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It wasn't her apartment anymore, a thought that stopped her just shy of walking right in. Instead, she stood, fist raised, knuckles poised and ready and begging for the sting of wood against skin.
"What are you scared of?" Fray's voice tickled her skin, crept across it like a sunbeam of resolve.
"We agreed—"
"The world wasn't on the verge of annihilation, and you weren't boldly marching off to the edge of existence like the do-gooder you are when you agreed to that." There was a pause, Fray falling quiet long enough that Kit was certain he'd left. Or worse. "They would want to know. They deserve to know. Don't you dare take something else away from them without letting them say good-bye."
He was right, and she hated when he was right just as much as he enjoyed it. The squeeze of their shared heart told her they both knew.
She rapped her knuckles against the door.
It opened.
He simply stared. Eyes wide. Limbal rings green levin across blackened sky. No words passed, and he gripped her arm and pulled her to him with a sharp yank.
He was warm. Solid. Alive. Outline of muscle and ridges of scale beneath soft fabric that clung to every dip of his shape. He smelled like home. Inviting. The part of him that belonged to her an instinct. Her arms fit around the barrel of his chest, and he smoothed her ears back in the same motion he tucked her head beneath his chin.
"Sid, I—"
He shushed her, and for a span of time that she quickly lost track of, heartbeats a number she itemized in her memory, they simply stood. Held one another. Pretend had begun anew. Inside the door was a fantasy they agreed they could never keep, but needed all the same, and they both knew it.
"Come in."
"If I come in—"
The words had no chance to take flight. He gripped her chin and turned her mouth to meet his, and backed them both through the door.
Tongue and teeth and warmth almost too hot to touch. Without surrendering her waist he dug fingers into her hair, a gesture she mimicked with both hands until her fingers twined around the spikes that grew out of the back of his head. She let the softest sound of relief, filling the room with hopes and lies.
A firm, small voice cleared across the space. Sidurgu broke the kiss and loosened his grip enough to let Rielle slip between them. She wrapped her small arms about Kit's waist.
And another set, only felt by her, reached as far as they could go around the three of them.
"Rielle," Sid started.
"House Fortemps," the girl said as she ducked and shuffled to get free of the tangle. "I will be back in the morning to see you off."
"You don't have to go," Kit tried. "I came to see you, too."
"If you think I am staying, and getting in the way of this, you're as nuts as the Holy See thinks you are. He's been sulking."
"I have not!"
"As you say." She swung a cloak around her shoulders, hopped first one foot and then the other into fur-lined boots. "I missed you, Kit, of course, but that can wait." The door opened, shut, and she was gone.
They were alone, but the urgency of their greeting had cooled. Easy comfort reigned.
"Set your sword down," he ordered, fingers making short, neat work of the buttons on her black coat. Leather creaked as she did as she was told, and the lining whispered as she slid the coat off. "Tell me everything."
She did.
Sid never questioned her stories. Never doubted for a moment the truth of her accounts. Mayhap he did not know what an Ancient was, seen an Ascian, or understood dynamis or time travel. Or, maybe that was doing him a disservice. But the look on his face, the unspoken worry in his contrasting eyes, the tension in his jaw said he did not need to. He always believed her, and now was no different.
"'Tis the end of the world, and you are about to chase a nihilistic bird to Fury-forsaken nowhere to save it." His nostrils flared as he breathed in, then let it out deeply. "Your husband?"
Her jaw trembled. Words that never got easier gagging her. "Gone. Just when I knew some part of him yet remained. Gave the last of himself that I might have this chance to finish what he started." She touched his stone, warm against her skin. "I can't fail."
"I am coming with you."
"You can't. Rielle—"
"Can stay with Edmont." He gripped her shoulders. "I told you: you're a dark knight, Kit. That means something."
"If I fall, if we fail, you need to be with her." She looked up, eyes begging him. "Please."
His breath deepened. Grew deliberate in meter as his temper ticked upward. He meant to argue. She could see every convincing reason pass across his dour expression. Whatever they were, he choked them down with a grunt.
