Chapter 52 #3
It occurred to me for the first time that perhaps Septimus felt just as vulnerable in my presence as I did in his. I’d seen his greatest desires. I’d seen him in the deepest clutches of his curse. And perhaps I had seen his greatest weaknesses, too.
I placed my hand over his. Squeezed.
And then unbuttoned.
The shirt fell open. He shrugged it off his shoulders, letting it pile on the ground alongside mine.
I let out a long, low breath between my teeth.
His body was exquisite. Like the work of a great artist. Lean lines of muscle over a torso that deserved to be immortalized in marble. An elegant form that could only be the work of a living master. It was enough to make one believe in the gods all over again.
But when I let out a wordless sound of shock, it wasn’t because of his beauty. It was because of what covered it.
Lines of white ink that gleamed like silver covered his chest, swirling over his pectorals and then running down the ridges of his abdomen.
The mark was raised slightly, inflammation along each stroke, like scar tissue.
And indeed, I wondered if perhaps that was exactly what it was.
The strokes formed large swirls that arced across his muscles, all running together as they reached his stomach, like branches to a tree trunk.
And at the end of each swirl, something was embedded into his flesh—each a different color, though all very, very tiny, perhaps a quarter of the size of my little fingernail.
I ran my fingers over one—ivory, perhaps?
Another was a spot of dark red, smooth and cleanly shaped, delicate as a flower petal.
My touch trailed over his chest, to the next branch, his skin twitching with each stroke.
This one was ink, in a teardrop shape, which glimmered a rainbow of colors like embedded opal.
It made the hairs rise at the back of my neck, a shiver over my flesh. Like when I had touched Zefiah for the first time, as if confronting something beyond the mortal realm.
“What is this?” I whispered.
“I’ve spent a long time collecting weapons against the gods,” he said. “I never intended to wield them myself. But over time, I realized I needed a contingency plan.”
A shiver ran up my spine. I had heard stories of what had happened to people who attempted to wield divine power beyond their capabilities. It stripped away their mortality, and usually, their minds.
“How?” I managed.
“Carefully. Over a very long period of time. We handed others the rope they needed to hang themselves, and I learned from their mistakes; recorded every instance, to make sure I never gave myself enough to loop around my throat.” His hand covered mine, moving my fingers across his chest. First, to the ivory. “A fragment of Alarus’s teeth.”
My brows lurched. “Teeth?”
“Morbid, isn’t it?”
Then he pointed to the spot of red-black. “A piece of a petal once gifted from Alarus to Nyaxia.”
To the drop of rainbow shimmer. “A drop of the blood of Alarus.”
To the little shard of gold. “A piece of the arrow used to kill Atroxus.”
I choked a laugh. “Gods above, Septimus. Is this what passes for a hobby in the House of Blood?”
But my voice was hollow. I didn’t even know it was possible for a person to do this—to embed pieces of the gods into their very body, even at such a minute level. The cost must have been extreme.
“I’ve only had one hobby for the last couple of decades,” Septimus said wryly. “Makes me very dull at parties.”
“I can imagine. Just sidling up to beautiful ladies, describing your techniques for embedding god teeth into your skin.”
“To be fair, Bloodborn women love teeth.”
But Septimus’s smile faded as my eyes traveled back to his. He stroked my cheek.
“I told you I’ve been preparing for this for a very long time,” he said.
“I will never be a chosen hero. I’ll never wield a sword capable of killing Nyaxia.
But I thought to myself, ten years ago—if I’m going to become a mindless weapon anyway, I’d ensure that I became the most effective one I possibly could. ”
So many things now made sense. The way he’d managed to hold the spear and the harp and the bow.
He’d managed to stall Nyaxia, however briefly.
At that thought, I paled. Nyaxia. She wouldn’t take kindly to this, to her husband’s remains being used to betray her.
“Does she know?” I said.
Septimus paused before answering—as if he’d asked himself the question before.
“I don’t think so. If she did, she would have made it known by now.
