Chapter 159: Chapter 159: Mildly traumatized
For a heartbeat he did stay. The pulse beneath his hand rolled through him like the sea against a breakwater, red light swelling and receding, warm and almost gentle. He hated how easy it would be to let it carry him.
Then he yanked his hand back.
The web of threads shivered and blurred, the cathedral of crimson filaments collapsing into darkness as if someone had blown out a thousand candles at once. Air hit his lungs cold and sharp. He staggered a half-step, catching himself before it showed, before he looked like he’d been pushed.
"Enough," he said, and hated that his voice wasn’t steady. He forced his fingers to uncurl and forced himself to meet Victor’s eyes. "I’ve seen it."
Victor straightened slowly, his grip falling away without resistance. The afterimage of the god still flickered behind his face; for a moment the man and the storm overlapped and then the man reasserted himself, smiling a little too quietly.
Elias swallowed hard, pulse still erratic. He wasn’t afraid of Victor, not exactly. It was the sheer magnitude of what lay under his skin, the thing no one should be able to touch. ’God’ had always been a word he used for men who could do impossible tricks, men who bent the world with power and theater. What he had just touched was something else entirely.
He dragged in another breath and squared his shoulders. "So that’s what you are," he said, trying for dry and getting only a rasp.
Victor’s crimson eyes glinted, unreadable. "Are you scared of me now?"
Elias’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "Not of you," he said, and his own voice betrayed him again, softer than he meant it to be. He cleared his throat, forced the dryness back in. "Of what’s inside you? Of how big it is? Yeah. That’s another story."
Victor tilted his head, his crimson gaze narrowing just a fraction. The god’s shadow flickered there again, a shimmer like heat over stone. "Most people would call that the same thing."
"Most people," Elias muttered, fingers curling and uncurling at his side, "haven’t had to crawl through what I’ve crawled through just to stand upright." He drew in a breath, the scent of smoke and iris still clinging to his skin like a second pulse. "You’re... a lot. But you’re still you. At least right now."
Victor said nothing.
The silence stretched between them, soft and heavy, filled with the echo of what Elias had just touched. And even with his stomach still tight and his hands faintly trembling, he couldn’t miss it, the pride radiating off Victor like heat, the faint, unhidden smugness of a creature who had invited him past the mask and been seen, truly seen, and not rejected.
Elias drew in a shaky breath. The scent of smoke clung to Victor, rising from his skin like a second pulse, sharper now after being stirred by power. It coiled between them, heady and unmistakable, and Victor’s eyes narrowed slightly as if savoring it.
"Don’t look so pleased with yourself," Elias muttered, but it came out weaker than he meant, a frayed thread instead of a barb.
Victor’s mouth curved anyway, not in his usual sharp grin but in something lazier and darker, the glimmer of satisfaction flickering behind crimson eyes. He didn’t need to speak; the tilt of his head and the way his shoulders settled said everything. ’You touched the abyss and you’re still here. You chose to. You’re mine.’
"I knew you could take it," he murmured at last, voice dropping to a low rasp. "My partner. My mate." Pride and something more intimate threaded through the words.
Before Elias could summon a retort, Victor moved. His hand slid up from Elias’s wrist to the back of his neck, fingers treading through the strands of hair until his palm settled there, warm and steady. Then he bent and caught Elias’s mouth with his own.
A deep, claiming kiss, heat pouring into the space between them. Victor’s mouth was hot, tasting faintly of smoke and salt and something older, and the sudden weight of it made Elias’s knees almost buckle. He inhaled sharply against the press of lips, dragging in the scent of smoke that clung to Victor and the undercurrent of his own iris rising to meet it. The mingled scents wrapped around him, dizzying, intimate.
Almost without thinking, Elias leaned in, his free hand bracing against Victor’s shoulder as he tilted up into the kiss. The warmth of Victor’s body pressed against his chest, the steady pulse beneath his skin still humming in Elias’s palm like an echo. He drew another breath through his nose, tasting the alpha on his tongue now, heat and iron and something that felt like thunder waiting just under the surface, and for a heartbeat he let himself melt into it, let himself be held.
Victor’s fingers tightened slightly at the nape of his neck, a slow drag of nails against skin as if to ground him there. When he finally lifted his head, crimson eyes burned close enough to catch the tremor still in Elias’s breath, his mouth curved in that small, intent smile. "That," he murmured, his voice a low thread of smoke, "is what you smell like when you’re not afraid."
"Like you?" Elias asked, raising an eyebrow under his glasses.
Victor’s thumb stroked once along the edge of his jaw, slow enough that it felt like a warning disguised as a caress. "Like you," he echoed, the corner of his mouth curling. "Only sharper. Brighter. Like an iris cut with smoke until it burns."
Elias arched a brow, though his pulse was still hammering. "Sounds like you’ve been practicing lines in the mirror," he muttered. "Do you hand these out to all the mortals you terrify, or am I just special?"
Victor’s chuckle rolled up from his chest, low and pleased. "Most mortals would be flat on the floor by now," he said. "You really are special."
"Good to know my survival instinct counts as flirting," Elias shot back, adjusting his glasses as if that could disguise the tremor still in his fingers. "I’m shaking because you’ve got a cathedral of souls in your rib cage, not because I’m swooning."
Victor’s grin went a shade wider, that glimmer of satisfaction flickering behind crimson eyes. "You’re allowed to be shaken," he murmured. "I like that you’re still snarky about it."
Elias exhaled, somewhere between a laugh and a groan. "Congratulations," he said. "You’ve officially upgraded me from ’curious’ to ’mildly traumatised.’"
Victor bent a little closer, his breath warm against Elias’s ear. "And yet," he said, voice low and amused, "you’re still here."