“Lynnria!” Jax snapped her fingers a few times in the girl’s face. “Oy! Wake up, quinie!”

  “To hell with this. I’m going.”

  Jax turned to glare over her shoulder. “It ain’t yer turn!”

  Xyn growled, her reptilian tail lashing with impatience. “She’s unconscious, and I’ve waited long enough! If she has a problem with it, she can take it up with me.”

  “Can we not argue?” I called. “I’m getting cold over here.”

  I was teasing, of course, but without my robe on, the air was only just tolerable. And it probably should not have been even that. Something was different with me today. I could tell. And not just my resistance to temperature. Maybe it was the changes Xhinn’s essence had wrought, maybe it was an aftereffect of having such a prolonged conversation with Ahnbe, or maybe it was as simple as all the practice I had been getting. Whatever it was, my sexual stamina was through the roof. I had already worked my way through both Jax and Arx—and not to brag, but I had been quite thorough—yet I felt as though I had only just warmed up. Gone were the days of my one-and-done popgun. I was now a finely honed machine of genital annihilation.

  On a side note, I fully acknowledge how cringeworthy saying that is, but I like to think admitting it counterbalances things a little. It is a mark of maturity when you are able to own your own bullshit.

  “If you’d like me to go again, just say the word,” Arx volunteered, the tufted end of her own tail flicking with a comparatively languid contentment between her ankles. She had rolled off of me not a minute prior and had been enjoying the afterglow of our coupling in the nearby snowbank as though it were a bed of down.

  Which looked horrible. Sexy but horrible. Whatever resistance I had built for the cold had not progressed to that degree.

  And no, my legs had yet to completely recover. I had been trying to flex my Status Effect transformation aura to counter the weakness—and it had worked somewhat; I could wiggle my toes now—but this was one of those weird gray areas where the problem was not quite a full-blown Ailment. Much like how you could get ridiculously horny without ever worrying about being overcome by Lust, some things were just tolerable enough that the rules of the world overlooked them. Consequently, I had been toying with the idea of having one of the girls paralyze me for real so I could fix myself, but broaching that topic would have killed the mood.

  “No!” Xyn raced up to claim her spot atop me, where she hovered on all fours, back bowed and snarling like an animal over a fresh kill—which might have been intimidating had I not been so used to this kind of behavior. And it probably should have been; Xyn was an unbound lilim, so she was not under the same restrictions as the others. But her breasts were dangling in my face. So… “Mine now! Mine!”

  Jax stamped her foot. “Lynnria first, blast ye! He ain’t even yer proper master!”

  “Is so master!” Xyn spat, already showing signs of that peculiar way lilim could go feral if deprived long enough. “Given! Given me. Pledged. Mine!”

  “I said yer proper master. Yer one and only!”

  “Serve. Obey. Protect. Commanded!” Xyn’s snarls were turning into desperate gasps. “Promised to train! Yes? Please… please… hurts!”

  “Uh… Jax?” I began. “Maybe—”

  But she was not paying me any mind—as was usual, when it came to these arguments over their pecking-order. “I know ye hurt, wench. Ye think I were born yesterday? Swear ye’ll never hurt him!”

  “Swear it!” Xyn agreed immediately.

  Jax folded her arms. “Swear, even if the Queen commands it!”

  Xyn’s eyes widened and she shook her head furiously. “Never! Never command! Not hurt Gift! Never!”

  “Bollocks!” Jax said with a snort. “What about—”

  Xyn opened her jaws and let out a sound that was somewhere between an eagle’s cry and a lion’s roar. But it was all frustration. Her claws began scraping runnels into the frozen soil by my shoulder.

  Okay, that’s enough.

  “Mia,” I called softly. “Go help Jax figure out what’s wrong with Lynnria.”

  “My lord,” she agreed, silent yet ever watchful. I knew she was only that way because it discouraged people from asking her questions, but it kept her out of a lot of these arguments. For which I loved her dearly.

  I flopped my head over to glare at my First. “Jax… chill. You’ve already agreed that Xyn should have a turn. Lynnria’s out. Until you can wake her up again, she forfeits hers.” I waggled my fingers in the air. “So it is decreed.”

  “Aye, Master,” the redhead returned with a reluctant nod. “Just… Arx, don’t let her do nothing sneaksome, now!”

