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Harrow wakes up, and her head feels suspiciously wooly. It’s dark, which she expected, but she can smell ink and sweat and something appealingly nutty, instead of the cool neutral scent of her bone cocoon.
Her eyes adjust to the dim light, and the first thing she can make out is a rumpled line of light, the kind that might come from a hastily-curtained window. It reflects off of the second thing she can make out: a pair of golden eyes, half-lidded in the darkness.
"Nav," hisses Harrowhark. "What have you done?"
"I preserved what little is left of your dignity," Gideon tells her, unhelpfully. "You're going to want some breakfast. Or maybe it's lunchtime now."
Some of the deeper shadows across the room shift, and then blinding sunlight invades the chamber. Harrow hisses and covers her eyes.
"Definitely lunchtime." Gideon approaches with a tray. "Eat."
Harrow ignores this and begins doing arithmetic. It wasn't even dark out when she'd collapsed into the cocoon, and if it's nearing noon-- "Griddle, have I been asleep for eighteen hours?" She struggles out of the nest of covers. She could swear the blankets weren't so heavy the first time she slept here. Her limbs feel leaden and numb.
Gideon actually has the temerity to touch her, wrapping her fingers around a polymer cup of water.
Harrow moves to set it aside.
"I'm not messing around here, Nonagesimus," Gideon says. "Drink something or I'll sit on you."
The clear liquid is not water. It is vaguely salty and vaguely sweet, but other than that, it tastes of nothing. Harrow finishes half of it and then tries again. "I have to go. Palamedes Sextus--"
"Palamedes Sextus is not impressed with you," says Gideon, and then, pointedly: "Alpha."
"He can't know," says Harrow automatically. No one can. They all think she's a beta, calm and even-tempered and well-suited to her role as the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth. If they know, they'll send omegas to distract her. The Ninth cannot afford distractions.
Gideon knows this, too. "He knows. He says he'll keep it a secret, though."
"Why?" Harrow cannot imagine anyone giving away anything for free.
Grimly, Gideon continues. "He wants you to stop spreading pheromones all over the facility. He says you're throwing off his readings."
"I shouldn't be spreading pheromones anywhere. The suppressants should--" Fear spikes into Harrow's belly. She shouldn't have gone into rut, either. Shouldn't have had to make the bone cocoon in the first place. But if Sextus had been there when Gideon broke it open-- "You should have left me there," she says. "I had it under control. I was resting."
"I thought you were dead," says Gideon. "And if you die, I end up back in the oss pits."
"I'm fine." Somehow, the glass in Harrow's hand has gone empty. She sets it aside impatiently. "I'll just double up on the suppressants until I can figure out what's causing them to fail."
"Or you'll poison yourself," Gideon points out. "There's a simpler solution here."
If there is, Harrow can't figure out what it is. Or what that nutty aroma is. It's not the porridge Gideon has put on her bedside table. She sniffs the air, trying to place it. "Did you bring almonds?"
"I wish," says Gideon. "If you want protein, I think that's a great idea. I can just run down to the kitchens. The skeletons there are weirdly helpful."
"I'll eat the porridge," says Harrow, icily. Gideon, who has always been extremely obnoxious, stands anyway. The nutty smell gets stronger, and it's a lot more appetizing than the porridge.
Suspicion creeps into Harrow's mind. "Nav," she says, very carefully. "You are a beta, right?"
Most people are betas. Gideon has never shown any signs of being anything else. There is no logical reason for her to be standing across the room, shifting her weight from foot to foot.
Illogically, Gideon fists her hands in her terrible hair. She looks obscurely embarrassed. "About that."
Harrow sucks air in, and then expels it forcibly, as if it has betrayed her. "You lied."
"I didn't know!" Gideon flings her arm down in a gesture of frustration that nearly upends the porridge bowl. "Not until I kicked open your cocoon--"
And got a faceful of pheromones. Well, that would do it. And she'd still managed to get Harrow out of the facility, up the ladder, and to the Ninth House quarters. Begrudgingly, Harrow is impressed.
