Topher's mouth was already on his before Beck's spine finished meeting the stone. The cold of the pillar bit through the torn tunic, a shock against the furnace his back had become, and then all he could feel was the wall of him — chest, hips, the whole broad weight of Christopher Jacobs pressing him flat like a hand pinning a page.

Beck got his fingers into the curls at Topher's nape and pulled. Hard. Not to move him away. To feel the give of it, the damp spring of black hair wrapped around his knuckles, the way Topher made a low sound into his mouth when Beck's grip tightened. That sound. Four years of imagining what Jacobs sounded like when he lost control, and the real thing was rougher, wetter, more animal than anything Beck had built in the dark of his own bed.

Topher's hand shoved up under the torn edge of Beck's tunic. Palm flat. Skin to skin, calluses dragging across his ribs, and Beck's whole body arched off the stone like the touch had current in it.

It did. A faint prickle of static raced along the path of Topher's fingers, raising every fine hair, and Beck's fire answered without permission — heat flushing up his sternum, down his stomach, pooling low. His magic had always been a traitor. Now it was screaming yes.

"You," Topher said against his jaw, and the word came out wrecked, half a growl. "Four years. Four years of you."

"Shut up." Beck dragged his mouth back to Topher's, teeth first. Bit his lower lip until he tasted copper-tinged salt, until Topher groaned and drove him harder into the pillar. "Don't — don't talk. Just—"

He didn't finish. Topher's thigh slotted between his legs, and Beck's hips rolled down against it before his brain could catch up. The friction through his training leathers was obscene. He did it again, grinding down, and the sound that left his throat was not a sound Beckett Marlow made. It was something younger and hungrier and it had been locked in a cellar for years.

Topher pulled back just far enough to look at him. Grey eyes gone almost black in the low amber glow of the arena lamps, sweat beading at his temple, mouth swollen from Beck's teeth. He looked like a storm about to break over a coastline.

"Say it," he said. Low. Raspy. Command in it. "Say you want this."

Beck's laugh came out cracked. "You've got a blade at my throat twenty minutes ago and now you want consent forms —"

" Say it. "

Topher's hand moved. Up his ribs, over his sternum, thumb dragging across his nipple through the thin torn fabric, and Beck's whole spine lit up like a struck match. His answer came out before he could armor it.

"Yes. Yes, you insufferable—" Beck's head fell back against the stone. "I want it. I've wanted it since the first day you called me sloppy in front of the whole lecture hall."

Something crossed Topher's face. Fast, unguarded, gone before Beck could name it — a flash like lightning seen through a shutter. Then his mouth was back on Beck's, and this kiss was different. Slower. Deeper. Like he was tasting an answer he'd waited years to hear.

Beck hooked his other leg around Topher's hip. The angle changed everything. Their hips slotted together, and through the layers of leather and wool he felt it — the hard line of Topher's cock pressed against his thigh, thick and unmistakable, and Topher's breath caught against his mouth like he'd been struck.

"Fuck," Topher whispered. Just that. Like it had been startled out of him.

"That's the idea." Beck's voice was unsteady but his hands were not. He got the leather sword-harness off Topher's shoulders — buckles, straps, the whole rig, metal clattering somewhere into the dirt — and then his palms were on bare freckled skin, on the broad muscle of Topher's back, and his fire magic bled through his hands without permission, leaving faint flushed handprints wherever he touched.

Topher shuddered. Actually shuddered, a full-body tremor, and pressed his forehead to Beck's collarbone for one breath. One breath where neither of them moved. Where Beck felt the pulse in Topher's throat hammering against his own chest, faster than any duel had ever driven it.

Then Topher's hands were at his belt.

He worked it open with a competence that made Beck's stomach drop — fast, sure, no fumbling — and shoved Beck's leathers down his hips, just enough, just to the tops of his thighs. Cold air hit Beck's cock and he hissed, and then Topher's hand closed around him and the hiss became something else entirely.

Topher stroked him once. Slow. Root to tip, thumb dragging through the wet at the head, and Beck's whole body jolted like he'd grabbed a live wire.

" Gods," Beck choked. His hands scrabbled at Topher's shoulders, nails digging in. "Warn a man—"

"You've been walking around this academy for four years with your hair like that and your mouth like that," Topher said, low and steady, still stroking him, still watching his face like he was memorizing it, "and you want a warning?"

