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Gideon was in the middle of her solo drills the first time it happened. She had her feet in position, rapier raised when she felt the first pull, a strange leaching that made her squirm and shake out her limbs. She was still shaking when the first jolt of pain hit. It lasted only a moment and when it ended, her body flooded with a relief so instant and so complete that it came close to arousal.
She paused with her rapier in hand. Waited. Nothing.
An aftershock from the avulsion trial? The Sixth didn’t mention the potential for anything like that. They’d been very stuck on brain damage, but that didn’t feel like it was her brain. That was an entire body sensation. That was--Gideon looked toward the door. Harrow hadn’t come back yet. She might not come back at all, and Gideon’s brain, undamaged--or perhaps damaged just right--settled comfortably on thoughts of release.
She resumed her drills, her body now set to a low anticipatory buzz as she mapped out her plans for the rest of her Harrow-less evening, every step bringing her closer to tasting that release. Eventually, pretty certain that Harrow really wasn’t returning, she got out her longsword and went through her drills again, really deciding to draw it all out. She did not feel a second pull. There was nothing but the satisfying weight of her sword, the feel of two hands on the grip, and by the end she’d almost forgotten the wobbling pulling moment. She was happy as a child with her sword gripped in her hands and her plans to spoil herself a little (and then a lot) after a very long day.
Harrow never came back. Gideon was used to this by now.
She was sitting in the warm current of the bathtub, being slowly boiled, when it happened a second time. That same pull, the feeling of something sucking at her, and then the pain. The pain was unmistakably similar to what she’d felt that morning when Harrow siphoned her soul, but it was momentary, over as soon as it started, and again Gideon felt the relief rush through her. There was that same thick tendril of arousal that curled in her gut, and she resisted the urge to slip her hand between her legs, already concerned about so much water in such close proximity to her body. The last thing she wanted was to encourage it. Gideon could wait. Harrow wasn’t coming back, so there was no reason to sprint toward this finish line.
After a long calming soak in the tub, followed by a swift trip to the sonic, Gideon settled into her pile of blankets. She opened one of her smuggled magazines and her mind settled into… nothing in particular, just the images in front of her--breasts and curves, torsos, legs--and she made absolutely no associations between any of the images on the page and any of the people who she’d met since leaving the Ninth. Or any of the people that she knew before that.
She’d just slipped her hand beneath the waistband of her trousers when there was a strange thump in Harrow’s bedroom, followed by a loud knock.
Gideon stilled.
“Harrow?”
No response.
“Harrow, that better be you,” Gideon warned. She set the magazine aside, removed her hand from her pants. She reached for her rapier and wished she hadn’t hidden her longsword away again so soon.
Still no response from the bedroom.
Harrow had the doors to this place warded all to hell. Or she did, until earlier that day. She must have removed the wards to allow the Sixth entry. Harrow had not come back as far as Gideon could tell, which meant--
“Hello?” Gideon asked. “You should know I have a very large sword and I’m pretty hot shit when it comes to using it.” And: “Come out with your hands up.”
Nothing.
She pushed open the door to Harrow’s bedroom and stepped inside. Everything looked just as it had earlier that day. The bed was unmade. There was a discarded pile of black shirts and black trousers and blacker robes on the floor. The heavy curtains were pulled back away from the windows and tied. There was no room for anyone to hide behind them. Gideon kicked one foot beneath the bed and ran it along the edge as far as she could reach. She felt nothing. She was about to get down on her hands and knees when she noticed the door to the wardrobe was ajar.
Gideon made a beeline toward it, pulling it open violently. She half-expected bone wards to yank both of her arms from their sockets, but there was nothing there.
Well, not nothing.
There was Harrowhark Nonagesimus crouched at the bottom, her head obscured behind a curtain of black clothes, only her knees and her feet visible amidst the boxes and boots at the base.
“Fuck Harrow, I was ready to come at you. Why didn’t you answer when I called your name? Better yet, why the hell are you hiding in a wardrobe?”
There was a long stretched moment when Harrow did not move, when she stayed exactly as she was, and Gideon’s heart lurched in her chest and her stomach dropped to her feet and she was positive that Harrow was gone and this was her empty shell, left behind in this wardrobe for Gideon to find. She dropped her rapier and pushed her way through the hanging clothes in an attempt to pull Harrow’s body free.
Harrow fought like hell as soon as Gideon touched her, and Gideon released her necromancer with an exasperated sigh of relief.
“What the fuck, Harrow. When you didn’t move or answer, I thought you were fucking dead.”
Harrow pressed herself back into the wardrobe. Gideon opened her mouth to curse Harrow out again, but whatever kept pulling at Gideon--she was pretty sure it had to be an after effect of the avulsion trial--chose that moment to start up again. It was the same as the last two times: that leaching squirmy feeling, the sudden pain, and then it stopped and the relief flooded in. Gideon stumbled and reached out to hold onto the edge of the wardrobe. “Shit.”
