23. The Ghost of His Sigil #2
Why did everyone insist on fighting Asher’s battles for him? Didn’t they see how strong he was, how little he needed them?
“I don’t give a fuck about professionalism. Asher is a consenting adult. If he wants to leave, he is free to do so. Isn’t that right, Blakely?”
Asher nodded at Julian. “I’ve got this.”
Julian opened his mouth, and closed it, then leaned against the swing door, and said, “Be careful, Asher.”
Now that his obstacles were out of the way, Lev rounded the long table. Asher watched with wary resignation, one hand gripping the table’s edge.
“Did you fuck him?” Lev asked.
Asher rolled his eyes in tandem with a maddeningly seductive swipe of his tongue against the inside of his cheek. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business. My body doesn’t belong to you.”
“Come now, Blakely. Don’t be daft.” Lev prowled nearer. “You were mine the moment you made my art a part of you. I might as well have signed my name on your arse.” Lev pushed his lips into a thoughtful pout. “Unless you already have it there…”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Why should I, when I have you to do it for me? Now answer me. Did. You. Fuck. Him?”
Asher’s hand tightened on the table, fingertips turning pale. “You can’t throw your toys away and take them back when someone else wants to play.”
“I didn’t throw you away.”
Asher drifted away from Lev, straying toward the rain-pelted windows at his back. “You left me. You said I was a mistake.”
Lev followed. “I said this was a mistake.” He gestured between them, grazing Asher’s chest with his index finger. “Not you. Never you.”
“I don’t believe you.” Asher shivered and wrapped his arms around himself.
Lev trailed a lazy half-circle around Asher to sidle in front of the drafty windows. “I never should have left you. Not there. Not like that. Not after learning you wore my sigil.”
“Sigil?”
“The Leviathan ouroboros. I haven’t seen that mark in decades. It startled me. I…”
His attention snagged on movement through the window to his right. His heart stuttered over a row of skipped beats. Silas stood in the flowerbed, draped in darkness, black hair drenched, rain dripping down his face like tears.
“Tell him,” Silas mouthed.
“I made that ouroboros for someone I once loved. Someone I lost.”
He never should have shared that illustration.
Silas had insisted, arguing that even if they had to hide their relationship, they could be out through Lev’s art.
Back then, Lev would have given him anything.
That was the danger of their love. He’d done things he hadn’t wanted to, and they’d both paid for it.
“Silas?” Asher asked. “The one you can’t stop painting?” Asher’s agile fingers slid Lev’s cuff up to bare Silas’s parting gift. “The one who left you with these?”
“How do you know everything?” Lev whispered, awestruck and terrified, skin sizzling beneath Asher’s touch. “It’s almost as if you were him in a past life.”
“I’m not.”
“I know.” Lev lowered his hand over Asher’s hand on his arm. “The last time I saw that ouroboros, I was a little younger than you are now. You can imagine my shock to find it on you in the same location I’d drawn it on him…”
“What?” Asher pulled his hand back. “I didn’t?—”
“I know. You couldn’t have known.” Lev sighed. “The sigil was a relic from our childhood, meant to guard him when we were parted. I couldn’t protect him, though. Perhaps if I had…”
Pain lanced through him. Outside, Silas nodded, encouraging him to continue.
“I loved him, and I hurt him.”
He’d confessed as much in therapy, a diluted version that denied culpability, but confessing to Asher while Silas gave his blessing felt like what he imagined Catholic confession to be—a speck of sand lifted from the ocean of guilt crushing his chest. In a word, useless.
No amount of Hail Marys and Our Fathers would assuage his guilt.
Asher chewed on his bottom lip, brow wrinkling ever deeper. What was his thinking? Lev was too afraid to ask.
“Lichenmoor is dangerous,” Lev continued. “ I’m dangerous.”
“That wasn’t your fault. I knew the tide was rising.”
“But I forced you out there. If I hadn’t found you…
” A shudder crept up his spine and he swallowed the knot of anguish in his throat.
“I thought I was strong enough to let you leave here tomorrow, but I can’t bear the thought of never se eing you again, never knowing if you’re happy, or fed, or if you would have been better off with me. ”
He swept forward, ushering Asher away from the windows, and Silas. Asher bumped into the table. His pupils dilated with fear, and something else… Desire, yes, but was that the faint trace of hope Lev had extinguished? Did his most devoted fan still carry a torch?
“I would do anything to keep you safe,” Lev gripped one end of Asher’s scarf, longing to unwind it from his neck. “Anything except let you go.”
Asher groaned and scrubbed his face with his hands. “You’re the most mercurial man I’ve ever met. What do you want from me?”
Lev encircled Asher’s wrists and tugged his hands down. “I want everything. All of your thoughts. Every piece of art you’ve made, all the art to come. I may not have your art tattooed on my body, but as much as you belong to me, I belong to you.”
Asher said nothing.
Fully clothed, Lev felt naked. “I’m so sorry that I hurt you, and for all the ways I’ll hurt you in the future.”
Asher’s brows darted together. His mouth opened.
Lev spoke first. “I’m going to make mistakes, but I promise to give you every single part of me.” He kissed Asher’s hand. “Please give me another chance. Let me claim you properly.”
He waited three excruciating heartbeats, and then Asher finally said,
“Only if I can claim you too.”