19
It seems I’ve shocked the Naughty Prince. He stares at me, his beautiful lips still damp.
Whatever momentary astonishment he suffered, he recovers quickly, and a cunning eagerness brightens his gaze. “May I come on you? On your skin?”
A tiny flutter between my legs tells me that I might not be entirely sated. I’m consumed by curiosity about which part of me he’ll choose—like I’m a living altar, trembling in anticipation of where he’ll place the offering.
“You may,” I tell him.
Standing at the bedside, he surveys my entire form while unbuttoning his pants. He takes out his length, and his hand travels along it with smooth, practiced strokes. He rubs his thumb lightly over the tip, glossing it with arousal, and then he continues stroking.
“This is going to be quick,” he says with a rueful laugh. “I’ve been aching all night. Keep looking at me like that, and it’ll be even faster—gods—ah—”
He takes his hand off himself, breath hissing through his teeth. His cock bounces once, but he doesn’t come yet, though his face contorts like he’s in pain. He’s trying not to release too soon.
I lift my hand, reaching for him.
“Don’t touch me, I beg.” His voice breaks. “Give me a moment.”
I withdraw my hand, laying my arm against the sheets. Vawn sets his knee on the mattress near my shoulder and touches the swell of my left breast, the part that bulges above the bandages. His fingertips travel inward, toward my breastbone.
Drawing a ragged breath, he takes himself in hand again and strokes swiftly, almost frantically. He comes in a pearly spill that pools between my breasts. Right over my heart.
I doubt he thinks of it that way. The emotional proximity probably doesn’t register in his mind at all. With him, the choice was probably as simple as, Nice tits. I want my cum on them.
I watch him coax out the last drops. He looks so pretty when he climaxes: black lashes on flushed cheeks, his chest heaving, his lips arched and parted.
I want him in my mouth. I need him back inside me, somehow.
Vawn’s eyes meet mine, and a faintly quizzical expression takes over his face. “Do you think I’m handsome?”
“What sort of question is that?”
“You never say it.”
I scoff. “Because it doesn’t need to be said. You’re well aware of your looks.”
He scrunches his nose. It’s a boyish grimace, and it turns my resolve to butter.
“Do you need me to tell you how pretty you are?” I say softly. “How you look like a god when you come?”
“A god?” He raises his eyebrows, grinning. “High praise indeed.”
“See, this is why I don’t comment on your looks. You’re already vain and obnoxious enough. Get me a cloth to wipe this mess off, and then go away. I need sleep.”
“Do you?” He tucks his dick into his pants and gives the laces a halfhearted pull.
“I thought we could stay up a little longer. Lady Kaenan gave me a kit of nail supplies, including a few different base coats and some very fine glyph paint from last year’s Guild batch.
And we still have some leftover from our second Guild sample. Maybe I could do our nails.”
“Aren’t yours still damaged?”
“I’ve been applying repair serum since we arrived. A few of them can handle a glyph. I could redo your fingernails, and I could paint your toenails, too, if you like.”
I wince. “I don’t know about that. Toe glyphs still scare me.”
Vawn chuckles, tugging one of my garter ribbons until the bow slips undone.
“I told you, I’ve got a technique. You’ll be all right.
They won’t activate unless you want them to.
” He draws the stocking down my leg until he reveals my toes.
“Look at these chubby little beauties. Just begging for some lovely magical art.”
“You seem to have done a lot of research into glyph-craft.”
“Other than sex and parties, it’s my favorite hobby.” He tweaks one of my toes gently.
“This technique of yours, for the lower glyphs—do you ever plan to share it publicly?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve been concerned how it might change things. The landscape of glyph-craft is already so imbalanced—this could make it worse.”
“Or better,” I suggest. “You could share it first with less well-known artificients. Give the knowledge to those with fewer advantages.”
“But as with everything else, it will migrate to the upper tiers and be guarded by those of the higher classes,” he counters.
“You speak as if you’re not one of them. Listen, holding onto the discoveries you’ve made won’t keep them from getting out into the world. Eventually someone else will figure out the same thing. At least this way you have some control over how the knowledge is dispersed.”
“I suppose you’re right.” He heads into the bathroom and returns with a clean cloth, which he tosses to me. “I could be persuaded to part with the designs I use to prevent accidental activation of lower glyphs. But I will not share my other secret. It’s too dangerous.”
