,” he spoke hollowly, staring at the flagstones of the Small Council's chambers with a strange fascination. They lay thick with an unspeakable filth. “His casts no such length. Why diminish it further?”

He felt a peculiar displacement, his wrath departed as swiftly as it had risen. It was not the outcome he had envisioned, and less still when Inu Taishou shattered the quiet with naught but a heavy sigh.

“It is the bane of courts, that those within them come to know us, even when we strive to remain hidden. They learn precisely where to strike to fell us. The common folk, however, wield no such influence. They are the ones who believe the fables, and the songs, and the grand tales of highborns’ glory. Do you know the name they whisper for you?” With a curious twitching of the lips, the King posed his question.

Sesshoumaru only offered a slight leaning of the head in response. Inu Taishou laid a hand upon his shoulder, and despite his fatigue and the raw truths uttered, that fond gleam in his eyes shone anew. "Sesshoumaru, the Cruel."

The Crown Prince merely gazed at him, his face a mask betraying no emotion, but for the first time, the King seemed to grasp something, for the twitching broke into a full-fledged smile. “An enigma you remain, but perhaps not as tangled as I'd presumed. I knew it would make your heart sing!"

On the morrow, Sesshoumaru stood upon the grand balcony of the Red Keep, staring down at the sprawling gardens. Even at such great distance, his keen eyes could discern the lone figure of a gravedigger, toiling to carve out yet another nameless pit. A final bed for the man he had put to the sword last night. The first rays of dawn crept over the horizon, and birds began their morning song. As two pigeons tangled in a chase through the trees, he felt strangely removed from all, as though the horrors of the eve were but a troubling nightmare.

It was hours later, the sun already burning bright in the sky, and the Red Keep stirring in its noontide clamor, when the half-blood found him. He traced Sesshoumaru's line of sight, but the gardens revealed nothing significant to him. The grave was dug, and the man without a name now lay buried, lost to memory in an unmarked plot. A wretched end, but one he had earned by his own hand, Sesshoumaru reminded himself.

The wind stirred his hair, bringing the garden's floral scents. Though he craved for the half-blood to speak, a greater part of him dreaded what might be said. With a clearing of his throat, Inuyasha broke the silence, at last. "Father asked me to sail for Driftmark with him, yesterday.”

His jaw tightened without his leave, but Sesshoumaru did not break his watch from the landscape below. The King had never bid him come along on his trifling journeys with the boy, and he should have learned by now not to let it wound him. It would be an awkward affair now, at any case.

“A few days and back, no more. Had some words for me, or so he said.” As Inuyasha spoke, a deep unease took root in Sesshoumaru's chest, but he gave no sign of it. He had a grim suspicion of what the King wished to discuss with his half-brother. “But then all this Stark idiocy came about. Seemed he had his hands full, so we delayed it.”

Mildly irked by his own thoughts, Sesshoumaru had to question if this stubborn resentment would ever leave him. He was grateful to have his face turned away from the half-blood. Surely, he wouldn’t be able to hold his stare for long, with such jealous bitterness coiling within him.

"I see," he replied, his tone conveying nothing. It took their talk at Crow's Nest for him to first grasp that the bastard's hold on their father's heart was something he ought not to begrudge. Were it otherwise, Sesshoumaru would be, in all regards that truly counted, an only child. There was a time, perhaps, when such a notion would have held appeal. Nowadays, it seemed to him a terribly lonely prospect.

"Reckon the man in my rooms last night knew about the trip," Inuyasha said, betraying only the barest hint of his pique. “But he wasn’t told it had been delayed. Expected to find them empty, the fool."

Sesshoumaru’s hands clenched tight on the balustrade, then, with an effort, he released it. "And how do you suppose he came to know of your private affairs?” he asked, his lips set in a subtle scowl. Each moment saw this matter grow fouler.

After a moment of quiet, the half-blood offered a small, awkward shrug, as if embarrassed his search for answers had come to naught. “Couldn’t tell you, I’m no bloody player,” he granted, without rancor or reluctance. “Even if I were, I’d make a piss-poor one. I’ve no gift for plots.”

