The Stars Over Bittergate Bay

Chapter 32

32

J onas was shuffling through more charts in his study when he heard a knock at the front door. With a grunt, he got to his feet and made his way back through the house. He’d been looking for anything that would be helpful for Sidney’s research and had come up woefully empty handed. The desire to find something was at least half (but likely more) an unspoken apology from his guilty conscience. Still, it would be useful to have more data, no matter what the impetus for gathering it was.

He'd just reached the bottom of the stairs when another knock rang out, impatient and demanding. The sound of it practically identified the visitor; Asterion might as well have called out his own name.

Though Jonas had just pulled open the door, Asterion somehow managed to already be leaning against the doorframe. The Prince’s long cobalt hair curled around the angles of his chin and cheeks, framing his flawless, glowing skin. His eyes were gold, crinkling at their narrow corners as his mouth curled into a smirk.

“Jonas,” he said, his voice low and ridiculously breathy. Jonas arched an eyebrow.

“Good morning, your highness.” Asterion huffed at the use of his title and peeled himself off the doorframe, shouldering his way past Jonas into the foyer. Asterion was broad across the chest, but his waist was as narrow as if he was corseted. He’d always been that way, and due to the nature of Fae magic he likely always would be. Asterion looked around the foyer with an appraising eye and made a small hum that was neither approval nor disapproval, but likely dismissal. When he looked back at Jonas, he put one hand on his hip.

“Don’t be a prick. You asked me to come. Why are you wearing that?”

“What?” Jonas looked down at himself. The glamour. He’d forgotten again. “Oh. I’ve been entertaining a human.”

“Entertaining? Is that what we’re calling it now?” Asterion leaned around Jonas to look into the parlor. “Ellery did mention something to me about him. I think she called him a ‘finicky weed,’ or something like that. She said he wanted an invitation to the party.” Asterion produced one of the heavy, embossed envelopes from inside a billowing sleeve and smacked it against Jonas’s chest, before striding into the parlor. “There you go. No need to thank me.” Jonas swallowed. He’d forgotten that Sidney had asked for an invitation to the party. Or Delilah had asked for one for him. It was hard to imagine Sidney in his threadbare sweaters and corduroy trousers carousing with Asterion, who was busy sweeping his short, velvet cape to the side as he swanned into the parlor.

Jonas set the invitation on the entry table and closed the door. When he turned back, Asterion had already collapsed artfully on the far end of one of Jonas’s least comfortable couches: a baroque thing, upholstered in blue damask that Jonas had inherited with the house. Jonas stepped into the room as Asterion dragged his fingertips over the fabric of the arm of the chair.

“Well, where’s your schoolboy? I want to steal him away from you.”

“He’s out at the moment,” Jonas said.

“You always did love having a student.” He smirked, but before Jonas could tell him to fuck off, Asterion fixed Jonas with a golden stare, his eyes narrowed, as a long, perfectly manicured finger tapped against his chin. “Can you take your glamour off, since the human’s not here? I need to get a good look at you.”

“Why?”

“Humor me.” Jonas sighed at the silliness of the whole thing, as though it wasn’t a relief to have one of his oldest friends here to help him. Jonas shrugged the glamour off his shoulders, and Asterion pursed his lips, his gaze intense and oddly humorless. For a moment, Jonas could have sworn that Asterion even looked sad. Before he could ask why, Asterion was smiling again.

“It’s actually disgusting how satisfied you look. I mean, really. Have a sense of decorum, Jonas. Some of us are languishing, you know. It’s cruel of you to be so thoroughly well-fucked.”

“I’ve never known you not to be well-fucked, Asterion.”

“Touché, darling. Still, just by looking at you I’m not sure what’s wrong. Your note said you had some problem that you wanted to talk through. And I warn you, if it's science related, I’ve already had two glasses of champagne, so I’m not going to be of much use to you. You know I don’t have the mind for it.”

“I know you pretend to be stupid because you think it’s interesting,” Jonas reprimanded. It was absolutely his least favorite thing about his friend.

“You wound me, darling. No one wants a clever libertine. It doesn’t play well in the bedroom.”

“I like you as you are.”

“Aren’t you a treasure?” Asterion purred derisively, batting his ridiculously long eyelashes at Jonas. “Either way, I’m at least two drinks in?—”

“It’s two in the afternoon.” Jonas glanced at the clock. And then at Asterion, and then at the clock again. “Wait. It’s two in the afternoon. You might as well be paying me a visit at six in the morning. What are you doing up so early?” Asterion sniffed, waving a hand dismissively.

“Trouble sleeping. Too much excitement with the Ascension. Don’t worry your pretty little horns about it. What’s the problem?”

It was now or never. Jonas sat on the opposite end of the horrible couch from Asterion and turned to face him.

“He hasn’t seen me without the glamour.”

“What?” Asterion wrinkled his nose. Jonas sighed impatiently, as Asterion’s expression shifted, eyes widening into understanding. “Oh. Wait. No—You’ve been fucking him in the glamour?”

“The sex isn’t the issue.”

