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Sidurgu’s first waking exhale is ragged, his next intake of breath rushed — only to be caught and splintered halfway to filling his lungs. No scent should be so heavy where the night’s thin air carries it, but this… It weaves through Cloud Nine’s rented rooms on a draft and seeps into his surroundings. Still blanketed by the haze of sleep, he turns his face into his limp pillow, but it is the conscious pieces of him, desperate for control as they are, that bid him to simply stay.
Even his own bedlinens provide no shelter. He burrows deeper until his horns scrape uncomfortably against the rigid mattress. Despite himself, he listens, searching the drunken quiet of the dark for something more than silence and shadow.
He's never been one to drool in his sleep, nor does he wake unable to take in enough breath without a nightmare on his heels. In the hall, the next door tsks and hushes softly as it opens, giving way to footfalls straying from the entryway, braving the depth of the night. Somehow hurried and listless at once, a familiar if slightly altered presence occupies the space just outside, halting briefly outside his room before moving on.
It is that sound, the brief hesitation at his door, that causes Sidurgu to disentangle himself from the threadbare sheets.
Shirt. Slippers. One hand through his hair as though it'll do anything at all.
Cursing the cold, he opens his door into a hall that is entirely empty aside from deep, still-growing shadows and the achingly familiar scent that had reached into his dreams.
The stairs are darkened but clear in his memory, light unnecessary as he takes them so quickly he barely touches them.
He can imagine the figure on the cobblestones even before the area comes into view, but when it does—
By the Fury. What wells up in him is all instinct, impossible to push down for how immense and sudden it settles into its entirety. Delaying it will have to do.
“It’s too cold up here for that.” Hours of disuse roughen his voice such that it is barely audible.
The Warrior of Light turns, and even the low light manages to highlight the sheen of sweat plastering her hair against her forehead and neck. Rather than protected in layers or bundled in fleece as he’s grown so used to seeing her, she wears only thin trousers and a tight thing that can barely be called a top — both darkening where they cling to her skin.
Sidurgu is already near to trembling with cold, but the nape of his neck grows damp with sweat.
Blessedly, the space between the Forgotten Knight and the Congregation is entirely empty at this time of night. Snow falls silently from an ink-dark sky, melting the moment it reaches her shoulders — a strange thing, her body shouldn't be so warm, especially here. Something about the sight makes Sidurgu's heart pound heavily against his ribs.
“Everything alright?” Hands up, palms out, he takes another step forward. The wind tears at his hair but does nothing to keep her scent from his senses.
Her scent, not the currant and citrus she keeps in small bottles but the notes beneath. The soapy coolness that Sidurgu has come to find so soothing now fades into a sweet salt. Something warm rises to the surface, familiar only in such limited doses that like this, it is nearly something else entirely.
“I just needed some air,” Wren says finally. She sounds uniquely like someone with a hand wrapped around their throat.
Ignoring this observation, Sidurgu casts an intentional look at the cloud-blurred sky, the city sprawling into the Brume over stairs and scaffolding. “There’s enough of it here.” He aims for easiness, but his nostrils flare, hands fisting against his sleepwear. “Unfortunately, it’s all cold enough to turn you to ice.”
Her laugh is so low that it curls in his chest and sinks deep into his stomach as though finding a place to sleep out this eternal winter. “I woke you. Forgive me.”
As if there could still be something to forgive between them. His arms stretch open despite himself, then relax as he allows some of his mental armor to slip. His own scent, ignored until this moment, reaches out like an offered touch.
Certainly, revealing even a light wave of his response to her is a risk. He takes it, and that little touch of faith seems to support her tense form, though her lips part silently.
“What happened?”
When she sighs, his fingers caress the air an ilm from her back as though attempting to soften the emotion in the sound. Wistful, half a laugh but so, so sad.
He gives her enough quiet to determine what she wishes to tell him, taking a step closer as he waits.
“Just a dream.”
Sidurgu raises an eyebrow, then feels the wind pick up and bends near to create a barrier between the icy air and her sweat-slicked skin. His hair has gone overgrown, and it slides over her shoulder like a caress he cannot offer. She shudders, a moment too late to have been affected by the cold.
