9. Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

T here hadn’t been any shouting, which Briar appreciated. His nerves were already shot. Dealing with a fight between two estranged siblings who could barely tolerate each other would’ve sent his anxiety skyrocketing. And, quite frankly, he didn’t want to deal with the clean-up. He listened to the heavy front door open and close as Uriel took his leave. Three minutes later, whispers on the second floor turned to footsteps on the staircase, and slowly but surely, the house filled with gossip.

The library cocooned him. He paced in front of the windows. Shame and regret and anger, oh, anger , needled him. Rage contaminated his body. He felt it everywhere—stored behind his kneecaps, burning in his elbows, electric and familiar beneath his clippings. Anger came, it took, and it ravaged him, and then, just like that, it vanished, and all Briar had left was exhaustion. He kept pacing, legs restless, itching to run, and scrubbed his hand through his hair. There was no place for him to lock away his memories. No attic where he could store the what ifs— what if I could save this one, what if he was right, what if I deserved this, what if Michael needs me —and no basement to plant his horrid, useless anger. The past, albeit recent, had dwindled. Every second before the auction had dimmed, gone unnoticed, and now, everything was there again, sprouting thorns in his stomach.

Aster opened the door slowly. He said nothing at first, simply turned the lock. Briar threw his feet at the floor, pacing past the windows once, twice, a third time. “Briar,” he tested, and took a step forward. “Would you like to talk?”

“What if that child dies?” Briar blurted. As soon as he spoke, he couldn’t stop. “Have I made a mistake? Have I damned someone over my own pride? I have, haven’t I? All this, because I couldn’t fathom being in a room with him. All this, because I’m too cowardly to face him. I deny someone help to. . . to. . . what? To play these avoidance games for the rest of eternity—”

“For as long as it takes,” Aster said. He tapped the secretary as he crossed the room. “You don’t owe the High Court anything.”

“To what end, though? When do I stop holding onto this hate and anger and fear? When will it let me be?”

“When you’re ready. No sooner than that.”

Briar huffed. “Isn’t it my choice? Shouldn’t I have a say in the place I call home? Don’t I deserve to turn away from the people who ostracized me?”

At this point, Briar barely understood his own thoughts. He knew what he felt, and he knew what he wanted, and those two things contradicted the person he strived to be. Unselfish. Forgiving. Merciful.

Still, he asked, “Haven’t they taken enough?” Briar halted in place on his tenth or twentieth back-and-forth, blocked by Aster’s wide chest.

Aster nodded curtly. “Yes, it’s your choice. You do have a say. Fuck them.” He grabbed Briar’s quivering fingertips and squeezed. “And yes, they’ve taken enough.”

“I don’t want to feel this way anymore,” he whispered. “I’m tired, Aster. I’m tired of waiting for a few feathers to give me hope.”

“They will grow back.”

“I want to believe you.”

“You’re allowed to be selfish. You don’t belong to the High Court, you don’t belong to me, you only belong to you. We both know there are other medics. Uriel and Michael can try to manipulate the situation, but if that child dies, it won’t be your fault. It will be theirs.”

Briar dropped his forehead onto Aster’s shoulder. “I feel responsible.”

“You aren’t.”

“I know, but still.”

Aster heaved a sigh. “Where do we go from here?”

“The shower,” he said, weakly.

“We’re done talking, then?”

“For now.”

“Will you look at me?”

Briar lifted his head.

Aster’s big hands cradled his jaw, fingers light on either side of his neck. He smelled like horse and pine. “You’re safe here. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know,” Briar said. His chest fluttered, as it always did when Aster met his eyes for too long. He brushed his mouth over Aster’s chin, teasing at his lips. “Would you have fought for me, Great Duke? Challenged Uriel in my honor?”

“I would’ve punched him directly in the face,” Aster said, the same way someone would say obviously , and laughed under his breath. “No, I wouldn’t have challenged him. I would’ve kicked his ass.”

Briar tipped his head back and laughed, warming in the presence of Aster’s hypnotic, youthful voice, and his ridiculous, human dialect. He sighed through lingering chuckles. “You sound like a teenager.”

“Would you rather I speak with dignity, darling?”