  Arx rolled onto one side to prop her head in her hand. “Oh, I’ll be watching alright,” she purred. “I want to see what kinds of techniques a three-thousand-year-old lilim can bring to the table.”

  That was quite the gauntlet to throw at a sex-starved lilim’s feet, and I was curious to see how she would respond. But Xyn was only staring down at me. She did not have the attention to spare for anything else.

  “Certain?” she asked through her constant shallow panting. “Can have?”

  I allowed my gaze to trace over her for perhaps the hundredth time, appreciating the way the ever-changing patches of glossy black contrasted with her tanned skin, the way her honey blonde locks curled at the ends—almost like clouds, it looked so soft—and the way her eye bored into me, burning with need and the first glimmers of hope. Yet she was taking the time to ask. I appreciated that. It was a quality I wished her Mother shared.

  She was one of the most exquisitely stunning creatures I had ever seen, and the spell Xhinn had cast was still burning strong in my heart. With the girls now at least begrudgingly willing to stand aside for her, it was not an easy thing to delay this even a second longer. But none of those were good reasons for us to be together.

  Oh, they were compelling. Do not mistake me. But good?

  So, with an effort of will, I forced myself to dig deeper. To mine the well of this creature’s psyche. To find that reason… or an excuse.

  “The last time we were alone, you said you loved me.” That seemed an obvious place to start.

  “Yes!” Xyn agreed. No hesitation. “Always. Always have, always will! Forever.”

  I could almost feel the shift in the air as my other girls stilled, but they did not interrupt, even to call her a liar. That was something. Confirmation, at the very least. Yet I swallowed back the fresh wave of desire that arose from within. I had an opportunity here. I could not squander it just to satisfy a terrible yet temporary urge to run my fingers over her exposed flank. Or the many things that might come after.

  “Why?” I managed.

  It was a simple question. One I had asked often of late, but I could see the effect it had on her. The way her muscles trembled. The way her teeth bared.

  “Why?” she repeated, shaking her head. “Why why why, always why! What why? Only do! Nothing else. Nothing matters but do.”

  “It matters a lot! This is love at first sight we’re talking about. Or smell, I guess. And it’s not just you. Your Mother and Aunt were the same way. That’s not some innocent coincidence. This is a pattern,” I countered. “Is it because of my dreams?”

  She jerked her head once to the side, hard. “No! No… don’t care about that.”

  “You don’t? Or they don’t?”

  “Either! Both! Don’t care!” she said again.

  I grimaced. What else could it be?

  True, I had gained a nascent command over the Words, and even managed a couple of off-the-books spells, but surely that was the point. The entire world seemed designed for the sole purpose of funneling people through the Dungeon as often as possible, rewarding them with a constant flow of Power and a single Word each time. What were people meant to do with that if not to wield magic?

  Unfortunately, there was only one other direction I could think to look in. It was not a topic I was keen to re-examine.

  “Xhinn… said something about my nature. That it would grow. That people would covet it,” I began before hesitating. I cast a furtive glance first at Arx and then at Jax’s turned back. She had not taken another step toward Lynnria, I noticed. I did not blame her. Just mentioning the similarity between my dreams and the way Faen were born had knocked our youngest member out cold, and here I was, pounding at that door again. But it could not be helped. I had to know. “Am I a god?”

  Xyn let out a low hiss. “I. Don’t. Care!”

  That took me aback. “Seriously? You… you don’t care? How can…? What…?” I had to stop to regather my thoughts. Never mind side-stepping the question, she had just lobbed a nuke right into the middle of it. How was I even supposed to respond to that? “Well, what do you care about? There’s nothing else special about me. Why me and not someone else? Someone powerful? I’m sure there are thousands—”

  “NO!”

  It was more scream than denial. Raw. Deep. Maybe even instinctual. Yet the effort of it seemed to weaken her self-control, driving her down until her nose was pressing into my cheek.

  “No one else…” she whispered through her hot panting. “No one else. Only you matter. Die first. Forever die.”

  I turned my head into the side of her face, wanting so badly to nibble at the tender flesh there. To claim her lips. To take hold of her waist and guide her the rest of the way down. She was right there. Everything I wanted, just beneath my fingertips. But this was new. I was getting somewhere. Finally! “You’d rather die than be with someone else?”