"When you succeed, you come back to us. And we do things right this time." His frown deepened. "When you win and the world is safe, we choose us."
"He means it, Kit." Fray's voice gnawed at her. Reminded her of the reality waiting outside the bubble that was their tiny Empyreum apartment. "Whatever little games of denial you two are playing at…"
"I will." The fantasy could choke them later. Her heart couldn't survive Fray's hash reality check in that moment. Zodiark was gone. Hydaelyn no more. Elidibus' entire self spent in his last effort to see to the star's salvation. "After this, the Scions can continue without me. Home is a who, not a place."
"Let us be home to each other, then." Sidurgu closed the space between them again, this time giving no quarter. His lips found hers, his hands her hips, and he snapped them against his. A needy rumble passed from deep in his chest.
"Bloody Fury, Kit." Fray kicked ineffectually at the nearby bench. She tensed, nearly responded aloud. The next moment, he vanished. She would have to resolve that later.
It was too easy to fall into. Like she had never left. Sense gone and replaced by the sensory. Like just a day or two ago they were watching steam rise from fresh blood on snow and unsure whose it was. She lifted her leg, already knowing he was about to pull it over his hip. Found her fingers down his trousers, teasing at the ridged folds of flesh behind which his erection already grew in anticipation. Braced as the wall met her back when he trapped her beneath him against it. Her briefs pulled hastily aside. They were joined before a minute had elapsed.
He swore, rough and low, nearly unintelligible as he launched into the pace they both enjoyed. Frantic. Desperate relief over something so missed, but pushed to the back of their respective minds in the name of keeping promises to part ways without regret. As if the grief that tore them apart stepped aside to allow them a few hours of make-believe.
Sidurgu was not, had never been, a runner up. A consolation. He was and remained a what-if. What if life hadn't wrung them so thoroughly? What if they didn't chase pain alone over the balm they proved again and again they could be together?
Kit closed her eyes, let lips and teeth and fingers do what memory recalled correctly, and in just a handful of minutes, they rested, propped against the wall, panting and temporarily spent. Immediate need slaked enough to breathe. Wistful longing for one another abated.
She traced the line of his jaw with the tip of her nose. Rested it against the thick scales at his cheeks. Curled fingers into the collar of his shirt and let the pads travel the join with his skin.
"I missed you," she said, meaning it.
He grunted agreement. Sidurgu wasn't one for many words. Did not often need to be. He cradled her head in one large hand, the thud of his heart against hers answering better, anyway.
And in her own chest, her shared heart pounded with frustration in equal measure to love and life.
Sidurgu grasped her other leg, lifted her weight, and hauled them to the bed midway across the room. The mattress sank under her weight, and they made quick work of undressing one another by rote. They paused, meeting one another's eyes, the threads of the abyss soothing just by proximity to one another. He cupped her face in both of his hands, the tug of his sword-worked calluses a familiar comfort.
"You're scared."
She nodded, eyelids coming to rest that lashes brushed the peaks of her cheeks. "More than I ever have been."
"'Tis not for me to tell you not to be, but know I believe in you." He climbed over her, pressing her to her back with a palm between her breasts. One knee, then the other trapped her in place. She wound her calves over his, doing the same. Whatever the night held, they were not surrendering their time. He dropped forward, propped on one arm, teasing her open with the tip of his erection. "I have to."
It could have been heavy, the weight of his faith in her. Instead, as he slid into her again, making luxurious work of bringing them into a languid rhythm, it lifted her.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, dragged her nails over the spread of scales down his back. He made a sound that landed somewhere between a buzz and a purr, arching into the touch.
"Thank you," she breathed against his horn.
"Thank me by coming back alive," he said, the strain in the words telling her they would be his last until they finished this round. He slid a hand between them, seeking her bud, swollen with their exertion, and drew rhythmic circles over it, drawing her to a peak, to a weeping moan of his name before he let himself spill inside her.
