“I’m Romulus. Did he tell you about me?” Of course he didn’t. “Who areyou? How did you even get here?”
She’s breathing hard, tucking a sheet beneath her arms like armor. Dark chestnut hair falls across flushed cheeks as she scrambles up against the headboard, adjusting a pillow with shaking hands.
“How could he just—” Her voice breaks. “How could he justleavelike that? When we were in the middle of?—”
She clutches the sheet tighter.
I drag a hand down my face and immediately regret it, because I can still feel everything. The slickness of her. The heat. The way she’d been clenching around?—
No. Absolutely not.
This is a line we’ve never crossed. Not in thousands of years. We had an unspoken agreement, my brother and I, because obviously swapping bodies mid-coitus would be traumatic for everyone involved. But apparently two centuries of imprisonment makes a god forget even basic fucking courtesy.
“Where did he even find you?” I glance around the room, cataloging the damage. Clothes scattered. Furniture askew. The scent of sex thick in the air. “ I apologize if he didn’t fully explain our... situation.” I gesture to the dual faces on our shared head. “Just tell me how much he owes you, and I’ll return you to wherever you came from?—”
Her mouth falls open. Then snaps shut. Then opens again.
“How much heowesme?” Each word is a dagger. “You think I’m a?—”
She makes a sound that’s half-hiss, half-growl, and if she could breathe actual fire right now, I’d be ash.
I hold up a hand. “Wait. Just... wait a moment.”
I close my eyes and push harder into our shared consciousness, searching for any scrap of memory that might explain this disaster. There has to be something. Some fragment of the last three days that?—
Nothing. Still nothing.
My eyes snap open to find her yanking a nightgown over her head with furious, jerky movements.
“Maybe he wouldn’t talk about you because you’re such an asshole,” she mutters.
My mouth actually drops open. “What lies has he told you?”
She whirls on me. “Remus never lied to me. Not once.”
“He obviously didn’t tell you about me.”
“I knew you were there. Sleeping.”
I scoff. “I never sleep for long. We swap constantly—every few hours at most. You couldn’t have spent more than a handful of hours with my brother.” I glance meaningfully at the wrecked bed. “So you’ll forgive my assumptions about the nature of your... arrangement.”
Her cheeks flush scarlet, but her eyes are pure fury. “I’ve known him for three days. Three incredibly long, intimate, intense days.”
“Three days.” I shake my head slowly. “That’s not possible.”
The longest Remus ever held me back was during the Battle of Thebes—forty-eight hours of blood-soaked chaos with Alexander the Great. But seventy-two hours? That’s beyond our capabilities. It shouldn’t be possible.
She plants her hands on her hips. “So now you’re calling me a liaranda whore?”
“I don’t—” I drag both hands through my hair this time. “No. I’m saying I don’t understand what’s happening here. If you’re not a prostitute, where exactly did my brother find you?”
She throws her hands up. “He flew down to a fountain in the center of my city and asked if anyone wanted to volunteer to be his consort.”
The world tilts slightly.
“He did what? Flew down? In front of humans? In broad daylight?”
“Yep. Really freaked people out. Most of them ran away screaming. Well, a lot pulled out their phones first—” she waves a hand vaguely, “—but yeah, mostly screaming and running.”