To give herself time to process this new data, Harrow rescues the porridge from Gideon's flailing and sticks a spoonful into her mouth. It's flavorless, the way it is at home when Crux makes for her, which means she owes Gideon another debt. Almost all the food here is inedible.
"But, anyway, it's convenient, right?" Gideon is saying.
Harrow chokes on her porridge. She scrutinizes Gideon's face, looking for a sign-- any sign-- that this is some kind of cruel prank. But Gideon seems to be in deadly earnest, standing there with the muffled midday sun limned around her terrible muscles and offering Harrow sex because Harrow has again failed to best her own biology.
She swallows her porridge and shoves aside her blankets, unspeakably glad to see Gideon did not attempt to remove her clothing. "No. No. Absolutely not. I cannot possibly compensate you for this."
Gideon makes an abrupt movement that makes Harrow reach for her earlobes, but this time, it's not a physical assault. "My body is the Ninth's. My body has always been the Ninth's, even when I hated it. How is this different?"
"This was never part of our deal. I cannot ask this of you." Harrow takes the stud from her ear anyway and rolls it around her palm. The bite of the sharp edge provides her with some small comfort in the face of a conversation that should never have been allowed to happen.
"I'm offering," says Gideon, shattering even that small respite.
Keeping her voice absolutely steady, Harrow asks the only question she can muster. "What's in it for you?" There's no acceptable answer Gideon can give her, and she asks it anyway.
"What do you mean, what's in it for me--? I would get laid."
Harrow contrives to sneer. "Are you really so desperate--"
"I will walk out of this room if you want me to. But ask me soon, because I think the suppressants Palamedes gave me are wearing off again."
Harrow stares at Gideon, shocked. It feels like the temperature in the room is rising, even though the climate control is off. The error is in her perception.
Gideon can feel it too. Only Harrow could see the flush rising on her cheeks under the paint, but then again, only Harrow is there in the room. Gideon has given away her secrets to 100% of the people present.
"I'm going to go," says Gideon, at length, when Harrow remains silent. "You know where to find me if you change your mind." She turns to go. Her boots thud on the floor like the clamour of funeral bells.
Harrow's mouth goes dry. Her arm moves without her consent, tossing the bone stud in an arc so she can snatch more from her ears, her wrists, her throat. In the end, Gideon does not leave, because she's pinned to the wall by a thousand skeletal arms, radius bones interleaving with ulnas to create a mesh cage that cements her against the plaster.
As Harrow stalks across the floor-- her limbs are light, now, light like feathers, light like air, light like the dazed gleam in Gideon's ridiculous golden eyes-- Gideon stops struggling and goes still within the cage. Phalanges encircle her wrists. Harrow tests her control, and is pleased when it holds.
"If I decide to take you up on your offer, Nav," she says, watching Gideon's pupils blow, "if I decide to take you up on your ludicrous, foolhardy offer that you've made because you have the morals and self-preservation instinct of a diseased lemming-- then I will send a skeleton, with a key to this room. Use that space to think better of your decisions." Now that she's up close, she can smell Gideon. Her cavalier is not in heat, but she still trembles in the cage of bone when Harrow approaches. Perhaps a respite will clear both their brains.
"Yeah. Yeah, I can work with that." Gideon rips one arm free of her skeletal restraints, pulls grasping bones away from her torso so she can lean down over Harrow, with her other arm still bound to the wall. She takes an enormous breath in through her nose, pornographic the way she sniffs, wallowing in Harrow's scent. "Now back off and let me go."
"You're a hog, Nav," says Harrow, even as she retreats back to the bed. Even gripped in the clutches of barely-suppressed rut, she thinks that kind of overt scenting is gross. The bones chip and crumble away from Gideon's body, and Gideon finishes the last few steps to the door.
"Hey, Harrow?" She pauses with the door halfway closed. "If you decide to take me up on my offer, the sex is going to be fucking phenomenal."
