Chapter 22
It’s Been Fun
Felix announces he’s going to the coven on Sunday evening with the particular energy of someone who has made a decision and is not inviting discussion.
“They’ve been asking,” he says, folding the borrowed clothes I lent him into his bag with the neat precision he brings to everything. “Since the fire. Morgana has a spare room, and her house has better wards than anywhere in Bristol right now, which seems relevant given recent events.”
“That’s a good idea,” I say.
“I know it is.” He glances up at me. “You’ll be fine.”
“I know.”
“You have the shadow prince.”
“I’m aware.”
He zips the bag. He looks at me for a moment with those sharp dark eyes that don’t miss anything, and I know he is reading something in my face because Felix always reads something in my face.
He picks up his bag and his coat and his collection of rings, which survived the fire because he sleeps in them, which is extremely Felix.
At the door, he pauses.
“Adam,” he says.
“Felix.”
“Whatever happens.” He stops. Starts again, which is unusual for Felix, who generally says exactly what he means on the first attempt. “You’re going to be okay. Both of you.”
I don’t ask him what he means by both. I don’t ask him if he’s done witchy stuff with tarot cards or runes and knows something I don’t. Felix says things when he’s ready to say them and not before.
“Felix…” rumbles Hex, but he’s stopped by Felix holding up a hand.
“No, I’m not leaving my phone so you can play with it. I never should have introduced you to the internet.”
Hex’s expression shifts into something that could possibly be described as a pout.
“Play with Adam’s”
Hex sucks in an indignant breath. “It’s an Android!”
I close my eyes. Count to ten. It doesn’t matter that my insufferable prince just said the word Android like it was a terrible insult.
I open my eyes, ignore Hex, and smile at Felix.
“Go,” I say. “Morgana will be waiting.”
He gives me the brief, businesslike shoulder pat that is his version of a hug, nods once at Hex, and leaves.
The flat settles around us. Just me and Hex and the November dark outside and the mugs in their descending row and the spice rack that has been reorganised twice since Thursday.
Hex is looking at me.
I sit down on the sofa. I pull my knees up. I look at the coffee table, at the candle burning there, at the space where the ring used to sometimes sit before I started keeping it in my pocket.
“When?” I ask.
I don’t explain what I mean. I don’t have to.
Hex is quiet for a long moment. He leans forward in the armchair, elbows on his knees, and looks at the floor. “Soon,” he says. “A week. Maybe less.”
A week.
I knew this was coming. I have known it since the beginning, since he appeared in my bedroom and told me about exiles and curses and a throne he was going to reclaim.
I have known through every morning and every rearranged bookshelf and every cup of tea and every night with him warm and present beside me. I have known.
But it seems knowing a thing and having it become real are not the same thing.
“Night and Dark will help,” Hex says. “They’ve been preparing. The timing is… as good as it’s going to get.”
“Right.”
“Dis will be expecting it. He won’t be unprepared. But neither will I.” A pause. “I’m stronger than he knows. Stronger than I was.”
“Because of the bond,” I say.
“Because of you,” he says.
I look at the candle. The flame is very steady. No drafts in the flat tonight, no supernatural temperature drops, just an ordinary candle doing its ordinary candle thing.
“And after,” I say carefully. “When you’ve won. You’ll be on the throne.”
“Yes.”
“In the Shadow Realm.”
“Yes.”
“With Fiend by your side.”
Hex shifts in his chair. “As a political thing.”
I nod. I am being very reasonable about this. I am handling it extremely well. I am a mature adult who understood the terms of this arrangement from the beginning and is not going to make it harder than it needs to be.
“That’s good,” I say. “That’s what was supposed to happen. That’s the whole point.”
“Adam…”
“No, I mean it. You get your throne back. Night and Dark get their liege back. Fiend gets his betrothed back and doesn’t have to marry Dis. The regime falls. That’s the right ending.” I am very calm. I am impressively calm. “That’s what was always going to happen.”
Kingdoms and princes and rebellions and wars have nothing to do with me. I’m boring and dull and ordinary. Being involved this much is truly remarkable. It’s astonishing that I can even talk about all this stuff so calmly. So of course it’s going to end, and my life is going to resume normalcy.
Hex doesn’t say anything. He is watching me with those red eyes and I cannot read his expression and I don’t want to because if I look at it too closely I am going to stop being impressively calm and I would very much like to stay impressively calm for a while longer.
I think about the mugs on the shelf.
World’s Okayest Person, pushed to the back.
Handles all facing the same direction. Descending by size in a neat row that drives me absolutely mad and that I have not changed because if I change it, then one morning he will reach for his usual mug and it won’t be where he put it, which is ridiculous, and is now pointless because one morning soon he isn’t going to be here to know that the mugs aren’t the way he likes them, and that thought is completely unacceptable and I am not going to follow it any further.
I think about the mugs and something in my chest does something quiet and terrible.
“I haven’t moved them,” I say. My voice comes out wrong. Just slightly. “The mugs. I haven’t put them back how I had them.”
The silence is enormous.
“I know,” says Hex, very quietly.
“I was going to.” I am thinking about mugs and I am not going to cry about mugs, that would be absurd, that would be completely absurd, they are just mugs, they are just in the wrong order, it is a perfectly correctable situation. “I just kept not getting around to it.”
I sense him move. The soft swishing sensation of him crossing the room, and then he is sitting beside me on the sofa, close enough that I can feel the familiar winter warmth of him that shouldn’t exist but does.
“Adam.” His voice is very gentle.
“I’m fine,” I say. To the mugs. “I’m completely fine.”
“I know you are.” His hand finds mine. “You don’t have to be.”
And that, more than anything, is the final straw. Not the news. Not a week. Not the throne or the Shadow Realm, or any of it. Just that. You don’t have to be.
