Chapter Fifteen
Morning News: “Welcome to One Shot, your number-one source for the latest in pro rawball news. I’m your host, Diamanda Blacktalon. While Vaknox of the Lizard People of Tesh continues his divine quest, I’m here today with yet another cohost. This one is—oh. Please don’t make me do this.”
*oooOOOOooo*
“Joining me is … the Red Stalker, Phantom of the Mortal Plane.”
*ooOOooo*
“Right. Anyway, our favorite It couple has been busy! After that outburst at the restaurant—oh my, was that ever scandalous!—we’ve had dinners, dates to the theater—Oroxo was even spotted buying flowers at a farmer’s market.
Look at that picture, so domestic! I can’t get enough of the way Orok watches him.
Fans everywhere have been going wild for them, and I—”
*oooOOOOoooOOOOO*
“No, it’s not invasive to have these photos! And you’re a ghost, don’t you haunt places? How is that not invasive?”
*ooo*
“I’m really starting to feel like I’m not taken seriously as a journalist.”
Falling into a routine is luxurious.
I get to do this with him. I get to wake up every morning and have breakfast with him, Bel more often than not ending up on my lap so I can lick syrup off his tongue.
We go to practices and games, home and away; and when we travel, I do my best not to be overbearing, and he texts me reassurances from the cheerleader bus or, gods, their separate plane—I can’t even pretend to be okay with that arrangement.
Gulus or Ilbryen is with him for those times—their adventure party really is short on resources, if senior members are the only options for our watchdog. Or they don’t trust me yet. Which is fine, considering I still don’t know who among their group I can trust.
Regardless, when Bel’s out of my sight, I’m a wreck.
My teammates, while not entirely understanding my sudden-onset travel nerves, pull me into distractions.
They never once make me feel less than, never once act like having emotions is weak.
Our gameplay is still fluid and cohesive, claiming us so many wins that we lock in our future before we even need to play our final season game:
The Hellhounds are going to the rawball championship.
Our managers and coaches are ecstatic. Reverend Drach is ecstatic, too, at the reception my and Bel’s relationship continues to get, fans gobbling up every sighting of Oroxo/Beauty and the Beast. Any negative opinions spurred by my lawsuit are long forgotten, and more discussion is focused around us than the Urzoth church’s violence or the Urzoth-Galaxrien situation.
And my parents are still totally besotted with Bel, as my occasional calls to my mother are spent reassuring her I haven’t scared him off yet.
Don’t really appreciate that yet, but I let it go.
With things silent on the cultists’ front, it’d be easy to get complacent.
But I refuse to be passive. I’m not waiting around for the cultists to attack again and I certainly won’t let them get close to Bel. I spend every free moment I can poring over research, scouring texts and rereading passages until I can recite them from memory.
They think that sacrificing Galaxrien’s mortal descendant, or using his body somehow, will free Galaxrien. The whys and hows don’t seem to matter to them; that belief is what has taken hold, so that’s the belief I have to undo to stop them.
But I can’t make Bel not Galaxrien’s descendant. Even if I could somehow prove that he isn’t, his true form is still overwhelmingly demonic, and that alone would paint a target on him.
I want Bel completely free of this. I want him to be able to walk around as his true self, or if he wants to be in his human form, I don’t care. I want it to be his choice. That’s freedom.
I hit dead end after dead end with who might’ve leaked info about Galaxrien’s descendant to the cultists. Mostly because it’s hard to hire investigators to look into members of a highly secretive adventure party. But Ilbryen swears she’s questioning things on her end.
Gods, helplessness will kill me.
Bel meets my obsessive research by deep-cleaning the apartment, and when I come out of my reading coma one day to chastise him for doing too much, he strips off his clothes and asks how I’m going to punish him.
All this research stresses him out, I know. He doesn’t want me in more danger than I’m already in, and he blames himself for all of this. I can’t stop, though. I have to keep him safe.
As the rawball season comes to a close in tandem with the winter holiday season creeping up, both Bel and I get hit with a distraction that puts all our stress in irritating perspective:
A request from Reverend Drach to attend services for one of the biggest church celebrations of the year, Urzoth Shieldsworn’s birthday.
And not just attend it, but be guests of honor.
Gotta love the holidays.
Yeah, the Hellhounds are in the rawball championship. But who the fuck are we playing?
Makes me miss the college rawball schedule where we’d be all wrapped up before the holiday season. Fucking game stress, I swear.
