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Saeran

It’s impossible not to think of the Sins at least once a day. Their impact on the world they rule ensures that ignorance can never be bliss. I can only be thankful that Gluttony’s face isn’t everywhere, like Lust’s is. My memories conjure him enough.

The room where Gluttony takes me is barren except for a single chair in the middle of the space. A hanging bulb right above it. Concrete floor and walls. Soundproof.

A torture room.

He shoves me forward, and I stumble, my legs still weak from our earlier kiss. It had taken every ounce of control I possess to take that knife and make Gluttony stop. He wouldn’t have without intervention, and I didn’t want him to. Wanted with every fiber of my being for him to take me, right there. The kiss alone brought a rush of memories that threaten to overwhelm me. Pleasure and pain vying for control. The feel of his lips against mine will haunt me.

It’s different from the kisses that I remember, more tentative and unsure. This is a Gluttony that’s never experienced it, never experienced us . He’s not confident or assured. It’s been so long that the images and feelings blur together with others, but it reminds me of our original first kiss. Both of us too young to understand what would be expected of us. Before an entire court looked to us for guidance. Before we’d honed ourselves into lethal weapons.

We’d grown together, become who we are by each other’s side.

That isn’t who I’m standing in front of. No matter how much he looks like him, he’s not. He doesn’t share the same memories. Doesn’t know . What shaped me doesn’t shape him. His recollections of the Fae world, of me, are either skewed or removed. The mystery of how still eludes me.

I wish I knew why we’re here now, on opposite sides, with a stranger staring down at me, wearing my lover’s face.

He pushes me into the chair, and I don’t resist. I’d rather sit anyway. The tiredness has reached my bones, reached my very soul, and standing takes effort I don’t have.

What happens now? What is he going to do to me? I’ve endured a lot in my life. I don’t think I can endure this.

I keep my head forward when he circles around to my back. If he’s going to hurt me, I’d prefer not to see it coming. Warm hands land on my shoulders. and I jump, the sudden touch causing an involuntary shiver. Not one of fear. He’s too close, especially after that kiss.

“I can smell it,” he whispers, bending to press his lips against my ear. Another shiver and my heart maintains an unsteady beat. “You’re reeking with it.”

I’m too afraid to ask what.

“Why shouldn’t I kiss you, Saeran? I’ve been around Lust and his sycophants enough to know what real desire is. And you? You’re dripping with how much you want me.”

He’s always been too clever. Seeing right through me, never letting me have any secrets. Even now, instincts ride him, and he knows me. Nothing but the truth will satisfy him.

“Should we start with something simpler, then?” My chair spins around, and Gluttony crouches in front of me, hands on my thighs. Trapping me in. He’s still taller than me like this, still larger than life, eclipsing everything around him. He sucks up all the oxygen in any room and demands my attention, always.

“Tell me about Conor.”

“You know about Conor.”

Is he aware of his thumb, rubbing my thigh? That the warmth of his spread palm seeps into me until I ache for him? If he knew how flimsy my resolve was, how easy it would be for me to tip over the edge and take everything offered—even if it means dooming those I’m supposed to protect—he’d be pressing his advantage. I can’t let him have that. It’s too easy for him to be selfish, to take and take, expecting me to keep giving. And I do. I did. Gave him everything, whatever he wanted. I took great pride in being the only one to satisfy him.

“Your friend seemed quite eager to tell us all about him. Should I get him in here?”

“No,” I blurt, my cheeks heating from the quick refusal. I wish I could say it’s only because I need to keep Tiernan safe. The truth is that my greatest desire is to always have Gluttony’s attention on me. I’ve been deprived of it for so long, and it belongs to me. I never thought I’d be in a room with him again, and yet here we are. Less than ideal in more than one way.

Together less than a day, and he’s already kissed me.

The smug look on Gluttony’s face shouldn’t be attractive. All I want to do is trace it with my fingers, soak it in, and refresh past memories.

“Then you tell me, Saeran.”

He’s saying my name like that on purpose, and my intense reaction to it every time shows just how pathetic I am, begging for any scraps he gives me.

“Tell you what?”

“He said you know where he is. I’m very interested in that information.”

“We don’t,” I say, resigned. “He was trying to protect me. We know where he’s been, not where he is now.”

“And where has he been?”

“He owned an apartment, in the middle of the city. By the time we got there, it was gutted.”

Gluttony takes a deep breath. His thumbs dig in, massaging, and I almost bite my tongue off. “It interests me why you’re chasing him. Bit of a fan?”

“He has something of mine.” A half-truth. He is something of mine. I think. I need to get closer to him to confirm my suspicions, and he continues to elude me.

“Does he, now?” He moves, wrapping a hand loosely around my throat. Not threatening, more like he can’t help himself, just like I can’t. The draw has never been one-sided, and some part of him remembers. Buried but never gone. “And where else have you followed him?”

“A—” I swallow hard. He keeps caressing me, and it’s hard to think. He’s too dangerous, and I’m wading through a storm. Right into his arms, which is the last place I should be. I have to get out of here. “A—facility, where they were making the chimeras.” One of what has to be many, at the rate they’re doing it. I have no idea where they’re getting the human fuel. Nothing in the media has reported on excess of missing people. They had to have taken dozens, if not hundreds, for what they’ve done.

