Chapter Two
Mads
Eighty Years Ago – The story Caspian didn’t need to hear
Mads should have kept the goods under wraps until marriage. Then again, he’d not learned that lesson before. He’d been promised the world and left behind.
He’d been seeing Baron on and off for a year, visiting in the night to secure his place with the next Eclipse coven head. And there he was for his fortnightly romp in the hay with the squirrel-dicked asshole, and he’d gone and gotten himself a pedigree familiar.
“Want to piss him off?” Mads drew a hand down his chest. He’d spent a good half hour jerking off and getting a little sweaty, ranking up his omega scent to lure Baron in.
Something in sweat, especially aroused sweat, drove alpha mages wild.
The way Marquis’s pupils dilated told Mads all he needed to know about his interest.
“More than anything, but I do not think having intercourse with you would improve my headspace.” Marquis took a step closer.
“Might improve mine.” Mads flicked a brow and lay back, kicking off his poorly shod shoes and holey socks where the hobnails dug into all the wrong places.
“My brother did you wrong, but that’s… How about we talk?” Marquis took another tentative step toward his bed then another.
“Talking is good, too.” Mads procured a wand from within his shirt and flicked the roughly-hewn thing to extinguish his lamplight. Moonlight flooded the room, the blue-white light made his hair appear to glow and kissed his skin in ways he’d been told were utterly salacious.
“Just talking.” Marquis reached the edge of the bed and leaned over, caging Mads in with his arms. He really was a handsome alpha, square-jawed and hair as black as the devil’s own. In his eyes were the true fires of the Eclipse coven name. “Why are you after my brother? You could do better.”
“Better than the Eclipse coven head?” Mads scoffed.
“Station isn’t everything. He’s an absolute cad. He lies as much as he breathes. He steals, and I swear by the goddesses that he will burn this coven to the ground in a ring of fire.” Marquis’s breath shuddered as he spoke, pure violet light in his eyes circling his pupils so brilliantly.
“And you would be better?” Mads traced a finger down his throat and collarbone.
“Probably. Remains to be seen if I am.” He lowered himself over Mads and placed a cool kiss over his temple before embracing the omega to roll onto their sides. “And I’d be absolutely no better than him if I made love to you like that.”
Mads melted into his arms. “But I’ve been told the Eclipse have the finest wands of all mages.”
“That’s the general opinion, yes. I make a fine one, too.” Marquis drew Mads’s head to his neck, and the scent of him flooded his nostrils. Clean flesh, a hint of rosemary in lye soap, and if perfection had a scent, it was there, too.
Mads purposefully wiggled his hips to brush their groins together. Sometime in all the commotion, they’d grown hard, and he shivered. “I can say that you have a fine wand for certain.”
“You’ve not even seen my wa—” Marquis halted and lifted his head to stare Mads down. “Was that a cock joke?”
“Indeed, it was.” Mads inhaled deeply and pulled Marquis in to touch their noses. “What will you make of it?”
“I’ll file it away for later. For the moment, you’re not acknowledging your pain. And what if my brother changes his mind and wants you back?” Marquis lifted a brow and smiled, his teeth so white and square.
“He won’t. He’s got a fine familiar there.” Mads rolled his eyes.
“If he finds out that you’ve been chasing my heels, he’ll want you back.
He always wants what I have. That’s how he operates.
” Marquis tucked a strand of errant hair behind Mads’s ear.
The gesture had a sweetness to it. And Marquis didn’t look at him like a piece of ass, like he was something to fuck and keep on his side.
Mads knew he was a gorgeous male, a treat for alpha eyes, or at least for those that were of his persuasion.
“Then I’ll reject him. I don’t want someone who would toss me aside without as much as a polite note via post.” Mads sniffed.
“Or a call.” Marquis sniffed indignantly.
Mads’s mood soured. “If my family could afford a phone.”
“How old are you?” Marquis sat up and stared him down.
Fuck.
“Old enough.” He stared Marquis down until he relented. “Twenty-nine.”
Marquis rolled off him. “You’re barely of age to be courting, but I wouldn’t do so without your father’s permission. A little young, though. Where did Baron meet you?”
Mads picked at his ear with his pinky finger and huffed. “Ask who? My dad died a while back. Baron came round trying to buy the wish off me.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” The way Marquis said it, like he actually meant it, made Mads’s heart do a weird flip in his chest, missing a beat or something dumb.
