It hadn’t been his intention, knowing how much Vanya needed truth in his life filled with words that didn’t mean what they should and a House whittled down by betrayal and tradition. But everything he’d done, every secret he had kept, Soren had done so not out of malice but out of love, and he wanted Vanya to know that.
Vanya’s arm curled around his waist, dragging Soren impossibly closer. He sucked in a breath, heat he couldn’t blame on the pool settling in his skin and hardening his cock. Vanya pulled Soren’s head to the side, and he went, letting Vanya kiss his way up to the hinge of his jaw to nip at his ear.
“Do you know what Callisto told me once?” Vanya said, voice deep and ragged, his cock a growing hardness between them. “That our roads were always meant to cross. You were always meant to be mine, Soren. Even the star gods knew that. I should have believed them.”
Soren closed his eyes at that, stomach swooping like he stood on an airship suddenly losing altitude. “Then keep me, princeling, because you always had me.”
Vanya groaned, the sound pressed into Soren’s skin, before he let go of Soren’s hair and blindly reached out for the tray near the ledge. Vials and jars were knocked over with a clatter, but he snagged a sealed one before his hand disappeared beneath the water again. He gripped Soren’s thighs, lifting him up out of the water as he stood. Soren wrapped his legs around Vanya’s waist, stealing kisses as Vanya walked them across the pool to the stairs, carefully carrying him out of the water. He was taken to one of the wide benches that lined the mosaiced wall, the marble cool beneath his back when Vanya laid him down on it.
Soren curled his hand over the back of Vanya’s neck, tugging him down into a heated kiss, Vanya settling between his legs in a way no dream could replicate. Maybe it was the steam from the water drifting through the air that made Soren lightheaded, or maybe it was having everything he’d ever ached for within grasp once more. His skin was primed for touch, practically burning for it, and Vanya was the only person he wouldn’t mind becoming ash for.
“You aremine,” Vanya said fiercely, holding him there as they panted into each other’s mouths. “The Ashionens cannot have you, and the wardens do not want you, so you will be mine.”
Soren’s fingers scrabbled against the ladder of Vanya’s ribs, something like a whine crawling out of his throat to leave his lips. “Yes.”
It felt like a vow between them, the words a promise that Soren wouldn’t break this time. Vanya leaned over him, blocking out the world, leaving only the two of them in that moment. “Then I will have you.”
Soren shuddered at the words, managing a jerky nod. Vanya gripped his knee and tugged Soren’s leg outward at an angle. He held on to Vanya’s shoulders when a slick finger pressed against his hole and slid in deep, no teasing in the touch, just a desperate need that Soren felt in his bones. Soren was so hard already ithurt, wanting everything Vanya could give him.
WantingVanyaand able now to have him.
“Do you know,” Soren gasped out, looking up into eyes he wanted to see every morning until the end of their road, fingers skating over a beloved face he’d committed to memory so long ago, “I would burn the world for you.”
Vanya swore, pressed another finger into Soren, the stretch too much too soon, but he didn’t care. Vanya surged forward, kissing him with a ferocity that made their teeth scrape together, the curl of his fingers inside Soren pressing against the spot that made him jerk with pleasure, wanting more, wanting everything.
And Vanya must have felt the same because he pulled his fingers free and shifted forward, pressing the head of his slick cock against Soren’s hole, and pushed in andin. Soren tipped his head back, mouth open on a silent, strangled gasp of air as Vanya took him, claimed him, the burn of him sliding in some distant ache Soren would always cherish.
Vanya rested their foreheads together, forearms pressed to the bench on either side of Soren’s head. Soren hooked the leg not bent near to his chest around Vanya’s waist, digging his heel against the small of the other man’s back. Vanya shifted on his knees, hips flexing, the motion pushing him impossibly deeper into Soren.
He let out a strangled little sound, and Vanya laughed, low, almost disbelieving, before he levered himself up. Soren groaned when Vanya gripped him by the hips and ground into him, slow and teasingly, because it might have been months since they last took each other apart, but Vanya had always known how to make Soren want no one else.
“I will give Ashion my country’s Legion,” Vanya said as he pulled out before thrusting back in, all while dragging Soren back down on his cock with that bruising grip of his. The force of it nearly had Soren biting through his tongue. “Because you asked, and I won’t break my vow to you.”
Soren’s hands tried to find purchase above his head on the cold marble, but the edge of the bench was too far away. “Vanya?—”
Another brutal thrust, the ache of it making Soren momentarily lose the ability to speak. “And I willkeepyou because you were mine from the first moment I saw you.”
The marble was useless, so Soren flailed his arms downward, finding Vanya’s to grip the other man’s strong forearms and hold on. Another thrust, oil barely slicking the way, and Soren let Vanya take what he wanted, groaning as the pace increased, the sound of their skin slapping together and their harsh breathing echoing in the bathhouse.
“You will be of my House,” Vanya bit out, baring his teeth, eyes dark with desire and want and need that Soren knew all too well. Vanya spread Soren’s legs wider, forcing Soren’s hips up, the next thrust at an angle that made Soren nearly choke on his tongue. He did it again and again, panting hard with the effort. “You won’t be nameless because you will carry mine.”
Soren came with a shout thepraetorialegionnaires outside could probably hear through the stone wall, came untouched, Vanya’s words like the shock of starfire running through him, lighting him up from the inside out. He shuddered through his orgasm, barely able to breathe as Vanya pounded into him, taking his own pleasure in Soren’s body because he could, because he had the right to it and always had.
Vanya finally came with a groan, hips grinding against Soren as he spent himself. His cock throbbed inside Soren, and he weakly clenched around it, shivering at the way Vanya’s grip got impossibly tighter. They stayed like that for a moment, breathing heavily, before Vanya slowly pulled out, leaving Soren aching to be filled again. Vanya pushed a finger inside even as he leaned over to kiss Soren, both of them messy and warm and still holding on.
“Our roads were always meant to cross,” Vanya murmured against his lips, finger pressing deeper, skating over that too-sensitive spot deep inside. Soren couldn’t stop the way his hips jerked, not sure if he wanted more or less, only knowing that he didn’t want Vanya to stop touching him. “The Dawn Star guided you to me, and I love you too much to see you walk away once more.”
Soren wrapped his arms around Vanya and tugged him down, tucking his face against the curve of Vanya’s neck and shoulder. Beyond the walls of the bathhouse was a war and their duties meant for two different countries and the whole of Maricol itself. But here, wrapped up in each other and nothing else, Soren let himself hold on to the only thing that had ever mattered to him.
Vanya never let him go.
Nine
VANYA
Raiah’s laughter was something Vanya always cherished, but hearing Soren’s voice at his table again was a particular kind of pleasure.
He looked over the decimated serving dishes of the evening meal at where Soren sat beside Raiah, his hand extended to her, with a tiny flicker of starfire curling against his palm. Raiah poked at it the same way she did Vanya’s when he pulled the aether through him and cast it in the only form of magic he knew. The starfire didn’t burn her, the way it never burned anyone blessed with that power.