When he gathered her to him, shifting around that he could lie back while holding her, she buried her face in his neck. Let her senses fill with the way sweat and yearning wound into every pore of every ilm of their skin. If she perished at the edge of existence, she would go holding this with all her other cherished memories.
Of the prickle of purple grass against her scalp, the way rough horns abraded her thighs, and blood swept across kiss-swollen lips had made her apex tingle. Of the ache of slightly too much aether being stolen from her body. Every one precious, and all seemed to cave her chest.
The memories of being needed, wanted, loved so viscerally that it could do no less than hurt as much as it comforted. Exactly the way she knew she wanted. Needed.
"Sidurgu," she whispered, "I love—"
"When you wrote me, I knew."
Kit swallowed. "What?"
"I was angry. Furious that we could have let that happen." He caught her fingers in his, bringing them to his lips. He touched every one with a kiss, each lingering just a heartbeat longer than the last. "'Twas not that which angered me. I was furious with myself that I was not there with you."
"We agreed that—"
"Maybe we were wrong."
"Sid…" She scooted, enough to lean up, propped on forearms on the muscles of his chest. She looked into his eyes, bright and intense in the night. Moonlight streamed through the stained glass, stately blues and sumptuous violets streaking across his pale white skin. His tail flicked, brushing the inside of her thigh. "You said you have to figure things with Rielle out on your own. And I… Elidibus…"
He whispered, words more felt where their chests pressed together than the sound heard. "How long will you martyr yourself, remaining alone for the sake of the dead, while the living long to keep you near? I cannot live this way, and neither should you." When her face fell, he added, "Fray is gone. Elidibus is gone. A stool with three legs is more stable than one, even two."
"I have to remember."
"Together, we can make sure they are never forgotten. That what they gave up to give us our fighting chances is worth their sacrifices." He grasped her by the jaw, forcing her eyes to meet his. "You helped bring Rielle and I together as a family. We live in your apartment. There is a hole here, shaped like you, if only you would fill it."
"I love you."
"Do not change the subject."
"That is the subject." She brushed her fingers along his cheek. Touched the pads to the swell of his lips. "What you are asking of me is no small thing."
"It changes nothing, except that you will have a place to land when you are not saving our sorry arses." Back and forth his eyes scanned, creased with a fear she did not recognize in him. "Tell me this is not something you want, and I drop it. We exhaust a few more urges, and you leave tomorrow same as you planned. Maybe you live. Maybe you come back. Maybe you do not." Fingers dug into her hair, and he tugged her face to his, catching her up in a pleading kiss. Between their lips, he added, "But, there is a reason you came here, and it wasn't just to take one last tumble together."
She swallowed, her throat suddenly thick. Closing. "I couldn't go without seeing you again."
"This is not something I am still willing to pretend I do not want." She leaned her face into his palm when he held it to her cheek. "When we got your letter, when I thought we had… I am not saying I want that—Rielle is enough for me there—but I know I would cross the abyss for you, and walk through every flame in it if you need me, nay, simply want me at your side."
A smile touched her lips, despite herself. "It is unlike you to speak so much."
"I speak when there is something which needs said." His frown creased his lips, the space between his thin brows. "I won't make the mistake of silence in this twice."
A pang of guilt seized her. Guilt that she considered it, as if to do so dishonored Elidibus. Guilt that she knew Fray was not entirely gone. Guilt that she could not tell him until she had a way to separate them, to give him back to the ones he died to protect. If she ever did find a way. She had failed Elidibus. She wasn't ready to give false hope she would not fail Fray, too.
"I would not have kept a baby." Unsure why she said it, she studied his face. Part of her hoped for a reaction that would have let her off the hook for deciding.
She should have known better. "That would have been yours to decide." He gripped her rear, pressure urging her to turn around. "'Tis not a potential thing we might create which I desire. I would have the woman in front of me, whom I know." Holding her hips, he shifted her to where he wanted her. "And now we know to use care to not cause the other. Hands."
