Page 29

MEZOR

The bond erupts while Mezor is on the other side of the gate. Rage. Fear. Guilt. His heart convulses. For a terrible moment, he fears the worst.

The gate trip back is a blur, more than usual. When he comes down from the pedestal to see Cyrus gripping his elbows with white-knuckled hands, his face pale, something cracks deep inside him.

I need him to be safe.

“Tell me what happened,” he demands, striding toward Cyrus.

The little demon is smeared with black ichor and smells like fear, like death. He bares his short fangs in a grimace of anger. “They found my nest. And someone was killed—one of the Grey Company.”

Instantly Mezor understands. Cyrus has been spying for them. Pulling as many threads as he can.

“Are you hurt?” He barely manages not to grab Cyrus and check every inch of him. His primus snarls like a caged animal. “Did they touch you?”

“No.” Cyrus lets his arms fall to his side with a shudder. “Only Sabinus. They let me go—I don’t know why. They probably thought I had nowhere to run. But there’ll be more executions.”

“You cannot go back.”

“I can’t stay away!” Cyrus’s eyes flash with silver fire. “What am I to do? I have my duties—my work for the King, for you. I can’t do any of that from outside the Court.”

Mezor closes the distance between them, letting the taste of Cyrus’s bitter fear ground him. He grips Cyrus’s shoulders. He had no one. But now he has me, and I’ll be damned if I let him feel alone. “Stay here with me. Let General Leuther ferret out those he can, until his attention turns elsewhere.”

Cyrus’s shoulders tremble in his hands. “I’m useless here.”

“You’re safe here,” Mezor growls. “The rest doesn’t matter.”

“But Leuther’s plans?—”

“Cyrus.” Mezor slides his thumb up the delicate jaw to cup his cheek. He exhales, trying to control his emotions, but it’s no use. “Come with me. Let me show you something.”

Taking Cyrus through the gate is the easiest thing he’s ever done. It feels right. It feels like coming home. For a moment he forgets that Hell will never again be home for him.

They exit the gate in a burst of white flame and Cyrus stumbles onto the grass with a gasp. His eyes are huge, fear and wonder warring in them.

“What—?” His head whips around. “What was that?”

“The aether. It can be disorienting,” Mezor explains.

Cyrus straightens his mess of hair and tugs at his uniform out of habit as he stares at their surroundings. In a moment he’s composed, his fear buried. It gives Mezor a flicker of pride, as if he’s the one responsible for Cyrus’s steel nerves. Mine, his primus insists, still wound up.

“What is this place?” Cyrus takes in the meadow, turning. They’re on the edge of the night forest. The eternal dawn glows in his eyes, washing him in gentle light that softens his edges. Slowly, his tension is overtaken by curiosity. “Is that a river?”

“The sea,” Mezor tells him.

“It’s so big,” he breathes.

“It’s bigger than it looks. Endless, to some.”

“It must be deep.” His gaze turns distant. “Sometimes I swim in the dam behind the forge hall, and when I dive under it’s like entering a different world. A silent, peaceful world. It felt like that in the aether.”

It’s closer to the truth than Cyrus could know. “Its depths are unknowable. Those who enter this sea don’t come out.”

“Where do they go?”

“Nowhere. Everywhere.” Mezor waits for him to turn back. “It’s the end of their journey. This is the edge of Hell—the last resting place.”

At last Cyrus tears his eyes from the horizon and looks up at Mezor, realization dawning. “We’re truly outside the Court. This is your realm.”

“We’re as far from Mount Hythe as we can be,” he replies.

Cyrus’s chest rises as he takes a deep breath of the sea air. “You said Hell was dead, but this place is beautiful.”

“Not everything has been twisted and blackened by rot. This is one of the few places left untouched. I want to show you something more important, though. This way, through the trees.”

He turns away from the sea and Cyrus follows. The light fades as they enter the forest, darkness enfolding them like a sea itself. The effects of the corruption grow more evident. Behind him, Cyrus silently struggles to wade through the thick mud and climb over the broad fallen trunks. Mezor slows subtly to let him catch up. He doesn’t want to leave Cyrus alone in the wilds, not for a moment.