“Speak however you want,” Briar said, and blushed terribly. He pushed against Aster, nudging him toward the door. He wanted to get him upstairs, into the shower. He wanted to keep the lights off. Find him in the dark, naked and soaking wet.

Aster lit a single candle. The light bent and bounced, landing on the black tile and beaming through the steam. Outside the washroom, the house energized again. Briar heard Sam come through the front door. The jingle of ornaments. Laughter and music. But his focus remained solely on Aster.

They fucked with Briar’s palms pressed against the tile. He rested his forehead on the wet surface, standing on shaky legs after Aster had gone down on him, fingered him open, and shoved him against the wall. Hot breath hit the back of his neck. Aster’s chest bumped his clippings, mostly healed over with new, delicate flesh, and he gripped Briar’s wrists hard, holding them beside his head. Aster wasn’t careful with him. He bit and sucked at Briar’s nape. His hips snapped roughly. The sound of their bodies meeting filled the shower, along with the splattering water and Briar’s hoarse moans.

Everything faded—worries, fear, anxiety—replaced by animalistic pleasure. Briar arched his back. Flexed his hands. Curled his knuckles until they paled. Fullness sat heavy in his groin, thickening with every quick stroke. Aster let his wrists go and grabbed his throat, a sudden movement, causing Briar’s pulse to double, his head to spin, his orgasm to take him by surprise. He gasped as Aster crowded him against the wall, thrusting harder, breathing faster, and when Briar reached backward to find him, to touch him, Aster snatched his hand, slamming it above his head. Briar felt Aster’s release, a trembling heat deep inside him, and memorized the hitch in his breath, the vulnerability ringing in his gritted moan.

Aster loosened his grip and guided Briar into a messy kiss. Briar rested his temple on the tile. His body hummed, satiated and limp. They stayed like that, lips hungry and lazy, until Aster pulled out and buried his fingers inside Briar, stroking his swollen, sensitive skin. Briar squirmed. Whimpered. His knees threatened to buckle, but he gave Aster his weight, sank his teeth into the Great Duke’s wrist, and allowed another wave of painful, blissful pleasure to wash over him. His cock strained, leaking and twitching.

“Enough,” Briar choked out, muscles clenched, holding onto hot, aching pulses. “Please, enough .”

Carefully, Aster pulled away. His lips dusted Briar’s flushed cheek. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, just. . . just dazed. You brute,” he said, laughing under his breath.

Aster purred, proudly.

“Did Clementine actually murder her husband?” Briar asked. Somehow, he hadn’t stopped wondering.

Aster nipped his shoulder. “Yes. He left their baby in a hot car. Tragic, really, but according to local law enforcement, an accident. Clementine didn’t agree.”

“Oh.” Maybe he shouldn’t have asked.

“Sometimes murder isn’t the answer. Sometimes, if you ask me, it is.”

“But she ate him. . . ?”

“Consuming what we most hate and most love has the potential to become ritualistic.” He stepped away and snatched the soap. Briar turned, still too wobbly to stand on his own, and put his back against the slippery tile. Aster arched a brow, shaking out his wings. “She also loves to cook, so.” He shrugged. “Maybe she needed to execute her revenge in a way she already understood.”

Briar didn’t get it, but he nodded anyway. “She doesn’t seem capable of killing.”

“We’re all capable of it,” Aster said. He ran sudsy hands over Briar’s torso.

“Have you killed before?”

Aster furrowed his brow, lips splitting for a silent laugh. He kissed Briar on the mouth. “Of course, I have.”

Yes. Obviously. Of course, he had . Briar had, too. The High Court called it cleansing and extraction and purification, but life was life, judgement was judgement, choices were choices, and killing was killing. But Briar had discontinued that life. He’d let it go the moment he’d signed away his rights at the Celestial Auction. Before that, even. As he reached over his shoulder and found blood instead of feathers. Farther back, when a simple, ignorable life was taken. That moment—Michael’s blade; a girl’s throat—had been a revelation.

Still, even as he took shelter at this old, haunted estate, with this peculiar Demon King, and his equally peculiar friends, Briar found himself restless. Wondering about a stranger’s life and a job he’d refused and the life he might’ve wasted.

“Peppermint or lemongrass,” Aster asked. He pushed his fingers through Briar’s hair, massaging shampoo into his scalp.