  She pulled away, a pained look contorting her features, but I saw the indecision there. She wanted to tell me something. I sensed it.

  “Will die.”

  “Half-truth.” Jax had not turned. The observation had come as a quiet offering to the wind.

  “Agreed,” Arx chimed in. “She’s hiding something.”

  Another scream, this time in anger. Again, Xyn’s claws ripped through the hardened soil at my side.

  “Will die!” she insisted. “Not matter what are. Only that are.” Her hand came to her chest, where she began tapping furiously. “Can’t not love. Can’t… can’t not want! You… you…”

  Though her mouth continued to work, her voice had faded to nothing. She only stared, her desperation so intense, needing me to understand yet unable to convey even the simplest explanation.

  “Please?” she whispered finally, her eye clouding with tears. “Please… n-not push away. Let me love. Let me—”

  A sob wracked her body, and she tore her gaze to one side.

  Which circled us back to square one. When she and I had first been joined, I had demanded to know whether the Demon Queen had cast the same spell on her as she had on me, but Xyn had denied it. She claimed her love had come before, that she could not conceive of not loving me, like it was some predestined thing, hard-coded into her very being. So a lot of this was familiar, but this talk of life and death? My nature did not matter, so long as I existed? It had expanded on things a little, but what was I supposed to make of it? Why would she die? How? And what did my scent have to do with it? It was enough to drive a man to madness.

  Yet…

  When I considered her emotions? That pain on her face? Her words might well have been a tapestry of fabrication and misdirection, but there was no trickery to be found there. This hardened, ancient creature was shedding genuine tears, bawling over the prospect of me even questioning her love.

  Which seemed like an excellent excuse to me.

  As swiftly as I could, I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her close. “I’m sorry,” I breathed into her ear. “I had to be sure. There’s so much going on. This time last year, I was all but invisible to women, and now they have arguments over who gets to have me next? I have actual goddesses fighting over me, and all I ever get are these vague hints. Can you blame me for—”

  “Can have?!” she demanded, cutting me off. She was writhing in my arms with the effort not to simply take me then and there. Anything that did not move her directly toward that goal was of no consequence to her. “Will let?”

  “Right.” Stop talking, Donum. I would get my answers eventually. Patience and perseverance would see me through, but for now, I just needed to get out of my own way and let things happen as they must. “Yes… yes, you can have me.”

  She wasted no time, even for thanks. Scarcely had consent left my lips than hers were upon me, but she was in no mood for tender lovemaking. Or tenderness at all. Her tears had been forgotten. She was a dragoness set upon a freshly slaughtered lamb, biting and snarling, mining greedily for my tongue even as she moaned her gratitude. Her hands were everywhere. Tangling through my hair. Tracing the lines of my chest. Dimpling my backside with her claws.

  But when I sought to reciprocate, to finally explore the tender delights of her body, she was quick to capture my hands and secure them overhead. There was no resisting her. Even a trained Olympian could not have matched her strength.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Wait,” she started to say through her panting, “Not yet. Don’t want to—”

  A swift burst of power was all it took to turn her words into a tortured howl of pleasure. I might not have been able to fight her, but if she thought she could hold me down without effort, she had another think coming.

  “Wait, I said!” she growled, her glare so thick with presence, it all but stapled me to the ground. “Don’t want to come yet.”

  “You’re that close? I’ve barely done anything.” Masculine pride warred with disappointment over the thought—pride to have pleased her sexually, disappointment that it might be over before I had even gotten started. Still, the urge to grin was immense.

  Xyn’s only answer was to release another steaming growl into my face. “Not move. Want clean.”

  My eyebrows quirked upward. “Clean?”

  A scant nod presaged her scurrying backward over my body. “Yes. Flavors mixed. Clean first.”

  “Oh!” Arx rolled to into a hasty squat. “Sorry about that. You skipped Lynnria, and I forgot we’ve been hazing her with our leftovers. Here, move aside and I’ll—”

  She jerked back only just in time to avoid the swipe of Xyn’s claws.

  “Mine!” the lilim roared through a curl of black flames. It seemed she was done with social niceties. I had given my permission, and Xyn meant to claim what was now hers by right. To interfere was death.