"Go away," Harrow tells her. She locks the door and weighs the key in her palm. Even with Gideon gone, that faint nutty aroma remains.
Harrow doesn’t lie to herself. There’s no chance Gideon will come back for her, which means she has to take care of herself. She strips off her clothes efficiently, letting them drop on the pile of other clothes on her floor. There’s a basket across the room, but Harrow doesn’t have the energy to waste on tidying her room. She needs to put paid to this pounding, rising need so that she can get back to work on the theorem trials. This is a delay she can’t afford.
Naked, she flops down on the bed and uses her hands. It’s not the first time she’s done this, exactly, but neither has she dedicated time to it. She manages to bring herself off, but this offers her no relief. Her cunt has dried out in spite of her efforts and her persistent need. She can barely smell the faint nutty Gideon-scent.
If Gideon had left the set of robes she’d been wearing, Harrow could bury her face in them, and maybe that would work better. It’s not like she would have sent her cavalier off naked: Gideon has other robes. To her enormous shame, Harrow considers raiding Gideon’s laundry hamper, but even if Harrow were to lower herself that far, that plan would yield no fruit. Gideon does tidy her space, and therefore all her dirty robes have been carted away by skeleton servitors for cleaning. The only scents Harrow will find among Gideon’s possessions will be soap and mould.
Nothing is working. There is no alternative. Harrow wraps her wretched nakedness in her discarded robe, raises a skeleton, hangs the key around its neck, and opens the door a thin crack to send it to Gideon.
To Harrow’s shock, once she sends the skeleton, the response doesn’t take long. The key scrapes in the lock after a scant fifteen minutes. Harrow leaps out of bed, clutching her robes closed. Even through the thick wood of the door, she can smell Gideon, which is not something she’s ever been able to do before. She’s been taking the suppressants religiously since puberty, since she presented in secret and in Drearburh. These feelings are unfamiliar to her, and she has never practiced coping with them.
The handle won’t turn. Gideon is holding it with the latch engaged. “I have one condition,” she says through the door.
“What?”
“Don’t bite me, okay? This is a casual thing, and maybe-- someday--”
Harrow rolls her eyes, yanking impatiently at the doorknob. "I won't bite you, Nav."
Gideon lets go. The door comes abruptly open, and Harrow staggers back. By the time she finds her balance, Gideon has locked the door behind her.
No prompting needed to keep this encounter secret, Harrow supposes. In an effort to regain control, she issues an order. “Take off your clothes and get on the bed.”
She huddles in her robe as Gideon begins to shrug off her own layers. Gideon following direction is an even sweeter fruit than the scent that’s gradually beginning to wind its way back to her nostrils. In a chemical-induced haze, the spirit of fair play grips Harrow, and she slides her own robe off.
“Whoa,” says Gideon, pulling her belt out of its loops. She’s still wearing far too much. Harrow readies a scathing remark that flies out of her head as Gideon lunges.
Harrow wasn’t expecting this. Gideon’s arms close hard around her unready flesh and lift her feet from the tile. Her cavalier drives her a few paces back before her back hits the stone a few paces behind her so the breath smooshes out of her lungs. The wall is very cold.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she snaps, mustering up all the ice she can manage with Gideon’s thigh parting her own. To make matters worse, Gideon lets her go, so the whole insignificant weight of Harrow’s body presses her cunt flush against Gideon’s trouser leg. She’s dripping wet again. Her toes barely reach the ground.
“They’re pierced,” says Gideon. That illuminates nothing until Gideon finds Harrow’s nipples with her thumbs.
Yes, those are pierced. The bones screwed onto the metal barbells are for dire emergencies only. It’s a practicality and, if Harrow is honest, a comfort. None of that has anything to do with the bizarre reaction Gideon is having to them. She’s wearing the expression she usually reserves for her sword and exploring the piercings with her fingertips like they’ll evaporate if she isn’t touching them at all times. Abortive shocks of sensation frazzle through Harrow’s compromised nervous system.
