Page 23

MEZOR

Cyrus darts out of the room before Mezor can stop him. Mezor sits up, a sigh collecting in his throat. The little demon is jumpy and frightened—and he understands why.

A bond. It’s not what he would have chosen, either. Whether he likes it or not, now he’s responsible for Cyrus’s wellbeing. They’ll be able to break the bond once settled, but for now, Cyrus will need him constantly.

Cyrus isn’t lying about being accustomed to pain, which has his primus furious. The thought of leaving him to suffer knowingly is bitter on Mezor’s tongue. Yet that’s exactly what he’ll have to do. He must continue his work until all the world seeds are planted. He’ll have to hope that Cyrus is strong enough to weather the sickness while the Court turns around him like a wheel of thorny branches. His instinct is to protect. But he must rely on Cyrus’s ability to protect himself.

He’s done it for so many years , he tells himself.

But his primus whispers, he shouldn’t have to do it anymore. We should protect him.

He should have known his primus was steering the ship when he set the lover’s challenge. It was always going to end this way.

Cyrus reappears in the doorway holding the sheaf of papers Mezor rescued from his nest. “Here. Look at this. You wanted to know General Leuther’s plans? I found the map of the two tunnels in his headquarters.”

Cyrus shoves the topmost paper at him. Mezor smoothes the paper out carefully to avoid tearing it with his claws. “You took this?”

“I copied it,” Cyrus says proudly.

It’s a roughly drawn map of the Court’s lower levels, with Mount Hythe’s borders outlined more cautiously, two half-shaded lines pointing into the outlying lands of the Pit. It’s immediately obvious that Leuther’s knowledge of the lower levels is incomplete. The tunnel passes under the area the King dubbed the tournament of souls, where he forced human souls to fight each other for the dubious honor of entering the Hellspring and becoming demons. Under the tournament grounds, Mezor knows there’s a network of other tunnels not marked on the map.

He taps a spot below the eastern half of the tournament grounds. “This ground is unstable.”

“Exactly!” Cyrus points to another section, directly under the mountain. “So is this. The King ordered these passages to be blocked off ages ago. None of this was marked on the General’s original map. What I don’t understand is why you want to know?—”

He stops. Mezor can practically see the cogs turning in his head. He flicks a lock of dark hair out of his face quickly, a movement so laden with eagerness Mezor must tamp down the urge to pin him down and bite him.

“The place we’re in now,” Cyrus breathes, staring at the map. His eyes dart across it. “ We’re below the mountain. We must be. You don’t want Leuther finding it.”

Mezor’s heart thunders strangely. Cyrus is smart—too smart for his own good. He points at a spot on the map right next to the planned excavation. “We’re here. Three levels deep.”

Cyrus nods impatiently. “Right. You have to stay abreast of the progress—even the cave-ins could cause trouble. So you need me, you see. To report on the tunnel.” A flicker of triumph crosses his eyes, but he looks down again and brings his claws together behind his back. Feigning shyness. “In between that, I can—I can be your vergis. There’s a lot I don’t know, so you’d have to teach me. But I’m good at pretending.”

“ Pretending? ” A growl builds in Mezor’s throat as he watches Cyrus sway between uncertainty and confidence. The bond stirs with the sheer strength of his conflicting emotions. It doesn’t take Mezor much effort to untangle the myriad threads of Cyrus’s thoughts:

He desires me.

I can use that.

Need to stay focused.

But I still want? —

The last thought devolves into a maelstrom of hold-touch-close, threaded with arousal.

The poor little demon is all mixed-up. Yet Mezor can also sense his determination. Cyrus might be good at pretending, but Mezor is not. He does desire Cyrus. I can be your vergis— those words are like brilliant explosions, sweet-tart want on his tongue, running down his throat to whet his appetite. There’s no small measure of guilt in there, too—he owes Cyrus after leaving him to the bond sickness.

