I watch the polymath round the hall corner, then murmur breathlessly down at Lucien, who’s currently thoroughly engaged with my collarbone.

“We could—we could find a room, you know. A broom closet, even.”

He rumbles his assent against my skin. “Forgive me my impatience.”

“Forgiven,” I tease, pulling him by the hand. “But not forgotten.”

There’s a giddy urgency to it all this time. And the next. And the next after that. The novels in Nightsinger’s library never spoke of the intricacies of it—the way you learn someone’s body, freckle by freckle and line by line and scent by scent. They never spoke of how different and yet the same people are in their love, in their wants and needs and lusts. The novels never warned me of the sheer glow, the incredible feeling of an empty mind and a full heart.

We’ve been forbidden to each other for so long that being together feels like a dream. We relish in each and every moment, and a day passes like this, wrapped in kissing and holding and just lying, just being with each other. Someone will find us if they need us, but we try so hard to pretend the world doesn’t exist for just this short time. And it works. He knows exactly how to touch me, and where, and when, and part of me faintly realizes that’s probably his handy little skinreading ability. Used for good this time. Oh so good.

But reality always finds a way in. It needles at first, piercing tiny holes in our joy through our conversations afterward—me tracing the gorgeous planes of his stomach and listening to him worry. About Vetris, about Varia, about the war, about everything.

And then, it punctures with an arrow.

I’m brushing the dark hair off his neck, kissing a line down his spine when I reach for his hand. The unmoving one. I miss, but my eyes are on his back, so it’s understandable. I flounder around for his hand again, feeling for it everywhere, but it’s not there. My fingers follow the line of his arm, his elbow, knowing it will lead me to his hand. Because it has to.

Except it doesn’t.

I feel down to his wrist, but that’s it. There’s nothing after that. Just air. I recoil at the smooth stub, the lack of fingers and palm and—and anything. I thought he—I thought it was there! It was, wasn’t it? It didn’t work, but it was there…

“Y-You—” I stammer. Lucien straightens instantly on the cot, his expression taut as he looks up at me. With one dark eye. The other socket is empty, perfectly smooth just like the stub where his hand should be. Not wound-smooth, not scar-tissue smooth. Just…smooth. Like the skin’s been unnaturally sanded down to an inhumanly perfect flatness.