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I cry out, the waves of my orgasm crashing into me. I spread my legs wider, tilting my hips for more and more. Valen doesn’t stop his slick movements, and I’m driven mad. Lucas fights to keep pace, and every time he goes too deep or too fast, with a pained cry, I peak higher and higher.

“Fuck! Please!” Lucas yells in a broken cry.

Valen breaks our kiss and asks me, “Are you done coming, my love?”

Lucas groans, and I lean against his face. “One more. But I want him to fuck me when I do.”

Valen huffs a low laugh and removes his hand from between us. “You heard her. One more time, magician, and I’ll release the spell.”

Lucas snarls, grabbing me a touch too roughly. I giggle when he drags me down, his strong hands wrapping around my thighs. Then all the relaxed lovemaking disappears. My eyes flare, and my arms snap around his neck. “Oh, fuck, Lucas!”

He pounds me, and it’s so achingly good after coming so softly for so long. I claw his back, my head tilting back as I cry my pleasure. My head tosses to the side, my eyes squeezing tightly shut. He strikes me so hard and so deep. He gasps in my ear, mumbling nonsense as he snaps his hips desperately, chasing a peak he physically cannot reach yet.

I twist my hands in Lucas’ hair and force him to look at me. I kiss him, and it’s sloppy and messy and everything I need. I sob into his mouth, and the tingling snap of the spell around the base of Lucas’ cock breaks.

His orgasm hits him like a train, his hips snapping against me. I come hard, twisting under him as he pulses, and meet him thrust for thrust as we lose ourselves in the mindless pleasure.

Lucas goes limp on top of me, and the air rushes from me on impact. Valen laughs and guides Lucas to the side, and I roll with him. Valen slots himself behind me, and I’m sandwiched between the two gorgeous men who love me. I go boneless, my mind blessedly empty.

We doze lightly before Lucas mumbles, “If I die early, it’s because of you two.”

Valen chuckles in my ear. “I’ll take that as the highest compliment.”

My hand smooths over Lucas’ chest where the scar runs from shoulder to hip. My thumb rests on his sternum. “I wonder…”

“What is it, my love?”

Valen kisses the back of my neck softly, and I say, “Could we put a thread in his soul?”

Lucas’ eyes snap open to glare at me. “Don’t even think about it.”

My thumb strokes. “If your rings were Leon’s… and there are threads in tokens…”

“Astoria Rosemont, you are not fucking up the world order or wildly experimenting on my soul. Hell. No.”

I pout and mumble, “I’d experiment on others first⁠—”

“No!” he barks.

Valen laughs. “Oh, my love. Already eager to break the Weave after fixing it?”

I sigh. “I just don’t want to lose anyone else.”

Lucas covers my hand with his and squeezes. “Trust me. No one is leaving anytime soon.” His stomach growls. “Except me if we don’t eat.”

Valen rolls away from my back with a stretch. “I’ll go make breakfast.”

The color drains from Lucas’ face. “No, I’ll make it.”

“Don’t be a damn martyr. I’m perfectly capable of handling it on my own.”

Lucas’ panicked gaze meets mine, and I grimace. He leans forward to whisper, “Don’t worry. I’ll save us.”

“I heard that!” Valen snarls as he retreats from the bedroom.

Lucas bolts up with a flinch. “Listen, V. Sometimes people have strengths and weaknesses.”

“I do not have ‘weaknesses.’ I am a potion-crafting progeny. There’s absolutely no reason in the darkest recesses of the Weave for me to not master cooking. It’s essentially the same.”

Lucas is running naked out of the room. “And yet you can’t, and the sooner you accept this, the better it is for all of us.”

I smile at the bickering and slowly sit up. It takes me a moment, but I slip off the bed and pull on the robe Lucas bought me from one of the villages he frequents to get us supplies. I exit the bedroom and enter the room I’ve claimed as my own. The walls of bookshelves are all empty, and I try not to feel the agony that usually greets me when I remember the tomes within my loft. Lucas promised me that he’ll one day slip back into the remains of Peripetia and steal the books from within my old home. We just need to wait until the Magistrate, Guild, and Order finish their war.

I approach the large mirror I keep between the two garden-facing windows. I gaze into it, not perceiving my reflection but inspecting the glass slowly and meticulously. It’s an act of meditative patience, and I sink deep within myself until there are no sounds except for my pulsing heart and even breath.

A flicker of darkness has my heart jumping. I press my hand flat against the glass and choke on a silent sob when something impossibly soft and familiar brushes against my palm.

Words escape me, and I lean my body against the glass and cry. For the first time in months, a recognizable, head-rubbing motion that comforted me all my life strokes along me, evidence of a demon on the other side that travels the stars in another world, that waits to guide my soul back to the Weave when my long life finally ends. The only one I would trust to find Lucas’ mortal soul and safeguard it until we could be reunited.

After all, Lucas is Jinx’s favorite.

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