“Must have been some dream,” he acknowledges — albeit reluctantly — when no further details make their way into the night. One scarred hand comes to rest on the small of her back, its span taking up so much skin that it feels indecent to touch her this way, in this place. Still, his thumb easily finds a pattern to trace through her nightclothes. Beneath them, he finds the ridged layers of her scales.
Sensation there should be dulled — he avoids the seams where her scales meet her flushed skin — but Wren gasps, jolting away from his touch for half a breath.
She melts into his hand. Face upturned, she catches her bottom lip between her teeth, gaze flicking from the wrinkled linen shirt he’d picked up off the floor to his verdant eyes. The suddenness of it gives him no time to pull back, putting his hand on her hip and his heart in his throat.
“It certainly was.”
Three words and his trousers are growing tighter. He is still considering a level, careful response when the doors to the Congregation practically crash open.
“By the Fury,” the former Azure Dragoon begins, voice so genuinely questioning that Sidurgu knows immediately that the other man is wholly unaware of the moment he interrupts. “Is there a reason it smells like sex and—“
Sidurgu stiffens, shifting his massive body just an ilm, tucking Wren into his side. His palm never leaves her flushed, scaled skin. Her forehead is hot against his chest, even through his sleep shirt, but the warmth is a welcome thing as she blends the lines of their bodies.
Of all the people to be pulling a late night.
It is, of course, too late to hide her fully. Estinien Wyrmblood’s attention roves over the scene — their lingering points of contact and the soft way Sidurgu shields her from view. Something in his stare feels like an accusation and a celebration at once.
“You two alright?” Casual, weighted. Not assuming anything. Still, he'll stay until he has an answer.
Wren’s head turns almost owlishly against Sidurgu's shoulder. Her gaze roves around the courtyard before catching sight of Estinien, where her attention falls like a heavy blanket of snow.
From the sound he makes, one would think she'd seared him.
Retired from his station and still recovering from some grievous wound, Estinien's left his familiar armor elsewhere. The fine cloak billowing around his shoulders has an almost imperceptible sheen. It clings to his broad shoulders one moment, and the next, he's sliding it off, striding forward, throwing it around Wren's shoulders, letting it settle like the weather. The gesture leaves him in thick woolen layers. Better dressed for these temperatures, he appears far more comfortable than either of them.
As though he's considered the risk and chosen to take it, the dragoon reaches for his friend's chin, holding it between lithe fingers as he looks into her face. "Cloak or no, you're going to freeze here."
Wren shudders, a reasonable enough thing for a woman currently catching her death, but something new enters the scent that rolls off her. The extra fabric around her should help, but with Sidurgu so close, it only seems to gather. He sees her eyes glaze further, feels how she buckles beneath the negligible weight of the fabric. Steadying her is a thoughtless thing, his hands settling above the set that catch her hips.
"You both need to get inside." Estinien's voice is like stonework, set in place and left to endure. "Come, we'll get her settled."
Sidurgu nearly protests, almost says that he has her, but something in the words, in set of the dragoon's jaw, in how he touches Wren as though feeding her, halts whatever he might say. Estinien's thumbs trace circles over her skin with care, the upstroke just brushing the edge of Sidurgu's scaled hands. It is hardly anything at all, but that ghost of feeling makes his eyes close, only for a moment.
"Fine."
Between them, Wren makes wobbling, absent progress toward the inn's doors. Her lack of steadiness and thoughtful tread inspires little confidence at the top of the stairs. Sidurgu lifts her without considering it overmuch. The cloak complicates his hold, but there's still a shocking amount of her damp skin on display, pressed to his chest, and she gasps against his collarbone as though he isn't wearing a shirt, albeit a thin one. Her attempt to twine her arms around his neck scrapes her inner wrist over his horn, and he nearly misses a step.
In a heartbeat, Estinien's lean body is pressing into them, balancing them against the wooden rail until Sidurgu gets his feet firmly back under himself.