“You need to leave, Nav,” Harrow said. Her voice sounded strained. “I don’t think I can stop.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what the fuck is going on.” She probably wasn’t going anywhere then either. To prove her point, Gideon crouched down on the floor beside the wardrobe. “Ready when you are.”
She could see Harrow better from this angle. Harrow had her eyes squeezed shut and she was shaking, just a bit. She licked her lips and swallowed twice before she spoke again.
“It isn’t safe for you here. I opened a jar in the Eighth Lyctor study. It was full of a very soft powder. The mere disturbance created by opening the lid was enough to--I must have inhaled some and now I’m--”
Gideon reached out to touch Harrow’s arm, and Harrow flinched back. That seemed… that was pretty normal actually.
“You’re sick?”
“I’m sick,” Harrow said, with a strange emphasis Gideon didn’t understand. “Something’s different. Not right, and I’m--I’m absolutely wrong.”
“Okay,” Gideon said. She pushed a hand back through her hair. For some reason this simple gesture made Harrow emit a low whine, followed by a sound of absolute disgust. Gideon ignored both. “How can I help?”
Harrow shook her head. “You can leave immediately.”
Gideon paused at that. If there was one thing Harrowhark Nonagesimus had confirmed since arriving at Canaan House, it was that she knew how to avoid a person she did not want to see. She went weeks without being caught by Gideon, slipping in and out of these rooms while Gideon was asleep. She knew Gideon’s schedule better than anyone, so the fact that she was here now, the fact that she was here at all, and had been the entire time Gideon was training (did she know about the sword?), throughout Gideon’s bath, the sonic shower--It could only mean one thing. There was something that Gideon could help with and Harrow did not want to admit it.
“You’re lying. If you didn’t need my help you wouldn’t be here.”
When Harrow spoke again it sounded choked and the choked words she said were: “Griddle.” And: “Go.”
“No way. Sick how? Should I go get Sextus?”
Harrow surged forward and grabbed at Gideon’s shirt. “No!”
Gideon held up her hands in surrender. Harrow released her and pulled back as though burned. Going for Palamedes and Camilla seemed the obvious answer. They could bring Camilla’s big back of tricks, poke at Harrow, spout out a bunch of stuff Gideon definitely wouldn’t follow, and then once prodded, they’d translate into words meant for normal people. Gideon stood and paced the bedroom once before coming back to stand in front of her cowering necromancer. Think, Gideon. Harrow needed her help. That was why she was there. Needed her help with what? Harrow said she’d inhaled something in the--”Okay, no Sixth. So I’ll go get the Eighth. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but maybe they’ll know what it was that you--”
Harrow cried out in outrage, and when she spoke it was through clenched teeth, an absolute growl: “Nav, I will stab you in the heart with your own ribs if you go anywhere near Octakiseron with this.”
Gideon sat on the edge of the bed. She looked at her empty hands and then shrugged. “So like, I’ll get you a glass of water?”
Harrow squeezed her eyes shut and sighed. “Yes, okay. A glass of water. And once that is done, I need you to shut the door and leave me. Don’t sleep here tonight. I can’t be trusted. I can’t even know where you decide to go.”
Gideon rolled her eyes and stood to get the water. “I’m not fucking leaving you here, so you can stop with that anytime now.”
“Nav--”
“Fuck off! I’m your cavalier, I’m--hold up,” Gideon said as several pieces suddenly clicked into place with a satisfying clink that left her feeling a little tingly in her belly and limbs. “So earlier, when I felt--I thought it was just leftover whatever from the avulsion trial, but that was you, wasn’t it.”
The black death look Harrow gave her was a warning, and also an absolute answer to Gideon’s question. It was definitely Harrow.
“You crave my juice,” Gideon accused.
“I do not crave your juice.”
“Fuck, you do though. You went off to explore that study alone, without your cavalier, using a key that I nearly gave my life for, and then you snorted some powder that made you crave my juice! Harrow. I never would have let you sniff powder from a ten thousand year old jar.”
This was untrue--Gideon probably wouldn’t have noticed Harrow breathing in a puff of jar powder until it was too late--but it sounded like something Camilla Hect might say, so Gideon went with it anyway. Camilla definitely would have stopped Palamedes from accidentally sniffing old as fuck Eighth House jarred juice addiction powder.
Harrow pressed her fingertips against her painted forehead and groaned. “Stop gloating. This is an extremely dangerous situation.”
“How?”
“I could kill you.”
Gideon snorted. “If you were going to kill me, you would have done it years ago.”
Harrow stopped attempting to poke her brain through her forehead and started pulling at the hanging clothes instead. Gideon guessed it was probably because she couldn’t glare quite as effectively with her hands over her face.
