Gee Whiz Comics

The haze didn’t just live, it grew. A patient heat that climbed, drawing your body to the edge of sweat. The stone floor on your naked back was cool enough to keep perspiration at bay, but broad palms did the opposite.

There were a thousand pricking needles under your skin—that was the relentless fever—and you realized how much pain you were in, but their touches placated it.

And they were touching you everywhere.

So many hands on your skin, more than you were used to. They trailed down your ribcage, stroked you, all over and greedy like they had never done it before, when in truth they knew your body more than yourself.

A hand was on your jaw. You wanted to touch him back, but couldn’t.

Strings of gentle moonbeam held you firmly in place, locking your wrists above your head.

Somebody held your face, kissing you fiercely.

James.

He’d been kissing you for a while now—maybe. You weren’t sure. He reclined next to you like a creation made for your personal ruin. The slot of his mouth against yours erased every thought that dared to form between your ears, replacing them with his taste.

Breaths tangled.

His metal hand was splayed against your chest, cool to the touch as he groped and pulled and teased, the movements resembling a mouth that latched onto its twin.

Logan.

He had your nipple between his teeth, in his mouth, on the flat of his tongue. The hunger he moved with made it feel like it had been much longer than two days ago since he last had you.

Every sound his lips made rang between your ears. One of his large hands squeezed your breast, feeding you into his mouth while the other roamed to your hip. It traced the curve of your bare ass, measured you with his open palm, then held you there with a grip as possessive as his mouth.

The two of them paid no heed to Clark, who languidly traveled down your body. He planted kisses that seemed kind in comparison to Logan and James, gentle blossoms of warmth dotting down your bare torso and hip—but that kindness was only at the surface.

Because he didn’t shy away from peeling your legs apart, only to slip himself between them.

His intentions couldn’t be innocent.

Those featherlight kisses now littered your knee and the inside of your thigh, more torture than comfort.

You thought their attention might abate your fever. They made it worse instead. Your head throbbed, and so did the rest of you.

“You’re burning up,” James murmured, the hand on your jaw sliding down to your neck to keep you looking at him. “You know what’ll happen if we don’t take care of you, yeah? You understand why we have to?”

What should you answer? Yes—although the fever was now frying more than just your nerves, you faintly remembered the voices that rattles in your ear before you passed out. This was your prophecy unfolding.

The voices didn’t say what would happen if you left it unfulfilled, but your body could take a guess.

On the other hand, the solution was too depraved to be believed, so no, you didn’t completely understand.

Most of all, you couldn’t understand why.

Your eyes drifted up towards the skylight.

The moon shone down, bright as near-day. She whispered her answer through the senses beyond your fingertips, your powers blooming without command like a midnight flower.

You felt a hint of it from her.

Amusement.

“Answer him, princess,” Logan rumbled against your breast. “Just need to hear you say you’ll let us.”

Your eyes drifted back down.

James’s hand was fondling your flesh into the older man’s mouth.

The sight sent a zip of heat between your legs, where another man hummed.

“We have to save you.” His voice was carried by a hot breath against your slick.

Clark. To think he’d done this to you just a few hours ago.

You squirmed, body too sensitive for your mind to work, but his hands kept you in place. If anything, he leaned closer to you now, mouth hovering over your clit.

“Use your words, darling,” he spoke, nose against your mound, “You’ll let us?”

Your lips parted with a shiver. Three men stopped, hanging onto your word.

The sound they heard next was thin and weak. It was far from the voice you used in a chamber of nobles with hidden daggers. Too feeble for royal decrees and negotiation tactics.

It was pathetic.

“Please,” you whispered.

Something washed over the men’s bodies.

Moonbeam. It seemed to glow brighter then, threading a pulsing sensation in their minds. The split-second felt like it lasted forever, as if they were under a spell—or a curse.

In that moment, three souls were pulled into one dark tide.

The temporary wave swept Logan with guilt at your display of helplessness; the kind that rode on the tails of failure—in his case, neglecting knightly duty and ignoring human virtue. He was your teacher, your guardian, for Gods’ sakes. The man who was supposed to cut down others before they even got to touch you the way he did—even when you’d been the one who’d pulled him in first.

Even when you’d urged him to.

Older didn’t even begin to describe him. He should’ve known better.

The emotion that stilled James’s hand was restraint. The wall that dammed his emotions was all too familiar to him. It defined him, in fact: destined for knighthood since birth, his honor and desire for you had fought in his very blood. For years he’d attempted to push you into a corner of his mind that was meant for wishful thinking—and wishful thinking was wanting to be with you beyond secret trysts.

Princesses didn’t fall in love with knights. That was how it worked.

And now, this? This was the Gods telling him he should stop wishing.

The wave stirred within Clark was a struggle of logic. Every ounce of skepticism he had for a religion that wasn’t his bubbled to the surface: was this truly the Gods or some sinister magic? Doubt kicked up thoughts like silt under a riptide. If Clark knew anything, it was that evil often disguised itself as necessity. In a split second, his senses scanned a radius that only widened, looking past the palace, peering behind the border’s curtain.

Perhaps this was manipulation—the rites, the Gods, everything—some dressed-up show, the way vestments were put on him for ceremonies. Orchestrated. Fake.

Perhaps this was all storytelling.

Time stood still.

Then the wave pulled back. Slow at first, but the more seconds passed, the faster it reeled.

Something in the deep swirled. It had a voice—alluring, comforting, warm.

It opened Logan to a different idea. You were the one who’d asked him to teach you pleasure. And what was this, if not another lesson for you to learn? This was how he taught you: by showing you what it meant to be incensed and soothed by the same hand. To be taken care of and used at the same time. To let yourself be seized by him in return for getting everything you needed—because he’d give you everything you needed.

And right now, you needed your prophecy fulfilled.

The waters raced backwards.

James paused, taken by your face. Sweat-misted. Messy. How pretty. For all the years he’d spent with you, the sight still pleased him as much as when he first saw it.

His eyes raked down your body. The fever was all over you.

What was this if not his reward? He’d lost so much—his choices, his arm, his best friend. Surely someone who’d given insurmountably for crown and country deserved something in return. Deserved you, even if it meant sharing you.

And if taking you was for the rites, then so be it. He’d cling onto any part of you for any reason, at any time.

The tide shifted completely. The waves ate itself, roiling into a new one that loomed. The moonbeam coated them, almost like a warm veil.

Clark’s swirling doubts were pulled away like a thin curtain. Against all odds, his super-senses signaled nothing was wrong. Not here, not anywhere—even in the hundreds of miles he could perceive. This wasn’t a toxin in your system, nor was it magic. The influence came from a plane unseen to him—and there were not a lot of places that were unseen to him.

For once, he thought: maybe this was what the Gods really wanted.

Maybe he should stop thinking so much.

A new wave crashed. In the undertow, the three men shared one ache.

One meant only for you.

“Please, help me,” you begged again, snapping them out of their reverie.

They glanced at your softly glowing eyes…

…and moved.

Logan was first. He unlatched from your tit, only to use his hand to shift your thigh higher, opening your legs wider. His other hand closed around the moonlight ropes that hung by your wrists, suspended by the bright skylight above—where his fingers looked like they might phase through, he grabbed them.

They were as real as Clark’s tongue against your core.

You moaned: from being pulled up so that you were seated rather than lying down, and from the wet heat that licked up your slit. As if Logan’s hand didn’t open your legs enough, Clark’s did too. It let him mouth over you, jaw slack, and those blue eyes glanced up to catch your gaze while his lips sucked on yours.

It felt like a flame.

But then James moved next, leaving you to kneel next to Clark, and the flame turned into a kindling inferno. He straddled your naked thigh. You felt more than saw the weight of his hard cock against your shin, but there was no time to process the slick he smeared on you, because he kissed up your skin until his dark hair and Clark’s brushed each other.

You shivered at another hot breath against your clit.

James’s eyes were blown black as he stared at Clark eating your cunt. The look on his face was a man lost and a man found all at once.

Meanwhile, Clark didn’t budge. Didn’t even spare a glance. Just rumbled a low moan into your heat when James buried his face between your legs, too, as if approving a fine choice.

The sensation of two tongues taking turns lapping your leaking cunt, flicking at your clit—at each other—proved to be too much. Your back arched. A keen noise escaped along with your instinct to close your legs, but their hands on your thighs kept you spread.

Your head thrashed when someone’s tongue dipped in. The other person murmured his dissent—James, you thought—before latching his mouth onto your clit.

Logan’s hand drew your face close to his. You could taste the smile on his lips. He peered down at you, and for a split second, you saw the glow in your eyes reflected back at you.

Or was it his eyes that glowed, too? You couldn’t tell.

“You know you don’t gotta beg, princess,” he muttered, hot against your mouth. “We’ll take care of ya. Look—”

The same fingers that rested on your jaw moved it down.

You couldn’t tear your eyes away even if you wanted to. They caught four blue ones that stared up at you—as lost as you are, if not more—mouths set on making a mess out of your pussy. Their dark curls tickled your thighs. Your lips were spread by thick fingers that teased, dipping into your hole that clenched with delight on its own, drawing circles around you like you needed to be wetter than you already were.

Like they couldn’t just sink two easily into you.

Logan poured filth right into your ear.

“—they love the way you taste.”

As if corroborating, you felt James’s voice against you, muffled by your flesh:

“Gods. Perfect pussy’s crying for us.”

Us. The word settled, heavy and warm and true.

You used to think you were dancing around a decision. How was it possible, when they were the choices? Each of them held a unique part of you in a way only they could—being with one meant the rest of you stayed with the other two.

Now, it was starting to feel like you didn’t have to choose at all.

Three tongues were on you. Logan’s at your neck, James’s engulfing your clit, Clark’s teasing your slit. You moaned, teetering at a razor’s edge, your lower gut tight with a knot that threatened to snap.

“That’s right, keep going,” Logan slurred against your ear, “make her cum.”

You realized he wasn’t talking to you.

Jealousy, unfamiliarity, disagreements—whatever it was that stood between the three of them, it was as if they had put everything aside for you.

Because James and Clark obeyed Logan. Their mouths and tongues took more of you than they did before, their movements and breaths equally erratic.

There were noises, too. Slurps. Hums against your cunt that shot all the way up your spine. Moans muffled by full mouths.

It was completely unsurprising that you crumbled just as a finger slid into you.

Whose it was, you didn’t know—didn’t care—because the rush of blood overwhelmed you, whited out your vision. You spasmed through the sudden release despite the hands and ropes that held you in various places. It was all frayed nerves and invisible fireworks, violent like a bout of lightning. The impact curled your toes and arched your back, hips chasing their tongues as though you could handle any more.

They didn’t stop lapping on you, cleaning your cunt like it was a feast.

You ended up with your thighs trembling, bracketing James’s and Clark’s faces.

For a second, there was quiet. The ringing in your ears was no longer, and you heard only the heaved pants of burning lungs. Mercy, finally—because you felt the air again, skin cooling down, heat subsiding alongside violent tremors.

Then two voices overlapped in response, and the fever punched back. No climb this time. Just a bright flash that stung you and stayed there, prickling at your skin again. You felt dizzy.

A breathless laugh escaped James. “Fuck, taste so good, princess.”

Clark shuddered against your folds, his finger and chin soaked by your slick. He curled his digit, testing the waters.

You bucked.

“So fu—hh, tight,” he panted almost in wonderment, “how’s she going to take both of you?”

Clark’s finger dragged out slowly, only to thrust back in, making you jolt alongside his words. Your chin tipped up at the quiet squelch when he buried knuckle-deep, and you faintly thought of being stuffed by not one, but two hard cocks—something you’d never done before.

“Need to open her up,” that was James, rising up to latch onto your chest, “make her cum again. Think you can manage that, sweetheart?”

Yet his hips said something else: they rutted against your thigh, and you felt the hard ridge of him grinding against your naked leg like he was some kind of animal.

You were too distracted to answer. It turned out you were drooling—from the orgasm or from James’s cock rocking desperately on you, you weren’t sure. You only realized because Logan’s fingers collected the spit by the edge of your lip.

Even without an order, your jaw slackened.

Logan’s thumb slipped in, heavy on your tongue, and you sucked on it like it was second nature.

The older man was on his knees next to you, his other hand pumping languidly at his cock. You caught the soft grin when he looked down at you, the shadow of his inches smearing your face.

In your current state, it should be hard to tell what he looked like, but you were familiar with this side of him, this angle—just never in the pale moonlight.

He was thick. The kind you couldn’t get used to, even after the many times you got to practice, the kind that worried your lips past swelling. His veins stood out in this light, ridges running like rivers towards a blunt tip that was flushed dark pink. The pearly bead that escaped him threatened to spill over if it got any heavier. It glistened with promise.

“You hungry, sweet thing?” he purred.

The question lit a fire in your stomach. You nodded.

Logan grunted, pumping twice, then pressed his tip against your parted lips. He smeared precum onto them. The smell hit you before the taste did, provoking heat to bloom between your legs again, and the fever shivered with glee.

“Good. Open.”

He didn’t have to tell you. You were already swirling your tongue across the underside of him.

Then you took him in your mouth.

He groaned. The sound hit you in the ribcage—you pulled away for a breath.

Except you couldn’t: someone’s hand was on the back of your head, not letting you move. Fingers carded through the hairs at the base of your neck, displacing the once-perfect updo beyond disarray. The grip was not unkind, but there was a darkness in the way it kept you in place.

“There. Gotta loosen your throat up, too. You’ll need it for Kal-El later.”

James.

It was James who pushed your head down Logan’s length. The noise that punched out of you was drowned out around inches that stuffed you—his cock was on your tongue, then suddenly right by the back of your throat. Fingers pulled you back by your hair just before you could gag: a small mercy that allowed you to inhale with the blunt tip between your lips, before James coaxed your head down again.

Just as Logan and James bruised your throat, Clark added a second finger. He scissored them, knuckle-deep, stretching your walls while watching how your cunt swallowed him.

You let out a throaty mewl.

The vibrations of the sound must’ve done something to Logan, because he grabbed your hands above your head—by the wrists rather than the moonlight ropes—and gripped, using them as leverage to fuck into your mouth. His hips followed the rhythm set by James’s hand that controlled the bob of your head.

Soon enough, Clark’s thick fingers started thrusting in tandem, too. Your veins burned at a dirty realization: you were being fucked on both ends.

It was intoxicating.

Your whimpers drowned against Logan’s girth.

“Ngh—mm-ffg—”

“Attagirl,” Logan gritted, hitting the back of your throat now, “Taking me so fucking well—”

Your eyes pricked with unshed tears. Lungs threatened to collapse at how full you felt, but there was a need in you that kept you together, even if barely. The fever demanded it, gluing the fragments of your consciousness and solidifying your desire to please.

You were rewarded with James, who muttered praises while he bobbed your head up and down. One of his arms pulled your body taut against his now, back against his chest, both sweat-slicked—which meant that his inches no longer rutted against your leg, but the curve of your ass. You felt the smear of his precum right there, every slide of him between your cheeks making more of a mess while he groaned:

“There we go, thaaat’s it, good girl, you’re so—hah—good for us—”

Before you could think, Logan wrested himself away from you, only to growl and twitch and shoot white spurts against your face.

The shocking heat of it triggered your own orgasm, alongside Clark’s fingers scraping your walls—he brushed a spot in you over and over without much effort, as if he practiced those come-hither motions in his dreams.

Something wet and warm splashed on the curve of your backside. It spurt out once, then again, and again, before sliding down your cheeks in heavy driblets. James panted into your ear in relief.

Time stopped making sense then.

Perhaps time just stopped.

You were suspended in a space that didn’t allow for the seconds to pass. An instant felt infinite, crawling slowly as someone spidered kisses up the damp skin of your back. Their hand smeared cum on the fat of your hip.

Jamie, you whispered to the blurry light above. Lips hummed against your shoulder in response. His fingers freed your hair from the pins that kept it up. The strands tumbled down and you breathed in, the inhale patchy and broken like your voice.

Someone else tugged on the ropes to lower your wrists. The blood rushed there, black dotting your vision for a second, but he made it worse with the way he swiped the cum clean off your chin and fed it into your mouth. You sighed around his thumb. He tasted familiar. You let him pull you into a raw kiss.

Logan, you murmured. The man only pressed his lips harder.

Then, in the trembling, your hands discovered they could move again. Your fingers combed through dark locks, as if thanking the mouth that now kissed at your mound. You felt a hot breath caress your throbbing clit before eyes locked onto you.

You didn’t look away while he licked his fingers clean.

Kal—Clark.

“I’m here,” he whispered.

Somewhere south of his body, you saw the dirty glisten that coated his cock.

He was covered with himself.

After that, you sank into whispered worship and a world with tilted axis.

The confluence of their hands directed you: cruel and kind in the same stroke, rubbing the skin of your tired wrists and placing them where they wanted. Limbs shared naked brushes, becoming each other’s palimpsest—every touch wrote a claim for pleasure, etching ownership into inches of skin that, from now on, would only want each other.

Like a pact, bathed in moonlight instead of blood.

You were kissed. On your lips, on your neck, on your pebbled nipples—by whom, your vision only captured blurry sequences. Their images rippled out of time, a carousel of dark hair and even darker eyes that left you blinded. Their scourge on your body was an overwhelming current. No part of you was spared, and by the Gods, the fever liked this amount of attention. Craved it.

No—not the fever. You craved it.

When you slowly weaved out of the chronostasis, the stage had already been set.

At the center of that brewing superstorm was your naked body, on your hands and knees.

You sat on James’s stomach, pussy smearing slick onto his abdomen. His metal hand cradled your face. The flesh one twined his fingers with yours and placed both right over his heart. The beat of it under his skin was erratic, but comforting. Moonlight ropes swayed gently from your wrists: ephemeral enough to be unseen up-close, real enough to feel.

A hand directed your chin elsewhere. You obeyed, eyes landing on Clark next to you. He was kneeling; flushed and sweaty and disturbed with lust, but still full of affectionate concern in the way he stroked your hair.

Which left no question as to who was behind you. Logan’s touch was solid against the fat of your ass, then he squeezed: both to keep you in place and rock you backwards against his blunt tip. He was hard again.

All of them were.

The friction of Logan’s cock grinding against you shot vertigo in one pulse of your blood. You buckled. He caught you, hands still on your hips. The sensation of the metaphysical bindings remained clear on your ankles, and Logan used the moonlight ropes to part you wider, if that were possible.

“You’re so wet,” he rumbled behind you.

His cock began sliding directly against your core, wanting to coat himself entirely with your essence. It produced a wet shlick.

“Hear that? Soaked for us.”

His veiny ridges rubbed against your folds, and you melted forward, chest collapsing. James watched you as you nearly shattered, your face overcome with delight and disappointment that the friction wasn’t more.

But Logan chased you, his pecs pressed tight against your shoulder blades, breath by your ear.

“So pretty,” James murmured hazily, thumb stroking your cheek. Your eyes glanced up to his.

For a moment, you swore they glowed, too.

Clark pushed the hairs away from your face, a wide palm on your forehead that quickly went elsewhere to soothe you.

“She’s still feverish,” he said.

“I know,” James replied. He let go of the side of your face to move your hips—hands next to Logan’s—only to line you up with his own cock. “That’s alright, isn’t it, sweetheart? We’ll take care of you.”

The wave of lust hit you heavy, and so did Logan’s chest above your arched back. Your weight dipped. It made your hole take in an inch of James’s blunt tip. The two of you moaned at the heat—you were so wet he might as well slip in, but Logan’s cock slid against your ass this time, and your body shook.

Callused palms fixed your hips, tilting it so that the red, leaky head brushed your swollen clit instead. You whined.

“What’s the matter? Want your Jamie to fuck you?” Logan rasped against your ear.

He led your body to shift, sliding you down until James slipped in between your folds again, your cunt slowly sinking onto his dick—and Gods, you were soaking him already, too wet for James to not move.

Your moan was swallowed by Clark’s mouth, his lips slanted against yours: he was almost everything you saw—but in the corner of your eye, James’s face contorted with pleasure as he sank in another inch.

“You want them both,” Clark whispered, his voice low and filled with more lust than you thought he would allow himself to feel. “You want to be stuffed by them. Want them to ruin you, don’t you, honey?”

“—you—”

The room was immediately silent. All eyes stayed on you, calculating the reedy breath you barely let out.

You tried to speak again. The words came out soft, but clear.

“Want you to ruin me, too.”

There was a ghost of a smile on James’s lips as he watched you.

“There she is. Our good girl.”

“Drives me crazy,” Logan husked against your ear, “kept smelling these two all over you. Turns out you want all three of us, huh, sweet thing?”

Clark kissed you. Fed the question directly into your mouth:

“Is that right, Princess? You want all of us?”

You nodded, not trusting your voice.

But your voice cracked loose anyway, ripped out of your thorax in a keen mewl as James sank more of his cock into you slowly. His length split you open, and your walls closed in on him like they had a mind of their own—a mind wholly set on keeping him inside of you.

“She’s so greedy,” he panted breathlessly, “One cock’s not enough for her.”

“Maybe we’ll give her three at the same time.” Logan chuckled somewhere behind you. His hand reached down from your stomach, fingers circling around your clit. The paradoxical gesture both placated and provoked your stretched-out cunt, leading it to throb and leak slick all over James’s cock.

You gasped, and it was Clark’s turn to smile, his lips pressed against your temple.

“All this time, she just can’t choose.”

Hands guided you down James’s length. He and you moaned when his cock bottomed out, balls pressed against your ass.

Gravity made it worse—or better. You felt full up to your stomach.

“Or she doesn’t want to,” Logan mutters, “but lucky for her, she doesn’t have to.”

Just then, you felt him slide his tip against your opening. The space between your legs was very much stuffed by James’s length deep in you, but Logan pried anyway. Teasing. Testing.

It should terrify you, the idea of another huge cock splitting your poor pussy open, but the thought only made your mouth water.

You clenched. A new wave of slick coated James, and his chest vibrated with soft laughter.

“Fuck, she likes it, Logan,” he smiled, wet lips parted. “You like that, sweetheart? Want another cock in you?”

Before you could supply an answer of any kind, said cock was already rutting into you, smearing precum over your slit. Logan fisted himself, pointing his length right at your full pussy.

No reply was needed.

“Breathe in, baby.”

Your eyes widened. He was pushing it in.

But you couldn’t breathe. Clark’s mouth closed over yours the moment the cry slipped: he fed his tongue into you, swallowing the sound while Logan’s girth stretched you more than you’d ever been stretched… and this was only the tip of him.

James groaned, eyes loyal on your shaking, hands stroking down your sides.

“Relax,” he cooed, “let Logan in, yeah?”

As if your mind could be even further gone, you had to contend with the reality of these two working together, for once.

Lips panted into damp air—Clark broke the kiss to crawl back, watching the filthy scene, but one of his hands was still on you, thumbing mindless circles on your jaw.

“Oh,” he moaned, “c’mon, baby, you can take it.”

Could you? It felt like the opposite, because although Logan’s bulbous tip was inside you now, flush against the underside of James’s cock, there was still that part of him that thickened at the middle—it weighed heavy on your mouth earlier, threatened to make you gag. You swallowed, throat bobbing: James shushed you even though you didn’t say a word.

The thick of his cock bullied further into you and Clark was on you again, butterfly kisses on your cheeks, your jaw, your forehead, muttering it’s okay, honey, you’re so damn perfect, gonna be good for us, aren’t you?—and those words alone nearly made you cum.

In burying himself deeper, Logan’s veins slid against James’s. The both of them echoed Clark in their slurred praises, voices low, lost, and just for you.

“Gonna take that dick. Go on, sweet girl, take all of me.”

“She’s so fucking tight, princess. So fu—ggh… fucking wet…”

“That’s it, that’a girl, you’re almost there—”

There was a comforting stroke down your spine and your breath hitched.

Logan was all the way in.

Your breath shattered into broken, hiccuped pieces.

The men moaned in unison, gravel in their voices, the sound dripping with both relief and want as if the word more had no limit to its meaning.

Logan growled against your shoulder blade.

“Fuck, there she is. Look at you, full of cock. You like being full of cock, sugar?”

“You’re so perfect,” James panted below you, eyes aflame. “So fucking perfect. Take us so well.”

Clark pressed a gentle smile on your crown. “Wish you could see yourself, honey. You look so pretty like this.”

Hands and mouths were all over you again. They touched and taunted your body, breathing praises so hot they made you shiver, groping you everywhere with greedy palms.

When Logan and James shifted in you, your lips fell open.

It was precisely the thing Clark needed to feed his cock in your mouth.

You choked. Not entirely from the size of him, no—you’d taken him before—but also from the inches that rubbed your walls. The inches that rubbed each other. The rutting was brought on by two hips that fought against restraint.

Then they moved, and your vision reeled.

They were slow. All of them. A small mercy, including Clark’s gentle hand on your head that moved your mouth up and down his length.

You were too far gone to appreciate the kindness, too hungry to care. Every pull that emptied you made the fever flare punishingly. Almost painfully. Every rock of them—all three of them—filled you up, hips bucking in a slow rhythm that placated the heat that crawled on your skin.

Over and over, the cycle repeated. Their patience chipped with each second that passed, and you didn’t know how long it took, but you all descended into madness.

Two swords shall pierce the ivory crown A bright star she shall swallow

Moans mingled in the dirty air. The smell of sex grew, and so did the wet slaps that punctuated two cocks driving into your cunt. Your wail vibrated around Clark as he used both hands to guide you, thighs flexing every time your mouth took all of him, your cheeks hollowed. The slams of them into you didn’t just echo in noise, but also throughout your entire body—every one of them zipped down your nerves like a red flare, sending a message that meant satisfaction, but returning with the plea for again, again, again.

Nothing was slow now. Logan and James fucked into you with desperation that bordered disrespect: the two of them bullying your pussy meant that you were never left empty. You faintly registered drool on your chin, and something else that was thicker and stickier. Clark glistened every time he pulled out of your lips.

The fever purred. He tasted more than good. He was delicious.

