Page 29 of Zel (The GriMM Tales #2)

Eleven

ZEL

Z el blinked awake slowly. He had slept more deeply in Ulrich’s bed than he had in his own since coming here.

Perhaps better than in his bed back home.

The room materialized slowly as he opened his eyes, and although he assumed he was alone now, the memories of last night, of finally giving himself to someone fully and having all his desires fulfilled, would keep him company until—

“Finally awake, little cabbage?”

The bed dipped as a body rolled toward Zel, with long arms wrapping around him and tugging him flush against the powerful figure behind him.

Zel almost didn’t believe it when he glanced over his shoulder and found the violet eyes and starlight curls that framed Ulrich’s handsome face. “You stayed,” he said breathlessly.

“This is my room.”

Zel snorted. “But you don’t need to sleep. Do you?”

“I do not, but your warmth made it difficult to want to leave the bed.” Ulrich lifted up enough above Zel to coil more possessively around him and claimed a kiss.

It was a slow, indulgent, deep kiss that made Zel twitch between his legs with ripening hardness, just as he felt a similar reaction from Ulrich against his hip.

Zel deepened their kiss further, clinging to Ulrich just as greedily.

There were no secrets between them now. None from Zel anyway. He didn’t have to pretend anything anymore. But that didn’t mean he was free.

“Zel?” Ulrich questioned when Zel stopped reciprocating and tensed in his hold.

“It’s nothing.”

Ulrich frowned.

“Nothing I want to think about until I am more awake. I am still buzzing from last night and basking in the memory of your touch.”

“Is that your way of saying you are too sore for another round this morn?”

“Ask me after breakfast.”

Now it was Ulrich who laughed. “Breakfast in bed it is.” He chastely kissed Zel’s lips. “Unless of course you’d rather—”

“Breakfast in bed sounds wonderful. With coffee?”

“It is my pleasure to serve.” Ulrich kissed him again before rising.

He was naked as he crossed the room, striking in his powerful, otherworldly figure.

His blackened arm with its painfully glowing veins while out of contact with Zel’s hair didn’t mar a single bit of him.

Zel still wished it would stay healed, since it caused Ulrich so much pain, but he liked the feeling of claws across his skin.

As Ulrich conducted with his hands a few paces away, summoning a cart on wheels and all the trimmings of a hearty breakfast, including steaming coffee, he also manifested a robe to cover himself.

Zel mourned the loss of the view, but Ulrich was still sensuous looking with the robe parted down to his navel.

When he moved, rolling the cart toward Zel’s side of the bed, his bare legs peeked through too.

“Does this please you, Zel?”

“Delicious looking.” Zel eyed not the food yet, but Ulrich.

“You can taste more of me whenever you wish.” Ulrich bent for another kiss.

No rapunzel was ever served with breakfast, but as Zel began to eat and enjoy his coffee, with Ulrich having pulled over a chair to sit opposite him at the cart and partake as well, he kept thinking about the lettuce.

He ate it every evening and had done so all his life.

Because Ulrich had wanted him healthy, robust, ripe with natural-born magic.

Natural-born magic…

Zel no longer feared Ulrich meant to consume his soul, but that phrase plagued him, and his appetite began to wane. Only someone with natural-born magic, like Zel, possessed what was necessary to drain Ulrich of his magic and leave him vulnerable enough to…

Zel set down the bite of bread he had been about to take.

“Is everything all right?” Ulrich asked.

“You said someone born of magic could drain yours the way you drain souls.”

“I did say that.” Ulrich set his next bite of food down too.

“There are few ways such a thing could be done. Technically, someone not born of magic could accomplish the same, but it would take far longer for them to amass the amount of power necessary. The latter was how I became immortal to begin with.”

“By amassing enough power to drain someone else?”

“In part. In my case there was more to the exchange.” He waved at Zel with a curl of his blackened fingers and then spread them wide to show the bisected circle carved into his palm. “With continuous blood sacrifice, this symbol can grant long life, but long-lived is not the same as immortal.”

Lothar . Now Zel remembered. Lothar bore the same symbol on one of his rings!

“For eternal life, a larger sacrifice must be made, and it must be willingly given.”

“Willingly? Someone let you drain them?”