I pace the bathroom, glaring at my phone where it’s propped on the side of the double vanity I’ve come to think of as mine. The game play echoes in the marble space, crowd noise and reporter commentary overlapping in a dull roar.
“Can’t believe it went into overtime,” I mutter as I button my shirt.
The Hellhounds had their holiday game yesterday, on a day celebrating a werewolf god—Roesia’s god, actually. We pulled in our final win of the season, which was unneeded; we had enough Ws already. Even so, it felt good. Crazy good.
The Hellhounds are undeniably a force to be reckoned with, and meanwhile, the Chimeras are scraping it out against the Dragons for the chance to go up against us.
“You’re buttoning your shirt wrong,” Bel offers where he’s hunched over his side of the vanity on a stepstool, leaning toward the mirror.
He needs the extra boost of being on his tiptoes as he swipes mascara over his lashes, and I’d swear he was doing it on purpose to pop his ass if he wasn’t actually so short.
Add on that he keeps his toes in a rotating color wheel of pink, Hellhound orange, and black, and it’d be a strong enough distraction; but he hasn’t gotten dressed yet or put on his illusion spray, standing there totally naked, his rose-gold skin glossed with the steam of the shower we shared.
For a beat, the game fades. We blew each other in the shower but gods, that’s not enough. Never will be. Just like I’ll never have enough of seeing him getting ready next to me. The ordinariness makes it precious.
Then I hear what he said and look down to see—yep. My shirt’s buttoned wrong.
He meets my gaze in the mirror and grins.
Eyes helplessly on him, I rebutton my white dress shirt and tuck the ends into my simple black slacks, each movement a little slower than normal. Maybe if I drag it out, we’ll magically not have to go to a celebration for a god I don’t want to worship anymore.
I don’t know why I thought I’d be able to avoid this holiday. The church is still Bel’s sponsor and I still wear their symbol on my uniform, and in all our planned PR moments, we’re two big, smiling examples of how Urzoth can be loving as well as tough.
Of course Drach and the church want to capitalize on us, and beyond that, they have no reason to think we wouldn’t want to go. That I wouldn’t be ecstatic we’re two of the select few guests of honor. That I wouldn’t be thrilled to be asked to speak at the service.
It’s tolerable. We’re representing aspects of Urzoth I agree with. It’s not like Drach is making me knock heads all the time; in fact, he doesn’t want me doing that. See? It’s fine.
Treva wrote a speech for me. It’s … somewhere. I should really read it before we get there.
The game plays on behind me, still a tied score.
Gods damn it, c’mon, Dragons.
“How big will this event be, really?” Bel asks. His question would be casual if not for the way his tail taps an anxious rhythm on the bathroom floor.
We haven’t had to go to any Urzoth services before, since Drach always wanted to keep our associations separate from what the services usually turn into: brutal fighting matches.
But this service will be more solemn, with sermons and other guests of honor speaking.
It won’t devolve into any shows of brutality for a few hours.
I press a kiss to Bel’s bare shoulder. “It’s the main Urzoth church in Philadelphia. Hundreds of people will probably be there.”
“Probably? You haven’t gone?”
“When I lived here the first time, I went home and attended services with my parents. Never needed to go to this one until now.”
At least my parents couldn’t make the trip out here for the service, since my mom is such a high-ranking member of their own church and had to stay for their services.
Bel flicks his eyes to me but refocuses on his makeup. “Hm. Hundreds of people. We won’t be that noticed. There are other guests of honor, right? Who’ll even care that we’re there?”
His tail taps, taps, taps.
I put my hand on his elbow, pulling until he stops his mascara application and faces me. “What part of this has you nervous?”
For a beat, he looks like he’ll deflect. I know what his face does when he’s trying to cover something up; the forced smile, his dimples nowhere in sight, his eyes turned down at the corners.
“Bel.”
He clamps his lips together before, finally, looking up at me.
I hold, giving him the opening, and after a breath, he takes it.
“You have to speak to the whole congregation,” he whispers. “It’ll be broadcast, too. And I know you don’t want any of this, so every time Drach says jump and you have to obey, I … I hate it.”
He straightens up and points the mascara brush at me.
“That doesn’t mean I’m not grateful for what you’re doing for me,” he says. “That doesn’t mean I want you taking on my guilt on top of everything else.”
My jaw thrusts to the side in thought. I can’t get out of the speech. Can’t step down as Urzoth’s poster boy.