  Far from being offended, Arx only flopped into the snowbank behind her and spread her legs. “Hmm~? ’sbright nails, if you were that eager for a taste of me, all you had to do was ask.”

  Xyn did not reply. Her point had been made, and she had no patience for flirtatious banter. Still eyeing the unrepentant and still-far-too-close-for-comfort Dolilim, she cautiously lowered herself until her blonde locks were tickling my thighs, but the scent of me pulled at her attention like a bear to honey.

  I doubt there are many who have had the singular pleasure of a gorgeous woman sniffing at their crotch, and in the process, gradually becoming overwhelmed by their own lust. It is a sight to behold. Highly recommended. Watching her eyelid fluttering with ecstasy. Feeling the heat of her panting breaths. The sudden sensation of her tongue lapping at my throbbing flesh, sack to tip.

  There was no sense of it being some obligation or attempt to please me, either. Every stroke brought a new moan to her lips. Every crook and cranny she explored sent new shivers racing down her spine. Pleasurable as it was for me, you might have thought I was the one eating her out, not the other way around. But before I could really get into it, she had finished and was again crawling her way north. I assumed that meant I had been polished to her satisfaction.

  She announced her arrival with a peck to my nose, but she was quick to warn me off. “Not touch yet.”

  “Oh, but I want to,” I protested, hands clenching uselessly at my sides. “I really, really want to.”

  I was being a tad cheeky, but you might have thought I had just slipped inside for how those words affected her. “Not… not yet,” she gritted out, shivering with excitement. “Wait until… until join. Then hit.”

  I blinked up at her, frowning. “Hit? That’s… not really my thing, Xyn. Are you—”

  “Yes!” she confirmed. “Hit. With pleasure thing? Hit and touch. Together. All at once. Make perfect…”

  Oh, that kind of hit. “I doubt that’ll be necessary with the way you’re carrying on. But okay.” Relaxing, I pulled my hands back behind my head and wiggled my hips. “If you think you can handle it, I aim to satisfy.”

  A pleased grin spread across her lips even as she reached down to steady my waiting manhood. “Aaahn~ Can’t wait. Come so hard, Mother will feel!”

  Mother? Some of the rakishness drained from my expression. “What if I don’t want Mother to feel? What if I only want Xyn to feel?”

  She froze, hand gripping my length less than a finger’s breadth from her entrance, completely poleaxed. Her constant panting turned so shallow and rapid, I feared she might hyperventilate. Her eye had gone wide with panic, telling the tale of a million-and-one thoughts racing behind it. What to say, what not, perhaps even struggling with what she could.

  But what she landed on did not surprise me.

  “Xyn…” She bit her lip and steadied herself enough to speak. “I don’t… have that power. I am Mother. Cannot… cannot separate. And even if… if could… f-furious! Would come! Demand!”

  “Yer Ma demands a lot,” Jax grumbled. “Entitled cunt.”

  “That she does,” Arx mused distantly. But when I looked, I noticed how fixated she was on the scant centimeter of air between my waiting sex and Xyn’s. “’stits, look at her trembling. I wonder how long I could hold out in that position.”

  Jax turned finally, but only just enough to give the three of us a once over. Her face was held carefully blank, yet that was more than enough to convey her thoughts. There was no part of this she approved of. Still, when she spoke, her tone was comparatively light.

  “You? That close and strung out?” She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Less than a ten-count, I’d wager.”

  “Ten?!” Arx surged to her feet and stamped around us. “I could do thirty. Easy!”

  “Oh, aye? So we’ll be skipping yer turn fer the next week, then?”

  Arx’s voice leapt up an octave. “I never said—”

  But I ignored the rest of their banter.

  I had known this was going to be an issue with Xyn from the beginning. She and her Mother were a package deal. There was no escaping it. Or none I knew of. Certainly, it was possible to detach a servant in favor of a new master—Mia was proof of that—but what motivation would Xhinn have to cast her off? Barring that, what would the Demon Queen do if I figured it out in her stead? Xyn’s purpose in being here was so the goddess could live a quasi-mortal life vicariously through her servant, and that had only been possible because we had carried this one through the Dungeon’s exit. There was no way she would give Xyn up. Especially not for this.