When Mezor pauses, pretending to catch his breath, Cyrus looks around.

“Is this all caused by the corruption?”

“The rot doesn’t touch everything directly. It eats away at the forest in pieces. When one part dies, the rest can’t recover.”

“Why would General Leuther want to leave Mount Hythe for this? He’ll be king of nothing.”

Mezor can’t help a chuckle. He wishes he could see Leuther’s face when confronted with those bold words. “You’re not wrong. But there are dregs of life here and there. Only the most tenacious survive, and Leuther thinks he’s among their number.”

Cyrus snorts. “He wants to step out of the King’s shadow, but he can’t even keep the Court together. The King would have hung Sabinus’s body in the feast hall as a warning for all—am I truly the only one Leuther wants to threaten? I’m just one spy.”

“The King’s shadow is long and dark indeed,” Mezor mutters.

“I’m so sick of it. All of us climbing over bodies to get our share.”

The despair in Cyrus’s voice cuts deep. The King’s brand of tyranny was all-consuming—no one was spared. Except Cyrus. Now, in this new world, he’s more of a target than ever. It’s bitter irony that Cyrus would prefer the King’s cruelty to General Leuther’s.

The clearing looms ahead. Mezor hasn’t yet returned to the sites where he’s planted the world seets, afraid to find he’s failed. But through the trees comes a flicker of light.

“You will find a way to a better life,” Mezor tells Cyrus firmly. He lifts Cyrus over the last fallen log.

“Put me down!” Cyrus sputters. “I can climb on my own.”

Mezor lets his hands linger for a moment, longing to pull Cyrus close, to be the one to show him better exists. But he won’t make promises he can’t fulfil.

“We’re here,” he says instead, letting Cyrus squirm away.

Cyrus gasps.

The clearing has been transformed. Glimmering flowers tumble down the slope toward a crystalline pool. New shoots erupt underfoot, spilling their bright scent into the air. New branches sprout from the trees where they face into the clearing. And a single, bright sapling grows on the bank of the pond.

Even Mezor is rendered silent.

Branok was right. Brilliant madman.

The sapling is soaking up the corruption, pulling it from the earth and turning it into energy. Already its roots will have burrowed into his sleeping brother’s heart to borrow his strength. When the tree is fully grown, its roots will reach back to the origin of its creation—the Hellspring itself. Together with the rest of the world trees it will create a nexus of immense power.

What the King plans to do with that power…he doesn’t like to imagine.

But Hell will heal.

“Is this your work?” Cyrus reaches out to the sapling and strokes its bark. Tiny pinpricks of light move under his fingers.

“The King made them. I only plant them.”

Cyrus’s expression grows somber. “You have everything at your fingertips. Confidence. Wisdom. Power. You speak to the King like he’s your equal. He needs you—otherwise he’d do this himself. What am I in comparison? How can I find my way when I have nothing?”

Mezor’s chest tightens. Most days, he doesn’t feel wise or powerful at all.

“You will. Trust yourself.”

Cyrus grimaces. “How can I? I thought my nest was safe. I thought the Grey Company could help me. But obviously I was a fool.”

“Then trust me.” Mezor’s heart squeezes at the uncertainty in Cyrus’s eyes. “I’ve seen your soul inside and out, haven’t I? Your courage and strength will cut through the dark and reveal your path.”

Cyrus’s gaze falls. “It’s hard to believe that.”

Mezor gets to his knees in the grass, taking Cyrus’s hands. Longing sweeps through him, a fierce urge to protect Cyrus, to give him everything. “You’re not alone. Take what’s mine—anything you need, it’s yours. I will help you.”

Cyrus searches his eyes, uncertainty written all over his face.

“Are you offering because of the bond?” he whispers, his eyes begging for the truth.

Mezor grips his hands tight. “Because it’s you ,” he growls. “Not because of the bond. Not because you’re a vergis. Because your bright soul deserves better than this ugly world.”

Cyrus’s cheeks darken. Mezor smells his approval a moment before the words come.

“When you say things like that, it makes me…” He wets his lower lip, making it glisten.

Mezor holds his breath.

