A blotch of red stained Iason’s cheeks and neck. “Yes. I didn’t think I’d ever want to do… that. Dominants are supposed to want to fuck submissives, but I never did.”
“You were holding out for a god.” Levi laughed. He took Iason’s wrist, curled his hand around Iason’s, and squeezed. “It’s been some time for me, too. I’ve taken submissives, but they’re usually too easily put under to fuck me, and I’d forgotten how good it feels. We can do it again.”
Iason glanced down at their joined hands but said nothing. They headed back to the house together, the sea smooth as glass behind them, a hint of the coming dawn in the gentle glow on the horizon.
PARTTWO
The Chariot
ChapterEight
Iason woke at noon, with bright sunlight filtering through the windows and his sheets filthy with sand and salt water. He could hear voices from the floor below, laughter and the thump of something heavy banging around.
It was nothing like waking up in his childhood home. He remembered, now—not in any revelatory rush, but in the quiet unfolding of old memories. He’d mince through the house so as not to disturb his mother and slip downstairs to see his sister, who was usually lying in bed with her medicines and tinctures lined up in tidy rows on her bedside table. She was too skinny toward the end, a beauty like their mother but drained of life, hands shaking as she turned the pages of her books.
He may have been older than her, but Ophelia was his confidante, his best friend—twins, she used to say, even if she was born a little late. He hadn’t started keeping secrets from her until he started training with Alistair and the Archmage, and only then because he knew how upset she’d be to hear of their methods. She was a radical, a firm believer in the possibility of peace with the light mages in the hills, and after she died, Iason’s time in the crypts increased so much that it was clear in retrospect that the Archmage had been trying to beat the last of her influence from his spirit.
He wondered what she’d say about Levi. Iason had never craved that sort of intimacy before. He’d heard that it happened that way, at times—some people simply weren’t attracted to anyone unless they made an emotional connection, and even then, they might not be drawn to their partner physically. But sex with Levi had been wild, and thrilling, and he didn’t think he’d mind if it happened again.
Ophelia was gone, though, and Iason had no confidantes left. That had been deliberate, he knew—orchestrated by the man who now raved about demons in the crypts below Mislia. But many things were changing. Perhaps it didn’t have to remain that way.
Iason stripped the bed and brought the sheets downstairs, where Levi had dragged an entire surfboard onto the kitchen table and was showing Sophie how to cover it with wax. Sophie looked up, mouth full of a strange concoction that glooped ominously on a plate between them, and shrugged.
“It’s the best I could make on short notice,” Levi said, “but it should do in the smaller waves.” He winked at Iason, and Iason couldn’t suppress the furious blush that heated his face. Sophie’s brows rose.
“You should join us,” she said. “We made marshmallow jelly icing for breakfast. Even Argo likes it.”
Argo, hearing his name, sleepily lifted his head from the sink and burped out a bubble.
“Horrifying,” Iason said.
“Humanity is on to something with sugar, though,” Levi said, still scraping wax over the board. “You should keep that up.”
“I’ll be sure to tell the official human council that sugar has your seal of approval,” Iason drawled. He dropped the bedsheets in the laundry hamper and went over to dip a spoon into the wobbly mixture. It was so sweet it made his teeth ache, but Sophie was looking at him so earnestly he suppressed his grimace. “You could sell this to children and make a fortune.”
“That’s what I said. You’re coming with us to the beach, right?” Sophie glanced between Iason and Levi. “Whatever you two are doing, you can take a day off.”
After last night, Iason thought he likely needed it. Sophie grinned when he shrugged his assent, and he was ushered out of the house before he could even dump the laundry into a tub for washing.
There was no sign of the storm that had raged the night before. Some members of the rebel camp were swimming in the ocean while others paddled around on boards or bodysurfed to shore. Iason sat on the beach while Sophie and Levi waded into the water, Argo wrapped around Sophie’s arm like a wriggling piece of jewelry.
Levi immediately gained a following. After he helped Sophie navigate a few waves, Sophie goaded him into showing off, which didn’t take much effort. Soon, Levi was walking back and forth across his board on a series of suspiciously perfect waves, and more surfers went running into the water as Sophie collapsed at Iason’s side.
“Argo’s with Levi,” she said, panting. “Did you see how I almost stood up last time? We didn’t have waves like this in Staria.”
“We rarely had them in Mislia, from what I recall.” Iason caught Sophie’s sidelong look. “I can remember quite a bit more, now.”
“You can?” Sophie sat up, then looked at the other people lounging on the beach around them. She lowered her voice. “Can you do a spell to hide what we’re saying to each other?”
“I’m a bad influence on you,” Iason said, and sensed for nearby magic. He pulled from a few charms and an unused spell net rather than from Levi, and tried to make something that would muffle their voices. It was imprecise and fumbling, but he suspected all wizard magic was like that, based on raw power and emotion rather than conduits and careful spellcraft. “There.”
“So you remember more?” Sophie asked. “What happened? How did you break the curse?”
“Levi helped,” Iason said, trying to suppress a blush. “Apparently, my approach to magic has been too restrained.”
“Your approach to everything is restrained,” Sophie pointed out. “You’re always so careful.” She dug in the sand with a foot, her gaze following Levi as he surged through the barrel of a wave. “Does it change anything? What you remember, I mean.”
“Some of it does.” Iason also watched Levi as he spoke. “You know I had a sister, Ophelia. You would have liked her. No one could make her turn from her ideals, and I believe that’s why my mother didn’t put much effort into keeping her alive. She had an illness growing inside her—a tumor. We thought it went away when she was a child, but it came back, and she had no defenses the second time around. Even a cold would have killed her. It did, in fact.” He glanced at Sophie. “She didn’t like how I was being treated—she found out, in the end, that it was worse than she’d thought. She asked me to come with her to the docks and flee for Staria. I didn’t go. She caught sick.”
