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She knocks on Caleb’s door hesitantly. He’s living in Rexxentrum, these days, finally moved out of his shitty flat courtesy of the Soltryce Academy’s visiting lecturer stipend and into a real house. He’s even got a garden out back, vines twining their hopeful ways up stakes and putting out overly ambitious leaves. There are a pair of dishes on the step, and half a dozen neighborhood cats with shining coats and lazy affects pretend she does not exist as she walks through their kingdom. When she’d asked why it took so long for him to find a place, years to crack into the hoards of gold the Nein managed to bring together with their adventuring and call somewhere home, Caleb had shrugged. “I had the tower,” he reminded her. Then, a while later, “It needed to feel like home, and nothing like it at all.”
She’s still never been to Blumenthal, but the outside of the house is a warm tan plaster with oaken beams bracing its narrow three-story structure, and the roof is shingled in slate. Only the Starosta’s house looked like that, back in Felderwin—she guesses Blumenthal was pretty much the same, and Caleb didn’t grow up rich. It fits in here with all the row houses in Rexxentrum, right on the border of the Mosaic and Shimmer Wards. She’s grown to know it, of course, spent long hours in the study and at the table with him. With all their friends, when they can make it.
But if it weren’t for the cats, from the outside, it could be anyone’s home at all.
The door creaks open slowly, and Caleb is behind it. He’s wearing a pair of reading spectacles, wire frames perched precariously on his prominent nose, and he blinks owlishly behind them. “Veth,” he says, more than a little surprised. “What are you doing here? I was not expecting you. Come in, come in, I will put on tea.” He swings the door open further, and turns to walk back towards the small kitchen. There’s a hole in his housecoat, right by the elbow, and in the last year his hair has given up the ghost and swiftly started turning grey.
Veth follows him inside, leaves her boots by the door. Caleb’s got a pair of slippers in just her size, a bright yellow with dark-green carved buttons sewn on the top of them. She slides her feet into them, and it hurts, the simple routine, how easy this all could have been. Her, tagging along, taking a seat at the counter while Caleb curses under his breath at his teakettle before sending a small flame to dance cheerily beneath the pot.
“So,” he says, leaning against the counter next to her. “What brings you here tonight?”
“I missed you,” she replies, and it scratches its way up through her throat, grasping and desperate, an awful confession.
Caleb’s breath catches, and before she can say anything else he wraps her up in his arms. “I miss you too,” he says, voice muffled, face pressed against the crown of her head and his speech halfway lost in her hair. His arms are skinny, still, none of the meager weight he’s gained in the last few years making its way to bicep muscle, but they’re long enough to encircle her, to hold her to his chest so she can feel the faint warmth through his housecoat, the beat of his heart. She could stay like this forever, she thinks, and when she reaches out to hold him back she has to close her eyes, hide them in his coat, because otherwise they might fill with tears.
The kettle whistles, and Veth locks her arms around him a little harder before he taps her gently on the shoulder and pulls away. He shuffles over, pulls down a pair of uneven mugs from a cabinet. “What do you want?” he asks.
“A drink.”
It sneaks out before she has time to stop it.
Caleb wavers, looks back at her. It’s the same look as they used to share, back when she got shaky all the time, when she was getting ready to pick a lock or run a scam, begging him for their last few coppers to dull the nerve-wracking fear. Not quite a promise, but not shutting her down. Ready to beg, borrow, or steal vodka for her, if it’s really what she needs. He takes off his glasses and folds them onto the counter. “Do you?”
“No,” she lies, because she’s Veth, who might like a glass of champagne after dinner, and who can’t resist a mimosa, but doesn’t down whiskey like a lifeline. Even if she wants it. That need stayed behind, seeped out through her pores into the clay. Not in her new, old body, even if it’s still always in her mind, and she has to steel herself every day against a bone-deep want that she can’t cut out of her memory. “No, I’m—something herbal, maybe.”
He busies himself, humming a low tune under his breath, some folk song she’s never learned, and brings back two cups that smell strongly of lavender and mint.
