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S he heard Gibbs let Marguerite Vasilios in, but she and Sonder were still in a heated debate.

“We need to go find the faerie before it Inhabits someone else!” Her hand sliced through the air as she attempted to drive her point home for the thirtieth time over the last hour.

“It’s a vapour. How are we supposed to locate a vapour?”

She’d pulled him into the piano room to have this discussion and he looked up at her dubiously from the piano bench.

“I don’t know, but we have to try.” crossed her arms. “What if it’s lying in wait for one of us?”

“Then we arm ourselves. Make it impossible to Inhabit us,” Sonder argued.

“We don’t even know how to do that,” she snapped, her nerves feeling frayed after all that had happened that day.

Sonder frowned at her and stood. He approached and placed his hands on her upper arms, sliding them up and down as if to warm her. “This morning was still a success.”

Part of her hated that he could read her so well. The other part of her was horribly grateful that she didn’t have to explain herself. “I let it get away.”

She peered up into his woodland eyes and let them search hers. “You didn’t let that faerie do anything. I am all for people taking responsibility for things that happen when the situation warrants it, but this is not one of those situations. For all we know, it was moving the damned thing that loosened the Celtic knot, and I’m the one who did that.”

Tears welled in her eyes despite her best efforts, and when one slipped down her cheek, Sonder was there to catch it, his palm along her jaw, his thumb swiping the traitorous tear away. “It’s going to hurt someone else.”

“We don’t know that, a stór ,” he reassured her, his voice low. “But right now we have to move forward. Success and scientific discovery are not linear. We’re still on the right path.”

He was right. She knew that much.

sniffled and stepped back from him, letting her analytical brain take charge. “We need to ward the manor. I can do that while you speak with Professor Vasilios.”

Sonder nodded once and they strode out to meet Marguerite and Gibbs, who were conversing awkwardly in the sitting room.

As soon as she saw them, Marguerite stood up from the sofa, her distaste plain on her pretty features when her attention landed on . “Miss Morrow,” she said icily. “I did not expect to see you here.” She shot Sonder a look. “Is this what Finneas is so livid about?”

“You’re not here to discuss Lynch, Marguerite.” Sonder had slipped into his cool, collected Dr Frankenstein persona as he sat in one of the wingback chairs opposite the sofa. “Please, sit.”

“Like hell, we’re not here to discuss Finneas Lynch,” Vasilios hissed but took a seat, smoothing out the skirt of her expensive two-piece. “He’s already on a tirade, trying to figure out who is going behind the Society’s back. It won’t take him two seconds to discover it’s you.”

Sonder tilted his head to one side, unbothered, and sank onto the loveseat next to Gibbs, who looked at her with wide eyes.

“ What are you doing, Sonder?”

“Curing the Plague,” he answered simply. “Isn’t that the job of my House within Agamemnon?”

A sharp, unladylike laugh popped out of Marguerite, incongruous with her polished demeanour. “You know how this works.” She gesticulated wildly. “We are their puppets or else we’re their bones .”

Her last words sent a chill up ’s arms and Gibbs reached out to squeeze her hand once. She offered him a small smile of gratitude as Sonder responded.

“We’re already their bones and it’s foolish to think we’re not. Achilles has always stood as a place that was meant to find a cure. To put an end to this Plague. This has never been about glory or control, not for me.”

It dawned on then that he had chosen the name Achilles very carefully. It was artful, brilliant, and so fitting of the hierarchy and relationship between the two, wasn’t it? Agamemnon and Achilles . And a slap in the face. Things were beginning to make a lot more sense.

“Lynch wants Agamemnon to be the hero,” put in, all of their attention swivelling to her.

“As it’s safe to assume Rochford does as well,” Marguerite murmured.

Rochford? Why did that sound familiar?

“In short, yes,” Sonder answered.

Marguerite deflated onto the sofa. “Thank god you wore the masks. At least they can publicly attempt to take credit.”

“I’m not scared of the Society,” Sonder assured her.

“Well, I am.” Marguerite pointed at . “And she sure as hell should be. And you!” She looked at Gibbs. “If Lynch finds out you’re two-timing him, you’re in for a world of hurt.”

Sonder rose and poured them all glasses of wine. “We will remain discreet. Lynch is no moron, he already likely knows it’s us, but he won’t storm the doors. If Lynch is anything, it’s a man of tradition.”

Marguerite sipped at her wine nervously. “Expect a tribunal then.”

and Sonder met eyes, and he answered her silent question. “Agamemnon is still ruled by a council. It’s archaic but effective.”

“And what happens at one of these tribunals? You said you become their bones.”

Sonder took his seat again, setting the wine bottle on the table between them all. “It’s not as bad as it sounds.”

“Do they actually murder people?”

Marguerite drained her wine and poured another glass. “There are things far worse than death.”

and Gibbs chugged their wine in unison. Then stood, her head already spinning from the alcohol and lack of food and her spill earlier. “I have a few things I need to do if you’ll excuse me.”

Their conversation played on repeat in her head as she moved about the house, discreetly setting out wards. She sprinkled black salt on every windowsill she could find, laid out herbs in various places, and drew the chalk symbols she’d found in one of her textbooks on the doors to the rooms they went in most often. At the door to the cellar, she drew an ancient symbol meant to lock out evil spirits and prayed it would work.

