Chapter Ten
Nemiah
Nemiah draped an arm over his face and rolled over on his bed. He thanked the goddess herself that their encounter was in the bath, where his strong omega scent wouldn’t plague him. His very heart ached to be with him, to share a bed, to hold one another at the height of passion. Things that he would understand that Virion wouldn’t. The headache that took him by storm came far worse than the one before, an ice pick of pain behind his eyes, chipping away at his resolve.
“Nemiah.” Jade’s, who Virion named Ivy, voice cooed from his doorway as she floated through the air much like a curling ash caught in an updraft. “Your mate is upset.”
“Unfortunately, I am too.” Nemiah pulled a pillow over his head and groaned through the headache.
“Did he do something?” She floated to his nightstand and placed a hot cup of something with a bitter scent.
“No. He’s doing his best. I just can’t… I want to… I’m not my father and I will not take advantage of him.” Nemiah didn’t bother hiding his pain or emotions from the nymph. He’d had the poor girl since he was a toddler. “I want our binding to be true. I had relegated myself to…never loving him, but our binding was fated. I need him and he doesn’t know anything but to try and please me out of duty.”
“Fated? That’s a tough one, little boy.” Ivy floated over the bed and lay upon the covers, snuggling up against him like she did when he was little. “Are you certain?”
“I am. He’s more than what I bargained for, and had he not been my fated, it would have been easy to have bedded him and left him on his own…” Nemiah winced as the pain shot through his mind and heart. Cool fingers raked over his temples, soothing his pains. “And he’s smart, wickedly so.”
“Clever, observant, and ever so kind.” She cradled Nemiah as if he were a child, bringing back memories of a terrified little boy hiding his tears from a father that had no patience, love, or care for a child. Nemiah was his little protégé, but lacking in thirst. Despite how much King Behran hated his only child, the goddess smiled upon him, so Nemiah could only bear so much suffering from him before she showed signs of her loss of favor. “The goddess smiled on your union, did she not?”
Nemiah nodded. “I feel like she’d be disappointed in me, that I put him through the consummation. I fear that I’ve not pleased her in some way. She’s given me a gift, and I rubbed my cock over it and lusted over him shamelessly.”
“Be patient. He’ll test his limits soon enough, you know? Perhaps some sort of gesture would help?” Ivy kissed the back of his head and patted his shoulder. “I brought some willow tea to you. Perhaps you should go speak to the goddess and stay in your lab for a while until you can calm down.”
Nemiah groaned and swatted his hand about for the cup and sat up, wincing away the pain. “I can’t sulk here all day, then, I suppose.”
“Good.” Ivy hummed and slipped from his bed, idly floating out toward the door, likely in search of Nemiah’s mate. If it was hurting Nemiah to abstain, then there was a chance that he hurt, too.
Goddess have mercy on me.
Nemiah rose from bed and slid on a pair of soft shoes, shuffling down the hall, his willow tea in hand as he sipped and headed not toward his laboratory but to one of the towers, climbing the long spiral to stare at the moon from an observatory window.
He knelt in supplication before the window and stared up at the waning face of the moon above, a sign that she was turned away from the land. She’d still hear him though.
“Mother Goddess, moon above, I seek your answer.” Nemiah bore his horns and wings free of himself, releasing the glamour that hid his features. The goddess blessed alphas and omegas alone with those features as a way to find one another in ways that the betas could not stop them. In flight.
Nemiah lit a black candle in the windowsill and stared at the flame as it petered out into a light-blue flicker. “Please.” It wasn’t a common supplication, but the goddess favored him dearly. His father had done so much damage and it was by her word that he had slain Behran.
Good evening, my son. The candle flickered as her ethereal voice floated by his senses.
“I felt your approval of my mate. I wanted to wait to choose him rightfully, but I had to take him for the good of our country. King Alluin demanded it as part of our bargain. Thank you.”
I do favor the child. His magic suits you.
“It does. I want for him so much, but waiting is hard, especially when he continues to throw himself at me.” Nemiah sagged as he turned his gaze to the flame. It was hard to look into the moon for too long, especially when he held such disappointment in himself.