I have seen firsthand the consequences of wielding these items, and I was careful to use only trace amounts.
The stench of my curse is likely all any god, even Nyaxia, smells when they look at me.
And then, there’s the smoke. Another shield. ”
Not only blessed medicine, but also a way of hiding the effects of the tiny pieces of divinity he’d used to enhance himself. Clever.
“But I suspect,” he said, “that won’t help me anymore. I’m very fortunate that she was so distracted when we made our attempt. And in the days since, too busy exacting her punishment to smell the traces of her husband on me. I suspect we won’t be so lucky, in our next attempt.”
My heart clenched.
I understood with fresh clarity Septimus’s certainty that he would not survive this battle. And instead of pulling away from his ugly truth, I stared it right in the face. Let myself feel all of it.
“They’re quite ugly,” Septimus said. “I know.”
I shook my head. My fingers traced the whorls of metallic white.
“I don’t know,” I said casually. “Looks like the kind of marks a hero might have, to me.”
He let out a soft laugh. With a gentle hand, he tilted my head up.
“Monsters recognize monsters, I suppose,” he murmured, his other hand tracing the scar the real Vindica Ultis had left on my shoulder, and then he lowered his mouth to mine.
This kiss was slower, more patient. I ran my hands over his bare skin, relishing each expanse of bone, skin, muscle.
He did the same to me—the two of us memorizing each other, in an unspoken understanding.
In our desperation, we sank to the ground together, both of us uninterested in moving to the bed.
And as Septimus laid me down on the fur rug, I let him see all of me, and I wasn’t even afraid.
His mouth tasted each of my scars, and he kissed the mark left on my worst night, the night I damned him, as he gently coaxed my thighs open and pushed home.
Home.
As he filled me, as my limbs wound around him and I moaned his name against his skin, that word lingered in my head. A completeness, a fullness, that I had never felt before in my life—not during sex, and not ever.
We took our time with each other, sharing breath as we coaxed each other through each stroke.
First with his weight atop me, and then rolling, our stride never breaking, so I was on top of him.
And I kissed him, and kissed him, not holding back any gasp of pleasure or moan or plea.
As he held me and ground against each thrust, urging me with his groans of my name, drinking down every one of my moans of pleasure.
Begging, desperately, “More, Kyrene.” More of my pleasure.
More of my gasps. More of the garbled whimpers I poured into his kisses, his bare flesh.
And in the final moments, when my gasps were so serrated I could barely breathe at all, when I could no longer form my cries of yes, gods, Septimus, yes, when together we stood at the precipice of the end, he held my face and pulled away just enough to look at me, crimson eyes dismantling me piece by piece.
“You’ve won, lyri,” he ground out. “If I’m your mark, you’ve taken me long ago.”
And then he pulled me tight against him, and drove into me one final time, and our climax drowned us in each other.
I held him as we wrung out each shuddering aftershock—seemingly endless, over and over, like waves crashing upon the beach.
I fell against his chest. I became aware of his hand rubbing my back, up and down, up and down. My heart was still beating fast. When the pleasure faded away, I was not prepared for what was left behind. Parts of me that had never been exposed to anyone, ever.
Septimus withdrew from me, repositioning so that I was nestled against his chest. When his eyes slipped to me, his face shifted. A thumb stroked my cheek, capturing a streak of salt.
He didn’t ask me, Why are you crying?
Perhaps he understood that I wouldn’t have been able to answer. Perhaps he didn’t have to ask at all to know.
Maybe they were tears of anger, because of what we were forced to do.
Maybe they were tears of fear, because of tomorrow’s terrible possibilities.
Maybe they were tears of regret, because I had finally found truth, vulnerability, but I had found it too late to offer it to those who had deserved it from me.
And maybe they were tears of bittersweet grief, because I had never felt this way in my entire life, and I likely never would again.
Maybe all of it at once.
Septimus’s face softened. His lips brushed my cheek.
“I know,” he murmured. “I know.”