She wraps her hands around the mug, simple earthenware glazed blue and orange as the sun setting over a Nicodranas sea. Caleb lifts his own drink, sets it down without bringing it to his mouth. He’s trying to act relaxed, she knows, standing across the counter, letting his eyes wander vaguely over the kitchen and not rest on her, tapping his fingers on the handle of the mug, drumming out a nervous rhythm. “So,” he ventures. “Missing… adventure? I am certain Beauregard has work for us, if you need. I can take a few days away to join you. It has been a while since I have assisted the Soul with anything but paperwork, but there is always something she could find. Probably something dangerous or embarrassing.”
It sounds good, is the thing. Going on some vague mission with Caleb, sneaking into danger, fighting by his side and sleeping under the dome when he’s burnt all the spells he has left. She could do that, Veth knows. She could push away the feeling, go out and risk her life, just to feel her heart hammer in her chest until there’s no space for anything but fear and adrenaline. But she’s tried that, year after year. It’s a salve, not a remedy. Veth shakes her head. “No. Just missing you.”
He goes eerily still. “Veth,” he says, just her name, tense and odd.
She sets down the mug. It’s not strong enough, herbed damn water that tastes like a garden. No draught to brace her courage or dull the guilt racing through her mind. Veth pushes it to the side, so there’s nothing between her and Caleb.
Then she leans forward, across the counter, and kisses him.
The last time they kissed, she had sharp, awful points for teeth, lodged between cracked lips, and Nott had held back for fear of hurting him. One last trick, she’d promised herself, one stolen moment between them before she could go home, before she’d leave it all behind for Luc, and Yeza, and the life she’d been trying so hard to go back to.
Now, her lips are soft, perfectly sculpted by Caleb’s hands and magic into a shape she can call her own, and Veth isn’t his at all. His mouth is slack, almost still with shock, but it slots perfectly against hers until Veth has to stop for breath. She cups his sharp jaw with her hand, pulls back enough to see his face.
Caleb’s staring at her, the slim bow of his mouth barely parted. He’s stunned, as unmoving as if he’s been entombed in clay.
Maybe she’s read him wrong; maybe Caleb never wanted her at all, and Veth’s a fool, ruining her life for something she can never have.
Then he surges forward, past her hand on his face, and Veth’s nearly knocked off her stool before Caleb’s lanky arm is between her shoulderblades, pressing her forward and her mouth against his, his tongue forcing its way past her lips with the ferocity of a man deprived. He hasn’t drunk a sip of tea. He tastes faintly of grain, of charred oak and ash, intoxicating as strong whiskey, the heat spreading through her body fast and strong as the burn of pure alcohol, flushing her cheeks and making her brave. Veth fists her hands in his hair, tears handfuls of it loose from his low ponytail, finding something to cling onto before she’s swept away.
“Veth,” Caleb breathes into her mouth, into the shared air between them, and he’s coming around the counter, her fingers sliding through the rough waves of his hair, catching in knots, trying not to lose touch even for a moment. He buries his teeth at her neck, sucking a dark spot over her racing pulse. “Veth,” like he can think of nothing else, kissing her as though he can’t stop.
He reaches around her, grabbing her ass, long, broad hands digging in through her leggings, and then Caleb’s lifting her off the stool. It clatters to the ground. She clings to him, wraps her legs around his narrow hips so Caleb can hold her up with his shaking arms. They stagger to a long, low couch, rust-red and overstuffed, and he drops her unceremoniously and follows her down. She tears his hair loose from its failing tie. It falls, bright copper and gray, over her, curtains out the world until all she’s worried about is stealing Caleb’s breath, sharing what’s in their lungs until they’re oxygen-starved, panting for more.
His arm is a bar on the side of her, holding her close, and this is what she’s been wanting for years, desperately, dreaming her skinny claws could reach for the laces of his shirt, feel his lungs heave beneath his ribs for her. He pulls her back in, one clever finger through her button necklace, tugging her up, her face seeking his like the sun.
She can’t get away, and she’s never wanted to less. She’s meant to be here, Caleb braced over her, nothing in the world besides them.
Then Caleb pulls back, mouth wet and pink, and says, breathy and panting, “Luc.”
She’s fumbling with the tie of his housecoat, trying to find the end of the knot that’ll make him come loose. “What?” Then it hits. “What?”