That alone allowed your jaw to open up even wider, and your eyes met his—a compulsion more than a choice. His eyes glowed back at yours, face contorted with intense pleasure.

“Fu—u—ck,” he stuttered, rough with impending rapture.

Logan and James felt it too. One of them sucked in a breath before pounding hard into you, desperate and out of rhythm, while the other slammed in even, deep strokes. Flesh consumed flesh, all while Clark used your throat the way you’d once dreamed: he’d never been so ruthless with his cock down your throat.

The thought tightened your pussy even more.

“Come,” Logan growled, the sound almost barked, “C’mon, want you to come all over us.”

Your tits bounced at the impact of his cock. James pawed at the flesh, squeezing one while staring at the way its twin shook with each thrust.

“Gonna fill you up so good,” he gritted between teeth, “fucking breed you—again and again—then scrape it all up and pump you with a new batch, huh? Yeah? Fuck, she’s squeezing me so tight, sweetheart. Want that? Want our cum?”

The moan you let out went straight up Clark’s spine, and as if that loosened his lips, he began to babble too:

“Yes, yes, take it—fu-hhh, your mouth—’m gonna cum, gonna cu—”

The warmth that shot down your throat was the trigger to a chain reaction.

It was a sudden spurt first, then another, but the ooze didn’t stop. Clark moaned, head thrown back, thighs shaking as he knelt by James’s side; though the sight was marvelous, it was the amount of him that made you dizzy. He kept going, driblet after fat driblet filling your mouth, and you gasped mid-swallow—he tasted better than you remembered.

The cum leaked down your chin.

When he pulled out of your mouth, his cock twitched another spurt that landed on your cheek.

Time stretched to a slow crawl. You eyes rolled back. Saw the skylight.

The moon should be looking back at you, but for a split second, you saw yourself from up above. The planar veils shifted inexplicably closer, as if peering into a looking glass: there you were, all bare and tangled limbs, cunt filled with two hard cocks that pounded into you, white sluiced down your chin.

This what was what the Gods saw.

But it was the look on your face that sent you over the edge.

You were in ecstasy.

You came, back dangerously arched, voice spent.

Logan and James crumbled next while your pussy convulsed all over them. Their hands roamed your body, gripping you in place—your ass, your breast, your hair—as if demanding you to take everything they have to offer while you shook with a loud, broken cry.

And they had lots to offer. Your eyes widened at the sensation. It felt as though they shot up to fill your stomach—no, your lungs, your throat—the hot spasms quickly filling up your hole, while the rest that overflowed flooded your inner thighs and the stone floor in a thick, translucent white.

Something else erupted then and there. The psychic powers that coiled around you, once forgotten, burst alive without your command: it flared like a too-bright light behind your eyes, and for a split second, you felt everything. Your body’s senses spiked, but the alarm was in your mind, because every nook inside it was flooded with one particular feeling.

Love.

It radiated from all over you—from the men surrounding you—and forced itself onto you like a heatwave. Unseen tendrils stretched beyond your fingertips on James’s stomach, reaching into his heart and consumed the emotion that bathed him. It fed on Clark’s hand in your hair: a small touch that heavily waterlogged your ribcage, filling your lungs to a point of making you gasp.

They started murmuring, voices overlapped, pained and ecstatic.

It made everything worse and so much better.

“Fuck, you’re everything.”

“Good girl, gooood fucking girl, full of our cum—”

“That’s it. So perfect. Made for us.”

Under the moon, the chapel turned into a den of sin, but there was no crucible holier than this.

The prophecy brought you here, but in fulfilling it, it was no more. Only you were left. In drowning your bodies with sin, you’d washed yourselves pure—the swift flow of pleasure cleansed with a burn. Breaths tangled, labored and full of love. Their hands soothed. Kisses quiet.

At the end of your trembling shockwaves, the fever subsided.

When you looked up, the moon was already halfway out of the skylight.

You found feeling back in your hands. The incorporeal ropes were no more. Soreness bloomed on your knees just then.

Twisting weakly, you caught Logan’s eyes: though they were heavy with lust, there was clarity in those pools—they no longer glowed.

Yet limbs slowly crawled all over you again, and their kisses climbed, more wanton than kind.

A different fever emerged. This one was distinctly not from the Gods.

“Clark here didn’t get to play,” Logan rumbled on your jaw.

Clark was already mouthing at your tit.

Beyond your body’s faded expectations, your hunger shivered alive. James’s grin was loose and smug all at once.

“Think you can take all three of us, sweet girl? We’ll help.”

Before you could reply, you were already lifted up, perched on Clark’s lap with two naked chests crowding your back. He stared down at you, thumb pulling your bottom lip down.

“Just once, okay, honey?”

It was a blatant lie, but you nodded anyway.

The moon coursed its path through the sky, leaving the chapel bathed in gradual darkness. The shadow made room for desire—it kept crashing onto you in endless waves, and the four of you continued to drown in it, until the midnight sky slowly turned light again.

You woke up in darkness.

There was a sky above. It was less that you saw it and more that you knew it, though it was entirely too dark to tell: but although your outstretched limbs and hair were weightless, moving was entirely the opposite. Space shifted around you like the air itself was opposed to your existence.

No, not air. The darkness that consumed you was water.

Immediately your throat closed up—more instinct than anything. The lungful of breath you had became the most precious.

Wherever you looked, there was no way out. The darkness was all-encompassing. How deep you were underwater, if there was even a surface, you didn’t know.

You legs kicked, meaning to take you in an upward arc—but where your swimming would smoothly cut through the water, this time everything weighed heavy around you. Sludge-like. Inky. Thicker than it seemed, until you weren’t entirely sure if water was what this was.

A wave of fatigue washed over you. Your arms and legs faltered.

Strange.

Panic should set it right about now: you were sinking with the last of your breath and no way up, but no anxiety clouded your mind. It was quiet, both in your head and down here—wherever here is.

Through the silence rang a single thought, crystal clear.

You were going to drown, and that was okay.

Bubbles escaped you as you coughed up the last bit of oxygen you needed to live. They floated up towards what you assumed must be the surface, obscured as it is. You watched them move in the water, become part of it, smiling in mild amusement at their easy escape.

Meanwhile, you sank further down. Your lips opened without thought, and water filled your lungs.

You choked.

It burned once, bright and painful. Water rushed through your nostrils and flooding everywhere they shouldn’t exist.

Then the pain went away, leaving nothing behind. Not even a buzz where it flared. Your vision turned blurrier—that was alright, not like you could see much in the first place. This was alright.

You let the water take you, and a deeper kind of darkness landed like a billowing curtain.

Was this what death felt like? It didn’t feel like the end. There was something warm about it—it reminded you of being suspended between consciousness and sleep, wrapping around you like a comfortable wave that slowly dragged you into a void.

Its emptiness didn’t feel cold.

It was holy.

You woke up for the second time bathed in light. The brightness blinded, and the air you breathed was easy and free. It almost felt alien.

Blue was the first thing you saw, your unfocused eyes making its expanse look like a strange cloth that covered your blurry vision. Except it wasn’t a cloth, because the color shone with a thousand little diamond pieces that rippled in the wind.

Blinking a few times, you recognized it for what it was.

The lake-sea, framed by your bedroom window. Its soft waves glimmered under the high sun.

You felt heavy and weightless at the same time: your muscles cried softly when you shifted just the slightest, but the immediate softness of your surroundings soothed them.

You were laid on your bed. The linens were warm, clean, and comfortable under your back. There was a blanket above you, maybe two, generously downy yet lightweight above you. The scent of everything was what lulled you in particular—it was the kind of scent that made it difficult to truly wake.

You looked down. You wore a cotton slip, cream-colored.

When you lifted your gaze back up, three shapes came to focus.

It was them.

They were dressed out of the uniforms you last saw in favor of something much more relaxed: shirts light-colored and half-buttoned, breeches dark and worn.

Logan was on the opposite side of the room, facing the windows. A forearm rested on the glass, while his other hand was jammed deep in a pant pocket, but he turned to you at the hint of movement.

James was a few feet away, leaning forward in an armchair with his elbows on his knees, hands folded in front of his face. His hair looked like it was raked through by fingers one too many times—a nervous habit.

The closest one to you was Clark, who looked like he’d dragged another chair by the edge of your bed so he could sit there and watch you.

None of them seemed to have gotten any rest.

The sight of them incited flashes of remembrance. The images flooded your mind and body, clearer than any other memory you had.

“Rise and shine.”

That was Logan, walking towards you with both hands in his pockets, only to shamelessly seat himself next to you in bed. Of course he’d be the first who dared to do so.

You looked back as he gazed down at you. His hazel eyes appeared more yellow in this light, sharpening the pierce in his stare, but you didn’t miss the warmth that poured out of it.

He’d looked at you like that many times. You’d be a fool to not recognize it now.

You parted your lips to speak, but found your throat incredibly dry, pushing syllables past the discomfort:

“How long was I out?” you croaked.

“A good few hours,” Clark supplied from the foot of the bed. He began stroking your leg from above the blankets, watching you and Logan as if he didn’t want to intrude. “You were sleeping so soundly… we didn’t want to wake you.”

There was a short sound of dragged wood when James stood up from the chair. He circled the bed, standing on the other side that Logan didn’t occupy. Leaning down, his metal hand reached out to your face, brushing away the hair that fell to cover it. The back of plated fingers pressed against your forehead, cool to the touch.

He moved them down to your cheek.

“Your temperature seems stable,” James murmured.

“Nice trick,” Logan quipped.

The two of them stared at each other: James with a restrained deadpan, Logan with mild amusement.

Metal fingers trailed down your face before reluctantly letting go.

“How are you feeling?” James asked. You gave it a second of thought or two.

Clark’s eyes caught yours, staring with unconcealed worry.

“We didn’t hurt you, did we?” his low voice rumbled. His eyes darted all over your face, as if looking for clues. You shook your head to calm him, although you didn’t know enough to find out the real answer.

The first thing you gathered when you slowly sat up was that you were sore, even with the assistance of the two men on your left and right—but that wasn’t the same as hurt. It ached, yes, but it was also extremely expected, considering what you’d done not too long ago.

Considering what they’d done to you.

Logan’s hand was still on you, reassuring on your back.

“That fever was gonna burn you alive if we didn’t,” he said.

“That wasn’t the only reason why you did it,” you murmured in reply.

Your eyes flicked to his. “Was it?”

Glances were traded across the room. The tension that used to exist in their in-between was gone, and so was envy’s bitter pangs. They were replaced with something that tasted like uncertainty without its usual discomfort.

Then they looked back at you, and your heart jumped.

The desire was plain on their faces: they were clearly reminiscing.

“It’s the only reason we’ll say out loud,” James answered. He touched your jaw now, thumb slowly dragging across your bottom lip like he remembered what you did. “We’ll say we did what we had to do to save your life.”

“It was what the Gods demanded,” Clark continued. There was a tentativeness, but he pushed through it, climbing up your bed and crawling towards you. The sight inspired a spike of temperature in your blood—he ended up sitting in front of you, close enough to touch.

He reached out first, holding your hand.

“It was this or death.”

Logan shifted, looping an arm behind your shoulder to pull you in. You felt his smirk when he kissed your crown.

“Look, princess, You’re already a bad influence on Kal.”

At the jab, Clark didn’t pout. Didn’t even send Logan a look of admonishment. In fact, a smile took over his face, all while his knees moved to bracket your thighs.

“Aren’t you lucky?” James pondered, still stroking your lip. “You don’t have to choose anymore.”

Your cheeks exploded with warmth from the combined attention.

Lucky was right, but the undertone in the room bled to the surface. It made itself known through their hands on you.

Destined felt like a better word.

Before you could process this burgeoning reality that seemed too good to be true, the stone door of your bedroom dragged open without warning. You nearly jumped under your skin.

A handmaid walked in—one of your attendants during last night’s rites. She carried a tray with a glass and a jug of water. The sight was enough to snap you back to the dryness in your mouth.

But her eyes widened, and she stopped in her tracks.

The scene that greeted her was scandalous, to say the least: the Princess’s closest companions—two of whom were part of her name day rites that was terminated early due to her mysterious collapse—was crowding her in her bed, assuming positions that only suggested an intimacy of a certain type of relationship.

An intimacy reserved for lovers.

Her shock loosened her grip on the tray. The glass and jug broke into pieces all over the floor.

The water did not.

The room froze at the anomaly. You stared at the clear, undulating mass that hovered an inch above the ground. The water still took the form of its vessel that was now in pieces on the floor.

Four pairs of eyes shifted their sights onto you.

It was then you realized that your hand was outstretched.

The water dropped—no longer a ball, but a splashed puddle all over the floor.

“Do you know why the Gods speak in verses, Amhara?”

Amon Lisianthus and Amon Amhara were in the courtyard in the eastern wing: the older woman sat on a metal bench, while her colleague stood to her side. They were in the same customary garments expected of their stations, light-colored fabric flapping gently in the breeze, while their tall hennins stood still.

It was a nice day out, if one could ignore the happenings of the night before.

Divinity could be so depraved, Lisianthus thought, although it could be argued that she’d understand, having served the Holy Houses for as long as she had.

Still, for the Gods to decree an act like that was new, even for her.

Amhara took her question into consideration.

“I can only speculate,” came Amhara’s measured response. He looked at his cohort while she bent down to pluck a blade of grass between her wiry fingers.

“The Maid, the Mother, and the Crone,” Lisianthus began, idly twirling the grass, “They are a perfect Trinity—but a part of their perfection was an aspect of humility. One of the Great Paradoxes, you know this.”

“Yes. Real perfection imbues itself with knowing that it cannot exist,” he quoted.

“Precisely,” Lisianthus smiled.

Amhara’s dark eyes watched as the older woman continued.

“It was said that, to teach this to their children of creation, they spoke in verses of fours rather than threes. A reminder to be humble, even when we think we are perfect.”

“Which is why there are only three Holy Houses,” Amhara pondered. “Not only to echo the Gods and their precepts… but to reflect humanity’s eternal lack.”

Lisianthus nodded. “And so the quatrain became the way the Gods spoke to us. The Book was written in in verses of fours. The name day prophecies are the same.”

A light breeze passed through, rustling the nearby trees. It carried along the sound of rushing footsteps. The Amons’ eyes traced its source.

From the edge of the walkway, in between the arches that separated courtyard from stone floors, a cleric was running. It was an unusual sight: the religious was rarely seen in such a state. Heaved breaths approached the scene, footsteps slowing the moment they entered grass. The cleric—a young man with a face flushed with sweat—bowed.

The Amons bowed back.

“My apologies, Your Holiness,” the cleric panted, “it’s the Princess. She has awakened.”

There was an apparent restraint in his appearance, as though holding something back, but Lisianthus gathered the other meaning in his words. A wave of her hand dismissed him. He bowed again, less hurried this time, sparing a few steps backwards before leaving the courtyard and disappearing down a corner.

“You realize what this means, Amhara?”

Amhara didn’t answer, though the look in his eyes suggested he knew. Lisianthus said it out loud anyway.

“It means that perfection is found not in threes, but in fours.”

You flung the full length window open and burst out to the balcony, cold fingers gripping the railing. The wind immediately batted at your face—if what happened didn’t slap you awake, this probably did.

The lake-sea glimmered before you, never ending. It crashed against a jagged cliffside that the palace embedded itself atop of. From this height, you could see the drowned levels that used to be part of your kingdom—the ground that the lake-sea swallowed.

Meanwhile, your handmaid dashed out of the room. Logan, James, and Clark approached slowly, looking on with a mix of caution and marvel on their faces.

You stretched your hand out again.

It was a familiar sensation, but not quite the same. There was a faint resonance just past your fingertips that reminded you of prying through feelings. It felt like combing, yes, except through something else—the threads you were used to and its emanating colors were now more like a thick mass, singular and unmoving and gray.

Even so, there were striations in that weight, and they sifted at your bidding.

It reminded you of swimming in a dream.

You sensed it more than you understood it. The understanding only arrived when you watched what happened to the waves.

They’d stilled. Or at least they looked like they did. After a blink, you realized they were still roiling, but it was almost too slow to be perceptible. The other parts of the waters still tumbled forward.

There was heat. Whether it coiled in the air or within you, you couldn’t really discern. All you knew was that your hand felt it, fed it into the resonance at the tips of your fingers.

“Princess?”

James appeared at your right. Two other men to your left. You were too focused to reply.

Because the blue changed. The waves that slowed was turning into a different shade, the deep cerulean thinning lighter and lighter. The sensation gripped you even more.

You realized the waters were parting. The shift in color was the seafloor making itself known.

It resembled the tearing of a rift, or the unstitching of a weave. Its painful crawl showed resistance—the thing that demanded your energy—but the lake-sea slowly gave in all the same.

Your fingertips trembled now. Each second that passed revealed more of the expansive ground beneath, sandy and dry. Specks dusted the swirl of the waters: not exactly magic, but the lake-sea itself, dissipating into a light mist that resembled soft rainfall.

A winding path tore into the water, the waves that surrounded it suspended like they were gentle banks of a stream.

The drizzle of scattered water formed a faint rainbow in the distance.

“Holy fuck,” Logan muttered.

Perhaps it was a trick of the mind, but the howling wind whispered familiar words in your ear.

And those who linger to be drowned will finally see tomorrow

There was nothing else but silence.

Clark’s was the first voice to break it, almost all alacrity.

“Good to know the Gods kept their promises.”

In a chamber high above yours, where day and night didn’t seem to exist, something was stirring.

The stone chamber was void of life. It should be: the sigil by the entrance only opened itself to a handful of people, and the one person that resided inside wouldn’t exactly be considered alive.

Yet there was a soft hiss of air interlacing in the quiet. It sounded like breathing, until it stopped.

Behind the glass of a cryogenic pod, a pair of bright green eyes opened.

thee fucking end! woo-hoo!!! now i get to yap about this series 🙂‍↕️

first time writing a foursome don't kill me

this was supposed to be a bodyguard/modern au, where the reader is some kind of whistleblower to dubious tech (she's a researcher loaned out by OXE to LutherCorp or wtv) and the three guys had to protect her... turns out the thing being developed is some sex pollen serum. foursome occurs.

guys. the gods = reader. there's a reader character (princess) but the gods? that's you. reading on your phone. it was supposed to be meta like that. i tried adding bits and pieces to hint at it (the thing about the gods doing this on a whim/for their amusement, clark thinking it's 'storytelling', the way lisianthus hasn't seen a prophecy so depraved before). i thought i was a genius CACKLING

i call this world reverse dune because instead of a lack of water, it's the opposite problem lmao

also the water thing was partially influenced by critical role... i'm watching campaign 2 in fjord's arc....... NO FUCKING SPOILERS PLEASE.

i forgot. because reader's grandpa is magneto, reader's mom is scarlet witch :)

yea i kinda did.

It was large. Wider than the reach of both your arms. Installed since before you were born: a piece of your parents’ wishes to mold you into a princess who was rich, both in knowledge and the thirst for it.

The map wasn’t made of anything so much as it was built into the wall itself. Engraved lines ran like rivers against pale and porous travertine, raked just shallow enough to house a thin sheet of steel powder. Borderlines: the invisible thing that corralled nature into man’s arrogant possession. The powder gave the lines a dark gray color with an occasional metallic glimmer when the light hit just right. It thrummed, floating about half an inch above the wall’s surface, kept at bay via electromagnetism—the powers of which were manipulable through the discreet dials that sit beneath the map’s southern borders.

You stared at the image before you. The reality of these lands had never looked so different.

To say ‘these lands’ to describe the realm was no longer accurate, for one.

You approached the wall. Hovered two fingers above a small, brushed chrome dial—the leftmost in a row of others.

The effects were instantaneous. Sparkling gray strings faded at your silent command with the faint sound of hissing sand: a set of borderlines dropped, no longer held up by magnetic force. Pale stone stared back at you where those countries were; not just undefined, but nonexistent.

You turned the dial again without touching it.

More countries disappeared from the map, their powdered borders falling with a gentle scatter.

Genosha. Madripoor. Krakoa. Latveria. One by one, you erased the nations that sundered themselves from Earth and let the shores grow.

Sokovia. The Queen’s homeland.

You blinked. With a gesture on the dial, the country disappeared from the map.

The only borders it now showed were your own kingdom and Wakanda, leagues away to the southeast.

Wakanda, which, for all you know, might be gone.

Alpine’s soft meow tore your focus away from the map on the wall. You heard her before the three knocks against your floor-to-ceiling window.

Against the borderless background of a cornflower blue sky and the enormous stretch of the lake-sea, Kal-El stood.

He was on the balcony, faded red cape billowing gently in the evening breeze. There was a golden glow emanating from the trim, vein-esque markings that covered his dark blue suit; angular and enigmatic, just like his jawline. The suit hugged his figure without mercy, a far cry from the usual clothing he wore around the castle. The glass and sheer curtain washed his outline like a hazy painting while the sun sank in the distance.

He smiled. You did too, if only tenser.

Circling your bare ankles was Alpine and her figure-eights while you unlocked the glass partition that separated you from him.

You stepped aside. He stepped inside, the edges of his cape cutting into your sallow bedroom, messy dark curls finally standing still now that the breeze was no more. Alpine meowed up by his feet and was rewarded with a fond head-scratch—he looked ridiculous leaning down like that, casting a giant shadow over the small blot that was your cat.

“How did it go?” you asked as you closed the window. The sounds of the lake-sea were once more muted.

His eyes met yours when he rose back up, a slight tease in them.

“Well, good evening to you, too.”

You leaned against the glass with a sigh, a hand pushing hair away from your face.

“Sorry. Good evening, Kal.”

“Oh gosh, hey, I was just joking,” he softly reassured. Booted footsteps immediately took him to your side, a palm ushering you further into your own room. His hand rested warm on your shoulder first, before smoothing down the lines of your back above your robe, the movement almost encouraging you to breathe.

He peered into your face, concern spelled out through his expression.

“You look stressed.”

“To put it mildly,” you shot back with a stare equivalent to a shrug. “So, what did you find?”

A smile took over Kal-El’s face. He held up a contraobscura. The device was a square slab of porcelain—an inch tall, at most, slightly smaller than his palm. Smooth-edged. Triple-lensed.

“Got it all here for you.”

Good thing the sky was already dimming, you thought. You walked towards the map on the wall, erasing the remaining borders to leave behind a slab of blank travertine.

To wait for the Inquisition’s final report on the Wakanda situation would have left you with nothing to do for a few days, at the very least. The unit was bound by procedure—one that placed them under the scrutiny of the Council, which was to say their Captain’s attempt at secrecy came with the cost of time.

You simply sent someone else to do the job, and do it quicker. A third party, so to speak.

Would James be pissed? Perhaps. But you’d get an answer. Or so you thought.

Kal-El stood next to you, facing the now-empty wall. With the click of a haptic button on the side of the contraobscura, he loosened his grip on the device.

It whirred alive and began to float on its own.

Then white light spilled into the room in unfurling rays, too bright for your eyes at first. You eventually adjusted, watching as the luminance faded into the barest of colors. The contraobscura’s projection slowly painted a picture on your bedroom wall.

What you saw one second later was an image taken from above.

Land.

The midday shadows suggested a circular border of verdant hills, lush with trees crowding each other before the curves flattened into an empty plain at the center. There was rock and vale in the surrounding topography, though nothing too dramatic. Nature looked untouched in this image, sprawling and wild: the perfect opposite of stone-hewn domes and barricaded cliffsides of your kingdom.

Kal-El spoke.

“This is Birnin Zana, the Golden City of Wakanda.”

Your eyes widened. You turned to him, voice terse.

“There’s nothing there.”

He only nodded, eyes at the image ahead. “Exactly.”

An unseasonal cold gripped your stomach. Pallor streamed over you. Your fingertips felt as though they had touched ice.

“Kal, that city is absolutely tangled with infrastructure. Commerce, industry… everything happens there—millions of people live there.” You breathe, only barely. “It cannot be gone just like that.”

He didn’t say anything. Just clicked through the carousel.

More images flashed on the wall, each one constructed after the contraobscura’s mechanical hum. You could barely recognize the landscape without the familiar landmarks that used to define it, but you knew them nonetheless.

There was clarity without immediacy.

The pointed spires of Birnin Zana weren’t featured in any of the images, nor were the spastic presence of lean airships that busied the city’s aerial highways—yet the hills were the same verdant ones that bracketed it. The ground looked green; you wondered if that was what it looked like, hidden all along underneath the tidy bricks that paved it.

Kal-El took more than enough pictures. Each one superseded a thousand words. The device flashed another image of a jagged mountain, like teeth against the sky. The vegetation was jungly and overgrown.

The Jabari tribe’s dwelling should’ve been there—a massive metal stronghold perched precariously on one of the peaks.

Instead, there was nothing.

The contraobscura showed a savanna next, pampas grass covering the expanse like feathers on a brown swan.

“That’s the palace,” Kal-El finally said, “…or at least, where it’s supposed to be.”

“I don’t believe it,” you whispered, stricken with disbelief.

He looked over at you.

“I could fly you there.”

While dread began to grip your ribcage, you felt your head grow heavy at the revelation. It was just as James said: no misplaced rock, no jagged caldera, no tear in the ground. Clean, as if the nation never existed in the first place.

“There’s not enough time,” you said, “the rites start at midnight.”

Midnight wasn’t until six more hours, which meant six hours too many for your friend to bring you to see the proof with your own two eyes.

“I could, uh, check if they’re up there.”

Space. You scoffed. “Kal, they could’ve hyperjumped. Several times.”

“I’d still find them," he pursed his lips, “if that’ll make you feel better?”

That didn’t earn an answer from you—not with words, at least. You shook your head and shot him a rueful smile. He’d always liked making others happy.

Despite the little time he would take to either fly you to where Birnin Zana was or to investigate the whole outer space for Wakanda’s presence, other matters took precedence.

Like getting through your name day rites and whatever prophecy that might be thrust upon you.

The contraobscura whirred, its projector deactivating along with the antigravity field underneath. While Kal-El let the device land back onto his palm, his blue eyes took you in.