Beck's laugh broke in the middle. "My hair? My hair? You look like you were struck by lightning and decided to keep the—" Topher's thumb swept over the head again and Beck's sentence died in a moan that echoed off the cavern walls.

Topher's mouth found his throat. Bit down. Not gently — a real bite, teeth sinking into the tendon where neck met shoulder, and Beck's hips bucked into his fist and his vision went white at the edges.

"Do that again," Beck heard himself say. Hoarse. Not a request.

Topher did it again. Lower, on the other side, and then laved the mark with his tongue, and Beck's fingers twisted in his hair hard enough to hurt. Good. He wanted it to hurt. He wanted the marks to still be there tomorrow when they stood across the ring from each other with the whole academy watching, and he wanted to know — he wanted Topher to know — what they meant.

"Turn around," Topher said against his throat.

"No."

Topher pulled back. Looked at him. That grey stare, flat and patient, the one he used right before he took a duel apart piece by piece.

"I want to see your face," Beck said, and hated how much truth was in it, and said it anyway. "If you're going to fuck me against a pillar the night before you try to kill me, I'm going to watch you do it."

Something happened in Topher's expression. The flat patience cracked. Underneath it was something raw and startled, like Beck had reached into his chest and pulled out a wiring diagram.

"I'm not going to kill you," Topher said. Quiet.

"Tomorrow you're going to try."

"Tomorrow I'm going to try to beat you." His hand tightened on Beck's hip, almost bruising. "There's a difference. There's always been a difference, and you've never once—" He stopped himself. Jaw working.

Beck didn't get to ask. Topher hiked him higher against the pillar — one arm under his ass, one braced on the stone, and Beck's legs locked around his waist on instinct, ankles crossing at the small of his back. The shift pressed Topher's cock against the crease of him through the leathers and they both made a sound.

"Tell me you have something," Topher said. "Oil. Salve. Anything. I'm not—" A breath. "I'm not doing this dry."

Beck's mind, which had been reduced to static and heat, clawed its way back for one functioning second. Training kit. Left pocket. The palm salve he used for blistered hands after dagger drills.

"My belt pouch," he managed. "Left side."

Topher found it without looking away from his face. Flipped the flap, pulled the small clay pot, uncorked it with his teeth — and that, that was the image Beck was going to keep: Christopher Jacobs, storm mage, undefeated in the ring for two straight years, biting the cork out of a salve pot with Beck's legs around his waist.

Topher slicked his fingers. Beck watched him do it, watched the shine of the salve catch the lamplight, and his cock jerked against his own stomach, leaking onto the torn tunic.

"Tell me if it's—" Topher started.

"If you finish that sentence I will set your hair on fire."

Topher's mouth curved. Barely. It was the closest thing to a smile Beck had ever seen on him, and it did something stupid to his chest. "Noted."

His fingers went between Beck's legs. Found him. Pressed.

Beck's head dropped back against the pillar with a crack. One finger, slick and slow, circling, pressing in, and his whole body locked up around it — not from pain, from the sheer overwhelming fact of it. Topher Jacobs had a finger inside him. Topher Jacobs was watching his face with the same intensity he brought to reading an opponent's guard, cataloguing every flinch, every breath.

"Breathe," Topher said.

"I am —" Beck's voice cracked as the finger pushed deeper, curled, and found something that made his vision go sideways. "Oh. Oh. "

"Yeah." Topher's voice had gone rough. "There it is."

He worked Beck open with a patience that was almost cruel. One finger, then two, scissoring slow, curling on every stroke, and Beck clung to his shoulders and shook and said things he would never be able to look at himself in the mirror about again. More. Please. Don't stop, gods, don't you dare stop. His fire magic was running hot enough that the air around them shimmered, and Topher's storm answered it, static crawling along both their skins, the smell of ozone thick as smoke.

"Now," Beck gasped. "Now, Topher, now —"

Topher pulled his fingers out. The loss was a physical ache. Beck heard the wet sound of him slicking his cock, and then Topher's hands were under his thighs, lifting him, positioning him, and the broad head pressed against him.

"Look at me," Topher said.

Beck looked. Grey eyes, blown black. Freckles across the bridge of a nose damp with sweat. A jaw clenched so hard the muscle jumped.

Then Topher pushed in.

