Chapter Thirty-Six Elician #2
‘I didn’t want to lie with anyone I didn’t love. And I swore I would never love anyone. I couldn’t bear to see one more person in my life die. And then…then I had you, and I would trade all the experience in the world in a heartbeat if it means that I will always have you.’
‘Well it seems that’s exactly what you’ve ended up with, husband. So…’ Alest shimmies back, standing before Elician even as his cheeks burn an ever more glorious shade of red. He holds out his hand and says, ‘Have me.’
‘Are you sure?’ Elician asks, taking his lethal healing hand in his. He stands.
‘I’m sure.’ Alest leads him to the bed. He bites his bottom lip. He glances shyly at Elician’s face, and Elician pulls him close once more. He kisses him.
Tension fades from Alest’s body. Water flowing perfectly down a stream.
He likes this. Elician knows he likes this.
He massages his hands along Alest’s body, before slowly reaching for his belt around his waist. And Alest mirrors the action.
A willing student, a fast learner. They kiss still even as their belts clack to the floor.
Their tunics are pulled free over their shoulders, and they laugh against each other’s mouths.
They only part long enough to free themselves, then they return.
Lips, perfect lips.
Warm and sweet and so very good.
Elician’s hands touch and caress and cradle.
Alest’s skin is hot and smooth beneath his fingers.
His body solid and firm. They had met when Alest’s ribs were his most prominent feature, his nakedness a revelation of starvation and masqueraded frailty.
Now, fat and muscle line Alest’s body languidly, smoothing out jagged edges and hiding his delicate ribs from view.
Elician trails his hands over them anyway, relishing how smooth his skin is and how healthy he has become.
He guides Alest back to the bed. Then he kneels and sets to work at Alest’s waistband as Alest stares up at him with a look of pure, wondrous awe. ‘You’re beautiful,’ Alest murmurs in Lunae.
‘You as well, my husband,’ Elician replies.
‘My husband,’ Alest echoes, grinning with such evident delight.
He cants his hips as Elician manoeuvres his trousers from his body.
He offers up each foot with decadent acceptance as Elician slips wool socks from tender flesh.
A kiss is placed at the ankle of Alest’s right foot, and from there: Elician lets himself delight in all.
A kiss to Alest’s calf. His knee. His hip.
Elician’s nose hovers over Alest’s groin, and he peers up.
Waiting. Anticipating. ‘Have me,’ Alest whispers, voice hoarse.
And Elician presses his lips to Alest’s cock.
It is smooth. Softer than Elician ever imagined.
He knows the feel of his own cock in his hand, knows the texture and weight of it.
But the feel of such a thing beneath his lips is altogether different.
Alest’s skin is warm, it smells like temptation and reward.
He kisses it again. Again. He dares to let his tongue taste it and Alest gasps.
He makes that noise again, that breathy recitation of a voice forced into existence by desire alone.
Elician crawls up the bed. He lies sideways at Alest’s side and wraps his hand around the very clear evidence that Alest wants him and him alone.
Alest’s back arches. His head presses deep in the mattress as his neck bends and his throat is bared and begging for lips.
Lips. Lips. Elician presses them to every part of Alest’s body he can find.
He strokes Alest three times more. Then suddenly Alest is scrambling, yelping.
Hands coming up. But Elician doesn’t think to stop, not even for a moment.
Alest comes with one leg kicking out in surprise and one hand snapping down to clench tight against Elician’s arm.
For all the many hundreds of years that Elician knows they will live at each other’s side, he will never forget the look of sheer bliss on Alest’s face as his body falls apart all too soon from Elician’s touch alone.
Elician strokes him through it. Hard at first, then gently as Alest’s cheek twitches and he flinches ever so subtly away.
He looks down at his palm, damp with spend, and he brings the mess curiously to his lips.
‘That’s gross,’ Alest croaks, but Elician tastes it anyway.
Salty and not anything Elician would ever consider a delicacy, but still Alest. He laps at it all.
At every part of his hand. At every place the fluid streaked its way up Alest’s chest. He licks at it, swallowing it down as Alest gasps and arches into his touch.
He goes to kiss Alest once more, to press their lips together as if it were divine providence.
And Alest, cruelly, pulls away. ‘That’s gross,’ he repeats stubbornly.
‘It’s not,’ Elician counters. But then it’s his turn to be shoved onto his back.
His turn to feel Alest’s tug at his trousers.
His skin is hypersensitive. Raw. He shivers as his body is bared before his husband.
He grins as best he can as Alest braces one hand on the bed to hold himself steady and uses the other to reach towards Elician.
His fingers tremble; he bites his lower lip.
Elician wraps his own fingers around the wrist stabilizing Alest’s position. ‘It’s all right. You won’t hurt me.’
‘Never let me,’ Alest murmurs. And he rests his palm against Elician’s cock. He frowns, tilting his head with the same expression he has when he reads a particularly complicated book, and simply: explores.
It is not titillating. Elician feels himself growing softer the longer Alest takes, but the touch itself is pleasant.
Sweet. He traces his fingers up and down Alest’s wrist, closing his eyes and enjoying the sensation of simply being touched.
Touched everywhere. His legs. His cock. His balls.
His nipples. ‘Fascinating,’ Alest murmurs, and Elician flinches as he hears an echo of a woman not yet dead.
As his back twinges in sudden sympathy for a different bed in a different place.
‘No,’ he gasps out, squeezing Alest’s wrist tight.
‘Tell me what was wrong?’ Alest asks.
