"Truce," I mutter to Crypt. "Just for one night."
"In your fucking dreams," he murmurs back. "But at least you'll behavingdreams tonight. Feel free to thank me in the morning."
He slips into Limbo without another word to me, but his meaning is clear: he'll make sure I sleep tonight. But sleeping near the Nightmare Prince without a dreamcatcher to protect me is out of the question. Paranoia crawls over my entire body like leeches, sapping away my control until my ears start to ring again, my eye twitching.
Before it can get too far, Everett spots a small spill of blood on the bed and the air in the room plummets. Our breaths plume before our faces as the sudden cold snaps me out of it.
The professor glares at me. “Want to explain this, bloodsucker?"
Maven doesn't miss a beat. "I offered Silas a snack."
Baelfire chokes, and Everett recoils.
She rolls her eyes. "Stop clutching your pearls. I enjoyed it. Now, if you don't mind…" She waves her hand and turns off the lamp using common magic. "I'm exhausted."
We remain quiet as we all settle into bed with her. When reserving this apartment, I had the bed in the keeper's bedroom custom-made to be larger than an Alaskan king, so it's not a tight fit, even despite Baelfire's overbulked frame.
Maven curls up in the middle of the bed, and Baelfire is quick to press against her left side, nuzzling against her neck. I lay beside her on the right, not surprised when Frost lays at the very edge of the bed on my side, still wary about getting too close to Maven.
But apparently, no matter how conflicted he is, he's too far gone for her to try to leave tonight.
"Night, Mayflower," Baelfire yawns, and I hear him kiss her cheek.
She hums, obviously already drifting off. But I have no hope in hell of going to sleep anytime soon. I'm still keyed up from feeding, and having Maven's body so close to mine is keeping my cock hard as fucking steel. I shift slightly under the blankets, gritting my teeth as I stare at the dark ceiling. The voices in my head are whispering, chills slithering over my bones at the idea of resting anywhere near the rest of these legacies.
I think I'm in for a long, miserably hard night.
So I'm not expecting it when a brush of incubi power sends a flood of fatigue through my system, sending me into a deep sleep within seconds.
31
CRYPT
Those three doltsthought it would be just one night.
But two more days have passed full of classes, tense hallways, intensive combat training followed by far more exhaustive personal training sessions under Maven's orders, brief casual touching for Maven's exposure therapy, highly monitored lunches and dinners, etcetera, etcetera?—
And each night, they all end up resting in the same bed as my dark little darling.
After that first night, Decimus insisted that sleeping near Maven had helped him deal with his pissy inner dragon, and she hadn't argued when Crane and Frost somehow wound up in there with them. Yesterday, after Maven put us through a ruthless training in the dungeon exercise room, Frost had showered, changed into ridiculous silk pajamas, dragged himself into her room, and passed out on the bed before they even discussed it. Crane and Decimus followed suit.
I grin to myself as I watch all of them sleeping deeply. I can hardly blame them. They now know as I do that a night spentnotat Maven's side feels utterly empty and cold.
Perhaps I would find it annoying, keeping Crane's dangerously unraveled psyche in such a deep sleep every night…except I've found that sleeping so close to all of her matches naturally gives Maven constant wet dreams.
I live for the pleasure she finds in her dreams.
Though to be fair, theyallget wet dreams sleeping so close to her. It's been absolutely fucking hilarious to watch Maven wake first every morning and pretend as if she doesn't have to crawl through a veritable forest of morning wood just to get out of bed and go to the bathroom.
We've all been too busy and exhausted for the last few days as we prepare for First Placement for anything else to happen in bed besides sleep. Not to mention, none of us wants to push Maven. She's barely getting used to not being petrified of physical touch, so we've all come to the unspoken agreement not to pounce on her at night. We're waiting for her to take the lead since she does it so naturally.
But all this sexual torture isn't good for them. Or me.
I think it's past time for everyone to blow off steam. It'll do the entire quintet good and offer some postcoital clarity before we face whatever horrors the Immortal Quintet decides to lob at us today in First Placement.
With that thought in mind, I tiptoe mischievously through Limbo, passing through Decimus's dream first to get to Maven's. Decimus is dreaming about her, of course. His projection of what she would look like clad in lace lingerie is mouthwatering. Perhaps almost as good as she'll look actually wearing it in the real world.
But when I slip into Maven's dream space, my heart sinks. It isn't a nightmare—at least, not yet—but this isn't a pleasant dream. I spent too long working to protect everyone else from Crane's utter insanity by keeping him fast asleep. I should havereturned to her subconscious sooner, but now I watch as Maven singlehandedly slaughters five ghouls in her dream.
