I’m a little sore and very exhausted, but I’ve also never felt so alive. He can now work my body like an instrument he’s mastered. He turns me over so I’m facing the bed, and then he reaches down. He strokes my clit in circles while thrusting into me. His cock is so good that I’m biting the sheets, moaning into the bed.
We find each other’s rhythm once more and then crest a wave of pleasure together. He fills me and I pulse around his cock until we both go limp.
He kisses my shoulder, and then we fall back, sweating and breathing hard. I lie on my side, and he mirrors me so we face each other. His hand is on my hip, the other playing with my hair.
He strokes my face, a sleepy smile on his kiss-swollen lips. My eyelids are heavy and so are his. All I want to do is fall asleep entangled with him. I lower my eyelids, but then the night clock chimes three. With those chimes, reality creeps back in. I become aware that I’m the High Priestess in the Praetorian’s bed. In the barracks where a hundred other sentries sleep. I have to leave before the sun rises. We have duties, responsibilities.
“I should return to the temple,” I say.
Torren pulls me closer to him and kisses my forehead. “Stay.”
I know I have to go, but I can stay for just a little while longer.
The next thing I know, I’m falling asleep.
Only, this isn’t sleep. I fall out of reality into the pull of godless death. Maybe Mirial has another memory to show me. Maybe she’ll help me figure out why Medea killed her.
But when I come to, the next memory I walk in isn’t hers at all.
LXIV.
Torren
Kerasea lies next to me, and sleep pulls at my eyelids. I breathe in her rose oil scent and a strange feeling covers me.
Contentment.
I’m just content.
Tomorrow is a problem for another day. Tomorrow, we have to be Praetorian and High Priestess again. There will be the announcement and funeral processions, and then we’ll have to both sit on the Verity Guild as we try the most important cases in the republic, including Medea’s. While we may not ever be able to prove that she was behind the murders of Verhardt and Eyo, she will be convicted of murder underlex religio. She will lose her seat on the Council, and I will be able to keep the new Senate safe.
That is all, and it will have to be enough, because there is a set of laws for the elite and an entirely different set for everyone else.
But that is all for another day. Tonight, Kera and I are just a woman and a man.
She’s fast asleep and I kiss her forehead, then I close my eyes.
I fall into deep sleep with her in my arms. As I fade, I have one thought: I’ve never wanted more than what I have right now.
LXV.
Kerasea
I stand on the stone terrace of the Senate Hall, the crowd around me perfumed and richer than I’ve even dreamed. The men have been noble for centuries, their mistresses the finest I’ve seen. I can’t have any of them. Not yet, anyhow.
It takes a moment for me to orient myself into this already occurred memory. I feel the same sense of being myself and not, trapped in a decided outcome, yet free to observe through the eyes of someone else.
But I am not Mirial.
As I look at the elite around me, I feel an unfamiliar sense of entitlement along with simmering anger. I deserve everything; I’m owed it. Yet I don’t have it. The Calais family was only made noble twenty-five years ago, our lousy ancestors failing us at every turn.
Revulsion fills me as I realize who I am. I am walking not in the memories of my friend but of Sentry Lucius Calais. I don’t know why this is happening—I didn’t use his body to commune with godless death. But then I remember that I did use my blood to spill his in the tower. Our blood mingled when I beheaded him, and this is my punishment. I have to walk in his thoughts.
I feel how much he covets and yet hates everything around him, and I can’t escape it. I experience it, seeping through me as if it’s my own emotion.
I stand near elites from the second province, all dressed for the Revelry. Eyo’s fine little mistress wears a silver string gown that leaves nothing to the imagination. They’ve been together for a month, and while she’s not the most stunning girl here, she opens her legs and her mouth on command. I’ve watched them through the keyhole before and have thought about putting her on her knees for me—to experience some of what he has—but I need to be patient. When I have his villa, I’ll have her, too. Better than her. Maybe I’ll make the High Priestess mine.
She’s talking to Eyo and wearing a gold dress where I can see her tits, nearly down to her slit. When I am the senator from the second province, I’ll taste that slit. A little poison in Eyo’s goblet and I will be voted into his seat, and then I’ll be equal to her. Greater. I’ll have everything I want, including her.
