2. Last Kiss

“Come to me,” Kesrik said.

Asirayya looked away.

“Your shoulder,” the Highlander argued. “You’ve been favoring it all evening. Tomorrow, you favor it in the arena, you will be dead in the first minute. And I don’t want to kill a man in the first minute. It is—” he paused, searching for the word. “Unsatisfying.”

Asirayya pushed himself up. The pallet creaked. He crossed the room in three steps and stood over Kesrik, looking down.

“Sit,” the Highlander said.

Asirayya lowered himself to the floor, his back to Kesrik’s chest. He steadied himself on the timber wall in front of him, fingers catching on the cracked horizontal seam, a scar running the length of the wall. He heard Kesrik shifting behind him, then felt the warmth of his palms hovering just above his shoulders—not touching yet, just radiating.

Kesrik’s thumbs found the edges of the wound. The pressure was feather-light at first, mapping the perimeter of the injury, tracing the raised edges of the scab. Asirayya hissed through his teeth.

“Not too deep,” Kesrik murmured. “Curved short sword. If he’d twisted—”

“He didn’t.”

“No. You killed him first,” Kesrik laughed softly.

Asirayya didn’t answer. The memory was still fresh enough to taste—the copper of blood sprayed across his face and the dust kicked up when the body hit the sand. He remembered the way the man’s eyes had widened in the last half-second before Asirayya’s blade found the soft place beneath his jaw.

The crowd had loved the kill, had cheered as the fighter fell. Men hurled coins into the sand, and women leaned over the upper galleries, waving bright ribbons.

Arena deaths rarely lingered.

Instead, in the moments before sleep, other fragments surfaced unbidden. Smoke drifting across a field of snow. The distant cry of a child calling from somewhere beyond sight. A brief silver glimmer caught in sunlight.

The memories carried no sense of where or when they belonged. Whenever he tried to follow them, they slipped away, dissolving into nothing and leaving behind only a faint, persistent unease.

“Where did you go?” Kesrik asked.

Asirayya blinked. “Nowhere.”

The Highlander knew better than to believe it.

Kesrik’s hands worked in earnest. Thumbs pressed into the muscle surrounding the wound, finding the knots that had formed from three days of compensatory movement. Each press sent a bright flare of sensation through Asirayya’s shoulder, followed by a spreading warmth that made his jaw go slack.

“You could have waited until spring,” he said.

Asirayya was silent for a moment. “They don’t pardon gladiators in the spring.”

Kesrik’s hands stopped moving. “Breathe,” he said. “You hold your breath.”

Asirayya exhaled. The sound of it filled the small room.

Kesrik’s fingers moved up to the base of Asirayya’s skull, pressing into the hollows there. The sweat on Asirayya’s skin made the contact glide—frictionless and intimate. Kesrik’s calluses caught occasionally on the fine hairs at his nape, sending small shocks down his spine.

“You’re good at this,” Asirayya said, his voice coming out rougher than he intended.

“My mother was a healer. Before.” Kesrik’s thumbs traced the curve of Asirayya’s cervical spine. “Before they killed her.”

The words settled heavily between them.

For years they had maintained an unspoken agreement. They talked about the arena, about injuries, food, weather, women, men, and dreams. They never spoke about before. They never spoke about home.

Asirayya knew fragments of Kesrik’s story, just as Kesrik knew fragments of his. Over years of sleepless nights and too much wine, details had slipped out accidentally: a brother, a fishing village, a mother who could set broken bones. Neither of them had ever asked for more.

It was easier that way. Easier not to think about villages. Easier not to think about families. Easier not to think about snowmelt and drowned bodies.

For a moment, Asirayya wondered what kind of woman could have raised a man like Kesrik. The thought came uninvited, and he pushed it away at once.

Kesrik’s hands paused on his shoulders.

“Your turn,” Asirayya said.

He didn’t know why he said it. The words were out before he’d thought them through, hanging in the cold air between them.

Kesrik didn’t answer right away. His hands were still on Asirayya’s shoulders, not pressing now, just resting. The weight of them felt anchoring.

“All right,” he said.

They traded positions. Asirayya kneeled behind Kesrik, who had stripped his tunic off in one fluid motion. Asirayya’s hands mapped the terrain of his back. He knew it by memory—old scars in pale ribbons, newer welts still pink, and the dense architecture of muscle built over years of sword-work. Asirayya could see exactly where a blade had glanced off Kesrik’s ribs years ago, leaving a crescent-shaped mark like a thumbnail pressed into clay.

He started at the base of Kesrik’s spine, pressing his thumbs into the dimples just above the waist. Worn nettle cloth clung to Kesrik’s hips. Asirayya’s fingers found the tight bands of muscle running parallel to the vertebrae, and he worked them methodically, the way he’d work stiffness out of a leather harness, with patience, pressure, and warmth.

Kesrik made a sound, almost a groan, but softer.

Asirayya pressed deeper until the muscle yielded—slowly, reluctantly, then all at once—releasing under his thumbs. Kesrik’s head dropped forward, chin nearly touching his chest.

“Tomorrow,” Kesrik said, his voice muffled, “we’ll have to forget this.”

Asirayya’s hands stilled. “Do you want to forget it?”

Kesrik turned. The motion brought them face to face. Even in the dark, he could imagine the faint lines at the corners of Kesrik’s eyes, the small scar bisecting his left eyebrow, the way his lips parted slightly as he breathed.

“No,” Kesrik said. “I do not.”

He lifted his hand, pressing his thumb to the hollow of Asirayya’s throat, just above the sternum, where the pulse beat closest to the surface. The pressure was light, as though testing.

Asirayya’s heartbeat kicked against that thumb. Once. Twice. A third time, harder.

“Right here,” Kesrik whispered. “If I wanted to. If I pressed hard and fast, you would be gone before you hit the ground.”

Asirayya swallowed. The motion pushed his throat against Kesrik’s thumb. “You’ve thought about it.”

“I think about everything. It is why I am still alive.” The words seemed to surprise Kesrik as much as they surprised Asirayya. Something tightened in the Highlander’s jaw. Then, just as quickly, it vanished.

Kesrik looked away first—toward the sleeping hall, toward the darkness—anywhere but Asirayya.

His throat worked once.

When he finally looked back, the familiar calm had returned, though it sat less comfortably than before.

Kesrik’s other hand came up, circling Asirayya’s wrist with callused fingers.

“Show me,” Asirayya said. His voice was barely a breath. “Show me how you’d do it.”

Kesrik’s thumb pressed deeper. Not enough to cut off air—just enough to make Asirayya aware of every inhale, every exhale, the fragile mechanism of breath that he’d taken for granted his whole life. His pulse hammered under Kesrik’s thumb like a trapped thing.

Kesrik counted, his lips moving silently. One. Two. Three. Asirayya’s vision began to swim at the edges.

Kesrik’s grip on his wrist tightened. The thumb pressed harder.

And then Kesrik’s mouth was on his. Not gentle. Not tentative. A collision of salt and heat, lips parting, the scrape of stubble, Kesrik’s tongue sliding against his own with a desperate, furious gratitude—as if this was the last real thing either of them would ever taste. Asirayya’s free hand came up, found the back of Kesrik’s skull, fingers threading into sweat-damp hair, and pulled him closer.

Kesrik broke the kiss first, pulling back just far enough to speak. His thumb was still on Asirayya’s throat. His breath came hard.

“Tomorrow,” he said, the words hot against Asirayya’s mouth. “Tomorrow, I do what I have to. But tonight—”