The stretch was everything. Beck's mouth opened on a sound that had no shape — it was too big, too much, the slow relentless slide of Topher filling him inch by inch while the stone scraped his shoulder blades and his thighs trembled around Topher's hips. Topher's forehead dropped to Beck's. Their breath mingled, harsh and shared, neither of them moving, both of them shaking.

"Fuck," Topher said again, and this time it was barely a word at all. "Beck. Beck. "

His name in that ruined voice, said like a prayer or a curse or both — Beck had spent four years telling himself he hated the way Jacobs said his name. He had been lying. He had been lying about so many things.

"Move," Beck said. "Move, or I swear to every god in the pantheon I will—"

Topher moved.

The first thrust drove Beck up the pillar, boot heels skidding on stone. The second pinned him flat. By the third they had found a rhythm, and it was not gentle. It was years of it — years of biting remarks across lecture halls, of drawn-out duels that ended in draws because neither of them could stand to lose, of watching each other across crowded rooms and calling it rivalry because the other word was too dangerous to think.

All of it, into this.

Topher fucked him against the pillar with a focus that was almost terrifying. Every thrust was deliberate, angled, watching Beck's face for the tell — and Beck, who had never in his life let anyone see him flinch, let him see everything. Let his head roll back. Let his mouth fall open. Let the sounds come out unguarded and loud in the empty cavern, echoing off stone.

"That's it," Topher breathed against his ear. "That's — you make that sound again, Marlow, I swear—"

Beck made the sound again. Deliberately. Just to watch Topher's control fracture.

It worked. Topher's rhythm broke, went harder, faster, the slap of skin loud in the quiet yard, and Beck's back scraped raw against the stone with every drive and he did not care, would not have stopped it for anything. He got a hand between them, fisted his own cock, slick with the salve and his own leaking, and stroked himself in time with Topher's thrusts.

"Close," Beck managed. "Topher, I'm—"

"I know." Topher's voice was wrecked, his hips stuttering. "I know, I've got you, come on, come on —"

Beck came first. His whole body locked, thighs clamping around Topher's hips, and it spilled hot and thick across his own stomach and the ruined tunic, streaking his skin, and the sound he made was his own name being torn out of him backward. The clench of it dragged Topher over with him — two, three more thrusts, deep and desperate, and then Topher buried himself to the hilt and came with a groan that vibrated through Beck's entire chest.

The heat of it flooded him. Beck felt every pulse, felt Topher's cock twitch inside him, felt the wet spread of it as Topher pulled out slow and it leaked down the inside of Beck's thigh.

Neither of them moved.

Topher's forehead stayed against his. His breath came in ragged bursts. His hands were still under Beck's thighs, holding him up against the pillar like he'd forgotten how to let go, and Beck's legs were still wrapped around his waist and neither of them was doing anything about that either.

"Your back," Topher said finally. Hoarse. "It's bleeding."

Beck turned his head. The stone behind him had a smear of red on it, and his shoulder ached in a distant way, like it belonged to somebody else. "So it is."

Topher's jaw worked. Something crossed his face — the same unguarded flash as before, and this time Beck caught it and held it. Guilt. Or something near it.

"Don't," Beck said. "Don't you dare apologize. If you apologize for this I will—"

"I wasn't going to apologize." Topher's voice was low. He eased Beck down, slow, one hand braced on the pillar, and Beck's boots hit the dirt and his knees nearly went out from under him. Topher caught him. Of course he caught him. "I was going to say — tomorrow."

Beck looked up at him. Torn tunic hanging off one shoulder. Belt somewhere in the dirt. His own spend cooling on his stomach. Topher's harness scattered across the arena floor like a dropped argument.

"Tomorrow," Beck repeated.

"The duel." Topher's grey eyes were steady on his. Not cool, though. Not the way they were in the ring. "It's still happening. The whole academy's going to be watching."

"I'm aware."

"So this—" Topher gestured vaguely at the space between them, at the pillar, at the smell of both of them hanging in the humid air. "This doesn't change that."

Beck bent. Picked up Topher's sword-harness from the dirt. Held it out, buckles dangling, and watched Topher's hand close around the leather — watched their fingers brush in the transfer, and neither of them pulled away fast enough.

"No," Beck said quietly. "It doesn't change the duel."

Topher's grip tightened on the harness. He looked like he wanted to say something else. Beck watched him swallow it, watched the mask come back down over his face piece by piece, and hated it more than he had ever hated anything in four years of hating Christopher Jacobs.