The tavern below is blessedly empty. Sidurgu had paid scant attention to his surroundings when he'd followed Wren outside. Now, the bartender has retired after clearing the tables, a single drunkard still standing in front of the fireplace as it nears burning out. The man's eyes widen — either at the sight of two of the tavern's constant patrons in such a state or the shock of seeing someone with Estinien's status here — and with them.
Estinien steps in front to handle the doors and sets a confident pace toward Wren's room, his hand turning the knob without needing confirmation. There's familiarity in it.
Inside, Sidurgu sets Wren back on her feet. The bed would likely be better, but he considers depositing her there only a moment before deciding he'd rather be run through with his own weapon than presume.
He's sure of himself with her. Estinien's presence is a new question, and he won't be the one to ask it.
So she stands in front of her closed wardrobe, spine against the grain.
Still sweating, Wren's fingers brace herself against the thickest part of Sidurgu's arm. She presses the back of her other hand against her forehead, smearing the sheen from her skin to the scales there. A bit of damp hair curls at her temples, sticking already.
It is entirely unfair how thoroughly the sight devastates him.
"I won't insult either of you by pretending you're less perceptive than you are." She smiles just a little, as though making an attempt at a joke. "I've left the best of my charm elsewhere. You must needs forgive me. Can I assume the both of you are… amenable?"
Sidurgu nods. Estinien blankets a dark laugh with his breath.
"Thank the seas for that, then." Sucking in a big, deep breath, she begins to struggle out from beneath her borrowed cloak, red rising in her cheeks with exertion far beyond the effort it should take to do so.
Estinien takes the fabric when she offers it, untangling the last of it from her when it doesn't come away cleanly. He folds it — square, efficient, crisp — and throws it over the back of a chair. Not the only thing half-undone.
"Need something to take the edge off," he notes, stepping in close.
Wren reaches for his shirt, then tugs, more strongly than either of the men in her grip expect considering her state. Were she drags Estinien in by his clothes, she brings Sidurgu near by digging her fingers into his muscle.
He groans, content to ache if by her hands.
"Please?" Her voice has gone thick with want. "I need—"
She could be begging for either of them. Both.
"I know," Sidurgu assures, lips already an ilm from hers.
He hears Estinien, low and with something bordering on frustration: "Anything. You never have to ask."
Everything burns but the kiss. It's all gone too hot, somehow, despite the ice clinging to stone and the dark fireplace. There's the smell and the sweat and the heartrate — his, hers, another. But when Wren kisses him, there's only the clarity that comes with being immersed in perfect cool. Water, breath, solid earth to stand upon.
She makes a strangled sound against his mouth, fingers fisting into his shirt. He only notices the reason for this particular reaction when she throws her head back, hard enough that he moves one palm to cradle her nape and skull.
Between her thighs, Estinien's wrist is half-covered by the hem of her sleepshorts, the rest obscured from view but activity clear beneath the thin linen. There'd been little working up to it, only some of the hungriest kisses Sidurgu has ever shared, but that hidden hand flattens against her, and it seems exactly what she needs.
Certain that she'll take more from him if she needs it, he steadies her, holding her even as she kisses him so deeply he begins to doubt his own knees. When she struggles to meet him. he drops his mouth to her throat, feeling her pulse beat against his lips.
She comes quickly, relying entirely on his hands to keep her standing. When Sidurgu spares another glance down her body, he catches sight of an arm wrapped around her thigh and a palm pressed against her belly.
"Well," Estinien rasps. He'd knelt to make the angle easier and seems content at her feet. "How was that edge?"
"Softened. Already sharpening, I'm sure, but for now…" She trails off, releasing Sidurgu's shirt from one hand and smoothing the wrinkles she'd set into it.
Estinien pulls away, rolling his shoulder. Sidurgu eases Wren back, finally settling her onto her bed.
Pulling himself from the floor, the other man groans, then speaks. "We need to grab a few things then. Will you be alright?"
Her answering nod is a little too dreamy — Sidurgu wants to stay, to curl himself around her, to let her use his body for soothing and sating as she needs it. Bells, a sennight, a moon, he'd content himself to lie beside her as long as she burns.