Her son’s name, in his swollen mouth, her thigh against the hard length of him. He goes stiff, eyes fixed above her, far away, the same glassiness she saw in his eyes when he first used his fire, his mind locked away.
“Caleb,” she soothes, and reaches out for him.
His hand snaps up and catches hers before it can touch his face. He’s back, his eyes round and fearful. “Your son,” he says, accusatory, like she’s somehow forgotten.
Veth doesn’t care. She’s here because she can’t stand it, can’t stand the quaint little house in Nicodranas with its thick-piled rugs and the alchemy lab in the basement, the way the sea air doesn’t do a damn thing to make it feel less like being trapped back in Felderwin. “He’s not here,” she snaps, and pries her hand free. Caleb lets her go, almost surprised at the way she breaks free from his grip.
“I am not going to ruin your life,” Caleb begs. “I cannot—Veth, I will not destroy your family.” He looks sick.
“Then I will,” she threatens, and her gut’s roiling the second the words leave her mouth, thinking of Yeza, laying tired and warm and pliant beside her last night, just like every night, stroking clever hands over her skin and looking at her with simple, uncomplicated love.
Caleb stares at her, mind turning over thousands of thoughts in a second, but he doesn’t pull away when Veth leans her body up and presses her lips to his.
She keeps her mouth on his until her lungs hurt, until she’s drowning in him. “I’m going crazy there.” It spills out of her, acidic and wrenching as vomiting up poison, as when she used to drink until her body could bear it no longer. “I’m going to—to do something horrible, to blow up the Open Quay or rob a jewelry shop, or—” It’s not even that simple, the awful urge in her chest, iron bands bound tighter and tighter until she’s gasping for shallow sips of breath. “I need you, Caleb.”
He’s still uneasy above her, shifting his weight awkwardly, the same look as earlier tonight. Ready to give her whatever she wants to keep her even-keeled and steady, no matter the cost, ready to let her rush ahead and pull them all into danger, ready to slip her a strong drink to keep her at his side. She doesn’t want liquor. He swallows. His adam’s apple bobs, prominent and sharp in his throat, and she wants to sink her teeth into it. “Okay,” he says, weighty and soft as wedding vows. “Okay.”
She should tell him, not if you don’t want. She should walk out the door and go home like the married woman she is, the wife and mother she’s starving herself to be. She should be good. She’s not—she hasn’t been, not since the first day she woke up with yellow eyes and a hollow stomach, the only parts of her left her claws and desire. She doesn’t.
Caleb leans down over her and kisses her. He’s delicate, careful, only the faintest taste of desire seeping through his barely-parted lips. “We should go upstairs,” he says. “Anyone could—”
He stops himself before the end of the sentence. She knows it. Everyone in the Nein is keyed into the alarm wards of his home, can walk through the house like it’s their own. He’s complained to her enough about Beau’s timing, always walking in when he’s in the middle of something delicate. Anyone could find them out, could swing open the door and find Caleb, bent over her, conspirators in one more cheat.
She wants it.
Then the guilt hits. It twists in her gut, heavy and cold as a stone, ready to weigh her down to the bottom of the sea, stealing the fiery heat from her face, her hands, her cunt. She can’t help but think of Yeza, last night, brushing a lock of her hair out of her face, love in his eyes and his soft touches. She can’t hurt him with this. “Sure,” she agrees. “Yeah. Let’s go upstairs.”
Caleb doesn’t get up at once. He stares at her, still, taking in her round face, blushed ruddy; her chest, heaving beneath her button necklace; the turquoise of her tattoos, unfolding careful as calligraphy over her face. He traces one of the lines with his thumb, light as a feather over her cheek, outwards to the shell of her ear.
She shudders, pins and needles through every inch of her. They don’t move anymore, not the way they used to, but her ears are still sensitive, her body trying in vain to twitch muscles not made to shift.
He watches her with his wizard’s eyes, fixed on his experiments for the slightest sign of a reaction, nearly obsessive in his focus. They could stay here, like this, forever; until someone discovers them, the same thrilling edge of fear as picking a lock with a Crownsguard coming around the corner, making her heart race and her chest tight.
Someone could catch them, and she’d be ruined.