She grinds down so hard she imagines she can feel each thread in the woven grain of the fabric separating her flesh from Gideon’s.
“Damn,” says Gideon, shifting her weight to support Harrow more securely. She mashes her face into Harrow’s neck and snuffles against Harrow’s skin, which is a massive breach of decorum. Actually, Harrow is pretty sure everything Gideon is doing is wrong for this situation, and yet she’s finding it spectacularly difficult to object with the warm bulk of her cavalier flush against her.
It’s a problem. She can smell her own arousal beginning to mingle with Gideon’s, and Gideon is still wearing clothes. It’s the worst of all possible worlds: not only is Harrow naked, she’s restricted to touching through fabric. Worse, Gideon’s tank top blocks none of the scent glands in her underarms, which are far too close to Harrow's teeth.
Gideon asked Harrow for one thing: not to bite. Immediately, it’s become the only thing Harrow can think about. Her whole world contracts to Gideon’s scent in her nose, Gideon’s mouth nipping at the side of her neck, Gideon’s hands on her tits, Gideon’s thigh between her legs. She feverishly works a bone bangle off her wrist, but it’s too late. She’s already coming. Her ejaculate soaks through Gideon’s clothing.
“I’m sorry,” Harrow says, when language returns. She’s made a mess, she hasn’t touched Gideon at all, and she has utterly humiliated herself. This is a disaster.
“That? Was hot. Can you go again?” Gideon is being very gentle with her, but she hasn’t taken her hands away from Harrow’s breasts. Helplessly, because she’s still pinned against the wall, Harrow arches into the touch. Apparently, she can indeed go again.
Before the situation gets any further out of hand, Harrow throws the bangle. Skeletons spring up behind Gideon and rip her away from the wall, freeing Harrow. (If she lands too heavily on her feet, Gideon is too busy trying to break free from half a dozen grasping skeletal arms to notice.)
She takes advantage of the respite to summon more skeletons. As she advances, her army hauls Gideon backward to the bed. Gideon fights the whole way across the room, but she doesn’t even have her sword. It’s easy to pin her down on the bed and glue her wrists to the moldering bedposts with bone amalgam.
"I told you to undress and get on the bed, Nav," Harrow says, climbing up after her. "Was that too hard for you?"
Gideon whimpers . She's struggling, her muscles flexing against bone. More importantly, she's losing. The motion of her body entrances Harrow: this is hers, this fight that they've shared for so many years given a new face. They're no longer spilling each other's blood. Harrow notices, with delight, that there is a second wet spot between Gideon's legs, extending well down the inseam. No one can blame her for ruining Gideon's trousers when Gideon ruined them first.
Before long, Gideon is well and truly pinned. If they were at home in Drearburh, Harrow would force Gideon to concede. Here, she doesn't have to.
To reduce untoward temptation, she calcifies cuffs over Gideon's upper arms, and, after a moment's consideration, over her own as well. Now they're both protected from unwanted mating bites.
The idea of letting the skeletons rip off Gideon's clothing tempts her, but Drearburh has never had the cloth to spare on a whim. "Will you behave now, Gideon? Will you take off your clothes for me?"
She watches Gideon's eyes very closely for signs of compliance. They're so dark that at a distance, even Harrow might mistake them for proper Drearburh black. Best of all, there are none of the telltale signs of fight in them. Gideon isn't looking for an opening, and she’s nodding. Her focus is smooth and absolute and centered on Harrow, flavored with a soupçon of desperation for spice. Harrow likes this very much indeed.
She releases Gideon's arms from their restraints. "Shirt off. Now."
"Yeah," says Gideon indistinctly. She wobbles slightly as she sits up. Harrow did that to her. All the muscles and curves that spill out as Gideon pulls her top off belong to Harrow.
"Down on your back," Harrow says, pushing lightly on Gideon's chest. Her hand is so much smaller than either of Gideon’s breasts.
Gideon drops back onto the bed without argument. "Wanna touch you," she complains as skeleton hands once again lock around her wrists and draw her arms above her head.