"Good," Topher said. Flat. Almost convincing.

He turned and walked toward the archway, harness over one shoulder, tunic stuck to his back with sweat, and Beck stood in the middle of the empty training yard with his own come drying on his skin and his back stinging against the cold and did not call him back.

At the arch, Topher stopped. Didn't turn around.

"Marlow."

"What."

"Your tunic's ruined." A pause. "Wear the black one tomorrow. The one with the high collar."

Beck stared at his back. "Why?"

"Because I put marks on your throat that the whole academy is going to see otherwise." Topher's voice was low and even. "And I'd rather the judges were watching your hands than your neck."

He walked out. His footsteps faded up the corridor, and the static in the air drained away with him, and Beck was left alone in the amber lamplight with his torn tunic and a raw back and the impossible, incriminating knowledge that tomorrow morning, when he stepped into the ring, he would be wearing a high collar and Christopher Jacobs would know exactly why.

Beck bent down. Picked up his belt. Buckled it with fingers that were not quite steady.

Then he looked at the pillar — at the smear of red on the stone, at the two long scuff marks where his boots had dragged — and he left them there. He could have scoured it clean with a flick of fire. He didn't.

Let the groundskeeper wonder.

He got three steps toward the corridor before he stopped.

His own neck. His own throat, hot where Topher's mouth had been, the skin still tacky with spit and cooling sweat. He lifted two fingers to the hollow of it and pressed, and there it was — a raised welt the size of a thumbprint, and another lower, on the tendon where the jaw met the ear. Two. Maybe three. He could feel the shape of them the way you feel a coin in a pocket: without looking, and with total certainty.

Tomorrow. The whole academy in the stands. The judges' table with the Archmage's seal on it, and every one of them watching his hands, and the high collar of the black tunic doing its work, and Topher across the ring with his grey eyes doing the math.

Topher would know. That was the point, wasn't it. Topher had *told* him to cover them. Topher had turned his back and walked up a corridor and left Beck standing in the dirt with instructions, like the whole thing had been a duel he'd already won.

Beck turned around.

He walked back to the pillar. The smear was still there — his blood, dried to a brown-black rust against the grey stone, and two long parallel scuffs where his boot heels had dragged. He looked at it for a long moment. The groundskeeper came through at dawn. Some old man with a broom and a bad knee who would see the marks and think *training accident* and sweep the dirt smooth and never say a word to anyone, and that would be the end of it, and Beck would have to live inside the fact that Christopher Jacobs had put his hands on him and left no evidence except the evidence Beck carried on his own skin.

No.

He knelt. Fished the salve pot out of the dirt where Topher had dropped it, wiped the rim clean on his ruined tunic, and set it aside. Then he sat back on his heels and closed his eyes and reached for the fire.

It came easy. It always came easy when he was angry, and he was angry now — a clean, cold, useful anger that had nothing to do with the duel and everything to do with the way Topher had said *good* in that flat voice before he left. Fire magic was a liar's magic. It said everything Beck wouldn't. Right now it said *fine. Watch me.*

He brought his hands up to his throat.

The trick was not to burn. Anyone could burn. The trick was to hold the heat just under the threshold of damage, to draw it across the skin in slow passes until the tissue beneath stopped remembering it had been bruised. He'd done it before — on his forearms, mostly, after drills that went long, the small purple blooms of a bad grip on a dagger hilt. He'd never done it on his own throat. The skin there was thin and the pulse was close to the surface and the first pass of heat made him flinch and pull back, and he had to breathe, and try again.

Second pass. His fingers trembled. He steadied them against his jaw, thumb braced at the corner of his mouth, and drew the heat down the line of his neck in a slow stroke, from under his ear to the point of his shoulder.

The welt under his fingers warmed, softened, and went.

He felt it happen. That was the strange part — he *felt* the mark let go, the skin sighing back into itself, the small raised ridge flattening under his fingertips until there was nothing there but ordinary throat. He moved to the second one, lower, and gave it the same treatment, longer this time, more heat, until the itch of healing replaced the ache.

Third. The one at the tendon. That one had been deep — Topher's teeth, and Beck remembered exactly how it had felt, the bright shock of it, the way his hips had bucked into Topher's fist. He held the heat there until the memory stopped being a mark and became only a memory.

