A broken, incredulous laugh tore from her lips. The Thornfather’s withered frame began to pulse with vibrant green light, new blossoms spilling radiant nectar onto the moss. They were healing him. The joyful violence of their pleasure was the medicine.
Power unfurled through her in molten waves. The Thornfather’s presence rooted through her, threading down her spine, into her bones, outward into the moss and the dark and the wild breath of the world. She could feel new shoots blooming through her ribs, vines curling in her lungs, sap humming beneath her skin. She was open to everything, and in that sacred openness, she felt Splice’s spirit braiding through hers. She clung to him as the Thornfather pulsed, radiant and impossibly alive, the full weight of goodhood crashing through them both.
Then, softly, the divine presence pulled back like a tide. Not gone, but only watching now, quieter. What remained was sweat, skin, and the man still buried deep inside her. The ritual had found its rhythm, and now there was only flesh and need.
Splice’s hands clamped to her hips, fingers digging hard enough to bruise. He drove up into her, meeting her thrust for thrust, cock spearing deep and true.
“Gods, Goldie,” he panted. “You take me like the earth takes rain.”
“You’re so deep,” she gasped. “It feels like you’re inside my bones.”
Their rhythm turned brutal, desperate. Goldie rode him like she meant to tear the world apart, hips slamming down to meet every savage thrust. He drove into her, thick and merciless, so deep she swore he was carving himself into her.
Her nails raked his shoulders, sharp enough to welt. He groaned at the sting, vines cinching her waist and thighs, dragging her down harder, forcing her to take every inch. One tendril slid up her spine and curled around her throat, pressing just enough to make her breath catch.
Her scream shattered the atrium as the next blinding orgasm tore through her. She clenched around his cock, spasming in frantic pulses, light bursting from her in another surge of green-gold fire that flooded into the Thornfather’s roots.
But Goldie didn’t stop. Couldn’t. Even as tremors wracked her, she kept grinding down on Splice, wild and ravenous, chasing the next peak like a woman possessed.
“More,” she gasped, voice splintering into command. “Splice—give me more.”
With a snarl, he moved. His vines writhed around her, and in a blur of strength he flipped her onto her back. The moss caught her fall, air bursting from her lungs, and then he was looming over her, his eyes blazed and wild with hunger.
Growling, he drove into her in one brutal thrust. He fucked her hard, relentless, every slam of his hips rattling through her bones.
“Take me,” he growled against her throat, breath hot and ragged. “Bloom for me again.”
She clawed at his back, but he only drove harder, as if carving his devotion into her skin. Her body arched to meet his, helpless, desperate. A vessel of magic, of heat, of him.
The next orgasm hit like a lightning strike, ripping her open from the inside. Light spilled from her in a glorious eruption, racing across the atrium in glowing waves. Branches quivered, blossoms exploded into bloom, petals raining down in spirals of radiant color.
Greymarket trembled around them. Walls flexed. Windows groaned in their frames. The building moaned, and Goldie swore it was coming with her.
Splice’s rhythm broke, erratic and brutal. His vines snapped taut, his breath a ragged snarl in her ear.
“Marigold!”he roared, her name both spell and prayer.
He came hard, buried deep, hips jerking as wave after wave of heat pulsed into her. It was like being flooded with spring itself. Heat erupted, thick and fertile, pumping into her womb in heavy, pulsing waves.
She felt the seed take root, magical filaments spreading through her belly, threading her veins with glowing fire. Every pulse of his release sent another shockwave through her body, another bloom of light across the Thornfather’s bark. The god shuddered, branches groaning as the his vast frame drank down their mingled pleasure.
When Splice’s hips finally stilled, he collapsed onto Goldie, still buried deep, pulsing inside her, locking them together. Vines slackened and curled back toward his body, spent. The air was thick with the sweet perfume of new blossoms and the musk of sex.
Goldie wrapped her arms around him, holding him close as their sweat-slick bodies pressed together. For a long moment,there was nothing but the sound of their ragged breathing and the steady thrum of power echoing through the atrium.
Chapter
Thirty-One
Slowly, awareness returned. It seeped back in, not just through Goldie’s own senses, but through the new, shared channel that now bound them together. She felt Splice first: his breath, his heartbeat, the faint tremor of his pulse echoing inside her ribs.
Beyond him, the Thornfather stirred, his vast consciousness a low, resonant hum beneath her skin. And deeper still, she could feel the Grove Core itself shifting, its roots flexing and branches sighing as if at peace.
Goldie drew in a shuddering breath. “It worked,” she whispered, her voice hoarse, raw.
Her cheek rested against the bark-like plane of Splice’s chest, and she felt his relief too—a long-held tension unwinding through him like water breaking free of a dam.
He pushed up onto his elbows, looming above her. The alien glow had faded from his eyes. He still looked otherworldly, vines and bark and man, but something in his expression was softer, achingly human.