Eyes closed, she raises her hand in a flippant little gesture, burrowing deeper into the sheets.
He cannot leave without kissing her still-warm temple. "You're okay." Murmuring the words into her hair does more for his own nerves than her needs, but she mumbles sleepily in response.
Estinien's already at the door, but when Sidurgu finally takes a step away from the bed, the other man is leaning languidly against the trim, all calm, patient regard. It settles something in his favor in Sidurgu's mind.
The lanterns in the hall still burn low. The light's barely enough to reach the floor, but Sidurgu knows the threadbare carpet by stride alone, expects the uneven patch of stone beneath it when it comes. Estinien manages well, so much so that he begins to consider how the intuition and grace required to fell dragons is oddly practical, at least for the front this dragoon puts up.
The main floor of the Forgotten Knight is still empty, the shadows dense and dark.
"Gibrillont will forgive us for helping ourselves. Better than waking him every time someone needs bread or bandages."
Estinien nods, so slightly that it's apparent he hadn't been considering the matter of permission. Probably assumed he had it, given the high regard he's offered.
A chasm between their concerns, so vast it's hardly worth his mind.
While Sidurgu searches for food, Estinien lights the stove for the kettle. Again, that strange grace shines. It's already odd to see him here, moreso when he arranges three tin mugs and begins to carefully measure something into each of them.
"Planning a tea party?"
Estinien's furrowed brow remains in place. "Need to have a cup of this." He looks up, assessing, his nostrils flaring with a short inhale. "You too, on a guess."
Sidurgu takes a moment to consider that response, stomach twisting. Some part of him still capable of breaking the surface is aware that the feeling is all arousal, though surely some of it should be… Something else, at least.
His response has already started, then. As for the third mug…
"You're well-informed," he comments, stacking a few loaves of bread on a waiting tray.
"We spoke of it once, the heat. Said the only thing to do was work through it however she could and take a bit of this. Won't do much except keep the fever down, but that's something."
"You keep it on hand?"
Estinien's face remains hard despite the a rosy tone dusting the tips of his ears. "After my transformation, my senses were quite reactive." He takes a big breath, all in a rush as if forgetting his surroundings, then releases it between clenched teeth. "She gave me my first doses when she realized."
"Returning the favor, then?"
"More than that."
Of course it is. Something like what this is for him, if he has to guess.
"She'll want syrup in it."
Estinien nods again, reaches, pours until a generous amount of syrup pools into the bottom of each cup. They finish the last steps in an easier silence. Sidurgu scrawls a hasty note; Estinien weights one corner with a pile of gil.
They had not ventured far, but the longing in him cannot be tamped down.
This trip back to Wren's rented room is far less fraught with hazards, absent of her distracting weight against his chest, her searching hands finding his horns. There's only the memory of her now, the tray in his hands, the footsteps keeping easy pace with his.
At the door, he notes another set of sounds: a splash and a scrape. Moving the food to one arm and pushing inside, he takes in the room and sighs.
Estinien steps around him, toward the desk where Wren is wringing a cloth into her basin.
"Thought you'd be down for a while."
"Couldn't sleep. It's already…" She trails off with a ragged breath.
The way Sidurgu's blood responds to the sight of her running that wet cloth over her skin is a desperate, ruining thing.
At the force of his own feeling, he had not expected Estinien's manner to be easy, for his lips to cling to a small curve, for the corners of his eyes to crinkle with fondness as he stroked back the pieces of hair meant to frame Wren's face. His other hand fell over the parted panels of her top, flattening below her breasts.
"Your heart is racing, my friend. Let's see if we can keep up, aye?"
She practically crashes into him. The closeness pins Estinien's hand between their bodies, and he curls the other around her shoulder, bracing protectively as he shuffles her back toward her bed.
Affected by this distraction only as much as hearing Wren moan into a deep kiss can reach into his chest, Sidurgu crosses the room faster, dropping his shirt and trousers somewhere along the stone. The floor is cold, and Wren's bedding isn't much warmer.