When he was done he sat back on the stone floor and let the fire go out of his hands. The air in the cavern was humid and still, and his own breath was loud in it. He raised a hand and pressed his throat again, all three places, and found nothing. Smooth. Unmarked. His pulse, steady under unbroken skin.

He should have felt relieved. He felt, instead, like he'd erased a sentence he'd wanted someone to read.

He got up. His knees protested. His back stung where the stone had opened him, and the ruined tunic hung off one shoulder, and his belt was buckled wrong — he could feel the tongue of it digging into his hip where he'd shoved it through the wrong loop — but he left all of it. He walked to the archway and looked up the corridor. Dark. Empty. The lamps along the wall guttered low, and somewhere far off in the academy a bell tower was counting something, three slow notes, and then nothing.

Topher was gone. He'd be in his own rooms by now, harness dumped on a chair, washing the smell of Beck off his hands in a basin of cold water. Beck could picture it with an accuracy that made his stomach turn over. He could picture Topher's face in the lamplight of his own room, that flat mask back in place, and he hated it — hated it with the specific, useless hatred of a man who has just been handled.

He sat down on the edge of the arena floor with his back to the pillar and waited.

He told himself he was waiting to make sure Topher didn't come back. To make sure the corridor stayed empty and the yard stayed his. He told himself he was waiting for his legs to stop shaking, and for the wet mess on his stomach to dry, and for the smell of ozone to clear out of the air so he could breathe like a normal person again.

None of that was true. He knew it wasn't true. He was waiting because Topher had told him to wear a high collar tomorrow, and Beck had just spent the last ten minutes burning the reason off his own neck, and he wanted — needed — for Topher to come back and look at him and see it.

He wanted Topher to know that Beck Marlow did not wear other people's instructions.

The lamp above the archway flickered. Somewhere in the walls, water moved through a pipe. Beck pulled his knees up and rested his forearms on them and watched the corridor.

Time went. He didn't know how much. The bell tower didn't ring again, and the dark in the corridor didn't change, and the smear on the pillar behind him dried a little more, and Beck sat with his back against the stone and his torn tunic and his burned-clean throat and waited for a man he'd spent four years telling himself he couldn't stand.

He rehearsed it. That was the worst of it. He sat there in the dark and rehearsed the moment — the way Topher would come back up the corridor, maybe with some excuse about a dropped buckle, maybe with nothing at all, and stop in the archway, and look at him. Beck would lift his chin. Just a little. Just enough. Let the lamplight fall on his throat, smooth as a page. And Topher would see it, and understand exactly what Beck had done, and what it meant.

*You told me to cover them,* the chin would say. *I didn't.*

He got up twice to leave. Both times he sat back down. The second time he told himself it was because his back hurt too much to walk, which was a lie so obvious he almost laughed at it out loud, and the laugh died in his chest before it made it to his mouth.

He rubbed his thumb across his own throat one more time. Nothing. Smooth. No welt, no ridge, no heat. He'd done it perfectly. That was the thing about fire — it never left a mark unless he wanted it to. He could erase anything he'd ever done. He'd been proud of that, once.

Footsteps.

Beck's head came up before he'd decided to move it. Down the corridor, past the archway, the sound of boots on stone — slow, unhurried, and then stopping. A long pause. Then starting again, closer, and the dark in the archway filled with a shape, and the shape resolved into broad shoulders and wet curly black hair and a leather harness slung over one arm.

Topher came back.

He came through the archway and stopped two paces inside the yard, and his grey eyes went straight to Beck — to Beck sitting on the arena floor with his back to the pillar, tunic torn, belt wrong, one knee up and one hand braced on the dirt. Topher's jaw did something. He looked like a man who had walked back up a corridor rehearsing a line and had just forgotten it.

"You're still here," he said.

Beck didn't answer. He got to his feet — slowly, because his back didn't want him to, and because slow was the point — and stood there in the middle of the empty yard with the amber lamplight on him and looked back at Topher without a word.

Then he lifted his chin. Just a little. Just enough.

He watched Topher's eyes travel up his throat. Watched them catch, and hold, and stop. Watched the exact moment Topher saw that the marks were gone — that there was nothing on Beck's neck but smooth unbroken skin, no welt, no bruise, no evidence at all, as if the last hour had happened to somebody else.

