“I didn’t—know that it would do that,” Nyx said. “Is it really you, or are you a vision?”
Azaiah smiled. “I am here.” He stepped forward, remembering with a thrill how it felt to touch Nyx, to want him. To be wanted by him. Though maybe it had only been the battle, the wine, the threat to his dear Nadia’s life. Maybe those were the only reasons Nyx had embraced him like a lover, pressed his mouth to Azaiah’s, grown hard for him.
Nyx breathed out, slow and easy. He ran a hand through his hair, and then he smiled and gave a husky breath of a laugh that echoed off the stones of the chamber. “I came here to ask about you. Easier with the witches. They don’t make me win a game first.”
Azaiah smiled in return. “It was only ever an excuse, you know. We needn’t play it anymore. If you don’t want to.”
“No, I— That isn’t what I—” Nyx swore softly. “I survived. The battle. Obviously.”
“Yes,” Azaiah said, amused. It was rare to see his soldier so… out of sorts. “I promised I would be there, when the storm came for you.”
“Right. I— Look. Things are different now, for me. For… this place. My family. Such as it is.” Nyx’s face twisted, and his grief for Tyr was still there, though it was gentle now, a pattering of drizzle rather than a deluge. “Lamont, he’s… in love, I think. It doesn’t matter, really, but he seems to be a little less… He seems better. I don’t know. But I’m home from the front, and I don’t know what to do with myself. The emperor isn’t well. Everyone knows it. Lamont will rule no matter what I think of him, and all I can do is hope he’s becoming a better person so he doesn’t set fire to the entire empire when he takes the throne.”
Azaiah wondered if Nyx truly meant that, but he stayed quiet as Nyx moved closer.
“I serve this empire with everything I am. I always have. I will die serving it. Whether that happens sooner rather than later, it doesn’t matter. But for once, foronce, I want something that’s mine. For me. Not the prince who was bought to keep the other, better children from dying. Not a war general whose worth is measured in how many of the enemy he can kill.Me.”
Nyx stopped in front of Azaiah. His hair was freshly shaved on one side, the rest of it trimmed and neatly pulled back, and he was clean-shaven, dressed in a fine red linen tunic with silver thread and cloth buttons, high boots, and trousers. He wore a belt engraved with the imperial crest, and it struck Azaiah that he was here not with Nyx the soldier but with Nyx the prince.
“You said I made you feel like a man, not a god bound to his duty. You make me feel like a man who isn’t bound tomine, too. Who could have something. Someone.”
He was breathing too fast. Azaiah reached out, very carefully, and stroked his fingers down the side of Nyx’s face. “You can, Nyx.”
Nyx’s eyes flashed, and he turned his head, pressing a kiss to Azaiah’s fingers. “Then let me have you.”
“Yes,” Azaiah said easily. “Yes.”
Nyx kissed him. It wasn’t rough or frantic, like that moment in the tent. He kissed Azaiah almost as if he were trying to be careful about it, slotting himself against Azaiah’s body and winding his arms around Azaiah’s neck. “I’d say we could go to my rooms in the palace, but the second anyone sees me, there will be three, four crises I need to solve. It’s going to have to be here.”
Azaiah didn’t mind. Nyx took him by the hand and led him over to the couch, a simple thing of wood and fabric stuffed with hay or down, and looked around. “But the lights are going dim. Maybe we should—”
Azaiah lit the multitude of candles in the room with a thought. Nyx inhaled sharply and said, “…or you could do that. What else can you do?”
“Extinguish them,” Azaiah said. That seemed rather obvious.
Nyx gave him a long stare, then shook his head and reached for him again. “I want to see you. All of you. Is that—allowed?”
Azaiah tilted Nyx’s chin up to his. He could feel Nyx’s dominance, and it was pleasurable, another sensation that was new and different. “Yes. Pleasure is not forbidden, even to me.”
“Good.” Nyx pulled at his cloak, and Azaiah dragged the heavy fabric up and over his head. Nyx, probably remembering how they were interrupted last time, didn’t bother trying to undo the laces of Azaiah’s—long out of fashion—black tunic. Instead, he helped Azaiah pull that over his head, too.
Bare to the waist, Azaiah shook out his hair and found Nyx staring at him, and not quite in the way one would want when disrobing for a lover.
“What is that?” Nyx asked, dominance in his tone again, though Azaiah doubted he was aware he was using it. Perhaps he thought Azaiah entirely unaffected—or more likely he simply didn’t notice. “On your neck.”
“Oh. Yes.” Azaiah tilted his head back, baring his throat, which gave him a rush of pleasure before a dominant as strong as Nyx. “The collar I wear, as Death.”
“That isn’t acollar, Azaiah. That’s a scar.”
Azaiah nodded, running his fingers over it. “The only one I have, yes. The only one that matters.”
Nyx swore, something hot flashing behind his eyes, then reached for Azaiah’s pants. “We’ll come back to that. I want to see you.”
Azaiah sat on the couch to finish disrobing. When he was bare, he lay back on the couch and let Nyx—still clothed—look his fill.
Nyx went to his knees beside the couch. “You’re so beautiful. You almost look—” He stopped. His eyes flickered briefly to the scar at Azaiah’s throat. “Would you rather take me? Have me on my back for you?”
It was an arousing thought, certainly, but Azaiah shook his head. He knew Nyx was thinking about what Azaiah had told him of how he’d gone to the altar, baring his throat for the Oracle’s knife. “I hold no ire toward those who sacrificed me and carry no scars but the one from the ritual in which it was done. It is… pleasing, Nyx, to think of the storm takingme, for once.”