Veth puts a hand in the center of his chest, and Caleb staggers to his feet, offers her a hand. She takes it. His palm’s big enough that her whole hand fits into it, her fingers stretched as wide as they can go as she laces her hand with his and follows him up the carved wooden stairs, the risers a full inch taller than her house in Felderwin, in Nicodranas. These are made for someone larger than her, someone tall. She leaps them as if she’s flying, like she’s meant for this and nothing else.
They pass the door of the library, the study and its attached laboratory, hold hands all the way down the hall. Caleb swings open the last door and steps through, and Veth realizes: she’s never been in his bedroom before, not here. It’s simple but busy, a suncatcher from Caduceus spinning pink and blue in one corner, casting what glow it can in the Rexxentrum evening over tall shelves crowded with books. There is a desk covered in papers a foot high, an unmade bed with an embroidered coverlet crumpled at its foot.
He’s lived here for three years, and Veth’s never been in his bedroom, when she used to sleep on his chest every night to listen to him breathe.
He gestures her in, a little sheepish at the mess, but it’s all his, less perfect than the tower but more real.
She jumps up onto the bed, bounces twice on it; it creaks obligingly, the heavy four-poster frame holding the mattress steady. Caleb’s standing in the corner of his own bedroom, flushed beneath his freckles on his face, bright pink spreading down to his chest. “Come here,” Veth says, and immediately feels ridiculous giving him the order.
He doesn’t seem to think so; he falls to his knees and crawls to the side of the bed, wraps his arms around her thighs and stares hungrily up at her, his head nearly in her lap.
Yeza looks at her with appreciation, like he’s lucky to have her. Caleb looks at her like she’s something he can never have, some statue made impossibly flesh, as if he should be venerating her, praying over every curve. He rubs his hand over the outside of her thigh, over the cloth of her leggings, and if he’s not going to take action she damn well will.
Veth shoves the shoulders of his housecoat down, and it falls loose around his wrists and legs, the tie already undone. He’s just in a linen shirt and soft trousers that do nothing to hide the outline of his cock, a damp patch already starting to form at its head. “Off,” she orders him, and Caleb almost tears his shirt trying to get out of it.
She unbuttons the top of her dress, baring her skin, and as her fingers go past the curve of her breasts she hesitates.
It’s a stupid insecurity. Caleb’s seen her body before. He was the one who formed most of it, the one who cast the spell to bring her home, his big hands carefully sculpting her hips, her neck, her stomach. She’s not fooling him, but—it’s something she’s only ever fantasized about, hands roving downwards while Yeza’s away taking Luc to the seaside, and some part of her is still afraid he doesn’t want the reality of her.
Caleb whines from where he is on the floor, waiting completely naked, skinny and freckled and irresistible, and a button goes scattering and hides under his wardrobe as she tears her dress the rest of the way off, careless of the fastening.
He comes up, high on his knees, reaches out his long arms to her back and without looking unfastens her bra and slides it off her body. Her tits flop down, heavy and round, and Caleb brings a tentative hand around to cup one; even with his long human fingers, his hand is not quite large enough to hold her, the soft flesh spilling around his fingers. His hand skims across her nipple, the barely-rough skin of his palm, and Veth breathes in reflexively with the sensation, sharp and shuddering.
Something in him breaks, some restraint finally snapping, and Caleb grabs both of her tits and kneads. “It’s been so long,” he says hoarsely, madly, “since I let myself want you.”
He says it like it’s a given, a desire he’s banked like the coals of a campfire and left to die, as though he’s been holding it down by the neck until it stops struggling and goes still under his hands. As though he’s been in love with her for years.
“I never stopped,” Veth confesses, the worst thing she’s said all night. Whatever it is in him, the ability to kill the need before it takes him over and makes him monstrous, it’s broken free in her. She’s just a monster, beneath her pretty brown skin and her flat nails, her smooth black hair instead of ragged green. She can’t force herself to stop wanting, to walk away from an addiction sweet as honey bourbon on her tongue, clear amber heady and intoxicating. She wants it like liquid courage surging through her veins, making her strong enough to stand against the whole damn world, goblin or no. Like she doesn’t feel Yeza’s hands on her face, some nights, and wish his fingers were long and crooked with freckles half-covered by his scars.