Tension drained out of her as she lifted her arms and rested her wrists, crossed, just above her tail. She should have known that even when he upped the stakes, he knew how to make it feel like there was no risk at all. Like no choice she could make would tear them apart entirely. Their hard-won friendship had always come first, once established, and had become one of the easiest things in her life. No wonder she had come all the way here, demanding the biggest mission of her life wait one day.
And in that moment, as he gathered her wrists in his fingers, pressed a kiss to her spine, and smoothed the other hand over her bum, she knew he was right.
She had not come for just a quick tumble. She had come to remind herself that while she fought to save all life, there was still something, two specific lives, that made it personal. The life she could have with Sid and Rielle. And, hopefully one day, Fray, too.
Fingers teased at her still damp folds, sliding through the slickness there, swirling and lingering, gathering as much of it as he could. He curled them into her, pumping gently, prompting another wave of heat. A soft, pleased hum slipped past her lips, rising in pitch as he withdrew. She squirmed, whimpering a protest.
"Shh." Slowly, deliberately spelling out his intent by drawing his soaked fingers back, upward, dipping between her cheeks until he could circle the tight pucker of her rear. "Relax. I have you."
A familiar refrain, giving gravity to the moment, the conversation, and all that stood to be lost. As if she needed a reminder. She let out a deep breath, lungs shuddering to release her fears and doubts of her own abilities. "I know."
Fingers worked her open. A gentle stretch. Slow, careful, easing her body as well as her mind, as if using it to underscore all the ways his offer was in earnest. By the time he'd lined them up, pushed into her, one cautious but steady ilm at a time, she'd gone nearly boneless beneath him. She exhaled, shuddering, her voice a largheto peal as she pressed her cheek to the bedding. Gripped it in her fingers
He swore, deep from his gut, gritty as breath fled him. Fingers dug into her hips, Kit almost certain she could feel every capillary snap as he bruised them. His forehead touched her spine. He trembled, as if remaining still were a great feat.
She needed him. Needed him to move. Needed to feel him come undone. She turned her face into the mattress, and moved first, wailing out as the abrupt rock of hips forced him the rest of the way inside her.
"Kit," he growled, breathless. Warning. It was all the encouragement he needed, and he returned her force in kind. Snaked an arm around and between her thighs, grinding her center beneath beneath a finger. And thrust.
The breath abandoned her. Left her unable to so much as gasp. Her toes curled, ankles twisting as she fought to release some of the sensation but not daring to shift too quickly to do it. Dragged her fingers over the coverlet, focusing on the zip of the weave of fabric beneath her nails as he pushed the pace. Pushed his depth within her. Pushed her to the point she almost begged him to stop. She bit the blanket, grunting as tears formed in the creases where lashes laced with one another.
It didn't last long. There was no way it could. It was too much, straddled across the threshold of where pain met pleasure, and when he stroked her to climax, the way she bore down around him dragged him right over the edge behind her.
She gasped out, eyes blown wide and voice caught. She arched her back, and didn't realize she was sobbing until he pulled her with him to lying together once more. He clutched her to him, buried his face in the crook of her neck, horns scraping the tender skin there.
"I'm fine," she reassured him. "I'm fine." Despite how she shook. Despite the tears tracking her cheeks. Her fingers twined with his, bone grinding against bone in a grip of desperation to not let go.
Quiet trickled over them, first her sniffles, then their pants of breath, and finally stillness on the bedding. She closed her eyes, letting herself picture what it could be like, if they had this every day. Every night.
"We will need a larger home," she whispered.
He started at her voice slicing through the quiet. "What?"
"Rielle will need her own room." Her heart began to run away with her. "When we come home together, we will need more space."
His lips curved against her shoulder. A rare smile. While she could not see it, it would be forever engraved in her memory. "Then you had best deliver us from this apocalypse."
"You had best be here when I return."
He pulled free from her, and turned her around enough to kiss her. A decadent thing, no force in the world enough to rush him. "We need a bath." He dotted a kiss to the space between her ears. "Stay here."
