For the moment, he was reasonably sure that he was here. That this was real. And maybe sooner or later it would come down not to whether he believed it or not, but whether he chose to believe it. If he could not differentiate real from unreal, sooner or later he could not allow himself to be paralyzed by indecision. He might simply have to accept that, for now, things were real enough.

The room was nightmarish. Between one second and the next he thought he knew where he was, but the knowledge didn’t want to linger.

“I could pull the doors off,” he offered. “It shouldn’t be terribly difficult.”

“I don’t think it’d work, baby,” Laurence muttered. “I’m not sure they’re really doors right now.”

Quentin nodded at that. “You think they’re the idea of doors, but only take on substance as doors when we are tethered to the real world?”

Laurence’s eyes widened. “Yeah. How did you…” Then he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. You’re right, though. I think that a sanctum is like a pocket realm, and unless it’s connected to the mortal world it’s kind of in limbo.”

“Then we need to connect it to the mortal world,” Quentin surmised.

“Easier said than done. It’s a spell imbued into this astrolabe your dad keeps in his desk-”

outer ring turned and the world spun under his feet

“-taken it with him.”

Quentin swayed and pressed a hand to the door, then squinted past the candles. “If this is his sanctum, surely it is not empty. There must be something in here that we can use to our advantage.”

“I dunno,” Laurence mused. “He seems to keep a lot of his spell books out in the library.” He drifted away toward the walls and began running his hands across them.

The library. It bubbled up from his memories, a mingling of old and new. Sometimes there were books and other things which gave off a variety of glows, and other times they were inert. Dead books in dead languages.

“Those books are not his,” he said faintly.

“Huh?” Laurence paused and looked to him.

“The colors.” Quentin frowned as he tried to put into words what he felt was obvious. “They are all different.”

Laurence’s brows drew together. Coupled with his beard it made him look like some wild creature, arresting and alluring all at once.

Quentin wanted him in ways he couldn’t describe.

“You’re right,” Laurence said slowly. “Your father’s magic isn’t like anything out there. It’s like holes in reality, like the universe hates what he’s making it do.”

“Right.” Quentin pushed away from the doors and crossed briskly to a chandelier. He drained the warmth from the candles’ flames until they extinguished themselves, then he telekinetically plucked the candles free to prevent hot wax dripping over his own fingers and fused them together into a pile on the floor.

He felt full of life, of warmth. He was buzzing with energy, though he had only the faintest of suspicions of where it might have come from. There was a vague recollection that he might have attempted to steal heat directly from Higson, but it was overlaid with Laurence and the most desperate, lustful moan…

Quentin cleared his throat and focused on the chandelier in his hands, coiling his grasp around the body of it, and then taking hold of the branches and pulling.

It resisted. He took his hands away from the metal and tore at the joints, focusing all his energy on wresting the branches from the central stem.

Metal groaned. It vibrated. And then, with a screech, it sundered. Branches shot free at such speed that he had to grip them to prevent them flying across the room.

“What’re you doing?” Laurence asked from behind him.

Quentin turned the remaining stem upside down so that he could repeat the process and tear the feet off. “Making a weapon for you,” he hissed as the legs of it snapped off.

Laurence’s hands landed lightly against his hips, and his chin came to rest against Quentin’s shoulder. “You can do that?”

“I don’t really know.” Quentin leaned back against him and regarded the shaft of iron. “He has to return at some point. I thought that if you had something to hand when he arrives you could…” He trailed off.

Did he really want Laurence to kill his father?

Was he honestly suggesting it?

“I guess you can’t give it an edge or something, huh?” Laurence’s cheek pressed against his ear.

“I doubt it. Even if I were capable of heating it to a temperature where it could melt, I have no way to shape it, I don’t think. Or any idea how.” He laughed briefly. “But I could perhaps break it. I think that wrought iron is reasonably brittle.”

“Mm.” Laurence sighed a little. “Could you freeze it first? Maybe it’d snap easier if you got it super cold.”

“Certainly worth a try.”

Laurence pressed lips to the side of his neck as he withdrew, and Quentin swayed briefly. There was a vacuum at his back now, and he felt adrift.

He wanted…

What did he want?

Laurence pinned against the wall, arms above his head, begging. His body twisting, writhing, desperate for Quentin’s touch. The sounds he made, the need in his dark eyes, dragged Quentin closer.

Would it feel good if their cocks were to touch?

Laurence’s whimpering grew louder. An arc of blood cut through the air between them and spattered Laurence’s chest, and Quentin bit his lip as he pulled the heat from his body.

