"Beauty."

Kunzite-sama paces around me, tempting me to turn my head.

"Not intrinsic, but in the act of apprehension. For in the case of beauty, apprehension is creation."

He comes around to look at me in the eyes, daring me to hold his gaze, which I do for a moment before letting my focus drop to my bare toes.

In the light, Kunzite-sama shines so brightly that he blinds the eye. White flash, white pain; he kills without being seen. To his enemies, he is a shaft of lightning, and he strikes before sound.

In the dark, Kunzite-sama is a mirror. And since he hates the light and lives in the dark, this is how I know him. In the blue glow of the bedroom, his eyes reflect the night and its companions, throwing back to me the apparition of my white skin as I stand naked before him. His hair is like his eyes: metallic, mimetic. It slides like melted silver over his shoulders, and then sways and drifts like spider webs, strands glinting in the storm light. His body, a dark shadow among other dark shadows, is given away by the glimmering snail-tracks of old scars. Thick and thin, they run like pale ribbons over his skin. Stabs, slashes, shrapnel, and even two jagged grooves along his spine that were the teeth of a falling portcullis. I reached out to touch one once, and was shocked to see the reflection of my finger in it, as though I'd touched a sliver of ice.

There is a tiny scar, too, below his left eye, and it flashes like a teardrop as the light catches it.

"Men's lives are plotted and driven by the apprehension of beauty. It is an island that they create, and the shore for which they reach, for once created, beauty gains an autonomy of its own."

He's getting verbal, uncharacteristically verbal, poetic almost, and I take to counting the number of times "beauty" rolls out of his mouth. The word, toyed apart into its syllables, is wrapped up in his deep voice and presented to me like a sweet, over and over again, as if to habituate me to the taste. Or make me sick of it. I don't like the way he plays with the word, taking such pleasure in the enunciation, heating up the air with it. Again his eyes meet mine, the gaze this time accompanied by a wry smile.

"But nowhere else is beauty more splendid than in battle. When the beautiful kill, their grace seems to conquer mortality."

He is only a breath away from me now; I can feel each word as it falls upon the crown of my head. He pauses in his sermon to inhale deeply. He is smelling my hair. I'm suddenly self-conscious, aware of my nakedness and his closeness.

"For surely, Zoisaito, the hardest thing for beauty to achieve is immortality."

The air in the room is cold, making my nipples contract and perk. I'm certain that's part of his plan. He's always doing something with the room -- tinkering, planning, engineering -- using his vast wealth of abilities and astoundingly deplorable imagination to arrange the environment to his liking, usually at the expense of my dignity. In bed the other night, he broke free of our embrace and rocked back on his heels, observing me as I lay on my back. Too puzzled to move, I remained motionless, wondering what he was doing, just sitting there watching me with those mirror eyes. Suddenly, I felt the touch of something cool upon my wrist. With astonishment and no small amount of horror, I watched as the carved black stone of the bedposts suddenly came to life, sliding slowly over itself and along the bedsheets, writhing, coiling in glistening ropes around me. Like black snakes, they twisted first around one wrist, then the other, pulling my hands behind my head. These animate coils had the voracity of living things but the strength of something that surely wasn't, and there were more around my thighs and ankles, twisting me, arranging me, spreading me apart and flattening me against the bed. All the while, Kunzite-sama loomed over me, not touching, simply watching, a satisfied smile on his face. Later he told me that he did it to see the black of the stone against the white of my skin. Beauty in contrast.

What sort of appraisal does he have in store for me tonight? I'd be a fool to think, after a bedtime lecture on the merits of the beautiful soldier - with me in the nude, no less - that innocence has swept clean the surface of Kunzite-sama's drafting table. Kunzite-sama who uses my buttocks as a lectern, Kunzite-sama who talks to the walls in conspiratorial whispers, Kunzite-sama who has trained the plants outside to capture and digest intruders.

Kunzite-sama whom I think I love.

He does not disappoint me. With one last, lingering breath above my head, he draws away, leaving me with the dark scent of his skin.

"Kill me, Zoisaito," he says. "Show me how beautiful you are."

There is an ocean on the bed. The languid night air drifts in through the window and slides beneath the thin sheets, making waves of dark fabric roll around the tapered jetties of my legs.