Every time she passed the sitting room, Marguerite and Sonder were deep in hushed conversation, and every time it made her muscles more taut. Somewhere around the time she heard them laughing, she drank a second glass of wine on her empty stomach.

She did hear Gibbs interject here and there that there was no such thing as faeries, but the lad had panic drank—one of his signature moves—and was passed out on the loveseat, curled up like a babe when Marguerite left, and Sonder took Gibbs to one of the guest rooms.

When they were finally alone, he smiled at her, but she couldn’t return it. Sonder sighed and pulled her up from the sofa, leading her to his study, where it was warmer with the fire. She draped herself over one of his favourite chairs, and he went to the sideboard.

“You look like someone poisoned your puppy,” he said as he poured. “Please tell me what you’re thinking so this agony I’m in can end.”

huffed a laugh. “You’re so dramatic.”

He handed her a glass of wine and sat on the arm of her chair. “Please.”

Closing her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at him, she said, “You and Marguerite are close.” It was an easy thing to observe. They were close in age, highly intelligent doctors, the both of them, and they’d been in a secret society together for years. She rode with him to the pub the night that Sonder showed beneath his mask, and he had planned to take her home.

Cautiously, Sonder said, “We are. We’ve been friends since grad school. She and Mariana O’Sullivan are all the good that’s left of those days for me.”

hated what she was about to say, but she was exhausted. It had been a rollercoaster of a day, and he’d just handed her a third glass of wine for the night. “And you’ve always been just friends?”

One of Sonder’s brows rose, and then his face slowly broke into a grin. “Are you jealous, Ariatne Morrow?”

He looked so pleased she wanted to smack him. “Don’t be coy with me, Sonder,” she snipped. “You just saw me naked .”

“Ah. No, I saw you partially naked, which I plan to rectify.”

His words and that smirk sent moths fluttering in her chest. “I’m serious. I need to know where you two stand after what happened between us tonight.”

Sonder nodded solemnly. “Of course. Marguerite and I have been friends since our first year of grad school. One drunken time about seven or eight years ago, we ended up in Marguerite’s room together—we were roommates, you see, in Briseis House. To be fair, I hardly remembered it then, and I recall almost nothing of it now. That is all. There is nothing there, I swear it.”

watched his face. This man she hadn’t quite realised she’d fallen so hard for. “One time?”

“One time.”

“Am I a ‘ one time’ ?”

He looked wounded, his face dropping. “. . .”

“I’m sorry.” She waved a hand. “This is juvenile. I’m just tired.”

Sonder took her wine glass and set it down on the table, kneeling in front of her for the second time that night. “Should I tell you then that I can’t stop thinking about you? That I haven’t thought of another woman since the first moment I saw you outside Achilles House with a corpse you’d cut open yourself?” He took her chin in his fingers. “Or how I have never thought of a woman the way I think of you?” He kissed her gently on the lips. “How I thought I was destined to be alone, but it turns out I was starving all these years, waiting for you?”

swallowed.

“Or”—he brushed her hair away from her neck and kissed her collarbone—“how many nights I’ve thought of you while alone in my room?”

Breathing was becoming quite difficult.

“Are you still jealous, a stór ?”

“Only of the walls of your room,” she breathed out.

He laughed against the hollow of her throat, his stubble tickling, and her toes curled. “Would you like to see the walls of my room, then?”

The moment the door closed behind them, Sonder had her pressed against a wall, his mouth on hers, his hands roving over her body. pushed at his chest, refusing to break their kiss as he walked her backwards toward the bed. They fell on it in a heap of limbs and he chuckled, that deep laugh that had been under her skin for months. Every place he touched was set aflame as they sloppily undressed one another.

He laid her out, slowing down, savouring her until she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, his lips exploring, their skin colliding.

Sonder moved atop her and whispered in her ear, “Are you certain?”

“Please,” she confirmed breathily.

He needed no coaxing. He slid inside of her and sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Fuck, .”

She gasped, arching her back and driving her fingers through his hair, watching the way his brows knit, looking at her as if he might consume her.

After a moment, she stopped him, pushed him down, and climbed on top. His hands gripped her hips, pulling her forward and pushing her back. His control snapped, she saw it in his eyes the second before it happened, and he rolled her. Nimbly, he stroked her, kissed her breasts, whispered how beautiful she was.

“Sonder, please,” she begged and he shuddered.

“Anything for you, darling.”

He moved inside her again, and she arched her back, moaning, and he let out that low, rumbling laugh, her whole body vibrating with it. But then he began a rhythm that felt so familiar it was as if they’d done this countless times. Loved each other countless times in countless other lives, other realities.

Sonder wrapped his arm around the small of her back and pulled her up to sitting, never severing their connection. He held her to his chest, her hair draped over his shoulder, his breath hot on her neck, rising and falling on his knees, driving into her.

“,” he breathed when she was close, tightening around him. “Look at me.”

She pulled her head from his chest as he held her up, gripping her waist. She looked into his hazel eyes and came. Her head fell back, her body on a whole other plane of pleasure, and she felt Sonder come within her as he kissed her breasts.

The second time was sweeter, slower, lingering. A savouring and an acquainting.

They collapsed together on his bed, and he held her tucked against his chest as if he never wanted to let her go.