Well, then. I close my mouth – which… he’s right, is for the best – turn on my heel and start walking again.
Chapter Twelve
Castien
I am doomed to hell. Then I remember my soul is artificial, and I might, in fact, be doomed to nothingness whether I abide by my ten commandments or not.
The thoughts won’t stop. They loop and twist, circling back on themselves the way the stairs circled down into the dark, and every time I think I’ve found solid ground, the stone faces are there again, whispering her fantasies and mine in voices that won’t fade. I can still hear them. I don’t think I’ll ever stop hearing them.
Jessa walks ahead of me, and I can’t tear my eyes from the sway of her hips. My internal temperature has risen beyond my ability to regulate it, and the heat coming off my plating is so intense I’m surprised the steel hasn’t turned red. My cock throbs against the restrictive plate with every step I take, and the arousal is constant now, a pressure that builds and builds with no release and no end.
But the arousal isn’t the worst part. The worst part is that I know she wants me.
I turn this over in my mind, trying to find a way to make it smaller, less significant, less devastating to every protocol I follow. Maybe it’s just curiosity. Maybe she sees me as a fascinating sex toy, something to try once and walk away from. But then I remember what she said when we were submerged in the hot spring, how she argued with me and tried to make me see that I think and feel the way a human does. She doesn’t have a low opinion of me. She doesn’t see me as an object. And that knowledge is doing something to my Aether Core that I don’t have a name for. It’s an expansion, a recalibration, as if my systems are adjusting to hold more than they were built to hold.
I’ve never felt this intensely. Not in five hundred years of existence.
Is this what falling in love feels like?
I’ve read about love. Hundreds of books in several languages, and every one of them described this exact thing. The worship. The need to put one person above everything else. The willingness to sacrifice anything and everything for them alone. I always thought those books were describing a human experience I could study but never understand. Now I understand it, and the understanding is more terrifying than anything these cursed caves have thrown at us.
Jessa doesn’t feel the same. She might be open to the physical side of it, curious enough to explore what touching me would be like, but that’s not the same thing. I want more than her curiosity. I want more than her body. I want her to look at me the way I look at her. The want is growing inside me until it’s louder than my commandments, truer than the laws da Vinci etched into my core.
The corridor narrows as we walk deeper, and I tuck my wings tight against my back. The stone walls close in until they’re scraping against my shoulders, and I have to turn sideways and squeeze through sections that barely fit my frame. Jessa slips through easily, her small body an advantage for once, and she glances back at me a few times to check that I’m still following. I am. I will always be following her.
The corridor opens without warning into a massive chamber, and the change in scale is staggering. Before us stretches a narrow stone bridge spanning a chasm so deep the bottom disappears into blackness. Far below, I can hear the crash of an underground river, the sound echoing up through the vast space. The bridge itself is an old, medieval construction, barely wide enough for one person to walk across. I can see gaps wherestones have fallen, leaving empty spaces with nothing beneath them.
Jessa stops at the edge and looks out over the chasm, then turns back to me.
“This is the Bridge,” she says, and I notice her voice is careful, controlled, as if we didn’t just hear each other’s dirtiest fantasies screamed through carved mouths. “The stones look solid, but some of them are designed to collapse under weight. There’s no way to tell which ones will hold and which ones won’t until you step on them.”
“How many gaps are there?” I ask.
She counts, pointing. “I can see at least six from here. Those are the ones where people fell.” She pauses. “Some of the intact stones might also be rigged.”
She steps back from the edge and looks around the chamber, tilting her head to examine the ceiling. It disappears into darkness hundreds of feet above us. No handholds, no ledges, no alternative route. She looks at the walls on either side of the chasm. Solid rock, sheer drops. Then her eyes move to my wings, and they stay there for a second before she looks away and says nothing.
I know what she’s thinking. She’s right. This isn’t even a real challenge for me. I could fly us both across in minutes and not a single treacherous stone would matter. But she won’t ask me. After the Spiral, after everything that was said and exposed between us, she won’t ask me to hold her in my arms. She’d rather risk the bridge.
And I should let her. If I touch her now, press her against my chest and feel her warmth and her heartbeat, I will not be able to hold back. Not anymore. Not knowing what I know. Artificial souls can be lost too, and mine is hanging by a thread so thin I can feel it fraying with every breath she draws near me. If Ihold her, and she holds me back, neither of us will stop before something forbidden happens.
I step toward her, close enough that she has to tilt her head back to look at me. She doesn’t move away.
“I will fly us over the abyss,” I say. “We don’t have to step foot on the bridge.”
“Are you sure?” She searches my face. “I don’t want you to do something that makes you uncomfortable.”
I laugh, but there’s no humor in it.
“You’re too considerate of a mere machine.”
Her expression changes. The concern drops away and a frown takes its place.
“I thought we established you’re not a machine, Castien. I don’t like hearing you talk about yourself like that.”
My Aether Core pulses at her words. A reverence I should reserve for God and the saints pours through me, and it’s for her. She’s all tantalizing flesh and soft skin. I want all of her.
“I will behave, I promise,” she says. “And you can make it fast, right? Just fly us over, and that’s that. We don’t have to talk about it or even think about it.”
