9. Chapter 9 #2
“Yes. And look what that cost. I confessed, and he rejected me. He tried to be kind about it, but in my grief that he didn’t love me back, I revealed what I truly was, and he was horrified.
I was everything then that I had tried not to be—a demon unable to stop consuming what I wanted until nothing was left.
“He tried to cast me out, to banish the ‘monster’ from ever being able to enter his kingdom again. It was me , my magic that corrupted his intentions. I just wanted him to understand. If he didn’t love me, so be it, but I wanted him to know me, to see me….”
Another tear fell, then another, too fast for Ashmedai to swipe at them all.
“He called upon the Amethyst for the power he needed. All the kingdoms have a gemstone somewhere, where magic congregates and the veil between worlds is thin. They’re what my people used to amass more power once.
I just wanted Cullen to understand, but when I tried to reach for him and touched the gemstone, I caused the curse.
“Cullen was eradicated into nothing. That would have been awful enough, but the darkness didn’t stop. The barrier sprang up, and the curse spread to fill it, transforming everyone inside and imprisoning them forever.
“Like a coward, I fled. Everyone saw me, watching on, helpless, as the curse began to change them. Brax chased me into the wood, tried to get me to see reason. He’d seen everything and didn’t reject me as Cullen had, but I was still so stricken by what I had allowed to happen, I didn’t want to listen to him.
“Then the curse reached us. When I saw what started happening to Brax, I couldn’t leave him. He was farthest from the Source Crystal, and maybe the most cursed because of it, because he changed so little but was never able to walk again.
“I tried to change back into my elven guise, but this was as far as I could get.” Ashmedai lifted a hand to stare at his claws. His razor-teeth, his eyes, his ridges—it all made sense now, because they weren’t from any legend or myth, other than stories of the demon itself.
“I carried Brax out of the wood,” Ashmedai continued. “The people drew their own conclusions. I was going to tell them the truth, but Brax spun the tale—that it had been Cullen at fault.
“Cullen may have started the spell, but the fault was mine. Even so, seeing the distress on everyone’s altered faces, these people who had become my friends, how could I not offer to lead in Cullen’s absence?
Someone had to. And, after all—” Ashmedai offered the solemnest smile Levi could imagine.
“—I already knew what it was like to live as a monster.”
A gasp left Levi before he realized how long it had been since he’d taken a breath. He watched the sorrow deepen on Ashmedai’s face like fissures, and he knew the king believed history was repeating itself.
He was wrong. Levi had been afraid because he hadn’t understood. Now the tale was told, the truth revealed at last, and as Levi took it all in and looked at Ashmedai, he had no doubts.
While Ashmedai’s eyes were hooded and lowered to the ground, Levi strode forward, crossing back into the barrier and leaving the snow of the normal world behind. He took Ashmedai’s face in his hands, and it was the king this time who gasped.
“The curse was an accident.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Ashmedai shook his head, eyes squeezing shut as more tears fell. “It was all my fault… because he didn’t love me.”
“I love you,” Levi said.
Ashmedai’s eyes flashed open. “Levi….”
“I love you. And, if you need to hear it… I forgive you.” He kissed Ashmedai, soft and gentle on tearstained lips.
Ashmedai’s voice caught in a pitiable, choked sound as he fell forward. He sank against Levi with arms wrapping tight, face turning from Levi’s hold and soft kiss to bury in Levi’s shoulder, where he sobbed.
It was the least Levi could do to offer this mirrored support, but the least was hardly all he wanted to give. He held Ashmedai tightly, so the king would know there was no fear left in Levi’s heart.
“I love you,” Ashmedai wept. “Oh, how I love you… stronger than I ever thought I could love anyone.”
Levi might have said such a comparison was unnecessary, but the selfish part of him enjoyed hearing that. It also made him wonder something he had dreaded before. “Forgive me that I must ask this, but… do you only love me because I remind you of him?”
Ashmedai’s head snapped up from Levi’s shoulder. “No. Your eyes and the faint resemblance in your face may have been what caught my attention, but I promise you, it wasn’t what kept it.”
The kiss this time was that familiar concurrent lean and press and tilt of their heads with mouths opening to claim something deeper than comfort.
Knowing the truth didn’t change the warmth Levi felt being in Ashmedai’s arms, or how Ashmedai’s lips and tongue made that warmth boil into a satisfying heat in the depths of Levi’s belly.