She watched him slide off the bed, all sinew and tight muscle, his tail swishing back and forth with his loping strides as he padded barefoot to the partitioned bathing area. She let her eyes drift back to the stained glass window, vision loosening until the colors became a latticework of light. Her heart fluttered, fingers gripped the colorless Convocation stone around her neck as the sound of water pouring into the large porcelain tub filled the room.
"You've done it now." The mattress creaked, weary from doing its job, as Fray sat beside her. All she could do was glare, lest Sidurgu hear her arguing with a near-ghost. "He thinks you are going to do this." He paused, squinting down at her. "Hells, you think you're going to do this." He brushed the backs of his fingers over her cheek, bright gold eyes shining red in the dimness. "Do you mean it? If we survive this, do you really intend to give up adventuring, and stay with them?"
She listened a moment, judging how much the sound of the water would cover. "I won't have to. That is not what he is asking me to do."
"So, who is going to sacrifice?" He tilted his head. "You don't think you're coming back on that ship. Is that why you agreed? You don't want this at all."
"I do, and I am," she hissed. "Why is that hard for you to believe?"
"We share a heart. I'm bound to your soul." He ran fingers over her hair, and irritated with him as she was, she could not help leaning into it. "Sometimes I think I know you better than you know yourself. And I do know Sid better than you do. This hope he offers does not come easily to him."
"You're jealous."
"I don't deny that." He looked over his shoulder as the sound of the water drip, drip, dripped to stillness. "If you hurt him in this, you will answer to me."
"Fray," she started. Her cheek was cold where his fingers had been, the mattress absent the divot of his weight.
"Can you walk?" Sid leaned around the partition, broad shoulders and a gentle smile. Her heart stilled.
"You didn't hurt me." No, perhaps not, but when she moved, her muscles screamed, clenched. Gritting teeth and sliding to her feet all the same, she slipped on wobbly legs.
He had her about the waist in an instant, unfurling his own spine to lift her to standing. "Do not tell me you tire so soon."
His hair stood askew, face soft. Knots and dips, juts of bone and scale, cuts of muscle. Lingering ghosts of bruises and dark circles beneath his black and green eyes tattled on him. He'd not been anymore careful in her absence as she in his. Mayhap they were better together. Safer. Mayhap there was a way to be happy in a world without Elidibus. "Why? Are you hoping you won't have to keep it up?"
He laughed, a warm, deep chuckle reminiscent of the Darkness she'd come to count on as companion. Then, he ducked, scooping her over his shoulder. She played into the theatrics, squealing and wriggling, the laugh leaving her lungs, feeling profane in the face of everything which lay ahead come morning. Yet, she would not have traded the moment.
With no care for the mess, he dropped her into the bathtub, her weight displacing the water in a rush over the curved edges. It sloshed to the floor, a half-hearted scolding. She sputtered to the surface, laughing, her ears sodden against her head, hair in her eyes. She wiped it out of her face just in time to see him step into the tub, kneel over her, then press her to the wall of the tub, claiming a kiss, black tongue pushing past her teeth. She slacked in his arms, her own tongue refreshing its memory over his lips. She lost herself in it until she couldn't breathe, and pushed gentle fingers between them.
"Are we not meant to wash up?" She followed the trail of a droplet of water as it dropped from the scales at his chin to his chest and began its journey downward. She chased it with eyes and finger, watching his abdomen tightened beneath her touch. Flex and flutter as she dragged it to his hip, drew it toward the slit where his length hid once more.
He caught her wrist and lifted it out of reach. "Yes." The smile on his lips vanished, taking with it the looseness of his grip as he pulled her toward him. "How is it I had convinced myself we made the right choice until you were on the other side of that door?"
"May I wash your hair?"
He paused, caught mid-motion by the momentum of her subject change. Fingers pressed against her pulse so tight it made her own tingle. "What?"
She stole a kiss, quick as a blink like it was a habit born of the comfort of time. "You always give what I need most, and that is something rough, sometimes brutal, and I crave it." She unwound herself carefully, settling into the still rippling water that danced with light from the nearby candle. "What is it you need, Sidurgu Orl, of the Obsidian Heart?"
