"I want you inside me,” she says. “Now. Right now.”
I grip her hip, lift her slightly and push into her in one long, deep stroke. The Bloom-infused water around our bodies turns the sensation into something beyond language. I feel everything. Not just the physical fullness but the amplified sensitivity of every nerve, hers and mine feeding our connection in a loop that threatens to end me before I’ve properly started.
My forehead drops to hers. My arms shake. “You feel—gods, Elle. The water. You feel like nothing I’ve ever—”
“Move,” she whispers.
I move. Slow at first, drawing out almost entirely before pushing back in deep, and every stroke is magnified. She wraps her legs around my waist and pulls me harder, deeper, and the pace builds from deliberate to desperate in a progression that I have no interest in controlling.
The vines join without invitation. They respond to the collective hunger in the room, and they know what we want before we do. Thin tendrils curl around her wrists and pin them above her head in the moss. Others wrap her thighs, spreading her wider, changing the angle so I can go deeper. A vine slides against me, wrapping with rhythmic pressure that makes me groan against her neck.
“Tell me you’re mine, Elle,” I say, my voice ragged, my thrusts turning rough. “Tell me you’re mine. That you’ll marry me, and this is the last night we spend afraid of losing each other.”
“I’m yours. I’ll marry you. And we’re going to survive tomorrow. I am going to spend the rest of my life making you say my name like that.”
Our releases hit within seconds of each other. Hers rips through her with a force that bows her spine. I follow, and through the bond I feel everything doubled, my corruptionmarks blazing dark against the gold of hers. The entire chamber strobes with light, gold and shadow and aurora, and the white-hot line where our magic meets and refuses to separate.
The vines release her wrists. The flowers on the walls settle into a soft, steady glow. The light overhead gentles from violet to a slow, deep purple pulse.
The room exhales. So do I.
I gently lift her out of the water and collapse beside her on the moss. Both of us soaked, steaming, covered in the faintly glowing residue of Bloom water and the evidence of magic that didn’t know where I ended and she began. My arm pulls her against me and she presses her face into my chest, and I listen to my heart slamming against my ribs and her breathing evening out, and the quiet hum of the Verdance holding us in the warm dark.
“That was—” she starts.
“Yes.”
“The water is—”
“Yes.”
“We should live here.”
I laugh. The sound is rough and real. It shakes through both of us where we’re pressed together on the moss.
“After tomorrow,” I say. I run my fingers through the strands of her wet hair, slow and steady. “After we survive this. After I marry you in whatever ridiculous fashion you and Peeble see fit to arrange. We’ll come back here. And I’ll spend an entire night doing what I just did, without the deadline.”
“Promise?”
“Vow.” I press my lips to her temple.
She presses closer. My heartbeat slows under her cheek.
“Are you scared?” she asks quietly.
“Yes.”
“What are you scared of?”
“Losing you. Losing Thalia. Failing the people in this city who looked at us at the festival tonight and believed we could save them.” I pause. “Failing myself.”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.” She tilts her head up to look at me. My eyes are open and unguarded in the violet light, and I let them be, because there is no version of armor that serves me here. “I know every dark, stubborn, overprotective, impossibly devoted inch of you, and the man I know does not break. He bends. He adapts. He finds me. Every single time.”
I don’t answer. I hold her tighter, and continue combing her hair.