  Even so, I hesitated to just set all that aside and dive in. I wanted to make love to Xyn here. I wanted to respond to the emotions she had displayed. To do otherwise risked perverting the act into some ritual of appeasement for a capricious and oft-hostile deity. But with Xyn in the state she was in, revoking the permission I had already granted seemed beyond cruel and would only cause her greater pain. It was a Catch-22.

  So I did the only thing I could. I passed the ball.

  “Then do as you must,” I said. “Ease your pain. Satisfy yourself however you want. But know that I am doing this for you and you alone. I don’t love Xhinn. She has to earn it just the same as you did.”

  Of course, it went without saying that I should have needed to earn the goddess’s love as well, but unless the past week had all been a part of some elaborate and incomprehensible ruse, we had skipped that part. Which was an enormous chunk of the problem I was having with this.

  Xyn nodded her understanding. “Then… Mother does not see. Not hear or feel. Only Xyn. Until ready.”

  I did not need the others to know she was lying. But then, that was the point. It was an agreement of shared delusion, kicking the ball down the road until we could do something about it. Sometimes, that is the only course available. And by sometimes, I mean most of the time.

  What followed was some of the best sex I had ever had… from a technical standpoint. Xyn was good. She was very, very good. An artist, really. However, I will not do her the disservice of describing it. This was not the beautiful commingling of souls a first time should have been. It was simply one friend helping another with an itch they could not scratch on their own.

  For now, that was enough.

  *

  I scratched at my beard, poring over the maze of lines Ahnbe had carved into the mysterious woman’s back. Like Xyn’s, they were only discernible as faint creases and easily confused with a body’s natural striations, scars, veins, or other such malformations. But even that was overstating the situation. It was like the goddess had reassembled the woman’s skin cells into patterns, and it was up to me to pick them out from among the teeming multitude. Even with my enhanced eyes, I would never have known any of this was here without having myself witnessed their creation.

  By contrast, Arx’s back was positively aglow with Words… and contained within the whimsical rendering of a tree stump. For some reason.

  “I don’t understand, Dearest,” she was saying. “Why are mine glowing if hers aren’t?”

  It was tempting to scoff. “Why are you asking me? I only just learned how to see this stuff.”

  She turned to deliver a pout over her shoulder. “And I just learned someone’s been carving an invisible tattoo into my back. How do I know what it looks like? Does it enhance my figure? Does it draw your eye to my curves like it should? These are important considerations, Master!”

  I did scoff that time. “Your curves draw my eye to your curves, Arx.”

  “But it’s glowing! That’s got to be the first thing you notice when you look at me, and a tree stump doesn’t sound sexy at all.” She thumped her knees. “Oh, I hate this!”

  “I promise you still look sexy,” I murmured, completely absorbed with referencing the two structures against each other for similarities. “The glow isn’t that distracting, and the roots outline your hips perfectly. It’s like a natural corset.”

  “Oh…” She wiggled from side to side for a moment, as though mentally settling herself into the garment. “That doesn’t seem so bad. But I’d still rather see it for myself.”

  “And how do ye expect that to happen, ye great walloper?” Jax called. “E’en if ye had the eyes fer it, it’s still on yer back.”

  My First was currently engrossed with her own task, namely reviving Lynnria under the tutelage of our local Faen. I had no idea what might be keeping the girl from regaining her senses, but Mia had been shouting instructions from somewhere within her depths, like an auto mechanic from under the hood of an original Grand Wagoneer. Random stuff, too. Move an arm here. Tickle a spot there. Give her wrist-nipple a quarter turn. What any of that had to do with a fainting spell was beyond me, but she was the expert.

  “At least mine has the right outline,” Arx returned primly. “Yours might as well be a giant penis.”

  “It be an obelisk,” Jax grumbled.

  “An ordinary obelisk would be phallic enough, but yours has vines growing out of it! Are you sure you’re not compensating for something? Commemorating the loss of an old friend, perhaps?”

  “Feh!” Jax spat, not rising to the bait. “Commemor-tating the loss of Master’s virginity, more like. I were the one what took it, and I been the one to satisfy him most. Be a monument to me prowess!”

  “That’s a lovely way to look at it, dear,” Xyn said before plastering herself over my back.

  Our recent coupling might have been a little strained, but it had been more than enough to send the lilim trilling her joy to the birds like a fairytale princess after. It was an amusing contrast to the frenzied howling she had put on display during the actual event. The woman made love like a lioness in rut.