You were evidently dressed for bed. The robe you wore was of a satin finish, plain like the slip it partly concealed. Both garments ended just before the tops of your thighs, inviting the coolness of night and wandering eyes to caress your bare legs.

“I didn’t mean to disturb your rest,” he finally said. There was an obvious guilt in the way he cast his gaze elsewhere. Ridiculous, you thought, considering he’d seen you in much more immoral states.

You shook your head. “It’s okay, I haven’t gotten any.”

His eyes returned, darting across your face. “Are you nervous?”

You weren’t sure of how to answer.

The cogs in your brain crawled more than turned, rusted from the busyness that mucked any and all attempts at self-reflection. Amidst the Inquisition’s return, the Council’s impatience to sunder, and your own birthday happening at midnight, you had passed through the hours like a ghost through walls: lifeless, yet full of unrest.

There had been no time to feel.

And now, hours before a ritual that remained cryptic despite the number of times you’ve gone through it, you started to feel.

The first emotion that made itself known to you was dread.

As the waves lapped on the lake-sea shore, so did the beginnings of fear emerge between your toes. Cold washed the soles of your bare feet, then rose up to your ankles. It was like the ocean in winter, except the chill didn’t sting immediately. It crept. Patient. Comfortable, even, before the temperature dropped and dropped and dropped past what you thought possible.

A memory took over as you froze.

Three years ago, right before the first Flood, your mother had fallen asleep at her name day rites.

She hadn’t woken up since. You’d been playing regent to a kingdom abandoned by her own subjects.

You remembered the Holy Houses’ interruption of the Council just two days ago: almost as if they were the divine intervention that convinced a room of restless leaders to stay their hand. Amon Lisianthus had said there was hope, but you didn’t trust the ambiguity that reeked out of such a sweeping statement.

That, and even a woman as sharp as she couldn’t conceal the slight tremble in her soul.

Whatever the Amons hid, it must be something big.

After all, if the Gods could take your mother away for nothing in return, what would they demand for a sliver of something?

What if they put you to sleep, too?

You’d always thought death might arrive at the tip of an assassin’s needle. A compromised goblet. A loveless political marriage. You would never expect it to visit so softly—in a way so familiar it was almost pleasant. Something you’d never fight against; not that you could.

The waters of dread reached your lungs now. The chill stung your ribs.

You suddenly couldn’t breathe.

Panic. What else could it be? And yet you had no control over the sensation. For a second, you were standing outside of your body, watching your own limbs lock.

Anxiety must’ve overflowed from your body language, because Kal-El immediately scooped you towards him, burying your head into his chest, guided by a gentle hand that stayed at the back of your neck.

Your heartbeat hitched at the shrouding warmth. Remnants of the sun clung to his suit, mixing with a scent you’d learned to be singularly his over the years.

His warmth wasn’t only physical: you felt it radiating out of him, the pulses in his aura soothing you much like the broad palm stroking down your back. He established a quiet pattern in his touch: three long lines down your spine, one slow circle after.

“It’s going to be okay,” he murmured against your temple, “You’re going to be okay.”

The fear that flooded you ebbed each time his hand began the comforting pattern anew. His words should’ve been an overused truism, but spoken in his voice, you came to believe the meaning. Borrowed his faith: that everything would be alright.

After a few seconds, you breathed again. Shaky at the inhale still, before slowly steadying like it used to. In and out.

“That’s it, breathe. Good girl.”

And here you thought you only liked stoic men.

“Clark,” you whispered.

For what, you didn’t know. You only knew the smell of the sun on him took you back.

“Clark,” he echoed.

His face was younger, but not by much—although the rosiness in his cheeks begged to differ. He’d always been taller than you, even then. The muscles on his face scrunched slightly in consideration, as if they were tasting the name you just uttered, before the corner of his lip twitched up.

He smiled at you. Brilliant and slightly offensive in its dazzle.

“I like the sound of that.”

Blame the prismatic light that tinted his face for how angelic that smile looked.

The planetarium skylight shone in an array of colors when fed with the golden glow of the afternoon hour. The skies must be clear in order for the sunlight to reflect through glass in such a way, and it happened to be an especially beautiful day when the two of you picked his name.

But not more beautiful than his face, beaming with unabashed joy. You didn’t even bother hiding your stare.

Everything that surrounded you was his: the height of the wall covered in books, the elaborate brass orrery spinning ever-so-slowly on the ceiling, the settee where you sat next to him.

And yet the name ‘Clark’ felt like the one thing he truly owned.

The triumvirate of the Holy Houses gifted him this two-story planetarium to remind him of home, not long after he crash-landed on Earth.

It was your seventeenth birthday when that happened.

Except he didn’t have one anymore—a home, that is—and the planetarium’s magnificence felt a touch misplaced.

Because while the Amons bathed him with luxuries and revered him as a gift from the Gods, Kal-El was a bereaved orphan. Completely alone in an alien land, with only fragments of memory and the pod he was grounded with to call his own. Its shrapnels hung at the edges of the orrery, glass and metal catching the light.

You were the only one bold enough to befriend a symbol.

You were the only one who could.

“You like being called Clark?” you asked, while wondering how someone’s eyes could be so bright.

“Yes, well, it sounds… common.”

“Clint is also a common name.”

He gave you an unsure look. “Clark’s better.”

You stayed quiet for a while.

“You know they’re not going to stop calling you Kal-El, right?” you said. “Starborne. The Last of His Kind.”

He leaned back. Looked up at the slowly spinning orrery, its thin cords casting even thinner shadows below.

“Yeah. But I can be Clark when I slip out.”

You watched the glimmer in his eyes give way to something else. There was a split-second recognition in you: after all, you’d spent most of your years growing up with the same thing.

Loneliness.

The very emotion that prompted his idea to leave in the first place. Not forever—he had nowhere else to go—just occasionally. Out of the palace and into the world. Enough to know what it was like being shoulder-to-shoulder with a person in a crowded market, to learn how to haggle and smell candied fruit as they were freshly made.

You remembered that first ‘excursion’ like it was yesterday. He’d come home with unshed tears in his eyes and made you promise to take him again.

A year now, and he still felt foreign, although it wasn’t a lack of time that failed to integrate him.

As was your case, it was status.

A child of the stars wasn’t supposed to be so grounded. A head that wears the crown shouldn’t lean so low.

Yet here you both were.

“Still, I’m not sure how having a common name might disguise…” You vaguely gestured towards him, “…you know. You.”

He looked down at his clothes.

An indigo coat made of crushed velvet covered his broad shoulders down to his calves, its hem and sleeve-edges embroidered with silver-threaded patterns that crowded at the lapels. Beneath the coat was a matching vest, structured above a simple white shirt left unbuttoned at the collar. His trousers were mostly hidden underneath the coat’s long hem.

But the outfit wasn’t the issue. His size was.

Nothing about Kal-El was outwardly different than others except how big he was.

“It should be fine—I think,” he looked back at you. “I mean, the people have only seen me from far away, right? If anyone recognized me out of the usual ceremonial vestments, it’d be a miracle.”

You furrowed your brows, pouting slightly. “I recognize you all the time.”

There was a glow on his cheeks that you attributed to prismatic refractions.

“That’s because we’re friends,” he replied.

And you were friends. Of course you were. Because he was too untouchable to play chess with, and you could drag someone to the dungeons with but a word. The two of you only had each other.

You caught his softening gaze. That wasn’t a trick of the light.

He spoke.

“You know I’m grateful for your friendship. For you.”

Then his mouth parted slightly, about to speak again, except the rest of his words hung silent in the air. You waited in that suspense.

The tension melted just as his face did into a smile, but it was markedly different from earlier. Where his previous smile was happy, this was the kind you’d give when you had no hope to control things: a situation, a person, a feeling. It looked like surrender, but his eyes were so sweet you’d think he was more than willing to.

It made you ache.

“Clark?”

Fingers clasped over yours, inviting a warmth in your chest and body.

His eyes drifted to your lips—or did they? It was too fast a movement, and your mind was too unreliable to decide.

When he leaned closer, he smelled like sunshine.

“I’ll always be here for you, you know that?” he murmured.

That low timbre from the past melded together with the current voice against your hair. Clark’s lips pressed against your crown, forming the same words.

For a moment, there was no memory, nor was there a future: no life-changing ritual, no rising seas, no duty. Just him and you and the unyielding solidity of his body against yours.

You believed his words more than prophecy because he was one of the kindest men you’ve ever known. Because his was a kindness that never shied from being seen, never hidden for the sake of pride or propriety.

You didn’t have to hide when it came to Clark. Neither James nor Logan could give you that sort of relief—the lack of pretense, no matter how thrilling it may be to pollute an unseen stairwell with either one of them.

Maybe that was your downfall—what turned your already-hungry affection into proper avarice.

Avarice that opened your mouth.

“Can you help me, then?” you asked, looking up at him.

He sensed the shift in you. Brushed stray strands away from your face.

“With what, Princess?”

“I don’t want to feel fear.”

The meaning wasn’t lost on him: it wasn’t so much you not wanting to feel fear, it was more you wanting to feel something else.

He didn’t need to glance outside to know that night had fallen. The sky was completely dark now, save for a final string of blue on the horizon line. Like the sun giving way to evening, his judgment was taken over by less-than-innocent wants—or had they congealed into a need?

He hadn’t tasted you in a while.

“What about your rest?” he asked, as if clinging to vestiges of decorum. Your rites and their preparations would take place in a few hours.

Your half-lidded eyes locked onto his, like time didn’t matter.

Your fingers wrapped around his hand that cradled your waist, only to pluck him away from the hold. A light brush on his knuckles. You circled his wrist like a bracelet that barely fit. Led his hand up to your lips.

Then, you kissed his fingertips and watched his eyes take on the night sky’s blue.

The warm contact didn’t last long.

You didn’t let it, instead dragging his palm against your heart, let him hear the beat of it under your breast—a meaningful gesture you immediately smeared by pressing his hand onto the silk that covered your tit, feeding his palm with your flesh. He kneaded it, breath stuttering.

You didn’t stop because he did nothing to stop you.

Your hand peeled his away from your chest before willing it to trail a path down. His fingertips skimmed past ivory silk until the fabric was no more, and you felt them trace the inside of your thigh.

You sighed when he moved on his own volition, inching up until he cupped you from above your underwear. The material did little to hide you—not when he could feel how hot you were becoming under his touch.

Two fingers pressed against the gusset.

Twin moans flood past parted lips. He could feel it. You were already so wet.

“I don’t need rest, Clark,” you whispered, carding your fingers through his hair.

A finger slipped in, slow and excruciating. He let out a shuddering breath like you were the one touching him.

You sighed into his mouth. “I just need you.”

The room was coated in complete darkness, but Clark didn’t need light to see you. Although his vision allowed it, he felt you most clearly, snuggled tight against him. The strap of your now-crumpled slip, the only thing you had on, was halfway off your shoulder. Your breath fanned his bare chest, hair splayed against pillows.

He stroked your head all the while. Shushed you back to sleep whenever you showed the smallest signs of waking.

All the while, Clark had been thinking.

His eyes landed on a mark on your neck, right at the side of your throat. A thumb brushed over it.

He remembered what happened but an hour ago.

“Must they always be so rough with you?”

Arms looped around his neck, you smiled, a little coy. He knew full well why—he was being hypocritical, having had his fair share of littering those same marks on you.

The fingers buried inside you pulled out just to thrust in again. Your words shuddered with your body.

“Are you jealous?”

“No,” he nosed your throat to hide the lie. Kissed the mark left by one James or the other, he didn’t need to know. But he knew how attuned you were to feelings, and the green he emanated could very well be telling you the truth.

Maybe hiding was useless, after all.

Just as he thought, you cupped his jaw and urged him up to look at you.

“I’m with you now. Don’t think about anything else.”

The words poured into him like honey, sweetly sinking and adhering to his mind’s innermost corners. They imbued him with a sense of finality and determination: to make you not think of anything else—or anyone else other than him, for that matter.

He slid down your body to begin that quest.

You sighed when he kissed your inner thighs. His fingers left you empty, instigating a noise of mild disappointment in favor of toying with the hem of your slip. His digits were soaked, so he cleaned them first: one suck into his mouth was all it took, and then they were back on you, inching the fabric up to reveal more of your skin.

Heavens, your skin. Better to touch than cold silk, you were warm. Pulsing already.

It was his heightened senses that caught your rabbit heartbeat first. It coursed through you and landed heavy at your center. But his lips pressed against your mound from over the fabric, and he swore he could feel you without his powers.

“Kal—Clark,” you murmured.

He smiled. Your mind was already fogged up.

“Yes?”

“Don’t tease.”

“I’m not, darling.”

And then, as if proving his innocence, he lifted the edge of your short nightgown and mouthed at your core underneath.

Your underwear was already soaked, but he made it worse with his drool. The groan he let out rumbled between your legs:

“Gosh, you’re so wet.”

You were about to tell him it was his fault, but then his large fingers hooked on the sides of your underwear to pull them down, and whatever you planned on saying melted into a moan—his tongue made you forget you had one of your own.

He licked a hot, wet stripe up the seam of your lips.

The strength left your knees: an outcome he’d considered, since his hands were already steadying your thighs upright.

He suckled at your clit, and you cried out an expletive he wouldn’t condone using.

The same way your lips parted, so did your legs. It was enough for him to latch his entire mouth over your dripping entrance. Your response was a whine, higher-pitched, your fingers carded through his hair.

His heart sang. You were letting him eat.

This was it: the way he made you his. And he’d make you his, over and over and over again.

Lying in your bed, hand brushing your hair, Clark knew he couldn’t really claim you.

Not that James and Logan could, either: whoever thought he could do so with a mere hickey would be wrong.

Nobody could claim you, despite the different pairs of arms you fell into.

So who was to blame for the ire rippling in Clark’s deepest of hearts? You’d known those two men for years. They’d had you for much longer than he had, and he wasn’t a part of whatever arrangement existed between the three of you—just an anomaly you never asked for.

He felt like a trespasser on unholy ground. An intruder.

But you let him in your bed anyway, and Clark understood what it meant to be a dog begging for scraps.

Speaking of pets, Alpine moved from the shadows. She had been politely gone while he mauled you like an animal—the gentlest one there was. Her white coat could be seen even in the dark, a blur that traced an invisible line towards your bedroom door.

Clark didn’t need his super-senses to see what was coming. It seemed that Alpine, too, had a feeling.

Three knocks, brass handle on stone. Firm. Respectful. Familiar.

A man’s voice floated in faintly from beyond.

“Princess?”

Clark didn’t move. The opposite, rather: he held you tighter, and you nuzzled all the more into his skin—close to stirring, but not quite awakening. As if you’d rather stay asleep for a little longer.

He didn’t want this dream to end, either.

“I’m coming in,” the voice announced.

Smooth rock pushed ajar. A slice of light from the hallway spilled into the bedroom like white ink on black paper. The door opened wider.

A figure besmirched the arched space with a strong outline. With his back turned against the light, the outlines of his knight’s armor shone, while his face remained cloaked by a shade. Steel moved one step closer. It dazzled in the dim, intricate metal engravings almost pulsing aglow.

Clark’s blue eyes met another pair.

“Ser James,” his low voice scraped, still heavy with sleep, “Her Highness is resting.”

James remained stoic as his eyes took in the scene before him, no doubt ascertaining the nature of Kal-El’s presence in your room. If he was surprised, he didn’t show.

Alpine walked in circles around his armored leg.

“I can see that, Starborne,” the knight replied, voice even. “She bid me to wake her on the tenth hour—it’s ten minutes past that.”

Understanding landed over Clark’s face like a slow veil.

“Did she mean to pay a visit?”

James nodded.

Just then, you murmured, consciousness reconstructing itself against Clark’s body. You stretched your arms around his torso while your eyelids fluttered open, bleary and not yet aware of those that watched you with great interest.

When you finally settled, you caught the silhouette darkening your doorstep.

Clark still had a hand on your back when he brushed stray strands away from your face.

“Is it time?” you rasped, looking at James. Your voice was wrecked with a sin the two men knew by heart and body.

Clark’s jaws clenched at how unbothered you seemed to be, letting yourself be seen by another like this: your nightgown askew, thighs plush and bare between the sheets—a state a princess would never be caught in.

“Yes, Your Highness,” James answered. How he looked like the sight of you ruined didn’t affect him, Clark couldn’t comprehend.

“Mm.”

You sat there for a second or two. Clark watched. He knew that paying a visit was never easy.

But then you turned to him, fingertips dancing across his jawline.

Clark didn’t need to be pulled down; he did it on his own into your waiting lips. A burst of greed consumed him—he pressed deeper, wanting to taste more of you in the kiss, to milk whatever he was allowed before letting you go.

When you parted, he saw gratitude in the way your eyes darkened.

Just like that, you got up, bare legs slung over the bed. Cold rushed into the space that you once occupied.

You found a robe, longer and heavier than the one Clark took off you. You put it over yourself, then walked towards the open door where James was.

You spared Clark one last glance before it shut.

The hallway was a strange amalgam of dim and well-lit, continuously curving in a gentle slope up. There were no sconces on the wall, just panels of light on the ceiling.

No window. No sky.

The path was almost designed to trap those who walk it in a state between night and day, stripping them of time to lead them to a place.

It was quiet except for James’s armor, its clinks bouncing off the walls.

Every sound was amplified. Even the silence.

The robe you carelessly put on swept the floor just slightly, leaving your slip to drown unseen beneath it. Your hair was unbrushed, tousled by fingers and other deeds.

There was no reason to care for appearances. Your visit was technically unsanctioned, and the person you were about to meet had seen you look worse.

Three more minutes down the hall that seemed to bend infinitely, like a snake eating its own tail, and it finally gave way to a spillage of another kind of light at its end. A section of the concrete floor jutted out to form a wider berth—fifty feet compared to the hallway’s mere twenty.

At that point, the walls were no longer.

Tall panels of full-length glass stood in their place, revealing the lake-sea. The expansive oriel framed a scene similar to that from your bedroom window, but at a greater height: here, the horizon looked longer, and a thread of silver moonlight glimmered at the water’s very surface. There were stars in the gentle waves.

A full moon floated above. Judging by the brilliance of its light in this night of the vernal equinox, it must have reached perigee—there would be less than two hours until she crowned the sky proper.

Opposite this oriel was a door.

Two, to be exact: each side made of thick stone, thrice as tall as you at the very least. The wall it was attached to was wider than the oriel, its lightly porous rock standing smooth and imposingly.

There were no handles or knobs to assist with the door’s opening.

Instead of a mechanical apparatus, there was a magical one. An identification circle sat right in front of it. Its edges were carved into the floor, containing runes that bordered it on the inside. The pattern mirrored itself like an ancient kaleidoscope.

You stood on top of it.

Nothing happened—no click of a weight-switch or the hum of a machine—until the runes flickered alive, silver-white with arcane recognition. They throbbed with light: one sweeping movement from the circle’s center, before fading away completely.

The only indication that anything worked after that was the slow grind of the massive stone doors. They parted sideways.

Without exchanging more than a look with James, your message was delivered loud and clear.

You stepped into the chamber. He stood by the door as it laboriously closed back with a loud thud, keeping watch.

For one second after, you were encapsulated in complete darkness.

It was colder in here.

There was a hiss. Lights began to react to your presence in the room: it bloomed gently, a vertical column on the ceiling that activated row by row with each step forward. They led to the center of the chamber. In fact, it was the only part they lit up, leaving everything else flooded in darkness.

The sight revealed to you was no less bleak than when you first saw it.

The room was clinical, if nothing else. Washed in a gray far too neutral for life. Its construct married polymer, steel, and stone—the only character it betrayed was the irregular speckles of the latter material.

Nearly a hundred feet in front of you was a pod.

It was the only thing in the chamber. Looked almost like a smooth pebble from this distance, except you recognized the glimmer of plasticized glass that covered its top half.

You approached, bare footsteps against cold ground.

Your mother was inside it.

She really was asleep.

Three years behind glass and you’d started to forget the exact shade of her eyes.

She hadn’t aged since.

Hadn’t exactly lived, either: the device sustained her, transparent valves running like external veins from her wrists and neck and feet, curving the rest of its hidden lengths within and underneath the polymer bed. It pumped a substance that preserved her.

You placed your hand over the glass.

The material slid open with a depressurized sigh.

Frosty air burst against your fingertips. You saw its wisps like breath in winter, before it dissolved into the rest of the room.

You spent a minute or two like that: staring at your mother, unobstructed.

A minute or two was all you were allowed—all she was allowed—beyond which the humid air might compromise her cryogenic sleep, the length of which remained mysterious.

Because the prophecy of her name day didn’t specify.

The Gods had only said she was to succumb to a long slumber, one that would end once the tides were tamed.

If ever, you thought to yourself. After the first year, hope had turned fickle until it became too much to carry.

So you recommitted her features into memory: the fine strands of her auburn-red hair held up by a royal headdress, the hands that used to hold yours, her face—delicate, peaceful.

The upward twitch of your lip was bitter in comparison.

Your mother had been forewarned.

Three days before her name day, you’d found her in the courtyard, staring blankly at the sky. When asked what was wrong, she’d smiled and asked you a question back.

“Would it be alright if… I went on a journey?”

“Where?” you’d blinked back, sensing her unease.

She’d brushed your hair away from your face instead of answering immediately. There was more she wished to say, but couldn’t—that much was plain.

“I don’t know yet,” had been the words she chose, “but I trust that you’ll be alright.”

While you’d tried to decipher her, she’d kissed your cheek.

“I love you, heart.”

Now, three years later, you were left by yourself. The journey she’d mentioned turned out to be this—a line so fine between life and undeath. Whether this was an enchantment the mages couldn’t decipher or truly a curse from the Gods themselves, the odds were stacked on the latter.

There had never been a way for you to follow this kind of journey.

No way for you to know, to be precise. The Amons did not spare you the same grace they did your mother.

You stared at her sleeping face, fingertips very carefully tracing her hairline as if she were an artifact and not a person. The sensation extended past your hand, energy reaching out the way limbs would.

One soul searched another.

She emanated nothing. Even in slumber, she didn’t dream.

Eventually, your knees met the ground. You leaned down and kissed her forehead. Frost kissed you back, numbing for just a second before it faded into a comfortable cool, then nothing at all.

“I’ll see you soon, Mother.”

Whether or not you were telling the truth remained to be seen. The rites would begin shortly.

With those final words, you waved your hand again. The pod’s glass closed, sealing its internal air shut, and suddenly the chamber became that much quieter.

Or maybe it was the violent beat of your heart that deafened you to your surroundings, as you stepped outside towards your fate.

The end of Logan’s cigar burned orange. It was perhaps the only color in the vicinity.

Most of the architecture surrounding the portico outside your bedroom was the color of bone, and the moon nearly drained the scene of any other shade. The space wasn’t enclosed—it directly faced a small open square of trimmed grass and its sparse flowers, letting moonlight stain its marble-tiled floors.

It was close to midnight.

There was a congregation of people waiting by your door. What they wore for the ceremony didn’t help: most of the small crowd of twenty were clerics of the Holy Houses, who nearly blended into the wall in their silver-white garments.

There were only two who wore heavy plate armor: him and a fellow knight.

James Barnes.

“You know you’re not allowed to do that,” James spoke, several feet next to him. The younger man had planted himself by an ornamented pillar since they arrived.

Logan suspected that James’s ability to hold his tongue had eroded as time ticked by. It had only been a little over half an hour since they’d been stationed.

In response, Logan shot him a look: one brow raised, eyes sharp. He breathed the cigar in again, then out, wisps of smoke languidly escaping past his lips at the exhale.

A quiet ‘I don’t care’.

Just when he thought the Amons would cut him some slack for passing the time this way, his stickler of a counterpart had to bring it up.

It was only slightly less irritating than the fact that you also loved this other James.

Logan never heard you say it out loud—not when he was around, anyway—but he had learned to read what your eyes spelled. Windows of the soul, or however the saying goes.

You looked at them the same way. Where you were trained to mask your true feelings around others, your eyes found theirs like you were safe to be yourself.

Not a Crown to be obeyed, but a woman to be worshipped.

There was only one other person Logan had seen you share that look with.

One other person who wasn’t here.

Logan turned around. He gazed past the portico and the grassy square beyond, focusing on a tall spire that stood a ways away—slightly to the west of your room, but still within the periphery. The tower loomed above dome-ceilinged hallways: a sturdy column capped with an elaborate, rounded structure that opened and closed at will.

The planetarium.

The lights were still on.

Through its bay windows, small as they were from this distance, Logan could make out a shape. Its outline was dark from the backlight, and his vision was not what it used to be, but he saw anyway.

Hazel eyes caught blue ones staring.

The Starborne. He was watching.

In what little overlap they had in their abilities, Kal-El was superior to Logan by well over a mile. With senses like that, he could probably hear the scene as if he were standing at the portico.

Despite being somewhat deified by the Holy Houses, Kal-El had no involvement in the name day rites.

Yet every year, Logan would find him there without fail: watching the proceedings in his gilded cage.

Turning to the rest of the congregation, Logan knew the number of people in attendance and who they were, as if these facts were written on the back of his hand.

Name day rites happened every year for the reigning monarch, and he’d been around for more than a few to memorize its proceedings.

All the Amons were here.

Amhara was ordained maybe ten years ago. The youngest among them, even with his graying beard, the day to his dark skin’s night. His eyes were black beads on white sclera, making his gaze appear more incisive than his gentle bearing. He was tall, too, which didn’t help—easily towering above most of the people gathered, including Logan. The hennin he wore emphasized his height even more.

Lisianthus was the oldest—and shortest—but also the most wily. Women of the Holy Houses had historically earned their place rather than being handed it, making Lisianthus a figure to be all the more wary of. Some said she was the best secret-bearer the Houses had seen in a while. Her silvery cloak didn’t help her pale countenance, but it looked like she put on some rouge for the occasion: light pink dusted her skinny cheeks.