“Either,” Briar said.

“The last time we did this I brewed the wrong thing, so either you pick one or I’ll make both.”

“Well, surely that isn’t true.”

“I made an entire pot of Earl Grey, you made a face, and then you made another, separate pot of jasmine. So, yes. It is true.”

Briar snorted a laugh. “Fine, peppermint.” He rinsed the larger, longer feathers on Aster’s wings.

Aster kissed him again. Mouth, forehead. “Picky,” he whispered, matter-of-factly. He let Briar finish with his wings, then stepped out of the shower and toweled off. “Prepare yourself for an onslaught of invasive questions, by the way. Nobody in this house has any boundaries when it comes to gossip.”

“I’ve noticed,” Briar said on a sigh.

Aster offered a small smile and crept through the door, careful not to let much steam out.

Briar took his time washing. He stretched his calves and reached for his toes, scrubbing sweat, horse, sex, and conflict from his skin. Once he finished, he dried. Dabbed oil on his wrists and hipbones and behind his ears. Slathered coconut scented lotion on his damp flesh. Strange, how he understood himself a little better after indulging in frivolous human luxuries. He enjoyed smelling like an artificial beach, being soft and pruned, having manicured nails, taking baths in glittery water.

No wonder Eve ate that fruit, he thought. Eden was probably rather boring.

He dressed in black denim and a cream high-necked shirt. In the hall, he stood before The Nightmare , admiring the maiden and all her desires, how she reached for possibility while she dreamed. Perhaps they were alike, him and her, wanting things they’d been told not to want, having things they never thought they’d have.

Luca stopped mid-step at the foot of the staircase, snaring Briar in a wide-eyed glance. “ You ,” they purred, and flicked their wrist. “I would love to know what that fiasco was all about.”

Briar sighed, again. “Michael sent Uriel to recruit me for a mission.”

They gaped, holding their wrist at an angle, palm flat. “That heinous dick.”

Sam popped around the corner, carrying a cardboard box brimming with garland. “Seriously. He’s a huge bag of ass,” she said.

Briar, truthfully, had no idea what to say to either comment. Still, he swallowed hard, as if the truth might set him ablaze. “I said no.”

“Well, obviously ,” Luca crowed.

Sam’s voice came from the sitting room. “Duh!”

Jennifer almost tripped, hurrying after Sam, arms overflowing with tangled stockings. One dropped. She pinched it with her toes and hobbled along. “I didn’t think you’d leave, since, well, you know, you and Aster are—” She blinked, steering her gaze to the chandelier. “—in an entanglement , I suppose. But—”

Luca laughed, one balking hah .

“ But! ” Jennifer shot them a sour look, then looked at Briar again. “I’m glad you’re here, Briar. We could use an extra set of hands with the tree, if you’re not busy. Sam chose the biggest one on the lot.”

“Biggest and fluffiest,” Sam sang.

Relief sank into his bones. The emotional outpour earlier had left him drained. The sex had, too. His muscles were splendidly gelatinous. But warmth filled the manor, seeping through the walls and the floor, and into him. Luca looped their arm around his elbow when he hit the bottom of the stairs and walked with him into the sitting room. Mallory sat cross-legged in an oversized recliner, crocheting what looked to be a scarf. Sam spread a wine-red skirt under the massive tree she, somehow, had carried inside. He hadn’t a clue how it’d fit through the door. A few other people—cooks and maids and loitering residents—pinned garland above the windows and across the mantle. Pine scented the room.

Jennifer handed him a foil globe. “See? It’s huge.”

He hung the ornament on a middle branch.

Aster curled his hand over Briar’s shoulder. Briar knew him by sensation, the gentle thumb to his collarbone, how Aster brushed his knuckles along the ring of his turtleneck. He knew Aster by presence and smell, by the energy that shifted once he entered a room. Briar leaned toward him, felt his chest touch his back. His clippings hardly protested. The pain was dull and muted beneath fresh bandages and new skin, but tolerable. Easier. A start.

“Here,” Aster said, and pressed a steaming mug into Briar’s palm.

Briar turned. They kissed simply, like two people used to each other. To seeking and finding, taking and having. “Thank you.”

The fire roared. Outside, snow fell.