Page 67 of Discordant Cultivation

The seizure lasted forty seconds—an eternity compressed into less than a minute. When Kieran's body finally went limp, Vale rolled him into the recovery position, checking his airway.

"Is he okay?" Eliza's voice came from somewhere far away, high and panicked. "Should I call 911?"

"No," Vale said. "He has epilepsy. This happens sometimes. He'll come around." He brushed hair back from Kieran's damp forehead. "Stay with me, sweetheart. I'm right here. You're going to be okay."

19

Wedding bells with hounds of hell, a blasphemed angel does what he does…

Vale

Getting Kieran upstairs required careful maneuvering—Vale supporting most of his weight while Kieran mumbled incoherent protests about being fine, just being tired, just needing a minute. The words slurred together as his nervous system attempted to reboot itself. Eliza hovered uselessly with her equipment, offering performative apologies about “not realizing the camera was still recording” until Vale dismissed her. He’d seen through the act—she knew exactly what she captured, and the gleam in her eyes suggested she knew exactly what she’d do with it.

But Kieran needed attention more than Vale’s fury needed an outlet. The concierge doctor arrived within forty minutes, asked the right questions without asking too many, adjusted prescriptions with that professional detachment that came from being paid very well to ignore context, and left fifty minutes later with instructions for rest and monitoring.

Now, four hours since consciousness slipped away from Kieran again—proper sleep this time, not seizure aftermath—Vale kept his vigil.

Vale knew because he counted every breath—twenty-three per minute in deep sleep, slowing from the thirty he’d counted when Kieran first went under. Every flutter of his eyelids. Every micro-movement that suggested consciousness might return to the boy curled beneath Egyptian cotton sheets that suddenly felt more like burial shrouds than luxury.

The doctor’s instructions were clear: complete rest, increase his Keppra dosage, with the possibility of adding Lamictal if seizures continued escalating. And Vale needed to start monitoring the clusters of myoclonic seizures to administer Versed if they lasted too long.

And monitor for focal seizures.

And clustered focal seizures.

He had no idea what Kieran’s focal seizures looked like.

What if he’s been having them already and I just don’t know what to look for? He told me he can play through them. Has he been doing that? Has he been hiding that from me?

Vale was getting ready to shake Kieran awake, to demand his Kieran tell him what to look for, when his phone buzzed against the nightstand—the seventeenth notification in the past hour that he’d ignored.

Another buzz. Then another.

Let them wait. Let them all fucking wait.

Vale’s attention remained fixed on the subtle rise and fall of Kieran’s chest, the way his dark hair fanned across the pillow. He was so beautiful, even now, with a faint line of drool making its way from the corner of his mouth to the pillow. Especially now, when he couldn’t perform or protect himself or choose what expression to wear.

What makes you different? What makes you matter when they didn’t?

The question had been circling his mind since the seizure, sharp-edged and insistent. Alex folded after six weeks, retreatinginto obsessive compliance that bored Vale into gently releasing him. Compliance without spark, submission without fire, accompanied by professions of love from someone Vale was certain felt nothing. The one before Alex—Mark? Martin?—had broken too quickly, sobbing gratitude that felt performative rather than authentic. Each one wanting to be broken, which ruined the entire fucking point.

But Kieran had kissed him back with a desperation that tasted real. He wrote songs that felt like love letters to his own destruction, poetry that shouldn’t exist outside fever dreams. Kieran looked into the camera during his last performance with eyes that held trust and shame and pain even as his mind prepared to steal his consciousness.

I’ve been breaking you without learning you, studying your responses without understanding your dreams.

The realization felt like surgical steel between his ribs. He knew Kieran’s medical history encyclopedically, but what did Kieran want to be before Vale found him? What made him laugh? What did he fear that had nothing to do with basements and leather belts?

I need to know everything. I need to collect all of you—not just your tears and your suffering. I want your joy too. Your trust. Your laughter.

Vale’s phone lit up with another notification, the preview showing a YouTube link he definitely hadn’t posted. His blood went cold as he opened the app, his fingers moving automatically despite the dread settling in his gut.

The video thumbnail showed Kieran mid-collapse, eyes rolled up, Vale’s hands visible at the frame’s edges. The title read: “TEMPLE OF FLESH BY THORN ENDS IN MEDICAL EMERGENCY - Raw Footage Shows Mysterious Caregiver’s Tender Response.”

Eliza. That ambitious little bitch hadn’t just kept the cameras rolling—she posted it for the world.

Rage flared through Vale’s chest. She ignored his direct command to stop filming and captured the vulnerable moment, then posted it without permission for her own career advancement.

He could end her. One call to the right people and Eliza Long would never work in this industry again…