"You had your turn," says Harrow, but she’s distracted. This position lifts Gideon's breasts. The succulent curves splay out on either side of her sternum.
Harrow has never spent time thinking about them in her life, because Gideon keeps them bound away. Probably so they won't jiggle. They jiggle now with every breath Gideon takes.
Harrow traces the outer curve and, daringly, reaches out to pluck at a nipple. There's no reaction from Gideon. Puzzling, because when Gideon touches Harrow, Harrow feels like she is going to shoot out of her skin like a construct exploding from a rib fragment. In a well-ordered world, simple physiology would govern this act. There is nothing wrong with any of the nerves connecting Gideon's skin to her body-- and yet nothing is happening. But Harrow can unravel that mystery later. Now, she doesn’t care what it takes as long as she can make Gideon writhe under her.
Experimentally, she reaches out and traces the pathways of Gideon's skeleton: the sweep of her collarbone, the cage of her ribs. There is a spot, she learns, a few inches below the red tuft of hair adorning Gideon's armpit. When she applies her fingertips to it, the touch makes Gideon's hips come up off the bed.
This is just as good as touching Gideon's breasts, Harrow decides, as Gideon moans beneath her. No. It's better, because Harrow gets to watch. Gideon's breathing shifts her rib cage with every ragged inhale, and the view is amazing. Harrow has read enough of Gideon's magazines to understand the appeal of generous breasts, but here, in the flesh, with the heat and texture and sweet nutty scent of Gideon's skin, it's indescribable. No one could hope to reproduce this on cheap glossy paper.
Harrow leans in and sucks a mark into Gideon's left breast, and that's best of all. This exquisite bounty is Harrow's and Harrow's alone. She is never going to share Gideon with anyone.
"Harrow, please--" says Gideon, which is auspicious-- "Harrow, please, you have to fuck me, I can smell you, I need you so bad."
Harrow doesn't need to do anything. She strokes the spot she's found a little longer, to prove her point and also because she very much likes to see Gideon squirm.
But she does want to fuck Gideon. So she drags her hand down Gideon's stomach, reveling in the fine hairs on Gideon's lower belly that guide her hand to Gideon's fly, and she personally drags Gideon's twice-ruined trousers off.
Her mouth begins to water, because Gideon's scent is so much stronger when Gideon is naked, too. It crowds in through her eyeballs, her ears, and her mouth. She kneels between Gideon's thighs, nudging them a bit further apart in an attempt to steady herself.
Gideon is ludicrously wet, dripping onto the sheets below her. Harrow slides the tip of her finger toward the source of all that wetness, just a fraction of a centimeter inside, and almost comes right there because of the raspy, guttural noise Gideon makes.
But no. Harrow is going to do this right. She's going to make her omega come so many times she can't walk for a week. Besides, Harrow has come once already, which is a point on Gideon's side of the scoreboard. Harrow refuses to let her win.
With that in mind, she takes her time sliding a single digit inside her cavalier. Gideon thrashes into the touch, pressing her hips frantically up until Harrow braces her elbow heavily over her pubic bone and takes her hand away entirely. Even Gideon can take a hint that heavy-handed. She stills under Harrow, breathing hard.
“Behave,” Harrow says. Indistinctly, she knows that Gideon is doing her the favor, but she needs this, needs Gideon to obey her, so she waits until Gideon nods.
“Please don’t tease,” Gideon says, at last. “Please, Harrow, I’ll be good.”
This time Gideon stays still, her muscles straining with the effort. Harrow takes pity on her and adds a second finger as she presses inside.
Her willpower collapses like a snow leek soufflé once she’s lodged knuckles-deep in wet, yielding omega. She noses over the garishly red hair covering Gideon’s mons, breathing in scent and smearing Gideon’s slick over her cheeks. It’s all so much. Harrow has no idea how the sensory input isn’t overwhelming her-- except that they’re together and they have always been equal opponents and complements to each other. Gideon whines as Harrow fucks into her, and Harrow meets her need ferociously.
