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Himera blinked. “How often are you wrong?”
“Only once, but that was recent.”
His mother asked, “What was the vision?”
“Your son and I in an intimate embrace. So, that isn’t happening. That vision is gone now.”
Riithan clenched his fist and got up to rinse the cloth.
Ylara pushed up on the arms of the chair and looked down at the ruined pale blue silk covered with blood and punctured in two places.
She balanced carefully and shuffled forward toward the bathroom. She put her hand on his arm as she passed him. “Showers are faster.”
She closed the bathroom door but didn’t lock it because she wasn’t an idiot. Breathing deeply, she walked to the shower portion of the wet room and slowly tried to get the gown off. She could pry it down to the edge of her hips, but it got stuck. She started the shower and looked up, glancing down to watch the red and then pink water circle the drain. She rinsed out her hair, pressing her hands against the wall as she got the coolish water to run over the mark. It throbbed when the water touched it, and her body throbbed a moment after.
“Ylara?” Riithan opened the door, and he gasped as he saw her.
“What? Do I still look that bad?”
“Um, this is the opposite of bad. You look...”
“Weak? Fucked up? Punctured?” She turned the shower off and guided herself along the wall toward the towels. He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her, rubbing his hands up and down her back.
“Lovely. You look lovely.” He paused. “Are you shivering?”
“Water was cold.”
He touched her chin and tilted her head up. “You lost a lot of blood.”
She laughed. “Yeah. Your venom attacks white cells?”
“It does. One drop can kill an adult man in a day, and you got a lot more than that.”
Ylara sighed. “Right. Where do we go from here?”
He wiped her cheek, and she realized she was crying. “We go back to my place, and I try to keep you calm and happy. It will require some effort on our parts.”
“I can stay here. You don’t need to put yourself out.”
His expression tightened. “You are not going to stay here.”
“Here I am accepted if not wanted. I can’t get either of those things from you.” She swallowed. “You stopped me from dying, so thank you, but—”
He lifted her and kissed her, his lips brushing hers. “You are wanted. More than anything in my life, I wanted you. I was sure that you didn’t want me.”
She blinked. “Why? I went with you; I trusted you; I wanted you. You froze when you found out about the BDC.”
“My family has hired women for me my entire adult life. They came because they were paid, not because they wanted me. I am sorry that I conflated your willingness with those transactions.”
She flinched. “The BDC doesn’t work like that. The contract is just because patron and escort need clear terms. They both have to agree to the event. If I had been an escort that night, I would have been in a mask on the arm of another guest at the wedding, and you wouldn’t have entered my thoughts because you were off-limits.”
He smiled. “Etgar said something of that nature before he punched me.”
She frowned. “When did you see Etgar?”
“After you ran to them when you left.”
“I saw Vallu?” She frowned and put a hand to her head.