  She nuzzled her frigid nose into the space where my neck met my shoulder affectionately. “Still, a penis? Even I wouldn’t be that daring.”

  “It be an obelisk!” Jax growled again. “And what do yers look like, eh? A feking bawbag?”

  “Mine have no art, thank you very much. They are engravings, not decorations, each Word placed where it needs to be to maximize its effect. I’ve no idea why yours are so fanciful. Nor why Auntie would have grouped them all onto this woman’s back.”

  “I’m assuming this is all one big spell to define what kind of creature she’ll be,” I hazarded, squinting with the effort of focusing so long. “Can you read any of this, Xyn?”

  She grimaced. “I’m sorry, Master. This body does not have the ability to see through the Veil. I could ask Mother if you’d like.”

  Jax and Arx whirled. “NO!”

  I shared the sentiment, but my response was more measured. “I doubt she’d tell us anything useful, Xyn. Knowing her, she’d just turn it into some new game or challenge or hide it all in yet another riddle.” Assuming she didn’t just kill the woman out-of-hand.

  “That is her nature, yes,” Xyn agreed before lowering her voice into a sensuous purr, “But I think she might be more interested in the butter betwixt my loaves.”

  “Don’t be crass,” I admonished, even as my manhood pulsed. “I told you, that’s for you. Not Her.”

  “And I told you, I am Her.”

  “Yeah, and Mia is me… except for the all those pesky thoughts, actions, life experiences, her physical appearance, and origin,” I countered offhand.

  But that was not the conversation I wanted to have right then. I was much more interested in exploring these Runes.

  Unfortunately, my Vocabulary was too limited to make any genuine progress. The only Word I was able to pick out with any certainty was the occasional ‘Is.’ There might have been a ‘Manifest’ in there too, but I only knew that one by reference to Xyn’s palm. So there was a strong possibility I was mistaken. And if the one I had used to bring the labyrinth down over our heads was present, I had yet to spot it. None of which was made easier by how sketchy Ahnbe’s handwriting was. The Shepherdess had a brutalistic flair to her Engravings that made the ones on Arx’s back look like fine calligraphy by comparison.

  Then there was the minor issue Arx had herself raised. Why the glow? Why was it absent on this woman? And Xyn’s only glowed when she was using them? There’s a pattern here. There has to be.

  “Ah, yes. Life experience,” Xyn was saying. “That does lend one a certain perspective. What are we but the memories we make along the way?”

  “Yeah, so Hallmark keeps telling people,” I muttered. “Help me up, would you? I want to get a look at Lynnria.”

  “Oh, but why? I’m so comfortable,” she protested, pressing herself even more firmly into my back. “I love the feeling of your wide shoulders against my breasts. It’s like I was made to fit there. Can’t I bathe in your scent a while longer?”

  I was a fan of that, too. Both parts. Xyn smelled of cinnamon rolls, which had made it terribly difficult to restrain myself during our lovemaking. But I had learned long ago never to encourage a lilim.

  “Well, if my legs would support my weight, I’d carry you as is. But they can’t, and I want to see whether Lynnria’s Runes are glowing… if she even has any.”

  “I’ll carry you, Dearest,” Arx volunteered, but Xyn only hissed at her dismissively.

  “And what about mine? I could tell you where each and every Engraving is and what it’s supposed to do. Some of them are… quite naughty. I wonder what Mother intended with them…”

  “I’m sure we’d all love to find that out together. And you can show me over by Lynnria just as easily as you can here.”

  Abruptly, her arms tightened and her claws bit into my shoulders. But her tone remained gentle. “Do you know what else is easy? Assuring a girl that her feelings are welcome… and not a burden borne.”

  Ignoring the pain, I turned just enough to look at her from the corner of my eye. “Your feelings are most welcome.” Pleasure. Comfort. Happiness. More pleasure, harder. Each pulse sent a gasp and a corresponding expression of shock through the lilim’s face. “But then, we’re not dealing with just your feelings. Are we.”

  A grin stole over the beautiful creature’s visage as she struggled to regain control of her breathing.

  “I look forward to the day you solve that riddle, my Gift,” she whispered, then snatched my arm up and over her shoulder.

  “Now… up you come.”