Those hands are on her now, drawing circles on the dark flesh of her nipples. Veth moans, and Caleb catches it in his mouth, transmutes it from noise to sheer desire. “Veth,” he breathes into their kiss, sending her own name back into her mouth. He runs a hand down her stomach, following the downy trail of hair she wasn’t bold enough to shave, the heavy curve of her gut a guide for his seeking fingertips.
The shame doesn’t have time to settle in, not when her whole body’s hot and sparking under his touch. He slips off her underwear and tosses them carelessly to the floor, buries his face in between her breasts and runs two long fingers all too gently along the wetness of her cunt. Her hips try to bear down, to find friction, but the bed’s maddeningly soft, not enough to give her what she needs, just pressing his hand deeper into the mattress until he takes it away.
Caleb exhales against her skin in a soundless laugh of disbelief. “You are impatient,” he says, and the roughness of his voice gives lie to the didactic rhythm of his words.
She’s halfway through planning her cutting retort when he takes one of her nipples into his mouth and rolls it against his teeth. She moans at the heat of his mouth, the way his lips tug into a smile against her flesh. He flicks his thumb over the other side, clever fingers working at the hard, sensitive nipple, drags a nail over her nerves to feel her flinch into the touch.
“I should have known,” she pants, “you were so upset when I said Beau should shape them, all those years ago. You were jealous.”
“Not of Beauregard,” Caleb says, mouth still against her skin, the vibrations of his voice passing through the softness of her stomach, resonating in her ribs.
She doesn’t want to think about that. She doesn’t want to think of time wasted, about who he’s remembering. She can’t think about him, or she won’t be able to have this. Veth fists her hands in his hair. “Have fun, then. All yours.”
He bites her tit.
It sends a heady pain rushing through her whole body, and Veth yelps, jumps a little against him at the sensation. He nips at her again, softer, still enough to hurt, enough to drive her out of her head.
The mark's going to go dark and purple against her skin. Veth’s going to have to hide it.
Caleb reaches down and uses his big, clever hands on her clit. His calluses drag against her, rough enough she can feel the friction despite her wetness. Veth tries to watch him, tries to keep her eyes on him, but he doesn’t let up. The heat coils through her body, something about to snap, and Veth’s thighs cramp and twitch as she comes.
He stays right where he is, fingers on her clit, gone still and careful as he watches her fall apart against his hand.
The overwhelming feeling fades, the shaking subsiding.
“You could eat me out,” she suggests. He’s definitely staring at her cunt like he wants to, at the place where his pale fingers press against her brown skin.
Caleb swallows. “I think,” he says, tongue thick, accent heavy, “that if I do that, I will come right here.”
That’s hot: it makes her shudder, a pleasant aftershock. She could tell him to do it, right now, watch him come undone. But she wants him in her. She’s not going to wait any longer.
“Next time,” he promises.
He says it easily, but it sends a coldness through her gut. If there’s a next time, if this isn’t just one bad decision breaking through who she’s supposed to be—then it’s who she is. Having an affair with the man she loves, behind the back of the man she loves, because she’s too greedy to act right and too cowardly to tell him the truth.
Then Caleb lifts his hand. She’s bereft, suddenly, cold air where his warm flesh was a moment ago, and Veth keens at the loss. He brings his hand up to his mouth and licks it. His lips are flushed red, his deft tongue sucking every finger clean, lingering on the pad of his index finger to taste her.
“Because you’re desperate to fuck me right now?”
“I could not want anything more,” he says hoarsely. He grabs one wrist in each hand, pushes her down flat under the arc of his body. She lifts her head to kiss him, licks her tongue inside his mouth, relishes the bluntness of their teeth. A silver thread stretches between their lips when she breaks the kiss for breath: a years-old Alarm, finally tripped.
She wriggles, tries to get her hands free. He freezes, nearly lets her go the moment she struggles. Then he redoubles his grip, holds her tight, staring into her eyes.
“You are beautiful.” He’s violently sincere, like he always is, and Veth has to look away, to squirm and struggle beneath him so the sickly feeling in her belly can’t take root. “You are—”
“Just fuck me,” she begs. “I need you. Just—”
He lets her go.
“Caleb,” she whines, drags his name out in her mouth and savors it on her tongue.