Topher's hand tightened on the strap of his harness. Neither of them spoke.

He had come back to see them. Beck knew it, in that moment, the way you know a storm is overhead — from the pressure, from the static crawling up the back of his own arms, from the way Topher stood in the archway and did not blink. He had come back to look at what he'd left on Beck's throat, and Beck had taken it away.

Topher didn't move for a long time. He stood in the archway with the harness over his arm and his boots planted in the dirt like he'd been nailed there, and the lamp above him guttered once and steadied, and the light slid down the side of his face and caught the wet curl of hair stuck to his temple. He was still damp. He'd walked all the way up to his rooms and back and he hadn't bothered to wash the salt off his skin, and Beck catalogued that without meaning to — filed it somewhere, next to the fact that the man had come back at all.

"Say it," Topher said.

His voice was lower than it had been. There was gravel in it, the kind that came from shouting across a ring for four years and from swallowing things he should have said. He didn't raise it. He didn't step forward. He just stood there with his hand strangling the leather strap and waited for Beck to give him something to fight.

Beck gave him nothing. He stood with his weight on his heels and his ruined tunic hanging open down the front and his chin still up, and he let the silence stretch until it got thin enough to see through.

"You came back," he said finally. Flat. Not a question.

"I forgot my buckle."

"Your buckle's on the floor of the ring."

Topher's jaw worked. He looked, for one second, exactly like a man who had rehearsed a lie on the walk down and had just heard it fall apart in his own mouth. Then the mask came back down over his face like a shutter, and Beck hated it — the same flat mask from every lecture hall, every tournament floor, every time Topher had looked at him across a room and pretended he was furniture.

"Then I came back for the buckle," Topher said.

"You came back to look at my neck."

That landed. Beck watched it land — watched Topher's grey eyes flick down to his throat and then away, fast, like a man checking a wound he'd been told not to touch. The static in the air thickened. Beck could feel it on the fine hairs of his forearms, the same crawling pressure that always preceded one of Topher's strikes, and he stood inside it and did not step back.

"They're gone," Topher said.

"They're gone."

"How."

Beck lifted one hand — slow, deliberate, the gesture of a man showing a card — and let a thin thread of fire curl up out of his palm. It crawled between his fingers and licked the air and went out again. The light of it caught the underside of his jaw, and the smooth skin there, and Topher's eyes followed the flame exactly the way Beck had known they would.

"Fire mages can burn anything," Beck said. "Including evidence."

Topher took a step into the yard. One. The dirt scuffed under his boot and the harness swung against his thigh, and the space between them got smaller by the width of a man's shoulders. Beck held his ground.

"You burned your own throat," Topher said. Not a question either. His voice had gone strange — not flat anymore, but tight, like a rope pulled past its working load.

"I healed it. There's a difference. Heat under the threshold, drawn slow, until the tissue forgets it was ever marked. It's a party trick." Beck shrugged one shoulder, and the torn tunic slid further off it, and he let it. "You should have seen the look on your face just now. You walked all the way back down here to gloat, and there was nothing to gloat about, and you had to stand there and figure out what to do with your hands."

"I didn't come back to gloat."

"No? Then what."

Topher didn't answer. He stood in the middle of the empty yard with the harness over his arm and his mouth shut, and the lamp above the archway flickered a second time, and somewhere in the walls the water moved through its pipe and went quiet again. Beck could hear his own pulse. He could hear Topher's breathing — slower than it should have been, the way a man breathes when he's holding something down.

"You told me to wear a high collar," Beck said. "You stood there in the dark and handed me an instruction like I was a problem you'd already solved. Cover them. Wear black. Nobody has to know." He took one step forward, and the gap between them closed to arm's length, and Topher did not retreat. "I don't take instructions from you, Jacobs. Not in the ring, not out of it."

Topher's eyes dropped to his throat again. Stayed there this time. Beck watched him look — watched him take in the smooth unbroken line of it, the pulse moving under the skin where the marks used to be, and something crossed Topher's face that Beck could not name and would not have named even if he could.

"I wanted to see them on you," Topher said.

The words came out low and rough and completely unguarded, and for one second the mask was gone — just gone, like a curtain dropped off a window, and there was nothing behind it but a man standing in the dirt with his harness in his fist and his whole face open. Then he heard himself. Beck watched him hear himself. Watched the shutter start to come back down.

He got there first.

