Desert

Her gaze is inscrutable as she looks back toward him, but it always is to him. She has a few tells that he has learned, but she is unpredictable and wild, often zigging when he thought she might zag. Rather than discouraging him, it only made him more certain that he had made the correct choice in joining her. If even he could not tell which direction the wind would blow her, their enemies would not either.

The boy peers back at him with blue eyes and Asmodeus watches back, uncertain of what to call the emotion in his chest. It was unlike anything he'd ever experienced before and it stilled his tongue before he could utter much more, a problem that was only exacerbated by Nyimara's easy affection. As she draped her elegant chin over his back, he withdrew his muzzle from their son so that he could try to trail his muzzle along the back of her foreleg, pressing kisses against her damp skin. He enjoyed her touch as much now as he had in autumn, although the feeling of handling something very dangerous to his health had no abated. A viper, willing to tolerate him for now but not, perhaps, for always.

He paused, breath pluming against her skin, as she conveyed the boys name and he rolled it around in his mouth as he looked at the bright eyed boy before smiling. Cahyr. "Yes," he mumured without interrupting her. Yes, their son would one day be something be stuff of legends, the sort of thing both revered and feared, Asmodeus knew it the same way he knew the sun was going to rise again tomorrow. His pride only grew as the boy objected to his dam's disappearance with flattened ears and a disgruntled expression and he chuckled low in his throat.

The sound died off slowly as Nyimara began speaking, her words dripping with the poison of possibility. It was yet another way to drive the knife into his father's back, but more than that, this was something she was offering to him. This wasn't just a jab at Solomon the same way that coupling with him might have been. This was something he had earned, an extension of the limited trust she was willing to grant him, a promise of something more if he would only grasp it.

And he reached out with both hands.

"Only if you promise to stay my Queen," he murmured, although he absolutely no doubt that she would not be letting her crown go anytime soon. However, with each stroke of her ego (sincere though the strokes were), he fanned the flames of her vanity and power, reminding her that no matter the circumstances that had brought them together, they were together now. He shifted so that he could try to bring his lips up the point of her shoulder in a series of caresses, ending at the tips of her mane as he toyed with them. "I would be delighted to stand at your side, Queen Nyimara, and show you what the three of us can accomplish."