Finally, there was Amon Nasser. He stood at Amhara’s shoulder. Not as old as Lisianthus, but nearly twice as thin. His brown skin sagged over bone, eyes light like the braided beard he wore to his mid-chest: five or six bunches, curly and thick. Since Nasser’s voice was reduced to wrecked reeds by age and a rampant tobacco habit (thank the Gods for the gift of regeneration, Logan thought), he now spoke directly through minds. Logan had never labeled someone as ‘creepy’ so quickly in his enduring lifetime.

Each of them headed their respective Houses and brought along five clerics, who chose to assemble quietly on the other side of the princess’s portico.

Meanwhile, all these three Amons had done so far was stand.

Logan knew better. With a super-soldier and a mutant in the vicinity—as well as an invested demigod a thousand feet away—they were probably talking via telepathy.

Psions. He never did like them.

Also, Lisianthus hadn’t barked at him for smoking. Hadn’t even glared. That was weird.

Something smelled wrong. Something that wasn’t his vintage cigar.

It wasn’t intense enough to warrant the claws, but then again, three of the nation’s most practiced psychics were here: it was very likely they’d dampened their internal unrest with their powers, and whatever Logan felt was a mere microcosm of a larger tension.

Then a deep sound rang out.

It was as though something hit the metal skeleton that held the palace together—a thrum in the castle’s belly that Logan could feel in his.

To call it a clock’s bell would be a gross mischaracterization, but that was what it was.

It struck again. Almost sourceless, the way it reverberated everywhere.

This was the midnight bell toll.

The party shifted immediately in response: no more hushed conversations, telepathic or otherwise. Practiced feet assumed positions like they were programmed to. The Amons stood before their clerics, who placed themselves in three neat rows.

“Put that out,” James murmured before moving to the very front.

“Don’t gotta tell me,” Logan quipped.

He jammed the cigar onto his own armored palm. Once the flame died, he flung it backwards to the grassy patio, the rolled-up stick flying up and away an easy ten feet.

It landed conveniently in a curved brass receptacle meant for candles.

James didn’t have to look back to know where it went. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

Logan walked to James’s side like he had all the time in the world—which, in a way, he did. Together, they were the princess’s chosen knights, anchored before the door to her chambers.

The bells still tolled. It rang for the seventh time.

Eighth.

Ninth.

On the tenth strike, two swords were drawn in unison. The sound of steel sliced the air at the weapon’s reveal. They were more ceremonial than anything; Logan’s had the slightest of jaggedness on its edge, while James’s looked newer in comparison.

They faced forward, swords held in front of their faces.

The twelfth toll rang out.

Nothing happened.

Then, after the quietest few seconds in the world, the stone doors to your room cracked open.

Three handmaids emerged first, walking out in a neat line. They had headdresses that concealed their hair and flowed sideways like spider-sewn curtains, their uniform as black as mourning. The women walked slowly to their places behind the knights.

When you stepped out, the silence was no longer one of suspense.

It was reverence.

You looked ethereal.

Your dress appeared poured on rather than put on. It might’ve been fair to mistake the fabric for water, because the material rippled with every minuscule movement. Like water too, its color escaped the eye, changing with each pass of moonlight: one moment a luminescent white, then gray, then a hint of blue at the undertow.

While the dress didn’t hide your body’s outline at all, it crawled up your neck into a high cowl. Your arms were covered by sleeves that flared out to your fingertips, almost like a waterfall. Its length draped across your torso and thighs, long enough to conceal your bare feet, forming waves that lapped the floor.

There were jewels floating all around you—except they were affixed to a clear veil. The fabric was so delicate it didn’t even cast a shadow.

Your hair was wound into an updo so tight it left no place for your face to hide. Your features were brushed to perfection with light-handed color, all to paint a picture of a symbol: regal, untouchable, and devastatingly beautiful.

Earrings, necklace, anklet. Every piece of jewelry you wore was made of silver. Each was a clasp in your armor. This was your war.

“Happy birthday, Princess,” Logan’s devil-may-care voice cut the silence.

You spared a small smile—you could always tell if he meant to say the title or the endearment.

Meanwhile, James didn’t say anything. He just stared in the way you were used to.

Loyal. Watchful. Longing.

You scanned the faces of those assembled. They looked back at you expectantly.

You nodded.

Somewhere in the back row, a hollow metal bowl was struck, its sound ringing sure.

The Amons stepped forward.

The rites began.

Amon Amhara bowed first.

“Hail, Princess Regent,” his low baritone boomed, “On this very night of your birth, the House of Balthazar brings the gift of wisdom.”

Lisianthus continued. “The House of Caspar brings the gift of cunning.”

Nasser was last; his words were projected rather than spoken:

The House of Melchior brings the gift of restraint.

Their three voices melded into one—in your mind and in the night’s cool air.

“May the Crown be forever blessed.”

From there, you marched.

The clerics went first, two by two, followed by the Amons who walked single-file. Your handmaids were next. Then James and Logan , who were side by side, continued behind them, swords still held near their faces.

At the end of that procession was you.

A light breeze traveled through.

The convoy made away from the portico and down the stone columns that bastioned the hallway from the small courtyard, black and white shapes casting clear shadow on the limestone-tiled floor. Their footsteps were measured in unison by practice, in time with the chants that resounded in a murmur of voices:

Glorious Maid, Mother, and Crone The Crown endures, a year hath gone This little vic’try over death Until we breatheth our last breath

A sacrifice we bring to thee To bend their will to prophecy So thy pow’r shall beest known And all the glory be thine own

The verses repeated again and again on every mouth, except yours and your knights’. The rim of a metal bowl was struck every three times.

You kept your eyes forward, though the scenery passed your periphery: the procession took you to a different part of the castle, turning a corner, and suddenly your portico was no more. Prayers echoed beneath hallway arches. You crossed canopied paths, cut a diagonal line through a flower garden with low hedges, and trailed a curved line into the east wing.

Your bare feet touched different ground. Some of the stone still stored the day’s heat; the grass was dry; the east wing had tiles that were smooth under the soles of your feet.

You were walking towards the chapel.

The entrance to it was much smaller than that to your room, but also a lot more intricate. It was washed in an uneven jade green color, but upon closer inspection, the gleams within its engraved slabs weren’t merely the result of quartz and crushed glass, but also fragments of seashells that shone like little stars.

On the surface were carved sigils. Their runic appearance was a direct relative to the one that opened your mother’s cryogenic chamber.

The two clerics who helmed the march pushed the doors open. The rest of the assembly trickled into the room, prayers and chants unceasing.

Upon stepping into the doorway, you felt unseasonal warmth rush over you.

This chapel was unlike other places of worship in the realm.

There were many ways people chose to deify the Gods—many structures to reflect these eclectic forms of worship. Some chose to build stained glass and rows of wooden pews, others a towering ziggurat.

Here in the palace, the very first Amons shaped the chapel to the aspect of emptiness.

The chamber was circular, about a hundred feet in diameter. Like the rest of the palace, it was made of smoothed stone and rock and coral, melded together into a grayish brown plane, too sanded down to tell the difference. There was a gentle downward slope to the room, as if it housed a quicksand within.

The center of it was marked with a metallic disc. Its gold-coated surface floated low with unseen magic—only slightly above ankle height. This ring-shaped structure was the altar where candles and other objects of worship rested: it was twice as wide as your wingspan and had an opening that allowed people to stand within it.

Above the altar was a skylight.

It was the diametric opposite of the natural jaggedness of the one in the Council’s chamber. Smooth and polished, the skylight’s geometrically perfect curves housed rigorous mathematical calculations that formulated the angle of heavenly bodies.

Those very calculations captured cold moonbeam in its arcs. Projected it into the chapel like a spotlight.

Tonight, that place in the middle of the altar was meant for you—sovereign and sacrifice in one living person.

A sacrifice we bring to thee To bend their will to prophecy So thy pow’r shall beest known And all the glory be thine own

The voices ceased with that very last echoed verse.

Amidst the people that entered the room, there was a straight and narrow path that led to the center.

You took the first step, passing through the shine of your knights’ armors. They followed behind you now, metal greaves almost scraping against the hard ground. Your footsteps, like the assembly, were soundless.

It was easy to sense the humidity in the room—it reminded you of a place that didn’t often have its doors opened. The air was stale, yes, but what caught your attention was its temperature: for a chamber that had no windows except the skylight above, it was warm to a point that teetered on suffocation.

Your heart beat faster in response.

In response.

You stilled.

In response to what?

You swallowed. Kept looking ahead.

Nothing was wrong. Everything went the way it should. The clerics walked down the right way designated for the rites. Nobody suffered an ailment and fainted along the way. Your dress didn’t snag on a twig in the garden path—that had happened during your first rite.

But you felt it in your blood: the beginning of a storm.

And speaking of storms, stepping into the ring-shaped altar felt like willingly being in the eye of one. You turned to the rest of the room.

Your knights stationed themselves five feet in front of the floating pedestal. Nobody else moved.

Then you looked up.

The moon was directly above you, a shining disc in the middle of the skylight.

A perfect circle.

A watching eye.

Something lurched in your stomach.

Fear. Panic. Anticipation.

The warmth of the room became your very own. You noticed it in your fingertips first, then toes; how cold they were compared to the rest of your body. A steady heat built behind your eyes—you thought of how fevers began. How they crept on a tiring day. How they weighed on your head, neck, and shoulders.

A chorus of voices snapped you out of your stupor.

The clerics and Amons started a new prayer, this time in an older tongue that harked back to early worshippers. It was no longer commonly spoken, but the Holy Houses kept it alive—preserved it in magi’s spellbooks and the castle’s protective runes.

You knew just enough of it to discern its meaning.

Maiden cunning, Mother wise, patient Crone Feed our minds, touch our souls, stir our bones

At this point, there was nothing left to do but listen.

These were the rites.

They would chant the same phrase a hundred times, strike the metal bowl, and it would be concluded. You were to stand under the full moon of the vernal equinox—bathe in the Gods’ very presence—to be washed with holy blessings that would sustain you and your rule for another year.

Everything was the same as your last rites. Your knights kept watch. The congregation was still in rows of half-circles that radiated from the epicenter: the altar.

Everything was the same.

Everything should’ve been the same.

But a chill brushed the back of your skull like ghastly fingertips, and you knew something was wrong.

You nearly shivered. The sensation contradicted the oppressive heat building under your skin.

You felt sick. Perhaps you should’ve heeded Clark’s concern and rested a bit more.

Whatever illness was in you didn’t quell despite your efforts to ignore it.

In fact, it climbed.

You tried your best to mask the discomfort, emotional tendrils curling into themselves like beasts held back by a single leash. Your mind was their master, and yet the focus you’d commanded it with faltered ever so slightly. It took everything to control the unrest—the Amons didn’t need to know.

A fever, you concluded. It had to be. The twin sensation of cold and warm confirmed it: the ends of your limbs froze, while your head and throat burned.

After this, you’d drink some medicinal tea and get some sleep.

The prayers had to be fifty times repeated at this point.

You were positive of your illness, but anomalous was what it was—because whatever experience you’d had with fevers, they never seemed to light your bloodstream on fire. You could feel it all too clearly: the paths that marked your veins, the pulse that shot from your heart and back, the palpitating heat.

The chapel didn’t help. Maybe it was the closed doors, or the lack of a breeze, or the number of people in it.

It felt like too much.

Warmth blocked your nostrils, and you were immediately made aware of the aridity in your mouth.

Maiden cunning, Mother wise, patient Crone Feed our minds, touch our souls, stir our bones

How many times had they repeated that prayer? Seventy? A hundred? More? It took all of you to keep your eyes open; you’d lost count.

Heat gripped your spine. A chill brushed your limbs. Your vision was strained from the dangerous warmth behind your eyes.

You half-expected nausea to wash over you and prompt you to retch, but it never did. There was no bitter taste in your mouth—there was no taste at all.

In the lack of taste was a thirst.

The warmth that conquered you made you all the more aware of your heartbeat in your ribcage. With each pulse, the hairs at the back of your neck raised.

You willed your knees to keep upright.

Don’t cave, you thought. Not now. Not yet.

But a faint whisper formed in the back of your head, and you immediately knew.

This malady was as much the mind’s as it was the body’s.

Maiden cunning, Mother wise, patient Crone Feed our minds, touch our souls, stir our bones

The strange voice in your head only grew with each chant. It rode the current of spoken prayers. Slipped between your ears. What was hidden between the room’s voices now formed its own: incoherent at first, but unmistakably present.

Noise. Susurrating like reedy air. Meaning concealed by their sound.

Meanwhile, the cleric’s chants seemed to grow louder. No longer murmurs, but not quite a bellow.

Feed our minds, touch our souls, stir our bones

Sweat collected at your temples. Its beads traveled down your damp skin. Your vision grew hazy.

Your eyes caught Logan’s. Then James’s.

They noticed—they always did when something was wrong. James’s frown deepened. Logan’s brows furrowed.

Feed our minds, touch our souls, stir our bones

The voices in the room began to clamor. The syllables rattled. Clamored. Frantic—like they were begging at the Gods’ feet.

But nobody moved.

The voice in your head was separated from the one in the room.

You stopped breathing.

It was female above everything else. Many but one. Old but young. Vindictive but kind. They spoke directly to you:

Two swords shall pierce the ivory crown,

As if called to it, you stared up at the skylight. Your eyes widened.

a bright star she shall swallow.

Something beyond your fingertips flexed, a sixth sense seeking out emotion. You didn’t even intend to use your powers.

And those who linger to be drowned—

But you saw it then. The moon had an aura about it.

It radiated excitement.

—will finally see tomorrow.

That was the last thing you saw before darkness took over.

“You’re not kidding.”

That was Logan, speaking to the still air of the hallway.

It was just him, James, and the Amons who stood there, facing each other in an imperfect circle. The clerics had immediately been dismissed the moment you’d passed out, the room cleared despite the knights’ adamance in approaching you.

Lisianthus was only able to convince them to wait by mentioning the prophecy.

She was also the one glaring at Logan right now, her stare withering, facial muscles pulled in a taut line.

“No, Gifted One, I absolutely am not,” she spat the honorific out, “Not on this matter of great importance.”

“I’m not saying you are,” Logan drawled, “I‘m confirming.”

His keen senses caught it. He could hear it—hear you—even from beyond closed doors. Your labored breathing. The way your limbs shifted against the cold, hard floor.

Far away from them, you whimpered.

James tensed at the sound. The reaction wasn’t lost to Logan—of course he could hear you too. Perhaps that was what prompted the younger knight to speak:

“If it is of great importance, you shouldn’t have deliberately withheld it.”

The three Amons looked to be in various degrees of restrained distress. It was the first time in years that their collective wisdom had been questioned, let alone so openly challenged.

Just then, a shape loomed over the hallway, bracketed by pillars, shaded under moonlight. It landed quietly on tiled floors, a cape flapping in gentle waves before stilling completely.

Kal-El arrived.

“I heard your call. What is the meaning of this?”

The Amons bowed like they were burned, the gesture hurried but no less deep.

“It’s the prophecy,” James spoke, too impatient to wait for one of Their Holiness, “She’s—something’s happening to her.”

Those words were enough for Kal-El.

Blue eyes immediately focused on the door, narrowing ever so slightly to discern what he saw past the walls. The scene’s colors inverted themselves. Behind layers of rock as the only source of heat within the chapel’s walls: you, your entire outline burning red.

Kal-El’s heart sank when he heard yours. The beat of it was erratic, entirely too fast and too loud to be considered healthy.

“She’s sick,” he whispered, “she’s really sick.”

James stared at him then, his face unreadable—like he was holding back a response.

Kal-El blinked, turning to the rest of them. He caught Logan’s expression first, nearly as stony as James’s, while the hint of fear in the Amons’ eyes was likely in anticipation of his reaction rather than your peril.

And react he did. The sight of five people standing around doing nothing to help you made his blood boil.

“Why is no one doing anything?” Kal-El roared, immediately heading towards the door.

Wait.

Nasser’s voice, infiltrating his mind, was able to halt his steps by sheer unexpectedness.

There’s an explanation for this, Starborne.

Kal-El turned back, though not without the protest of his very limbs. You were inside, alone, suffering from a fever that was well on its way to dehydrating you, and the stone walls were far too easy for him to destroy.

“Make it quick,” he acquiesced.

Amon Amhara stepped forward, producing a scroll tube from within his robe’s sleeve. Clark’s palm wrapped around the leather material, quickly unclasping its metal joinery to reveal the parchment within.

He unfurled it. Read it.

Brows furrowed at the words written in the Amon’s ink of faith. The dark red smears were calligraphic, yes, but also hurried, as though captured before the divine inspiration—or perhaps hallucination—could leave the writer.

Two swords. A star. The promise of salvation.

He lifted his eyes past the paper’s edge to meet Amhara’s.

“What is this?”

“Her Highness’s prophecy.”

“But what does it mean?”

Amhara looked away. In fact, almost everybody did—except for Logan, who stared at him in a perfect non-verbal language that said ‘you can’t be serious’.

“Scan her yourself,” Logan finally grumbled.

“I already did,” Clark replied, an edge of impatience in his voice.

James raked a hand through his hair. “Look closer.”

Clark did. Nobody said a word.

There was your outline in his vision again, encased in a literal flame of shifting red, orange, and yellow. To say you were running hot was an understatement.

You were on the floor: body not quite splayed, instead curling up into yourself, clutching your stomach like you were in pain. The sight made your agony his own, but Clark continued to focus.

The fever wasn’t the only thing alarming about you—everything else was. In fact, the heartbeat he heard thumping wildly against your ribcage, your erratic exhales, the warm pulse of your blood… they all spelled something else. Something other than the fever.

You writhed, and he saw it. Felt it.

Smelled it.

His eyes darkened.

You were wet. Leaking. It called out to his body like a siren song. The soft slick when you pressed your thighs together was amplified by his superhearing; it told him you were more than ready to take it—take him.

Clark tensed up, momentarily disgusted by the way his own blood pooled south. He could see you clenching around nothing, and by Gods did he want to be your relief.

He peeled his eyes away from the door like it hurt. Logan and James stared like they already knew.

“You must understand why we kept it a secret,” Lisianthus spoke, “If people found out, her name would be beyond sullied—”

“She wouldn’t be the first monarch to take more than one lover,” Logan cut in.

Lisianthus’s face was grim. “Do not mistake promiscuity with duty, Gifted One.”

If the split-second vitriol wasn’t enough of a tell, nothing was. James called it out.

“You knew. About her… and us.”

She collected herself. “You weren’t exactly secretive. Her most of all.”

“And?” Logan challenged. “You wanted to punish her, so you didn’t tell. That it?”

There was a silence in the hallway. Lisianthus parted her lips, closed them back, before finding the exact words to speak:

“A princess, ravaged by three men at the same time…” her eyes were pools of conflicted gray, downcast, “If it were known that the Gods commanded for such—such barbarism—”

“—the Holy Houses would splinter.” That was Logan, finishing her sentence.

“You are one selfish lot,” Clark gritted through his teeth. “You could’ve told her. Now she’s lying there, suffering. She could—”

“We do not want the princess to die,” Amhara interjected. His was the most placating voice so far, and the reassurance bled through the tension, if only a little.

“The prophecy. It says at the very end: those who linger to be drowned will finally see tomorrow.”

Clark’s gaze drifted back to the scroll still in his hands. The ink of faith said those exact words. This Amon had spilled it; the highest covenant that demanded the absolute truth.

Looking at Amhara now, suffused with a mix of guilt, concern, and conviction, there was no cause to doubt him.

“It’s a message of hope,” the Amon continued. “Something to do with the tides, I’m sure of it. Please, you must—”

Just then, three men’s heads snapped towards the door. Logan, James, and Clark; they stood straighter, frozen, jaws clenched.

They were the only ones who could hear you moan.

It was followed by a whiff that hit Logan’s senses like a physical punch: the older man jolted at the smell of you, so sweet and inviting, coaxing memories to surface.

The coat of you on his fingers. The taste of you on his tongue.

“She’s clearly clouded. We—we can’t,” Clark said, as if reading Logan’s mind. He didn’t sound convincing, not even to himself.

“If you’re out of this, Starman, there’s no point,” Logan growled, “You read the prophecy.”

Clark breathed, the raggedness of the exhale barely masked. “I know, but… she is under no condition to make a decision.”

“She’ll die, Kal!” James barked. “And I won’t let her.”

Armored footsteps approached the door. James was held back by a hold around his metal gauntlet.

Clark.

“What exactly are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” James replied. “I just need to see her.”

Logan scoffed, already standing next to him. “That’s not the only thing you want.”

But James pushed the doors open anyway, and Clark didn’t stop him this time.

You were in hell when you came to.

It was said that those who lusted were punished by flames. To be burned beyond desire—a consequence for playing with fire.

You had to be in hell because everything burned: your lungs at each inhale, the space behind your eyes, the moonlight. Every time you tried to breathe deeper, it stopped at your throat, as if the heat had repelled air out before you could swallow it.

The room was sideways. Not at all the way you remembered it. Or maybe you didn’t remember anything at all.

What did it mean to remember? Every part of you was so attuned to the now, there was no space for even the concept of history—and the now was rife with sensations that overloaded you.

The loneliness that came with space. The cold floor against your too-warm skin. The fabric of your dress brushing against your thighs.

Slowly, you realized what this was.

Because most of all, you felt empty.

Bit by bit, you were made aware of memory. You had those. There was a time before hell, and you had already existed.

Somewhere in that murky stream of consciousness, a familiar recollection surfaced. You’d been through this before. You’d been hungry like this, with all the promise of satisfaction laid before you, only to be told to wait.

The feeling rippled through the river of your lifetime, slowly taking shape into something less innocent. You were dangling by a cliff’s edge, separated from paradise by a thin line.

In knowing the lack, you understood the need.

It screamed out to you, the truth in torrents fighting against a current of sensory overstimulation and heat.

Escaping to the surface were kisses, broad palms, whispered sweetness against your ear; but also bruises, a fist in your hair, and grips around your wrists that you couldn’t escape.

Through it all, there was pleasure. So much of it that, even though you’d only grasped fragments, it was already enough to make you shiver.

The sensations burned bright, melding together with your fever. It provoked more to the forefront of your mind—teeth, touch, and a hot tongue dipped between your legs.

These memories worsened your plight. You squirmed as if remembrance made it real again, twitching and clamping your legs together to stop yourself from leaking so much.

You snapped your eyes wide open.

You were wet. You didn’t need to see it to know: the slick had coated your dress, making the fabric stick to you more than it already hugged. Its dampness was more than apparent.

Being aware of your body only assaulted your senses even more. Every slight movement brushed you against the material in a way that was wrong—or so incredibly right, because your nipples grew tight against your clothes, and the rub of fabric by your inner thighs wrested a pitiful moan out of you.

The sound was too sudden for you to quell, too weak to show how tortured you truly were.

You were about to move your hands to relieve yourself, but couldn’t. They wouldn’t move.

Tears began to well up in your eyes.

You looked up at the skylight. Through a vision so blurry, you could see the moon shining down straight at you.

Strange—because you’d found your powers, and they seemed unaffected by your fever. Dare you say the spectral energies that swirled past your body pulsed stronger. You had a feeling you’d easily reach into someone’s mind this way, in the process of losing your own.

With this surge, you stared at the moon.

She smiled.

There was no mouth on her—it was your sixth sense that told you of her grin. And it wasn’t kind. Far beyond the motherly image she was often portrayed, her bright visage hid an edge, like the dark side of her.

What terrified you wasn’t the darkness that oozed from the skylight.

What terrified you was that you liked it.

Reduced to your instincts, the only thought you could muster was to run.

But your limbs were limp—you couldn’t crawl, even if all you wanted was to escape the moonlight.

Just then, in that dizzying haze, there were sounds.

Voices. A door. Footsteps: either more than one, or the world had become cacophonously loud.

Then you feel more warmth—this time, not the one from within you.

Once the door groaned open, the men were greeted with a sight that stopped time and thought.

They saw you lying down, limbs askew, in the middle of the altar that still floated inches off the ground.

You were sobbing. Awake—maybe just barely.

The moonbeam spilled into the room like billowy curtains. The light moved and shimmered before moving again, stirring like it had a mind. Whatever it was that happened—or was happening—in the chapel, it had to be the exact opposite of natural: not the likes which Logan or James had seen before, nor could Kal-El’s aptitude comprehend.

Yet that wasn’t what tied their tongue most.

It was the strings that draped down from the skylight.

They looked too ephemeral to be ropes, but too unwavering to be phantasms. Their source was an endless above. Each strand of them was a steady silver gleaming in the dark, and there were four.

When you writhed, only then they shifted.

Logan wasn’t the only one who noticed: the lines of light were wrapped around your wrists and ankles.

They tied your form to the heavens—not taut such that you were a marionette, but looming imminent like they could make you one anytime they liked.

Kal-El zipped with super-speed to kneel right next to you. The other two followed suit, armors rattling. Logan stood near your curled-up legs. James crouched behind you.

A big palm held your shoulder, coaxing you to lie on your back. Another palm cupped your cheek. Three pairs of eyes studied the way the unknown force wrecked you; although to call it unknown at this point would be to feigning ignorance.

“Starman.” That was Logan, giving an order without the words.

There was silence aside from your panted breaths while Kal stared at you, his vision gleaning past what normal eyes could see.

“Fever’s 104. She’s tachycardic. Pulse is still rapid but weak.”

“Princess? Can you hear us?” James called out gently, a slight tremble in his voice, placing his metal hand on the other side of your cheek.

It took everything to speak.

“James,” your voice cracked and shook, “help me.”

There were more hands on your legs. Your eyes drifted down, watching as Logan’s armored fingers glided around your ankle. The contact was skin-to-skin despite the swaths of light that encircled you there.

He knelt and took your hand in his, lifting it up gently to inspect the moonlight that bound your wrist. Your palms touched.

Then his fingers trod away from yours and closed around the silver rope.

Your wrist dangled in the air, held up by the string like a puppet.

“This is some sick joke,” Logan muttered in disbelief, glancing up at the moon.

