He smiled. “It’s been a while since you said my name like that,i psychi mou. I missed it.”
Selene turned in his arms and gripped his waist, eyes dancing with the last of the golden sunlight. “I missed hearing you call me that.”
“As long as you don’t doubt that I mean it.” He tucked her hair behind her ear. “You are my soul, my heart, my breath. My everything. My…”
The word locked in his throat, and it pissed him off that Roman had said it first.
“Soul mate?” she asked.
His lips quirked—she could always read his mind. “We’ve been avoiding that particular word for a long time, haven’t we?”
“Seems silly. We acknowledge so many other ways we’re connected, but that one word…”
Augustus shifted his weight closer. “Are you suggesting we stop fighting it?”
“The word itself doesn’t have to matter as long as we go into tomorrow knowing where we stand.” Her palms climbed his stomach, sternum, pecs… “If you leave me in this world alone, I’ll chase you into our next life, Triarius. There is no me without you.”
Her final word barely escaped before his mouth descended on hers. Thedin of the ship faded, and all that remained was the rhythmic crash of the waves against the hull.
And Selene. The rise of her chest, the thread of her fingers through his hair, the heat of her sweet breath and tongue. Her body stretched against his, languid, her hips filling his palms, her spine an instrument beneath his fingertips.
Her kisses slowed, and her lips stretched into a smile against his mouth. “Take me to bed. Remind me what else you can do with that mouth.”
“With pleasure.”
Augustus didn’t just worship Selene’s body that night—he gave his entire soul to her. He was hers, and she was his, and no one would ever look at them again and think otherwise.
In those final hours before dawn, she released the walls and shackles between them—they laughed, they fucked, they whispered, they slept for minutes at a time. They watched the sun begin to rise from the balcony in nothing but a shared blanket and their bare skin.
“Phya is just a money man,” Augustus said. He sat with his back to the glass wall, Selene settled between his legs, and an early morning sea dotted with the Bladesworn’s ships in theEntia’s wake.
Now that the hours were closing in, Selene’s anxiety was starting to voice itself with a lot of questions. To his surprise, she’d already known Taran Phya was funding Thorne’s war.
Augustus kissed the top of her head. “I’ll offer him whatever he wants to end this war. Men like him always have a price.”
“Will it matter? Thorne has his ships and weapons. He’s—” Selene’s body quaked with a full-body shiver, and she absently touched the scar on her cheek. “He’s mad, Augustus.”
A year ago, he’d have brushed off a comment like that. He was a Triarius. He was Cassia’s Bane. He came to this war armed with mercenaries and a gut full of revenge.
But his mother had once warned that it was impossible to win a battle against madness. He learned Cassia’s full meaning the hard way—they might have escaped Orestis Vidalatos with their lives, but they lost much more in the process. Losses they would never recover from.
So, no, he wouldn’t brush off her concern. He’d witnessed how far Thorne intended to go, and Selene had lived aboard his ship for weeks.
“I don’t know what more I can do.” Augustus rested his chin atop her head. “I just want to protect my dad and whoever’s left in the fleet, and if I have to sell my soul to Taran Phya to make up formymistake, I will.”
He shifted to get a better look at her. “What would you do? You’re usually full of brilliant ideas.”
Selene lifted a bare shoulder. “I don’t know.” She sat in thoughtful silence for a minute, then said, “He’s the sort of man who easily makes you think you’re a step ahead while quietly enjoying the fact that you’re walking straight into his trap.”
She twisted her body until she sat sideways between his thighs, her knees to her chest. “With Orestis, we knew what he wanted and why. We understood who we were up against. Alexandra was a bit of a wildcard, and honestly, had I not been raised to understand her the way I did, we might not be here.
“Thorne is different. He didn’t behead that entire crew because he was tired of your parents’ reign. This is personal to him.”
Everything she said made sense, but he couldn’t imagine what his parents would have done to ignite vengeance this deep and cruel. “Thorne joined my mother’s crew when he was nineteen, and he stayed with her for nine years. Maybe he just hated her that much?—”
“He hated her so much that he’s spent the last six or seven years plotting the downfall of your entire fleet?” One of her blond eyebrows kicked up, and for a split second, Augustus was reminded how stunningly beautiful she was. He damned near forgot all about the seriousness of this conversation.
Oblivious to his trailing thoughts, she continued. “Your mother was a hard woman, butthathard? She didn’t demand the loyalty of her crew in cruel and unusual ways; she earned it by getting into the thick of it with them, and she had their backs. Always.”