Black, beautiful glass. Forged under duress, sanctified by the flames of the world's core. Stunning to behold; easy to shatter if treated carelessly.
He rolled his eyes as if hearing the moniker embarrassed him. "All I need, I have."
Kit shook her head. She settled her back against the steep wall of porcelain, and gestured for him to lean back. "When was the last time someone was careful with you?" When he didn't comply immediately, she tugged his arm. "Promised you something soft? Gentle? Our lives do not have to be solely about death." She knew the answer, and it existed in the form of a man all but dead, tethered to the world by her own desperation to be something giving for once.
I see you for what you are; you are death.
Lambent green rings, brilliant in a sea of ink stared back in the dark. Like he did not understand the words she had spoken. "I…"
"Lie back, please."
He remained still, a beast which could spook or charge, still undecided which impulse would win. Then, finally, he did.
She took a moment to watch his face. The discomfort he wore like a sweater that snagged all his scales. Pinched mouth and wrinkled nose, a dour slant to his partially lidded eyes. This, she thought, is what it is all for. The people she chose when she struck down Elidibus at the top of the Tower.
She missed him. Every heartbeat of every minute of every hour of every day. She would never love another the way she'd loved Elidibus. She would never not regret that he was no longer in the world. He was a masterwork of a man in every way.
She hated herself for the things she'd done. The choices she'd made. Killing him. The other beautiful, irreplaceable lives she'd snuffed from the world. But when she stroked Sidurgu's face, skimmed a thumb over his eyelids that he'd close them, letting pale lash settle upon his cheek, she found she couldn't regret her choice to save this world entirely.
There are good people in this world, she reminded herself. And the love she held for Sidurgu, for all of them, was no less important for how it was different from that she held for Elidibus.
She cupped water in her hand, dribbling it over his hair and using wet fingers to slick it back. Wiped it gently from his forehead, tracing the line of his brow with the side of her thumb and letting the melodic trickle of water help her forget there was a looming apocalypse outside. Carefully dammed it from his eyes.
The soap came next, lathered in her hands and worked into his hair with her fingers. Pads massaged scalp, nails dragged softly over skin. He went nearly boneless in her lap, a soft sound escaping him, and he flinched as if it startled him to have done so.
"Would this really be enough for you?" she asked, having rinsed the last of the suds away. She slid down a little, nudged him to slide up until his spikes and horns were safely away from her eyes while he rested his head against her shoulder. She threaded her arms beneath his, hugging his chest tight. He cupped his hands under her thighs, and there they rested.
"What manner of bloody question is that?" he asked, though his voice held no grit over it.
Kit thought a moment before responding, tilting her face that she could kiss the ball of his shoulder, murmuring against his skin. "What if you could have Fray back?"
He did not move. His breath stilled in his lungs. "Such a thing is not worth discussing. Shall I ask you the same about Elidibus?"
"I take your point," she admitted. His skin was wet silk beneath her fingers, smooth until it wasn't, each scar a story, some she was a part of, some she was not. How did she tell him the truth? One of their dreams could come true, and she intended to find a way to make his happen. "Where I come from, taking a single partner is simply not done." She watched her finger as she drew the nail lightly along the ridge between scale and skin. "Elidibus coming back would not remove you from my heart. Would not change what you mean to me, who you are to me?"
"And who am I to you?" He left his eyes closed this time. When her fingers caressed his cheek, he leaned into it as if it were a helpless action.
"The person who saved me from despair. Who helped me learn that my life hadn't ended, and that I shouldn't be quick to throw it away." Her finger drew along the length of his horn. "If he came back tomorrow, it would not change that you saved me from the grief his death brought me."
He was quiet a moment before he sat up. He shifted about until he faced her, and directed her to turn about. She did as he asked, surrendering the soap to him when he held out his hand. She let him soap her up and rinse her, dropping her head against his chest when he was less than prudent about where his fingers fell and how the lather let them slide. She knew the light floral lilac scene would forever remind her of him, and let it bond to her memories.