‘Not that word. Not like this.’ He cannot bear to open his eyes. Cannot bear to see the expression on his husband’s face. Things were going so well. So perfectly well and he ruined it. Ruined it like he ruins so many things. Anger sears through him. He pushes himself up, preparing to flee.
Alest cups his cheek. He forces Elician to meet his eyes. ‘Not here,’ Alest says. ‘Not that word, and not like this. I heard you. What do you want?’ And it is too rough, too raw. Too needed.
‘I want this to go right.’ It’s all he’s ever wanted between them.
‘Can I touch you again?’ Alest asks. And when Elician nods, he thinks Alest will reach for his nipples once more, but he is greeted with a kiss.
A kiss, and the very position that got them into this mess to begin with.
Alest straddles him. He rocks his hips downwards.
He lets their cocks rub oh so decadently together, and Elician clings to him as a perfect storm of contact and heat spirals upwards to a point of unspeakable reverence.
He gasps. He groans. Alest clings to him and they chase glory in the chaos of unity and Elician comes with Cat careening off his lips, and Alest gasping, ‘Yes, yes,’ in his ear.
They emerge from the maelstrom, sticky and wet, and Alest categorically refuses to taste Elician’s spend where it threatens to glue their skin together the longer they let it smear between them. ‘I feel like we missed a few steps,’ Elician hums against Alest’s throat.
‘That’s the beauty of eternity, my love,’ Alest whispers. ‘We have for ever to get it right.’ It is a future that has made all the pain in the past worth fighting through.
‘We’ll have to practise if we’re going to get it right,’ he warns his husband. ‘Again, and again, and again.’
‘I think we did get it right,’ Alest says. But, with a smile that rivals the gods, he adds: ‘But I would do anything you asked for, so long as I was with you.’
And it is perfect.
Even if it isn’t masterful.
And perhaps, for that alone, it was made all the better.
The first envoy from Soleb arrives, and it is Jonan Morsen.
He walks into the Lunar Palace and Elician cannot stop from grinning at the sight of the man.
Even Alest is pleased. He descends from his throne and strides across the hall to shake Morsen’s hand and invite him for a private meal rather than simply settling for a standard audience.
They go to an antechamber and Elician is a little delighted by the idea that in some cases, absolute monarchies do have their uses. There are no scribes hurrying to join them, no additional lords and ladies. Alest requests privacy and he is given it without anyone sneering or asking twice.
‘How are my people?’ Elician asks Morsen. He is immediately given a ream of papers thick as a tome, all of which apparently describe in fine detail exactly what he has missed since he absconded to Alelune.
‘The plague is ending,’ Morsen summarizes.
The relief he feels is palpable. Elician lets it wash over him, lets the words drench his mind in joy and acceptance.
Finally, he knows. ‘The death toll, while substantial, was not as high as it could have been if left unchecked. The Reapers and Givers managed to keep the plague at bay and ensure food continued to be dispersed uninterrupted throughout the provinces.’
Alest’s hand takes Elician’s and squeezes it. He smiles at Elician, happy and proud. We did it.
There is only one more thing they need to do before they can focus on the building of their new nation. ‘My brother,’ Alest says. ‘I would like for him to leave Alelune.’
‘You want him in Soleb?’ Morsen asks.
‘He is loathed here,’ Alest says. ‘He will never be able to…be anything other than who he is. There will be no change. Here, the whole of Alelune will be his cell, and he will remain ever a monster behind its bars.’ He grimaces when he turns to face Morsen fully.
He needs to force himself to meet the man’s eyes, ashamed of the asking.
‘Your wife gave us a home once. I don’t imagine Gillage will be easy to manage but…
I know Elena won’t let him pretend the world is his to command. ’
Morsen doesn’t answer right away. Alest is grateful for that. It’s a question that requires contemplation. ‘She would be delighted to try to make something of him,’ he eventually says. ‘If nothing else, she’ll enjoy having someone to talk to about science.’
‘Thank you, Morsen,’ Alest says. ‘I truly mean it.’
‘That boy owes you a great deal more than his life, you know, if he turns out well in the end.’
‘That’s his choice too,’ Alest says. ‘We all have our own choices to make.’
‘And Nured?’ Elician asks. Alest flinches.
‘If I choose to kill him, it’s murder, is it not? Because I personally want him dead when he…he did nothing legally wrong. Everything he did was sanctioned by Gillage or my queen.’
‘Everything?’ Elician asks slowly.
‘I can’t prove the rest.’
‘Does he have anyone? Family, friends? People who will care?’ He asks the questions through gritted teeth, displeasure evident but intention clear.
Alest shakes his head. ‘Let him truly become something else and start his journey again,’ Elician whispers.
‘This life is over for him…he has made his choices. He isn’t a boy like Gillage, turned twisted and wrong by fate.
Nured knew what he was doing when he tortured you as a child, when he tortured Lio and encouraged Gillage into violence. He always knew.’
Morsen looks between them. He doesn’t interrupt.
Elician is glad for that, because when Alest nods his consent, it seems to take everything within him to manage it.
Elician closes his eyes. He reaches out with his mind and his heart and his very being.
He finds the mind and body and shape of a man who has been nothing but darkness and pain for many years.
He finds the soul deep within Nured’s body, takes it and forces it to start its cycle anew.
Die, he thinks. And knows the moment it occurs.
Vengeance and justice taking place at once.
‘Done,’ Elician whispers.
He holds Alest to him, and Alest clings to his back. Guilt and uncertainty and despair and relief shiver across Elician’s senses as he presses his lips to Alest’s brow. With one death, there is so much relief, and that too is a sign of life persevering.