Chapter 9 Deific Deals #2
“We have so much to discuss.” Mhot hurried to the door and threw the bolt. “I’m closing the shop for this appointment. Come with me to the back, spindle. I need your measurements, and I’ve got a new silk just begging to be draped.”
“Katarina doesn’t like being touched or—”
“Then why are you touching her, Azrion?”
The demon pulled his hands back to himself, barely realizing he had moved in close to the human again and taken her by the waist.
“It’s all right.” Kat’s smile was easy then, not pained in the least. “Would you mind if I took a look at your needles before we’re through?”
“We can do whatever you’d like, spindle.”
Azrion wasn’t disappointed that Kat was comfortable with Mhot, he just wasn’t prepared for it.
He also wasn’t prepared to be relegated to a chair in the empty mercer’s shop while the two went behind the curtain into the coveted back studio without him.
He called on Kat at least thrice to check on her wellbeing—and it was indeed as boorish as he’d dreaded—but the increasingly giggly answers told him she was indeed fine, so he eventually gave up and stewed.
It wasn’t that he thought he was entitled to see Kat disrobed—not that at all—but what if she needed… something?
Scrubbing a hand over his face, Azrion flicked his tail through the gap in the chair.
It knocked into one of the dress forms, and he caught it with magic before it knocked down the whole row.
His human would be fine, he just wanted to see her face light up again, that was all.
It had been the most delightful surprise of the evening, to finally learn something about her he didn’t have to infer from her perfunctory answers.
She might not be willing to tell him about where she came from or her family, but did any of that really matter?
Not more than her interest in artistry, surely.
But he did need to know more. In fact, he needed to know everything.
Azrion let his head rock back as he closed his eyes. Naranni had seen them at the Naevas sister’s shop, and she would undoubtedly run right to Melora and deliver the gossip. And that would…well, it would change things, wouldn’t it?
It had only been a few days, but Azrion already felt an ease with Katarina he hadn’t been expecting even when he made mistakes and stumbled through ill-conceived ideas.
Kat was a resilient human, but would she be able to weather however Melora might decide to retaliate?
He’d not thought of that, only of how his past co-conspirators were as ruthless as his mate.
He’d not chosen Katarina with ruthlessness in mind. He had chosen her because she was the one he wanted. It was inexplicable, but the moment he’d seen her, he knew.
What? That she was gorgeous. That she could keep a secret. That she was meant to…well, Kizros had said it, or something like it: humans were magical in one way or another, and Azrion’s latent skill must have picked up on whatever sorcery she exuded.
When Kat and Mhot finally returned, Azrion was disappointed to see her still wearing her rather boring, too large dress, but Kat’s face had changed. She flashed him a smile that was more than just easy—it was beaming with genuine happiness.
“So,” said Azrion, standing a little too quickly and nearly knocking over the side table with his tail. Strange—he was always a graceful demon, but it was like his limbs had forgotten how to cooperate. “How soon do you think you can have something finished for us?”
Mhot had been grinning at Kat but turned playfully sour when eyeing Azrion. “So demanding, all of you!” She flicked a hand to the dress forms across the shop. “I’m nearly finished with the costumes for the festival, but if you want something for tomorrow too—”
Azrion shook his head. “I’m much too busy with work to attend the summer festival, and frankly, I’m not interested in watching my sister perform as Ajath’s bronzeberry in the Aestival Dance.”
Mhot chuckled, and Azrion shuddered.
“Unless, dear Katarina, you’d enjoy taking part in one of the largest celebrations in Heck, squeezing through crowds, dealing with the noises and smells and—”
She looked utterly aghast at the idea, and he just grinned. He’d known the moment they met that she wouldn’t be up for something like that, and she needed some time to herself before his next planned outing anyway.
“Nothing for tomorrow, but she does need a dress for Fioran Vumheri’s wedding.”
Mhot sighed heavily, but there was a pride in it, like it was an honor to be so put upon. “Of course, Azrion, anything for you.”
And for his coin, but that always went unspoken. “And anything for you, darling,” he said and watched Katarina’s face turn as red as Mhot’s.
Katarina’s face was still floating through Azrion’s mind later that evening long after he’d walked her to the post and arrived home himself.
Stripped of his frilly outer layers and a few of the heavier earrings, he’d found himself wandering from chamber to chamber, restless and…
well, there wasn’t quite a word for what exactly was coursing through him.
Giddy? A bit, but this was more enthusiastic.
More piqued, more impassioned, more…aroused?
Azrion squinted up at the ceiling to focus, and his cock twitched unaided.
Huh, interesting. He wasn’t entirely convinced that was the only thing vexing him, but he supposed he could take care of that base need, and maybe it might make the other inexplicable longing go away.
That was until the guest rune lit up and let him know he wasn’t actually all on his own.
Azrion hurried across the house and for the briefest moment hoped he might find Kat on his doorstep but quickly brushed over that silly thought like blotting out sketch marks with thick white paint because of course it wouldn’t be. She’d had enough of him before the day even began.
As he paced into the entry, he tipped his head at the two figures obscured by the front door’s glass.
Maybe it was friends coming to call and see how he was holding up after his split with Melora.
