Chapter 2: Someone Has to Want Them
You don't sleep that day. You lie on your narrow bed in your rented room above the print shop and stare at the ceiling and think about a star that wasn't there and a prince who said someone has to want them very badly, and then went straight back to arguing with you about Jupiter's moons like nothing had happened.
You think about his hand wiping the ink off your forehead.
You think about his eyes, all four of them.
When moonrise comes, you climb the three hundred stairs and push open the observatory door, and you don't take off your coat, and you don't go to the telescope.
He's on the chaise. He looks up. He's already smiling, the hopeful, too-eager smile he wears every night when you come in, as if he's afraid one night you won't. "Darling! I've been thinking about Callisto, and I simply refuse to accept that..."
"What did you mean," you say, "about the star?"
The smile falters. He sets down his teacup very carefully.
"Did you make it?" you ask. "Is it some kind of magic? Is it a trick?"
"No." He shakes his head slowly. "No, darling. Not a trick. I could make a star if I wanted. It's a fairly basic spell, for a Goetia. Showy. Rather vulgar. But I didn't." He looks up at the dome, at the sky beyond it. "The Goetia sky reflects the heart of whoever lives beneath it. It's an old magic, older than me. When my marriage ended, three stars went out. When... when I lost someone I had cared for, very foolishly, a whole cluster dimmed. And when you came up those stairs and told me Titan was a rock..." He makes a small, helpless gesture with his long fingers. "A star came on. I didn't do it on purpose. I'm terribly sorry. I'd hoped you wouldn't notice."
"You hired an astronomer," you say, "and hoped she wouldn't notice a new star."
"In hindsight, not my best plan."
You laugh, and it comes out shaky. You take off your coat finally and drop it over the brass railing, and you walk across the observatory until you're standing in front of the chaise. Even sitting, he's nearly eye level with you.
"I don't want your book," you say. "Or your gold. I mean, I'll keep the gold, I'm not an idiot. But I didn't come back every night for the pay."
His feathers lift slightly all over, a soft, involuntary ruffle, like a shiver. "No?"
"I came back because you're the only person in Hell who listens to me. And because you're funny, and you're kind, and you're completely wrong about everything and you don't care." You swallow. "And because I can't stop thinking about your hands."
There's a silence. The four red eyes are very wide.
"My hands," he repeats faintly.
"Yes."
"These ones?" He holds one up. It's long and slender, clad in a dark glove, with fingers that end in neat curved points beneath the fabric.
"Those ones."
"Oh," says Prince Stolas of the Goetia, in a very small voice. "Oh, my."
He asks. That's the thing you'll remember. He asks everything.
May I. Is this all right. Do you want. Would you like me to. He asks before he touches your face, before he takes off his gloves, before he pulls you down onto the velvet chaise and into his lap, and each time you say yes, and each time he looks at you like he's never heard the word before and can't quite believe it's meant for him.
He kisses carefully. You'd wondered how, with a beak, and the answer is that it's softer than you expected, warm, and that his tongue is long and clever, and that when you sigh into it his whole body shudders and the feathers along his neck stand up like a cat's fur. His hands, bare now, slide up under your shirt and over your back. His palms are warm and dry, his fingers end in small dark talons that he keeps very carefully away from your skin, and when one of them grazes your spine, just barely, you gasp and arch against him and he freezes.
"Sorry, sorry, darling, I'll be..."
"Do it again," you say.
He does it again. Slowly, the very tip of a talon trailing down the line of your back, light as a quill on paper. You shiver all over. He makes a low, wondering sound, almost a coo, and does it again, and again, until you're pressed flush against him and rocking in his lap and pulling at the high collar of his coat.
"Off," you tell him. "Take it off. I want to see you."
He hesitates. Just for a moment. "I'm rather... a great deal, under all this. My former wife found it..."
"Your former wife," you say, "was wrong about a lot of things."
He takes off the coat. Underneath, he's all feathers, grey and silver-white and soft as smoke, his chest broad and downy, his waist narrow, his body long and lean and nothing at all like a man's and yet unmistakably, beautifully, wanting you. You put your hands flat on his chest and push them up through the feathers to the warm skin beneath, and he makes a sound like you've struck a bell inside him.