“…It makes me feel strange,” he finishes, barely audible.

Heat flushes Mezor from head to toe. Cyrus’s scent rises abruptly. Mezor’s nostrils flare and he parts his lips, eagerly seeking more of the luscious warmth that flows from his vergis. The bond swells with desire, Cyrus’s need making itself known.

“I’ll say them them over and over,” Mezor vows. “Until they’re the first words in your head when you wake and the last when you fall asleep. Because they’re true.”

Cyrus’s gaze is ravenous. “They can’t be true.”

“I’ll say them until you believe them. Every hour of the day.”

Cyrus shudders. Suddenly he pulls his hands out of Mezor’s grip and fumbles for his buttons. “Make me forget. I need to forget. I need something—good.” He throws his coat to the grass. “Please.”

Mezor surges forward. He brushes Cyrus’s trembling hands out of the way and flicks open the ties on his shirt, discarding it. The undershirt follows swiftly, leaving Cyrus’s gleaming silver skin exposed to the air. Mezor yanks him close, no longer able to resist, pressing his mouth to Cyrus’s warm, bare chest, his stomach, his hip, biting each spot then licking it soothingly. His skin tastes of tastes salt and bitterness, tipping Mezor over the edge from adrenaline into all-encompassing hunger. Cyrus squirms out of his pants with a whimper. He’s already stiff, his dark cock pointing to the sky, and the scent of his musk and slick mingles with the clean air in a way that fills Mezor with primal desire.

“Don’t stop,” Cyrus groans.

“You’re perfect,” he murmurs, a refrain he’ll never get tired of. Especially when it makes Cyrus flush with pleasure. “I wish I could keep you here forever, in this clearing, in the dusk. I would mate you on this spot and fuck you into ecstasy every day.”

Cyrus moans and grabs his horns, hands shaking. “Mezor. Inside me—now.”

Mezor tips him to the earth gently and the flowers burst into puffs of glittering stardust around them. Cyrus winds his arms around Mezor’s neck and begs with his eyes.

“I need it,” he whispers. “Need you.”

Mezor seals his lips over Cyrus’s and enters him in one stroke, swallowing his howl of pleasure. His insides are silken and gripping, pulling Mezor’s cock in. Mezor digs his claws into the earth for leverage and fucks into him with a raw, wild noise. Cyrus buries his face in Mezor’s shoulder. A sudden, sharp pain blooms where his teeth sink into Mezor’s skin.

“ Yes ,” he snarls.

He drives his cock into Cyrus’s quivering hole with ferocious strength. Cyrus takes it all. His proto-knot swells, and the bond swells with it, billowing up through his chest and into his throat. Cyrus tenses under him as Mezor’s bulge pushes against his hole.

“Knot me,” he sobs. “Fill me. Own me.”

“I don’t need a knot to own you,” Mezor growls, but he has no intention of letting his bulge go to waste. He won’t knot Cyrus—not even now. Instead he bullies his swollen base past the resistance of Cyrus’s hole, tighter outside of heat, until it slides in and locks them together. Cyrus’s moan catches and his mouth drops open silently. Mezor’s blood shines on his fangs.

A faint whine comes from Cyrus’s throat as he adjusts to the swell inside him. Then his hole tenses, slick flooding his passage, and his whine rises in pitch. His eyes gleam wetly. His cock spurts pre-come, and thick, pearly seed begins shooting across his chest.

Mezor’s peak rises from the very core of his soul at the sight of Cyrus spilling completely untouched, his chest heaving, sweat gleaming in the light of the world tree. Cyrus goes limp under him, limbs soft and eyes glazed. But his hole still squeezes Mezor’s cock, and Mezor shoves his proto-knot deeper with a snarl, flooding the tight passage with hot come. His balls churn as pleasure races up and down his spine.

Still buried inside, he slides his tongue across Cyrus’s scent gland, licking away the scent blocker he’s left there to expose his natural smell.

Then, finally, satisfaction.

He buries his nose in that patch as Cyrus shudders underneath him, his breath slowing and his heartbeat steadying. “Perfect,” he murmurs for the hundredth time.

Cyrus’s claws dig into his skin. “My primus.”