There had been some fallout, though Archie only remembered it vaguely. Partly because he had only been a child when it happened, and partly because he simply hadn’t cared at the time. The head of their local temple had attempted to accuse Marianne – then a wide-eyed bushy-haired girl with an infectious laugh who had barely started to show womanhood – of being a demon in disguise. Ollie hadn’t taken that well, not to mention Marianne’s parents’ outrage.
“Hm, yes. I rather drew back from the temple after that, but the training never leaves you. Part of the Allegreian Order’s teachings are around handling the demonic and banishing it, if need be. I don’t know the full of it since you had to be a complete initiate, but since I’d been so devoted in temple, they’d started me on the first part of the training.”
Of course they had. Archie hadn’t made the connection between Ollie’s religious leanings and the temple’s reputationas an anti-magic order. Not all temples or branches were, but the Allegreians stood staunch on it. That reputation was falling out of favor, now that the king had publicly made pacts with demon queens and had an established order of mages, but the Allegreians had managed to find their place within this new system.
The temple provided safekeeping and reassurance for the common people that the mages wouldn’t get out of hand, as well as advising the king on unauthorized magic use. And now Archie knew that all magic came from demonic powers, he understood, suddenly, that the temple was really there to help with illicit demon summonings.
“I never knew you could sense magic,” said Archie. He’d be more impressed if he wasn’t busy being terrified, trying to remember if he’d done or said anything that might give his situation away to Ollie. If he’d only paid a little more attention at temple, he might have understood Damaris’s whole deal earlier. Not to mention he would have been more careful if he’d known that people could be trained to sense unauthorized magic. He was thankful that people weren’t as religious in the city. If he’d stayed in their township, no doubt he would be attending temple every week.
“Well, it’s not the sort of topic that comes up often in polite society. Not to mention there’s no exactly many possessed people running around. But more importantly, this friend of yours. Have you seen him do anything suspicious?” Ollie pressed.
Archie tried to keep a straight face. Pretty much everything Damaris did was suspicious. “No, not at all. But I doknow that he is acquainted with Prince Ixthan. Surely the prince would know if Lymond was an unauthorized magic user?”
“The demon prince?” Ollie said with a frown. “Why didn’t you say so before?”
Archie bit his tongue. He’d hardly had the time to say anything at all. “Yes, we met at a party hosted by the prince.”
Ollie’s eyebrows raised. “Your acquaintances are moving up in the world. Well, there’s no way to miss the amount of demonic energy coming from him so if the prince knows him then he must be a registered mage even if he’s not public about it. Sorry to have panicked you, Arch.”
Shaking his head, Archie said, “Not at all, I’d rather know. I wouldn’t have expected an Earl to be a mage either.”
They parted ways after that, Ollie wanting to see if Father needed any help for the evening, and Archie ostensibly back to the palace. But first, he waited until Ollie had headed out of sight before doubling back to the pub. Damian was still there, cradling his drink in the corner as he observed the humans.
“Thank the gods you’re still here,” said Archie, gratefully sliding into a seat. He’d been terrified the whole time that Damaris might decide that he’d had enough of being corporeal for the evening and vanish back into Archie’s mind – at which point Ollie would have no doubt sensed the magic and realized thatArchiewas the one possessed.
“An improvement on last time,” said Damian, lifting his pint glass and taking a sip for Archie to see that he was really interacting with the glassware and not merely faking it.
“Can you taste it?” asked Archie, his fear momentarily derailed at seeing just how solid, how real Damian seemed.
“No. There is a sense of wetness, of cold, but not yet taste. Though judging from my environs, perhaps I should not expect the taste to be good,” said Damian dryly, glancing around.
Archie reached out, impulsively, and lay his hand on Damian’s arm. It felt real, startlingly real. The grain of the fabric under his hand, a light warmth that emanated from Lymond’s arm and the firmness of muscle laid over bone. “Amazing. This is so much more convincing than the previous time.”
“A matter of priorities. In my observations of humans, they place much importance on feel, on touch, on textures and pressure and so on,” said Damian, with a slight wrinkle in his nose, which told Archie how much demons didn’t care about any of those at all.
“We were lucky,” Archie informed him solemnly. “We picked the right day to try this again. It turns out Ollie is able to sense magical signatures. When he saw you, he told me you were possessed. If you had been inside me when he’d met, I think he would have sensed you were there.”
Damian frowned, clinking his firmly-real fingernails down the polished wood of the tankard. “That is indeed a problem. I haven’t shielded my signature as Damian, since I thought the only ones who could sense it are other demons.”
“And temple priests,” said Archie. “Ollie was preparing to go into the temple, that’s how he got the training.”
“Are they in abundance?”
Archie, who had not gone to temple since he was a boy, shrugged. “I haven’t spoken to one in years, but they are around here and there. Things like weddings and funeral ceremonies, I suppose, but they’re also the king’s demon hunters.”
Damian tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the table, and Archie felt the connected muscle under his palm flex. He felt so real. And, Archie realized, there was no good reason for them to still be touching like this. If anyone else in the taproom could see… He withdrew his hand, sliding it into his lap as his face flushed.
The demon reacted immediately, his fingers stilling unnaturally as he pierced Archie with his gaze. Archie averted his eyes as Damian narrowed his eyes, but it was no use. Their entire bond was built around Damaris’s ability to see Archie’s shameful desires.
As Damian leaned in, Archie froze in place. He wanted to lean away, to shrink back until he melted into the chair, but it was too late now, Damian’s face barely an inch from his. Surely, the heat from his face was radiating through the sliver of air between them.
And then Damian inhaled deeply, and Archie felt as if he was being breathed in. He straightened in his chair, the weight of that desire lifted from him as Damian drank it in. Sweet relief flooded Archie, his mind clearing again. He hadn’t known Damian could do it like that. Every time Damian had fed on him before, his desire had blown back on him threefold, a continuous cycle of increasingly delicious agony until he was spent. He shivered.
“Are you ready to go home?” asked Damian. It sounded almost tender. Archie wished it could be like that: a man asking his lover if they would like to return home as easily as a man with a wife. He swallowed, and nodded.
Outside, the chill wind battered at them again. Archie expected Damian to vanish into the shadows the moment they were out of public view, but the demon stayed by his side. He extended an elbow, and it took Archie a moment to realize what it meant. No one had done it tohimbefore, and he hadn’t exactly got that far with any women. He hesitated.
Damian waited, elbow extended. There was no one around. No one to see them apart from the occasional drunk laborer in this area of the city. And even if they were spotted… what of it? They wouldn’t be recognized in the darkness. Archie slid his arm into the crook of Damian’s elbow.