“Griddle, I nearly killed you this morning. We never should have attempted it, but you were so willing--” Here Harrow stopped as though overcome. She took a deep breath, fingers twisted up in one of her robes, and then continued: “--and I was desperate to stay ahead of Sextus. I wasn’t in a position to refuse, not once you’d agreed. So I stepped into that entropy field. It was a death field and I knew it and I kept going. I sucked you dry, pulled your soul from your meat, from your heart and your veins, and despite all reason, you lived. What was more, you continued to give. You gave me everything you had and then some. And you--”
“Okay,” Gideon said, because the way Harrow was talking about it was turning Gideon on again. “I was there, I get it.”
Harrow swallowed and let her head fall back against the wall of the wardrobe. “Then you get why you need to leave. It’s overwhelming me, Griddle. I don’t know how long I can hold back, and you’re--you’re no use to me dead.”
Well, that was another damn lie. A necromancer always had use for an empty body. Gideon was chock-full of bones!
“I’m your damn cavalier, Harrow. I’ll say it again, my Vampiress of the Forbidden Juice: I’m your creature. I’m staying. Deal with it.”
She left the room before Harrow could express her horror at the vampire bit. In the bathroom, she paused, leaned against the sink and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked… fine. She looked good. Healthy enough. They’d completed the avulsion trial just that morning, and yeah, it was fucking awful. It took its toll on Gideon, but she had a nap and she ate and since then--
She filled a glass with water and gulped down three big sips. She felt them slide down her throat and hit her stomach cold as Drearburh. Gideon refilled the glass again and then jogged back to the bedroom, bounding in with the glass of water sloshing in her hand. She thrust the glass out toward her necromancer.
Take it, Harrow,” Gideon said.
Harrow took the glass of water from Gideon’s hand and only then did Gideon realize her mistake. “I mean me--my juice. Take whatever you need.”
Harrow clenched her hands around the glass and turned away.
Gideon knelt before the wardrobe. She pushed up her sleeves and exposed her wrists to Harrow. “I’m serious. Suckle my soul.”
Harrow threw the cold water in Gideon’s face with an enraged cry.
Gideon sputtered. She tried to wipe her face on her sleeve, but the glass had been full and the sleeve wasn’t cutting it. She used the bottom of her shirt instead.
“Thanks. I had a bath, stood in the sonic, now you’ve given me a water shower. I’ve never been so clean in my entire life.” At least she hadn’t reapplied her paint. She pushed her wet hair back from her face and looked up to find Harrow staring at her.
“You’d really let me do it.” It sounded strangely like an accusation.
“I just said I would.”
“Why?”
“Because you obviously need it--look at you--and because--“ Harrow hadn’t asked, not this time. That response wouldn’t work. The truth was different now. “Because I want to feel it again.” Harrow shook her head, fast and panicked, and Gideon held up her hands and clarified: “No, not like this morning. I mean what you were doing a little while ago. Those short pulls, they’re like little pulses or whatever. Those aren’t so bad. They’re, um--they’re interesting.”
“Interesting,” Harrow repeated. Her painted mouth moved around the word carefully, and when she looked up at Gideon, her eyes were brighter, less panicked. She was thinking about it, considering the logistics. Gideon let out a shaking breath. They were going to do this.
“I don’t know if I can keep it up,” Harrow admitted. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.”
“You will,” Gideon insisted.
“You don’t know that.”
Gideon shrugged and folded her arms over her damp chest. “I don’t see how it can be worse than this morning. There’s no super death field to cross here. It’s just you and me. You aren’t—it won’t send me anywhere like what the Eighth did, will it?”
Harrow shook her head. “Never. Absolutely not.”
Gideon shrugged again. She turned and looked for something to brace herself on, settled for holding the bedpost. She nodded and closed her eyes. “Okay. Let’s do it then.”
Nothing happened. Gideon cracked an eyelid just in time to see Harrow’s feet slip out of the wardrobe. Harrow parted the clothes like a curtain and slid through them as she stood. Harrow was shaking, her entire body vibrating just slightly, as though she was trying very hard to keep herself in one piece. Shit, Gideon hoped this helped. She hoped she wasn’t pushing it entirely for selfish reasons. She hoped--
Harrow started with no warning, not even a twist of her hand to give herself away. Gideon’s knees buckled as Harrow grabbed on, as she started to pull. Next came the squirm, like snakes or worms slithering beneath her skin. Gideon thought that was the worst bit. She could handle the pain, but that slithering--like Harrow had hooks in her soul at the end of each limb and when Harrow pulled, Gideon’s veins and her muscles and whatever else thrashed inside the shell of her skin, whipped about like a worm on a line. No, that didn’t make sense. She wasn’t--Oh, now the pain, sharp and hot and screaming. Gideon held tight to the bedpost, teeth gritted as everything went white and hot. Her vision blurred, Harrow disappearing into the smear of the room.
