Page 3 of The Wrath of Ashes
“Maybe you like those thin boys with hair like corn silk?” Lyss giggled.
“Not my type.”
“So, you do have a type, do ya?”
Trapped, Asha sighed heavily. “It’s inconsequential. I’ll never marry or partner.”
“Mayhap someday the right m—person will come along.” Lyss’s voice grew soft and reedy. “Possibly one’ll come for me, too.”
Chapter Two
Mezerath
A chill ran down Rath’s spine, his fire twitching in the core of his being that burned beyond all else. A young man knelt at Rath’s side, affectionately rubbing his cheek along his knee as the empty throne room hummed with magic along every gilded surface. It even glimmered in seams across the stone floors. The barrel-vaulted ceiling carried whispers among the buttresses to the grand pillars, shaped from living stone to appear as if twisted into the very rock of the mountain.
The whispers carried tidings, and his head shot with pain as he tried to tap into their meanings.A pity.
“What’s wrong, my liege?” His bedservant, Jeron, glanced up at him with twinkling eyes the color of citrine, a common trait among his kingdom’s humans, glimmering in the crystal lamps that framed his gilded throne. His ginger hair and yellowed eyes were a common thing, but Rath found it comforting. It made him certain that he’d find one that looked the same in a few years, when his contract was up. Or they grew tired of him. A dragon did not force a bedservant to perform. Sex was only a minute duty of a bedservant.
Rath shifted uncomfortably, the padded velvet beneath him more of an inconvenience than a status symbol. His father had found it appropriate, but Rath despised the thing.
He extended his quite-human hand, all soft flesh, save for the trace pattern of scales, almost like a tattoo, running along his forearms. His black-tipped nails brushed through the male’s hair, lightly trailing. “Would that I could tell you, boy, for you’d be far more bereft than I.” Sadness kindled in Rath’s heart.
“I’ll listen.” He glanced up hopefully. Those same glistening eyes that he’d found enamoring mere weeks ago had grownstale. They fared far better, staring up at him with Rath’s cock in his mouth. The thought sounded, but it wasn’t that he’d grown too old or changed in some way. Truth told, he was in his prime, but Rath wasdistracted. And somethingnewhad come along, something interesting.
“Yes, I know you will, so obediently. But maybe it’s notyouraffections I long for.” Rath ran a single finger down the side of his face and under his jaw, tilting it up to stare at the boy, as appealing as gruel to him since he’d the fates telling him his mate was ready. He cast his gaze away and scoffed, sighing once more. He so hated disappointing people, and he waited for Jeron’s tears. ’Twas the inevitable end of a bedservant’s contract. Some would lament, despite every measure being taken to not have feelings for one another.
Instead of the sourness Rath anticipated, the boy’s eyes brightened. “Has my liege sensed his prince?”
Rath could kiss the boy, a reward for his understanding. And joy? It almost made Rath want to keep him.Almost.
“I have. Infrequently, I feel pulses of him run through my soul. Great anguish. It’s grown strong as of late.” Rath flicked his finger off the boy’s chin and resumed stroking his head.
“Call out to him. Isn’t that what a dragon does, my liege?” He blinked up expectantly. Ever the voice of reason, a bedservant quelled a dragon’s more primal impulses. They were both bedwarmer and sitter.
“I do, but all I get is pain in response. Either he must die and I wait for another to come or endure the suffering to bring him to me.”
“Isn’t this your first mate you’ve sensed?” Jeron looked up expectantly, his eyes aflame with delight. Rath was very young by dragon standards, in his midtwenties—he’d have not had time to sense another. Rath was practically a child himself, in some senses.
“It is. And that’s what vexes me… He’s my perfect one, and if I miss his arrival, the next the fates try will never be as perfect. I want a perfect eternity. And I am impatient. Does this bother you that I pine for another?” Rath trailed the tips of his claws through the boy’s hair, witnessing him shiver.
“I can no more allow myself to fall in love with you than you me. You are unreachable and beautiful, and I so far beneath you. My king, you have needs as any male, and I am honored to meet them.”
This is why I picked this one.The memory of their first meeting, one of a few young men, brought to him some two or three years ago, came to. He had that eager eye, a dragon worshiper. He viewed their sex as ritual to the gods themselves. Rath snapped his fingers, quite pleased with himself for remembering.
“May I ask a favor for my service to you, my liege?”
Rath refocused on the boy’s glimmering eyes, the corner of his ever-stoic mouth tugging up. He’d been told it was an eerily similar gesture to his father’s roguish smirk. “And that would be? Dear Jeron?”
Coy little creature… No wonder I liked his ember of heart.
He visibly shivered at his name being said. “Might I be his valet? I would be dutiful to my king dragon’s mate. I would brush his hair with fine oils and tend his care for you. As you see, I do a fine job with my own skin. Might I care for his, to keep his scales polished and his horns shined?” Jeron reached high, his soft fingers brushing the base of Rath’s horns, the sensation foreign and welcome. Rath leaned his head to the side, the chain connecting the upward sweep of them jingling, catching Jeron’s eye as he climbed eagerly into Rath’s lap with an air of comfort, not the raw sexual nature he was trained for.
“You would want that? To never lie in my bed again, never feel my cock pulsing between your thighs? Or on your lips?”Rath grinned wickedly, his lips brushing the pointed shape of his teeth, even in his humanoid form, so sharp. He could look somewhat more human, but it was uncomfortable and made him uncomfortable. Humanity had a certain weakness to it.
“My greatest pleasure is to look upon you, and eventually I would become too old for you, would not be fit for my master’s affections. I may age or grow withered, but I can still serve your mate.” Jeron wrapped his arms over Rath’s shoulders, a familiar gesture, but it lacked Jeron’s usual sort of lasciviousness. His hips stilled and lips did not migrate toward Rath’s.
“What if I rather have a female tend him? I may become territorial of a male in my mate’s chambers.”