"You would have made an easy alliance with Fray," he said. "The real Fray. Not the version your mind conjured, however accurate it was." He set the soap aside, and slid his hand down her stomach until he could curl fingers over her mons. "You would have driven him mad, and he, you, but I think…" He paused, as if not certain what to do with his fingers now that he'd parted her lower lips. "If Fray came back, I would still want you to stay."
Her mouth went dry. "If Fray came back I… I would still stay." She turned about in his arms. "I mean I would still make my home with you when I was here."
"Do you mean that?" Fray asked, stepping around the partition. "You had better mean that."
"Is that a yes, then?" Sid asked, his voice lilting subtly with hope.
Elidibus was gone. Body, mind, and now soul. What was holding her back? "Yes." She cupped his face, thumbs laying against the scales on his cheeks. "Let's… make this work. You, Rielle, me, and…" Instead of finishing the sentence, she kissed him, but the flutter in her heart told her that Fray had heard. Had felt the genuineness of her words in the pulse they shared.
"I love you," they said in unison, their voices complementing one another. Sid added, "I did not believe I could again. Fray and I were together so long. 'Twas difficult to imagine moving forward without him."
Kit's eyes flicked to the corner and back to Sid's eyes. "He's always with us, I think."
"What do you—"
She did not give him a chance to answer. Questions were dangerous until she had more answers. Fire burned in her belly, and her heart beat for two. Having care of his horns, she wrapped her arms around his head and claimed his mouth.
He did not question further, and decided their bath had gone long enough. Holding her against him and letting her wrap her legs around him for support, he lifted them from the tub. Water sluiced down their entwined bodies, cheering their departure as it poured back into the tub, then splattered across the floor behind them.
Without care that they were sodden, he hauled them to the bed, letting his weight drop onto it, her falling with him. His eyes blazed as he watched hers. Refused to break their locked gaze as he laid back, pulled forward his erection, and lifted into her.
She dropped her head back, moaning out, sinking down onto him, luxuriating in the stretch and pull of being filled by him once more. Helpless to the sensation, she ran her hands down her body, until they met his at her hips, and entwined their fingers.
She rocked atop him, sliding and grinding together, as deep as he had room to grow. Maybe it was a moot point. Mayhap she would die en route to finding Meteion, and the world would end anyway. Maybe she would save them all only to die in the process.
Or, mayhap she would win. They would all be safe, and she would leave the Scions and find adventure in whatever mission of Justice Sidurgu set for them.
"Of course that is what you want, you bloody do-gooder." Her mind registered Fray behind them. It tugged at her how it was odd, his proximity while she and Sidurgu were enjoined. "I will make sure you get back to him. If I can't… then…"
The way he trailed off should have given her pause. But Sid had hands on her hips, yanking her down over him as if she would dare pull away. Everything was him inside her and the hope she felt.
She hardly noticed Fray's hand on her shoulder, the fingers which curled around her jaw. The way his warmth added to hers and met their rhythm. The way he whispered good girl into her ear as she shifted hips to take as much of Sid as possible while remaining separate people. How he pressed his body to hers, familiarizing with and mimicking the tempo of their synchronous motion. It wasn't until the odd sensation she suddenly placed, the way the warmth permeated her, that she even noticed.
He was behind her, grip on her jaw painful until it wasn't. His body did not stop as it molded to hers. It melted with her. Merged into her, his arms and legs stretching out within her like she was armor he donned. She cried out, the sensation of their heart beating as one suddenly very literal, slamming into painful clarity. An embrace she couldn't shake off. Possessive and consuming, she realized far too late what he had done, too late to decide if she objected. When she tried to scream, no sound came.
She was she and she was him, at once one and two. Sid moved inside them, everything she felt echoed through Fray's shared senses and reverberated back into her once more. His fingers filled hers, yet a phantom of his hand squeezing her throat still lingered.
Longing and relief and aggression and desire and pleasure. All of it rampaged through her veins, painted a flush across her skin. Love filled her every pore, but she was trapped between it—hands upon her, inside and out—and the sudden panic at the realization he could do this at all. Entirely violating for the way it had been forced upon her, yet… it was not something she found herself wanting to cast off, either.