Before long, Gideon has soaked Harrow’s hand to the wrist and Harrow has added a third finger. She can’t quite figure out how to make her cavalier come , no matter how she crooks her fingers. (Gideon had made a horrible noise like a rusty hinge when Harrow tried to add a fourth finger, and Harrow had backed off immediately. She wants Gideon to come so hard she forgets her own name and is reduced to gasping out Harrow’s, and she can’t achieve that goal if her cavalier-- her omega-- is anything but perfectly comfortable.)
At least Gideon is trembling under her with every sign of pleasure. Harrow can’t hold out any longer: she comes again, her fluids mingling with Gideon’s in the musty depths of the Canaan House mattress.
After that, she gives up worrying about orgasms and focuses instead on giving Gideon what pleasure she can. Her constructs will hold, protecting them both. That means she can take what she needs. Emboldened by the slick constriction around her fingers, she sinks her teeth into the flesh of Gideon's thighs and feels Gideon's inner walls pulse around her fingers again and again.
Gideon grows indecorously louder and louder, and Harrow welcomes it. Let anyone fool enough to cross her meticulous bone wards know that this is hers. Harrowhark has bound Gideon Nav to her service, and she intends to take full advantage of it.
Rearing up to get a better angle, she fucks Gideon viciously, using fury in place of strength. Her cavalier can take it.
Harrow comes again like that, this time on Gideon’s other thigh. There is a deep satisfaction in seeing her fluids smeared over her omega, faint bruises blooming on Gideon’s thighs underneath the splatter of milky white.
To give them both a moment of respite, she crawls up Gideon’s body and offers up her pruney fingers for her cavalier to suck clean. It is not the first time that Gideon has bitten her, but it’s the first time that Gideon has added sweeping strokes of her tongue, the first time that Gideon’s teeth nipping the pads of her fingers has overwhelmed Harrow with lust instead of anger. Abruptly and with almost no provocation, Harrow comes a fourth time across Gideon’s belly.
They stare at each other for one breathless moment of stillness, and then Gideon bares her teeth and pulls on the bone constructs anchoring her wrists above her head.
Somewhere in the depths of her head, alarm bells are going off, but just then Harrow doesn’t care. Gideon is hers, and so she can let the construct crumble. Let Gideon’s hands fall heavy on her back and drag their bodies close together so that Harrow can press the full length of her meat onto Gideon. Her cavalier is so big . Their legs tangle together and it’s wonderful for Harrow to be able to scrape her teeth over Gideon’s torso, leaving stinging red marks over each of her cavalier’s ribs, but it’s not enough.
Frustrated, Harrow pulls back and Gideon follows with her hands roaming feverishly over every inch of Harrow’s bony back. Neither of them wants to mess around with talking, but Harrow manages to communicate by headbutting Gideon’s side enough that Gideon flips over onto her front and lifts her hips.
Harrow can fuck Gideon deeper from behind, with her hips lodged firmly against one round muscled buttock. Her cavalier is still trembling under her, and even with her face smushed into the threadbare pillow, she’s loud . When Harrow rakes the nails of her free hand down the flexing muscles of Gideon’s back, Gideon screams . It fills her soul, like Harrow has been hungry for this sound for as long as she can remember and has been fed properly at last.
Replete with gratification, she spills across Gideon's ass with enough force that her cum drips down the back of Gideon's thigh to puddle in the hollows of the inside of her knees.
That marks the sum of Harrow’s endurance. Her wrist aches and her shoulder burns. Harrow withdraws in a strange mixture of humiliation and triumph. Gideon rolls over and sprawls bonelessly over the mattress.
“What do you need?” Harrow demands, allowing her remaining constructs to dissolve into dust and chip. By the degradation of the osseous structures, Harrow can estimate that they spent a full forty-five minutes fucking.
Gideon blinks her eyes open. (Clarity is slowly returning to them, and it makes Harrow want to snarl.) “What do you mean?”
