Free Darach by RJ Scott

diamonds."
    Ceithin visibly deflated at these words, and with a muffled curse, he sat on the ground and crossed his legs, resting his chin on joined hands balanced on his knees. He was silent, and Darach had moved past being uncomfortable and was now focusing on his acute embarrassment. What kind of man described white as diamonds or glass? He may not fill traditional procreation roles, but he was a damn man, not some poetry writing girl.
    "Can you sit a while, Darach?"
    "I'm tired." Darach really was tired, he knew he would sleep like the dead if he got the chance to go back to his nice comfy bed.
    "Just a minute." Ceithin wasn't exactly pleading, but his words weren't unkind, so with little thought, Darach acquiesced, settled himself opposite, and waited. "Did a seer pronounce for you when you were born?" Ceithin's question was direct and to the point.
    "Yes, for me and Kian and Eoin in the same pronouncement."
    "Kian told us about his Hunter. What was pronounced for you?"
    "That I would fall from grace." Darach had had twenty-one years to come to terms with the fact, assuming his sexuality or helping Kian on some weird-ass teenage quest would bring his downfall. He never expected involvement with a Cariad would bring about the end of him.
    "Fall from grace?" Ceithin tilted his head as he repeated what Darach had said. For a second Darach wished the moon was brighter so he could properly see the expression on Ceithin's face and in his eyes. "That isn't all of it, is it? Not just those few words. Did they say anything about who you would be with? Who your bond would be?" Ceithin tripped over the question, his voice showing a level of nervousness Darach had never seen before in him. Darach inhaled deeply, the rush of night air comforting, warm, scented with the water and the forest that ringed them.
    "They said I would be with a carrier of healer Fire, red Fire." There, it was simply said.
    "You want to know what was pronounced at my birth?"
    "Cariad have a seer too?" Darach immediately wished he could retract the inane comment. Knowing the Cariad, they had ten seers or a hundred seers. Ceithin didn't seem angry though. He simply shook his head.
    "We don't need what you call a seer. Your seers are actually just Cariad descendants with lesser ability. We have our parents who know what is ahead for us."
    "Your parents?" Darach really tried to imagine his parents being able to see anything of his future, but he couldn't picture them being different from what they had always been.
    "Well, mine was simple. They knew from the day I was born I would be with another man."
    " Isn ' t knowing your future that clearly giving you some kind of self - fulfilling prophecy? " Darach prided himself on his grasp of the right words.
    "Not really. I wasn't told until I was sixteen, but by then I had realized for myself anyway. A man with blue fire, the Water element, but our union would lead to greatness if the bond was made."
    Blue? It is just a coincidence I have blue, and I am attracted to men?
    Ceithin continued, and this time, his chin rose and his hands smoothed gentle Fire in his palms. "There was more, you know. Images I see that I know must be from the beginning of me, a Fire so bright that when sapphire blue mixes with mine it makes a shade of violet I had never seen in nature. Then there was the white…"
    He held out one hand, Fire skimming the surface. Unbidden, Darach held out his own hand, a small trace of sapphire coloring his skin. When Ceithin closed his hand around Darach's, it was as if Darach's whole being reacted, violently and from the core of him. Violet sparks snapped again, and tiny dancing flecks spiraled up like the floating embers from a dying fire.
    "Darach…" Ceithin rolled the name on his tongue and dropped his gaze. "Tell me why you came to find me."
    "You already know. I read in Kian's journal—"
    "I mean, why chance Guardian, the Council, the prison, why try and find a Cariad?"
    Darach paused before he could