And then Harrow let go and all the taut bits inside Gideon, all the bits her soul gripped tight to as Harrow tried to suck it away, suddenly snapped back into place. Gideon’s insides reverberated with the force of Harrow’s release and she heard herself groan as she folded down to the edge of the bed. She missed and ended up on her knees instead, her chest pressed to the bed’s edge, her cheek resting on thick blankets.
She waited for the feeling to subside, for that whip of arousal to settle within her. It wasn’t an orgasm (if only it was! Her body was really screaming for that now. She regretted not giving it a go back in the tub), but even so, Gideon saw what she’d just done, replayed it back in her head and imagined how it must have looked to Harrow. She’d given it all away, shown Harrow exactly why she was interested in this. She braced herself for Harrow’s disgust as she pushed away from the bed and turned to face her necromancer.
Harrow was leaning against the bedside table. She was breathing fast and heavy, and she watched Gideon with wide eyes.
“Are you okay?” That was it. Not even a hint of disgust, not even a mean twist of her lips at Gideon’s perversion.
“Yeah,” Gideon stood. She realized now that the pulls she’d felt while she was doing drills and bathing, that was Harrow really holding back. What she’d experienced out there was just a fraction of what she felt now with Harrow right here in front of her. The tentacle of arousal just sorta wiggled in her gut out there, whereas now it snapped and cracked against all of her surfaces, really making itself known.
Still. She stood and tested her limbs. She felt solid. Her brain didn’t feel scrambled. She was fine.
Harrow stood too. She seemed a little less sure on her legs, but she didn’t sway or stumble. She moved to stand in front of Gideon.
“What does it feel like?” Harrow asked. She reached out toward Gideon’s face like she wanted to touch her, which was strange. Harrow never tried to touch her, unless Gideon counted that morning when Harrow put bare fingers to Gideon’s neck. “Does it—“ She pulled her hand back before her fingers made contact with Gideon’s face. Gideon pulled in a shaking breath, her body still thrumming a little from Harrow’s release.
“It’s weird, like really creepy weird--snakes under my skin weird--and then it’s fucking awful,” Gideon said, honestly. “And then suddenly you let go of me and everything’s amazing for a few seconds.”
“I don’t understand why you’d let me do it.”
“Me neither,” Gideon said, then: “No, I do. The amazing bit is the bit that sticks. The rest of it is easy to forget as soon as it gets good again.”
Again Gideon expected disgust and again Harrow failed to deliver.
“How does it feel for you?”
Harrow’s eyes darted back and forth as she contemplated the words she could say. Eventually she settled on: “I think the powder was designed to train adepts to siphon. The feeling--it’s filling, but at the same time it leaves me hungry, starving, and all I can think about is how much I need more. It’s--you feel electric under my skin, and then it’s like--the thalergy collects and it starts to bloom and burn at the same time.” She paused. “I understand the theorems involved. I know exactly what’s happening, but I don’t have the words to explain to you how it feels.”
“Hm,” Gideon said, because there was only one conclusion Gideon could draw from all that Harrow’d just said: this was kinda hot and sexy for Harrow too. Gideon bit the pad of her thumb in contemplation. Maybe there was a way they could--”Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking. Before I knew you were here I was going to settle in and, um, take care of some of my own business. And what we’re doing right now, it’s--now I really need to take care of that business. Maybe we can--you can shut the door and take care of whatever business you need to take care of in here, just like… suckle away. While you do that, I’ll return to my business out there.”
Harrow frowned. Okay, maybe suckle wasn’t the right word. Suckle was not at all the word for what Harrow was doing for Gideon. Finally, Harrow said: “If I’m going to… suckle you, you need to be here, so I can make sure I’m not inadvertently suckling you dry.”
Gideon groaned. “You aren’t. You won’t. Come on, Harrow, I mean it. You can sip my juice all you want, but that business I mentioned, I--”
“You can take care of it here,” Harrow decreed.
Gideon paused, mouth hanging open a little, eyebrows raised. She waited for Harrow to realize what she’d just said. Harrow looked expectant, a little annoyed. She did not seem to realize. Gideon took a deep breath and prepared to make things awkward.
“Okay, so, I’m not sure we’re--by taking care of business, I mean I need to rub one--”
“I know what you mean,” Harrow cut in, her words spewing out of her in a rush. “You can take care of that here.”
“With you also here,” Gideon clarified.
Harrow shrugged. “Cover yourself with a blanket.”
Gideon still wasn’t entirely sure Harrow knew exactly what it was they were discussing.
“So, I know you said you know, but I need to make sure you know what you said you know,” Gideon said. “Because rub one out means I need to touch myself. Intimately. You know, down here.” She tried hand gestures to emphasize her point.
Harrow narrowed her eyes. “Are you--I said I know. Stop talking to me like I’m a simpleton.”
“I’m talking to you like you’re a penitent Ninth House nun, like you’re the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House.”
“Well, stop that too. I’m a Ninth House nun who lived my entire life in a House shared with you and your filthy magazine collection. Of course I know what you mean.”
