Chapter 27
The caravan set up camp when night fell. After they’d raised their tent at the back of the group, Azreth started to head for the center of the camp until Raiya grabbed his arm.
“Where are you going?”
“They’re setting up a watch rotation. I’m going to help.”
“It’s been too long since you’ve had a decent feeding. We’ll reach Frosthaven soon. We should make sure you have as much power as possible before then.”
He paused, then relented. “You’re… right,” he said, oddly hesitant.
She motioned to the tent. “Shall we?”
There was a tiny crease between his brows, but he nodded. Giving him a lingering look, Raiya lifted the flap of their tent and slid inside, then waited to let her eyes adjust to the dim light.
One of the shepherds had gifted the tent to them after the day with the vythian. The small space was insulated by furs and heavy cloth bedding, and a lantern filled it with amber candlelight. It was humble, but it was their own, and it was private. She had consciously set it up away from the others.
She was grateful to Jai and Madira for sharing their space, but it had grown a tad tiring living in such close proximity to a pair of bickering teenage siblings.
She pulled off her robe and her warm trousers, bare except for her underwear and a thin undershirt. Suddenly cold, the peaks of her breasts hardened against the fabric. Goosebumps formed on her exposed arms and legs.
Azreth didn’t blink during the entire process. His eyes never left her.
He bent forward, and his nose came close to her head as he inhaled her. Prickles went up her spine. “I have craved you,” he said softly.
A tiny shiver of anticipation went through her. “A minute ago, I almost thought you didn’t want to…”
“I have never wanted anything as much as I want you.”
Her heart fluttered. Watching his face, she reached up and unclasped his cloak from around his shoulders. His expression was soft, but somehow seemed tired.
Wearing nothing except his armored sarong, he was stunning. In the low light, his skin was dark and his eyes were bright, like candle flames. The swells and tucks of lean muscle binding his limbs were powerful but not bulky—his supernatural strength far surpassed whatever power they should have reasonably granted. He was perfection.
Even the prosthetic arm seemed to have been intentionally made with an eye-catching, almost ostentatious color. Was that just the natural color of his magic? Or had he picked it specifically out of a rainbow of choices?
Her eyes went to the spot where magenta magic met what remained of his shoulder. “May I ask you a personal question?” she said.
His eyes shifted and refocused, as if he’d been thinking of something else. “Yes. Whatever you like.”
“How did you lose your arm?”
His eyebrows twitched. She held his gaze.
“It was taken at birth,” he said.
Raiya frowned. She had assumed he’d lost it during a battle. “What do you mean?”
He sank to his knees, tilting his head to look toward the side of the tent as he recalled old memories. “Something went wrong when I was made. All the sacrifices were made, the sacred words were said, the ritual was performed correctly, but when I walked through the veil, my right arm was misshapen and weak. There was no magic that could fix it. The eldress conducting my creation was offended by my ugliness and weakness. So she removed it and banished me.”
Raiya felt the blood run from her face.
“After that, she said that my fate was in my own hands, and that I would live if I was strong enough.” He shrugged, arching an eyebrow almost cockily. “I lived.”
Azreth had never been a baby, so his memories wouldn’t have faded, would they? He must have recalled every agonizing second of the process. “How long ago was this?”
“I was made ten years ago.”
Raiya stared at him. He’d only been alive for ten years?
“And the others just let her do this?” she asked.
“I was weak. It was the most practical course of action. Even if it hadn’t been, they had no reason to fight her on my behalf.” He cocked his head at her. “Don’t be angry, Raiya. It was long ago.”
“They shouldn’t have done that to you. You didn’t deserve that. You hadn’t done anything wrong. You’d only just been born, and your first experiences in the world were pain and loss.”
“She could have killed me, instead. I know she wanted to. She was angry because of how I’d turned out, because I wouldn’t make a good servant to her. She was generous to spare me even though I was worthless to her.”
“That’s not generosity. You know it’s not. You wouldn’t do that to someone, because you know it’s wrong.”
He didn’t answer.
“What happened after that? You said you were banished. What does that mean?”
“It means that I was without a house. The fourth hell is dominated by a number of houses, each ruled by an eldress, that are eternally at odds with each other. Most of my kind belong to one of those houses. We roam alone for most of our lives until we are recalled by the leaders of our house when we are needed. The houseless are outcasts. They are beholden to no one, and no one is beholden to them.”
“But you didn’t have anyone to guide you, or teach you things? How did you learn to… to live? To speak? To use magic?”
He shrugged one shoulder, uncertain. “I just knew. We are born knowing many things. The rest, I learned on my own.”
“It sounds lonely.”