He’s rustling through an end table, throwing odds and ends to the ground. “Found it,” he says, victorious—there’s a tiny bottle in his hand, the same kind he uses for his spell components, and he tears the stopper out with his teeth.
A fleck of cork sticks to one of his canines.
It would all be very charming, if Veth wasn’t getting cold splayed out on his bed all by herself.
She sits up, crosses her arms, and Caleb almost drops the bottle he’s holding as her tits bounce. “You’re playing games,” she accuses him.
“I am not,” Caleb says. “I just have some, ah, logistical concerns about—” He gestures downwards.
He changed in front of her, dozens of times. A few times, she snuck back into their room in whatever shitty hostel they could scrape together money for, and caught him, hands on his cock and lip bitten to stifle his moans. Tried not to hide in the corners and watch, and failed, and pretended she hadn’t seen a thing or wished he’d say her name. She’s seen him before, the greedy glimpses she’s let herself take, but not like this—not on display.
His cock’s nearly as long as her forearm and thick around as her wrist, flushed as red as his face.
“Right.” Veth swallows. “Logistics.”
He upends the bottle, and oil rushes over his fingers. It’s cold when he touches her, slips his finger past her oversensitive clit and into her.
When Yeza fucks her, when she’s this turned on, she hardly even notices the first finger slipping inside her. Caleb is impossible to ignore. He’s big: she almost stopped noticing, once she was Veth again, once she no longer perched on his shoulders. She’s noticing now. Just one of his long, broad fingers is nearly as much as the cock she’s used to taking. He’s tentative, careful, almost shy about putting his fingers in her.
“Probably,” he rasps out, “this is all we should do. It would be reckless. I could hurt you.”
He adds a second digit, crooks his fingers. “Absolutely not,” she hisses, in the second before he glances over the perfect spot inside her and it becomes a moan. “I’m—fuck—tough. I can take it.” Everything about this is reckless. “I’m sure as hell not stopping now.”
Caleb doesn’t reply. He nods, the way he does when he’s focusing on a problem, keeps working his hand into her slowly and carefully, forehead creased in concentration. It’s almost the way he experiments with magic, the deep focus, committing every time she gasps or writhes on his fingers to his unfailing memory.
It’s not perfect. He doesn’t know her body, can’t drive her wild in mere seconds from years of long practice—but when he finds something, he learns.
Her second orgasm’s slower, less frantic, but Caleb rides it out with her, cups a breast with his free hand while she moans and melts around him.
“Okay,” she manages, once she can move her legs on her own, stretch out the hip flexor that’s gone rogue and painful from spasm. “Let me just—” she grabs the bottle from where it’s lying, spills slippery oil onto her hands.
Caleb closes his eyes and bites his lip as she runs her hands over his cock, big enough that her fingers hardly meet around its girth. The tip of it is already wet, beaded with liquid, and as she thumbs gently at the slit his hips jerk uncontrollably. “Slow,” he begs.
She wants to explore, to touch him until he breaks. But she’s already being greedy enough tonight. Instead, she lets him go. He grips the base of his cock hard as it springs free.
She crawls back onto the bed on her hands and knees. It’s the perfect height, level with him standing. “Go ahead,” she says. It feels ridiculous. The words are clumsy, nearly unnecessary; she’s never fucked someone who had to be told to touch her before. They’re an awkward bridge for the gap between their bodies.
Then he braces himself and slides the tip of his cock into her, and she stops thinking. The stretch of it hurts, bigger than the toys she has at home, bigger than Yeza’s—
He slides forward another inch, muttering to himself in a language she doesn’t speak, quick and quiet as a chastisement or a prayer. His hands dig into her hips. “Beautiful,” he says, part of his litany, “so good, Veth, you are so—”
It’s a good thing she’s not facing him. He can’t see the tears welling up, the pain and relief overwhelming her in equal measure. She’s too full. There’s no space for the guilt in her gut, nothing for her mind to justify. Just her body, finally getting what it needs.
He moves a fraction too slow, his bony thigh driving into her hip, still learning her body. She leans back into him, and the next stroke hits deeper, drives the breath out of her lungs in a stifled cry.