The meaning of his words didn’t matter—all you could register was the deep baritone rumble coming from his chest. You whimpered.

“Gosh, you’re not okay, are you, honey?” Clark whispered placatingly, kissing your temple. “It’s okay. We’re here now.”

“She’s being held by something,” James chased, voice urgent. There was no time to address the hot flare in his chest when the Starborne called you that.

Instead, James stood up and unsheathed the ceremonial sword, slicing it horizontally. It cut only air, yet the string remained real within Logan’s grip.

“It’s useless. It’s immaterial,” Clark replied, still holding you in his arms.

There was a pindrop silence.

For a second, these three men—more than human in their own right—were confronted by a reality beyond comprehension. Their senses brushed it: a different awareness was present in this room. An entity whose powers surpassed theirs.

The three looked up at the skylight. The moon peered back down like it was interested.

The Gods.

They were watching.

Your sobs brought their attention back to Earth. James moved your jaw, guiding your neck to face him.

That was when he saw it.

“Logan,” James called warily, “her eyes.”

The older man circled closer. You weakly stared up at his upside-down face, wanting to ask what was wrong with them. But then he leaned down to look, and you saw yourself reflected in his gaze.

Glowing. Your eyes were glowing.

The color was deep enough to miss, but too unnatural to mistake as something else, even in the small reflection you saw. Purple or pink, you couldn’t name it if you tried.

For the first time that night—and perhaps even longer—Logan addressed the Starborne by name.

“Kal?”

Blue eyes shot up.

“Close the door.”

The warmth by your side left you, and you shivered at the cold while the stone doors punctuated the silence with a dull thud. Someone stroked your cheek, a gesture of comfort that only made you want more. You leaned into the touch like an animal, heart swelling at the pressure.

Then Clark was back, fingers interlaced with your hand.

Above you, the men exchanged looks. The air crystallized with understanding.

James was the one whose gaze you caught first, as he brushed a tear away from your damp cheek.

How long had you been crying for?

“We’ll take care of you, sweetheart,” he murmured low, tinged with darkness. “Just let us.”

@pinksplace supernatural bondage, how about that 👅

A tall shape cut through the dark. Its shadowy outline passed through between a stone-hewn arch, then another, and another. Its heavy steps were hastened. A hint of silver followed its movement: threads of embroidery adorning ice-colored priestly garments gleamed where the light hit as its wearer traveled deeper within the castle’s structure.

The night’s quiet was smeared only by the figure’s footsteps above faint cricketsong.

Beads of sweat ran down aged ebony skin, escaping the curls of a graying beard before seeping into a woolen stole wrapped around a neck. The material was heavy for what would have been a cool Spring night, but not nearly as heavy as the matter this man carried in silence.

In all his long years as the head of a Holy House, Amon Amhara had never been so on edge.

The divine message he had just received was unlike any other—much stronger than the one that called him as the House’s servant, and clearer than any dream.

Still, the elder forced himself to remember the sensations, gripping them by the frayed edges of his human consciousness. A high priest with Gods-given fortitude, the Amon clutched onto each detail with all his might, his painstaking effort even causing him to screw his eyes shut as he muttered down the open corridor.

His path turned a corner, away from the moonlight. The darkness made it easier to remember the vision.

Two swords: crossed, twins in shape. Their steel was jagged and threatened by rust, yet sharp they remained—for the Amon feared they’d cut his skin despite being a mere image. Together, they rested upon the backdrop of a sable sky.

Above them loomed a single star, its light brilliant and pure.

And then there had been a voice—only one, at first. It had begun as a whisper, a thrum too low to understand, before growing into wisps that tickled beneath murmured prayers, until they swelled and swelled and swelled into a cacophony of overlapping voices. The rattle had drowned the Amon’s thoughts. Loud. Frantic.

Until eventually the soundwaves found each other, blending together to form the same shape. An unmistakable chant that had only stopped when he’d snapped his blurry eyes open in a cold fright.

The voices had said a name.

The princess’s name.

Yours.

The terrace was on the west wing’s rooftop: green, open, and particularly quiet this hour of the morning.

Past the overlooking view of the lake-sea, a red circle rose. The burning sun always promised a clear day ahead, though temperatures may be cooler than the color suggested. Gentle clouds floated by, distant and wispy way up high as if emanating from the horizon line, itself barely noticeable between the still-dark expanses of sea and sky that bracketed it.

You leaned against stone railings, surveying the waves below.

There wasn’t always so much water. The past three years had changed that.

The quietness you got to enjoy this morning was partially thanks to the high tide, although to thank it would be exceedingly blasphemous.

When the waters had first risen, it was the lower levels of the kingdom who’d suffered.

And Gods, how they had suffered. Wards of the commons woke to waterlogged fields, their bedrooms flooded, crates of precious supplies beyond saving in drowned cellars. Some disappeared, swept away—kin and cattle alike. Those who remained were broken with a loss no amount of coin could repair.

What had followed had been a mass-migration to the city level above: a tear-filled mess that the imperial officers did their best to marshal. Even after settling down, an atmosphere of unrest had gripped the populace.

It hadn’t let go since.

Because the lake-sea had been nothing but giving until the Flood: an abundant source of nature’s bounty, providing your territory with food aplenty and a place of rest laden with beauty. Tradition called it many a thing: old folk songs lauded it as the mirror into which the sky gazed, sonnets celebrated it as a sapphire dropped by the Gods.

Now, it was a silent terror. For the tides do not rest as men do, and they grow ever taller.

Your people had to relocate yet again in just three months after the first Flood.

The lake-sea had been the reason so many people left to seek refuge under other banners. Some had taken up their sails, while others with heavier purses had boarded airships.

What they hadn’t known at the time was the fact that water had been rising everywhere.

The seas swelled. Lakes crested. Rivers overflowed—all despite man’s cunning to contain them.

A natural disaster or a supernatural malediction, the human race was still undecided.

Either way, the very thing that tended this Earth was suffocating it, as if finally telling land-dwellers that they were unwelcome. What used to be the ground now lay buried in the deep.

You stared at the graveyard of rooftops underneath rippling water.

Three years ago, children used to play there in a plot of green. It felt like ages had passed.

Just then, something soft circled around your left ankle. Something furry.

You smiled, looking down at the movement under your dress that betrayed a beloved culprit. It meowed, further giving itself away.

Two ears emerged from beneath the hem, white as fresh snow, before out popped a feline face with blue eyes. The creature’s lanky body shimmied out of the fabric, almost like it was trying to scratch its back on it—a useless attempt against such a weightless material.

You leaned down and extended a hand to do the job. The cat happily received it, arching into the touch. It yawned.

“Good morning, Alpine.”

She purred in reply.

The peaks she was named after had drowned centuries ago in an older, primordial flood. Nobody knew the waters could rise higher than they already had.

You may call the morning peaceful, but silence was its true name.

Silence that broke when a trumpet blast pierced the veil.

One long, clear note divided the dewy air, and you nearly jumped in your own skin. Alpine was clearly taken aback at the sound, bolting in shock between the conifers and rose bushes that blushed at the sunrise.

It wasn’t a warning—too pretty to be one. The tune was that of a return.

Someone was coming home.

You looked up to the sky.

As the red sun broke the sleepy blue morning with streaks of light, you watched as the sky began to glimmer with a thousand reflective surfaces. What looked like perfect little squares shifted rapidly in your vision—light, dark, metal, light, dark—until finally, a low sound polluted the air.

The sound of an engine.

An airship uncloaked itself from its reflective camouflage, looming out in the open—though it would perhaps be more accurate to call it a shuttle, instead. The smooth gray of its reinforced steel covered a triangular, dart-like body. Lean. Designed with and for precision. It was feather-light compared to most passenger ships, apparent in how it floated gently downwards. Its turbines blasted hot air, causing the nearby scenery to shake.

It descended on the docking terrace—the structure itself austerely made of stone, bleached from sun’s lashings—before stilling to a complete stop.

The shuttle’s chosen landing pad hummed to life, greeting it: a circular iron structure etched with veins of light, both arcane and artificed in nature. Unseen mechanisms raised the pad from the ground as the vessel’s bridge dropped. Decompressed air hissed, like it had finally gotten the chance to breathe.

You watch the disembarkation from afar.

A squad marched out of the ship. Orderly. Uniformed. You counted fifteen soldiers. In a line like that, and from this distance, they looked like a colony of beetles: their armor gleamed under the rising sun, steel plates washed with pinks and oranges from a sky that burned at the horizon line.

Even from all the way up here, you could spot him.

Helmet off but still armored like the rest of his men, he stood in front of them, likely giving orders you couldn’t possibly hear from your viewpoint. He was far away, but it was as if you could see the lines on his face as he spoke: Gods knew you’ve had more than enough time to memorize them, having known him since you were barely literate.

It should scare you, the exactness with which his head turned to where you stood, at least three hundred feet above where he was.

His eyes found yours. They were bluer than the wakening edges of the sky.

James Barnes—Captain of the Inquisition, Holy Knight of the Imperium—had returned.

Eight seats marked a circle within a chamber of smooth, calcified stone—one for every point on a compass rose. On their sides were runes, as ancient as the kingdom itself, decorating what would have been blank slabs of sanded-down rock. The seats rose up, united with the ground as if they’d been birthed from it.

You sat at the head of the enclosed room: North. Seven other people of various ages and adornments occupied the remaining seats, covered in shadow. The air smelled faintly of lake-sea salt.

The room looked like it was built by nature herself. In place of doors, the rock curved, forming archways and pillars that resembled a network of short tunnels. Its structure trapped coolness in the room, a welcome reprieve for when the sun shone vengefully, at the expense of leaving most of the chamber’s corners shrouded in darkness.

The source of light came from a part of the domed ceiling that was left exposed: one that formed a jagged circle at the center. Where the rest of the stone chamber was smoothened by tireless hands, this part was left the way it was. Its coarse circumference of raw rock allowed the morning rays to pour in—the way a skylight cave would.

Under that spotlight, surrounded by the Council, was a lone figure.

For the second time that day, you laid eyes on Captain James Barnes.

He stood at the chamber’s center, dressed as he was when you saw him disembark.

“Your report, Captain.”

He bowed, casting long shadows on the bare ground.

“Our southward expedition confirmed that another flag has abandoned the Gulfed Earth,” James said, gaze kept low.

“What flag?” The low voice of a Duke seated to your right chased.

The Captain kept facing you as he answered:

“Sokovia.”

Murmurs of uncertainty and weariness bloomed within the chamber’s walls—except the room was dead silent. It was the restless thrum of pure energy that tickled the edges of your mind, even without focus.

Other than that, you could hear a pin drop. Or maybe the heavy breathing of a corpulent Duke seated on the Southwest.

“And you’re sure of this?” you ask.

“Yes, Your Highness,” this time he stared right at you, “A crater in the ground, just like the others. They’ve taken to the skies. I suspect we might be the only grounded territory left.”

“Sokovians, traveling to space?” someone spat—an older Marchioness to your left. Her voice serrated unabashedly as long robe-sleeves gesticulated past armrests. “Whenever did they learn how to do that?”

“It seemed that in closely watching the waters, we forgot to watch our enemies,” Southeast calmly said.

Darius Petrov sat in the Southeastern seat. The head of House Petrov was a lean man in his forties, with a square face and a bare-minimum bow. Like the other Petrovs, living and dead, his thin eyebrows were the only hair he possessed on his head. Outside of council meetings, his vanity was revealed by the endless finery he draped himself with—and by preferring gold over silver despite its unflattering sheen on his skin.

During council meetings, his ambitions were always concealed, poorly as it may be. Today, however, it appeared that he stopped trying.

“Sokovia is our ally, Archduke Petrov,” you corrected, tone clipped.

“Was,” he hissed back, though his voice remained dangerously placid, “Our good Captain here said they abandoned us.”

You steeled your expression, finding his hazy figure in the dim.

“They’ve simply gone down a different path. It was our choice to stay.”

There was derision even in the way he leaned to one side, the outline of him resting his face on a palm—a face which surely would reveal the same disdainful energy that emanated from him, if only he were better lit.

“Then I’m beginning to think our decision unwise,” he concluded smoothly.

The objection in his tone was so clear, you could feel the tension in the room grow more pointed. Its sharp edge was directed at you instead of the Archduke; the minuscule signs of rest in most other Nobles’ body language made it apparent that they happened to agree with Petrov.

You felt like you were in a nest of snakes.

This was Petrov’s way of posturing, you realized. Show that he had the majority’s support. Rattle you with the beginnings of a revolt.

You made sure to imbue your words with coldness when you spoke.

“You say so, but I believe the Council had your vote to stay when we convened three seasons ago.”

“Many things have changed between then and now, Princess.”

The way he uttered the title sounded deeply infantilizing.

“So if I asked you again, at this very moment,” you uncrossed your legs, brows lightly furrowed, “you’d vote to sunder our kingdom from Earth?”

There was a pregnant pause, but you already knew his answer. You just needed him to say it.

“I would, Your Highness.”

Disquiet flooded the chamber again, multiplying as though they amplified like slithers chasing each other against infinite concave walls; a noisy chatter that lived more in your head than in your ears. You fought back a frown at the overwhelming sensation.

Meanwhile, James remained an unmoving figure amidst the turbulent tempers that rapidly filled the room. The Council’s single, silent audience.

You focused on his energy. Heavy as he felt—weary from the journey, no doubt—you at least found him steady; an anchor to the Nobles’ volatile excitability.

Finding calm, your gaze pierced Petrov in his seat, dark as it may be.

“You do realize, Archduke, that sundering would doom our Queen to sleep forever?”

The implication in your rhetorical question hung with weight in the quickly staling air, thick with venomous silence. The Archduke’s alignments were a clear infraction against the Crown. In some serpentine effort to gain more power in an ailing world, these so-called Nobles would turn their backs against a Queen who bestowed on them her favor—the Archduke just happened to be foolish enough to make the first move.

You would have found it a little funny, if not for the fact that the Queen was your mother.

There was no response from Petrov. He seemed to realize that any more dissent may suggest treason—enough for his Council seat to be vacated. Permanently.

“The Gods aren’t bound by time the way we are. Their promises remain eternal.”

A new voice came from the arched entrance, echoing ominously.

Three figures step into the shaded light through one of the doorways to your right. They were no more visible than the outlines of the Nobles in their stone seats, but their white robes betrayed them. Identical fabric moved with a faint snowflake-like glimmer. Intricate details were embroidered with silver thread on the length of their stoles. Thin veils draped across their faces as a means of modest obscuration, its fine mesh pinned to the front of high hennins made of silk.

It was the figure in the center who had spoken: female, older, the smallest of three, the smallest in the room—yet what she lacked in height, she made up for with unmistakable authority, also despite the slight roundedness in her shoulders and neck.

Her voice boomed in the chamber.

“All that is to say, are you no longer a believer, Archduke Petrov?”

The Archduke replied, taken aback: “This is a closed meeting—for the ears and eyes of the Council only!”

“The Amons’ guidance is always welcome, especially in troubling times,” you casually dismissed his complaint, before turning to the clerics in the room. “Well, Amon? Are you here to bear graver news?”

You could see her face now as she stepped forward: skin pale, weathered with wise wrinkles; gray eyes shrewd, like a fox, but twice as sharp. Her thin lips were lightly rouged, white hair pulled back tightly and hidden underneath the fabric of her headdress.

Amon Lisianthus smiled. For once, you noted a sliver of zealous gladness.

“No, Your Highness. In fact, there might be hope yet left for us.”

Once again, the room reacted. You felt the pulse of energy by the tips of your fingers—sharp with cynicism, and then melting into the warmth of faith. Scanning the seven seated around you, you noted their unspoken responses, taking care to mask your own into neutrality.

Unlike your mother’s, your powers weren’t fully developed. She would have looped the thread of emotion to each person within a second or less.

But now was hardly the time to covet.

You opened your hands.

“Do share, Amon.”

The curve of her smile flattened into a terse line.

“I’m afraid I cannot, Your Highness.”

Her response stalled your breathing ever so slightly.

“Why?”

“The prophecy hasn’t taken its true shape,” she offered. “We’ve only received signs—but the pieces shall fall into place on your name day, as the Gods decreed.”

Of course. You swallowed the urge to scowl. If there was anyone in this room with an inclination for dramatic suspense, it would be the religious.

Yet theirs was a power you couldn’t fight—not that you were sure you wanted to. For the Gods spoke exclusively through their bloodline, the same way power flowed through yours, and as long as the kingdom lived, their prophecies had not failed. Not even once.

It was as though the Gods, unseen as they were, wished to equate skepticism with stupidity.

This form of power was what bound the royal bloodline and the Holy Houses. This was what shut Archduke Petrov up.

The waning of the waters had been promised a year after the first Flood. Not straightforwardly—which was strange, considering how the Gods’ previous decrees were always so sure—but in hints. They spoke of the tides’ cradle: a genesis, a source that may be harnessed or caged to stop the flooding.

The year after, they spoke of man’s rule over seas, and that sustained those who remained grounded. While the rest of the human race fled to the skies, taking pieces of Earth with them, your banner stood firm: a spike of pearl and silver above the rising flood.

Amon Lisianthus spoke again, addressing the room while her wiry fingers intertwined around prayer beads.

“We ask the Noble Houses to hold on,” her tone was firm, like she wasn’t asking at all, “for Her Highness’s name day is near, along with the vernal equinox.”

She was right. In the midst of daily reports, resource management, and finding the time to eat, you’d forgotten your own birthday and the tradition that came with it.

“Three days,” Amon Lisianthus said, “and your decision shall be unanimous.”

Archduke Petrov leaned back into his seat. “Let us hope that is the case.”

“Then I see no reason for this council to continue.”

You stood. Those seated followed suit.

“We convene again after the name day rites. You are dismissed.”

Seven figures drifted out of the domed chamber, each taking leave through a different doorway like the split of a water drop. Their exit was soundless, though you had no doubt of the whispers that were sure to escape once they were out of earshot. The Nobles’ coats and pelts and robes revealed their colors under the leaks of sunlight from the ceiling, before disappearing entirely past stone-cast archways into the darkness beyond.

The chamber was no more silent than it was before, but at least the air was less oppressive.

While you dismissed the Council, the Amons remained. So did James. You looked towards Lisianthus, the ivory of her silhouette firm like a chess piece.

“Is there truly nothing you can share with me before the rites, Amon?” you asked.

“You know there isn’t, child,” she smiled. Something in her expression spelled secrecy.

You followed that hunch with the singular focus of a notched arrow—although the manner with which you concentrated on her aura was carefully concealed.

…because she was the one who taught you how to do this.

Nothing about the Amon wavered or changed; not in reality, and certainly not in energy. You stared at her. She stared back placidly, the halo about her colorless. The edges of your consciousness grasped onto hers as well as fingers against thin silk: slipping, barely holding on.

Where your power was primed to reveal, hers concealed. Considering her long years as Amon, she had plenty of time to practice camouflage.

You dropped it, and in doing so, your shoulders relaxed. The movement was barely there, but her gaze turned a stern chastising as if you’d been completely transparent. It nearly made you regress to your earlier years, when you were just about as recalcitrant as every other youth in the kingdom.

“You gave Mother plenty of time to prepare for her prophecy.” Adolescence trickled only slightly out of your tongue, but there was enough bite to chill the air.

The Amons tensed. Lisianthus masked her reaction the best.

“The Queen’s prophecy was an exception, given how dire it was.”

“I suppose I should be happy, then, for it appears that mine isn’t.”

You smiled as you spoke. One would think it a genuine thing, though in doing so, one would find oneself the furthest one would ever be from the truth. It was a royal smile—painstakingly perfected upon, gradually easy to offer, unfailingly difficult to discern.

You felt it this time: the prying touch of another’s mind. You recognized its thrum as Lisianthus’s.

You breathed—a slow rise in, an even slower fall out. A fortification trick she taught you many years ago, while you were still under her wing.

“Many think evading the third eye is the same as cowering,” she said, circling around your standing posture, “Freeze, and hope you don’t get caught.”

Her slender hands landed on your shoulder, willing them to drop.

“But that just makes them easy prey.”

A finger tipped your chin up to meet her gray gaze.

“Breathe, child.”

You obeyed, letting air in and secretly feeling glad for it.

“To truly shield yourself, you must make yourself a hunter. The bigger animal they can’t even touch.”

That lesson truly bore fruit today.

In Lisianthus’s search for your true feelings, you remain unperturbed. What brought you comfort was simple: the Amon could scrape the very crevices of your brain all she liked—at the end of the day, the seat on the throne was yours, and so was the power to deal with any wrong move on her part.

What you didn’t expect was the faint taste of her emotions that attempted to comb yours.

Trepidation.

Curious, considering her optimistic word choice earlier—and you hadn’t sensed any falsehoods when she spoke them, either.

“All shall be revealed on your name day,” the Amon’s voice cut through the silence. “Until then, may the Gods be with you.”

She bowed with the other two figures, mute once more. Together, their bone-white cleric garbs swept the floor as they walked out of the chamber. You watched as their uniform steps led them to turn into the hallway, disappearing from sight.

You and James were alone.

Even without scanning him, you felt his mood. It was pinkish-orange, not unlike the sunrise from earlier—a shade that flickered with eagerness: for attention or for something else, you were about to find out.

You turned to look at him. He stayed, obedient at his designated spot. The streaming sun sculpted his face in light and shadow, making his eyes shine an even more brilliant blue.

“Was it really just Sokovia?” you tilted your head.

The sundering of one nation was devastating enough a loss to humankind, and you know James Barnes to be quite discerning when he wanted to.

“…We suspect the Wakandans may have evacuated as well, Your Highness,” he answered.

Your eyebrows raised slightly—a tell that you didn’t bother to mask. He had seen you make uglier faces behind the Amons’ backs as a child.

“Suspect?”

James nodded. “There was no extraction sign on their territory. No crater. Not a single moved rock, actually. It was like Wakanda never existed.” He pressed his lips. “I decided to omit this finding until the Inquisition finds out more.”

You filed that point of concern in your head, gazing at an imaginary point: a cold column on the other side of the room. Two kingdoms, both allies, no longer on the same plane. Yours was a territory which had always had an affinity to the waters—often worshiping the element—but to be the only one left with it was… dangerously lonely.

“Their technology has always been superior. Maybe that meant a cleaner sundering… The kind we aren’t familiar with.”

“We’re looking into the possibility,” he said.

You looked at him.

“If it’s true,” you began cautiously, “if we are the last…”

He knew. He nodded, eyes softening.

The Inquisition wasn’t an inquisition to begin with. They were organized to seek out survivors of the Flood. What started as a search-and-rescue mission throughout the realm’s far reaches turned into a mere inspection of what remained. No more rural communities to evacuate. Not even major territories remained.

The Inquisition had been formed to ask if anyone out there needed help. Today—now—the question was: is anyone out there?

Once the remaining doubts about Wakanda were cleared, there was no need for the Captain’s unit to exist.

Something in James’s energy shifted. It took you out of your pondering.

There was a beat of silence, and then:

“Your Highness?”

Your eyes met his in a silent question, trailing to his lips when he spoke the answer slowly.

“I haven’t… given you your due greeting.”

The movement in his throat was all too clear.

He approached, one step closer.

“May I?” he whispered.

You nodded.

Then plate armor scraped against stone floor. He bent the knee.

The rays of light that painted him from above made him look more sculpture than man: a knight born into myth, instead of the boy who taught you to skip stones on sunset-pink pools. His hair looked a lighter brown from here, his blue eyes icier.

You rewarded him by stretching out your hand, bare except for a lone signet ring. Your fingertips brushed his. The touch was almost anything but—a mere graze of skin against callused skin.

Still, you felt him just enough: weathered by the sword, warm nonetheless.

With that gentle hold, he brought your hand up to his face and kissed the seal of your ring, gaze kept low—a veneration to a higher power.

But he didn’t stop there.

Those lips landed again, this time on the back of your hand.

He raised his eyes to meet yours.

For someone who’d only seen far-reaching waters for more than a month, the look in his irises spelled out thirst.

One that only you could quench.

But quench was the opposite of what he did to the flame in your stomach.

His hand turned yours—just enough for his lips to kiss your palm. They trailed, divining a fine line like a fortune-teller would: soft but firm. Out of the act, he pried pleasure instead of a prophecy. Stirred restlessness instead of relief.

You weren’t the only one affected. With a building urgency, James rose to stand again, holding your wrist up as he stepped closer. The silk of your dress stroked the steel of his armor; an echo of the way his metal hand slid onto your waist. The touch was cool, yet it inspired the course of your blood to be anything but.

The rising temperature could’ve fooled you into thinking it was summer and not the edge of spring.

His other hand still held yours. His mouth brushed against your inner wrist, kissing your pulse point. Eyes remained locked with yours even as his mouth nipped, blues looking at your face from beneath lashes that had no right to be that pretty.

You sighed.

The sound seemed to embolden him.

Because he kissed up, up, up past your palm again, until his plush lips ensnared a finger between them.

“Missed you,” the confession was poorly enunciated, a low moan with your pointer finger knuckle-deep in his mouth, “so much. You don’t understand.”

Dampness bloomed between your thighs, at the same time as the snag at your heartstrings.

His pink tongue swirled, and you understood why he held your waist: there wasn’t nearly enough strength in your knees to keep them from buckling.

“James—”

“Nobody’s coming,” he cut you off with a reedy whisper, almost reading your mind.

Then he took a second finger in his mouth, as if eager to distract you.

You exhaled, shaky and stuttered. Though your knight’s senses were enhanced to be sharper than the average anatomy, the risk of being discovered like this—in the Council’s chamber—still caused your heart to race.

But he swallowed more of your fingers in his mouth. Hummed. And suddenly the violent pump of your pulse took on an entirely different meaning: the way a wave erased writings on sand, so did lust wash away your fears.

You couldn’t even begin to think about putting your guard up. Not when you were glued to him like this.

In taking over your senses, he took away your common sense.