He finds his voice before he can think better of it. “A temporary agreement, then. Be my vergis when I’m here, and keep me apprised of Leuther’s plans. Our time together will strengthen the bond. When my work is done our agreement will end—and I’ll tell the King you did everything I asked.”

Cyrus nods shortly. He practically trembles, he’s so taut with emotion. “Good.”

“Are you certain?” Mezor asks, one final out, but he can tell Cyrus won’t take it.

“I can learn to be a good vergis,” Cyrus says defensively. It’s obvious he’s ducking around the question. “I had a book I used to read. It’s where I learned about things like…knotting.”

He looks up through his lashes and Mezor’s gut clenches with want. Oh, that look is sharp as the point of an arrow sliding home between his ribs. But there’s real longing there, too. Whether it’s for the eventual freedom Mezor can offer, relief from the pain of the bond, or even just the touch of a primus to soothe him…it hardly matters. In Cyrus’s dark eyes he sees himself hurtling toward his own doom, and he can’t hold back.

He will make it delightful for Cyrus—teach him to want things he never dreamed of wanting.

“Let me show you something,” Mezor says, standing.

What he aches to do is flip Cyrus over, open those tender thighs dusted with fine silvery hairs and press his nose to the place where that scent is strongest. To reward him for being so clever, preferably with his tongue.

But that would be a disservice to him.

Instead he takes down his robe from its hook and rifles through his chest for something Cyrus can wear that’s not his ridiculous uniform.

“Put this on,” he says, holding up a shirt.

Cyrus frowns. He lifts the shirt over his horns. “Why?”

“Hmm.” It’s too big, of course, but in a rather delicious way. “Decency.”

Cyrus snorts, then falls quiet as he remembers he’s supposed to be playing at being coy and teachable.

Who knows what that book taught him about vergis. If it came from Mount Hythe’s library it was written by angels, and they have some bizarre notions. After all, they were the ones who built a viewing room for mated pairs to fuck in while their entire upper caste watched. Mezor might be tickled by the idea in the heat of the moment, but even he can see it’s perverse.

He leads Cyrus out of his bedchamber and through the main room. Cyrus keeps his hands linked behind his back, but his eyes fly back and forth, absorbing everything. He’s silent until Mezor opens the door. Then his mouth drops open in real awe and he gasps.

“The grotto.” Mezor shuts the door behind them.

Entering the grotto is always bittersweet. Once his home was an intrinsic part of Hell’s biome. The stream, the vines, the moss underfoot—all connected to the rest of the land by threads of life. But when the realms split open and Mount Hythe fell, bringing corruption spilling into Hell, the grotto was cut off from the rest and preserved under the mountain.

He sometimes wonders if it’s the reason he can’t sleep. He had this place, an uncorrupted gem in the heart of their razed lands. His brothers had nothing. Their homes burned. Their lands died. All the while, Mezor hid like a coward in his cave.

“What…is this?” Cyrus spins. He gapes up at the ceiling far above, where glimmering stalactites drip with water and glowing mosses.

“It’s Hell as it used to be.” He can’t help feeling proud as Cyrus stares with wide-eyed delight.

Cyrus kneels and buries his fingers in the moss. Light flickers under his fingers and he gasps. “It’s like you. All lit up.”

A chuckle escapes Mezor’s lips. “Yes. We’re made of the same stuff.”

“What did you want to show me?” Cyrus asks, his usual wariness falling away.

Mezor has to hold himself back from scooping the little demon into his arms. You don’t need to be taught anything about being a vergis, least of all by me. You’re perfect already. He’s going to do himself a lot of harm with this fool’s arrangement.

“This way.”

He takes Cyrus around the back of the cottage. There, a stone plinth rises out of the earth, and atop it, a pillar that comes to his chest. On its plateau is a golden sphere.

The gate is old—even older than him. The plinth, the pillar, and the sphere itself were all gifts. Long ago Hell had open borders, sharing knowledge and craft with angels—and even sometimes humans. The gate is angel-crafted, like the world seeds. It’s attuned to Mezor alone. Not even angel-craft lasts forever, though, and its power is running dry.

