Chapter Twenty-Nine
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Olline awoke naked and aching in the best way. At some point, in the delirium of the late night—or was it the early morning?—Casimir had woken her with a trail of wet kisses down the back of her neck, teasing her earlobe, until she had draped a leg over his hip, allowing him to slip inside her again. They had made love, slow and sleepy, their climax leisurely to arrive but still a torrent of warmth and shuddering ecstasy. They’d fallen asleep again, him buried deep within her, neither wanting to move and lose that connection.
Until now. When Olline woke up alone.
She groped in the tangled sheets, searching for Casimir’s warm, firm body. Finding nothing, she opened her eyes a fraction, hoping beyond hope she would see him and be able to fall back asleep. Because that was the rule. If you didn’t fully open your eyes, you didn’t fully wake up. Seeing no familiar alabaster body, her eyes shot open and Olline’s heart ticked up a beat. Sitting upright, she looked around, her chest heavy as her breaths came quicker. Did he leave? Perhaps he slipped away to get his things, or he was simply out of sight.
Olline tossed the sheets aside and practically jumped out of bed. She didn’t bother putting on clothes as she raced through her apartment. Immediately, her thoughts went to Etzel, which is not who she wanted to think about ever again. How, in their immediate relief and passion, she had once again not used her power to disable Casimir’s chip permanently. Panic stabbed at her chest, thinking that Etzel had found a way to turn the chip back on, to command Casimir away, to enslave him yet again.
She tore into the kitchen, eyes wide, breathing frantic, when she found an honest to goodness note on the counter:
“Only for you am I a morning person. Gone to get you that real coffee you love so much. I didn’t want to risk breaking your ancient machine.”
Olline read the note at least three times, breathing deeply throughout. She had to, to be certain it was real, that she wasn’t still dreaming, that everything was fine. Trust Casimir to be so old-fashioned, and dare she say, romantic. Who took the time to actually put ink-based writing devices to archaic and fragile paper? Olline briefly clutched the note to her, then gently folded it and tucked it away somewhere safe. Maybe in years to come the sentiment would be meaningless, common even, but for now, she wanted to keep the note somewhere safe to revisit if she needed to. Tucking the note away, she suddenly remembered all the windows in her apartment, and that she was still very, very naked.
Olline took her time getting dressed, taming her hair from the unruly aftermath of last night. Then cleaned up the apartment. The coffee kiosk Casimir was going to was deep in the city, which meant Olline had time.
After throwing their clothes into the laundry chute, she curled up on the floor and pulled out one of her holo-tablets. In theory, she knew how to disable Casimir’s control chip. Based on the schematics she had from his file, it was the best she could do without surgery. In practice, though, Olline had no clue what to do.
She had never tinkered with a cybernetic biomagitech device before, let alone one still embedded within a person. This would not be like using her magic to rip out her own piercings for defense. Casimir should go to a hospital where a trained water caster physician could disable the device while also monitoring his vitals. But given who Casimir was, and what Etzel was capable of, even when Delora got the files and brought every lawsuit in Antal against Etzel, Olline didn’t think it would be safe for Casimir to go to a specialist in a hospital or magitech facility. Etzel’s claws were dug in deep anywhere biomagitech was concerned. Until they took him down, they couldn’t trust that someone working at a cybernetic facility or a specialist in a hospital wouldn’t tip him off, or worse, be a thrall activated to apprehend Casimir. Olline could always reach out to Lochan and see if someone within the Hayashi Corporation he worked for could handle a device like Casimir’s, but securing safe travel out of Antal to Cyneburg with no one in the Government Plaza knowing would take too much time.
Olline hunched over the holo-tablet. The collar of her slouchy jacket finding its way into her mouth and she idly chewed, her eyes fixated on the schematics. She murmured to herself as she tried to work out the logistics of the device, and what she could finagle the pieces to do with her power based on several assumptions, when there was a knock at her door.
Rising to her feet, Olline was already smiling on her way to the entryway, the phantom smell of her coffee already teasing her even before she had the warm cup in her hands. Disengaging the locks, she made a mental note to get a key-fob made for Casimir so he could leave her poor doorman alone. As soon as she swung the door open, her smile faded.
“What—” was all she said before everything went blacker than the void.