He let go of your fingers with a wet pop, only to trade his hands on your waist, groping soft flesh while he ducked to nose at your neck. His hot breath alone was enough to make you shiver, but he gave you more: slowly, big palms reached down your hips, cupping the globes of your ass only to press you against him.

Your hipbones met his—or what would be his, underneath all the metal that housed him.

“Tell me you missed me too,” he rasped against your throat, hands kneading the fat of your rear, “You did, didn’t you, Highness?”

Gods, his hair. You combed your fingers through the long locks. You could smell him. He smelled like the ocean.

Untrusting of your own voice, you answered with a nod, but the way he parted signaled a dissatisfaction. The burn of it was clear behind dilated pupils. The metal hand now cradled the back of your head. His lips hovered over your parted ones.

“Say it for me, sweetheart.”

It took you more than a second to find something other than inflamed anticipation in your throat. The syllables almost shuddered with succumbence:

“I missed you, too.”

When he finally leaned in, it was with a languor, like he was smearing his lips against yours. Your blood sang at the taste of him, the warmth of his mouth traveling through yours and down your limbs, before making a home south of your stomach.

Hunger took over swiftly.

A slant of his face, and suddenly you were consumed. He pressed, earnest and deep, tonguing into you before you could right yourself against his chest. The hand that held on to your curves moved to one side of your cheek, a stern commander to keep you where he wanted you—where he knew you wanted to be.

It was the metal one: the perfect leverage that bordered on balefulness, except you craved this kind of trap.

The other one of flesh and blood found home on your body, running up and down the expanse of it. Fingers caressed a line down your sternum, cradled your waist, cupped your hips to kiss his the same way your mouths found each other.

You gasped when his greaved calves moved, walking you backwards until the fabric covering your legs brushed against stone.

Even with your eyes closed, the world spun.

After the light stopped its split-second dance, you found yourself on James’s lap, fluttering eyelids gathering his spread thighs as he sat like he was one of the Nobles—and as a Holy Knight of the Imperium, he technically was. Except, perhaps, the ‘holy’ part.

Because when you parted a mere hair’s breadth away, he crashed his lips into yours again, barely giving you a chance to breathe. The metal hand slithered to the back of your neck this time.

You moaned into the kiss. His tongue wasn’t the only thing that coaxed the sound out of you—it was also the sensation of engraved steel against your core.

He was grinding up into you.

Little did you know, James put you in this position for a certain purpose. A nefarious one. While it’d take a few more seconds to be revealed, he was set on exhausting you of any remaining sanity in the meantime.

The stone was unrelenting beneath your knees when you escaped the rut of his hips. You sat down on your haunches, letting him chase you. The sensation tugged your head back.

Lips parted, though a thin strand of saliva remained. It broke when he dove, pressing open-mouthed kisses down your jaw and neck. He laved at your skin shamelessly. Your chest heaved in response, but a gasp gave itself away when his tongue traced a long line up to the shell of your ear.

It teased with heat before engulfing your earlobe with it.

“Jamie—!”

Hands flew to his pauldrons as his tongue twirled, further ruining the already erratic pattern of your breathing. A pleased growl reverberated in his chest: reward for saying his name—the name you knew he always relished in times like these.

‘James’ was for everyone. ‘Jamie’ was just for you.

Then you heard someone clear their throat a distance behind you.

Jumping in your skin, your reflexes whipped your head back—or they would have, if not for James’s hand gently caging the back of your skull to keep you facing him.

Just as he had expected: the culmination of the footsteps only he could’ve heard.

“It’s alright, Highness,” your knight rasped, mouth loyal to your neck, “just the other James.”

The other James didn’t ever go by the same name at all, preferring a sobriquet that had been stitched onto his being for as long as he’d been alive—and a long time it was. To call him an older man would be the understatement of the century. He lived through at least two of them, yet his face could never tell. To many, he was a part of legends.

To you, he was Logan: a mentor you owed much to.

As if sensing your wandering mind, the James you were sitting on sank his teeth into the flesh of your neck. Sharp. Mean. The whimper was ripped out of you before you could stop it. He chased his own cruelty with generous laves of his tongue, before sucking greedily on your skin to make matters worse.

Unbeknownst to you, his blue eyes were pinned to hazel ones the entire time.

James Barnes’s hold on your head only loosened when he was sure he’d leave a mark—one with a shade deep enough to last a few days. He grunted, the sound smug.

You turned around just enough for shaky pupils to catch a glimpse of the intruder hanging by the doorway.

Logan stood a good thirty feet behind you, definitely not far enough to mistake the sight of his Princess perched on James’s lap as something else. He was out of his armor, instead donning something much more everyday: a loose linen shirt, comfortable from many wears, and leather belts that criss-crossed over a practical pair of earth-colored trousers. The ease in his posture suggested disillusionment over what he walked into, but you knew better.

There was a slight tick of his jaw that gave him away.

Despite the unmistakable flush on your face, this wasn’t Logan’s first time catching you in the act. It was almost too convenient.

Almost as if someone had diligently planned for it to happen.

If your face was russet from shame, now the shade was made deeper from anger.

“Bad timing?” Logan drawled. James didn’t stop mauling your neck.

“W-What did you need?” You managed, attempting to paw James off, which failed to the point of it backfiring: the knight gathered your wrists in one hand and stopped your body’s squirming with the other. His mouth sailed to your ear then, bullying you there again. You fought back a noise.

Even with your clothed back facing Logan, you still felt exposed by the indecency thickening the air.

“Wanted to make sure you’re not too tired for tomorrow morning’s training.”

Logan’s tone was calm. His eyes were the polar opposite, housing a dark storm. You didn’t miss the taunt in his words.

“I’m fine,” you breathed. A miracle, really, while James continued to nibble at your ear, briefly reminding you of an animal’s bid for attention. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Logan didn’t bow when he took his leave. Just nodded. He never did bow. Didn’t have to. He had served long before your private wing of the castle was even drafted.

His booted footsteps echoed down shadows, lingering long after he was out of sight, until finally you were left exasperated in silence—or however much of it could survive a man abusing the shell of your ear.

“James, I swear to Go—mmng!”

Your chiding was cut short by the weight of two fingers on your tongue.

Metal. Heat rushed southwards at the taste, your moan muffled by the unexpected intrusion.

Blue eyes stared straight at you. They burned.

James dragged his syllables over a voice like gravel, and in doing so, he made your heart hurt all over.

“How do I make you choose me?”

You didn’t answer him. Can’t, because he slowly pushed his fingers deeper into the cavern of your mouth, while yours trembled on his shoulders. His flesh hand skimmed down your spine, finding a familiar ribbon that held your dress together.

He tugged at it with one practiced pull.

Silk spilled loose around your chest. The fabric took its time escaping from you, and when it did, his hands covered your skin like they were bound by duty and not lust.

What makes you think I haven’t? you wanted to reply, but the very thought clouded over when his warm hand slid up between your bare thighs.

There was a secret hour between dark and dawn. It colored the sky in a blemishless indigo.

In this secret hour, the stars shone a touch brighter than when the sun kissed the edges of night’s fabric. The winds gentler. The world quieter. Even before the men and women of your kingdom fled the ever-rising waters, this hour had always been secret.

Nobody woke or spoke or did things. Not outside, at the very least.

Certainly not in the palace arena, of all places.

Close to a mile away from the castle’s innermost point was a circular, roofless structure, built downwards. Steps receded into the ground, hewn out of natural limestone, bleached over the years by sun and rain. The arena wasn’t as big as the Dueller’s End at the far reaches of the realm—that coliseum was a landmark for much more gladiatorial spectacles, its bloodiness abhorred within your borders—but it was sizable, and uniquely subterranean.

Calling it a hole in the ground would be equal to spitting on the faces of craftspeople who poured their life into it. An edifical marvel was what it was.

One could feel its ceremony even before entering its passageways. Trees lined the perimeter, their foliage tall and spiky, as if puncturing the sky. A generous ten, maybe twenty yards of cobblestone lined its rim: this plaza was where vendors often parked their carts on a game day, enticing show-goers to spend coin on trinkets or a bite.

Rising from the ground was a smooth wall about half your height, but too wide for tight-pursed visitors to actually leer into the arena like it was a wishing well. Sculpted beams of translucent white quartz jutted out from this border, hovering where a roof would be. They dotted the edges of the circle like markers on a sundial. Oblong shapes tapered at the ends, almost mimicking a blunt needle.

It was from these beams that the mages would put up enchanted tapestries to shield spectators from rain and shine. Sometimes, real fabric was used in place of magic. The sunlight would smear color into the pale stone below, dappling the crowd’s faces with pinks and purples and blues. The faint kaleidoscope always reminded you of marketplaces and their vibrant canopies.

This place had not seen a single smile since the first Flood. Nothing to celebrate. Nobody to celebrate with.

Children who’d once gasped in awe at the displays showcased here were most likely on an airship now, going far away. Relocated mothers and fathers were probably bleeding warmth to fight the cold outer space—sundering meant living a life entirely different than on Earth.

James’s report repeated in your head. Your kingdom was most likely the only one left in a drowning world. A final frontier before extinction.

You imagined the view from way out there. It would be bleak. All inky blackness with no end. Sure, the stars were pretty—but would they still be, if their sparkle was the only thing you could see for eternity?

The secret hour was too late into the night, or too early in the morning. Not a soul was to be found in the arena: not on the steps, the plaza, or the ring.

None but two.

You, and the man who was making you fight for your life.

The weekly spar was your way of finding comfort in routine. A way of soothing the hollowness of a ghost kingdom. An attempt to feel something as the world sunk into nothing.

You were losing. Admittedly, you’d been slightly distracted.

In letting your mind wander to the skies where most people flew to, your shortsword barely parried his claws set to tear at your chest. If that hadn’t chased the sleep and stray thoughts that clung unto your system, you didn’t know what would.

Because Logan sparred with you like station and rank didn’t matter.

Here, you weren’t a princess, and he wasn’t the knight bound to protect your royal line.

Here, you were quarry—but only if you let him treat you like one.

This was why you enjoyed training with Logan the most: he wasn’t afraid to be rough. Perhaps he even preferred it.

Even now as he drove another clawed fist at you, he didn’t hold back. You sidestepped in the nick of time, boots scraping backwards. The distance allowed you to breathe. If you’d moved any later, your guts might have colored the stone floor red.

Despite all this, you knew he’d never hurt you.

Maybe it was this unconditional trust that dulled your senses today.

His leg swung at you with a high kick. You ducked down, nearly tasting the sand from his boots. As you bobbed back up, you attempted a stab at his shoulder—but it was too obvious a try. The way he swatted your weapon off its mark almost echoed a disappointed deadpan. Steel against steel sounded once: a noisy clang. His claws ground against your sword.

“Too slow,” he murmured, looking down at you.

Your eyes must have gleamed, because he smiled. Whether he chose to interpret the flame in your stare as irritation or amusement, the possibility of either pleased him.

You couldn’t admit that it might be both.

Not that you needed to say things for him to know them. After all, this—the fight, the air that seemed to thin, the scan of limbs in every microsecond—was his preferred language.

His preferred way of being close to you. His favorite excuse for watching you.

You swung at him again. Harder this time, maybe even a little wild.

Logan clicked his tongue. A wordless reprimand.

That provoked you even more. You launched at him with no regard for tactic or technique: a downward slash—deflected, the jab that followed—dodged.

“You’re impatient,” he barked. As if he were so virtuously above recklessness.

His foot swiped at yours. A poor attempt at tripping. You shifted your body weight back, avoiding the movement entirely. There was even a second to spare—you used it to shoot him a look that said: really?

The maneuver felt too cheap for someone who had his kind of edge.

Logan was a Gifted One. Fought in the Bloodstorm War that decimated most of his kind, if not all. And that War ended far before you were born—just one of the many crucibles in James Howlett’s long life.

Having looked at him, you knew his body didn’t even house the scars to prove it. Rather, it couldn’t, thanks to his regenerative powers.

You always thought it was a curse, not being able to save the evidence of your grief.

Because surely, he bore much more pain than just any man could.

They said he served your great-grandfather first. That his face hadn’t changed over the years.

Nobody from that generation was alive to attest to the former fact. But you could attest to the latter.

The face you’d gotten to know in your childhood was the same as the one you looked at now, give or take a few faint lines—they aged him the way leathers and fine wines did: flatteringly.

You hung back a couple of steps, preparing a springboard for the next clash, but he didn’t let up. Closed in with two long strides.

A slash of air. You were face-to-face with the pointed ends of three claws. Your shortsword blocked them, the blade slotted perfectly in-between. That leverage was enough for you to wrest his limb away, and suddenly there was an opening—enough space for a kick to his stomach.

The impact pushed him three feet. He landed on both of his with a mere grunt, the soles of his boots scraping against the ground. Compared to your heaving chest, he looked almost peachy.

“That’s better,” he growled.

Except there was a gleam of something dangerous in his eyes.

It translated into the way he came at you again. He threw himself forward with renewed strength, and the fight left its strategic trajectory.

The flurry of your attacks was faster now. Messier.

He aimed at your head and thigh. You spun around him in a narrow semi-circle, pummeling the hilt of your sword square on his back. He twisted to grab the longsleeve of your shirt. Fist around fabric locked you in place. You swung back, violent—heart pounding as the metal of his claws cut the air where your head had been.

You yanked free from his grasp and swung your sword at his arm. He faced you and parried with his claws.

It was a stubborn dance from there: swipe—parry—swipe—parry, all while he pushed forward and you stepped back.

The sparks were no longer metaphorical.

You felt the vague presence of the arena wall behind you. How many more feet until you’re cornered?

The thought made you blink at the wrong time. Your attack slipped a moment too late—or too early.

His perfectly-timed rebuke sent the shortsword flying out of your hold, flung by its blade to one side of the arena. It clanged a few times at the rough landing before lying still.

Your eyes and his spared a simultaneous glance at the weapon, then found each other. So did your breaths

The edges of his caressed your face with warmth that you knew was not a result of mere training.

Your palms were sweating more than you thought they would. Maybe that was what loosened your grip.

Just to drive the message home, he rested his claws at your jugular—heavy, but not enough to hurt. Your throat bobbed, nearly tasting metal.

“I yield,” you murmured.

He stayed there for a beat, almost like he was milking his victory.

Then Logan retracted his claws with a sharp snkt.

You physically felt the dip in adrenaline once he did: it fizzled out like seafoam, and suddenly you were left with limbs that burned with exertion. The fire in your lungs was bright, unrelenting.

It was quiet for a moment.

You repaired the pattern of your breathing. Tried to ignore the beads of sweat that raced down your spine underneath your clothes—identical to the ones that ran down his bare biceps, far too visible and within arm’s reach.

In looking away from the distracting veins down a muscled forearm, you caught sight of his chest: his breathing was much better than yours, but the white sleeveless shirt that covered him was slightly damp with perspiration, betraying effort.

When you righted your gaze to his face, he was already staring at you.

The fever that plagued your lungs was cured, but in return, you felt the heat everywhere else. The flash of it was so violent you found yourself unable to look away.

Because his jaw clenched.

It was the same tell you caught yesterday, while someone else’s mouth was on your neck.

You wondered if Logan thought about it.

But here was the thing with Logan: the man was as mysterious as he was blunt. A true paradox of nature.

Except today, he spared you from wondering.

The kiss was stern more than anything. He had a hand on your chin, face slanted in a sharp angle to capture your bottom lip between his.

The breathing you just calmed hitched again, because you felt everything in no time at all. He tasted like adrenaline and sweat and remnants of tobacco; his weight hinted at the wall behind you that you weren’t quite pressed up against. Not yet, at least.

Wherever his hand went, goosebumps followed. The fingers on your chin moved to stroke your jaw. Cup your cheek. Slide down your neck. Their journey paused at the knot of your lace-front shirt that covered your collarbone. It came undone quickly.

The same could be said about you.

You gasped into the kiss because his broad palm kneaded at your chest while pushing you back against the cold wall behind you. He was the rock to the arena’s hard place—you were the soft thing he pawed and groped at. Your hands clung onto his forearms for anchor.

One of his hands held on to you, too, just selfishly: it stationed itself at the back of your head, making sure his lips continued to mesh against yours. Don’t run from me, he seemed to say, as you traded hot breath and spit and want.

The way you gripped his arms replied back a wordless never.

A swivel of his hips against yours rent a moan straight into his mouth. He was already hard. His trousers weren’t enough to conceal the ridge of him; you spied it from fluttering lashes, ached just from the suggestion of his size.

He ground into you again. You rocked back this time.

“Fuck, princess,” he groaned, the sound punched out of him. You traded your breath for more of his mouth.

Then his tongue melted against yours, and you traded sounds, too: a small whimper out of you, a growl from deep in his chest.

His lips and hips both parted from you. You almost gasped at the loss, if only he didn’t stare at you like he wanted to tear you apart.

If only his knee didn’t nudge yours to open.

It slid in the space between your legs, moving up up up before settling right against your cunt with a gentle press. The color in his eyes was swallowed by black at your visible shiver.

He lifted.

You mewled in surprise, eyes widening while your hands scrambled around his shoulders for purchase. The simple movement sent pleasure racing through your nerve endings.

He grinned down at you, canines flashed, breath caressing your face. “Such a pretty noise.”

Much like the spar earlier, he didn’t go easy on you.

His knee continued to rub against you, insistent and precise with each grind. The layers of clothing between your body and his only served to make the friction worse—or better. Your back peeled against the wall, arching almost in delight when you responded to his movements with your own.

Your hips timed perfectly against his knee. The wave of lust hit you two-fold.

You groaned. So did he.

Together, you entangled in the dark of twilight, the only two shapes in an empty arena. Despite the shade that cloaked the space, your sin was apparent through the bend and fold of your bodies.

Your hand closed around one of his, guiding his palm to slither up your own body until it reached the undone part of your shirt. He kneaded the flesh of your breast from above the fabric, impeded by a bodice that supported you underneath.

Logan’s eyes studied your countenance. By now, the flush on your skin could no longer be blamed on the spar. The pink that dusted your cheeks was a lewd shade—one that had kept him awake for more nights than he cared to admit.

Something caused Logan to still.

There was a bruise on the side of your neck, purple with indecent promise. Faint and obvious all at once.

A gift from your Captain.

He paused his ministrations. Felt a mix of lustfulness and pity at the pleading look you shot him—still a weakness of his, after all these years.

You swallowed when he leaned down. Your mouths were inches away from each other, yet he did nothing but stare back.

Then, three things happened at the same time.

The first was him yanking your bodice down. The boning pushed your tits up, presenting them as if in some kind of obscene offering. A rush of cold air sent goosebumps crawling on your skin—but you didn’t stay cold for long.

Because the second thing that happened was his hot mouth closing greedily around your exposed nipple.

You choked out a sob. Your fingers sank into his hair anyway, wanting more.

The third was his knee rutting into you, pressing relentlessly over your clothed cunt. You were practically perched on him, thanks to a palm around your rump that pressed you in place. You were convinced he could feel just how wet you were; the linen that made up your breeches and undergarment was too light to conceal anything, or maybe you were so soaked it was beyond hiding.

You mewled when he delivered a hard suck on your tit. Hips rolled onto his wedged knee. The zings of pleasure pooled into a paradox of satisfaction and hunger.

“Thaaat’s it, good girl, use me to feel good,” his voice rumbled, words muffled by your flesh. While you did as you were told, he teased your nipple with the barest hint of teeth.

When Logan’s other hand snaked up to knead and pinch and bully the breast he wasn’t sucking, your vision spun, dizzying you. The assault on your senses ripped his name out of your throat: sobbed, not spoken.

“L-Logan, ‘m gonna—”

He didn’t stop. Just looked up at you from under his browbones.

“Yeah, princess? You’re gonna what? Hm?”

Whatever you meant to say melted into a keen, unintelligible noise. Your head tipped back, mouth open at the crest that shuddered through you—one powerful wave that sent you writhing unbecomingly atop his knee.

He watched. He always did when you came. His eyes were half-lidded, a low moan escaping his parted lips as he witnessed you crumble. His knee still hungrily rocked into you, as if coaxing every last bit of your pleasure for his own.

While your tremors subsided and your chest heaved, his lips leaned into yours.

This time, Logan kissed you like he wanted to believe he was the first to do so. Soft. Gentle.

You indulge in the daydream, your fingers carding through his hair, hands cradling his head as you tasted his longing.

He certainly hadn’t seen you as a woman when you gave your first kiss away. That was crystal clear.

You were much too young then. Too wide-eyed. Logan had barely paid attention to you beyond the duties demanded of him as the Crown’s guardian—which he enacted in the most detached, bare-minimum way.

Maybe that nonchalance was what drew you to him all those years ago: the idea of a lifelong Holy Knight of the Imperium being not at all holy and less than devoted to the Crown was strange, but interesting.

How old had you been when you’d confided to him about the boy you liked? Ten? Twelve? The memory seemed so distant.

“He has pretty eyes.”

“Mm.”

It was always likely to encounter Logan on the west wing’s rooftop terrace: that spot was furthest from the busier parts of the castle, and the view it offered of the lake-sea and the lower levels was extraordinary.

The sky was blue above you—one of those transitory afternoons before you were dragged to another supplementary class.

You sat on a bench, watching Logan’s back as he stood near the stone railing. You knew he wasn’t smoking only because the Amons would give him an earful if he got caught, which wouldn’t be the first.

Unlike the priests, or any other castle staff for that matter, Logan wouldn’t pick you up by the neck to hand you to whomever was supposed to tutor you. The chief reason why you were completely content to be with him.

“I think he’s sweet on me,” you mulled over it for a while, then, as if in conclusion, “He holds my hand when I walk down the stairs.”

Logan didn’t even look back at you when he replied. “That’s nice.”

Your brows furrowed a little at his noncommittal responses—he never seemed to be interested in anything.

“You really don’t care, do you?”

“Smart girl,” he drawled.

“Are you sure you should be talking to a princess like that?” To your credit, your tone was more amazed than angry at his behavior—although his being around since before you were sentient should have gotten you used to the coarseness of his conduct.

He finally turned to stare at you, though his eyes spelled exasperation more than amusement. One didn’t need to be psychic to figure him out: in a world full of smokescreens, he was a sign on a wall.

“Princess or no, you’re too young for crushes,” he replied, one eyebrow slightly cocked.

“…What’s a crush?”

“What you’ve got for this boy.”

You pouted. How strange; you’d never heard it called that. Perhaps the term was one of his anachronisms.

“Well,” you looked down, swinging your legs, “alright, then, I got a crush on him.”

Logan went quiet again, his gaze affixed to a vague point on the ground. His eyes were a pair you couldn’t read, but there was a color wreathing the air around him. You could feel it on your fingertips. It was the same shade that accompanied a rainy day, where people wore black and threw flowers on a mound in the ground.

Your grandfather, the King, had told you Logan was bound to act like that sometimes—that he went off someplace else, and that when he did, you should take care not to bother him so much.

Why? you’d asked your grandfather, ever curious.

He might be thinking about his friends, your grandfather had said. They’ve passed, sweetheart.

You’d stopped asking after that. You understood enough, though it was decidedly through secondhand knowledge rather than firsthand experience. The War ended long before you were born, and yet its shadows reached the present: in the banners they took down every month of mourning, and in the lines of Logan’s face whenever he retreated into a memory.

If anyone’s soul understood that same hollow grief, it would be your grandfather’s.

Because whoever Logan had lost, His Royal Majesty, King Erik Lehnsherr, had lost as well.

You ended up staring back at Logan with a gaze as unfocused as his. He returned your gaze this time, no longer stuck in the past or the terrace’s paved tiles.

This was another thing you’d learned about him: where questions and chatter were ignored, a simple look might earn his full attention.

You smiled at him. Small. Sympathetic. Shy.

Your grandfather might’ve been wrong. Maybe bothering Logan would distract him from the constant pain, if only for a moment.

“Logan?”

“What?”

“Do you think I should kiss my crush?”

To your surprise, he didn’t roll his eyes. Didn’t grumble. Just kept that look on you—one that you couldn’t read.

Except the somber aura that coiled around him quelled just a touch.

“Depends. Who is it?”

You grinned. “It’s a secret!”

Logan huffed. “Yeah, well, I’m dyin’ to find out.”

You ignored his obvious sarcasm. “So? Should I kiss him?”

There was silence dotted with the sound of distant gulls, until Logan finally said:

“Only if you wanna keep him around.”

A few days after that rooftop conversation, you did end up giving James Barnes your first kiss. Ended up keeping him around, too, just like Logan said.

Except now it was Logan who kissed you, and you bore the blame for returning it.

The way he kissed was a far cry from the first match that lit the flame after your spar: one soft brush on your lips, another at the corners of it, then another on your jaw.

He let you play with his hair all the while. The tufts that curled near his temples had always been a source of your amusement.

“Logan?” you whispered, struck by a thought to a halt.

He hummed against your ear.

When you didn’t immediately continue, he pulled back, darkened eyes darting across your face, searching, assessing.

You knew this look well. He always liked to think he hurt you—which was something you had to reassure him you enjoyed, however rarely it happened. Still, it never lessened his worries.

Your palm eclipsed his cheek while you formed the words.

“My name day is soon,” you began.

He waited.

“I think,” you swallowed, “I think something big might happen again—just like it did with Mother.”

He nodded. Thumbed away sweat from your jaw. “I figured.”

The look on your face must’ve been unmistakable surprise.

“The priests looked busy, for once,” was his simple response.

Although that earned a weak smile to grace your lips, you didn’t bother hiding the trepidation in your eyes. He didn’t hide the concern in his.

“You’ll be there for the rites, won’t you?” you whispered.

Thick arms wrapped around your body, pulling you closer than you thought possible. You completely relaxed into him. It was as if you didn’t need the strength to keep you upright anymore—he’d held you so tightly between his chest and the arena wall, you could wrap your legs leisurely around his hips.

Which was exactly what you did.

When he spoke again, it was with his lips against your forehead.

“‘Course I will. When have I not been?”

And really, when had he not been? He was there on your very first name day rites—the midnight you turned sixteen. There every year since. Always one of the sword-bearing knights, trailing behind a procession of priests for a religion he didn’t entirely believe in.

