“Wait.” Delphine pulled in a breath, eyelids fluttering downward, hand extended but not quite pressing to his chest. She was holding back, demure for a moment, and it threw him. “I really am quite glad to see you, Damien.”
That was…well, it wasweird, and he didn’t like it. He clasped hands behind his back and glanced about the shadows around her. “No Celeste?”
Her timid look faltered with a frown. “My sister has returned to Clarisseau, as if there is anything for either of us there. We had a bit of a disagreement recently.”
Now, that wasn’t a surprise. Delphine’s requisite for total control often took its greatest toll on her younger sister, and even meek Celeste would eventually tire of so much browbeating.
“She’ll be back when she inevitably fails at surviving on her own. But I’m not here to talk about her—I came to Yvlcon hoping to see you.” Silver eyes finally raised back up to meet his own. “To apologize.”
Damien’s stomach knotted, and the feeling went all out of his limbs. Apologize?Delphine? She had to be setting up a joke, andif not, something much worse.
“I know things ended…poorly, but I truly regret that.” Her fingers were touching his chin, hesitant and careful. The last time she’d touched him had been extremely unpleasant, but as she ran a thumb over his jaw, he was reminded of other things she could do with those hands. “I certainly don’t regret the pillaging or the passion, but some of my actions—of both of our actions—were lamentable.”
Damien searched for the truth in her face, the tautness of it always difficult to read. He shifted his jaw away from her hand. “Well, I suppose we both have to live with the damages then.”
“We were so young and foolish then, but could you really blame us? You may have been upset, but so was I, and you did that, Damien. I know you can’t understand, but you broke my heart when you left.” When she blinked, there was something like earnestness in the silvery swirling of her irises. Damien had misconstrued that look before, but he had recently given it too. “Our relationship may have been a little fraught, but it was only because we wanted one another so deeply, and I’ve never stopped.”
The room’s sounds quieted around Damien, and a twinge in his chest deepened. It had been so long since he’d even laid eyes on her, he supposed anything could have happened. Delphine was a master at saying things but only following through on the most heinous of her promises, but then so was Damien, and he had meant his most recent apology.
Delphine closed the space he’d put between them. “I understand you now, Damien. It took time, but now I know what you really need, and I know exactly how to give it to you. Let me.”
As her hand fell fully onto his chest, it felt as though her request burrowed in beneath it. Because that’s what it was, a request, wasn’t it? She’d never really done that before, asked forpermission to do anything to him, she only ever took whatever she wanted. The pinching at his skin and the squirming beneath her palm, it couldn’t be real, it couldn’t be arcane manipulation, not at Yvlcon, though it was nearly as uncomfortable.
Damien glanced down and saw no magic there, just her claws poised to dig in. “You hurt me.” The words felt odd, and he hated the weakness in his voice.
“But you can’t be hurt,” she said with the kind of timbre one uses on a child. “You always said so yourself.”
She wasn’t wrong, at least about the fact he had expounded as much as the truth.
“But, if you feel that way, then I suppose I’m sorry. Forgive me?”
“Forgive you?” Blood rushed past his ears as his hands tightened into fists. “You think a few words are enough to absolve what you did to me? Keeping me mindless and locked away for—” He snapped his teeth when he heard his voice waver and rise. Any kind of altercation was unacceptable at Yvlcon, and she didn’t need to hear it anyway—she knew as well as he what she’d done, and she would only get off on being reminded of the gory details. In fact, there was already a smile playing at the corners of her lips.
“As I said, I know what youneed,” she stressed, pain twisting under her hand though she wasn’t moving it. “There’s no shame in admitting you were wrong and coming back to where you belong.”
For all his confusion, Damien knew one thing: belonging to Delphine had been utter torment.
“No,” he said flatly, stepping back and relieving the pressure against his chest, his heart beating madly. “I would much rather slum it.”
Damien turned, unwilling and unable to give her another look. A brief moment of satisfaction passed through him—notsince he had finally left had he managed to turn down one of Delphine’s advances. An entire year had gone by as he wasted untold arcana constantly casting for her presence every hour of the day so he could flee if he ever felt it. But actually telling herno—that had almost been easy, no arcana even needed. It may have turned out differently if magic were not kept in check by the Grand Order and their helpful, silver cuffs, but as it stood, Delphine had no power over him.
But that euphoric feeling of freedom only lasted a moment.
“Fucking Shadowhart.”
Damien strode back across the hall, no regard for those in his way. The sorry excuse for a blood mage was perched on the arm of Amma’s seat, bearing down on her as she’d squashed herself into the corner, glaring back like a feral animal.
The two were so absorbed with one another that they didn’t notice his appearance. “Will the onslaught of inconveniences this evening never end?”
Amma turned to him, and that’s when he saw the redness in her eyes, the tears preparing to spill down her cheeks, and he knew it was because ofhim. Damien didn’t give Xander a moment to say whatever pithy remark danced on the tip of his tongue, clamping hands onto his coat’s lapels and yanking him to his feet. “You rat-fucking bastard, I’ll rip off your limbs and shove them—”
“Challenging me to a duel?” Xander’s hands were up, announcing the words loud enough for those closest to hear, his smile too wide.
The ominous whispers around them quieted.Fuck.
Damien released him with as much force as he could shrug off as accidental. The blood mage barely staggered, frowning back. “Is that a no?”
Of course it was—a duel would almost certainly ensure both of their deaths if it took place at Yvlcon, GOoD would see to that.