“This is a gate into the rest of Hell,” he tells Cyrus. “The grotto is precious, but it’s not what I care most about protecting. Without the gate my task would be nearly impossible. It cannot be damaged or destroyed.”

Cyrus’s eyes widen. “Can you go anywhere?”

“There are gateposts across Hell—I can reach any of them.”

“Will you show me?” he asks eagerly.

Mezor shakes his head. “It wouldn’t be safe. Neither the gate nor the wilds are what they once were.”

He doesn’t miss how Cyrus’s face falls. “Of course.”

If things were different…

Mezor bites back the words. If things were different, what? Would he take Cyrus through the gate and show him the wonders of the land of eternal midnight? There’s little left that’s wondrous about it.

He puts a hand on Cyrus’s slim shoulder. “Come. You should rest.”

Back inside the cottage Cyrus falls asleep quickly, still engulfed in Mezor’s shirt and nestled in his long-unused bed. White linen and silver skin gleam in the luminescence of the indoor garden. Cyrus’s dark lashes flutter as he dreams. Mezor hasn’t used this room to sleep in since…well, since he stopped sleeping. Instead it serves as his garden. Here, he hoards slivers of life away from Hell’s corruption. He tends to them as Cyrus sleeps, reluctant to leave his side just yet.

Cyrus looks deceptively sweet among his rescued flora. Only a hint of his waking fire shows, a furrow of his brow as something goes awry in his dream. It isn’t long before Mezor gives up pretending he’s not checking on Cyrus constantly. He gives in and draws his chair up next to the bed. What he wants is to climb in and draw Cyrus into his chest, skin to skin. But he’s loathe to disturb Cyrus—he needs to rest. Their closeness alone will ease the bond sickness.

Feasting his eyes is one thing he can indulge in, and he does.

When he met Branok for the first time inside Mount Hythe, when he was a mere human soul with eyes that burned, he looked upon Mezor’s form with greed. Branok saw what many did—a creature of power and strength. Branok needed that power. He stepped into the Hellspring and shaped himself in Mezor’s image: a tall, strong primus with deadly claws and teeth, and horns sprouting out of his head. He called himself a demon, and he wanted to create an army of others like him.

But his control over the Hellspring is still limited. In the end, it gives each soul what it wants the most.

The Hellspring gave Cyrus the body of a vergis. What that means about him…the knowledge makes Mezor ache. His soul wants be protected. To be treasured. To be loved like no other love, to become two souls living as one. A life that’s impossible in this broken world.

His claws dig into the straw tick.

What games the King likes to play with us all .

Cyrus stirs, the bond flickering with awareness. He rolls over, eyes still shut, and his horns catch on the bedding and send a puff of fur into the air. His foot stretches toward Mezor.

“You’re awake,” he mumbles.

A shiver drifts over him as Cyrus’s claws brush his arm. “I don’t sleep.”

“Hmm.” Cyrus peeks at him, silver eyes hazy with sleep. His brow furrows. “‘M going to be a good vergis. But you could be a better primus.”

A spark flares deep inside him. “Is that so?”

“Want to be covered in your scent.” Cyrus rubs his cheek against the bedding. His eyes darken. “All over.”

Mezor gives in to his urges and climbs onto the bed with him, his blood already thickening with desire. “Are you saying I’m neglecting your needs?”

“Maybe.” A playful smirk dances across Cyrus’s mouth, and he arches into Mezor. His scent rises headily into the air, mixing with Mezor’s own scent and the rich sweetness of the buds surrounding them. A rumble of satisfaction spills from his chest as Mezor gathers him close.

Mezor strokes his flank. Cyrus goes limp in his arms soon after, sinking back into dreams, and his ardor banks to a gentle warmth.

Against all intelligent thought, Mezor brushes his lips over Cyrus’s forehead.

“Dream of my touch, bright flame.”