He said nothing, but reached up to take her hand. Despite everything they’d already done, touching him this way still made her heart race. She curled her fingers tighter around his hand, cradling it in both of hers.
“I shouldn’t have brought this up,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She must have been radiating sadness and pity. Perhaps he disliked that. Maybe depression tasted like something that had started to rot.
“You have been alone, too,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?”
“I can see it. There is a deep unhappiness in you that never completely goes away.”
“That’s—that’s not true. I’m fine.”
“You were alone in that fortress with the man who you loved, who hated you. If you’d had anyone else to help you, you would not have turned to me for aid.”
He was right.
Was it true that the unhappiness had never left her? Was it trapped inside her, marking her like a scar? Would it ever go away?
She put a hand to his sternum and idly slid her fingers down his body, watching his chest rise and fall heavily beneath her fingers.
“Have you ever been intimate with someone just… for fun?” she asked. “Not for feeding?”
“…No. But I have enjoyed spending the nights beside you.”
She smiled at him. She didn’t often hear him talk about enjoying things. Bringing him out of his shell and bringing him happiness felt like a herculean accomplishment.
She grazed her lips against his cheek, and he leaned into the touch.
“I like it when you touch me like that,” he said, his voice almost inaudible, as if it had taken some effort to say it.
“Like what?”
“Softly.”
She recalled the rough, almost animalistic way he’d taken her last time. That hadn’t been very soft at all. Not that she’d minded. “Do you remember when you told me never to touch you?” she asked.
“Yes.” He thought for another long moment, his hand rising to cup hers. “I like… how gentle you are. No one else has ever touched me the way you do. I had never seen anyone touch other people like that before I came here.” He looked faintly amused. “You are so unlike me.”
“We’re not so different.”
She wanted to take her time touching him. She wanted to run her hands over every part of his hard, smooth skin, exploring his entire body one bit at a time, watching the subtle ways he responded with little twitches or breaths.
He was incredibly seductive when he wanted to be, and yet she wondered if it had never occurred to him that someone might long to touch him, not just to be touched by him.
She was going to take her time. Sleep could wait. Feeding could wait. She kissed him, then pushed on his chest with both hands, but he didn’t move.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Lie back.”
He gave her a careful look. Then he slowly leaned back on his elbows.
“All the way,” Raiya said.
There was another noticeable hesitation before he did as she asked. He tilted back until his head touched the threadbare blanket that made up the base of their bed, then stared up at the ceiling, waiting for her to show him what came next. He looked a bit like a prisoner awaiting execution.
“Are you all right?”
His eyes flicked toward hers. “Yes.”
She placed herself on his waist, straddling him. “Are you sure?”
His hands settled on her waist, just above the flare of her hips. “I will do whatever you like.” His hands gave her a careful, loving squeeze.
Her voice kept getting quieter, as if to match the gentleness of her touch. “I’m honored. But I don’t want you to do anything. Just let me touch you.” She leaned forward, pressing a barely-there kiss to his cheek, brushing the corner of his beautiful lips.
He was unnaturally perfect, inhuman, a being made of magic—and yet sometimes, he seemed so perfectly mortal. Like now, as she weaved her hand through his hair, brushing the spot behind his horns, and he arched slightly, his breath catching. When she rubbed him there, he hissed a pleased sigh.
There was a soft spot hiding there. Who would’ve guessed that his horns were guarding something sensitive?
As she touched him, he didn’t moan or say any appreciative words, even though his body betrayed his enjoyment. It didn’t seem like he was trying to hide it—more like he didn’t know how or when to express pleasure.
She worked her way down his body. His eyes grew heavy lidded and distant, and she’d hoped his body would relax as she worked on him, but if anything, he grew more tense. She slid her hand over his sarong, feeling the hard length beneath it. It jumped as she took the thick shape in her hand and lovingly outlined it with her fingers. Azreth hissed in the back of his throat, his hips rolling. She squeezed up and down the length, teasing him slowly.
“What are you doing?” Azreth murmured after a while.
“What do you think?”
“This is pointless,” he said, his voice hoarse.
She raised an eyebrow, watching him suppress a shudder as she stroked his length. “What?”
“I can’t feed from this. I’ve told you, it’s only you—”
“I don’t care about feeding. I want you.”
He stared at her. “It is not necessary.”
“It is to me.” She rubbed her hand over his cock, and it pressed up against her from beneath the fabric of his sarong, hot and eager. “Tell me you want this.”
He looked at her for a long moment, his hips lifting slightly in time with her strokes.
“I do,” he breathed.
