Chapter 27

27

T hey spend the night walking the cobblestones of Paris, tracing the motions of the next night. Finding the entrances, finding the spots where the magic bleeds to the surface, evidence of the experiments done below.

They don’t talk much, the nerves skittering underneath Ambra’s skin, but she trails as Gurlien buys himself a new outfit to not stand out as much in the concert, and doesn’t protest when he adds a few things for her onto that.

They fall into bed again once the sun rises, and Ambra doesn’t wait for him to fall asleep before turning towards him, burying her face into his shoulder, and he inhales.

“Are you okay?” he murmurs, and there’s sun starting to peek in through the curtains.

“I’m fine,” Ambra declares, slightly muffled and he huffs out a laugh. “Human bodies process things differently than demons.”

It’s a wholly incomplete sentence.

“So you’ve said,” he replies, almost lazily, but his hand curls around the small of her back all the same. “Describe it to me?”

It’s another small, warm comfort. “Every emotion—and I mean every single one—has a physical component,” she grumbles. “And right now, I…”

He doesn’t say anything, but the hand traces a motion across the thin fabric of her sleep shirt.

“I’m having a lot of them,” she finishes, frustrated with the impreciseness of the language. “I can hardly sort through them and pull-out specifics.”

“I’m worried,” he says, and she pulls away enough to look at his face, read his expression. “What, I am!”

“Why?” she asks, instead pillowing her head on her arms, her leg still touching his.

He scowls, before his face softens, his brown eyes staring up at the patterned ceiling. “I keep on trying to predict what their behaviors are going to be, what actions they’re going to take, and they’ve taken none of them.”

She blinks at him, and the morning sun is gentle on the colors of the room, sending pastel pinks and yellows through the window.

“If I were them, I would firstly follow any written containment procedures,” he says, rubbing his nose. “Barring that, I would stop at nothing to get you back in custody. They’ve…they’ve given up too easily. Or there are bigger things they have to deal with, and that frightens me. And Nalissa is still pushing on with her plans…I don’t know what to make of it.”

He frowns up at the ceiling for punctuation.

“I can’t figure out why they wouldn’t wait for you to be asleep and pull you then. Just try every hour or so until they get lucky. But here we are, relatively unharmed, in Paris, and they’ve tried little. ”

“I don’t want them to hurt you,” Ambra says, softly into the dawning room, and his eyes flicker over to hers. “Whenever I try to plan, I see them hurting you and all my thoughts crumble away.”

“Not to be glib,” he says dryly, and she arches an eyebrow at him. “If they kill me, you can always teleport my body to Delina and I’m sure she’ll be fine with taking care of that problem.”

“There’s other things they can do to you besides kill you,” Ambra says, and she shivers, even in the warmth next to him. “I would know.”

And even a Necromancer in her prime wouldn’t be able to bring back Misia.

He remains quiet, breathing next to her on the bed, filling the space with his presence as indelibly as if he struck a chord.

“I don’t know if that’s the human brain chemistry or the demon…way of thinking,” Ambra says delicately, not quite able to force her mind to think of it head on. “Or if it’s some leftover trauma from all of this.” She gestures to herself, to the body she’s stuck in all alone, and swallows past the lump in her throat.

“Trauma sounds like a good way of talking about it,” he murmurs, still not looking away. She’s exposed, completely vulnerable. This man in front of her could do anything to her and she wouldn’t stop him, wouldn’t even think of it.

“I think they took away a very part of me.” Ambra says, and he reaches over, touching the exposed skin on her arm, sending goosebumps down to her hand. “I don’t know how to put it in words, and when I think about them harming you, I feel the same way as that fear.”

It washes over his face, brilliant in real time, and he gentles his touch on her arm, a soothing back and forth .

There aren’t tears in Ambra’s eyes, but the pressure’s there, building.

“When this is all done,” he starts, hushed in the morning air, “we can spend all the time in the world figuring out how to put things into words.”

When it’s all done.

She stills, blinking at him in the soft lights.

“It’s hard to think about,” she says, after a long moment. “What after would be.”

“I could believe that,” he says, just as quietly. “When your entire existence is bent towards one thing, comprehending anything else is foreign.”

And that’s exactly it.

And he would know.

His hand is still on her back, warm against the sleep shirt, and he’s still wearing the pajamas from the motor home, even though they’re too short on his ankles.

His face is tired, he had complained after about hour three of walking along the Paris streets, but his eyes are sharp and aware, like he knows how weighty it is for her as well.

“I’m glad I’m here with you,” she whispers, and it’s far more vulnerable than she wanted it to be. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to do this alone.”

His lips part, his eyes flickering down.

“I’ll admit, the kidnapping was a rough way to start,” he says, and she huffs out a laugh at that. “But…” He trails off, deliberately so, like he’s trying to suggest something she can’t quite understand.

She raises an eyebrow at him. “You’re using subtext and I’m not getting it.”

This breaks his face into a smile, before he pulls her tightly in, so her head leans against the crook of his shoulder and her chest is pressed against his.

She squeaks in surprise and feels rather than hears his chuckle.

“I’m glad I get to take them down with you.”

She briefly considers squirming out of the hold, before she settles her forehead and listens to the rise and fall of his breathing.

“I never thought I’d be this far along in taking them down,” he continues, his voice a low rumble against her ear. “But before three weeks ago I didn’t think I’d ever break into their base and release a bunch of stasis chambers, so everything’s new.”

She tilts her head at him. He had done so much for the College and they had cast him aside, and now they’re getting what they deserve.

“And I didn’t think I would be…so close with a vastly unpredictable demon through the whole process,” he says, and his other hand settles in her hair, threading through the one side of her scalp in an almost hypnotizing mirror of the tight grip he had when they kissed. “But I’m not complaining. About that.”