If I let myself imagine, if I let myself see, the bed becomes a living thing, rippling and churning around my stationary form as though trying to digest me. But then I have to close my eyes, because I'm reminded of the stone snakes.

Kunzite-sama didn't do anything like that tonight. He merely wanted to spar with me, or rather, to watch me spar with him, naked. I obliged, and fought well despite the relic of modesty that made me flush when I saw his eyes on me. But I still had the same trouble that I always have: the power that I summon with enough difficulty on my own failed to come to my hand when I needed it. I tried very hard, stretching the boundaries of my conscious until my brain and body thrummed with Metallia's heartbeat... or my own. I couldn't tell. And because of that, I wasn't able to produce anything. Not a spark. Not a fizzle.

Perhaps Kunzite-sama blames himself for taking me into his bed so often; my success as a lover is started to rub raw against my failure as a fighter. I can see it in his strained countenance: his vision of the fighting beauty is failing to come into fruition. I am fierce, but not nearly deadly enough to seem immortal.

The other day during training I saw him lose his temper for the first time. It was a horrible sight - or rather, a non-sight - as for once I became victim to that barely visible white flash that is Kunzite-sama's strike. Before I knew it I was on the ground, and I could hear his cold hard voice threatening to take away my name, to put me back where he had found me. Tears of fright and humiliation bullied their way past my eyelids, the shame of crying causing them to well even faster.

I fled to my room, stripped off my clothes, and promptly vomited on the floor. As a pathetic finale to my failure, I couldn't even summon the magic to clean up the mess, and so spent my time scrubbing and gagging. Rage trickled from my eyes and burnt its way down my cheeks, and kept doing so, long after I'd cleaned the floor. Imagine my astonishment when Kunzite-sama, voice softer now, even a bit congenial, summoned me back for the night.

Yet I am more worried than I've even been, as my failure tonight, naked and all the more pitiful for it, lent an added keenness to the edge of my fear. As we made love afterward, Kunzite-sama held me with the kind of tenderness one bestows on an animal before it's put to death. It shouldn't be this hard. I want so badly to please him, to show him at last that I am one with the Dark Kingdom and master of its magic. But then I think of the living bedposts, of the hallways that change shape when I am gone, and the books in the library that have no print in them, but that Kunzite-sama spends hours studying nonetheless. These things repulse me, tell me that I will never be a part of this place. Not fully.

Even Kunzite-sama himself is a riddle. Covered as he is in mirrors, he divulges nothing. The Kingdom is a secret kept from me.

The sheets rustle only slightly as I rise from the bed, pulling my robe around my shoulders and belting it tightly. Double knot -- just in case -- in case of something I can't anticipate.

On the silent pads of my feet, I slip out of the room, looking back once at Kunzite-sama's recumbent, glistening form. His eyes are open. It doesn't matter, though. I can come and go as I wish; my duty to him begins the moment he summons me and ends when pulls himself from my body. Other times I am simply another ghost in the tower.

Even in a place devoid of sentient life, it's hard to find privacy in the garden. The creepers, picking up my scent as I brush against their vanguard tendrils, recoil noisily into the brush. Phosphorescent tubers throb with red and blue light, humming with irritation at my presence. A huge orchid opens its labial petals, dripping with slime, and bares its venomous stamen.

Yet it is only here that I can execute my plan, outside of Kunzite-sama's supersensory bounds. And not be bothered by wayward youma.

Finding a relatively bare patch of ground, I stop and kneel. My head is throbbing dully and my stomach churns empty. I know the price of failure, and I know the value of my honour. My pride.

Zoisaito. That is my name, and always will be.

From inside the folds of my robe I pull a short sword. It's not mine, but I thought it would be nice to die with some part of Kunzite-sama inside me. When he wakes up, of course, all he'll find is the sword, but he will know what happened. And why.

The blade gleams even in the dark of the garden, and I hold it poised at my belly, simply breathing in and out, feeling the tip of the sword touch me gently again and again. I suddenly find myself thinking what a beautiful painting this would make. A lovely boy with a white nape, sad eyes looking up - at what? - the blade ready to collapse the entire scene. Despite myself, I find a shy grin and a blazing flush spread across my face, and I wonder if anyone else has ever managed to give themselves a hard-on.

Now. Ready with the knife. Breathe in and then push; it'll be over before you know it.