He was on the floor. On his knees. One hand to the floor slick with blood, with cum and he began to retch.

“Quen!” Laurence dropped to his side and grabbed his shoulder. “Goddess, what’s wrong?”

The touch was on him. On his chest. His back. His arse. Fingers, slick and slippery, touched his body. They probed and poked and entered-

“Oh, god.” His stomach heaved, but there was nothing in it to bring up. “Laurence…”

“He beat you, and then he raped you!”

A wave crashed through him. It was as though a jumble of puzzle pieces had all aligned themselves for one unspeakable moment to reveal their entire picture. Every moment from escaping the mansion’s basement to right here, right now, shone with sharp and sickening clarity, and he knew.

He knew.

A wail like the howl of a banshee wrested free of him and shredded his throat on the way out. He had been debased, degraded, and he had forgotten.

How?

How could he forget that! How could he forget it year after year? How could he finally remember, only for it to slip away from him again?

How was he supposed to live with this knowledge?

The shame.

The hurt.

What had he done? What could he possibly have done that warranted such punishment? He was good, he did as he was told, he never hurt anyone or anything.

Heat bled from him. It ran tracks down his cheeks, it made his eyes ache. He fought to hold it in but it leaked past his barriers and fell to the floor.

He knew this room.

Quentin scurried back toward the doors until his back hit them. He tore at them with his fingers, with his gifts, with everything he had, but they weren’t real and they didn’t move.

He was trapped.

In this room.

Hands were on him. They touched his arms, so he smacked them away. After them came a voice.

“Quentin. Baby. I need you to calm down.”

It said the words again. Then it added, “Please.”

He could see nothing. It was pitch black. Wherever he was, there wasn’t even the faintest glimmer of light.

His chest strained for air. His throat was nothing but pain. He swallowed and tried to form words.

“I don’t want to be here,” he whispered.

“I know,” the voice said. It sounded like it was crying. “I know, baby. We’ll get out of here as soon as we can, I promise.”

Quentin reached into the dark and found warmth. He placed his hands to it and hands gripped his shoulders in turn.

“I’m sorry.” He’d screamed himself so hoarse that his voice wouldn’t come. All he could do was breathe the words and hope they would be heard.

“Shhh. Quen. You haven’t got anything to be sorry for.”

He struggled to see the owner of that voice in the black, but there was nothing. “He… He did things…”

Laurence groaned. “I know, baby. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.”

Quentin sagged back against the wall. The fight left him, and his body shook in its wake. “You knew,” he breathed.

He heard a soft sigh. The hands released him and the warmth moved to sit by his side. Laurence’s shoulder rested against his own, his hand settled against Quentin’s thigh. “Yeah.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“No,” Laurence agreed.

“Why?”

“Because I couldn’t see a way for that knowledge not to hurt you. I tried to find away. I looked at so many futures to see if I could figure out how to tell you, but I couldn’t…” He made a faint sucking noise. “I couldn’t find a way that didn’t hurt you.”

“So Freddy decided to do it himself.”

“Freddy wants you to kill your dad. He believes you’re the only person who can do it. He figured if he could get you angry enough you’d take revenge.”

Quentin closed his eyes. “I see,” he rasped.

They sat in companionable silence a while, and that was nice. Quentin didn’t have to say anything, he didn’t even have to be anything. He could just exist in an almost blank state, without having to worry about the things he knew.

“I love you,” Laurence said softly.

His eyes flicked open, but it made no difference. The candles had been blown out, and with no connection to the mortal realm there was no way for sunlight to reach them.

“How?” he croaked.

“What?”

He turned toward Laurence a little. “How can you possibly love me?”

Laurence made the strangest sound, as though he were choking. “Are you kidding me right now? Is that a joke? How can I not love you? You’re perfect, Quen! You’re everything I never even knew I needed. You fill a hole in me that I never thought could be filled, and you treat me like I matter to you, like I’m worth something. You treat me like I’m a god, when all I am is this…” He swallowed. “Junkie. Addict. I’m not even close to what you’re used to, what you deserve, but you love me, and I love you, and I can’t even imagine what life would be like without you. I need you, Quen. I need you.”

His own breath hitched as Laurence’s words wrapped around him. The truth of them was raw, and he couldn’t escape it, no matter how hard he tried.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I love you so much. Please don’t… Don’t ever leave me.”

Laurence snorted at him. “You know I never will.”

Quentin leaned against him and placed his hand over Laurence’s.

Father would return. But for now Quentin needed to find some strength, and Laurence was the one who had it.