5. Chapter 5 #2
A myriad of recent instances flashed through Ashmedai’s mind, and he could have kicked himself for not realizing sooner.
Dreya was constantly mentioning Luccite lately, or asking after her, and whenever Luccite draped herself like the cat she’d become, Dreya never minded being what Luccite leaned upon.
Dreya fancied Luccite, and Luccite might just fancy her back, given the way her ears twitched and how she looked up at Dreya from her shorter stature with rapt attention.
Maybe Ashmedai hadn’t noticed before because of his increased seclusion until recently, or maybe his eyes were simply more open because he knew what it felt like to want someone for the first time in centuries.
Taking in Levi’s sweetly stitched face, his wavy scarlet hair, his eyes that glowed with a violet light all their own, the truth was, Ashmedai was glad he wasn’t Cullen.
Levi
Levi tried to follow what Dreya was going on about, but her words seemed more hurried than usual.
Something about new preserving methods for the meat from the hunt, and did Luccite have any ideas, or could Levi ask Braxton if he had any?
Levi didn’t think new methods were necessary, but Dreya had seemed eager to find something to discuss when she spotted them.
No—when she spotted Luccite , because she wasn’t really talking to Levi; he had just happened to be with Luccite when Dreya appeared.
Levi had hoped Ashmedai would still be with Luccite when he finished with Daedlys and Klarent, but the king had already left.
Luccite had decided to accompany Levi then to find out all she had missed from delivery day.
What amazed Levi now was realizing that Dreya wasn’t the only one acting strangely—Luccite was too.
Levi had only just met the healer, but he thought Luccite’s reaction earlier when Ashmedai passed on Dreya’s regards had been strange, almost like she would have blushed if she weren’t covered in fur.
She also seemed to be hanging on Dreya’s every word with that same anxious but admiring expression.
“Any other suggestions you might—”
“Your help, please!” someone interrupted Dreya’s rambling. It looked as though two half-built stalls were encroaching on the same corner, and their owners didn’t look happy about it.
Dreya’s ears flattened to her head. “Sorry, Lucc. If you’ll excuse me.” She almost forgot to acknowledge Levi, looking much more forlornly at Luccite as she left.
Luccite stared just as longingly after her.
“You and Dreya have known each other for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Hm?” Luccite turned to Levi, and a ripple seemed to run from her shoulders down her spine with a shifting of muscle and fur beneath her robes. “Your point?”
“Well… you’re not courting. Why? You’re clearly interested in each other.”
“Pfft.”
The way Luccite looked away with an accompanying squirm made it so obvious that Levi had guessed right, he had a sudden feeling of dread drop deep in his stomach, wondering if he was that obvious around Ashmedai.
“I was here in the beginning, you know, a dwarf once,” Luccite said. “I’m an old woman compared to anyone born of this place, and Dreya is barely thirty.”
“No offense, Madame Healer,” Levi said with a brewing smile, “but I hardly think age matters when everyone here is unaging once they reach adulthood. I myself am less than a month old. Do you think me less of a man?”
Whether a defensive comment or a telling one, whatever Luccite was about to say stalled on her tongue—and she smirked as she spotted something behind Levi. “Others certainly don’t.”
Levi turned to see where she was looking and found Ashmedai. For a strange, wonderful moment, Levi wondered what the king would look like in sunlight. Moonlight still framed him beautifully, making him almost shimmer like the glittering trees.
“Roped into anything new?” Ashmedai asked when he reached them.
“Hm?” Levi looked around, remembering that he had been talking with Dreya—and Luccite, who seemed to have disappeared.
He spotted her heading back down the market steps, though she wasn’t at all subtle in the way she glanced toward Dreya before departing.
“I don’t think so. Dreya was mentioning something, but it seemed more a ruse to talk to Luccite than to employ either of us. ”
“You noticed too?” Ashmedai’s smile seemed more somber than usual as he looked at Luccite descending the steps, and then at Dreya across the festival grounds. “I hadn’t realized, but it seems so obvious now that there’s an attraction there.”
Being in Ashmedai’s presence again, Levi couldn’t take his eyes off him, not even when white-on-black captured his own inferior violet.
Perhaps it was the curve of Ashmedai’s white cheek, the silkiness of his black hair, his long neck, or the fangs in his smile.
It was all those things, Levi supposed—pieces making up a radiant whole.
