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The molten trickle of heat that wound itself into the back of Mirnatius's skull had nothing to do with the cords of wood that the frantic-eyed boyar's servants were still piling higher into the grate and even less to do with his delightful little bride, who stood unrelentingly dull and awful in the corner of the dingy bedroom they'd had to stuff themselves into. It was all sulfur, all sun-scorched blood and hunger, and he wasn't in the least surprised when Chernobog welled up within him and breathed out a soft, mocking laugh, so quiet that not even the men attending to his hundred tiny buttons would have heard it.
He knew better than to say anything in return, of course; knew better than to flinch, or blink, or cringe away from the burning claws that traced invisible lines over his still-clad back, marking out the memories of burns and weals.
He knew better than to think but you agreed—, banishing the thought into the tight sick clench of his stomach before it could quite coalesce. Chernobog had made no agreement with Mirnatius, but Mirnatius had more reason than anyone else still alive to know how worthless they were, how empty the meaning and bare the letters. And though Irina had told him to stay away, he had never put his word to that.
Mirnatius emptied his mind, staring blankly into the leaping flames, the crackling hiss of damp wood covering the low voice that lapped at his ear. "Just a taste," Chernobog said to him. "I have sworn not to feast, not yet, but I will have a taste of her, here, now, before she can escape you again, before you can fail again. And you will get it for me."
He didn't reply (how could he?) only bent his head so that the servant could be done with the last few buttons. The heat of the over-stoked fire beat hot lashes across his back; Chernobog's attention crawled beneath his skin in nauseating counterpoint. Across the room, Irina's maids were bundling about with her clothing, then bundling her into the bed. The single, heavy-framed bed, in this too-small room, in this too-small house. Mirnatius took a shallow breath and felt heat and brimstone in his lungs, the threat of slow, choking agony should he fail Chernobog again all too clear.
That was all he had for respite; then his manservant was ushering him towards the bed as well, snuffing the rough, ugly candles, drawing the curtains about the bedframe in an awful parody of marital privacy. As if he could ignore the noises of half a dozen bodies rustling around outside, bedding down on the floor; as if he could ignore the heat within, the bare, bubbling coal in the pit of his stomach.
She might have been able to refuse the demon, for whatever good she thought she could scrape from it, but he had long been bought and sold, his choices ripped away before his birth.
He ought to have said something, he knew, not so much for Irina's sake as to cue all the witnesses packed into the room. But Chernobog didn't care about them, except to chuckle, low and malicious, about the shame and resentment their presence caused him. So Mirnatius said nothing; simply reached out across the bed.
Somehow he had almost expected her skin to be cold, as if in the dark of the borrowed bed she might have transformed herself into the fell Staryk beauty his bewitched court thought her to be. She wasn't, of course; she was warm beneath his fingertips, the smooth skin beneath the rough lace and linen weave of her nightgown nothing but human.
Irina flinched beneath him, eyes gone briefly wide in the dim firelight oozing between the bedcurtains. The flash of vulnerability lasted no more than a moment before she set her hands to his chest and shoved, calling out "Oh, beloved!" loud enough that no doubt even the men crammed into the hallway beyond the boyar's bedroom door could hear her.
She meant to push him away without alerting their servants; no doubt to spare herself the humiliation of their delayed wedding night, knowing he didn't want her, believing she'd banished the demon. Mirnatius would have gladly let her, were it not for the fire in his gut and the too-certain knowledge that one simple brush of skin wouldn't suffice to sate Chernobog's hunger for a taste.
He leaned down further instead, forcing her back against the bed, pressing his mouth against the hinge of her jaw, the line of her neck. Her pulse was fast as a rabbit's against his lips and her skin tasted faintly of salt; if there was some frozen sorcery there after all, he could only hope he wasn't meant to be able to discern it.
"Be still," he said, muffled against her. Unnecessarily: she'd frozen again when he covered her, gone still and motionless except the race of her heart and the quick, shallow, barely-audible breaths, a tiny involuntary tremor of her thigh as he pulled his hand further up along it, drawing her skirts up to her waist.
Irina tensed when he touched her, pushing his hand awkwardly between her legs, fumbling along her slit until his fingers dipped into her. She was hot inside, just slick enough that he could push inside first with one finger, then another, in some terrible parody of lovemaking. Still the feeling of being watched persisted and slowly grew, fiery touches spreading up along his thighs in mockery of the way he had touched her.
Whether it was his demon's doing or his own, Mirnatius felt himself stirring, his body responding to the tight squeeze around his fingers, the slight scent between their bodies. He thrust his fingers deeper into her, drawing a tiny, choked gasp that might have been pain.
Perhaps it was obvious to her that he knew little enough of what he was doing; it certainly felt obvious enough to him. But she said nothing, just stared up at him with a blank, armored mask that was sickeningly familiar.
She didn't want it? Neither did he. What she had failed to realize was that neither of them had, neither of them would ever have a choice in this or in anything else; that all her bargaining had bought only the luck of escaping the tsar's bed with only so much blood as this would draw. Mirnatius slid his fingers from her, rucking up his own nightclothes and used the damp slickness that clung to his skin to stroke himself to full hardness.
He had never been wholly awake when Chernobog had ridden him to use and break his little toys; the sensation of burying himself into someone else's body was utterly new and yet somehow familiar at the same time, astonishingly good and unbearably nauseating. His hips bucked, entirely outside his conscious control; the bed squeaked beneath them, rocking in an unsteady rhythm, and Mirnatius felt the sharp, stabbing pain of tears start to his eyes even as pleasure sparked and lit inside him, rushing upwards like leaping flames.
She was still so hot inside and slicker by the moment, the only frozen coolness about her in her empty stare. And whether his demon wanted it of him or not, Mirnatius couldn't bear to look at it a moment longer; he collapsed forwards over her body instead, burying his face in her long, mussed hair and rutting down into her tense, unwelcoming body.
It felt as if it took him forever to reach his climax, though it couldn't have been more than a handful of minutes. The shattering blow of it hit him like a lash, knocking him forwards against her, tearing the last worthless remains of his control from him even as the heat vanished from the pit of his stomach, leaving him alone and empty.
Irina must have been able to feel his tears wet against her cheek, must have been able to tell that his shudders went on too long to be pleasure. But she said nothing; not even in this close, tight space where she might have whispered.
Some small mercy, that. More than he deserved.