More than anything, Levi still wanted tonight to end sharing Ashmedai’s bed, where nothing and no one could touch them.
He was about to suggest Ashmedai whisk them away when he remembered the upturned dirt.
“Wait,” Levi said, pulling from Ashmedai slowly before he turned to head back across the barrier. It was unnerving crossing intentionally, and Levi might have held his breath while he did so, but like before, nothing happened once he reached the other side.
He knelt in front of the dirt, casting a wary glance around him to look for anyone else like the highwayman, but once he was sure it was safe, he started to dig.
“What is it?” Ashmedai called. “What did that man bury?”
Levi’s stomach churned and he jerked his hands back when he realized what he was uncovering. There were parts beneath the dirt.
Body parts.
Worse was when Levi looked around more closely and realized that although there wasn’t disturbed dirt elsewhere, there were mounds like this one. Hundreds of them. Everywhere.
Levi leapt to his feet. “He’s a murderer.
There are bodies buried out here, countless bodies.
Who knows how long that man has been burying victims where he thought no one would find them.
” With a shudder, Levi scooped the dirt back over the mound he’d uncovered and returned to Ashmedai.
“I hope you terrified him so badly that he never returns.”
“While normally I loathe instilling fear in anyone,” Ashmedai said, “I agree. Now, I think it’s time we left the wood, if you’d care to join me somewhere less daunting.” He held out a hand, and Levi wasted no time in grasping it.
They started to head back down the path.
“I wish I knew why I can cross the barrier when no one else can,” Levi commented.
“Braxton mentioned that creating you was part of his experiments toward weakening the barrier,” Ashmedai said.
“Clearly, he is succeeding if he found a way to let any of us cross it without disintegrating. Maybe he doesn’t know or didn’t want to risk having you test it.
He told me tonight, though, that he is nearly complete. ”
“He was at the festival?”
“Briefly. I might get to walk with you in the sunshine yet.” Ashmedai pulled Levi more tightly to his side as they walked.
Like many times before, Levi felt as though the shadows were watching him. After the highwayman and discovering all those bodies, it was no wonder, but Levi shrugged it off with a shiver. “What should we do about… all that back there?”
“Nothing tonight. I don’t want to sour anyone’s mood during the festival. He’s gone. I’ll tell Yentriss tomorrow to put up patrols and keep watch just in case. For now, I want to enjoy the rest of tonight. You’ve given me something I never thought anyone could.”
They reached the end of the path, with sparkling lights calling to them once more beyond the wood’s borders.
Levi turned to Ashmedai and took his hands. “Would you like to go back to the festival?”
“Would you?”
“I think I’ve seen enough.”
There were shadows here too, maybe more so with the trees casting darker ones opposite the festival lights. Ashmedai gathered Levi close and leapt into the nearest patch of darkness just like Levi hoped he would.
Ashmedai
He loved him. Levi loved him, even after learning the truth.
Ashmedai had never felt so… full.
Aurora said hello when they first arrived back at the castle, but though Ashmedai and Levi both doted on her for a spell, she made scarce soon after, like she knew they wanted to be alone.
They had already been intimate once, yet the trek up to Ashmedai’s bedchamber felt different. For the first time, someone other than Braxton knew who and what Ashmedai was and wasn’t afraid. Better still, Levi wanted Ashmedai and sought his touch as boldly as he had before.
Their silk tunics were almost easier to lose than robes, the light, elegant fabric fluttering off their bodies like gossamer. They helped each other out of their undershirts and trousers, and Levi hardly seemed capable of keeping his hands from straying, if only to trail over Ashmedai’s ridges.
Ashmedai’s weapons belt had been set aside at the start, Levi’s already gone, since it had been stolen, but the circlet and ear cuff they’d claimed at the festival remained. Ashmedai traced his fingers along the cuff and up to the tip of Levi’s ear.
“The cuff can stay if it makes you look at me like that,” Levi said, reaching to graze a thumb along the golden circlet with its scarlet gem resting upon Ashmedai’s forehead. “I certainly wouldn’t mind you keeping this on. The Amethyst King, who never wears amethyst himself.” He chuckled.
“I suppose I’ve often given myself away with how I’ve never quite felt like I belong here, but red has always been more my color than violet. Let’s save that hue for you, shall we?”