Then I released, and he did too, filling me to the brim. I panted like I’d run a marathon.
“Wow,” I said, breathless.
“Fuck, Pickles,” he rasped, still shaking. “I will never get bored of that. Let’s go again.”
I laughed weakly. “Ok, but first let’s get cleaned up. You smell like fish.”
He gave me a mischievous look.
“Don’t talk about your feminine odor that way, my love,” he said, teasing.
I shoved him with my foot and scoffed. “From your bandages, you ass. You smell like a salmon!”
He kissed my head and glanced at our reflection. “I can see if one of the servants can fetch scissors for my hair and a shaving blade,” hesaid, then he reached for the small bag I remembered seeing Antonias carry.
He pulled out the dagger of destiny.
“Or you can just use this,” he said, casually, like it was a comb and not an artifact that made my blood feel strange.
“What?” Panic flashed through me. “You want me to do it?
What if I cut you?”
“Then I’ll heal in ten minutes,” he said with a shrug. “Come on. I’ll teach you.”
He placed the blade in my hand.
The moment it settled into my palm, it didn’t feel like holding a weapon so much as holding a living thing—heavy, humming, awake. The metal warmed against my skin, and something deep in my chest answered it before my mind could, like recognition without memory. I tightened my grip instinctively, then forced my fingers to loosen again, unsettled by how natural it felt and how wrong that naturalness was.
Titus studied my face. “Is everything ok?”
“Yes,” I replied, then swallowed. “Just…” My voice cracked. “I miss her. Zephyros.”
It wasn’t a complete lie. Her loss still ached in a place I tried not to touch. And holding the blade she had sacrificed herself to retrieve brought it all rushing back—the memory of her strength, her loyalty, the way the world had once felt safer with her in it. But I didn’t dare admit how the blade had responded to me. Or how I had responded to it. The sensation had been intimate, unsettling, almost aware. And I had no idea what it meant. How was I supposed to explain something I didn’t completely understand?
His expression softened, and he brushed his thumb over my knuckles. “I know,” he murmured.
He guided me to the counter and steadied my wrist, showing me the angle. A large, claw-foot tub began to fill with steaming water, and there I was—sitting on the sink while the High Lord trusted me with a blade against his throat.
Row by row I scraped the shaving foam away. A few tiny nicks appeared, then healed almost instantly.
Next, he sat on the floor between my legs, facing away from me, and I trimmed the longer patches of his hair to match the shorter lengths. The dagger was so sharp it cut through his thick tresses like butter, but it never so much as grazed my fingers, no matter how I held it—strange, and more unsettling the more I noticed it. It would not cut me. I didn’t feel “comfortable” with it so much as… familiar in a way I couldn’t explain, like it wanted my hand and my blood knew that.
We bathed together, washing away the remaining evidence of the Temple from his skin. He soaped me gently from head to toe, reverent and careful, and I did the same for him, as if we could scrub the memory from our bodies.
After, we crawled into bed with fresh linens—someone must have come in while we were in the washroom—and he pulled me close. We talked about everything: the revolution brewing in Ashenport, my dinner with Antonias’s family, their secret identities. But I had questions of my own.
“So you and Antonias planned all of this?” I asked. “To rescue me? Did Cercies know?”
Titus’s face tightened as memories pained him. “Cercies was out of range for mind-to-mind when I tried to warn him the Holy Guards were coming for him,” he said quietly. “But I passed Antonias a cryptic, after-burn note to give him. I told him that if he got caught andcollared, I would manipulate the flame so he went first, so he could demand to leave and not fall with the Temple. I knew I could shield you, but I wouldn’t be able to save him from the flames.” His throat bobbed. “I’m sorry you had to endure as much of the ritual as you did. I had limited choices. I tried everything I could to save you both.”
“So why wait to blow everyone up until after your turn?” I asked. “Cercies could’ve left and you could’ve done it then, right?”
He exhaled, eyes heavy. “That was the plan originally, but Caddver wouldn’t take his eyes off me. I couldn’t give him any indication I was going to attack, or he would’ve set off my collar. When it was Aurelius’s turn, he finally became distracted enough for me to unleash my flames.”
He looked at me, remorseful amber eyes searching mine. “I had an impossible choice,” he admitted. “I felt you would rather go through with it with Cercies than watch him die.”
I cupped his face. “You chose right,” I whispered. “He didn’t hurt me, Titus. And now Calpurnia has her mate.”
