Iriset grins around Singix’s nipple and moves down farther, mouth tracing the center of her stomach to her navel. Singix is shaking.
Leaning away, Iriset detangles the princess’s hands from her hair. “Sit on the edge of the tub,” she instructs, and Singix does it instantly, like her knees stopped working. “Hold on,” Iriset says, putting Singix’s hands to the rim next to her hips.
Then Iriset kneels down and pushes Singix’s legs apart.
“Oh Leq’ina,” Singix curses—the name of the Ceres demon of obedience, Iriset recognizes with a little laugh. But her attention is on Singix’s thighs, the pale skin, and the dark hair curling lower than Iriset would have guessed, growing from the nest around her labia down the insides of her thighs like rain. Iriset puts her face to it, on the left, and breathes deeply. Singix whispers her name, and Iriset noses at the soft skin, smelling so much of the lovely bathwater and a sweet musky smell of arousal. It’s nothing like Bittor’s smell, and despite all Iriset’s big talk, she’s never been with anyone with a feminine-forward design before. Everything she learned about such bodies she learned on her own.
Iriset is almost dizzy with how excited she is.
Kissing her way toward the center, she holds Singix’s legs open. Glancing up once, she sees Singix watching her in a daze, mouth open, panting lightly.
Iriset slides her hands up the princess’s thighs and when her fingers brush the outer lips, Singix jerks—but forward, nearlyslipping off the edge of the bath. “S-sorry,” Singix gasps, and lets her head fall back again. The tips of her long black hair fall into the bathwater. Iriset takes it for the permission it is, and parts the labia with her fingers, staring at the inner layers, vivid pink and slick looking. She leans in and presses her mouth to the folds, and Singix moans.
Iriset kisses Singix for all she’s worth, licking and sucking, and only avoids the hot hole, though she longs to dip her tongue inside, reach in with a finger or two, stroke the soft inner walls. She keeps her hands on Singix’s thighs to avoid the temptation, and when she sucks lightly on Singix’s clitoris, the princess squeaks again and again, turning the little desperate noises into a chant.
Oh Holy Silence, Iriset is so hot, so aching. It tastes wonderful.
“Iriset, Iriset, I…” The princess lifts her bottom off the tub’s edge and pushes onto Iriset’s face. Iriset lifts one of her legs, shoving her shoulder under Singix’s knee so the princess has a little leverage to fall apart.
When Singix comes, she does so very quietly, bending over Iriset’s head, hugging her, breathing in long, shaking sighs. Iriset holds her, licking her own lips, and tugs Singix to sink forward onto her lap, straddling her. Iriset holds her tight. As Singix melts on her, Iriset lets go with one arm and slips her hand between their bellies. She doesn’t expect to need more than a few strokes, to be honest.
She shifts just enough to make a little gap between her legs and gets her finger between her own folds, finding herself hot and rather disastrously wet. Smiling against Singix’s neck, she easily presses, only shifting her wrist a little. She slides her first two fingers inside, glad to be free to penetrate herself, she thinkswith a private laugh. But Singix blinks at her, then bends away to look down. “Oh,” she says, and touches the shallow folds of Iriset’s bowed belly. “Can… can I?”
“Please,” Iriset begs, and laughs breathily for real at the speed with which Singix slides her fingers down. Then Iriset groans and moves. Singix is using all her fingers, and Iriset doesn’t let her explore and tease, not anymore. “There, like that, long and hard,” she says, and Singix obeys. It’s barely any time at all before Iriset comes with a low moan that’s part lust, part relief.
She nearly ruins the post-orgasm pleasure for herself by thinking how glad she is to have tasted Singix before the Vertex Seal gets to.
Once they have cleaned a little—convenient to have the baths right there—and dried off and wrapped up in dressing gowns, they rejoin the Moon-Eater’s Mistress and Sidoné in the sitting room. Singix holds Iriset’s hand, bashfully, and only nods sleepily when Amaranth demands that Iriset keep her promise to tell them all about fucking a man.
Curled upon pillows and blankets together, and drinking a golden wine that tastes creamy and crisp, the four women discuss sex. Or rather, Iriset and Amaranth and Sidoné do, while Singix listens with her head on Iriset’s shoulder, sipping wine and absorbing. Iriset hopes she can stay in the princess’s bed tonight. (And she also hopes she is not allowed, or she may fall a little bit more in love with this Ceres beauty.)
It is no hardship for Iriset to describe Bittor, and their first few encounters, their laughter and vicious arguments, what he tastes like and what Iriset enjoyed and did not. Amaranthcompares it slyly to women, confessing without confessing that she has been with girls before, very physically, and she speaks quietly of the Moon-Eater’s power, the tentative explorations of his presence she had to discover on her own, for the previous Mistress taught her that was the best way to own the god a little bit. Sidoné admits that when she was fourteen, she and Garnet considered each other, for how convenient it would be to love each other that way, when they served so closely. Garnet liked kissing and touching her well enough, she says, but Sidoné had not, and they’d broken no customs of Silence.
They laugh at Iriset as she admits to growing aroused all over again, and Singix cuddles her closer, but only smiles a secret little smile and kisses Iriset’s fingers.
It’s a wonderful night. Iriset will hold it close in her memory for years, a single night of friendship, where she and Amaranth dance around forbidden topics, Sidoné treats her as an equal, and Singix clings to her with a growing happiness and comfort that plants itself in Iriset until she feels deeply assured they’ll always be friends, even if Iriset must beg Singix to send her to the Ceres islands as a traitor. For several moments, Iriset feels like both herself and Silk, beloved together.
Sometime near the peak of darkness, when the moon is half eclipsed by the world’s own shadow, Singix wanders to the low table covered with gift boxes and treats. She plucks a narrow plate of tiny caramels striped candy-green and shaped like succulents. Ceres letters of virtue are painted atop them in perfect gold.
Amaranth and Sidoné are arguing in intricate circles around the gossip that two princes of the mirané council are lovers. The women lounge together, eyes half lidded, laughing and shoving each other gently. Iriset nests in a vivid blue silk blanket andstudies it with the careful caution of tipsiness, wishing for a stylus to test the stitches for design.
She hears Singix catch her breath, but distantly assumes it must be pleasure at the candies. Then there’s a whisper of silk and a heavy bump.
Spinning, Iriset sees Singix sprawled on the floor. Iriset stumbles up, trapped in her blanket, and falls hard on her knees, hands against Singix’s perfect cheek. She touches her lips, her neck—there’s no design pulse. Ecstatic force pops and bursts inside Iriset, and she tries to touch Singix’s flow, or anything. But there’s nothing.
Nothing.
Iriset has no stylus nor glove, no tools to press into Singix’s body and find the snapped threads of design. “I need—I need a stylus! I need to help her.”
“She’s already dead,” Sidoné says, crouching. She pushes open Singix’s mouth. Traces of candy stain her tongue. “Get the Seal guard outside.”
Amaranth says softly, “No. Wait.”
“Ama,” Sidoné begins, but the Moon-Eater’s Mistress shakes her head no. She stands like a voluptuous pillar, staring down at the dead foreign princess.
Iriset trembles, desperately holding back a wail of grief—not this, not Singix, not now, tonight. Her princess can’t be dead. Iriset folds her hands flat together, struggling to contain her ecstatic panic, struggling for a falling force of calm. She breathes through her mouth, her tongue atingle with design, with the arguing energy of the room.
It was so fast. Singix was only just smiling, only just riding her face! Only just grasping her hair, warm and alive with flow and hope.
