Chapter 198: Husband

Pazuzu’s POV

Pazuzu had not expected it to feel like that.

The pain registered somewhere but what mattered was everything that came pouring through behind it, the bond snapping fully taut between them,

Luceriel’s entire self rushing in unfiltered. Centuries of loneliness arrived first, the particular exhausting loneliness of being the eldest, of being the one everyone else leaned against and nobody ever thought to hold up.

Then duty, endless and unrelenting. Then that ferocious pride that had never once allowed him a single hour of rest, worn like armor for so long that he had forgotten there was anything underneath it.

And underneath it, quietly, there was a man who had been waiting a very long time for somebody to notice he was tired.

It took a bite to know what was going on his head and that made Pazuzu feel for him.

His hand came up to the back of Luceriel’s head without any conscious decision at all, holding him there, and a sound escaped him that he would deny making for the rest of his life.

When Luceriel finally drew back, his mouth was red and his eyes were blown wide and he looked genuinely shaken. The mark he had left behind glowed in green against Pazuzu’s throat, and Pazuzu could feel it settling into him, bedding down somewhere beneath the skin as though it had always belonged there.

"My turn," Pazuzu said, and his voice came out considerably rougher than he intended.

Luceriel tipped his head to one side, baring the long pale line of his throat, which was, Pazuzu thought distantly, the single most trusting thing the Sin of Pride had ever done in front of witnesses.

"If you make this unpleasant," Luceriel said unsteadily, "I will never forgive you."

"I have absolutely no intention of making it unpleasant."

He leaned in and sank his fangs into that pale throat, and the whole world went white.

The bond completed with a force that rocked through both of them. He felt Luceriel’s knees give, felt his own arm lock around his waist to hold him upright, felt the demonic vitality already pouring out of himself and down into the cracked, burning channels of Luceriel’s core, mending what the curse had been eating through for weeks.

He could feel the damage as clearly as if it were his own body, the raw scorched places where the sight had torn through him again and again, and he poured himself into every one of them without hesitation or measure.

He tasted blood, and something unbearably, impossibly warm.

"Mine, " he growled. "Finally. Mine."

When he withdrew, the mark he left behind glowed faintly violet against Luceriel’s skin, curling in the shape of two small horns.

"Well," Pazuzu managed, still holding him up. "That was considerably better than I anticipated, and my expectations were extremely high."

"Do not speak," Luceriel breathed against his shoulder.

"The kiss," Anomas said. "To seal it."

"Ah." Pazuzu looked down at the flushed, unsteady sin in his arms and felt something dangerously close to tenderness. "You have already endured a great deal tonight, darling. If you would rather not, I can simply say the words and nobody here would think less of—"

Luceriel kissed him.

He took a fistful of Pazuzu’s violet robe and pulled him down and kissed him hard, right there in front of every one of his brothers, and Pazuzu forgot every clever thing he had ever intended to say.

It lasted considerably longer than a sealing kiss needed to.

"Oh, that is repulsive," Sariel announced loudly.

"That is ROMANTIC," Seraphel shot back.

"I am going to be sick."

"Nobody is stopping you from leaving," Raizel said, fanning himself vigorously. "Personally I am having a wonderful time. Look at that violet against the emerald. I told you the phoenix would catch the firelight."

"You told us that eleven separate times," Taizel said.

"And I was correct eleven separate times."

When they finally broke apart, Luceriel’s face was red all the way to his ears, and Pazuzu could feel the humming through the bond like a struck bell, exactly how little he regretted it.

Anomas lifted the red silk cord and wound it around their joined hands, once, twice, three times.

"By blood given and blood taken, by marks worn and vows sealed," he intoned, "the abyss and the heavens both bear witness. This bond cannot be severed by either party, by death, or by time itself. It is done."

The cord flared crimson and dissolved into light.

Somewhere above them, the fireworks began again without anybody lighting them.

"Husband," Pazuzu said immediately, testing the word with enormous satisfaction.

Luceriel closed his eyes. "Do not start."

"Husband."

"I am begging you."

"You will have to forgive me, my love. I waited a very long time for this, and I intend to enjoy every single second of it."

"You have said it three times in under a minute."

"I intend to say it considerably more than that before the night is finished. I would prepare yourself." Pazuzu raised Luceriel’s bound hand to his lips and kissed his bloodied knuckles, holding his gaze the entire time. "How do you feel?"

Luceriel paused at that. The question seemed to catch him off guard more thoroughly than any of the teasing had, and Pazuzu felt him searching for the answer somewhere inside himself before he found it.

"The burning has stopped," Luceriel said quietly. "Behind my eyes. It has been there for weeks and I had stopped noticing it, and now it is simply gone."

"I told you it would be."

"You did." A pause. "You were insufferable about it."

"I was correct about it. The two are frequently indistinguishable." Pazuzu let his thumb drift once across the back of Luceriel’s hand. "You will not die on that battlefield. I have made certain of it for a demon’s mate comes first before anything."

Something flickered through the bond then, warm and startled and almost immediately buried, and Pazuzu had the good sense not to comment on it.

But he knew that they were from Luceriel and he was taking in the bond just as much as he was.

"Now." He straightened, still holding Luceriel’s hand, and looked toward the assembled sins. "Shall we go and plan how to kill my father, husband?"

"That is four times."

"Five, once we reach the war room. Possibly six when the wall is over and I have you in my arms."

He is going to murder you, Vaelith observed mildly.

Possibly, Pazuzu agreed. As long as it’s Luceriel, it will have been worth it.