Dealing in wish was a necessary evil and oftentimes was the only inheritance a mage left behind.
For their family, there was a lot of debt, and the wish settled it.
Mostly. Mads paid off the rest with his ass, but he wasn’t about to tell Marquis that.
“He wasn’t that great a man, to be honest. Kept me from being booted from the clan, the wish. ”
“Still. It has to be hard.” Marquis sat up and tucked his legs neatly underneath him.
It was well past evening, and he still wore his evening attire, not even changed into his nightclothes, which gave him a stiff and stuffy appearance.
Baron was much the same, but he had a way of looking casual even in his finest.
“Easier with him gone. He drank and gambled.” Mads scoffed.
“And your other parent?” Marquis reached out to stroke over Mads’s hair with a gentle sweep.
“Never knew him. Alpha father promised marriage and split the day he got the goods. Just me and him.”
“That’s terrible.” Marquis frowned.
“Can’t imagine any alpha who would let that happen would be worth having as a father.
Glad I figured out Baron was a cunt before we spent a heat together.
” Mads folded his hands behind his head and stared up at the white plastered ceiling with designs pressed in.
His house still had mud plaster over the boards.
Most of the walls were insulated with newspapers, too.
Hell, he still had an outhouse. He bet that their house had a water closet, not that Baron ever let him use it.
“True. Well, since you’re here for the night, would you like something to eat and to sit up reading for a bit?” Marquis smiled.
“Can’t read.” Mads blew a lock of hair from his forehead.
“Do you have a trade?” Marquis continued doing that stroking thing with his hand, sending goose bumps over Mads’s skin. For Baron’s brother, he had very little in common.
“In the summer I follow a Romani carnival a bit and do penny witchery.” Mads glanced away, not wanting to see the look of judgment on Marquis’s face.
“It’s summer now. Why aren’t you with them?”
“Good question. I stayed for Baron. I thought we were going to end up together.” Mads shrugged.
“Such a prick.” Marquis sighed heavily.
Mads couldn’t disagree. “But back to what you said earlier. I’ll totally take free food.”
“That, I most certainly can do.” Marquis rose from his seated position and left the room.
Mads contemplated bolting the moment Marquis closed the bedroom door.
Never coming back. Finding the next circus, carnival, or freak show to slip into.
His mind was one step out the door when Marquis turned in the doorway, his violet eyes bright and alluring.
Nothing like Baron’s dark blue. Mads stared. “What?”
“I’ve not bathed in a few days.” He frowned.
“Just spell yourself clean. That’s what I do.” It wasn’t the most hygienic of things, but he could scrape the dirt and oil off himself and his clothes well enough to subdue any stink.
“I can tell. Would you like to bathe with me after we eat?” Marquis cleared his throat and cast his gaze away. “And I’ll read to you after. Stay the night.”
“Aren’t you afraid of getting caught with a pennywitch in your bed?” Mads hated that term, but it’s all the lowborn mages had. With no connections or good lines to a higher coven, they were relegated to trickery and petty magic. The foul name for his station should have cemented it for Marquis.
“What are they going to do? Force me to marry you? Wouldn’t be such a horrid fate.” Marquis turned and closed the door, his footsteps growing quiet.
It was a Robert Frost moment. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could…
Down one path lay more pennywitchery. More Romani, more freak shows.
Human rights would be a thing, sooner rather than later.
Everyone else but the United States was evolving, so time was coming fast. On another path lay a future with the mage who had offered him food, a bath, good company, and hadn’t tried to ravage him.
But that path, too, forked. On one side lay eventual abandonment, and the other, a future where he might never have to sell his ass to pay his coven dues again.
Then again, marriage was also a type of selling one’s ass.
Five steps to the window to freedom, or lay there and hope the other brother didn’t dispose of him as easily as the first.
So, it was a surprise even to himself that he didn’t bother getting up.
They ate. They bathed. They read together.
And come morning, they were caught in an innocent embrace, fast asleep atop the covers with Tolstoy as their bedmate.
Tolstoy…
He remembered that much.
There was a wedding soon after. A baby… One with Marquis’s dark hair with Mads’s silvery shine. Justin?
No, they never decided. But Marquis was dead set on one name in particular.
Rexford.
Little Rex…