“Don’t get all butt-touched with me unless you want your Juice Box to dry up and disappear.”
“Never call yourself my Juice Box again, Griddle. I mean it. I will tear you apart if I hear you say that one more time.”
Gideon made a slurping sound, intended to indicate a rapid drying event.
“Just use a blanket and don’t look at me,” Harrow snapped.
She really knew how to get Gideon in the mood.
They stood there for what felt like a very long time, just staring at each other. Harrow’s eyes were hard obsidian and her painted mouth was pulled so tight that it seemed to end in sharp points on every side; two at the top, one at each end, and her bottom lip pulled in so much it formed a sharp little “v” down toward the angles of her chin.
Gideon should refuse this. She should push her own needs aside, take care of Harrow, let Harrow suck up as much of Gideon’s soul sauce as she needed. When it was over, she could rush out of this room, hump the nearest piece of furniture, and let it all explode in private, without Harrow having to see what this had done to Gideon Nav.
They weren’t intimate, her and Harrow. They weren’t even friends. Most of the time Gideon didn’t trust Harrow as far as she could throw her. A lot of the time she was sure she’d never hated anyone more. But then some of the time--
Something in Gideon’s brain malfunctioned, just suddenly veered off the tracks, and she took a step toward Harrow, fully intending to kiss Harrow, to cut herself against those sharp painted lips before sense rushed back in and slapped her across the face.
What the fuck.
That was enough to convince Gideon that she should absolutely reject this offer. She turned and left Harrow in the bedroom, returned to the safety of her own nest. She was fully intending to stay there. If Harrow wanted to suck at her, Harrow knew where to find her. But when Gideon got to her nest, she didn’t settle into that safety. Instead she picked up one of the blankets and carried it back into Harrow’s room, her brain screaming what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck!? over and over with each step.
This was a terrible idea. This was going to make everything so damn weird in the morning.
Then again if Gideon stopped to think about it, it was already weird. It had been weird for weeks, and every day just made things weirder, blurred a line, smudged it, and forced them to draw a new one.
Gideon drew a new line now. It was a line that said, okay, Harrow can suck on my soul, and I’m going to masturbate in front of her while she does it, but I will absolutely never think about kissing that mouth, not ever again. Gideon threw her blanket onto the narrow cot that was meant to be hers. She pulled the thing away from the end of Harrow’s bed and up against the opposite wall so that she could sit on it and have somewhere to press her back.
She situated herself on the cot, the blanket draped over her. Hidden beneath her shame curtain, Gideon pushed down her trousers and her shorts, kicking them off her feet and onto the floor.
“Okay,” she said, still unsure if she actually planned to go through with it. She was wet and so ready, had been for a long time now, but right then--Gideon half naked, legs bent and spread beneath a blanket, and Harrow just standing there fully draped in black--it felt pretty fucking strange. Gideon closed her eyes to block out the scene. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
Harrow wasted no time. The pull came immediately and Gideon braced herself, her back pushed tight against the wall as her insides slithered. She gripped her hands over her knees and waited out the worst of it. When the pain came, she gritted her teeth against it, refused to cry out. It was nothing she hadn’t lived through before. This pain was nothing next to what it was like to walk that entropy field with Harrow.
And then it was over. The pain was gone, replaced by the cracking whip of release and oh, fuck--okay, yes, she was really definitely doing this. She slid her right hand from her knee and pressed it between her legs, just a slight flat pressure. She was wet against her palm and she realized, suddenly, that that was all it was going to take--not even a finger to her clit--as the orgasm rolled through her. She was gone, nerves firing, everything delicious and sweet, and she knew--she knew--there was a lot more where that came from.
Gideon savored it, every last second, and only at the very end did she remember where she was and why. It hit her hard, the thought that Harrow might be watching. She pressed up against her palm and then--no, that was too--shit. Fuck. Please Undying Guy in the Sky, let Harrow be good to her word. She didn’t need to know how close Gideon had been that entire time, how easy it was to send her whimpering over the edge.
Gideon opened her eyes, dreading what she might find, but it was fine. Harrow wasn’t watching. Harrow was lost in her own thing. At some point while Gideon was carefully ignoring her, Harrow had climbed onto the bed and now she stared up at the dark canopy, at her hanging mobiles of bone with her head tilted blessedly away from her cavalier. Gideon could see the rapid rise and fall of Harrow’s bird-like chest, the ridges of bone boxing her in, and her fingers twisted into the sheets.
That was it--She couldn’t see Harrow like this, with her cunt literally pulsing beneath the palm of her hand. She looked away just as Harrow shifted and said: “Griddle? Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” The word caught in her throat so it sounded like she’d choked on it. Fuck. “Yeah, I’m good.”
“If you need me to stop--”
“I’ll tell you,” Gideon said. “I promise I’ll tell you. And then you’ll stop.” She didn’t believe for a second that Harrow wouldn’t stop. It was a surprise to realize she trusted Harrow completely when it came to this.