Sesshoumaru snorted, a quiet sound he felt no need to suppress. "I've marked it," he drawled, and while he'd always known, he now understood simplemindedness was not the true cause. Inuyasha could be reckless and coarse, without a hint of finesse, but he was far from witless.

He's softhearted. Do not mistreat him.

A disquiet stirred deep within Sesshoumaru, but he kept it hidden. He’d been certain the King had bid Lord Naraku send a whisperer to the bastard’s chambers, but it appeared he was mistaken. It would have been noticed he’d never taken ship to Driftmark. The intruder either served a different master, or he was, indeed, a little bird, and Lord Naraku was keeping watch on his half-brother unbeknown to Inu Taishou. Both possibilities were equally disgruntling, thought for distinct reasons.

He did not voice his inward thoughts. These were not burdens he made a habit to place upon the bastard. His indiscretions were for no one to mend, but himself. His many talks with the King had left that plain enough.

Inuyasha's eyes briefly darted to him. "Was this the first?"

Sesshoumaru cast him a curious glance, although there was no true need for clarification. His features remained settled into a facade of unconcern.

"The first man you’ve killed?" The half-blood put forth the question with rare caution. Such hesitancy suited him ill, Sesshoumaru decided at once.

He had seen, from the outset, where this conversation was bound to go. For a time at least, he had wished to draw it out, but the bastard would grant him no such reprieve, this time. Sesshoumaru considered dismissing it entirely, perhaps with a cutting remark about Inuyasha being a callow green boy who understood nothing, and that he ought not meddle in the affairs of men, as was his wont. They would merely circle their way back to this, though. The half-blood, above all else, possessed a stubborn streak.

Sesshoumaru released a long, measured breath. “No.”

“Whispers follow you,” Inuyasha said, his voice yielding no hint of his true mind. A thing uncommon enough to make Sesshoumaru's muscles tighten. “About why you were sent beyond the Neck. A slaying occurred, they say, at the training yards. Whenever I asked, father would deny it, so I paid them little mind."

A faint tremor ran through Sesshoumaru’s hands, the training ground’s dark earth and the steady drip of crimson sharp in his mind. He clenched them tight to still them. “And he spoke true.” No guilt or hesitation marked the easy lie that left his mouth. “Give no credence to idle talk.”

Inuyasha drew a deep breath, resting his elbows upon the stone balustrade. He chafed at his weary features, and in that moment Sesshoumaru knew that, no less than himself, he had endured a sleepless night. After a lengthy quiet, the half-blood muttered, “Father lies to me all the time.” The statement was devoid of any sharpness. “It used to make my blood sing with rage. Felt like he took me for a damned idiot, too much of a greenhorn to understand his oh-so-kingly plights. These days, I choose to believe he simply doesn't want me saddled with that.”

To hear it stated so bluntly brought a sting. Time and again, the King had offered that same hollow reasoning when caught in a lie, and for the half-blood to parrot it so thoughtlessly grated on him. While enthralled on occasion by his uncanny ability to pierce through disguises, Sesshoumaru could also find it an affront beyond words. “My eyes were dimmed, it seems, to think I gleaned any sharpness in you.” He sought to rein in his anger, but his tone betrayed him. “You are precisely the fool everyone takes you for."

“Well, I care little for your assessment,” Inuyasha replied, with no hint of fear or insult, as he at last turned to face him. A stern gleam of resolve marked his mien. “And that's a laugh, from one who can't keep his own tongue from twisting."

The urge to offer a cruel retort, to put the bastard off his stride, stirred within him, but he managed to quell it. Sesshoumaru was being challenged, prompted to put forth a denial they both knew would crumble like sodden sand, yet he made the attempt nonetheless. “I never lie to you,” he replied evenly, his smile thin and unnervingly sharp. “I obscure the truth.”

