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Dante was satisfied with a simple, substantial breakfast but Aster always insisted, when they stayed at the mansion, on serving him a proper spread: bread and juice, and assortment of fruit, good tea, fish or eggs, and a side of meat. (“Plenty of iron!”) For himself, he chose fruit and a strong cup of coffee, which he would linger over a while Dante ate his fill. Sometimes the other clan members joined them, but just as often it was the two of them on the bedroom veranda, or at a table positioned in the garden, and on the laziest mornings, in bed with the curtains thrown back to let in the daylight.
It was such a morning, early summer. The sun had risen but not struck the bedroom windows. Aster, reclined against the lavishly padded headboard, brought a steaming cup of coffee to his lips. The diffused light through the long, gauzy curtains gave him a sort of otherworldly radiance, especially the near-translucent ends of his hair, feather soft against his forehead and curling at his chin.
For no reason he could think of, Dante reached up to stroke the side of his face.
Aster turned to him with a searching expression. “Did you get enough to eat?”
“Mm. Are you going to have something besides coffee?”
“I’m still full from last night. I had the most delicious meal.”
Dante smiled. “Not sick of it yet?”
“I could never grow sick of such a feast.”
With a wink, Aster leaned forward to kiss the scars on Dante’s neck, and angling his face downward, nuzzled his throat.
“You’re so good to me,” he whispered. “Sometimes I can’t believe . .. ”
He was thinking about that sorcerer again, the one who had abandoned him. Dante had only picked up scant details but nothing he’d heard endeared him to Aster’s creator. Aster put on a flawless front, identical to the one Dante wore whenever the topic of his own parents came up. The others did not see through it, not even Eiden, but Dante had recognized the act the first time Aster had mentioned this Huey, and a part of him resented the enduring connection the sorcerer had to Aster that Dante never would.
But it was not the only one.
“I adore you,” he said.
Aster flushed as pink as his hair and his eyes turned to glass. Dante carefully took the coffee from him and laid it aside. Holding out an arm, he pulled Aster against him.
“I don’t have any pressing business today. Do you?”
“Nothing urgent,” Aster said. He rested his head against Dante’s shoulder and, almost reverently, touched the ring on his hand.