“Are you ready?”
Gideon recognized the rising shift in Harrow’s voice, the pitch going higher, and she braced herself. “I’m good, I’m really good for it. Go.”
Harrow went.
She sucked at Gideon, pulled from her, and Gideon shivered. Her arms shook and her fingers slipped and slid in along her slick skin, brushing up against her clit. She sucked air through her teeth and she didn’t look, she didn’t look, she didn’t look. She didn’t look, not even when she realized that Harrow was moaning, not even as she touched herself, fingers sliding along the sensitive sides of her clit, in time with the rhythmic sounds gurgling up from Harrow’s throat and out onto Harrow’s tongue.
When it was time for the pain again, Gideon welcomed it. She pushed in toward it. The bones above Harrow’s head started to rattle and the noise Harrow made in response to that threw Gideon right back over the edge. And then, just as she fell apart, Harrow let go and the release lashed back at Gideon. It surprised her, shattered her, punctuated her orgasm in bright white exclamation points. Gideon grunted in a desperate attempt to keep the shock of it quiet. Her muscles contracted and she curled down over her knees, forehead pressed against the tent of her blanket, her mouth open in a gasp.
“I’m okay,” she gasped out after a long moment of recovery. She flexed her bare feet around the edge of the cot. “I’m good.”
“That was--”
“--bone-shaking?” Gideon supplied.
Harrow let out a breathy noise that might have been a laugh, but Gideon was not lifting her head to check. Harrow’s breathing was as loud as Gideon’s, the bedroom full of the sound of their rasps, like every hall and every room full of asthmatic old nuns back on the Ninth. That helped. Thinking about the crumbling old nuns distracted her from the fact she was talking to Harrow while her fingers were still tucked wetly between her--no, okay. She’s lost the nuns. She was back in the moment again.
She felt the start of the next pull and she lifted her head and said: “Take it.”
Harrow pulled and released, pulled and released. She lapped at Gideon’s soul, pulled until Gideon felt taught and tight. Gideon shriveled within herself, and then Harrow released, and she swelled up fast, bright and bursting. Again and then again and the knucklebones that hung from the bed’s canopy sprouted. They reformed into tibias and radii, into femurs and ribs, a great knot of bone that broke through the strings that held them. They clattered on the bed around Harrow, onto the floor beneath Gideon’s feet.
Gideon’s fingers were frantic on her clit, pulling up pleasure to cloud over the slither and the squirm and the pain.
Across the room Harrow writhed. “You’re so--” she said, but the words disappeared in another gasp, another cry, another pull at Gideon that made her grunt at the pain and thrust up against her fingers. Gideon imagined what Harrow was trying to say. You’re so perverted, maybe. You’re so dirty, perhaps, but Gideon didn’t think it was that. Harrow never had any problem saying words she meant to slap and sting. This had to be something harder to say, something like You’re so strong, Griddle, like you’re so good, or you’re so hot. I’m gonna--
Harrow let go and it tore through Gideon to a litany of so strong, so hot, so good.
In the lull, Gideon pressed: “What were you--Harrow, say it.” She needed to hear, even if it was perverted, dirty, stupid, crass.
“What?” Harrow asked, and Gideon thought the words must have been lost in the pull and the bones and the bright wet burst of delicious release.
She wasn’t sure when they started watching each other. She couldn’t recall the exact moment when their eyes met. Once it happened, they were locked, and it didn’t seem that either of them could turn away.
If they were being honest, Gideon didn’t even try, not for a moment, not once.
Harrow was fully painted, fully clothed, but the way she moved and the sounds she made--each pull on Gideon had her back arching, her hands splayed. She was glowing beneath her paint, a bright white that almost seemed blue. She pulled from Gideon and the light of her glowed brighter and the bone bits in Harrow’s pockets sprouted into arms that crawled from her robes, across the mattress. They fell off the sides and crumbled onto the floor. There the bone sprouted again, waves of constructs that rose and fell each time Harrow took, each time she swallowed another powerful gulp of thalergy.
Gideon completely forgot herself. She forgot that she intended to be discrete. She pushed two fingers into her herself, as deep as she could go, and there was no mistaking how wet she was. It was blatantly audible. Harrow had to hear it. There was no way she didn’t know.
There was nothing to do on the Ninth except training and drills, except push-ups and press-ups, and there were times when Gideon spent an entire day locked in her cell, magazines spread out across her cot, and she fucked herself until she couldn’t take anymore, until the pads of her fingers looked pale and shriveled, but she’d never felt--fuck--another pull and Gideon gritted her teeth and let Harrow take. Harrow cried out as skeletons climbed up from the floor. Blood beaded on Harrow’s forehead and it dripped from Gideon’s nose. Gideon ignored it, wiped it away with her free hand. She focused on Harrow’s eyes, blown, black, and bound to Gideon. Harrow never looked away, not ever, not once, and when Harrow let go of Gideon, she gasped and her body sagged. The relief of it rushed Gideon and she exploded around her fingers with an unsuppressed shout, her feet pushing her up from the cot, her hips thrusting down onto her hand.