Under Inuyasha's eye, a muscle gave a faint jump. He gave a huff, averting his gaze—as if Sesshoumaru's nerve were too galling to endure. "Hmph. I daresay that's what father speaks to his own damn self, when it’s his turn to obscure."

A sharp reply came unbidden to his lips, an urge to tell the bastard he knew nothing, and that he might bask far more cozily in their father’s warmth, but Sesshoumaru was the one who better grasped his devious mind. It vanished the moment he looked at the boy properly, though. Inuyasha wore a mask of anger, yet beneath it lay a distinct hurt.

With a wrinkled nose and folded arms, he stood silent for a long while. "You need not speak of it, if you would rather not,” he said, at last. “I won’t ask about the yards, or about those other men you felled. I won’t dig into whatever dark thing happened up North that makes you sweat through the night. Keep your secrets locked away, if you so like.”

To be so easily absolved should not have stirred him so deeply. Far from feeling ease, Sesshoumaru found himself abruptly, unreasonably enraged at Inuyasha for having pierced his composure. He longed to snarl at him, to silence him, to put an end to his grudging but ever persistent forgiveness. Then he would have an excuse to be rid of him, and all the unsettling feelings he awakened.

Instead, he gave a curt nod. He could not discuss these matters with the bastard, and for once, it was not a failure of speech that held him back. He simply did not want him privy to them. The duties he’d performed, at the Wall and in the moons preceding and following, brought Sesshoumaru little to no pride. He dared not risk the half-blood's gaze upon him as it had been last night, that empty mask drawn tight across his face to cloak fear.

"I was rather… ill at ease, yestereve,” he conceded, almost against his will. His back muscles drew taut and hard, keenly aware of Inuyasha’s scrutiny.

“Ill at ease,” the half-blood echoed flatly. A quick push of his arms brought him astride the balustrade, his head cocked as if to pierce Sesshoumaru with his stare more precisely. Despite his lack of core strength, he was remarkably nimble. “Is it your custom to go about murdering folk when you're ill at ease? I suppose I'd best watch my mouth around you, lest I trouble your ease and earn a blade for it."

Sesshoumaru let loose a dry chuckle, as it wasn’t rare, when the bastard’s blunt manners managed to delight him. “You mistake my meaning.” Though he refused to turn away from the horizon, he could picture the stiff set of Inuyasha's shoulders, the quiet challenge of his scrutiny. A sight known to him, a bother at times, although it always brought a measure of ease.

Reaching out, Inuyasha caught a lock of Sesshoumaru's hair, then gave it a light tug, as if compelling his attention. No other would have dared such insolence. “What was your meaning, then?"

Inuyasha's eyes burned with an unsettling intensity, his features set in too serious a mien, but Sesshoumaru refused to look away. "I called you bastard," he said blankly. It was but a fact, plainly stated, yet it proved enough to steal the half-blood's voice, even if only for a moment. The affront lay not in the name itself, they both understood, but rather the way he’d spoken it.

Abruptly stiffening, Inuyasha released Sesshoumaru's hair and turned away from him. He must have known it was as close to an apology he would ever receive from the Crown Prince. His lips pulled into a frown, as if he begrudged Sesshoumaru for the discomfort he now endured. A fitting pair they were—one who would not request a word of pardon, and other who recoiled at the mere hint of it.

Inuyasha let out a snort, his nose scrunching. "Still mulling over that? I'd forgotten all about it.” He chafed at the front of his breeches, oddly focused on the small gesture. For a long moment he was still, then, with visible strain, he said, "It does not offend me to be called what I am. I'd be a fool if it did, and I am no fool, for all you delight in naming me that.”

Sesshoumaru felt his heart shrivel. The half-blood's indifference to his lesser birth was far from a novelty, yet it remained as bewildering and galling as it had ever been, although for different reasons. Without a thought, he offered a hand to help him from the balustrade, uncaring of those who might witness it. Though he had no true need of it, Inuyasha reached back.

It occurred to Sesshoumaru then, that his brother would forever remain unnamed, yet no longer could that be said for the creature stirring within his breast.