Her hand left him just long enough to undo the ties holding his sarong closed, letting his cock spring free. She gingerly ran her fingers over the velvety skin, admiring the gentle pull and stretch as she drew it down to reveal the slick head. Gods, he was beautiful. Was it lewd of her to find his cock beautiful? The flesh was dark blue and vibrant at the tip. It was as tall and blunt and intimidating as the rest of him, but it was sensitive and needy, and it was making him shake with pleasure as she touched it.
He groaned, powerful hands grasping at blankets as his hips strained toward her. “Raiya,” he sighed, the word like a protest, like a prayer, like a poem.
“Azreth,” she replied placidly. She used both her hands on him, putting all her heart into her strokes. “You are so beautiful like this.”
His hips bucked involuntarily, thrusting into her hands. He threw his head back, gasping as he climaxed.
Just as he’d said, he had no ejaculate, but his cock pulsed and strained with his orgasm anyway, mimicking a mortal’s body in every other way.
How odd and fortuitous that the gods had given them the gift of sexual pleasure even though it wasn’t necessary for procreation. It was a kindness done simply to give them a little more joy in their lives. To Raiya, it felt like further evidence that demons were not inherently evil, the way mortals believed. They were intelligent individuals, capable of desire and happiness independent from feeding and survival, though it seemed like even Azreth hadn’t quite believed that about himself.
Azreth let out a sharp, harsh breath. His gaze slanted toward her, and glittering swirls, like faraway galaxies, filled his eyes. Raiya pushed a lock of hair away from his forehead, then found herself running her hand through his hair. She couldn’t stop touching him.
He closed his eyes blissfully. He was unbelievably lovely when he was soft and relaxed. It was an entire new dimension to him that she’d not seen before.
“There is something I must confess,” he said.
He sounded serious, and she stiffened.
“What’s that?”
“In the hells, there is an illness of the mind—a rare and deadly kind of madness that befalls some of us.” He took her hand. “I have felt the change coming over me for some time. I am not myself. I can no longer think properly. I can no longer reason. I care only for one thing. It occupies my mind every waking second. I have tried, and I cannot escape it. The obsession consumes me.”
Raiya’s heart thumped hard. The world had gone still, narrowed to only him. “What are you talking about?”
“I have let myself become addicted to you,” Azreth said. “I think of you always. I crave the feel of your skin and the sound of your voice constantly. Every moment I am away from you feels empty. Where I once would have cared only for myself, I now care for you. It’s torture, and bliss. In the hells, the people who fall victim to this curse are called Enthralled. Once the madness takes hold, it rarely lets go.”
Raiya’s head was swimming. “Are you describing love, Azreth?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes. This is what mortals call it.”
The sadness and fear in his voice sent Raiya’s soaring heart crashing to the ground.
He sensed her mood. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, clutching her arms. “This means I’m yours. Your servant. Your slave. Be anything but afraid.”
A madness. He considered love a madness.
She could not know what happened to demons in the hells who contracted this “madness,” but she could imagine it. Were they taken for all they could give, used and then thrown aside, like she had been with Nirlan?
And it was no wonder he considered it madness if he saw no middle steps between being someone’s enemy and being their slave. To proclaim that you loved someone was the ultimate vulnerability. It was the equivalent of prostrating himself before her, opening himself up to whatever wounds she might intentionally or unintentionally inflict on him. And he was doing it willingly.
“I can’t return to the hells,” Azreth said. “They will take me to an eldress to be exorcised if they find out I am Enthralled. They’ll force me to be cured.”
Raiya’s eyes were wet. She took his face in her hands. “There is a difference between the devotion of love and the devotion of a servant, Azreth. Love isn’t about power and submission and fear. When you’re with someone who loves you back, like I do—” Emotion filled her throat, and she swallowed hard. “When you’re with someone who loves you back, it’s about mutual affection and trust and selflessness. It’s the greatest thing in the world. People live for that kind of love. People kill and die for it.”
“It scares me.”
“If you are mine, then I’m yours, too.” She leaned in and kissed him.
He kissed her back. It was chaste at first, and then it wasn’t.
His arms wrapped around her. It was enough to make the breath wheeze from her lungs, and yet she felt him holding back, using only a tiny fraction of his strength.
The world turned as he flipped her onto her back and knelt between her spread legs. Magenta light glowed around her as summoned hands appeared in the air.
“That isn’t necessary, Azreth,” she offered. “You alone are enough.”
“But one hand alone is not enough to touch you. Even a dozen is not enough.”
“Oh,” was all she could say before the hands took away her breath. They stroked down her sides, tickled her thighs, and caressed her breasts. Ghostly fingertips scraped over the palms of her hands and the arches of her feet, brushed over her lips and plucked her tight nipples.
