“Let it be known that this is the cost of breaking my trust… and of regaining it.”
“Then say that you’ll have me.” Despite the slur in his voice, Maddox spoke it loud enough for the crowd to hear. His gaze though, was only for Diego.
They swore they could sense the drip-drip of blood from his elbow. It might mean three weeks of him, if they said yes—three weeks that he would sit at their side, expected to sigh beneath their fangs. Three weeks where he could turn around and stab them in the heart again.
“Take him back, my lord,” Henry called, and others followed with cries of “He’s earned his place” and “Look at him, he’s already yours!”
Diego tried not to flinch. They lifted their chin and flashed their fangs at their eager onlookers. “Prince Maddox has won himself a second chance. But one slip, one lie,” they hissed, dropping their gaze back to him, “and I will have you flayed alive and served as a delicacy.”
Maddox lifted his head, leaning into their touch, and smiled. “As you wish.”
For a moment, Diego felt nothing but tender, warm and wonderful and free. It startled them so much that they pulled back, dropping his arm. Their fingers shook like they’d been burned. “Valentine, finish him off for me. I’m no longer hungry.”
Diego forced themself to watch as Valentine carefully licked Maddox’s wound to heal it and pressed his fangs into Maddox’s skin to inject him with the venom that would increase his blood regeneration process tenfold, again with the extra hint of tenderness that Diego swore was more than mere professionalism. They waited for a grimace from Maddox, some sign that the teenager who’d been so disgusted by their partner’s vampiric state that he’d sent them fleeing San Salud was still in there, waiting to show his true colors. But he smiled at Valentine instead, then at Diego, his gaze burning them up.
The rest of the night passed in a blur, Diego moving from one guest to the next, barely pausing long enough to sit beside Maddox for the meal that came with this particular event. Diego had laid the circlet on his head, and Valentine had helped him back into his costume, exchanging soft words that Maddox returned with just as much resolute affection as he’d shown Diego. He’d been dazed for the next few hours as his body fought to renew all the blood he’d spilled for them. After that, he seemed oddly content to watch and smile, conversing in character with anyone who approached and sitting pleasantly by himself with a glass of wine otherwise. His gaze still rarely left Diego.
It was like he was trying to memorize them all over again, redefine who they were in his head.
It left Diego conscious of just how much he’d changed as well—the strong muscles, the unflinching courage. He’d always been dramatic and intense—that was one of the things that had drawn Diego to him in the first place, the way every time their eyes met, Maddox seemed to be having a private conversation with them, like they were reincarnated lovers with centuries of history that no one else could possibly understand. They’d lived like that, too, a pair of hopeless teenagers who’d thought their young love was different from everyone else’s, until the moment it had fallen apart.
But then, here he was ten years later, watching Diego with all the same contemplation and fire, so perhaps what they’d hadwasdifferent.
That didn’t mean it could work.
When guests asked whether they were going to taste their consort soon, Diego feigned disinterest and irritation, as though they were fighting their craving for the delicious Prince Maddox just to spite him, and not secretly terrified of what biting him might mean for them both. They would have to deal with the consequences of that later, as customers showed up expecting Diego to slowly melt to Maddox’s charms and treat him as a coveted prize. But they told themself that by then, Maddox would probably have fled Diego’s life with the same speed as last time.
In the wee hours of the morning, guests began exchanging farewells, characters falling away to reveal the tired but happy people beneath. Diego offered them a final sovereign’s salutation, deliberately snubbing Prince Maddox of the Grave Gate, and retreated to the backstage with Valentine.
They cornered Serina with such speed that even she looked mildly surprised. She turned from the prop she’d been adjusting with a knowing smile. “Yes?”
“You—” Diego hissed, but their emotions caught in their throat, and too quickly, Valentine cut them off.
“Don’t blame Serina, I approved, too.” He pressed a hand to Diego’s shoulder, like that was some kind of comfort. Ordinarily it would have been—they valued Valentine’s opinion like it was their own, and his love meant the world to them, but goddamn him if he was going to be employing it whereMaddoxwas concerned.
They shrugged off his touch, returning it with two middle fingers. “Fuck you both, then.”
“We thought it would be nice for you to reconnect,” Serina replied, as ever the perfect calm against Diego’s fire.
Valentine added, “And you always enjoy a theatrical public apology.”
“He’s right.” Serina lifted a brow as she said it, affectionate but pointed. “You can’t air all your dirty laundry during events for years and not expect your family to eventually respond in kind.”
“That’s not fair,” Diego retorted, equally sure that after the hell they’d spent their life stirring in public, it probably actually was.
Valentine sighed, rubbing at his neck. “I’m sorry. It’s just so rare that someone comes looking for us wanting to make amends. If it was my past showing up with that much love and devotion, I just figured…”
The pain in his voice cut Diego open. He’d retracted his fangs, they noticed. It had been a long time since he’d done that in the safety of the Celestial Club, but it reminded Diego of when he’d first joined them, the way he’d been too afraid to work with his fangs out, even in the highly vetted and protected environment the club fostered. Back then, he’d hidden other parts of himself as well, capped his emotions behind his naturally stoic expression and his eyes under a mass of blonde bangs he’d finally let Serina trim last year.
He’d taken the first threat on the Celestial Club even harder than she had.
Diego’s anger wilted under the shadow of his pain—pain that looked so much like the mirror of their own. “You don’t know what he did to me.”
Valentine’s pale cheeks flushed. He looked away.
Serina held Diego’s gaze, though. Gentle, but firm, she said, “Idoknow, Diego. Maddox wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
A flash of horror slid through Diego, nauseous in their gut. “What did he tell you?”