He wasn’t there for duty. Nor the Gods.

He was there for you.

You tucked your face into his neck, breathing in his scent. Then you murmured a thank you against his skin, too soft to be a whisper.

Meanwhile, Logan tried not to think about the other man who was certain to be there, too.

James Barnes had been your sword-bearer for as long as he’d been knighted.

Amon Amhara woke up drenched in sweat.

There was an untetheredness to his consciousness that made him doubt whether he actually woke—his pulse trembled the way it did in his dream, and for one second he thought himself trapped. Were the cotton sheets under his fingertips real, or was this just another shackling realm?

A single sound cut through the pale yellow morning: a bell. Its tone rang once and rang clear, as if produced by striking the edge of a smooth bowl, amplified perfectly across the castle grounds. The sound was a call to prayers.

That, along with the distant shuffle of footsteps in the hallway, told the Amon that this was no dream.

Yet he looked down at his palms, which still shook. Blotches of light tainted his vision; remnants of stars and gleams of steel that blinded him. The voices he heard in his sleep bled into the day—too unanimous to be forgotten, too familiar to be ignored.

They once spoke your name in a vision. That was two nights ago.

This time, they spoke a verse.

He scrambled out of the firm mattress and onto a nearby desk. A drawer was pulled—its contents clattered—and from within, the Amon pulled a fresh scroll. Damp palms unfurled the paper, slotting each end into a thin divot in the wood to pull it taut.

Then he inhaled, pressed the pad of his thumb onto one corner, and started to write what he heard with the ink of his faith.

Two swords shall pierce the ivory crown A bright star she shall swallow And those who linger to be drowned will finally see tomorrow

A shape cut through the dark. Its shadowy outline passed through between a stone-hewn arch, then another, and another. Its steps were hasted. A hint of silver followed its movement: threads of embroidery adorning ice-colored priestly garbs gleamed where the light hit, its wearer traveling deeper within the castle’s structure.

The night’s quiet was smeared only by the figure’s footsteps above faint cricketsong.

Beads of sweat ran down aged ebony skin, escaping the curls of a beard before seeping into a woolen stole wrapped around a neck. The material was heavy for what would have been a cool Spring night, but not nearly as heavy as the matter this man carried in silence.

In all his long years as the head of a Holy House, Amon Amhara had never been so on edge.

The divine message he had just received was unlike any other—much stronger than the one that called him as the House’s servant, and clearer than any dream.

Still, he forced himself to remember the sensations, gripping them by the frayed edges of his human conscious. A high priest with Gods-given fortitude, the Amon clutched onto each detail with all his might, his painstaking effort even causing him to screw his eyes shut as he muttered down the open corridor.

His path turned a corner, away from the moonlight. The darkness made it easier to remember the vision.

Two swords: crossed, twins in shape. Their steel was jagged and threatened by rust, yet sharp they remained—for the Amon feared they’d cut his skin despite being a mere image. Together, they rested upon the backdrop of a sable sky.

Above them loomed a single star, its light brilliant and pure.

And then there had been a voice—only one, at first. It had begun as a whisper, a thrum too low to understand, before growing into wisps that tickled beneath murmured prayers, until they swelled and swelled and swelled into a cacophony of overlapping voices. The rattle had drowned the Amon’s thoughts. Loud. Frantic.

Until eventually the soundwaves had found each other, blending together to form the same shape. An unmistakable chant that had only stopped when he’d snapped his blurry eyes open in a cold fright.

The voices had said a name.

The princess’s name.

Yours.

The Chrysler is parked. Logan manages to walk in right as the shower bursts into a full-on downpour. The faint petrichor only lasted for two stretched-out minutes.

His footsteps almost echo in the dim space of the smeltering plant—clouds and rain pelting against the rusted windows mean less light from the outside. A dark grey late afternoon.

Charles is asleep. He stares at the older man for a while, as if pondering the frailty of who was supposed to be—and still is—the strongest of them all, before making his way back to his quarters.

A cling-wrapped plate of empanadas sit silently on the dining room table. Must be your doing.

He leaves them be. Food is not what he’s craving.

He finds you in bed, legs half tangled in-between the sheets like you can’t decide if it’s too warm or too cool. From the doorway, his ailing eyes catch the steady rise and fall of your chest, casting a shadow of his figure upon the already darkened room. You’re on your side, fast asleep, none the wiser to his presence.

Wearing his shirt and nothing else.

A heavy sigh escapes him. Whether he’s collapsing from the burdens of the day or from something else, he’s not quite sure. He takes off his jacket and drapes it on a chair, then his shirt, until he’s left wearing undershirt and slacks. He slips onto the bed behind you, a soft grunt as he does so, the give of the soft surface almost forcing his joints to relax.

Then your scent hits him. All over the pillows and sheets. All around him.

He shifts, arms wrapping around your waist while his nose finds the crook of your neck like it always does. Inhaling. Exhaling. Letting the different notes of you in his system, as if you’re the thing that sustains him—shampoo, skin, and a hint of spice.

Maybe it’s the weight of his arm that causes you to murmur, slowly stirring. He strokes your hair and kisses your shoulder, trying to placate you back to sleep, but you sigh and yawn, and he knows he’s woken you up.

“‘s just me,” he rumbles. Too late. You’ve turned around, hazy half-lidded eyes peering into his.

“You’re back,” you hum, nuzzling into his chest like a spoiled house cat. His arm tugs you close and the metal in his bones melt into something lighter, not without a twinge of pain in his chest.

This is what he’s craving.

Your breath tickling his collarbone, hands curled around his undershirt, like you’re happy he interrupted your nap. The soft smile on your face says just as much.

“I cooked and put Charles to bed,” you whisper, voice still laden with sleep. “He’s talkative today.”

Logan doesn’t reply, but feels the good news in his body the most, how his tired lungs seem to expand a little more when he breathes in. What would he do without you? You smell like a lifeline, one that he’s tethered himself to, latched on with wolf-like teeth on your neck, which you always seem to freely offer.

A gift. A beautiful one.

He kisses the crown of your hair and inhales.

A strong gust of wind sends rain hurtling down harder, its torrents hitting the glass like a million loud drums, but the room is still, save for the few sacred motions of his body and yours.

His hands slipping under your shirt—his—to skim lightly up your ribs and nestle on your back. Inhale, exhale.

His.

The flutter of your eyelashes against the space between his shoulder and chest, as you blink. Slow. Sleepy.

His.

His chin on the top of your head.

His.

Just the two of you in this bed, and you’re his.

“Nap with me?” you ask, fingers quietly tracing the path of veins on his arm.

“For a while,” he mutters.

A terrible lie.

He’d stay here forever if he could. Denounce the dust of roads traveled if it means ending up where you are. Where he lay next to you like this and count the beat of your heart above the storm.

You lean up and cradle his face before kissing him. He mirrors your motions, keeping a hand on your jaw while his lips part, tongue already searching yours like it’s missed you. And it has—his entire being has.

Once upon a time, he was afraid. Tried to get you to leave before you became precious enough to hurt him. But not anymore. Not when you place desert willows in a mason jar on the dining table to “make the room smile a little”. Not with the way your arms slip around him like it’s the easiest thing in the world to do.

Not with your mark all over the soft corners he didn’t know existed within him.

You let out a quiet sigh, deepening the kiss, fingers carding through his hair. For a moment, he forgets. Every bruise, every bullet hole, every cut on his flesh.

He forgets what hurt means.

Because this is where he can truly breathe. Where his bones find rest—a kind of rest so pure he can’t help but wake up another day and try again. Where century-old dirt gets washed away, as ardent as desert rain. The fount he leashed his fate to. His life-giving pond.

His name was Logan Howlett. New in town.

As a mechanic, he fixed cars and froze people in place when he walked past—it's not everyday you get to witness the picture of handsome ruggedness in a town like this: small enough to cover in a half-day drive, big enough for strangers.

He should be on billboards.

An ad for Marlboro, maybe. Or Harley Davidson—you've seen him ride that metal beast around town. Or anything that would allow him to perch on something, whether a horse or a motorbike. He'd make a beautiful photograph with that side profile.

Wait, what was it you were thinking about again?

Oh. Right. Never change for a man.

That guiding principle was thrown out the window when your dad brought you to Logan's workshop for the first time.

You started to actually pay attention to the drivel of automotive engineering. Not your fault your dad liked to mutter things to himself—things like "automatic transmission should be goddamn banned", and "get outta my face with those Cybertrucks or whatever you call 'em".

Car talk used to be white noise. Now they're important information.

But who could blame you?

Because that time in the garage, Logan looked at you like he wanted to eat you whole.

Bright hazel stroked your face without touch. You've had hands on your skin that were less intimate.

Maybe it was how out of place you were. Clean t-shirt and jeans amidst grease stains. Fresh perfume on top of the smell of kerosene. While your dad blended seamlessly into the harsh environment of steel and spare tires, you stole the show by being the only thing that's soft to touch.

Logan's intense stare might have been a signal for you don't belong here.

But then he proved you wrong. Asked you a question the moment your dad left to take a phone call outside the garage.

"And how old are you, sweetheart?"

It was designed as if he needed you to taste how wrong it was. The age gap between the two of you must be enough for legal adult.

When you gave him your answer, it backfired.

The flavor was intoxicating.

So it goes: in the next few months, one trip to the garage became multiple (not all business—your dad liked hanging out with Logan). You noticed each other in places that felt too public. Eyes locked in crowded rooms, bodies danced a perimeter in boisterous bars.

He had the patience of a hunting predator. You didn't think you enjoyed playing the part of a prey.

And through it all, the two of you never collided. Not now. Not yet—as if you were waiting for a designated hour that hadn't arrived.

In the meantime, you occupied yourself with dreams about the one time he moved past you in a place packed with other people.

You had felt his hand on your lower back, firm and warm for a second too long. His body slid behind yours. So did his voice: the low baritone rumbled in his chest, but you felt it tingle up your spine. His lips must have been inches away from your ear that night.

"Sorry, sugar," he murmured, "tight squeeze back here."

Your cheeks had found color. He'd smirked like he knew what exactly he was doing.

Which was why you found yourself feeling shy a week later, cheek pressed into a phone.

The truck wouldn't start. You checked everything you could: the battery terminals, the ignition coil, the starter motor. Nothing worked.

Or maybe you had selective blindness, because giving up meant he could come over.

Logan murmured your dad's name on the other end of the line when you called.

"Hey, it's me, actually," you fought back a stammer.

You weren't sure how to interpret the crackly silence—it lasted for a few seconds before that husky voice spoke again.

"What d'ya need, pretty? You never call."

Concerning how your knees came close to buckling.

"So, uh... the truck won't start."

You'd berate yourself for sounding as awkward as a schoolgirl, but it was enough of a miracle that you had enough cognitive function to respond.

"Your daddy couldn't fix it?"

"Not really. Well, Dad's not home, so I took a look at the engine myself."

"Did you, now? Good girl."

You shivered.

"Yeah, but I couldn't find what's wrong."

"I'll be over in ten."

"Thanks, Logan."

"Don't thank me yet, sweetheart."

The line went dead. You almost did, too.

Ten minutes later, he's in your garage, bike parked up front. It was almost offensive how he got to work straightaway, bending himself over the front of your dad's truck, one arm propped on the open hood.

The handsome picture brought to mind another ad he might star in. Some four-wheel drive fit for traversing the wilds—Jeep or Land Rover.

You resisted imagining what his hair would feel like between your fingers.

"Carburetor's old," he concluded, finally looking at you. "Your old man's put off changing it for too long."

"So you can't fix it?" you asked from five feet away. The distance should anchor yourself from being swept away by his charm, but he closed it with two-three easy steps and your will nearly crumbled. That image of your fingers through his hair invaded your mind's eye again—they looked so soft under this light.

You breathed.

A mistake, because he smelled like pine and gasoline.

"Gotta work on her at the shop," he replied.

Why on earth did you start thinking about his body and yours on top of a car creeper? It would feel good to lay under his shadow while he mauled your neck—

You managed to find your voice, but the words came out weak.

"I was gonna go out."

"Can't exactly do that with a busted truck, can ya?"

His eyes flickered down to your lips, the movement so obvious you'd think he wanted to get caught. You blinked the wave of want away, breaking eye contact like it was inhibiting too much of your breathing.

In doing so, you caught a glimpse of the black metal on the driveway. Logan's gaze followed yours.

"Let me give you a lift."

Did he just purr that at you? You swallowed.

"It's a lot of errands," you replied. "I don't want to trouble you."

"It's no trouble, pretty."

Then you felt his fingers catch yours, gently pulling your hand in what should be an innocent a gesture...

If not for the way his eyes darkened. The way he leaned down to face you. The way his lips curled upwards ever so slightly.

That ghost of a smirk told you it was time.

You don’t remember life without it.

Maybe there was a time when it didn’t exist. When you were young, when there wasn’t enough sentience for memory to take root. A time when your youthful limbs were free to skip and run, no heaviness to drag them down. A time when waking up felt like the start of a new opportunity instead of repeating the same old pain.

And then you learned of soulmates.

When children your age sighed, dreaming of finding the one, you were the loneliest you’ve ever been. A solid weight, a rusted chain around a lamppost, tethered to nothing, scraping the ground in solitude.

When other fifth graders poked their palms gently with a pencil, hoping a certain someone in class would feel it too… you wished you didn’t have a soulmate in the first place.

You learned the hard way not to offer this particular opinion so freely. Fifth grade was a lonely mess because of it. 

Years went by, as they are wont to do. There were more and more days when tying your shoelaces was as difficult as a gold medal Olympic sport. It was on those days that your mind often found itself twisting. Confused, just for a moment, at the reality of it. 

Maybe it was never you. Maybe it was them.

Maybe the reason you had to miss Brenda’s birthday party—the one everybody went to—the reason your favorite outfit felt all wrong and scratchy all over you couldn’t even breathe… was them. Your soulmate. Maybe they were the source of your hurt.

Maybe everything, the sensations in this body, the pain, was their fault, not yours. 

You cried so much that day.

Even now, past the larger real-world bricks adulthood threw at you, you can still feel it if you think about it enough. The emotional bruise eclipses the physical.

But you know it isn’t their fault.

The first time you felt your soulmate’s pain, you knew as certain as the blood that ran through your veins: it wasn’t yours.

It felt… different. The sensation was as bright as a primary color. In between your knuckles on both hands was a dull throb, three-pointed and went away as soon as it came. 

As real as it tingled, you recognized that it was far away. A layer of discomfort that’s separate from yours, echoed into your body like a ripple that calmed at the edges. A ghost of the original, painted on your body like a faded counterfeit canvas.

It happens often. The knuckles in particular. Sometimes it’s on your torso, your arms, your legs, lightly punishing parts inside of you that you don’t exactly know. They rarely linger.

That time in fifth grade, when you told your study group you wished you didn’t have a soulmate and turned the entire class against you?

You remember thinking: they must be suffering because of you. 

You wished you didn’t have a soulmate because they’d have to carry your suffering. And you wouldn’t wish this kind of suffering on anyone.

The kind of suffering that leads to dismissive doctor’s orders that cost too much money, marked by clipped tones after trying your best to explain yourself. The kind that invites questions, so many of them. Well-intentioned folks that can’t relate to half of what you’re going through. Skeptics accusing you of passing your soulmate’s pain as your own—or worse, of being lazy.

What would you say to your soulmate, should you ever meet them? “I’m sorry for making you feel like you’ve got full-body bruises every day”? 

You moved the moment you could.

You left your town, taking all your savings, a secondhand car that has nearly ten times the miles of the Pan-American Highway, and whatever stuff you can fit in the trunk and backseat. The pain came with, of course. 

The destination?

Somewhere remote. All the way west and past the border, a Canadian town whose skyline is cradled by majestic ridges. A place where spring’s wildflowers speckle a horizon line, where thick ice melts into crystal clear waters.

You chose a place so far away as if you could shed your ache among the interstate dust.

Because far meant a lot less people, and that meant a lot less noise. A lot easier to pretend soulmates didn’t exist. 

What you didn’t know was that running away led you right to the one person you’d never want to meet.

The first time Logan spots you is at a hardware store.

He isn’t supposed to be there. Some spat between the delivery guy and the boss, and suddenly he’s the one loading and unloading timber across town.

Your soft blue sweater looks like a little lake between aisles of caulk and paint. An out-of-place loveliness that pulls him in, footsteps on tile. He can see the deep crease between your brows as you bring a tub of what looks like putty closer to read the label. You’re muttering.

“Can I help you?” 

You turn. He blinks, taking you in—your eyes, the part of your lips. 

“I just want to understand why there are so many types of spackling paste,” you sigh exasperatedly.

He forces his attention past how pretty he finds you and starts asking questions: if you have experience patching up walls, how big the cracks are, the material of the walls.

From there he finds out that you’ve moved into that little lot up at Saddle Peak, a house that’s only ten minutes from his on a dirt road. A place just as remote, except it’s more woods than mountaintops. He learns that you work at the library, the only one in town.

The small talk gives him time to study your eyes. The shape of them. Something about the way you look at him makes him stop and wonder: what exactly have they seen that made you come here, of all places? Most folks your age yearn for more. Bigger.

Maybe you’re running from something.

Whatever it is, it’s none of his business. A deserter like him should know.  

He picks up a container that has ‘FAST ‘N FINAL’ printed on it in big red letters.

“Use this. Dries faster, sands easier.”

“Well, thank you so much, um…”

“Logan.” 

You smile. “Thank you, Logan.”

Then you offer him your name and a handshake, and there’s an imperceptible lurch under his ribcage. A flicker of a glow, a stirring of gears. He nods at you like the vowels that form your name didn’t slap him awake. A man like him shouldn’t be allowed to taste thrills—and this shouldn’t feel like a thrill in the first place, not in this place with its harsh overhead lights and the smell of lumber he just came to deliver.

Something tells him it’s not just electricity. For one second, the fibers that keep him together flutter. The kind of sensation deep in his bones, a signal for something big. 

He leaves you for the parking lot, but his mind stays in that aisle, picturing you in that blue sweater with a tub of putty, probably wandering the store for more things to fix up the brick house up on Saddle Peak.

You seem like the type to prefer plaid tablecloths over polkadots. Lilies over roses.

He wonders if he gets to know for sure.

The second time is hard to miss when your car is parked next to his outside the grocery store. 

He sees you lean, one hand over the open trunk door, looking wearily at the two brown bags on the ground like you regret buying them. He doesn’t ask any questions, just puts a hand in his pocket, the other resting on the top of his Chevy.

“You alright?”

You blink, a little startled. “Oh. Logan. Hi.”

“Those yours?” 

You nod. 

Before you can protest, he grabs them and places them neatly along with the rest of the bags in the trunk of your car. There’s a sense of giving up on your face, like you’re too tired to fight some kind of unseen enemy.

“Thanks,” you say quietly.

“Headin’ home?”

“Yeah. You?”

He nods. “I could help.”

“Hm?”

“Carry those,” he nods at the bags. “Make it one trip instead of two.”

You look like you’re weighing your choices and he finds himself hoping for a certain outcome, as if war hasn’t taught him enough about hope.

“Only if you have nothing better to do,” you finally say. He lets himself smile at that—the slightest of tugs on the corner of his lip. 

Maybe he shouldn’t have. Bringing a man you’ve only met twice to your house by the woods feels like a horror movie plot, even if it’s just to let him help with your groceries. But he can’t help it. Has he not seen a pretty thing like you in that long? The school teachers that flirt with him and his lumberyard buddies are plenty cute, and he just saw them yesterday night. 

But there’s a depth in your eyes like no other, beguiling him to step deeper into the waters. A familiar heaviness, too. Like you’re moving mountains in secret.

After a few miles of his El Camino trailing two seconds behind your vehicle, the both of you pull up at your house.

Red brick facade and shingled roof, a charming amount of ivy creeping past the windows. Small yet well-maintained. The mahogany front door has stained glass on them, late afternoon sun dappling colors on the floor when you unlock it and tell him to come in.

He carries all of your stuff in one go, as advertised. You offer him something to drink in thanks. He settles for coffee.

There are white dots over stucco-covered brick on the far side wall. Putty in cracks.

“You filled them in.” 

“It was easy to sand,” you comment. “Thank you for that, too, by the way.”

He takes in the space. It’s bare. No moving boxes or clutter of sentimental belongings, like you think you might offend the house if you over-decorated. No photo frames or artworks or fridge magnets. It doesn’t look like you moved in a few days ago—it looks like you’re sheltering yourself from a storm. 

But the dining table has a square tablecloth on it. Cream-colored. Plaid. 

The old thing under his breastbone squeezes tight. There’s a string tied around his heart. He didn’t know it existed.

You are a gracious host, showing him around the single floor. Its square-foot size means the dining table is crowded into a corner by the window, and the only bathroom is nestled within your modest bedroom. A hideaway in every sense of the word.

What could you be running from? The oppressive noise of the city, classic pressures of modern living, romantic troubles? That last one can force a man to the other side of the earth.

He watches you smile and sit by the kitchen island, the weariness in your eyes a double meaning in and of itself—like your body is tired, but also your soul.

Soul.

Maybe it’s that. Soulmates. 

He hasn’t thought about it in a long time. On one hand, he finds no time or space for the very concept of it in the type of life he leads. On the other, it’s unjust. 

Whoever his soulmate is must be cursing his existence for jumping into line after line of fire, baring his claws, dancing in perilous heat. They probably aren’t blessed with regenerative healing. It cripples him to think of what they must go through, bearing his pain, so he doesn’t.

Not anymore.

Considering he was born a century ago, there’s a good chance his soulmate is already dead, anyway.

So yes, maybe that’s what you’re running away from. 

Maybe you can’t find it in you to love the one destined for you. Or maybe it’s the other way around. The latter stings to think about—you, aching and alone, crawling into a Canadian corner, finding comfort from an unbreakable bond of pain with someone who no longer wants anything to do with you.

He swallows at the thought.

A tension builds between his shoulders. An infinitesimal fraction of the soreness of muscles stitching themselves back together after a long battle. It’s gone within seconds.

He listens to you talk about the backyard. It’s a mess, but a bountiful one, overgrowth of trailing rosemaries and wild strawberries blanketing rich soil, blending seamlessly into the forest. Thriving a bit too much without even trying to.

“You gonna start gardening?” he asks.

You don’t look at him when you answer. “We’ll see.”

That afternoon, there’s a sense of comfort while the two of you skirt around each other, a repartee so easy it almost feels practiced. He surprises himself by dropping some personal morsels as if responding to yours. His job at the lumberyard, a vague picture of his military past, where he likes to eat lunch. You refill his coffee and tell him about the books that make you feel safe. 

When he leaves, you’re no longer a stranger, but a neighbor.

He has a feeling it’s reciprocated, the way you stand by the doorway and watch as he feeds himself a Cohiba, lighting the end only when he’s seated behind the wheel. The elbow that rests on the car window waves easily at you when he pulls the coupe away.

You wave back, smiling.

The third time you meet him is by accident. 

The diner is crowded, but it’s the closest source of coffee. And you need it sorely. The lunch you had is heavier than you can handle, and the looming pollen season only makes the oncoming drowsiness worse. 

You’re waiting by the counter for your order when a figure approaches from the corner of your eye.

“Logan,” you turn, smiling, “what are you doing here?” 

He looks good as he saddles up next to you. A dark blue western button-down, the collar of his white undershirt peeking underneath, blue jeans on long legs. He leans on the counter and glances behind him, but his frame is blocking the view, almost like he’s trying to shield you from view.

“Late lunch with the lumberyard boys,” that velvety baritone replies. His voice has to be laced with caffeine, because you’re suddenly more awake now. “You?”

“Escaped for a bit to get a cup. I’m so sleepy,” you admit sheepishly.

“Tossed and turned last night?”

“No, no, I slept fine. This is probably a food coma.”

You look over at him. He looks different in this light, though to be fair, you’ve only seen him in two different sun configurations. This time it’s soft white and evenly diffused through picture windows. It blurs the lines on his face, making him look younger, less etched by the past.      

Your fingers twitch. They want to touch his skin. 

“How’ve you been?” you look away at the chalkboard wall menu like you were going to order something else. If you stared at him longer, his gravitational pull might make you do something stupid. 

“Not so good.” 

That captures your attention quick, eyes snapping back to his, worried.

“Why?”

He leans in, looks down for a second like he’s about to tell you a secret. 

“You keep showing up.”

There’s a lump in your throat. Your breath hitches. A look flashes in his eyes, the tiniest hint of roguery in hazel irises.

“The next time I meet you, I don’t want it to be by chance.”

Heat crawls and settles onto your cheeks. You pretend it’s not there.

“Next time?” you ask.

He nods. 

“Dinner on Friday. Caesar’s. How’s that sound?”

When did he get so close? You can smell the richness of trees in his hair. 

“That… sounds great, actually,” you whisper, meeting his gaze. 

“What time do you clock outta the library?” 

“Seven.”

“I’ll pick you up.”

“Okay.”

A loud drawl of your name shatters the moment, and you jerk as a waxed paper cup is thrust into your hand, about as hot as your cheeks. You need to get back to work.

“I’ll see you on Friday,” you say, rushing out of the diner like the coffee is burning your hand. You hear a man ask “who’s the cutie, Logan?” followed by some teasing before the heavy doors swing closed.

His smooth voice rings in your ear.

The next time I meet you, I don’t want it to be by chance.

You look down at the paper cup, awake and extremely aware of what just happened.

When was the last time you felt this way?

The last time you felt like you’re wanted without world-shattering follow-up questions like ‘I’m pinching my arm now, does it hurt yours?’ and the barely masked disappointment that chases right after.

The last time life was as simple as asking for what you want in order to get it, and that somehow eases the pain that follows you like a twin.

The last time you felt like a person. 

You feel like you just wasted money on coffee.

On Friday, you wake up to the beginning of a storm. Its center is your body. 

You brave through it. You have to. Today is too important for fog and fatigue. 