The blanket slipped and Gideon scrambled, reaching for it. She pulled it back up over her knees.
Once more and this time Harrow was talking again, low and quiet, like she had so much to say, but didn’t want Gideon to overhear. Then it happened:
“You’re so alive. So--” Harrow stopped again and if the blanket wasn’t absolutely essential right then, if one of Gideon’s hands wasn’t extremely busy, Gideon would ball the thing up and throw it at Harrow’s head. She didn’t, because her hand was busy and the blanket was essential and with the way Harrow was watching her, Gideon couldn’t even be mad, not really. Harrow was going through it with her. Harrow was right there with her, and fuck, but it felt really damn good not to be alone in this.
“I”m so what?” Gideon pressed, unable to stop herself, just as Harrow said, “--Gideon.”
That was enough. Her name on Harrow’s lips was enough. It was perfect, actually.
The field of bone vibrated against the floor of the room, bounced and shook as though all of Canaan House had started to quake, as though the First itself had grown unstable and the rock beneath their feet was about to give way.
Gideon thought she might die.
She really thought she might die right there with three fingers pushed deep in her cunt, with her thumb on her clit and her hips thrust up toward the ceiling. It was so much worse than the avulsion trial. She couldn’t let it happen then, not without killing Harrow, but Harrow wasn’t in any danger now. Now the only thing holding Gideon back from the brink was the absolute humiliation of leaving Harrow to clean up this mess, to pull her lifeless cavalier’s fingers from dripping cunt before she called for Sextus. She imagined Harrow struggling to get Gideon’s trousers back on and then giving up, just covering her cavalier with the defiled blanket. That would be fine at first. It’d be fine right up until Colum the Eighth and Protesilaus the Seventh lifted Gideon’s body to take her to the kitchen morgue and then the blanket would fall away and everyone would know the perverted truth.
No, no. Harrow was right. Gideon was so alive. She was good, so fucking good, and she was about to come harder than she’d ever come in her fucking life. Harrow just had to let go.
Harrow let go.
The world rocked, split, shattered. Gideon died.
**
Well, not quite. It felt a hell of a lot like dying anyway.
Eventually color returned to the room and rational thought slowly trickled back into Gideon’s head. Her vision cleared and she found Harrow still there on her bed, looking back across the room at Gideon. There was something soft about her. She looked sated, lying there on the bed, her body flush against the mattress, shoulders trembling. Gideon felt no more pulling, no more pain, no more rush of release. Harrow seemed well and truly spent. Gideon seemed--well, she was certainly alive.
“Harrow?” Gideon asked.
Harrow just stared back at her, eyes wide and mouth slack. Her forehead was pink with sweat and black tendrils of hair stuck to the side of her face.
It took some effort but Gideon managed to prop herself up on one elbow for a better view. She repeated Harrow’s name, a little louder this time.
Harrow sucked in a breath and blinked. “It’s subsided,” she said. “I think it’s worn off.”
“Oh, thank God,” Gideon said hysterically, her voice reduced to a rasp. She wasn’t sure she could move, but knew she had to get out of there. If she lingered too long--if they came too far down from this before Gideon was safely on the other side of that door, it was going to get so weird. Anyway, Gideon had a mess to clean up and an eight-hour date with her blanket pile. She tried to stand, her blanket clutched tight around her waist.
That was a mistake. The room began spinning as soon as she was on her feet. Her knees buckled and she collapsed gracelessly onto the floor. Her heart felt fucked up, irregular and weak, and she could still feel a damn heartbeat in her clit.
She groaned and opened her mouth to assure Harrow she was fine, but Harrow was there before a single word left Gideon’s lips. Gideon tried to swat her away, but Harrow persisted and somehow managed to pull Gideon to her feet. Miraculously, the blanket did not slip.
“I can get to my bed. I’m fine,” Gideon insisted, though she couldn’t seem to stop her body from shaking. Harrow ignored Gideon and guided Gideon to her bed instead. Gideon settled down onto the edge of it, unable to disguise her relief. “Okay, sure, I’ll sit for a minute.”
Harrow retrieved Gideon’s trousers and underwear and set them on the bed. Then she left the room. Gideon assumed that meant she was supposed to get dressed, and she really intended to, but she couldn’t seem to get herself to move. Instead, she sat there and waited, and when Harrow returned it was with two wet clothes in her hands. She grabbed Gideon’s arm and began wiping Gideon’s fingers with one of them. The cloth was warm and Harrow’s grip was firm and gentle.
Gideon took a deep breath and wished for death.