She has far more pillows than what comes standard with a night in Cloud Nine, but he makes himself comfortable with the rough stone wall at his back.
Wren settles in beside him with a long slide of her exposed skin over his. It's a soothing thing to have her this close, even damp with sweat and desperate to control her squirming.
It seems impractical (and rather cruel) to delay or deny her.
Still, the thing that had once wedged itself beneath his armor and only worked deeper now flares behind his breastbone. Since that first ignition in his chest, it's glowed with her attention, warm enough to bask in. No matter the shadows, the winter. Now, that unknowable thing blazes.
He kisses her before the flames leap into his lungs, shares her breath, feels her reach for him as though whatever is pouring from that raw place cannot burn her, as though it is something she needs.
Sidurgu catches that he's lost track of Estinien, marks that he's begun to busy himself with the trays from the kitchen, realizes after his own inhales go ragged and desperate that the other man must be giving him time.
There's a clear way to use it when Wren throws a thigh over one of his, still arcing toward his mouth. Her hips roll, some frustrated sound glancing over his cheek as her lips pass over his jaw. Her touch moves him effortlessly, coaxing his head up and back. Finally, with her feverish forehead against his throat, she stills, only for a moment, before pressing closer, grinding with enough force that Sidurgu flexes the muscles beneath her, assessing her response.
Her moan reverberates through him where she stifles herself into his shoulder.
"Please," she manages, not even an ilm from his skin.
He cradles her skull against his collarbone and draws himself taught again.
Another moan, this one only half-caught as she throws herself headlong into a few words, managing most of them. "So good. Can feel your scales and— so good." And then, just "Sidurgu" when he times another press of hard muscle to meet her just as she drags herself against him.
She groans. Behind her, the mattress bobs with the addition of Estinien's weight, stretching out before curling around her.
"Touch me." She's already too far gone to soften these desires.
Hidden by her shoulder, Estinien laughs, fond but dark. "Come first. You must be close."
She must be. Every strong sinew of her draws taught and tremulous.
Helpfully, Sidurgu eases his hand between them, arcing the calloused pad of a thumb over her nipple until she stills entirely. His thigh grows wetter, his thin sleep pants adhering to his scales and her flesh. With an arm around his shoulder, she clings tightly enough that feels her serrated intake of breath where her chest expands into his.
Estinien laughs again, not unkindly, and slides his hand up Sidurgu's leg until he reaches where Wren opens and his fingers bend, entering.
Wren sighs. Not expecting her to focus on much at all but her own need, Sidurgu notes when she tugs insistently at his waistband, her fingers dipping beneath it as she searches over skin and scale. Sure, indulgent, her tough drags over his slit where his cock already presses it open.
She's barely begun to circle her wet fingertips over his head before Estinien is drawing her back. His hand flexes idly between her thighs.
"Let him undress."
Wren nods, mismatched eyes wide, pupils blown with desire in the low light.
When Sidurgu eases himself from his sleep trousers, his length now free, she's released from the arms that had separated them, and he finds his own hands on her hips, bidding caution as the heat beneath her skin rises.
Estinien shifts closer, attention flicking between them. "She wants it; she can take it." But his eyes find her, his free fingers holding her chin. "You like the struggle when you're like this, don't you?" His other hand is everywhere, her throat, her tits, her arse.
Sidurgu's breath goes short at the sight of Wren nodding again, reaching for him as if she needs the weight of him atop her to survive the next second.
For all his care, Wren struggles far less than he expects when he pushes in by ilms at a time, nearly half-buried before her clenched walls drag wounded moans from them both.
"Fury." He bows over her for a kiss, feels her relax with shallow intakes of air that leave him, too, lightheaded.
The needy scent that had haunted him shifts, not yet sated but simpler than it had been when he found her outside.
"Please," she rasps again, her legs wrapped high around his waist. "Sidurgu, please."
He hears Estinien then. "Already said you never have to beg."
Sidurgu pushes into her hard enough to feel his flared hips nearly bruising the backs of her thighs.