Instead? Instead, she let go. Let the nearly too much permeate every reach, let Fray do the work, and breathed out as the pleasure filled her to bursting. All she could do was allow it to take her, to wash over and through her, watching Sidurgu's expression shift to utter bliss and feeling his hands dig and scratch and tug. Fray tipped them forward until her forehead was pressed against Sid's chest.
He gripped her jaw, finger and thumb squeezing against bone and the webbing tipping her chin. "No. I wish to see you."
She nodded as much as his hold would let her, while deep inside her, Fray said, "Good boy," in her voice.
A moment, there and gone, flitted through Sid's eyes. A slight crease of the corners, the briefest falter in his grip, hiccup in his pace. A tightening of his jaw, tendons in his neck. Something deep evoked and drawn back into the light of day. If she had not been so intimately aware of the way a distant memory looked crashing back into the fore of a mind as his lips parted and the question of how died unspoken, she'd have missed it.
He shifted, an arm sliding until he had her weight supported on his arms, and flipped her to her back. He yanked her legs to tilt her hips, letting him fall into her more than thrust. But he rode her at an instant gallop all the same, all frenetic energy wrapped in something feral and greedy. Each impact an attempt to drive her through the bed itself and into the floor, the posts of it creaking as it rocked with them. She couldn't have pointed out the moment Fray released her voice, but one instant she was stuck in silence as sensation claimed her, and the next, wailing from deep in her chest, the velocity of their combined climax threatening to tear her in half.
Usually, after spending himself, Sid immediately rolled to his side to avoid crushing her under his weight. Tonight, he collapsed. Boneless and exhausted, sweat-slicked and uncaring that the rough plates of scale across his body scraped her skin, or how his horns rubbed rough at her tender neck. He growled, low in his throat. "What the hells was that?"
Fray withdrew. Shrugged out of her like she was little more than a jacket, and she shivered from the sudden chill. Before she could stop herself, she was shaking. Crying. Full on sobs she could not blame squarely on Fray at all. Especially when Sidurgu shifted and pulled her close, whatever anger had bubbled up inside him vanished as he switched to comforting her. Especially when Fray stretched out behind her, molding himself to her, wrapping his arms around her, and nuzzling his nose into the join of her neck.
"I'm sorry, Kit," he whispered. "I should have asked. I should never have… I don't know what came over me. I got carried away."
Sidurgu rubbed a hand over her back, and she shook her head beneath his pointed chin. Her fingers found Fray's between them, and wound them together. She squeezed, tight.
"You do not need tell me right now," Sid said, pressing a kiss to her head. "Perhaps 'twas merely a trick of memory but… for a moment it seemed as if he was here." He squeezed her, tight. "I hope I did not hurt you; I got carried away."
She wept as they held her between them. For all they'd been. For all they could have been. For all they could be. For the way she'd been used again. And for the way it seemed such a small price to pay for them to have just this one moment. A moment she would never get. She hooked a foot around Sid's calf, his tail tickling against her thigh. Fray breathed into her hair.
"I love you," they said to her, in unison.
She knew, beyond a doubt, she'd give this to them again.
"And I, you," she murmured, hiccuping between shaky breaths. "I wish I did not have to go."
"Yet, you do." Sid buried his nose in her hair. "'Tis little use in wishing it were otherwise. So, go, and come back. Save us all, as you always do. Rielle and I will be waiting."
Fray hugged her, his arms a reminder she would not be going alone. Their shared heart slowed to a gentle pulse, beating between them. Listen, Kit. Listen to our heart. In your darkest hour, in the blackest night…
"Where else could I go?" she asked. "Who else could I love but you?" No one alive.
Sidurgu's breath caught in his chest, causing Kit to fear the question he might breathe into existence. But he asked no question, raised no fuss. "Sleep," he said. Not a request.
She breathed out fully, until her chest ached with the emptiness which matched her own, and did as she was told.