“Veth,” he gasps, and he sounds close to tears. “Ah, fuck, Nott—”
“Yeah,” she agrees, “yeah, me,” choking the words out.
“Nott,” he says again, wild and uneven, losing control, “you—”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, which she’s pretty sure included going to make me come, before he’s collapsing over her, the rhythm of his hips stuttering to a halt as he spills inside her.
She lets him cover her, drape his long limbs over her as he shivers and goes soft. She pulls forward, slips his softening cock out of her so she can get closer to him, stroke her hands through his hair and watch the tension go out of his face. He doesn’t even look this relaxed when he sleeps. There’s cum dripping out of her, pooling on his sheets, her body still sending the occasional shock of pain as she shifts, and she’s maybe never felt better than she does right now, hazy like she’s four drinks in and high on life.
Veth curls up next to him as he lays facedown, puts her hand on his back so she can feel his heart beat.
He stays down for a long while before he turns himself over, looks at the wreck he’s made of her. Long enough for her eyes to dry, for that hungry edge of fear to crawl back into her heart, but when Caleb turns to face her and meets her gaze, it’s gone quick as a counterspell. He still looks star-struck at her bare skin, her tits and round stomach, as though she’s stepped out of a dream.
“Stay,” he pleads softly, reaching out a hand. “Tell him we got caught up in study. I could have used all my magic, and not been able to teleport again today. It has happened before. I am certain I have a new spell we could work on together.”
“I shouldn’t,” Veth whispers. “I should go home.” Both of them flinch at the last word. Her husband is waiting. She promised it would be a quick trip when she hopped through the circle, just a little jaunt to Rexxentrum and back. She doesn’t like lying to him.
Caleb sighs. “Let me see if I have any potions,” he offers, and makes to move off the bed. “If you leave like this, you will bruise.”
The bite mark on her tit’s already turned to a deep red, her hips still sensitive where his fingers dug in. She wants to keep them, wants to save the evidence on her body to keep her from going mad. But Yeza would see, and pain-drunkenness hardly lasts longer than the real thing.
Caleb brings her a potion. She uncorks the vial and downs it: the sharp astringency of the alcohol used as a medium lingers after the herbal taste is gone.
“This will help,” he says, holding out his other hand. “Bruise balm.” He unscrews the top of it, hesitates. “Is it—let me take care of you?”
“Yes,” Veth answers, and she can feel the tears trying to break free again. “Yes. Of course, Caleb. Take care of me.”
He smooths the balm over her skin, over the bruises he’s left, hands slow and lingering. She ends up halfway in his lap, his hands on her body, her head pressed against the soft thud of his heart in his chest, curled up against him the same way they used to sleep. Eventually, it’s done; he fetches her clothes, summons her loose button back from under the dresser with the swift cast of a spell.
He helps her back into her clothes, tugs her boots back on and buttons them in silence. He offers her a hand up, and she takes it, her feet firmly on the ground.
“I can bring you back to Nicodranas,” he offers. “I have the magic to teleport you home, if you wish.” She can feel the distance in the words, something smooth and unbreakable as his magic dome bring conjured into place, and Veth squeezes his hand.
“Next time,” she promises.
“Next time,” Caleb says, the distance between them fading as he presses a kiss to her brow. The guilt settles between them, heavy on both their shoulders. But it’s always been easier to bear as a shared weight.
Nobody on the street looks at her twice as she skulks home from the Nicodranas circle: nobody cares about a heavy little woman with her braids askew, even in her bright dress. She doesn’t pick anyone’s pocket on the way back, doesn’t even have the urge to slide a trinket off a street vendor’s table in the Open Quay. For once, she’s not restless, her mind not desperately clutching for more.
Yeza perks up his head the second she opens their door. “You’re home!” he cheers, and his whole face shines in an easy smile. “I made dinner, but we ate before you got back—I wasn’t sure when you’d be home, but I made a plate—”
“I love you,” Veth says, and means it.
Yeza stops in the doorway of their cramped little kitchen, a plate in his hand. “I love you too,” he says. “I know you get cooped up when you’re here too long, but—I’m so glad you made it home.” There’s relief in his voice, the relief he has whenever she opens the front door after another adventure and comes back to him.
“I always will,” she vows. Secrets or no.