When she comes, something in her eyes looks so much like adoration that he aches. The vise of her around him does nothing to dull it.
The heat's taken hold of him, too. He drags her closer, settling into a rhythm the moment her aftershocks abate enough to allow him the movement.
He devotes the sound she makes to a memory.
Estinien shushes her quietly. "Ah, we can't have you waking the rest of the inn, can we?"
One hand settling gently on Wren's throat, Estinien pumps his own cock twice before dragging it over her parted lips.
As he fucks into her mouth, he passes a palm over her pebbled nipples, down her stomach. Without pause, he traces her entrance around Sidurgu's cock before setting his palm to grind against her as he works his fingers, one after another, into her.
Even alone, Estinien's hand would feel divine. But Wren had been stretched and wet, and now she stretches farther, grows wetter. And Sidurgu's mind nearly blanks when one finger not pressing into Wren dips into his own slit.
"Gods, you're both gone."
Sidurgu says nothing, breath halting. He's got a hand on one of the dragoon's muscled thighs to support himself when a muffled cry precludes her cunt fluttering, Wren's strong but shaking legs constricting as though he could be closer if she only held him tightly enough.
He spills into her, pulsing against her walls and two thrusting fingers.
Estinien's noise of interest draws the attention of bright green eyes. There's that damn smirk, controlled despite Wren's throat working his cock deep. "She's not nearly done with you."
Which is fine. Sidurgu does not feel fine, entirely, but for all he's grown hot, he's still hard within her.
"Here." Estinien withdraws, far too casual for a man who'd had himself in someone's mouth while they'd moaned through their pleasure around him. "Wren, sit up. On him, unless you need a moment."
It is a terrible, though temporary, loss. She settles in Sidurgu's lap as he makes room for her, taking him easily and stifling her moan against his shoulder. She's trembling too badly to do little more than roll her hips, though she tries.
"Keep him warm if you wish, but be still," Estinien cuts in. He's left the bed, gathering the mugs of tea he's left to steep for at least half a bell.
Wren complies with a whimper. Sidurgu considers rebelling, but with the sheen of sweat covering them both, they need the antipyretics badly.
She reaches for the offered cup, but her hands shake. He begins to reposition, already working out how to hold it to her lips while drinking his own. She squirms; he throbs. The task before him is nearly forgotten already.
Watching Sidurgu's reaction over Wren's shoulder, Estinien shakes his head, not bothering to hand it off. "Focus on choking yours down. I've got her."
Even with the syrup, it tastes more of a tree than anything Sidurgu would consider a tea suitable for drinking.
Wren doesn't complain as Estinien tilts the tin tankard against her lips, watching each bob of her throat. "Good." He murmurs gentle words until pulling the cup back at last, checking for dregs. "Well done."
The praise runs through her entire body. Sidurgu's free hand travels her back until he's emptied his own mug and placed it on the nightstand, watching Estinien throw the third back heedlessly.
"Now," the dragoon, still far too calm, says finally. "How are you feeling?"
Wren flushes from chest to cheeks, smelling sweet and soft. Her walls clench, making Sidurgu's jaw tighten in response.
"Right, then. And you?"
It's strange to consider Estinien asking after his condition.
"Fine, just her heat hitting. I'm…" He seeks a decent way to put it, nevermind that they're both naked and he's balls deep in their mutual ally. "I'm at a point where I can keep up."
Estinien's brow arches. "For how long?"
"As long as she needs."
"Well," he says, taking in this presumably new information. "That's lucky."
Estinien settles back onto the bed, seated far enough from them that his touch is intentional. Knee, ribs, shoulder, lips. He looks expectant.
Briefly, Sidurgu wonders who put this arrogant half-stranger in charge. Then, Wren whines.
From his place, Estinien laughs, dipping his fingers into her mouth before dragging them down.
"You wanted to beg, love. Go ahead and ask for what you want."
Her first plea convinces him to ease his fingers back inside her, at least. Sidurgu hisses, barely keeping his hips flat against the bed.