Today he’s taking you out to dinner.

You walk yourself through the morning routine. Get to the bathroom in one piece. Put on clothes that make you feel good, but still comfortable enough to last you the entire day. Drive to the library.

Then it’s time to work. 

There’s that reading program you’re planning with the local primary school. A new intern assistant is coming in today and you’re in charge of instructing her on her responsibilities. In the afternoon, a couple of town hall folks will drop by. Funding talk. 

It’s looking to be an unforgiving day. 

If you tell someone “don’t think about an elephant”, they’ll only end up thinking about elephants, or so it goes. So you do your best not to mind the ache in your joints and focus on the task at hand.

For the most part of the morning, you pull through. Even if your typing is slower today. Even when familiar Dewey decimals become foam at the tip of your tongue. The fog. Do not think of it. 

Somewhere in between your best efforts, it all goes wrong. 

Out of all the years you’ve used this topical cream, it chooses today to smell wrong. Sharper. Slightly nauseating. It relieves the pain in your neck at the cost of blooming a sensory headache.

Doesn’t help that you start to feel self-conscious about the aroma. You’re supposed to go on a first date with a charming man who looks entirely out of your league, three—no, two and a half hours after this meeting. Reeking analgesic is not going to help your chances for a second date.

At around five in the afternoon, it flares, angry and bright.

You’re not sure how to survive this. 

You keep trailing off mid-sentence whenever you speak, too preoccupied with pain. Pain with a capital P. 

The heat pads don’t help, not when your whole body feels like it’s working against you.

When sitting upright takes just about everything out of you, you feel like crying—not because of the pain, but because you won’t see him tonight.

If you go to dinner, you’ll most likely end up collapsed in a chair, dead weight that can’t even walk itself to your car, much less drive. Then come the questions. The explanation you’ve offered enough times to get sick of it yourself. And maybe, if you allowed yourself to think the worst of him, the “are you sure you’re not just tired”—the same words they keep saying to you. 

You won’t let him see you like this.

So you drag yourself to your colleague’s desk, weakly telling him you’re not feeling well and will be heading home for the day. Begging them to please let the gentleman picking you up at seven know that you won’t be able to make it for dinner. And that you’re really sorry.

That’s about the only thing you can do before you pack up your essentials and make your way to the parking lot, feeling like your ligaments are weighed down by sandbags.

Can you drive? No, it’s not about that, you have to. Just take it slow, you convince yourself. You’ll arrive eventually. The key is reaching home without somehow getting more hurt. That’s the last thing you want in this situation. 

You start counting your breath the minute you drive, one for each inhale and exhale. It’s at seventy-something before your brain begins to scream the most mundane motions in your head just so you don’t mess up—CLUTCH. BRAKE. ACCELERATE.—like you still have L-plates stuck on your windscreen. 

The dirt road leading up to Saddle Peak never looked so good.

You vaguely remember stopping the car. The walk to your front door uses up the dregs of what fuels your limbs. You don’t even make it to your bedroom. Shoes are kicked off and you collapse then and there on the couch. 

As temporary as it is, relief still makes you shudder. The pain doesn’t go away, merely dulled. At least you can breathe better now that you’re home.

You see Logan when you close your eyes.

God, you hope he doesn’t think you stood up on him. Not after that moment in the diner. Not after he stirs something in you, something other than this crushing, endless fatigue.

You hope he doesn’t disappear.

He doesn’t, but you do, faint thoughts of him floating in your mind even as you slip into darkness.

Logan waits for ten minutes. Fifteen. By the twentieth minute, the fur-lined jacket starts to feel like an embarrassing mistake, like he got the wrong idea entirely.

He’s lived and breathed the assess-decide-act cycle. Everything about this smells like a bailout. A whisper of a doubt shakes between his thoughts. Did he imagine the whole thing, or was he a victim of a trick? The ease while you talked about your house, the color on your cheeks that day at the diner… You looked relieved when he asked you out, or so he thought.

Despite all assessments pointing to walking away, he walks into the library building instead.

Hope is a stubborn thing, and it wants him to believe you’re not that kind of person.

Old habits die hard. Military-trained eyes flick through exit points, memorizing name tags and badges like he’s in a grey zone. Jackson Pearce—front desk—directed him to Sasha Ewing-Clark—back office—who calls over one Louis B. Barrett, who promptly tells him that you are out sick and that you can’t make it to dinner.

The young man also apologized for forgetting about the memo. At least he’s still around to pass the message.

Your place is on the way to his. He should drop by, make sure you’re okay, at least. Ignore that whisper of a doubt that remains implacable, stubbornly feeding ideas into his head—that maybe you’ve changed your mind, that you don’t want to be found.

He drives a little over the speed limit. By the time that red brick house comes into view, the sun is setting, an orange ball of fire hanging low between the trees on the west side of the road. He pulls up next to your car—you’re home, it seems.

Walking up to the stained glass door, it’s hard to see inside thanks to the light. But he knocks. A set of three stern raps against wood. 

Silence. He knocks again.

There’s a crash from the inside, like shards of glass on hardwood floors, then a curse. Your voice.

The sound lights up his nerves like a battlefield and his hand is already on the doorknob, twisting it. It’s unlocked. He bursts in.

He calls your name, but sees you there immediately. Standing at the mouth of the hallway, broken remnants of a mug scattered and glinting near your feet. You’re in a worn sweatshirt and a pair of flannel pants, looking like nothing is particularly wrong, except for the surprised look on your face.

“Logan?”

“You okay?” he says, sounding a lot more worried than he thought he could.

“Yeah, just—don’t—there’s a lot of glass, let me get the broom—”

Two things happen at once, and quickly.

The first is you stepping on an unseen shard on the ground near you. You hiss out a low “ow, shit” while hobbling two steps into the hallway, one hand propping you up against the wall while you twist to see the blood on your bare left foot.

The second is a stinging pain on his foot, like a fire ant bit him through his boots. 

The same spot you’ve hurt yourself.

His brain screams, but his body freezes. Assess, decide, act—except his senses takes three, four extra seconds for him to believe. 

There’s no fire ant in his lumberyard-approved boots, but the pain is very much real.

It’s yours.

What snaps him out of it is the sight of you, still trying to walk. There’s a drip of blood on the walnut floor. He bolts after you, footsteps thudding loud on wood and then crunching on glass before he hoists you over without ceremony, carrying you over his shoulder.

You yelp, vision swimming.

A few paces later, you’re draped gently on the couch, seeing the world right side up again. He takes his place on the other end of the couch. Hazel eyes narrow as he gently leads your leg to lift, intently surveying the bare pad of your foot, thumb stroking the skin around the cut. You feel the area throb. It hurts because of unfortunate placement, more than anything.

“Does it look bad?”

He shakes his head. “Still bleeding, though. You got a first-aid kit?”

“Drawer under the kitchen island,” you sigh, head leaning back against the armrest. You feel a little stupid and a lot helpless. “There should be towels there, too.”

He’s there and back in a flash, but the movements he makes when tending to your foot is anything but rushed. He has the piece of what used to be your mug clamped with a pair of tweezers. Firm. Ready.

“This is gonna hurt,” he looks at you.

You nod, gripping the edge of the seat. “Just get it over with—”

The last syllable melts into a groan as a singlemindedly sharp pain flares through your nerve endings. Logan holds up the offending shard, about the size of a button, before placing it on the coffee table next to the couch. It’s stained red.

“You’re lucky it dug in sideways,” he rumbles, already reaching for rubbing alcohol and cotton. “Would hurt a lot more if it punctured. This’ll hurt too. You ready?”     

You force yourself to nod, still breathing heavily from the glass.

He’s right, of course. The burn of the antiseptic solution is more drawn out, lingering around the lacerated part of your skin like a hot purge. You try to inhale deeper while he cleans the wound. His touch is stern but slow. Reminds you of an earned scolding from a good friend—uncomfortable, but sorely needed.

“You’re doing great,” he whispers, not taking his eyes off your foot. There’s a heat that pulses through you at the way he said that, and you wonder if an accelerated heart rate will get in the way of a wound closing.

Reality sets in—he’s here. In your home. He was supposed to pick you up at the library.

“Did Louis tell you to come here?” you ask.

He shakes his head, pressing the cotton pad over the entire wound. You hiss. It feels like punishment for talking about someone else.

“He told me you were sick and you went home.”

Your voice is small when you reply. “You didn’t have to check up on me.”

He looks at you, still holding a soaked cotton pad to your cut. There it is again, the gleam you’ve seen once, yet know all too well. 

“Wanted to see if my date bailed out on me.”

You smile, both teasing and weak. “You don’t seriously think that.”

His tone sobers, looking back down at your wound.

“Minds change.”

The breath is knocked out of your lungs at his words—murmured, a little less sure. Did you keep him waiting? Did he really think you stood him up? What are you supposed to say without sounding like you’re making excuses, or having to provide an executive summary of your personal brand of suffering?

You lean forward, as if your body is asking him to please look here.

He doesn’t, busy plastering a gauze. You speak anyway.

“I’m sorry. I tried to push through it, but I couldn’t,” you offer softly.

“You’re apologizing for being sick?” he looks up at you, eyebrows folded.

You stare back, lips parted. If you can be honest about one thing…

“I… was really looking forward to it. Dinner. With you.”

You feel the plaster stick. He’s done nursing your wound, but his hands linger. 

“That true?”

You nod, trying to school your face into something that doesn’t spell out youthful eagerness. He looks at you like he knows what’s really inside your chest, then stands up to take his jacket off. You’re not sure you’re allowed to look at how his white undershirt hugs his chest like a vise. 

“What do you say we do it now, then?”

“Huh?”

“The date. After I clean this, of course.” He gestures to the broken glass on the ground.

“I don’t understand—” you swing your legs, but he tuts.

“Don’t you even think about moving. Where’s your broom?”

You sigh. “Supply closet. Down the hall, to the left.”

It doesn’t take long until you see what he means. The fortunately large shards on the ground are disposed of safely, and suddenly he’s raiding your fridge and pantry, lining up ingredients on the kitchen island. A bag of pasta. Tomato sauce. Half a lemon. 

“Are you cooking?” you hop over to where he’s standing. The look he gives you is downright disapproving, but you settle yourself on a bar stool before he can stop you. 

“It’s not gonna be anything like Caesar’s,” he runs a hand through his hair. You suddenly have the urge to do the same.

“I can help.”

“Not with that foot, you aren’t, sweetheart.”

You clench your jaw, hoping it passes off as frustration from being asked to sit still rather than a physical response to the nickname. 

“You’ve helped enough, Logan. I can’t possibly let you.” 

“Yeah, well, you can’t do anything about it, can you?”

You hate that he’s right. What are you supposed to do to pin down a man over six feet with your throbbing joints and a fresh cut on your foot?

On another occasion, you’d indulge in fantasies of less appropriate methods, but not today. Not when the hurt defeated your persistence and gave you an actual injury like that was its prize. Not when you were convinced you won’t see him, yet here he is anyway. In your kitchen cooking dinner as if he knows where the spices and the good skillet are.

You’ve put up enough fruitless fights today. Maybe it’s time to stop.

“Fine,” you sigh, “at least take off your boots in the house.” 

Dinner was spaghetti bolognaise with a whole lot of substitutions, but still good. He holds your arm when you move to the couch. The conversation that ensues is easy despite your fatigue—the nap earlier really helped—and the injury is manageable.

You joke that the beer he’s drinking is payment for patching you up. He says you still owe him for cooking dinner. 

“What do I owe you, then?” you ask.

He shrugs. “Eye for an eye. Come over mine and cook for me.”

You laugh. The first time today, and maybe in a long time. 

“How bold.”

“Too much?”

You shake your head, letting your lips melt into a smile. “I heard the view up there’s amazing.”

“See for yourself,” he hides his own smile behind the can of beer. “It’s only ten minutes away.”

“Sure, after my foot is better,” you fold your leg, tapping on the gauze. It doesn’t hurt unless you put your weight on it. Logan told you to change the dressing often and run water on the wound—that should speed up the recovery.         

“I hope you’re not going to work tomorrow,” he places the beer can on the coffee table. Empty.

“Don’t know if I can,” you lament. “I’ll call in sick.” 

The two of you talk like that for the rest of the night, implying future plans like not-so-secret codes. Cooking dinner for him to call things even, finding a time to eventually go to Caesar’s like you were supposed to. Maybe a nightcap after at his favorite bar. 

He’s on the quieter side between the two of you, but that doesn’t make him hard to talk to. In fact it’s the opposite. The topic of jobs tangents into a discussion about lumber and their various smells, and when the conversation makes a U-turn, he asks how you’re supposed to remember where a leaf is in a forest of books. 

Then you talk about logging trees versus logging book requests, and just about everything else under the sun.

Everything except soulmates.

You wonder if he’s as curious as you are. If he knows you’ve abandoned your search. If he has, too, and that’s why it’s so easy for him to be with you, content without confirmation. Maybe he found the one and decided they weren’t right for him—a common enough story. Or maybe he’s still holding out.

You wish you could find out without asking. Throwing the question first means it’ll be thrown back at you. You don’t even know what to say if he asked. “I don’t want to know who my soulmate is because I’m probably causing them so much pain” is so much more confusing than silence, and so you settle for concealed curiosity. 

Let it stay easy between you and him. 

When the two of you realize it’s late, you walk him to the door despite his insisting otherwise.

Despite the tug in your chest that misses him when he’s still in front of you. 

“Thank you. For everything,” you say, hovering by the open doorway. This is the first time you’ve seen him in your porch light.

“You’re welcome,” he digs his hand in his pocket. He lingers too, as if his feet are too heavy to move. 

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

He’s still looking at you. 

You don’t know how, but you gather enough physical and mental strength to lean up. A gentle hand on his jaw. A kiss on the cheek. The song of crickets in tall grass is drowned out by your own heartbeat, thumping in your ear like a wound-up drum.

When you part, it’s not far. You want to search his eyes for disapproval.

He kisses your lips instead.

You almost tip backwards—he’s tall—but he anchors you with an arm around your waist. It guides you closer to him until your chest brushes against his, and it feels like they’re never supposed to be apart in the first place.

He’s warm, large hands on your back and hip lulling you into a sense of security. Then one of them cups the back of your head, tilting you slightly, letting him kiss you deeper.

You sigh. You’re safe here.

Then his tongue meets yours just barely and it ignites a flurry of fireworks behind your ribs, the explosions echoing throughout your limbs. Finally, they sigh, a sensation that’s the opposite of pain.

You cup his jaw for a pause, needing air more than wanting it. If it were up to you, you’d kiss him forever. He groans as if it hurts to stop. 

“Do you want me to go?” he murmurs against your mouth.

“No,” you breathe.

“Good.”

He leans in again.

Time bleeds since that night, painting beautiful rivers that intertwine your life with his. Work is generous enough to give you a week off. You spend it mostly with Logan, like he isn’t just some guy you met by chance in a hardware store.

Like it’s the most natural thing to do.

And it is. Logan in your home, letting you rest your feet on his lap on the couch. Logan in your bedroom, stroking your hair, waiting for the sun to climb higher.  

When you asked if he was needed at work, he said, “I haven’t called sick in years. They can survive a few days without me.” 

And just like that, you’re not simply neighbors anymore. Not since that kiss.

It’s his own fault that he’s trapped here, really. The first time he asked was the night you cut your foot, but he hasn’t stopped. Always “do you want me to go”, in the morning when you wake up warm in his arms, or breathed into your ear when you’re tangled together at night. As if he’s doing everything in his power to make you say no.

As if he’s scared you’d actually want him gone.

But you don’t. Always a shake of your head, and then time and intimacy peels back your life-hardened layers. You find your voice. “No, stay.” “I want you here.” Quiet proclamations of your desire. Soon, your body learns to speak the same language, arms around his torso, face buried in the crook of his neck.

Don’t go.

“If you really want to leave, you shouldn’t ask,” you teased him once.

“I’d be crazy to,” was his response.

He stops asking after that.

In fact, he doesn’t ask at all.

Doesn’t ask about the assortment of pills in the medicine cabinet behind the bathroom mirror. Doesn’t question what you’re doing when you apply topical cream or place a heatpad on yourself.

But you know it’s not ignorance. It’s anything but.

He watches the exhale you let out, how you lean against the sink after washing the dishes. Notices the days you need a moment to wake up, the way you walk to the bathroom in calculated steps. Sees you take your medicine. 

And more than that, he always helps. He never rushes you for anything, quietly matching his pace with yours. He takes out the trash without being asked to. He buys groceries while you’re out cold, deep in a nap you didn’t know you needed. He doesn’t coddle or fuss, just offers you a hand before you get up from your seat. Never fails to pull you up, no matter how heavy you feel. 

It’s almost like he’s waiting for you to tell him.

So you resolve to.

You’re at his place this time, finally fulfilling that promise of cooking for him, and it’s beautiful. Almost unjustly so. The panoramic view of the Rockies are uninhibited, filling you with a rare sense of wild freedom in contrast to the cozy sanctuary that is his log cabin. 

He likes your food, thank goodness. Lucky for you, he seems to like you more, always eager to have you in his arms.

He wakes you up today to see the sun rise. It blazes a pinkish red, flooding the sky, making snow-white peaks blush. You’re on his chest between the sheets, satisfied with the scenery of the great outdoors and turning your focus to the man that tore down your walls with nothing but gentleness and comfort.

Your voice is low and husky. “Remember when we were supposed to go to Caesar’s?” 

He hums. 

The memory is near in time, but distant in everything else. It feels like you’ve known him for so much longer. How is it possible to fall into place so easily with someone you just met?

“I was sick. You came over and helped me with the cut.”

“Mm-hmm.”

You take a deep breath. Your mind isn’t polluted by the usual fear that fogs you when you’re forced to explain what’s wrong. Maybe it’s the cloudless sky and the mountains in the morning light. Maybe it’s Logan, strong and steady underneath you. 

“I have this… thing,” you begin, still choosing your words. Saying them out loud hardly gets easier.

He looks at you, still stroking your hair. Slow. Take your time.

“I haven’t really told you about it. It’s… kind of hard to explain.”

But you tell him anyway, in short but sober sentences and thoughtful pauses. You tell him about the pain and tiredness, how you got to know those feelings better than anything else you’ve ever felt. You tell him about the days: bearable most of the time, except for the days when you feel like you’re a shell of who you are, the essence of you gone, like the energy you don’t have. 

There it is, out in the open. The reason why you don’t even want to think about cultivating your overgrown backyard.

You tell him your plan. To be alone. To not face the unthinkable, to not give the unthinkable a face. How your soulmate must hate you for making their bones feel like lead. 

He smiles at that. Then his expression shifts.

“Do you feel it? Your soulmate’s pain.”

That’s his first question. He’s worried you’re hurting more than you should. It makes your heart ache even more. 

You nod, voice quiet. “It’s different from what I have, though.”

“What do you feel?”

“I haven’t felt it. Not for a while. But it used to be here a lot,” you stroke across your knuckles. “Dull. Goes away within seconds. I can ignore it.”

He hums. “Maybe they’re a boxer.”

You smile. “I thought so too.” 

Once you’ve run out of words, you look at him, a stare that wonders if that was alright. If that was too much. 

“Do you want me to go?” you whisper, even if your soul breaks a little at the thought.

He shakes his head. Drags you up so he can kiss you instead.

You melt, hands on his shoulders as your lips meet and part and meet and part like waves on a shore.

He answers in your ear. 

“Never.”

That night, Logan doesn’t sleep when you do. He watches.

You look like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders. Your arm is draped lightly across his midriff. The way your chest rises and falls smoothly in the moonlight, the lines on your face a little softer. 

He thinks of your body and how it must feel. 

Not just the aches you told him about, but the pain he’s brought to you. 

Could you feel the bullets, the gashes, the stabs? Did you feel the itch when his cells would stitch themselves back together? He replays the way you touched the back of your hand, thinks about how your skin stings each time he takes out his claws. 

How your body fights his battles as if you don’t have your own.

He’ll tell you one day. About who he is and what he used to cut before trees. The weapon he wields before axes. How he’s cursed to know pain over and over again.

He’ll tell you about the day you cut your foot on glass. The way he felt it on his body, the exact same spot, the exact same time. The way it stung for a while before disappearing completely. 

He’ll tell you how, other than the cut, you’ve never hurt him.

He’ll tell you he’ll be happy to shoulder everything for you, even if you weren’t soulmates. Except as luck would have it, you are. 

But whether you’re brought together by fate or free will, it doesn’t matter to him anymore. 

Maybe he can’t move your mountains for you. But at least, with him, you’re not doing it in secret. He wants to be the one that sees you, that tells you how strong you are, especially when you rely on him.

He’ll kiss you and ask if you want him to go, just like that night.

He hopes you’ll say no once again.

it’s the smell that drives logan howlett crazy, subtle as it is even to his senses. you aren’t dripping, not yet, and that’s a thing he’d happily remedy.

he strips himself down to nothing and slips onto bed behind you, careful not to wake you.

the first thing he does is bury his nose in your hair and breathe you in—it’s enough to make him shiver.

then his hands move: fingers trace your exposed stomach, taking in the warmth of your skin. slow strokes, up and down, deceptively comforting. your chest rises and falls evenly, asleep and none the wiser.

“almost like you’re doing this on purpose,” he hums to himself when those same fingers snake south.

his face is in the crook of your neck now, because he wants to smell the change: a shift in your pheromones that only he can sense.

it hits him like a drug.

the catalyst? his fingers ghosting your hole above the fabric.

he moans.

you shift in his arms, the cleft of your ass rubbing against his already hard cock. logan’s fingers begin to circle, feeling the growing dampness of you, teasing the outline of your firm clit.

despite being a man of rough repute, he can be gentle, especially if being gentle means torturing you better.

“she’s dripping,” he’s talking to himself now, his own breath catching as he tugs your panties to the side, callused fingerpads rubbing your wet slit, “leaking, need to plug her full. yeah? you won’t mind? no, you won’t, you’re a good girl.”

when he sinks a finger in, you let out a hazy moan, spine arched into a large palm that’s busy groping your breast. the friction pulls you out of slumber, but only barely.

“l-logan—”

“sshh. go back to sleep, baby. let me have my fun with you.”

but you can’t—not when he’s fucking you with his fingers like you owe him, and not while he’s murmuring filth into your ear the whole time he plays with your clenching hole.

“need this pretty pussy to cum for me. she’s been wantin’ that, yeah? c’mon, sweetheart, let her cum for her old man.”

bucky barnes is hungry. and not for the dinner he willfully skipped.

the sight is the catalyst for this certain appetite: he finds himself kneeling on the bed just to watch your unconscious body and the gift between your legs, presented so beautifully in that pretty underwear.

“for me? you shouldn’t have,” he breathes, just as his face lowers to your inner thighs.

his hands spread you open just so he can see you better.

and that’s all he does. stares. amuses himself with the wet spot on the fabric that grows ever so slowly—must be because of his warm breath fanning your pussy. he swears he can taste you in the air, and the sensation makes him painfully aware of the tent in his pants.

so he rewards himself. his reward is you.

just a little bit, though: his lips kiss your pussy through the underwear, tongue pressing against the fabric for a taste.

your hips chafe against the air. his eyes look up, only to find yours still closed. still asleep. that pulls a grin out of him.

“i’d normally ask you to beg, but oh well,” before he slides your underwear down, throwing it somewhere on the floor.

his mouth on your cunt is designed to keep you asleep, and you do remain sleeping while he plants slow, open-mouthed kisses on your slit, nip your clit, dip his tongue teasingly into your hole—not enough to wake you.

some would argue he loves torturing himself just as much as he does torturing you.

but the goal is to get you unmistakably wet. and it’s working.

the evidence of his restraint pools near your ass on the bedsheets. he collects the slick with his finger and puts it in his mouth, moaning at your taste.

his meal is ready to be devoured.

and devour is exactly what he does to you. his mouth is no longer kind: lips move with hunger, kissing yours, then his tongue curls past your entrance to fuck you.

that wakes you up. he can tell through the strangled moan you let out.

hands pin your hips. you feel more than hear his voice, muffled against your sopping cunt:

“settle down, sweetheart. let me eat.”

the sight of you sleeping in his white button-down and little else shoots lust through clark kent’s veins.

he tries to be a good person and exercise restraint, despite the many conversations had with you about—in your own blunt words—using you when you’re asleep. and an agreement was reached. but still, a part of him can’t fathom the thought of just... taking you without you begging him to.

that part of him leads his feet to the bathroom. a cold shower is due.

except the running water doesn’t clean his dirty thoughts, instead exacerbate them—until he realizes he’s jerking himself off and that white stuff going down the drain isn’t soap.

okay. at least now he can go to bed without a raging hard-on.

wrong.

sleep doesn’t find him—mainly because he’s so aware of how easy it would be to take you the way you’ve consented to. how easy it would be to pull your underwear down. gosh, he can smell you from here. why are you so wet? are you having a really good dream?

clark gets hard again just laying next to you.

if you ask him, he doesn’t know how he got here. doesn’t know how he has your body atop his, doesn’t know who took your panties off.

doesn’t know why his thick cock is between your naked thighs.

he only knows how good it feels to rub himself against you.

“f-fu—ngh—”

his chin presses gently on the top of your head as he rocks, watching himself: the bulbous head poking out between your thighs, only to disappear and come back again, pearly bead at the red tip. he loves the feeling of it: your soaked panties wetting the length of his cock, the skin of your thighs rubbing against his veins...

somewhere along the way, he slips his cock into your panties and slides himself against your cunt.

your juices coating him makes him moan, the sound reverberating deep in his chest while his fingers play with yours, circling and tugging at your nipples.

“mmh...”

he freezes. that’s his cue. you’re waking up, he should stop, should ask you if you’re okay—

instead, a lie tumbles out his mouth so easily, he almost scared himself.

“’s okay, sweetheart, it’s just a dream. just lay back and feel good for me, m’kay?”

the next murmur that leaks out of you sounds sweet, sleepy and pliant. clark takes that as permission to continue ruining you.