[b]Bella![/b]

Reality slowly bleeds in. Stairwells were involved at one point— no, not stairs, the slow curving slope of their ramps, just steep enough to make the climb difficult, hands groping in the dark. The floor is richly carpeted, the wall is black stone, and there is a rising odor of distant smoke. Here, then, is a maze of guest quarters and servant closets and salons, the shantytowns that spring up architecturally around any ballroom large enough, and one that would be not too difficult to navigate if there were lights, but there are no lights. Lights have died, and there is night.

Sight is a useless sense. Certainly your auspex can tell you his outline, but what good is that when you are entwined and entangled, as he half-pins you against a wall to stop you from bowling him over? No. Rely on the others. Rely on the sound of his ragged breath, the catch and hitch of pain that is being repressed and pushed down, how words come apart in his wet mouth and become pants and huffs of breath until he lashes them together as exhalations. Rely on the smell of blood, fresh, on his palm, trickling down his hip; the Azura’s strike through his side did not rupture any internal organs, but blood is seeping through his body’s attempt to seal the wound, hampered by a potent anti-coagulation toxin. No wonder he can’t make the words come. He’s not close to death, but only because Artemis pulled away the blow at the very last second.

If she had not, he would be dying in your arms, here and now.

Feel his false bravado, how he turns the pain into a clinging strength, how his muscles lock in place when you strive against him, how he shakes with the effort in a way that says he can do this all night, if you make him. How dare he care? How dare [i]he[/i] refuse to give up on [i]you?[/i]

He needs a lot of things: a bandage (until someone can wash the injury clean and allow it to naturally seal), a shirt (or this one peeled off so he looks like an Olympic wrestler, clammy after a grueling brawl), and someplace where he can sit down and catch his breath for a moment. He needs you to stop fighting him, or else he’ll break himself stopping you. And he needs to stop smelling just a little too much like a broken bottle left behind a long time ago. Doesn’t he?

Or maybe you want to take deeper breaths of his hair, of his sweat, underneath the blood. Redana used to make you think of unthinkable things when she was finished with her Olympic training, didn’t she? And after all that, after the dance and the violence and the way he’s holding you and refusing to let go, the way his hand is on your ear right now, even though he took the blow that should have been yours, even as you’ve torn at his clothes and played with him like a mouse…

Well, you’re allowed to feel many feelings all at once. And even if there’s much more important things to take care of, you’re allowed to have confusing thoughts about pulling open a room and rewarding him while the whole palace burns down around your ears. If you’re going to die, it would be a shame to die without fucking him, you might think—

But you should probably do something about the wound instead. You always have been on the side of those who need your protection (and your carry?), after all.