That ought to be obvious. “How do I make you come?”
“Are you joking?”
“I am trying to be considerate,” says Harrow, with furious precision.
To her horror, Gideon laughs. “I’m all good, doom empress.” When Harrow says nothing, Gideon clarifies. “Don’t worry. You got me off.”
Harrow glares at her. “That can’t be right. You were-- the same the whole time. Coming is more.” She knows this for a fact, underscored by the five orgasms she’s just experienced herself.
“Never thought I’d have to argue with you about this, but apparently you’re just that good.” Gideon stretches out her shoulders and then adds, smugly: “Told you the sex would be phenomenal.”
Harrow considers this. “Do you mean to tell me you were coming that whole time?”
“Or close enough to, yeah.” Gideon pats the spot next to her on the bed-- Harrow’s bed. As if Harrow is going to snuggle.
There is absolutely no chance of any of that. With some effort, she wrings the tension out of her wrists and attempts to stand.
She makes it upright nearly without issue and takes two wobbly steps before Gideon arrests her progress, lifts her off her feet, and bodily conveys her back to the bed. At least Gideon doesn’t put her down in the prodigious wet spot.
"I'm going to have to rehydrate you again," Gideon says.
"You don't have to do anything." Harrow knows her tone is too sharp, but she can't bear any more help from Gideon. Her lips are chapped, her mouth dry, her head faintly aching. Nothing fifteen minutes' sleep won't cure, probably, and then she can get back to work.
“If you get out of that bed before you drink at least two glasses of water, I will resort to violence,” Gideon says, on her way to the bathroom to fill the polymer cup Harrow emptied hours ago. It is patently unjust that a woman who has just spent 45 minutes having an orgasm-- orgasms?-- can just walk across the room with an untroubled gait. Harrow subsides unhappily onto the pillows. She still has her necromancy, but perhaps she can afford to conserve her strength for a few minutes.
“I drank one, too,” says Gideon, when she returns. She hands Harrow the cup and then slings herself into the bed next to her.
The water soothes her parched throat, and Gideon is big and warm and her arm is heavy when she curls around Harrow like a big, contented cat. Well. Perhaps a short nap won’t hurt. As long as Gideon doesn’t get any ideas. This is dangerously pleasant, and Harrow can’t afford any distractions.
Harrow wakes up in a panic. It’s light again, and there’s a wet spot on her shoulder where Gideon has drooled on her. She shoves urgently at the arm wrapped around her waist and can’t budge it. Time keeps slipping through her fingers.
Even though she’s still asleep, Gideon makes a noise of protest and pulls Harrow more firmly into her embrace.
Grinding her teeth, Harrow pulls the last of her earrings from her ears. She’ll need to replace them before she ventures back down to the facility, but for now, she needs her army to get her out of bed. It’s vexing, so she doesn’t bother with finesse. Gideon’s bare ass hits the cold flagstones with a satisfying thump.
“What the fuck, Nonagesimus? Don’t I get a thank you?”
Harrow ignores this in favor of getting dressed. “I need to get back to work.”
Gideon springs to her feet. She looks even more ridiculous than usual, because she’s standing like she’s ready for a duel even though she’s swordless and naked in front of Harrow’s bed. “I’m going with you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Tough shit, necro lady.” Gideon moves with strong, sure strides to the other room, where presumably she has clothes that aren’t a damp, wrinkled pile on Harrow’s floor. “I took my key ring back when you were unconscious the first time, so if you ever want to dick around in that basement again you’ll have a hell of a time getting back in there.”
“Fine. Get dressed.” Harrow doesn’t have time left to argue.
The marks that Harrow left are already starting to fade from Gideon’s body.
Harrow waits until Gideon is halfway out the door before she calls after her. “Adequate paint, Nav!”
Gideon flips her off until the door slams shut behind her.
Alone, Harrow strokes the cool paintbrush over her cheekbones. The paint glides on in thick, comforting layers. Her mind is clearer than it has been in a full week.