If she’d just pushed on to her bed she could have passed out on her own and she never would have had to see Harrowhark Nonagesimus wiping the aftermath of ten orgasms from her cavalier’s hand. Gideon groaned in despair and then she started to sway forward. Harrow’s body stopped her attempt to crumple and die and she ended up with her face pressed to Harrow’s cloaked shoulder.
That was worse.
“You’ll stay here tonight,” Harrow said. Even worse.
Gideon felt her heart in her throat. It fluttered fast and she set a hand on Harrow’s shoulder, tried to push herself up to stand. Harrow pushed her back down. Harrow--full of Gideon’s life juice--seemed surprisingly strong. “No, that’s not--Harrow, I’m really fine.”
“I hope so,” Harrow agreed. “You’ve always been surprisingly resilient.”--you’re so alive--”But you’ll stay here so that I can make sure.”
“On the cot,” Gideon suggested. If they were going to share a room, then Gideon should sleep on the cot.
“Stop, Griddle. This is a very big bed. It’s the width of three cots on the Ninth. We can both sleep here and we’ll leave a cot of space between us. I won’t have you sleeping on the floor again. It’s been a very...eventful day.”
That reasoning sounded logical? It sounded safe. It sounded entirely unlike the Harrowhark Nonagesimus Gideon knew, but then, they’d just--they’d crossed some definite lines, and neither of them seemed quite sure where the new lines had been drawn. Harrow’s line was currently somewhere beyond sharing a bed, at least for the moment.
Gideon had no idea where her line was at the moment, so okay. They’d share a bed.
“I don’t need the blankets,” Gideon offered. “I’ll take the top, you sleep under the blankets.”
Harrow shook her head. She reached past Gideon and adjusted the pillows, then stood back and gestured for Gideon to climb in.
Gideon was suddenly very tired. She did as she was told. She curled her blanket wrapped body into Harrow’s bed. Her clothes would have to wait. She could sleep, just a bit, and still get dressed before the awkwardness of morning hit.
Gideon closed her eyes while Harrow did whatever it was Harrow did to prepare for sleep. She opened them once to confirm that Harrow was, in fact, planning to sleep, and was not secretly preparing to ditch Gideon and head back down into the depths of Canaan House. No--Harrow was still there. She’d removed her robe. She didn’t have to remove the bone corselet, that’d danced itself off Harrow’s chest and crawled off the bed somewhere around Gideon’s fourth orgasm. Finally Harrow settled into the other side of the bed, her body carefully compact, a cot’s width removed from Gideon’s body. She curled onto her side facing Gideon, her breath coming in small even puffs.
Gideon was completely spent, utterly drained. In a kind and perfect universe, Gideon would fall immediately into blissful dreamless sleep. She’d wake early enough to clean up and get presentable before Harrow so much as cracked open one eyelid. Harrow would be brittle and mean and they’d never talk about any of this again.
She did not fall immediately to sleep.
Neither did Harrow. Gideon could feel Harrow’s eyes on her, presumably studying Gideon to make sure she wasn’t going to do something stupid like try to leave or die or whatever.
Eventually, when it became obvious no one was passing out anytime soon, Gideon cleared her throat, tested her voice, and said: “So, if this powder shit was designed to teach adepts to siphon, I feel like they fucked up. That seemed more like, I don’t know--”
“An Eighth adept’s idea of a good time,” Harrow supplied quietly.
“Oh!” Gideon smiled, surprised. She pushed herself up on her elbows and the room started to spin again. Gideon ignored it. “Nonagesimus! You sucked that thought right out of my head. Fuck, my head--” Okay, so she couldn’t ignore it for long. She flopped back onto the bed with a groan.
“That was dangerous,” Harrow said.
“Worth it though,” Gideon said, before she remembered that she still wasn’t dressed. This was a conversation for a week from now. They shouldn’t be having it while the memory of Harrow running a wet cloth between Gideon’s fingers was still so fresh.
“Yes,” Harrow agreed, surprising Gideon again. “But the price is too high. It can’t happen again.”
Gideon, if she was honest and not at all embarrassed, would gladly pay this price again for another round. Give it a few weeks, so she really built back up those thalergy reserves and then they could have a real go at it. She just had some of the best orgasms of her entire life. Of course she’d do it again, buckling legs, wet cloths and all.
She’d save the suggestion for another day. “So what you were doing with the bone, would you call that a bone frenzy?”
“Do not quote The Noniad at me at a time like this,” Harrow said, but Gideon thought she saw the slight pull of a smile at the paint smeared corner of Harrow’s mouth.
She caught herself wanting to kiss Harrow again, and she pressed her teeth into her own cheek to quell it. Harrow had just watched Gideon masturbate excessively. Harrow had just blatantly got off while lapping at Gideon’s soul--didn’t even need to touch herself, which was really something to behold--but kissing Harrow on the mouth. It was a line that Gideon did not dare cross, not even now, not ever.
She deflected and said: “Lucky for you, that’s the only line of The Noniad I ever learned.”