Gods knew someone should have been looking out for him considering his companions thought the severed courtship was authentic and presumably heartbreaking, and wouldn’t it be nice if—
“I’ll handle the castration myself when my shiny new weapons arrive.”
Azrion choked as he opened the door, and his cock gave another sovereign wiggle, though this time it sought a place to hide.
“Azrion,” Ozirax lifted his chin with a stony-faced greeting. “Sorry, I’m a little early.”
Stars above, it wasn’t Katarina standing next to the purple demon, but it was the next best—or worst—thing, er human. Her sister. The one who was off limits and would strangle him with his own tail.
The two had slightly different coloring, and this human was muscular where Katarina was made up of sinew, if he had to guess what was under her baggy dresses—not that he was guessing, dear gods, not in front of the perpetually-murder-faced woman who spoke of castration on his doorstep.
But their faces shared the same angular planes, and their eyes the same rounded, deep-set shape with lashes that were, in a word, sublime.
“Not a problem.” Clearing his throat, Azrion tugged at his shirt and was immediately hit with the smell of Katarina.
Azrion was almost entirely sure humans couldn’t detect the thoughts of others, thank every star in the sky, but he wasn’t at all sure about how their noses worked.
His stomach clenched and his claws dug into the door jamb he tried his damnedest to lean against casually.
Oh, great and powerful gods, if you don’t let them smell her on me, I will abstain from self-fornication until the warrior constellation sinks below the horizon.
“No issue at all that you’ve shown up early for our meeting when I was expecting you later.
” Blazes, was Azrion’s voice always so loud?
Sound didn’t likely cover up familial essence, but then what did he really know of humans?
Maybe noisiness was his best defense—words were his strongest weapon most of the time anyway.
He glanced over his shoulder and eyed his coat thrown lazily over a hook—that held most of Katarina’s smell, the crook of the arm where she’d delicately held onto him all day and the side she’d pressed her trembling self too, and—oh, gods, not now, Azrion!
But then he saw what he’d left just beneath it, the reason Ozirax had come in the first place—a canvas bag full of pigments—and he pretended like he’d never been so distracted by his new mate that he’d forgotten about the meeting in the first place.
“Restocked with Kiz, so everything’s freshly made. ”
He used the door as a barrier, leaning away to collect the satchel, then grinned widely as he held it out.
The human bore daggers into his very soul with her multicolored eyes, a blue one so reminiscent of Kat’s but with none of the uncertainty and another as green and deadly as a viper.
“Only the finest, you know,” Azrion said around a lump in his throat, gaze trapped in the woman’s and doing its best to plead for the body it was attached to, especially the neck and tail. “Oz has been coming to me for years, though it’s our little secret. I am very trustworthy.”
“You sound the opposite of trustworthy right now.” Ozirax took the bag with his signature indifference, knocking Azrion off balance just enough that he had to swing his tail to remain upright. “For fuck’s sake, Azrion, yes, it’s a human.”
“It?” The woman turned her hostile glare onto Ozirax then, and Azrion nearly cried with relief.
“You don’t have to say it so loudly,” he hissed.
“So dramatic.” Unlike Azrion, Oz appeared to have no qualms about being glowered at with such fiery ire. “Are these safe for humans?”
Finally, a chance to redeem himself. “I am a professional. Of course it’s safe for humans.” Azrion felt his mettle ascend and added for good measure, “I am nothing but accepting of humans.”
Ozirax groaned. “And now you sound the opposite of accepting.”
A bag of coins hit Azrion in the chest, and he bungled the catch, which he decided was only a boon—no reason to show Katarina’s sister he had any kind of physical or reflexive prowess that could be assessed as a threat.
“Thanks for this.” Ozirax gestured with the bag. “Come on, Spicy.”
“It was nice to meet you, human who…I don’t know your real name.
” The corners of Azrion’s mouth began to ache from the width of his grin.
He took a step back, easing the door closed as he mustered friendliness he knew Ozirax wouldn’t adore but hoped would ingratiate him to the human.
“Best be off, don’t delay. A delight as always, dear friends.
” The latch clicked shut, and Azrion kept grinning at their silhouettes against the glass. “Bye now!”
Azrion only breathed when their forms disappeared.
He ran hands over his face and then threw his arms out to either side, flopping them around like he could shake off the embarrassment and the nerves.
Oz had never brought someone to Azrion’s home to gather supplies, but he supposed humans were worthy of secrets and truths and—
Wait—she didn’t mention Kat at all, so why the fuck were they here together in the first place? And Spicy? What did that mean?
Azrion hesitated with his hand on the knob, questions churning as magic began to tap at the back of his skull, but he didn’t fling open the door.
No, he didn’t need to know, couldn’t know, though…
the pair of human sisters had found them somehow, Oz and Az, purple demons who shared a history most others couldn’t fathom.
Oh, well, the four of them made quite an adorable set of pairs, didn’t they?
Except, of course, Kat and Az weren’t really a pair.
Still, Azrion felt a shiver run up his spine, and with it came the inspiration for a new painting.
“Congratulations,” he whispered at the ghost of the couple on his doorstep and strode off for his studio.