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“Temporary illusion split,” says the first one.
“With substance,” the second adds. “He’s got taste. I’ve got technique.”
“You’re the same person,” I hiss, heart thudding.
“Are we?” the first muses.
“Debatable,” says the second. “I’m definitely the fun one.”
They move in tandem, circling me like I’m the center of some spell they’ve been perfecting in secret. My skin heats, magic prickling beneath it—not with warning. With anticipation. The bond recognizes Silas. It doesn’t protest the duplicate.
Because it feels like him.
Both of them.
And gods help me, I want to know what it feels like to be touched by both.
“I should stop this,” I murmur.
“You should,” they say in unison.
Neither of them moves closer. Not yet. But it’s a trap. The kind of pause a predator gives when it wants you to make the next move. My breath comes shallow, my hands twitch at my sides.
I take one step forward. Only one.
They pounce. The real Silas grabs my waist, spinning me toward the bed with a laugh against my throat, all teeth and heat. The duplicate presses up behind me, his hands alreadysliding under my shirt with reverence and hunger like he’s never touched me before—
They’re in sync. Perfect, terrifying sync. Hands mapping familiar territory with new hunger. My shirt disappears before I realize it’s gone. Lips find my neck. My collarbone. My lower back. They murmur to each other as they work, narrating like artists admiring their own damn masterpiece.
“Gods, your skin,” says one.
“She always taste this good?”
“Better,” murmurs the other.
I try to stay composed. I fail.
One Silas slides down my body, kissing his way to my navel. The other palms my breasts, biting my shoulder gently, as if to remind me who he is. Who they are. My knees go weak. I don’t know whose hand catches me, but I land soft. On silk. On temptation.
On my back.
Two Silas’s above me, identical, smirking like I’m about to be ruined.
The real one kisses me with the kind of hunger that speaks of years, not weeks. Not time, exactly—but something older. Like we were stitched together long before the Hollow ever touched this world. He’s wild when he wants to be, all teeth and groaned curses, but right now? He’s slow. Greedy. Like he wants to map every inch of me, again and again, until he’s convinced he didn’t miss anything.
The second one—his illusion, his shadow, his match—isn’t gentler. But he’s sharper. Precise. When he drags his tongue over the inside of my thigh, it’s a study. When he kisses lower, he does it like he’s unraveling a spell—like I’m a thing to be undone.
Their mouths don’t clash. They alternate, one kissing me while the other presses into the curve of my hip or bites the edge of my shoulder. I’m not sure which one groans when I roll my hips upto meet the second’s mouth, but I know which one moans when I grab the first by the hair and pull his mouth to mine.
I kiss Silas like punishment. Like surrender. Like I’ve decided this is how I want to die—tangled in heat and spit and the way his hands shake when I suck his lower lip between my teeth. I feel the illusion-Silas’s tongue flick against me again—deliberate, relentless—and I break the kiss on a gasp that turns into a curse.
“Fuck—” I choke out, because I’m being worshipped by two of the same sin, and it’s not soft. It’s not clean. It’s filthy and perfect.
The one between my legs hums in satisfaction. The vibration rips through me, and I almost come undone then and there—but Silas knows me better than that. He shifts, sliding down until they’re side by side now—one keeping his mouth on me, the other pressing his fingers inside, curling them just right, learning me all over again like it’s the first time.
I grind into them, into him, desperate now, hand clenching the sheet above my head, the other tangled in hair—his or his, I don’t know, I don’t care.
I’m not moaning words anymore. Just sounds. Just raw, broken pieces of myself cracking apart under the weight of pleasure. Of them.