Page 12 of Astaroth

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He did as he was told. Puffy snowflakes fell past the windows. Over the trees, evening darkened a batch of heavy storm clouds. He wanted to rewind the day. Pause the moment they’d kissed. Memorize the shape of Aster’s lips against his own. Demand to be kissed harder.Kiss me like you’d kiss a lover,he wanted to say.Kiss me like you’d kiss a whore.His cheeks burned hotter.Kiss me like you’d kiss a stranger in a nightclub.

The air parted. Aster’s wings rustled pages and tossed books open, stirring the library. Briar saw his reflection in the windows, not flying, just leaping, skipping the space from doorway to couch, and landing behind him.

“This might hurt,” Aster said.

Witch hazel and antiseptic tinged the air.

Briar set his chin atop his folded arms. “I know.”

A cool, wet cloth touched his left clipping. He flinched but stayed silent. Peroxide fizzed. A violent sting sank through skin into bone. Despite a high tolerance for pain, Briar still clenched his jaw, hiding his face in the crook of his elbow. Aster moved speedily. He dabbed at first, then held the cloth over deeper wounds, cleaning infection from bulbous scabs. At one point, he gathered a breath, but no words followed. A few moments after that, he fingered ointment onto the wounded flesh and set gauze then cloth over his clippings. Lastly, he secured a tight bandage around Briar’s chest.

“Angel or not, you’re susceptible to infection. Immortal does not mean unkillable,” Aster said, finally. “I’ll have a bottle of amoxicillin sent to your room. One pill, twice a day.”

“All right.”

“Michael did this to you?”

Briar stared out the window. In the reflection, he watched Aster reach for him, just barely. His fingers twitched, hovered, dropped to the couch. “He did. I resisted. Forced his hand. Encouraged his. . .” Briar’s breath shortened. “Brutality, I suppose.”

“This was a choice. He chose to do this to you,” Aster said.

“There’s no undoing it, so.” He tipped his head from side to side, rolling one shoulder then the other. He turned to glance at Aster. “Thank you. I’ll see you for dinner?”

“Yeah,” he said, and cleared his throat. “Yes, I’ll see you then.”

Briar left the library. He climbed the stairs, inhaling long, trembling breaths. Once his bedroom door closed, his knees buckled. He reached over each shoulder, pawing at the bandages, urging the pain to lessen, willing the terrible memories of Michael to fade. He remembered fistfuls of his own feathers. The crunch of delicate, hollow bones. Sayingplease, stop, enough.

Crumbled on the floor, Briar cried.

Silently, he began to pray.

Give me the strength to forget him.

Clementine did, indeed, make stew. The hearty meal rivaled the weather, warming Briar from the inside out. He’d spent much of the evening in his bedroom, but after he’d washed his face and concealed the bandages under a thick button-down flannel, he’d joined Aster at the table. They’d shared a bottle of spiced wine and talked about bland things. The storm, how Briar wished to organize the library, whether or not Aster should re-paint the stables. The truth lingered under each neatly packaged answer—oh, yes, a dark stain would look nice on the pasture fenceandI love a good short story collection—glowing like embers near a puddle of gasoline.

Briar had kissed Aster.

Aster had kissed Briar.

Now, Briar could think of nothing else. If he wasn’t locking away a memory of Michael, he was actively fantasizing about Aster. He wanted to be touched. He wanted to know what he was capable of feeling, what he was capable of making someone else feel. The simplest things made his blood rush faster. Aster’s sleeves rolled to his elbows, how his teeth scraped a fork, the wayhe dunked his fingers in his wine glass and sucked them clean. Briar had experienced one kiss—one—and, somehow, he could not function. Something, truly, had to be done.

“I’d like to go for a swim after this,” Briar said. He scooped a piece of gooey, rum-soaked brownie into his mouth. “Join me?”

“You shouldn’t get your bandages wet.”

“I’ll stay in the shallows. Yes or no?”

“Obviously, yes.”

“Obviously,” Briar mocked, rolling his eyes. He hid his smile behind his wine glass. “How indulgent are you feeling?”

“That’s quite a question.”

“Wine, Aster. Should we bring another bottle?”

Aster’s smile split into a grin. He took another bite of the brownie and stood, offering a curt nod. “Red, right?”

“I have zero preference,” Briar called.