I don't respond.
She grins. "Right. Forgot. You're, like, eight hundred years old or whatever. You probablyarea Victorian butler."
"I'm not a butler."
"Could've fooled me with that posture." She walks over to the supply station and grabs a bottle of volcanic oil. "Seriously, do you ever relax? You're sitting on a massage table like you're about to give a corporate presentation."
I shift slightly, adjusting my wings. "I'm relaxed."
"Sure you are." She pours oil into her palms and rubs them together, warming it up. "Alright, big guy. Face down. Let's see what kind of disaster you've turned yourself into this week."
I stand and move to the table, lowering myself onto the plush furs. The padded cradle supports my face, and I extend my arms at my sides, my wings folding carefully against my back. The left one is still tight, the membrane pulled taut over the bone spurs.
Tamsin walks around the table, assessing. I can hear her footsteps, light and quick, as she circles me like a predator evaluating prey.
Except I am not the prey.
I am four hundred pounds of stone and muscle and ancient, barely restrained power.
And she is a hundred-and-twenty-pound human with soft skin and fragile bones.
And yet, somehow, she is the one in control.
"Jesus Christ," she mutters. "Your left shoulder is a mess. What did you do? Sit at a desk for twelve hours straight?"
"Fourteen," I say.
"Fourteen." She sighs. "Of course. Because why would you take care of yourself when you could just work yourself into the ground like a masochist?"
"I have responsibilities."
"Yeah, and you're going to have a permanently calcified shoulder blade if you keep this up." She climbs onto the table, positioning herself above my lower back. Her knees press into the furs on either side of my spine. "I'm serious, Cyprian. You can't keep doing this. I don't care how important your security empire is. If you lock up completely, you're not going to be running anything."
I do not respond.
She places her hands on my shoulder blades and leans forward, driving her weight down through her palms.
The pressure is immediate. Intense. Her small hands press into the rigid stone surface of my back, and I feel the faint give beneath her touch, the calcified muscle softening under the heat of her palms.
"There it is," she murmurs. "Right there. You've got a massive knot right under your scapula. This is going to take a while."
She shifts her weight, repositioning herself, and I feel the warmth of her thighs pressing against my sides. She is straddling me now, her compact frame balanced above my spine, her hands working methodically across my upper back.
I close my eyes and focus on the sensation.
Her touch is firm. Confident. She does not hesitate, does not pull back when she encounters resistance. She just leans in harder, using her body weight to drive her knuckles into the calcified tissue, breaking up the adhesions with a precision that should not be possible for someone so small.
And then I smell it.
Exhaustion.
It rolls off her skin in waves, a sour, acrid scent that cuts through the eucalyptus and sage. It is the smell of someone who has been running on fumes for too long, someone who has pushed their body past its limits and is now operating on sheer willpower alone.
I open my eyes.
She is still working, her hands moving across my back in steady, deliberate strokes. But I can see the tension in her shoulders, the way her jaw is clenched, the faint tremor in her fingers.
She is exhausted.