"Zoisaito."

Low, even syllables, following one another in smooth procession like beads on a rosary. I know whose voice that is, and despite its gentle cadence, I flinch.

Failure, even at this.

"Kunzaito-sama?" My sword is frozen in humiliation; I dare not turn around and show him what I'd been about to do. My erection topples in an instant, but the blush continues to burn its way across my cheeks and ears.

"What are you doing out here, Zoisaito?"

"Meditating."

"Get up and face me."

There is nothing I can do to save face now. On puppet strings I rise to my feet, sword hand limp at my side, a deserter in my one-man battle. I turn toward Kunzite-sama, and feel myself suddenly go cold.

He is standing in full uniform, a mighty blade of ice in his right hand. In the shadows, his eyes for once have lost their light, leaving only the tear-scar gleaming on his cheekbone. It glitters, seems to move, to trickle, and for an instant I am fooled into thinking he's crying. Strangely enough, it is in this moment of illusion that my thoughts flash clear as the blade of his sword.

He has come to kill me. The threats of expulsion, of taking away my name, they were spoken merely to terrify me into productivity. The true price of failure is death, clean and simple at my master's hands. Of course. Why let someone else's ineptitude tarnish his reputation? Why let me slip amongst the Kingdom's pariah, the perpetual divulgence of a dirty secret, when he could have me perish here and now?

This is fine with me.

I drop my little sword, not caring how loud a clatter it makes on the stones. The smell of the garden is strong now, and I breathe it in, fully and slowly, closing my eyes to the darkness and the shining crown of Kunzite-sama's head as he approaches. I am not afraid. I had wanted to die moments ago, and now I shall, this time at the hand of the only creature I ever cared for. And I will keep my name.

"I am sorry it had to come to this, Zoisaito." Kunzite-sama's low voice is so very close now, and I imagine that I can feel the coolness of his ice blade next to my skin.

"I am happy to die if I am with you, Kunzaito-sama," I breathe softly, surprising myself by meaning every word.

He exhales shortly, the sentiment indecipherable. "That's good to know."

His hand - the one not holding the sword - suddenly seizes the fold of my robe and pulls, yanking the thin cloth open and down, past my shoulders, my arms teased out of the sleeves, the double knot holding fast, the ensemble finally resting in a pool at my feet. Of course he doesn't want to cut through cloth. And yet I wonder how necessary it was to pull the whole thing off, and so I charm myself by thinking that he simply wants one last good look at me. Creation through apprehension, one more time.

Having no desire to see my reflection, I keep my eyes closed. Kunzite-sama's breathing is getting harder; the moment must be close. There will be no last-minute begging, no attempt to flee. I am glass, stone, ice. And I am beautiful.

His breathing is harder and then his mouth is on mine, and my eyes blink open - can't help it - open to look into those long twin mirrors just centimetres away from me. Deriving so much pleasure from watching, Kunzite-sama hardly ever closes his eyes when he kisses me. He says I'm lovely even when I'm out of focus. It usually makes me laugh, but not now, oh not now. What is he doing? Why must he torment me like this, when I'm ready to die? His tongue is swiping back and forth along the rows of my teeth, a strong thick long tongue made so from the calisthenics he puts it through, all his careful diction and articulation.

I'm starting to forget about death and honour, thinking more about the warmth of his one arm encircling me (the other still holding the sword), the heat of his mouth as it sucks on my lower lip, the roughness of his trouser fabric as his thigh moves to press between my legs. There is the familiar rush of blood, the sly hunger that poses as legitimate desire; I know these feeling because I have felt them countless times before. Circumstances become inconsequential - is he really still holding that giant icicle?

It doesn't matter, I tell myself, as I feel my body lifted - eyes still closed - and lowered onto the ground. There's a moment of discomfort, of hard rock and grime scraping my back, but then it's all kisses again, Kunzite-sama's hair tickling my cheeks, his foreign scent laying siege to my second most active sense.

My feet have gotten tangled in his cape, and I feel him reach back with his free hand, thinking he's going to set things in order. Instead the hand travels between my legs, gloved but I don't care, pushing my thighs apart in slow, sweeping motions. I grind against his hand as it brushes past, not caring how shameful I look, wondering if I have to grab hold of him to make him press harder.