“I beg to differ.”

“You fuck everyone in a glamour,” Jonas accused.

“I live in a glamour! This is me,” Asterion pressed his fingertips to his chest. “Perhaps the prettiest version of me, but I don’t go around dressing up like a demon or a?—”

“He doesn’t know,” Jonas said, needing desperately to curtail Asterion’s rant and keep them on track. “Sidney’s never seen me like this. He doesn’t know I’m a demon.”

“Did you mark him?” Asterion asked, his eyebrows annoyingly high. Jonas huffed.

“Maybe? I’ve got so little magic left it’s hard to—I mean, if I did, it’s not?—”

“He’s not in here salivating over your every word, so I suppose that’s a good sign.” Asterion collapsed back into the corner of the sofa and stared at Jonas, one hand sliding up to cover his mouth. “Is he leaving soon?”

“I asked him to stay,” Jonas said. Asterion was silent, his eyes as wide as dinner plates, the hand over his mouth now clutching his jaw. Jonas grit his teeth. “Don’t.”

“I assure you, I’m quite speechless.” Jonas growled, crossing his arms over his chest. The silence stretched out between them, as Jonas kept his gaze firmly fixed out the front window, where long grey clouds were rolling in over the tops of the trees to the west. The carving on the back of the sofa was digging into his shoulder. He hated this room. When everyone left, the first thing he was going to do was redecorate it.

Asterion slid over on the couch, so his knee was pressed against the side of Jonas’s thigh. Jonas looked down at him, and Asterion leaned forward and took Jonas by the chin, staring into his eyes.

“I love you, my darling. But you’re not going to like what I have to say.”

“That’s nearly always true.”

“You have to tell him.”

“I know I have to tell him,” Jonas grumbled, jerking his chin out of Asterion’s grasp. “ How do I tell him?”

“Gods, Jonas. Aren’t you supposed to be the smart one? You just fucking tell him.”

“Historically, that hasn’t gone well for me,” Jonas snapped. Asterion pursed his lips, drawing back in surprise.

“This is about Edmund?”

“It’s not about Edmund,” Jonas lied. “Humans always want something. When they find out you can do magic. Grant wishes. Whatever?—”

“Well, first of all, you’re not a fucking genie.”

“I mean?—”

“So, if you like him, bestow some favors on him. Give him some gold. Shoot some sparks out of your cock. Whatever he likes. What’s the problem?”

“I can’t do magic without a reagent! The glamour is practically all I have left. Anything more complicated than that is gone. If Sidney wants to see me shoot sparks out of anywhere, he’s going to have to forfeit something for it.”

“So what?”

“So, I don’t want to be a magical well for any human who decides to toss a fucking penny in, Asterion!”

“I thought you said this wasn’t about Edmund,” Asterion said, then pursed his lips pointedly. Jonas groaned and ran his hands over the sides of his head, tucking his fingers around his skull behind the curve of his horns. As though he could squeeze the effects of Edmund’s betrayal out of his brain. He didn’t want this to be about Edmund. He didn’t want to be afraid forever. Alone forever.

“Look,” Asterion leaned into him again. He hooked his fingers into the crooks of Jonas’s elbows and tugged his arms down, catching Jonas’s hands in his own. Asterion’s smile was thin and almost pitying. Jonas groaned.

“Are you going to be nice to me?”

“I’ve never once been nice to you.” Asterion’s smile strengthened briefly. “We’ve been friends a long time, haven’t we?”

“We have,” Jonas admitted, begrudgingly. He had too few to deny the existence of any.

“Were we ever in love, do you think?” Asterion asked. Jonas stilled; his head cocked to the side. It was rare that either of them talked about the time after Edmund. The years Asterion had stayed with Jonas. In the cottage. In Jonas’s bed. Asterion had been trying to help, in his own way. Jonas had wanted it to be romantic, for a little while. Maybe it had been.

“I don’t know,” Jonas said after a moment. Asterion’s mouth crumpled in the middle, his eyes strangely damp. In a hundred years of knowing Asterion, Jonas realized he’d only seen him cry once or twice. Usually from mirth. Never like this.

When Asterion kissed him, Jonas both was and wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t surprised that it was happening. He was surprised he felt nothing in it, except desperation in the way Asterion’s hand had tightened on his wrist. Jonas stilled, his own body foreign in that moment. Something was wrong with Asterion, and suddenly Jonas was worried about him. He cupped Asterion’s cheek with his hand, meaning to gently push him off?—

A crash, a splatter of something wet, had Asterion and Jonas jerking away from each other. Sidney stood just inside the front door, eyes wide. How had Jonas not heard it open? Oh, Gods. Oh, shit.

“Sidney—” Jonas lurched to his feet, nearly knocking Asterion off the couch. His lips prickled where blood rushed back into them.

“I…” Sidney’s voice was a breath. Milkshake, Jonas’s hamburger, a cherry tart, was all over the floor and Sidney’s boots and pant legs. “I left something in the truck,” Sidney managed, before turning around and walking back out of the house.