Chapter 158: Chapter 158: Try it on me (2)
Elias blinked at him, the words taking a heartbeat to land. "On you?" he repeated, incredulous. "Victor, that was a corpse full of stolen ether, not..." He broke off, one palm flattening against the wall as if the grain of the paneling could steady him. "I don’t know if you’re bored or just like to mess with me."
Victor’s smile widened, slow and wolfish, but the glow behind his eyes didn’t soften. "Think of it in terms you understand," he murmured, his tone half-lecture, half-tease. "Matteo was being steered, call it controlled, call it possessed, depending on what you believe. I am a god in a human vessel. Essentially the same principle..." He tipped his head, crimson gaze glinting as the corner of his mouth curved higher. "If you ignore the part where I’m conscious of every thread you’d be touching."
His thumb traced another idle circle at the back of Elias’s neck, the gesture at odds with the weight of his words. "That’s why I’m asking, Elias. Not to amuse myself. To see what happens when you reach for something that isn’t dead."
Elias’s fingers curled against the paneling, nails scraping the wood. "You’re unbelievable," he muttered, heat creeping up his neck. "You drag me out here, you act like a barnacle for hours, and now you want me to... what? Test my weird death touch on you?"
Victor’s grin only widened. "You say it like I’m asking you to do something scandalous."
"You are!" Elias hissed, finally pushing off the wall and stepping right up to him. "Fine. You want to see? Don’t flinch."
Crimson eyes gleamed. "Never."
Elias swallowed once, set his jaw, and raised his palm. Up close Victor was warm in a way no god should be, the scent of smoke and iris filling his nose. He laid his hand flat against Victor’s chest.
Nothing happened at first. Then, gradually, a tremor passed through Victor’s body under his palm, subtle at first, then unmistakable. Elias had no idea what he was doing. With red ether, he could always see the strings on the puppets and the neat lines to pull or cut, but on Victor there was nothing, only warmth and a strange, coiled presence.
Victor’s breath hitched, a falter more felt than seen, and instinctively Elias started to pull back. But Victor’s fingers slid down and closed around his wrist, holding him there, not hard enough to hurt, but with the quiet weight of a command.
The longer Elias kept his hand in place, the stronger the sensation grew. It was like pressing his palm to a hidden engine: a slow, thunderous rhythm, not a heartbeat but something older, vaster. Heat rose up his arm, tingling against his skin until it felt almost electric.
Victor’s eyes burned brighter, a flicker of something sharp breaking through the usual composure. "You feel it now," he said softly, a low rasp that might have been a growl. "No strings. Just me."
Elias’s pulse stumbled. The smell of smoke and iris filled his lungs, heavy and dizzying. He wanted to step back, to shake the feeling off, but Victor’s grip stayed steady, anchoring him to the moment.
"Just a little more," Victor murmured, crimson gaze glinting.
Elias drew in a slow breath and pushed.
Not with his hands but with whatever part of him reached into corpses and ether and threads. It was like leaning into a dark current. The warmth under his palm deepened and turned molten, and for an instant he had the disorienting sense that Victor’s body wasn’t a body at all but a gate, skin stretched thin over something enormous.
He reached for the core the way he would reach for a line of stolen power, and the vastness moved. It was rising like black water, closing over his shoulders and head until he couldn’t tell where his own pulse stopped and the deeper rhythm began. Smoke scent thickened in his lungs, sweet and acrid at once, dizzying.
The god that lived behind the human face, formed out of the fragments of others, shattered crowns, broken wings, and glints of ancient power threaded through a shape too bright to stare at directly, had shown himself. It was watching him, all of it, a thousand eyes behind crimson ones, a storm held in a single vessel.
Elias’s pulse stumbled hard. He tried to step back, to drag air into his chest, but Victor’s grip stayed steady, warm, and inexorable, anchoring him as if to keep him from drowning.
At first the vastness had been just pressure and heat. Now, as he pushed even more than before, it resolved.
Threads.
Not the pale, frayed strings of stolen ether he saw on Matteo, but living veins of crimson light that fanned outward from a black center like roots, like nerves, like a star seen through blood. They quivered under his palm, endless and interwoven, running out into darkness and back again. For a moment he thought he could hear them, a thousand thin voices existing, the pulse of every life that had been taken, pledged, absorbed, and given to Victor and bound inside him.
And he was standing in the middle of it.
The web wrapped around him without touching, a cathedral of red filaments suspended in black. Each strand hummed with its own vibration; some sharp with fury, some slow with devotion, some fading into nothing at the edges. All of them converged on the dark core beneath his hand. All of them belonged to the god in front of him.
Elias’s pulse stumbled hard. His breath caught in his throat, chest tightening under the scent of smoke and cheddar until it felt like drowning. He tried to step back, to drag air into his lungs, but Victor’s grip stayed steady, anchoring him there as if to keep him from being swept away with the tide.
The threads shuddered, a ripple passing through them toward the center. For an instant the god behind Victor’s face leaned closer, vast and unspeakable, its attention sliding over Elias like the weight of an ocean.
The roar of a thousand filaments dulled. One by one the threads stopped vibrating like taut wires and began to sway in a slow, measured rhythm. The countless murmurs fell back into a low hush, like surf withdrawing from a beach, until only a deep, steady pulse remained. It wasn’t human, but it was no longer crushing; it moved through Elias like the rise and fall of breath, a tide rolling in and out.
His heart still hammered, but the sensation under his palm softened. The red strands around him glowed less harshly, their light no longer searing but warm, almost protective. What had felt like drowning now felt like being held in a current that carried him instead of dragging him under.
Victor’s thumb brushed once across the inside of his wrist, a strangely human gesture against the inhuman backdrop. "This is me," he said quietly, his voice echoing in the vastness as if it belonged there. "Not the mask. All the lives I’ve taken, all the vows bound to me, every thread you’re standing in... I am the one holding them steady."
He leaned closer, the god’s shadow still flickering behind his eyes but his mouth curved in a small, intent smile. "I keep them from devouring each other. I keep them from devouring me. That’s why it feels like this. You’re touching the thing I spend every second controlling."
Elias’s pulse stumbled hard again, but differently this time from the strange lull settling through his veins. Smoke and iris wrapped around him, heavy and dizzying; he dragged in a shaky breath and felt the tide of threads rise and fall with it, like they were breathing with him.
Victor’s grip stayed steady, anchoring him. "Stay a little longer," he murmured, eyes bright as embers. "My mate."