You undress yourself, because he's shaking too much to manage your buttons, and when you're bare in his lap under the open dome, with the strange Goetia stars wheeling overhead, he just looks at you for a long moment, all four eyes, and then puts his face against your throat and breathes in.
"You smell like ink," he whispers. "And winter. I've wanted to do this for three weeks."
"Only three?"
"Since the first night, if I'm honest. Since you stood on my rug and called my natal chart 'statistically illiterate.' I thought I'd faint."
He lays you back on the chaise. He's so much bigger than you, he could cover you entirely, and the knowledge sends a hot, heavy pulse low through your stomach, but he doesn't. He kneels over you on the velvet like you're a book he's waited his whole life to read, and he reads you slowly. His beak along your collarbone. His tongue curling around your nipple, then the other, until you're gasping. His talon tips skating down your ribs, your stomach, the insides of your thighs, so lightly that every nerve in your skin wakes up and begs for more.
When his fingers finally slide between your legs, you're already wet, and he groans aloud.
"Oh, darling. Oh, look at you."
He touches you with the same care he does everything, slow circles that make you squirm, then one long finger pressing inside you, the curved talon carefully turned away, and his thumb working your clit until you're grabbing at his feathers and saying his name. He watches your face the whole time. The second pair of eyes is open. All four are fixed on you, glowing faintly in the dark, and there's nothing in them but hunger and wonder.
"Tell me what you want," he murmurs. "Anything. I'll give you anything."
"You," you manage. "Inside me. Please, Stolas."
He's never heard you say his name without the title. You see it hit him. His feathers flare out all at once, a great soft explosion of grey and white, and he makes a broken sound and pulls you up into his lap again and lowers you onto him.
He's large, and he's careful, and the stretch is overwhelming and so good your eyes sting. He holds you there, braced against his chest, letting you take him at your own pace, murmuring nonsense into your hair. Darling, sweet thing, beautiful, oh, you're perfect, you're perfect. When you finally sink all the way down, you both stop breathing.
Then you roll your hips. And he says something in a language you don't know, low and guttural, and his hands grip your waist and he starts to move with you.
It builds slowly. Then not slowly at all. You ride him on the velvet chaise under the open dome, his feathers soft against your thighs and his talons pressed carefully into your hips, and every time you sink down he lifts to meet you, deeper, harder, until the chaise is creaking and you're crying out and he's gasping your name over and over like a prayer he's just learned. His tail feathers have fanned out behind him, a vast trembling arc of grey and silver, like something out of a painting.
You come first, clenching around him, your head thrown back and your mouth open on a sound you've never made before. Over his shoulder, through the open dome, you see the new star, the one off the Crown, and you swear, you will swear it to your dying day and beyond, that it flares brighter at the exact moment you break apart.
He follows you, shuddering, his face pressed into your neck, his arms wrapped so tight around you that you can feel his heart pounding through the feathers. It goes on for a long time. When it's over, he doesn't let go. He just holds you, rocking a little, making a soft, low, contented sound in his chest that you realize, after a moment, is something very like purring.
"You're trembling," you murmur.
"I'm terribly out of practice," he says into your hair. "It's been... it's been a long time since anyone wanted me just for me."
You lift your head and kiss the side of his beak.
"I want you," you say. "Just for you."
He doesn't say anything. But all four of his eyes are wet.
You fall asleep on the chaise wrapped in his coat, with his wing over you like a feather quilt. When you wake, it's lavender morning, and someone is standing at the foot of the chaise.
Not a servant. A servant would never wear a crown that size.
He's tall. Not as tall as Stolas, but broader, heavier, his plumage a deep dark violet, his face beaked and lined and ancient and filled with a cold, contemptuous boredom. A crown of black iron sits on his head, set with a single red stone. He's looking down at you, naked under his son's coat, with the same expression you might use for a mouse the cat brought in.
Stolas wakes beside you. You feel him go rigid.
"Father," he breathes.
"Stolas." King Paimon of the Goetia flicks his eyes from his son to you and back. "I came to discuss your divorce settlement. I see you've found a new way to embarrass the family." He turns toward the stairs. "Dinner. Tonight. Bring your little pet. I'd like to see what you've decided to throw your title away on this time."