“Oh! No, Your Majesty,” said Eric, startled.
“Then blame not yourself.”
Gratitude or relief or something of the sort stuck in his throat. Eric blinked away the sudden wetness in his eyes.
“Ixthan didn’t come,” observed King Ruben, after a moment.
“I – no.” Eric hadn’t asked him to. He’dhopedthat Ix would offer to accompany him, but if Eric were being truthful to himself, he’d already known that Ix wasn’t the type to offer. Usually it was this defiance of human social norms that Eric liked about him, that thrill of when Ixthan knew his behavior wasn’t the done thing and yet went ahead and did it anyway. The look in other people’s eyes when he made them uncomfortable or said the unspoken out loud. It was just that today, of all days, he could have done with some quiet murmuredI’m sorry for your lossandHe was a good manand other comforting, meaningless human platitudes that weren’t even true. At least Marty, Gareth and the others had been there.
“Hm,” said the king, entirely inscrutable, and fell silent again for the rest of the ride. The king, of course, could also do whatever he wanted, social cues be damned. He likely knew how meaningless it was to offer his condolences to Eric when he was the one who signed the death warrant in the first place.
By the time Eric got back to the New Palace, a blanket of exhaustion had settled over him. When he lay down on the bed though, his mind wouldn’t let him sleep, reliving his father’s final moments over and over. He sat up eventually, startled to find himself having sweated through his shirt, and dragged himself into a hot spring bath instead. This was one of the extravagant benefits of living in Ix’s rooms in the palace, the water magically kept any temperature he so wished. He went for just shy of scalding. It was enough to get his blood pumping again so he didn’t look like a corpse, and then he hauled himself to Ix’s study for a distraction.
Ix was still at the mirror, tracing more unknown symbols around the edge of it. They looked different to the ones from yesterday, although Eric couldn’t be certain. Though the mirror glowed, there was no sign of wispy presences only visible on the other side which was a small mercy.
“Did you win yet?” said Eric, more out of habit than any real enthusiasm.
“I’m close,” said Ix, narrowing his eyes critically. “Damian said he first saw the human world through a mirror.”
All of those were words Eric understood separately, and yet he hadn’t the faintest what Ix was going on about. “Who saw a what?”
“Damian. Earl Lymond.” Ix’s words sounded hazy and unintelligible by the time they reached him, as if his head was bound in cheesecloth. Strange. Eric shook his head to clear his ears.
“Oh, yes. Lymond, wonderful man. Can’t believe he’s still not engaged after three years,” he said. Well, Eric had no room to throw stones in that department. He’d had a wife lined up for him for over a decade and yet he was completely inexperienced in courtship, so Lymond wasn’t the only one of their group who was still an eligible bachelor.
“Three years?” said Ixthan, halting with his hand still raised against the mirror. “Oh, he got you too.”
Ixthan put down his stick of charcoal, the powdered black dust puffing cleanly itself off his fingertips when he clicked his fingers as if they dared not sully his hands. As he walked towards Eric, he pulled his brows together and bared the slightly too-sharp tips of his teeth. His mage-face, Eric called it in the privacy of his own mind. That moment of distilled concentration hung in the air, right before he released his magic, suddenly focused on Eric. He shivered involuntarily.
The distance between them vanished, Ixthan leaning in so close that Eric could feel his breath, always cold no matter the season, graze along his cheekbone. He didn’t dare move. From this close, he could see each individual eyelash, impossibly dark, the gold ring around the outside of Ix’s amber irises. Ix made a twisting motion with his fist, as if tugging something out ofEric’s chest. Eric gasped; a knot he didn’t even know was there unfurled.
“How long have you known Lymond?” asked Ix softly.
“I –” Eric knew the answer was three years, and yet now it didn’t feel true. He had impressions of Damian, the Earl of Lymond at all of Ix’s parties, could recall conversations with him and details about him, and yet these impressions were vague and didn’t superimpose on his memory in the same way. He found with some surprise that he couldn’t recall Lymond at all aside from a couple of times this winter. “What happened?”
“Come here,” said Ix, holding out a necklace. As he reached out to put it on for Eric, Ix’s fingers grazed the skin of Eric’s neck and Eric’s mind went blank. It wasn’t until the necklace was fastened and Ix stepped back that Eric could breathe again. He’d bitten his lip, so as to not say anything horrendously stupid, but Ix could no doubt see the way his body reacted. “The stone is infused with my magic, it’ll stop you from being affected by him. Or any other magic.”
“Lymond,” said Eric hoarsely, and then paused. It didn’t feel right to bring up another man just because he was thinking about Ixthan too much. He cleared his throat. “He’s a mage?”
“He’s a demon. Strong, too,” clarified Ix, though he looked annoyed to admit it. “He passed into this realm by himself, without the help of a mage summoning him through the border. He’s been using magic to make himself appear as though he’s been at court for years.”
“What! A demon.” Eric squeezed his eyes shut, trying to figure out what was real or not. “How does that even work? I didn’t know demons could change people’s memories. And Lymond, that’s a real county, how–”
“I helped him, of course.” Ix rolled his eyes, as if it was inconceivable that Lymond could have done this by himself. “The previous Lymond passed without an heir. A few piecesof false paperwork and Lymond has a new heir and no one’s the wiser. And it’s not true memory modification, that would be impossible. He’s just very good at manipulating people into the impression that they know him, and your human mind convinces itself of times that must have happened.”
“And instead of reporting him to the Magisterium, you… invited him to a party?” asked Eric, fiddling with the necklace as the metal lay cold against his skin. Lymond’s abilities sounded dangerous. Even though he hadn’t harmed Eric in any way other than the false impression of friendship, he could immediately see the potential of much more treacherous applications.
Ix didn’t care much for their human laws, but still, he knew the precarious balance of his status at court. Ixthan and Ceronzar shared the king as their father but their demon blood came from two different demon queens, specially chosen by the king as they were rival clans and despised each other. If Ix was to be seen gathering demonic power around himself, Ceronzar’s mother would surely retaliate swiftly and brutally, and vice versa. Not even being a prince would exempt him from such dangerous activity as harboring secret demons. And now Eric was complicit.
“He’s far more powerful than anyone my father’s mages are summoning, and he negotiated his own possession bargain,” said Ix. He looked more pleased by this than anything else, and Eric knew him well enough to guess why. There was only so much the human mages could teach Ix about magical theory when their own demonic summonings were so heavily regulated and supervised; where else would Ix get a chance to talk to a demon without human fetters?
“So you’ve been talking to him about magic?”
“Indeed. He gave me the idea for the construction of this spell, though I doubt he even knows it.”
“Wait, don’t tell me any details, I’m skirting too close to treason as it is,” said Eric with a shudder. “And I would rather like to avoid the whole flaying, drawing and hanging part.”
“You shouldn’t have gone to the execution. It’s made you upset,” said Ix, suddenly stopping in his musings. He turned, tilting Eric’s chin up and looking at his face properly. Eric squirmed away, all too aware of how gaunt he must look. And the sudden swoop in his stomach from having Ix grab him like that… fuck, he didn’t have the mind to deal with that right now.