"Say that again," Beck said.

"No."

"Say it again."

"I said I wanted—" Topher stopped. His hand on the harness strap went white at the knuckles. "You heard me the first time."

Beck let the silence sit. He reached up — unhurried, his eyes on Topher's the whole way — and laid two fingers against his own throat, right where the deepest welt had been, and pressed. Nothing there. Smooth skin and a steady pulse and no ridge, no bruise, no proof. He watched Topher watch him do it.

"I could put them back," Beck said.

Topher's breath caught. It was a small sound, almost nothing, the kind a man makes when he's been hit somewhere he wasn't guarding — and Beck heard it clearly in the quiet of the yard, and filed it next to the rest, and did not smile.

"That's not—" Topher started.

"It's a question." Beck let his hand drop. "You came back down here for something. You stood in the archway and looked at my neck and told me you wanted to see the marks on it. So I'm asking. Do you want them back."

The lamp guttered. The harness creaked in Topher's fist. Somewhere above them, through the stone, the academy slept — a thousand people with no idea that the two of them were standing in the dark below it, one duel away from the title they'd spent four years bleeding for, saying things neither of them had ever said out loud.

"You know what tomorrow is," Topher said. His voice had steadied, but only just — the rope pulled tight again, holding. "You know what's at stake. If I answer that, we don't get to walk into that ring as rivals."

"We stopped being rivals an hour ago," Beck said. "You just haven't admitted it yet."

Topher looked at him. Long. The grey of his eyes had gone dark as a storm front, and the static in the air pressed against Beck's skin like a hand, and neither of them moved. The smear of blood on the pillar behind Beck had dried to rust. The salve pot sat in the dirt where he'd left it. The ruined tunic hung off his shoulder, and his belt was still buckled wrong, and his throat was smooth as a page, and every single one of those things was a sentence waiting for Topher to read it.

"Ask me again in the morning," Topher said.

"No."

"Beck—"

"I said no." Beck stepped in, close enough now to feel the heat coming off Topher's chest, close enough to smell the rain and ozone still clinging to his skin. "You don't get to hand me a collar and a timetable and walk out. You came back. You're here. So stand there and answer, or leave and don't come back down this corridor again."

Topher's hand came up. Slow. Beck watched it come — watched the calloused fingers rise between them, watched the knuckles still white from the strap — and did not flinch, because flinching was for people who hadn't spent four years learning the exact reach of this man's arm.

Topher's thumb touched his throat. Just there. Just the one point of contact, rough pad against smooth skin, right where the welt had been, and held.

Neither of them breathed.

"Gone," Topher said. Quiet. Almost to himself. His thumb moved once, a slow drag across the hollow of Beck's throat, and Beck felt his own pulse jump under it and knew Topher felt it too. "You really did it."

"I told you. Party trick."

"That's not what I meant."

Beck held still. The thumb stayed where it was, warm and heavy, and the lamp above the archway threw their two shadows long across the dirt, and somewhere far off a door opened and closed and the academy went back to sleep. He could have stepped back. He knew exactly how to step back — the same way he knew exactly how to end a duel three moves before his opponent did. He didn't.

"Then say what you meant," Beck said.

Topher's hand stayed on his throat. His jaw worked once. The mask was all the way down now — no shutter, no flat grey calm, just a man standing in the dark with his thumb on another man's pulse and his whole face saying the thing his mouth hadn't gotten to yet.

"Tomorrow," he said finally. "Whatever this is. It waits until after the ring."

Beck lifted his chin under Topher's hand. Not much. Just enough that the thumb slid up the line of his throat and the lamplight caught the smooth skin there, clean and unmarked and his, every inch of it.

"Then you'd better win," Beck said. "Because if I take that title off you tomorrow, I'm not going to be gentle about what I ask for next."

Topher's thumb pressed once, hard, against his pulse — a promise or a warning, Beck couldn't tell which, and didn't care — and then his hand dropped, and he turned, and he walked back up the corridor with the harness over his arm and the dirt of the yard still on his boots.

He stopped at the archway. Didn't turn around.

"Black tunic," Topher said. "Tomorrow. Wear it anyway."

Then the dark took him, and Beck stood alone in the middle of the empty yard with his throat still warm where the thumb had been, and the smear on the pillar behind him, and the salve pot in the dirt, and the long night still ahead of him before the sun came up over the stands.