"More than that," Estinien coos, leaning close even as he withdraws his touch. His smile is distinctly sharper than before, his canines visible. "I'm not much for proper manners, but you sound so pretty when you're polite."
"Please."
The single word sounds so broken that Sidurgu's heart — the heat, likely — rushes to meet her. She's finally giving in, begging beautifully for both of them as though ruining her is the only thing that might hold her together.
He doesn't need to hear her ask for them; he's already settling his back into the pillows, holding her close as he rearranges her over his hips.
Perhaps selfishly, he has her facing him, unwilling to wonder what he misses in her eyes or be so far from her lips. Estinien only spares him a knowing, amused look over her shoulder as he settles his knees on the thin mattress.
Wren gasps when he brushes against them.
"Easy," Sidurgu murmurs.
She's entirely too pliant when she believes she'll have whatever she wants. He gathers her against his chest, coaxing her lips to his.
He swallows her moan when Estinien pushes forward.
If tasked with selecting a man for their patience, most would choose neither Sidurgu or Estinien. But with her, they establish a mutual pace so glacial that Wren rails against their holds, rushing to take more of them. Even with her dripping down their lengths, she struggles with the stretch. Still, she makes every effort to push herself closer to their hips and over the edge.
"Gods, Wren." There are few words Sidurgu can conjure at this moment, so he settles for repeating himself. "Easy," he reminds her.
Seated at last moments later, there's little reason to restrain her lovers from rocking into her. Estinien, for his part, seems to have let go of whatever unaffected air he'd carried through the night, his body pressed to her back as she bows against Sidurgu's chest. One arm wraps around her to play at her nerves.
"There you are, taking everything you wanted." The dragoon still manages a bit of smugness.
Wren's face falls against Sidurgu's shoulder, nearly catching herself at the edge of his horn. He tucks his head low, kissing the crown of her head. Released from pleading, her lips and tongue work cleverly at his throat's hollow.
Such a position quiets her well enough, but his groan of pleasure… Blessedly low, the sound fills the night as thickly as her scent had. His hands are strong on her shoulders, the backs of his hands just grazing Estinien's skin.
Between their movement and the fervor with which the heat has taken them, it takes nearly no time at all for Wren to fall apart. Fluttering warmth and the drag of another twitching cock against his spell an end so strong that his vision gutters out, going dimmer than the few candles they'd lit. Estinien finishes with him, pulling a gratified moan from Wren where she lies shaking but sated.
Cleanup waits the better part of a bell, admittedly, for all the times they manage to pull each other back to the sheets once someone finds the strength to leave.
It's… nice, really. The heat's leveled from a burn to something more comfortable for the moment. Estinien's clarity means someone to fetch the washcloths, to pour the water with steady hands, to offer more than plain bread. Sidurgu allows himself the gentle affection of tangling his legs with Wren, letting his hands wander or receiving hers as the night passes.
In the first bell of easy thought before sunrise, Wren makes arrangements for one of her companions to care for Rielle in the coming days, someone well-trusted and with a bit of healing magic they're well-suited to teach.
After making the linkpearl call and writing out her instructions, Wren lounges in bed, cool and loose enough to enjoy a soft blanket and eat a bit of the makeshift meal hastily thrown onto the tray.
"I'll send for Haurchefant." Sidurgu assures her. "He'll be at least a day, but he will join us."
Estinien raises a brow, frowning slightly. "He won't expect you in the manor?"
"No. She prefers it here." He ignores the look Estinien casts about the room's crumbling corners. "I'm less than comfortable in the Pillars. Besides, the House is too quiet for this."
"Fair enough." Estinien rises from his place on the bed to join him at the desk. "I need to write a letter to the Lord Speaker. There will be a blizzard, likely to slow your knight's arrival — might make for a long few days."
"Then you can have these posted in the morning." Sidurgu stacks their letters.
He receives a grunt in response, seemingly in the affirmative. Fortunate, as he has already found himself returning to Wren. She's unwrapped herself from her blankets, and he lays between her bare legs, head dipping as he tastes her sweat-salted skin.
Her hands find his horns, and yes, it appears they'll need a few nights.