His thumbs pause. “Where?’

“It’s gone. They destroyed it.” They’re frustratingly efficient at erasing any traces they were ever there. The order has been around for so long, keeping under the radar of the Sins—and of us—that it worries me. They’re too good at it now, like rats in a sewer. Conor screwed up when he half transitioned, and it’s the only reason we’ve learned as much as we have in such a short amount of time. It’s helped them advance at the same time it’s given us a beacon of sorts.

“Destroyed before or after you got to it?”

Loaded, clever question. “During, actually.” I may have thought they were using it as bait to lure us in and kill us, but Conor doesn’t know about us. A trap for the Sins, perhaps. We almost paid the ultimate price for it.

“Did you discover something?”

“No.” I wish I had. The failures continue to stack up. “They’re kidnapping people to create them. There were discarded bodies and parts. Conor can make them because—” I snap my mouth shut, horrified at what I almost revealed.

“Because…” Gluttony prompts.

I shake my head silently. I want to give him everything, but there’s a line I have to draw. To protect myself, to protect all of us.

Gluttony tugs me forward before I can react, and suddenly, I’m in his lap, straddling his hips while he remains in a crouch.

“You’re lying to me, and we both know it. Maybe you know so much because you’re working with him.”

“No.” It’s hard to concentrate on what he’s saying when he’s so hot underneath me, muscles straining and body heat rising to surround me.

“What were you doing with Greed, then? No more lies, Saeran. I’m thoroughly sick of them, and you won’t like what happens next.”

“We were trying to help him, to get him out.” That’s at least the whole truth in that regard.

“How did you know he was there, hidden deep underground? The same way you knew where to look for Conor?”

I don’t answer. At least that way I won’t have to lie. There are enough of them between us.

“That’s how it’s going to be?” His hand curls around my hips, dragging me even closer. I can feel the shape of him snuggled against my ass, and my eyes flutter closed momentarily. The urge to rock on him, to take this further, overwhelms me, taking over all my senses. “I said, no lies.”

“Not—lying. Not speaking isn’t the same as lying,” I say breathlessly. I need him to keep touching me as much as I need him to stop. Don’t stop.

“Semantics piss me off.” He grips my ass, and my answering groan is automatic. I couldn’t have held it back if I’d tried. My hips move on their own, pressing down on his hardness. Yes, please . It’s been so long. Lifetimes. I’m at breaking point after spending eternity without him. It would barely take anything to have him inside me again, filling me and making me whole. Making us both whole.

“They’re all I have.” The last word ends on a moan as he guides me to rock on him. He pulls back, our eyes meeting. The streaks of lightning in the gray are breathtaking, irrefutable proof that this is affecting him too. “They’re all I have,” I repeat.

“Who are you?”

The truth comes tumbling out of my mouth before I can take it back. “Yours.” Forever. Always. It doesn’t matter where we end up, how far apart we are, or what memories we take with us. He’ll always be mine, and I’ll always be his.

“What does that mean?”

There’s no answer that will satisfy him. Not without revealing everything.

“I could kill you right here, right now,” he growls. “Tell me why I shouldn’t.”

Silence is my only weapon here, and it cuts through both of us. He hates it; the anger brimming under the surface a physical entity between us. He’s never allowed me to be anything but one hundred percent his. He doesn’t know why it bothers him now, but I do.

He yanks me even closer, our chests plastered together. His breath is hot against my cheek as he grasps my nape, holding me in place. “You’re testing my patience.”

“What patience?”

He chuckles deeply, the sound reverberating through me. “Give me another gift,” he whispers in my ear. “I want more. What else do you have?”

I clutch at his muscles, the rough hair on his forearm a pleasant scratch. Anything he wants. Anything. “Do you—what do you want?”

“Everything, Saeran.”

A tall order. So many years together once resulted in our home full of what he claims is “everything.” Never satisfied, always wanting more, and I considered it my life’s work to feed him. He’s not the only one that’s been starved all this time.

He watches intently as I spread my hand out. Lightning strikes the center, and a small tornado rises until it covers my hand, a mini storm literally in the palm of my hand. When it dies out, there’s a set of cuff links resting there, in the shape of lightning bolts.

“Put them on me.” The husk in his tone feeds my soul. I’d do anything for him when he speaks to me like that.

My fingers glide over the back of his hand and circle his wrist. I can’t span around it, he’s so much bigger than I am. He’s not wearing cuff links on his white shirt, so it’s easy to clip these on. Every time I brush over them, a small jolt runs through me. They’re saturated with him. A good thing it doesn’t hurt me.

“I can feel them. How?”

“They’re filled with your magic.”

“How’d you do that?” He snatches my wrist and holds it, eyes hard. “How can you use my magic?”

“I—I didn’t.” An unforgiveable mistake. All I want is to satisfy him, to the detriment of all my other brain cells. “I used yours and pulled it in to make them.” A simplification of something far more complicated and intrinsic.