You could never disappoint me. You were created from vileness and violation and I blessed you to be loved, to fill a hole in a heart. I cannot change that which people choose to do, but I can give people the choice to be happy. You are choosing your own path to happiness with him.
“I do not wish to be my father.”
If that is the case, open your heart. Do you think the boy has known an abundance of love or care? He is accustomed to cold indifference, as it is familiar to him. I think your nymph has given you a good idea. See to it, my son. Goodnight.
The flame went out in a flicker, and Nemiah sagged in mixed relief and determination. “Thank you, Mother Goddess.”
Nemiah rose to his feet and stared up at the moon, taking in the paleness of her.
Motion caught the edge of his vision as he glanced away, a flit of white amidst the dark of the courtyard. Virion stood in contrast. A soldier, stiff at his side, paced a few feet behind him, guarding the male as he wandered the grounds in the waning light. He was a beautiful wisp walking through the eve, and as his voice carried, a soft mutter that brought no meaning with it, he remembered the Telecon idea and wanted nothing more than to bring it to fruition and show his mate that he valued his mind. And he’d rub it in King Alluin’s face and prove to the man that his beautiful son was ever as strong and smart as he’d never given him credit for.
As the fleeting moment watching his husband passed, Nemiah turned and made his way back to his lab. Work needed to be done.
***
In truth, the transition from text to voice should have been an easy one. He had forty-eight tones he could transmit and discern, but forty-eight tones weren’t enough to transmit voice. He buried himself in his work, missing sleep and meals.
Piles of paper littered his workbench, and he laid his head down, eyes closed for just a moment in the piles of parchment. A moment that must have been much longer, for when he woke, his papers had been organized into three piles. It took him a few moments to realize what the piles were as he stared between them. One pile was his correct work. Another pile was incomplete and, thus, incorrect work. The third was a straightened-out pile of pages he’d crumpled up. A few extra pages had been laid upon his correct pile, the handwriting neat and crisp, lilted in the curt slant they taught in Liaberos.
An illustration and notes he’d never made laid a new design out for him. By attaching two polar opposite magnets to a transducer, the fine vibrations of sound would create finer motions and on the receiver end, the same two magnets could vibrate a pin against a tympanum, much like sound would travel through a cadence chamber eliminating the need for tones all together!
Nemiah’s lips spread in a wide grin and a strange flopping dominated his stomach. He wanted to find Virion and kiss him. The beautiful finish to his design was perfect, and he wanted Virion to know how much he loved that brilliant mind. Love. The beautiful male had his heart in flutters.
Amid all the notes was another, a curt note from his mother in her stilted lettering informing him that there was a formal event in two days and to show up in a clean shirt. A fiefdom that bordered a day and night fae kingdom had been taken over by his father’s army and was under the tumultuous transition of leadership. They were mostly dusk fae, but they had resources to offer, mostly in the realm of silver mines. Wooing them would be an imperative…
People split from moon and sun. Watched by both goddesses… Family split from kingdom to kingdom with perilous borders… People that would want to speak to their loved ones.
He sat bolt upright and his stomach growled. Eyes wandering, he caught the sight of a cup of tea with a saucer beside it, topped with a cold sandwich. He’d never asked for or been served one before without first asking. The food was seen as something undignified, and certainly he’d never had one like it before. It must have been at Virion’s behest. As attendants never entered his lab, it was the logical conclusion.
He took a bite and savored it, fulfilling the need for something to get him through the next few hours of interpreting Virion’s notes.
Well into the night, he caught himself pacing the office. He’d envisioned a coding system, a translation system, something far more complex. But like two strings in a tin cup, the vibrations were the code and the translation. Brains could do the rest. Thalmic interference in a mockery of sound waves…
He fished around his lab to find polished magnets and oriented them in a glass tube, rattling a ball bearing against a small leather drum. From opposite sides of his lab, he transmitted, listened, and repeated until the first rays of dawn when he had his first success. He had to swap the ball for a nail and eventually the nail to a needle, but the vibrations carried and, while the quality of the voice wasn’t as nice as a cadence chamber, it worked. The Telecon had officially been created.
“My brilliant husband.” Nemiah sighed with a half grin before shuffling from his lab to his living quarters to sleep until someone told him he had to wake. Maybe twenty or so hours.