Azreth’s own flesh-and-blood hand found the sweet spot between her legs and dipped into her warmth. His fingers came away dripping.
She writhed beneath the touch of his summoned hands. “Yes,” she whispered.
The hands smoothly removed her underwear and her shirt, and then he was spreading her legs with his knees as he positioned himself above her. He did not touch himself except to grasp the base of his cock to put himself at her entrance. She looked down, drinking it in. The size of it was in proportion to the rest of him. She normally would have found such size off-putting, but on him, it seemed correct and lovely. Maybe it was also because he didn’t seem overly proud of it, the way some well-endowed men might have.
He placed his hand just above the soft triangle between her legs. “I want to help you.”
Raiya realized what he meant, and she nodded rapidly. “Yes. Do it.”
Magic flowed from his hand. A tingling, opening sensation spread through her core, making her insides numb and hypersensitive at the same time, and her sex was suddenly hot and relaxed and achingly empty. She felt wetness dripping from her, and she was drunk on pleasure.
“Oh gods, Azreth,” she gasped. She felt the broad head of him pushing against her, and she sucked in breath. She couldn’t reach his flesh-and-blood hand, so she grasped the magenta one at her hip. It turned over obligingly to interlace its fingers with hers.
His body bowed over her as he pressed into her. She choked out a soft cry as he seated himself within her and his hips came flush with hers. Whatever that magic was, it made it all so much better. It opened her for him, but it also made everything more sensitive, more hungry. Her body pulsed with need, and the twitch of his cock inside her sent waves of satisfaction through her.
His body was hard and hot and heavy, inhumanly massive and smelling of heat and fire. He was familiar now, and all of these things were comforting rather than strange. He was hers. She was his.
“More,” she murmured, her voice shaking. She felt almost feverish. “Please.”
He panted as he thrust into her in a steady rhythm. The hands, which had been stroking and teasing her, grasped her tighter now, greedily clenching handfuls of flesh, or tightening their grip to hold her still. She felt her climax rapidly approaching.
“Azreth.”
“Raiya,” he groaned, his voice reverberating with multiple impossible pitches at once.
“Bite me,” she said.
He looked down at her, startled. “What?”
She paused to consider her words. They came through a haze of arousal that made speaking feel like running through tar. “I know who you are. What you are. I want all of you. The sweet parts, and the vicious ones.”
Hunger brightened his eyes.
“I would never hurt you,” he said.
“I know.”
“I am yours.”
“I know.”
He gripped her hair to gently pull her head back, exposing her neck. He pressed deep into her, then lowered his mouth to her throat. She felt his teeth on her, and she tensed.
His lips sealed over her skin, and his teeth pierced her, taking her blood. She climaxed in a flood of pleasure as sharp pain burst across her throat.
Azreth moaned, his hips rolling against her, luxuriating in her clenching heat. His teeth released her, and she felt trickles of blood drip down her skin, which were quickly caught by his tongue. She lay still and allowed him to lick and suck her as her limbs trembled with exhaustion. She felt his teeth scraping her, as if some part of him was imagining taking more than just a little of her blood, but his touch was careful and restrained.
Suddenly he moved up to kiss her cheek, a stark contrast to the pleasurable violence they’d just been engaging in. One by one, the hands disappeared. Azreth wrapped an arm around her waist, pressing her body against his in a desperate, hungry embrace. It was an awkward gesture, not exactly sexual. She realized he did not exactly know how to express love or nonsexual desire. Those feelings were new to him. She said nothing, but put her hand behind his head and touched his hair, content to be held by him.
His tongue caressed the wounds on her neck in long, sweet strokes, and she sensed a spell sealing the punctures.
“I love how you taste,” he said.
“What do I taste like?”
“Like life.”
Her hand wandered behind his horns again, rubbing him the way she might rub behind a cat’s ears. His eyes fluttered closed.
Something invisible and magical was warming the air around them. It had been slowly growing in intensity since she first began touching him, and now she could feel it permeating her skin, entering her with every breath. It was the polar opposite of the heavy, oppressive rage and despair and fear she’d felt when she’d first met Azreth in Nirlan’s dungeon. It was light and effervescent, bright and energizing.
It was Azreth. It was his joy. And it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever felt. She had never expected that his happiness would be as palpable as his anger was, but it was, and more.
“I am yours,” he said again.
She replied with a different wording of the same sentiment—her preferred wording, which declared devotion without subservience, as they both deserved. They were each other’s, and they were free. “I love you.”
He pulled back to look at her, a small crease of concentration between his eyebrows.
“I love you,” he said carefully, testing out the words. There was something uncertain in his voice, but there was nothing uncertain about his emotions, which had unfolded to fill the space between them.