“That’s still using it. How do you pull it? What are you, Saeran?”

My Fae abilities have always skewed differently, simply for being the mate of a Sin. What we have at our disposal is so much more because of them. I’ve been cut off from it, with only drips of it available to me, but pieces are coming back, simply from being this close to him.

“You crossed the shroud to be here.”

That much I can give him. “Yes.” We both know I’m not of this world. Neither is he.

“We haven’t crossed for a long time.”

It doesn’t sound like a question, so I stay quiet. Where is he going with this?

“What does it look like now?”

Oh. Part of him yearns for home just as much as my entire being does. To walk among the grass, walk the tree bridges, be one with nature. There will always be a piece missing, so long as we’re stuck on this side.

“I don’t know,” I admit painfully. I don’t know. I wish I did. What have the Light done to it? Is there anything left to salvage? Our entire culture, our customs, everything that makes us us , wiped out in a single night. The hate I have for them is a real, physical thing.

He lifts my chin with a thumb without dislodging the hold he has around the back of my neck. The difference in our sizes makes me shiver. I know exactly what he can do with that strength—both good and bad—and it never fails to make my body go from zero to a hundred in a single moment.

“Why not?”

“I haven’t—I haven’t been home in a long time.” Here isn’t home, and it never will be. This place will always smell wrong.

“And why is that?”

More silence.

He huffs a laugh and stands, dislodging me. “The things that I can do to you to make you scream, to make you beg to die, are infinite. Is that the path you want to go down?” He yanks me to my feet.

Part of me still hopes there’s enough left that he won’t harm me. He’s already allowed me more than he’s allowed anyone else. I know that he would have already started the torture if someone else refused to answer his questions like I have. I’m not ignorant about who he is, and what he’s done. His reputation is the same as it’s always been. Kind to the ones he considers his, ruthless with our enemies.

Gentle with me.

“What if I start on your friend? I wonder if that will make you talk?”

Fear chokes me, wrapping around my throat. No . I can’t have someone else get hurt because of me. I’ve failed Tiernan, and all the others, too many times already. “Please don’t,” comes out of me, revealing all my cards as I plead.

“No?” Gluttony drawls, pulling me closer again, forcing me to tip my head back to maintain eye contact. An attempt to intimidate me. Even now, I’m not afraid of him. Only of how much power he has over me. How easy it would be for him to break the pieces of me that are left. “You won’t answer any of my questions, and now you think to ask me for something?”

He drags me out of the room before I can respond. He’s silent as he takes me back down to the cells and shoves me inside. Tiernan rises from the seat as soon as I enter and comes toward me. The deep growl that Gluttony emits stops him in his tracks.

I subtly shake my head. There’s no use riling Gluttony up further. I’m trying to avoid violence, not invite it.

“My patience”—his lips curl up in a sneer—“Will only go so far. Think about that while you rot in here.”

The cell door slams shut, and I flinch at the sudden noise.

I stay at the door, a hand wrapped around the bar, waiting for the receding footsteps to die out. Only when I’m sure we’re alone do I turn to Tiernan. “We have to get out of here.”

He checks me over with a frown. “Did he hurt you?”

“Not the way you think.” Impossible not to hurt when we’re so close. When I have to put distance between us. “But we need to leave.”

“You said we couldn’t. That we’d be revealing our hand.”

Revealing ourselves as Fae is the least of our worries. “He kissed me.” The touch has faded, but it’s cemented in my mind. “If we stay here…” I don’t have to say it out loud. He knows. My control is paper-thin right now. If I let Gluttony in, we’re all dead. We’re not ready for an assault. We were at the top of the food chain once, and we still weren’t ready.

“I told you that we should have left it alone.”

“Can you lecture me later? We have to go.”

“How? There’s no safe way for us to get out. We’re underground. Guards are watching our every move. The Sins are watching our every move.”

“Mess with the footage again, and then break the door. I’ll take us the rest of the way.” The shadows will guide us. The Sins are going to know what we are after this; they aren’t stupid, and they’ll work it out. Best for us to be far from here when they do.

“The shadows are going to consume you,” Tiernan warns. “You rely on them too much.”

I’m not in the mood to debate the dangers, and we don’t have time. He can lecture me later.

“I need you to trust me.”

“I trust no one else more. I follow your lead.”

A mistake. “I need you to—” I gesture at the door. Using that kind of energy will make it impossible for me to leave. I’m too weak. The kiss with Gluttony has both reinvigorated and drained me. A half connection that tells my body exactly what it’s missing, like sucking in a breath after being underwater for too long and then being dragged under in the next second. More harm than good if it’s not completed. The breath has put water in my lungs.

Tiernan narrows his eyes suspiciously. “Why can’t you do it?”

It isn’t the time to get into this. “I’ll explain everything when we’re out, I promise. Right now, could you please?” The sooner we’re out of here, the sooner I can check on Diarmuid and Riordan. And put distance between Gluttony and me.

Tiernan nods, and then with a loud, booming blast of psychic energy, the jail cell door is lodged in the opposite wall. “They’ll have heard that.”

“Well, let’s make sure we’re gone from here before they organize themselves.”