“No.” Ulrich grinned. “Hence the curse. It would have consumed my entire body after forcibly draining someone. To keep the curse contained, I had to drain all of my closest and most powerful companions. My friends. It had to be them, for no one else was near enough to me in magical strength. It is unlikely anyone but someone as powerful as I was could have consumed enough souls or so quickly as to outrun the curse. Even I almost failed, but I was determined.”

Zel recalled that the orphans who had remained with Ulrich the longest and who’d seemed the most corrupted over time had eventually vanished from the scenes of his past, and by the end, Ulrich had stood alone.

“For a long time, I felt no loss for betraying my friends, no regret,” Ulrich continued.

“The last I consumed, a man gifted in shadow magic, used to say, ‘What’s one more life if it’s worth taking?

’ I said the same to him when I killed him, and he smiled before I took his soul.

We had all grown cold and cruel by then.

Only the physical pain of my curse prevented the numbness from overtaking me as the centuries passed.

To drain my power now would require someone of equal strength, or someone born with magic, curated for many winters to expedite its growth. ”

“With lettuce from your own garden,” Zel confirmed. “You weren’t surprised nor upset to find my dagger or to discover me having dispatched that awful man last night, because as you admitted, you knew exactly why I came here.”

“I should hope so.” Ulrich held Zel’s stare without blinking.

“You wanted me to discover all this, about how you might die, because you want me to drain you, to be powerful enough to succeed and… kill you.”

“Such a horrified look on that sweet face. Is it not as fulfilling for you if your target wishes to die?”

Zel had never been quick to tears, but ever since the morn he’d broken down before his trek to the tower, his eyes could grow hot in moments.

“Forgive my awful jest.” Ulrich rolled the cart out of the way and moved to the bed to sit at Zel’s hip. “That was unthinking of me. But yes, I always knew why you came here, and that you are…” He brought his lips to Zel’s ear and finished in a gravelly whisper, “such a fair lad.”

Zel’s eyes sprang wide at the triggered memory of the old woman he had quite literally run into on the night of his final assassination.

“A useful trick.” Ulrich shrugged. “One I even taught to my apprentice. Disguises are always useful, but unassuming ones, weak, frail ones that appear less threatening, are better suited for manipulating others. I was just so curious to get an early look at you.”

As surprised as Zel felt, the amazement quickly faded. Of course Ulrich had known everything all along. He had planned for this, for every step, every stage, to happen exactly as he had wanted it to. “But why? Why do you want to die? To give all this up. You have everything.”

Ulrich sighed as if he had heard such reasoning before.

“Immortality itself is more of a curse than most believe until they have it.

I initially planned for you to drain enough from me to become immortal in my place—as punishment, not a gift.

I assumed you would have been raised cruelly, deserving of such an end, being the babe of thieves and assassins, but you proved me wrong.

You can be brutal when threatened, but everything in nature has defenses.

The truly vile people of this world deserve to be dispatched, and I am one of those.

“When the time comes, you will still be able to drain enough from me that I can be killed, but you will not have to suffer with immortality unless you wish for it, and I plead with you, Zel, do not wish for that. It is the true curse even if it takes ages to realize it.”

Zel’s eyes were still hot, burning, but the scowl he formed kept any tears from falling. “You never wanted someone to marry.”

“No. I wanted an end. But you almost could have made me reconsider.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Zel—”

“Please, Ulrich.” One tear slipped free, streaking down Zel’s cheek, and as Ulrich reached to wipe it away, Zel grasped his hand and held it to his face, pleading, “Stay. Live . For me.”

“Zel…” Ulrich tried again, but Zel spoke on, still holding Ulrich’s hand to his face.

“At least let me say my piece before you answer.”

Ulrich sighed again but nodded. “If you insist.”

Zel brought Ulrich’s hand to his lips and kissed the inside of his palm where the mark that had become his curse was carved. Then Zel tossed the covers from him and left the bed. Ulrich’s gaze upon his backside as he strode across the room was potent enough to warm Zel’s skin.

“If you want my attention on your words, Zel, you are making it rather difficult to focus.”

Zel pursed his lips as he retrieved another of Ulrich’s robes, leaving it, like Ulrich had, parted to just past his navel where he cinched it closed.

“Try harder,” he volleyed back. His still unbound hair dragged behind him like a train of spun gold.

“Can you project into this room part of my past like you did your own?”

“You can project it yourself,” Ulrich said. “You have more magic in you than you yet know how to wield. As with magically braiding or unbraiding your hair, simply will it.”