“The secret of how you keep glyphs perpetually in effect.”
“That’s the one.”
“And you won’t tell me?” I pretend to focus on wiping his cum from my chest, but inwardly I’m rabid with curiosity.
He groans, dropping onto the other side of the bed and rolling towards me. He places a hand over my breast, a casual caress that startles me at first, but it thrills me, too. His thumb sweeps back and forth, every little stroke a lick of flame that sears right through the bandages to my skin.
“You’re killing me, sweetheart,” he murmurs.
“I’m just asking a question.”
“You’re going to hate the answer.”
“Tell me anyway.”
After a few more seconds of pondering, he says, “I kept them permanently active by incorporating a morpheme from one of the unknowable glyphs, along with a reverse stroke sequence.”
“Wait.” I turn to stare at him. “I know there are forbidden glyphs, but the unknowable ones—I thought they were mythical.”
“They’re very real. Several of them were created by an ancestor of mine on my mother’s side.
I have one of his notebooks, half full of designs, and I’ve added my own.
Those glyphs don’t appear anywhere else.
They’re symbols entirely of my own invention.
Without the foundation of his research, I couldn’t have developed them.
They took some trial and error, but when you’re an artificient, you can practice on yourself. ”
His smile is entirely mirthless, his eyes shadowed.
I’m half afraid to press him for more information, but my instincts are screaming at me to make him tell me everything.
His lower glyph set was doing something terrible to him—I just know it.
And if that’s the case, I need to convince him not to apply them again.
“A perpetual glyph has to be fueled by something,” I say quietly. “Where were you drawing the energy?”
“From my own life force, much like a healer would. The morpheme I use is a derivation of the first death glyph ever devised, which shares several elements with a standard healing glyph. Once I apply the art to the surface of the nail and activate it with my blood, the glyph continues to function as I intended, indefinitely. For every hour it’s in effect, it sucks the equivalent of an hour’s worth of my life-force. ”
“So you’re shortening your potential life span just to—what? To feel more pleasure in the present? To deaden your negative emotions and amplify the pleasant ones?
“To survive.” His eyes are icy caverns, filled with the long darkness of despair.
“I told you I nearly killed myself—not once, but many times. There’s something twisted in my brain, Syth.
Sometimes I sink so low that I feel like I’m choking on misery every fucking moment.
It’s like living in a pit of black ooze, sucking it into my lungs with every breath.
You don’t understand the horror of existing like that.
To alleviate the agony, to soothe the pain and enjoy my existence, I would gladly shorten my life.
I’d rather live briefly and colorfully than slog through a long, dark existence or suffer so much that I make a final, brutal end of it, long before my time. ”
“But how do you know when ‘your time’ is? How do you even borrow from years that don’t exist yet? How does it work?”
“I’m not sure. Something to do with the fabric of the fates, I suppose. Perhaps a more methodical student of the craft would dig into it further and find those answers—but I only know that it does work. When my perpetual glyphs are active, if I focus on them, I can feel it. The slow drain of time.”
I can barely form words because my throat is tightening and my eyes sting with impending tears. “How is the slow drain of your life better than the darkness?”
“It’s better because I feel better. I don’t sense the drain unless I bend my mind to it. Otherwise, I’m fine. I’m charming and witty and carefree.”
And dying. Dying sooner so you can enjoy your youth. But I don’t speak those words to him. They reek of judgment, and I don’t want him to shut me out, so I choose my next question carefully. “When did the darkness begin?”
“I was around twelve, I think.”
“And you told no one?”
“I mentioned it to my sister Terith. She was sympathetic, but I don’t believe she really understood.
The way I described my inner darkness seemed to scare her, and after that conversation she avoided such talks with me.
So I hid it and I endured it, until I’d had enough training with glyph-craft to experiment with solutions. ”
“You’re brilliant, you know,” I confess. “Your solution is genius. But it will end your life so much sooner. The people who love you want as much time with you as they can get.”
“The people who love me?” He vents a bitter laugh.
“There are precious few of them left. And no, I don’t count my friends from Kyr.
They like me because of my face, my money, and my willingness to try anything at least once.
They do not love me. They enjoy the version of me that’s possible because of the glyphs I’ve designed.
They wouldn’t like the real me beneath it all. ”