Malthios–Aym relationship

The Malthios–Aym relationship was an intimate bond preserved in Malthios’s memories and in the way he guarded his wings: Aym was both a former sexual partner and the last person to touch them. Their closeness also gave Malthios a personal point of comparison when he recognized Aym’s personality in Theo.

Intimacy and Shared Ritual

Malthios and Aym had sex and liked grooming each other’s feathers afterward. The grooming was especially intimate because demon wings were sensitive, making the care they exchanged a form of closeness beyond the sexual encounter itself. The text presents this as mutual: each groomed the other, rather than one partner simply tending to the other.

Aym and Malthios’s Wings

When Luc asked permission to touch Malthios’s wings, Malthios hesitated. He explained that Aym had been the last person to touch them, then declined the contact, saying the wings were all he had left that belonged to him. The exchange makes Aym’s place in Malthios’s past tangible: their shared intimacy remained the boundary against which a later request was measured. Malthios had also explained that his wings had once been black and turned red when he became Demon King, a reminder of the many of his own kind he had killed to claim that position. Their history of touching those sensitive wings therefore belonged to a private register of closeness, distinct from the violence associated with their changed appearance.

Memory and Resemblance

In a later conversation, Malthios immediately named Aym when asked which person Theo most reminded him of. He saw a resemblance in personality, while distinguishing it from Theo’s physical similarity to Kamil. The comparison shows that Aym remained part of Malthios’s intimate store of memories and an enduring reference point for recognizing familiar qualities in someone else.

Significance

The relationship is recalled through specific forms of bodily trust rather than through a detailed account of its beginning or end. Mutual feather-grooming establishes how close Malthios and Aym had been; Malthios’s hesitation with Luc shows that this closeness had not become interchangeable with later contact. Aym’s continuing presence in Malthios’s memories links past intimacy to the bonds and likenesses he perceives in the present, without erasing the privacy he associates with the wings.