Chapter 197: You first

Pazuzu’s POV

Yes.

One word, and Pazuzu felt his own heart slam against his ribs hard enough that he genuinely wondered whether the entire courtyard had heard it.

He had waited centuries for that word. He had chased it across a kingdom, been thrown out of Verolona for it, been struck in the face for it more times than he cared to count.

He had spent a week impersonating a reclusive master on a mountain simply for the chance to stand in the same room and be insulted to his face.

And now the Sin of Pride stood before him in emerald silk with his chin lifted and his ears faintly pink, and he had said yes.

Pazuzu had told himself, repeatedly, that he would remain composed when the moment arrived.

He had rehearsed exactly what he intended to say. He had planned something clever, something appropriately smug, something that would live in Luceriel’s memory for the next several centuries.

Every word of it had gone completely out of his head.

Oh, listen to that, came a lazy, hissing voice curling through the back of his mind. The heart of the great demon prince, pounding away like a boy at his first festival. How undignified. How thoroughly pathetic. Shall I describe the rhythm to you, or would you prefer to suffer in private?

Vaelith, Pazuzu thought back, without moving a single muscle in his face, if you say one more word, I will leave you sealed in the abyss for a hundred years.

You would miss me terribly. You talk to me more than you talk to anyone.

That is a reflection of my circumstances, not my preferences.

Your heart is still racing.

Be silent.

The serpent’s amusement coiled away into the dark somewhere behind his ribs, and Pazuzu returned his attention to the altar just as Anomas spoke.

"Join your hands."

Luceriel hesitated for only a moment. Then he pressed his bleeding palm against Pazuzu’s, and their fingers laced together, and the blood between them mingled dark and red all at once.

The world cracked open.

It came in like a flood breaking through a dam wall.

Everything Luceriel had been holding behind that flawless composure poured directly into him at once, and Pazuzu had to lock his knees to keep standing.

The fear came first. It was sharp and cold. It was the fear of dying uselessly, fear of failing his brothers, fear of what he had just agreed to.

Beneath that sat a loneliness so old and so thoroughly buried that Pazuzu felt his own throat tighten around it.

And beneath even that, small and furious and desperately suppressed, was the thing Luceriel had refused to name all evening. The racing pulse. The heat crawling up his neck. The way he had looked at Pazuzu descending through the fireworks and forgotten, for one entire breath, how to think.

Pazuzu smiled slowly.

"Oh," he murmured. "Oh, darling."

"Do not." Luceriel’s face had gone red. "Whatever you are about to say, do not say it."

"You thought I looked ethereal."

"I said do not."

"The most beautiful man you have ever seen, I believe the phrasing was."

"Pazuzu."

"I am simply repeating what you told me." He tightened his fingers where they were laced together. "Rather loudly, in fact. You may wish to work on that, now that I can hear everything."

"I said nothing of the sort. I thought nothing of the sort."

"You are thinking it again right now."

"I am thinking about how satisfying it would be to push you off the nearest tower."

"You are thinking about my mouth," Pazuzu said serenely.

Luceriel made a small strangled sound and looked at the altar stone as though it had personally wronged him.

Through the bond, the mortification rolled off him in waves so strong that Pazuzu nearly laughed aloud in front of every sin in the courtyard.

"I withdraw my consent," Luceriel announced to nobody.

"Far too late, my love. Anomas already began the rite."

"Anomas, I withdraw my consent."

"You may not," Anomas said, without looking up.

"See?" Pazuzu said happily.

Luceriel looked as though he wanted the ground to open beneath him and swallow him whole, and it was, without question, the finest moment of Pazuzu’s entire existence.

Then he let his pheromones go.

He had been holding them back deliberately all evening, and the moment he released them they rolled outward across the courtyard, dark and heavy.

Violet orchid, rich and nearly sweet, threaded through with something smoky underneath it, like incense burning low in a sealed room, and beneath even that cold mineral bite of deep stone and old earth.

It was the scent of the abyss itself, and every alpha present stiffened at the weight of it.

Luceriel’s breath stuttered audibly.

"Must you," Luceriel gritted out.

"Yes," Pazuzu said. "I must."

"The marking," Anomas interrupted, entirely unbothered. "It must be done now, and it must be done by both of you, each upon the other. The auspicious hour will not hold much longer."

Luceriel went very still.

Pazuzu felt the hesitation arrive through the bond before it ever reached his face.

It was not disgust. Not reluctance, either, whatever Luceriel’s expression insisted.

It was simply that this was permanent, and Luceriel had spent his entire existence ensuring that nothing was ever permanent without his permission.

"Are you certain about this, Luceriel?" Azriel asked quietly from the side. He had one arm around Seraphel and his crimson eyes were fixed on his brother. "Nobody here will think less of you if you stop. Not one of us. Say the word and this ends right now."

"How touching," Sariel drawled. "Shall we all hold his hand while he does it? Perhaps sing something."

"Sariel, I will put you through that wall," Lumiel said.

"You are welcome to try. You have been threatening it for four hundred years and I remain unbroken."

"I am only saying that mating a demon is a rather significant decision to arrive at in under six hours," Uriel added, arms folded. "Tobias is from Elysium and I still had to think about it for a decade."

"You thought about it for a decade because you are Sloth," Taizel said.

"That is beside the point."

"It is precisely the point. You once took eleven years to answer a letter."

"It was not an urgent letter."

"It was a declaration of war."

"And it resolved itself without me, which proves my instincts were correct."

"Every one of you, be silent," Anomas said flatly. "The hour is passing, and it will not wait while the seven of you bicker like fledglings."

Pazuzu ignored all of them. He lifted his free hand and rested it gently against the side of Luceriel’s face, thumb brushing just beneath his eye.

"Look at me," he said quietly. "Not at them. At me."

Luceriel looked at him.

"I know what you are afraid of." Pazuzu let his voice drop until it was meant only for the two of them. "You are not afraid of the pain, and you are not afraid of me. You are afraid that once this is done, you will no longer be entirely your own. That someone will always be able to see you." His thumb moved once more. "I will see you. That is unavoidable. But I will never use it against you, and I will never let anyone else touch what I see. You have my word, and I do not give it often."

He meant it. Every single word.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he felt Vaelith go quiet, no longer amused at all.

"I will protect him," Pazuzu said, louder now, lifting his head to address the courtyard directly. "I know precisely what all of you think of me, and I do not particularly care. But he is mine now, and there is nothing in the abyss or the heavens I would not tear apart to keep him breathing. Believe that or do not. It changes nothing."

Nobody answered.

Then Seraphel clapped his hands together, beaming through the tears still drying on his face. "Okay, that was actually really beautiful. I am sorry. I know we are about to go to war, but that was beautiful."

"It was adequate," Sariel muttered.

"It was beautiful, Sariel." Seraphel insisted.

Luceriel let out a long, slow breath. Pazuzu felt it steady through the bond, felt the fear recede just enough.

"You first," Pazuzu told him.

Luceriel blinked. "What?"

"You go first." Pazuzu tilted his head to one side, baring the line of his throat without an ounce of hesitation. "I am not going to ask you to offer your neck to a demon before I have offered mine to you. Take it."

Something moved behind Luceriel’s eyes at that, something Pazuzu felt more than saw, a sharp complicated lurch of feeling that Luceriel immediately tried to smother and entirely failed to hide.

He stepped in. He took hold of Pazuzu’s shoulder with his uninjured hand, leaned down, and bit his neck marking him as his.