I turn and he is right there, and his hand is warm in mine and his eyes are very steady, and I stop being impressively calm.
It is not dramatic. I am not a dramatic person.
It is just that my eyes fill up and overflow and I make a small sound that I am going to be privately embarrassed about later, and Hex pulls me into him and wraps his arms around me and I press my face into his shoulder and let the whole carefully maintained composure go all at once.
He holds on. He doesn’t say it’s alright, because it isn’t, and we both know it. He doesn’t say don’t cry, or tell me reasons why this is manageable. He just holds on, one hand on my back and one in my hair, completely solid, entirely present, as real as anything I have ever felt.
“I know,” he says again, very quietly, into my hair. Just that. I know.
After a while the storm passes, the way these things do. I breathe. He breathes. The candle burns steadily on the coffee table.
I pull back enough to look at him. He looks at me. His thumb moves to my face and brushes away what’s left there, very carefully, and then he kisses where it was. Then the other side. Then my forehead.
Then he pulls back just enough to look at me again, and his expression is the unguarded one, the one underneath all the others, the one that doesn’t have a name.
“Stay,” I say. It comes out smaller than I mean it to. “I know you have to go. I know. But until you do...”
“I’m here,” he says. “I’m not gone yet.”
“Good,” I sniffle as I look away. “Because… you know. We should probably feed you up. Make sure you are as full of power as possible. For the cause.”
“That is very generous of you, My Love,” he says softly, and I hear the smile in his voice.
I don’t care that he is smiling at me. I turn back to face him, and I move forward, plastering my lips on his.
He doesn’t recoil. He doesn’t even flinch. What he does, is make a soft noise. One that sinks down into my belly and settles there, warm and glowing.
His arms circle my back, pressing me close. Holding me tightly while he kisses me back.
His kiss is tender and passionate. Fire and ice. Need, longing, and desire.
I fall into it. Surrender completely. I let all my fears, worries and anxieties float away. The only thing that exists is this moment, where I am in Hex’s arms and he is kissing me, and this moment is perfect.
Suddenly, the world tilts and shifts. It takes me a second to realise that Hex has stood up and is carrying me to the bedroom.
Okay, this is hot. Like super hot. I’ve always wanted to be swooped up into a hot man’s arms. It’s a fantasy I’ve had for a while. No idea where it came from.
Okay, I’ll admit it. I know exactly where it came from. When I was a teenager, I read an obscene amount of bodice rippers, so sue me.
Hex’s kiss deepens as we drift down the hall, and I realise with faint alarm, that we are drifting. There is no jolt of footsteps. I’m not being carried to bed, I’m being floated. It might possibly be even hotter.
The mattress brushes gently against my back. My head spins with disorientation, but then Hex is everywhere, and I forget all about being dizzy.
He’s still kissing me, and now he is touching me everywhere. His soft, mist-like touch is brushing over my arms, my legs, my stomach, my neck, my thighs.
A filthy, wanton, moan pours out of me. Hex drinks it down eagerly.
Shadows twist and twine. Tines coil around my peaked nipples. They flick and squeeze.
Tentacles of dark smoke tighten around my neck. A secure, possessive hold. A touch that speaks to my primal instincts and tells me I’m safe, and the only thing I have to do is surrender. Someone strong and powerful has me, and they are going to take such good care of me.
I moan again. My mind feels fizzy. There is too much pleasure and satisfaction to process. Hex is touching me in a thousand places and each and every spot feels euphoric.
Hex stops kissing me. His head drifts down my body. Dimly, I’m aware that I’m naked. My clothes seem to have disappeared. I hope Hex didn’t magically disintegrate my comfiest jeans.
He gently nudges my thighs apart. I spread my legs shamelessly wide and forget all about comfy jeans.
Soft, hot heat laps over my hole, and I wail. Fucking hell that feels good.
He licks again and again. Wet, gentle and determined. Confident and hungry.
I throw my arm over my face in an effort to muffle my debauched cries.
His tongue glides and glides. I wail and wail.
He eases into me. A gentle nudge that my body surrenders to. I groan deeply as he fills me.
So soft. So silken, yet so heavy and present.
He slides deeper and deeper. Deeper still.
My cock throbs. My heart races. My lungs heave erratically.
Hex thickens and swells. Is it his tongue or his cock? I have no idea. I’m not sure it matters. He is a shadow being. It is Hex inside of me. The rest is semantics.
He continues to grow. Stretching me wide. Filling me deep.
Nothing has ever felt so good.
I bite my arm.
Tendrils of shadow gently pull my arm away. I can almost hear Hex saying, I wish to hear you, My Love.
I suck in a breath and then I scream my delight as Hex fucks me. He hits my prostate just right, in a way I’ve only ever managed with toys.
Sparks ignite. Stars explode in my mind. Muscles contort and spasm. I orgasm so hard it is a religious experience. Near-death, out of body, the full works.
Joy, euphoria, ecstasy. Burning bright. Consuming me.
Eventually, the fire dims. Slowly I drift back into my body. Reality begins to reform.
Hex is lying beside me on the bed. His arms are around me. I’m panting and sweaty. Very disorientated.
A stray thought bubbles up. A line from Lord of the Rings. ‘Darkness took me and I strayed out of thought and time.’
I wheeze out a weak laugh. Gandalf, you have no idea. Getting killed by a Balrog is nothing compared to getting railed by a shadow being.
“My love?”
Hex’s concern makes me laugh even harder.
“I’m fine, you just fucked my brains out and all that’s left is nonsense. Well, more nonsense than usual.”
Before he can say anything, I roll over and snuggle into his chest. I sigh happily.
His arms tighten around me, and his shoulders relax.
“You are incredible, My Love.” He kisses the top of my head.
I snort softly against his chest, and let sleep claim me.