“I asked Luccite why she’s never pursued anything with Dreya,” Levi said.
“And?”
“She said she’s too old.”
Ashmedai released a quiet huff. “I’d say that’s fear talking more than belief in those words. Plenty of couples here have already proven that age means nothing if two grown people are of the same mind.”
“Exactly. What a blessing that I do not think, act, or look my age.” Levi smiled .
A similar flash of a wider smile stretched Ashmedai’s face, but he seemed distracted, his mirth only fleetingly genuine before it strained. “It is rare for new love to blossom. Perhaps my advisors need a helping hand. Maybe at the festival.”
“A subtle steering in the right direction, you mean?”
“My shadows can steer as well as any guiding hand. They’d never even know,” he finished in a whisper.
The clandestine proposal seemed equally devious and delightful to Levi, just like Ashmedai’s smile—before it faded again.
“I’d say that is a worthy cause to assist you in, my king, but is everything all right?
You seem… sad. Is it something Luccite said?
” Levi had almost forgotten what they had been up to earlier. “Is it about me?”
Ashmedai looked ageless, without the hint of a smile. He always looked ageless, but like this he seemed frozen in time.
After a swift look around at the mild bustle of workers, Ashmedai suddenly seized Levi by the shoulders and dragged him behind one of the finished stalls, pressing him up against the wall and causing Levi’s pulse to quicken.
Levi had rarely if ever seen Ashmedai use force before.
He was always one to be gentle, even when agitated.
To feel such force used on him didn’t frighten Levi, even seeing that he and Ashmedai were completely hidden from prying eyes.
The close quarters, the firm grip on his arms, the flash of Ashmedai’s white-on-black eyes catching the light from the moon above, only made Levi feel more blissfully captivated.
“You, Levi, are very special,” Ashmedai began quietly, like a furtive echo on the wind. “Never doubt that. I spoke with Braxton and….”
“Yes?”
Ashmedai looked frozen again, lost. His grip loosened, but he didn’t release Levi.
He looked down, gathering his thoughts or maybe his nerve before he met Levi’s gaze again.
“If you could dream up a different life, would you? What would you want your life to be if you could have anything your heart desired?”
For the longest time, the thought that Levi could choose hadn’t even entered his mind. He was Braxton’s and would always be Braxton’s, content to stay sequestered in the tower or hide within his cloak when he was asked to venture outside.
Now, given the choice, all he wanted he had before him, because he had either already acquired it or believed it was just within reach.
So, he reached.
Levi shrugged Ashmedai’s hands from his shoulders to grasp the king’s face and kissed him.
He didn’t think this was what Ashmedai meant by his question, but it was all Levi wanted.
A queer sense of having wanted this before, something similar to this, stirred within him like…
like one of his daydreams, a feeling that he had wanted this and not been allowed to take it, not without staying hidden like he had always been hidden.
So he had resisted his desires and been so lonely because of it.
It didn’t make sense, but Levi could have sworn that even before he’d been created, he had known want, to be something other than what he was, to have someone he thought he could never have, someone like Ash… and in that moment, claiming Ash was all he could have asked for.
Levi boldly slid his tongue past Ashmedai’s teeth, feeling the barest scratch of their sharp points, and shivered all down his body. He wondered if Ashmedai could feel the prick of stitches at the corners of his mouth, but if he could, he didn’t seem to mind.
Ashmedai kissed back with a force as great as what he had used to pin Levi behind the stall.
He kept Levi pinned, pressing into him as a turn of his head guided the path of their tongues and pushed their connection deeper.
It was all so warm, heated, almost feverish, and every slow coil of Ashmedai’s tongue made Levi want more.
His hands shook as he lowered them from Ashmedai’s face to slide around his neck and pull him closer.
He felt Ashmedai cling just as tightly, wrapping strong arms around Levi’s waist and pressing their bodies flush.
That was how Levi felt— flush —with no desire to lose the building heat in his stomach that made him press into Ashmedai harder and whine between their lips.
Ashmedai smiled like a contented shark when they pulled apart.
“C-can that… be my answer?”
As wide as Ashmedai’s smile had been, the way it sank made him look like he might weep, and Levi wasn’t sure why, because Ashmedai said, “Yes. Yes, it can. Keep taking your draught, Levi, and your daydreams should fade. Nothing else matters.” He cupped Levi’s cheek almost reverently. “Not as long as you are you.”