However much it gives the impression of spontaneity, Kunzite-sama's lovemaking is methodical, his passion shunted not to his body but to his brain, giving fuel to his choreography, filling his head with curious erotic permutations, considered with fleeting fastidiousness before being put into action. He burns, yes, but he burns with a plan. Consequently, I should have known that there was a reason he wasn't letting go of his sword.

I get my first shock when its icy tip is traced down the centre of my belly, leaving a moist, melted line from my navel to my groin. My eyes open momentarily to behold Kunzite-sama rising up to kneel between my spread legs, sword hand drawn back. Then he leans forward, pulling my right leg over his left shoulder, his free hand coming to press heavily down on my chest. The weight makes it hard to breathe, hard to raise my head to see what he was doing. And even harder to get away when I feel the tip of the dripping blade touch cold behind my balls.

"Struggle too hard and you might lose something, Zoisaito." Kunzite-sama leans in further, forcing me to double up, knees to my chest. My right hand whips around reflexively, trying to push the freezing tip of the sword away from this most sensitive area of my body. In my haste I grab the sharp edge of the blade and yelp as it bites into my palm, cold as ice and sharp as a razor. My hand is now wet, with water or blood I can't tell.

The tip of the sword moves slightly, tracing the small distance of my perineum, until finally it catches in my tight pucker. I know I've stopped breathing. For a couple of seconds, everything is still: my chest, my limbs, and the sword that drips its meltwater down the crack of my ass. Then, as inexorable as a slow tide, Kunzite-sama starts to push the blade. At first I don't feel anything; the cold has made my skin numb. But soon the ice, preceded by trickles of frigid water, meets the warmth within me and brings with it unbelievable pain.

My lungs are working again and I scream the most awful scream, of pain and horror and disbelief. Kunzite-sama doesn't stop pushing the sword; it goes deeper, freezing my flesh as it melts from my heat. He's looking me right in the eyes, his expression cool and critical, frowning a bit as though he's waiting for something to happen. I try to strike him with my fists, but I find I can't move much because the sword's going even deeper.

My screams congeal into words. "You're cutting me open!"

"Calm down, Zoisaito," he says, his voice bearing a discernable edge of irritation. "I'm not cutting you at all. Look." His sword hand leaves the handle and touches my opening, then rises into view. His gloved fingers are wet with water, but there is no blood to be seen.

"But it hurts!"

"Yes, it does. But that's not my doing." With that, he seizes the handle again, and resumes pushing.

I writhe uselessly as I'm impaled. I don't know how much of the sword is inside me - the ice is making my bowels numb - but after a few moments I feel a stubborn and terrible resistance, and know that I can't take any more.

"Kunzaito-sama! Please stop! Stop! It won't go any farther!"

"Yes it will."

"No, it won't! I'll die!" And I will. I can feel the tip of the sword pressing into the wall of my gut. One more push and it'll be through, into the dark red swamp of my body. Why does he have to kill me like this?

"Zoisaito, listen to me."

The pressure is on again, the sword jabbing deeper.

"Kunzaito-sama, please...."

"Pay attention!"

There's cool water leaking out of me; I can feel it soaking the ground.

Kunzite-sama's free hand flies to my face and takes hold of my chin, forcing me to look up at him. As I meet his stare, something flickers, as though suddenly the light has changed, and for a brief moment my reflection disappears from his eyes. So curious it is to see something other than a mirror, the pain and cold seem to vanish for an instant.

"Good boy," Kunzite-sama whispers, smiling a little. Still holding my face, he pushes again with the sword. Pain tears its way back into the scene, and I feel myself starting to lose strength, my vision framed by a growing border of grey.

"Zoisaito!" He shakes me. I wail angrily in response.

"Zoisaito, listen to me very carefully. This sword is already a part of you."

I look up at him, dazed, feeling the tip of the blade melting inside of me, the water sluicing around, trickling out onto the ground.

"This is what you fail to understand. In the Dark Kingdom, there is no such thing as wasted energy. It leaves one thing, and is absorbed by the next."

Pain and outrage make dangerous chemistry. Kunzite-sama is talking nonsense, and the more I wish that I would die, the more I want to take him with me.

"You were going to kill yourself, Zoisaito. Where do you think all that sorrow was going? Do you think it was merely running around in your blood? Do you think I couldn't harvest it for my own use? Say, to make this blade?"

