Lord of Unkindness Chapter Thirty-Eight

 Notes: A bit of fallout from our climax, my darlins. Let's get some closure!

Title: Lord of Unkindness Chapter Thirty-Eight

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Chapter Thirty-Eight

 

 

Someone is touching him. Soft fingertips skate across his chest, lingering on his collarbone and skimming his shoulder before trailing down his arm as slow and sweet as drips of honey. Those fingers interweave with his, and a warm voice close to his ear says, “I can tell you’re waking up. That’s good. Can you feel my hand?”

“Mmhmm,” Ciro hums, lost in the moment.

“That’s so good, baby. I was worried there for a while.”

Worried? Why would Angelo be worried?

Wait. Angelo? What…how were they…

Memories pour back into Ciro’s mind, bursting through his languor like breaking a dam and flooding his brain. He gasps and his eyes fly open as he tries to sit up.

He can’t. He’s got all the muscle tone of a drunken earthworm right now, and the second he even approaches upright his head starts spinning. “Whoa, slow down, slow down,” Angelo says, easing Ciro onto his back again. “You’ve got a hell of a case of magic whiplash, Ciro. It’s going to take a while to get back to normal.”

Normal…Ciro thinks he’s forgotten what normal actually is. Before this, he would have said normal was numb fingertips and loneliness, pushing most of his magic away and wondering how long he’d have before he started to lose his mind. Before that, normal was a healthy body and a broken heart, a mind that was as good as owned and operated by his father. Now he can feel his body, all of it, and his magic…one of his familiars is sitting on Angelo’s shoulder. He can’t see any others, but he can feel his magic brimming inside of him like it never has before, a hurricane of power barely kept at bay. He needs to let more of them out.

Maybe not in kaiju form this time, though.

Angelo grabs a bottle of water off the side table with his free hand and holds it up to Ciro’s lips. “Here,” he says. “You must be parched.”

He is, come to think of it. That informs his first question. “How long have I been under?” he asks hoarsely after his first few sips.

“Two days.”

Two…days? Shit. “Are you okay?”

Angelo smiles. He looks so gorgeous when he smiles, and this is the first time in too long where the expression is completely unburdened by the metric ton of shit Ciro has thrown at him. His chin is stubbly, dark hair roughening his golden brown skin, and his eyes are tired, but he’s happy. He’s so clearly happy that the top layers of worry building up in Ciro slough away in an instant. “I’m fine,” he says. “Although I could do with less sitting by your bedside while you recover from something that could kill you.” Then he leans in and presses a kiss to Ciro’s cheek. Ciro turns his head and makes it a kiss on the lips after a moment, and their conversation is derailed by the sheer joy of pulling Angelo in close, opening his mouth so he can taste him better, the heat he always feels around this gorgeous man building so fast—

“Mm, wait,” Angelo says, pulling away after a few more moments. “Wait, we should talk first.”

“Talk about what?”

Angelo looks a little sheepish. “Well, there’s actually a lot. What, ah, what do you remember?”

Too much. Ciro acknowledges that a little of his eagerness to lose himself in his lover came from not wanting to discuss the fact that his uber-familiar appears to have eaten his father, but there’s really no putting it off at this point. “My dad is dead, isn’t he?”

“As best I can tell,” Angelo agrees. “His body is gone. I have no idea where it went, honestly, and I’m not sure we want to experiment and find out exactly what happens when a familiar eats a person. It’s probably the same as when familiars eat each other, so in all likelihood he’s been broken down into his atomic components and…repurposed.”

Ciro feels vaguely sick. “Is he inside me? Is that what I’m feeling, this…” He points at his chest and the storm he feels brewing in its depths.

Angelo shakes his head. “You got a boost in magic, that’s all. It might dissipate over time, or it might be a permanent increase. There’s no way to know for sure.”

Ciro has his father’s magic now. The sick feeling stays, but it’s joined by a sense of righteousness he can’t quite hide. That fucker, all his threats and bullying, all the shit he did, and all he came to in the end was making his son more powerful than he’d ever been. If Victor had a soul, hopefully it was burning in hell, but Ciro thought he could get used to having his father’s magic on his side. “Okay.”

Angelo looks a bit skeptical. “Okay? Really?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you’d be more upset, honestly.”

Ciro gives him a half-smile. “The best vengeance is living well.” Speaking of that… “Did Nephele survive?”

Angelo sighs. “She’s alive, but she lost a lot of blood. Your family doctors came thanks to a call from one of your cousins, but they’re not sure she’ll ever wake up. She’s in the same suite as your Uncle Magnus at the moment.”

His uncle…who is also in what was likely a permanent coma, thanks to Ciro. He turns his head to stare straight up at the ceiling for a moment. “Does it make me a bad person that I’m not sad? I didn’t want her to be mauled to death, but. I don’t want to have to deal with her, either.”

“That seems totally appropriate to me, considering the fact that she clearly thought you were her property. That’s not love, that’s obsession,” Angelo says, anger curling around the edges of his voice. “Not to mention what she did to Annette, and Maria, and who knows how many more people because she was ordered to or because she got bored. Nephele was a very sick person who was unfortunately also very powerful, and those can be the hardest people to help.”

Ciro tucks his conflicted feelings away and nods. “But Maria is okay?”

“Oh, she’s fine,” Angelo confirms. “She’s got a few questions about the tablet in the hall, though. Apparently her luck drew her to it, and once she got there Richard was unable to touch her no matter how hard he tried.”

Ciro smiles. Magic worked in mysterious ways sometimes. “And Richard?”

“Oh, Chiffon took care of him and his kitty.”

Hang on… “Chiffon? How?”

Angelo grins. “You’re not the only one who ended up having a big meal during that fight. Chiffon will probably be in a torpor for days.”

Ciro stares at him. “What is Chiffon?”

He pats Ciro’s shoulder. “Better you don’t ask, sweetheart. Now, let’s get you cleaned up. Your family—what’s left of it—wants to meet with you, and we need to review the story you’re going to be telling the cops.”

Ciro is starting to feel left behind. “What cops?”

“Baby, you blew the roof off this place both figuratively and literally,” Angelo says. “That requires some answers. Lucky for you, your cousin has a story ready to go.”

It would have to be a good one to get them out of this without being arrested for domestic terrorism, but the way things are going right now, Ciro’s willing to bet on them.