“I don’t follow. You’ve given us so much already.”
“The skylight,” Sikras continued, facing her. “I ...Myroom is on the second floor. I could ... I could always commission its construction in there. Nothing but stars above. If you’d like.”
Helspira blinked, stood, and took slow, tentative steps toward him. “Sikras, are you offering me your room or inviting me to share it with you? Because I’ve misread the signs before, and I need some clarification this time.”
Pulse intensifying, he took her hand and held it to his chest that she might feel his wild heart. “I am inviting you to share far more than my room,tse tsu. Whatever you wish for, you need only ask. I am yours to command.”
“Mine to command?” Her gaze trailed from his eyes to his lips, then back to his eyes. “Kiss me,” she said, voice soft.
Sikras glided his fingers across her cheek, until they stopped at the back of her head. Eager, he soaked in the sight of her before gently pulling her forward. Tender, light, he grazed his lips against hers, shackling his craving for anything beyond chivalrous affection.
When he pulled back, she found his attention, cheeks flushed and breathless. “Again,” she whispered.
The foundation of his resolve crumbled when he pulled her into him again, kiss deepening, tongues meeting in a growing surge of passion. Slow, he reminded himself. Go slow. He pulled back, forehead against hers.
“Again.”
Undone, Sikras’s hand slipped to the small of her back, the pressure of her body against his enough to send him over the edge. The taste of her, the scent of her, the feel of her overwhelmed his senses in a euphoric rush, and he pulled away from her lips just enough to find her neck, savoring the sensation of new skin until—
A voice in the hallway. Saelihn’s advisor. “Catseye, there you are. Regarding your permit to profit from profane magics—”
“Claudicare,” Sikras mumbled into Helspira’s neck.
The door slammed shut. Magical backlash felt like a small tickle as he lost himself in her again, dedicating everything to memory. The curve of her waist, her hips, the angles of her jaw. The warmth of her skin. The way her claws carefully raked over his scalp. The way she purred soft, subtle gasps when his lips found a particularly erogenous spot beneath her ear.
It was torture to stop. But this was hardly the place. A woman with her delicate history deserved meticulous perfection, and he would accept nothing less. As their last kiss ended, he inhaled deeply, thumb brushing over her cheek. “To be continued?”
Flushed, Helspira nodded, tucking strands of hair behind her ear. An immovable smile lit her face. “I hope so,” she said with a breathless laugh, running her fingers through his dark hair. “Is it weird that I almost miss the gray?”
“Should be back in ten to twenty years if you wanted to stick around,” he said, giving the inside of her wrist a kiss. “But if you don’t want to wait that long—” One uttered spell later, his black locks lost their color, returning to the silvery gray.
Helspira’s blush deepened. “I’d wait forever, Sikras, so long as it’s with you. No matter how you look.”
“Then, I am yours forever. I hope.” She was, after all, the only goddess he had planned to worship. “But should you seek religion prior to your demise and crave the promised afterlife of a deity, I’ll support that, too. I just want you to be happy.”
Helspira freed a laugh. “I’m happy to go wherever the godless heathens go.”
Sikras bowed his head and stepped backward to rub his neck. “On the subject of godless heathens, as excited as I am to embark on our future together, I may have to delay our adventure a teeny, tiny bit. Nothing major.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Oh, not much. I just have to kind of, sort of, create a portal to Chthonia, hunt down Ithusa, and either kill her a thousand-plus times or make her relinquish Vessik’s soul. No big deal.”
Horror overshadowed Helspira’s previous euphoria. “Chthonia?”
“Vessik is one of my dearest friends. Siaphara may paint him in future history books as a tyrant, sure, and that’s a legacy his actions created that I cannot change. He made mistakes, but he’s not a wicked man. His soul will know the peace his biography will surely claim he doesn’t deserve. That’s something Icancontrol.”
Helspira shook her head. “Sikras, the atmosphere in Chthonia is oppressive to humans. The heat—”
“I have a spell for that.”
“You don’t speak the language, and the beings there aren’t like my family. They’re aggressive, manipulative, lawless—”
“I have spells for that, too. Pointy ones.”
Lips tight, her stiff shoulders rose with a breath. “There arehundredsof diavoli in Chthonia. Ithusa’s power—”
“—was inflated by four years’ worth of souls that Vessik collected for her. I lost count of how many times I’ve killed that woman. Not every diavolos in Chthonia will have thousands of souls to revive themselves with every time I end them.”