I go completely still, frozen from the inside, my senses reduced to sight and sound. Kunzite-sama is an icon above me, his face shrouded by his silver hair and framed by the backdrop of roiling plant life. My gaze travels around and around this scene, and all the while I listen, realizing suddenly what he's telling me.

"Everything is a part of everything in this place, Zoisaito; all were raised from Metallia's blood and ashes."

The sword moves a little deeper inside me.

"You worry so much about harnessing the power that is just out of reach, when it is already a part of you."

He pushes suddenly with all his strength, and a cold tide surges in my belly. I scream in shock, but not in pain. I can feel the hilt of the sword bridging the cleft of my buttocks. The blade is all the way inside.

In that instant, my wide-eyed stare returns to meet Kunzite-sama's unyielding gaze, and I realize suddenly that what I saw before was no trick of the light. I can see into his eyes. My reflection is gone from them, as is the glancing light and the mirrored forms and shadows. All that remain are two lambent grey-blue irises and two wide black pupils, as deep and fathomless as my own. And they're watching me.

The hilt of the sword clatters to the floor, its ice blade melted to water inside me.

"Now you see, Zoisaito? You're so full of magic, you could burst."

But I don't burst. The cold water soaks into me, sucked up greedily by my body, mingling with my blood, pumped out by my heart, twining down to my fingers and my toes. I can feel it to the roots of my hair. And if I could see my reflection now, I know that my skin would bear the bluish sheen of the ice, glistening coolly at my lips and on my eyelids.

The garden illuminates before my upturned eyes. Not with light, for the shadows remain as strong and caliginous as they always were. But now I can see the molten fire coursing through the veins of those rubbery leaves and dripping from the fleshy stamens. Is this Metallia's blood or mine?

Kunzite-sama's hands wrap around my waist and hoist my up so that I'm sitting on his lap; his arms crush me to his chest. I break the embrace to look up into those newfound eyes, and he grins at me.

"A pleasure shared is a pleasure doubled, Zoisaito."

I rise up and lock my lips onto his, bracing his head with my hands. The ice water surges up through me and into my mouth, where I can no longer contain it. I am the breath of winter.

Out from my lips comes the pointed end of the sword, solid once more. I feel Kunzite-sama open his mouth wide to receive it, the length of the blade travelling slowly from my throat into his. His tongue moves as he gulps it down, water again when he swallows it. The last portion of ice leaves my lips and I sigh, feeling the buzzing chill finally gone from my body.

"My sorrow."

"My pleasure."

I wipe steam from the window pane and stare out at the midnight morning. The hot light of the bath pitches my reflection up on the glass, and I see what I have only seen for the past two weeks: myself. Nude standing on the woven mat, condensed beads of water glistening on my skin. My hair is slathered in oil, which I will rinse out in exactly half an hour.

A silver torch in the recesses of our bedroom, Kunzite-sama dresses without sound. I share his bed all the time now; my little subterranean chamber has been left to collect dust and closet bad memories.

On my back are oily handprints, for which credit must duly be given. But now, unlike before, I don't cringe in anticipation of Kunzite-sama's convoluted plans for my body. For now I know that he is offering to me only half of the puzzle, half of the game; his perversions are mine to mutate. Together we create wonderful things.

Things that I never noticed now flourish and flounder under the scrutiny of my senses. The sound of the walls, for example, little whispers for my ears alone, though usually most unexciting: "Like your boots." "Humid in here today." "Kunzite's down the hall." I can also read the books on the shelves, even though the print is not visible to the eye. And for the first time I notice something different in Kunzite-sama's smell; a familiar, comforting, earthy underlay to what is otherwise an olfactory mystery. I once spent a good fifteen minutes smelling our sheets, trying to soak up this strange but tender divulgence.

I can conjure magic with my hands, pull it from my throat, raise it from my skin, blink it from my eye. I'm rolling in it: the same shimmering power that clung to Kunzite-sama's skin and made him shine so brilliantly in the dark. It makes my hair burn like fire and my skin glow like the moon.

Being a narcissist by nature, I have learned to love the Kingdom. Its eyes are always on me and I return the favour in kind, and as I do so, I can feel my power growing stronger. Creation through apprehension, from now on.