Another laugh, and she smiles at him, impulsive. “You complain about a lot of things.”

“It’s one of my talents,” he replies dryly, then his eyes flicker down to her lips again, and the seriousness of it strikes her.

He’s not drunk this time. She’s not impaired.

His hand is already in her hair, the other on the small of her back, and they’re already touching so much there’s hardly a part of her body that’s not in contact with his.

And she wants more. Again .

He inhales, like the want is across her face, and it very well may be.

“Ambra,” he starts, voice low, but he’s not pulling away. “Stop me if I do something you don’t want me to do.”

“Of course,” she replies. “I can blow up buildings, I’ll stop you if I need to.”

His brain visibly skips a beat. “Stop me before we get to that point.” And his eyes, his intelligent eyes, focus down on her lips again.

“Of course,” she murmurs, struck by something halfway between embarrassment and need, and the tip of her nose burns warm.

His lips quirk up into the barest hint of a smile, before he gently, ever so gently, tilts her head towards his and kisses her.

It’s different from the drunken night.

Before, he had been so full of fury, like every bit of control had left his body and all that was remaining was the want for her, but now his lips are tender against hers, softer, like he’s taking his time to explore her.

She curves her hand on the collar of his sleep shirt, holding him in place, kissing back.

This time, kissing Gurlien is like a thorough examination, like he’s discovering her and sharing in the act of knowledge. Like each motion and small adjustment is an instruction, a revelation of more of herself that he gets to guide, and the fingers in her hair tangles lazily.

Instead of a fire roaring until it consumes everything about her, it’s a slow growth of warmth, like a steady lighting of a candle, until even her fingertips tingle with the potential.

His lips part, and she mirrors him, and the skin on the palm of her hand warms at each moment of touch. It’s a safer burn, she’s not on the precipice of losing control, and she can experience it all.

He makes a small noise in the back of his throat, something gentle, and she pulls away, breaking the kiss.

“Is that okay?” he whispers, brushing the hair that had fallen in her face.

Without words, she nods. It’s a different sort of sensation, not the lump in her throat choking her out, but the knowledge that no words she can think of would come close to expressing what is in her.

Except warmth, and with that warmth, a sort of profound safety.

He smiles at her, heartbreakingly so, before settling back in the pillow, and she settles with him, an easy relaxation through her body.

Yes, there’s the want there, but without the stressful ever pushing need behind it.

Instead, comfort.

His hand traces a circle on the thin stripe of skin where her sleep shirt rides up, and it’s almost overwhelming all over again.

And she never wants him to stop.

She splays her fingers out on his chest, on the collar of the thin T-shirt he wore to bed, and there’s the same want she had at the bar, lurking beneath the knot in her throat.

She’s not a stranger to sex, not really, but never before has she had this strong of physical desire to go along with it. It’s almost a wave, threatening to drown her, and all they’re doing is some idle touching while lying next to each other.

He’s not even wearing his glasses, they’re neatly folded up on the side table, leaving him entirely without armor.

“Your eyes did a thing,” he murmurs, and she’s close enough she guesses he could tell. “Most of the time they just glow, but they flickered off right then. ”

“That happens,” Ambra says, debating being embarrassed, but that would entail her pulling away. “Part of the…side effects of the processes.”

He hmms in the back of his throat, and she could press a kiss to his neck so easily. Anyone could, if they were this close, and the level of vulnerability he’s at is astounding.

That anyone without powers would let anyone get this close.

And that despite all that, he’s letting her.

So she leans in, pressing her lips to the tender point right on the side of his neck, and for a brief moment she can feel his pulse.

His breath hitches and the hand on her back briefly spasms.

“Ambra,” he murmurs warningly, and another thrill goes down her spine.

“Yes?” she asks, propping herself up on her elbows to watch his face. “You’re going to tell me if I overstep, right? If I get to stop you, you get to stop me.”

A thousand emotions flicker over his face, starting with the widening of his eyes and a looseness to his jaw.

“Right?” She pokes him on his rib cage, and he squirms at that, the corners of his eyes creasing into a smile. “That goes both ways?”

“You’re a menace,” he informs her, and she smiles at him. His arm still around her back, smiling and getting those small expressions in return. “Are you going to turn every comment about how to be a person back on me?”

“Of course,” she replies sweetly, before leaning forward and kissing his mouth, catching him off guard.

She would kiss that mouth a hundred times if the world let her.

“I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing,” he mumbles into her lips, definitely not stopping her. “I don’t want to do something to you that you don’t know what it is.”

“May I remind you that I am literally centuries old?” She breathes, letting her own hand drift to the elastic band of his pajama pants, her thumb grazing the skin below his belly button, and he twitches beautifully.

But still, his words deserve to be taken seriously, so she pauses, keeping her palm against his skin there. If he’s helping her with context and subtext and understanding things, she should extend that.

“I’m proposing sex,” she says blatantly, and he nods. Behind the seriousness and the attentiveness, there’s an almost manic hunger behind his brown eyes. “Or at least things on the way there.”

His throat bobs as he swallows, and her mind is briefly derailed at the thought of kissing there again.

“Have you, before?” he asks, haltingly, his eyes flickering down to her chest, to the skin revealed at her waist, to the slope of her shoulder.

“Of course,” she answers, and he briefly shuts his eyes in relief. “It’s going to be…different. In this body.” Which is an understatement. “But there’s a different sort of…desire in it. That I want to try.”

For a long moment, the only sound that reaches her ears is the rasp of his breath and the ever so slight buzz of the lighting fixtures.

“If you do,” Ambra amends, a strange, almost mortifying shyness creeping over her, flushing her cheeks.

Gurlien’s eyebrow twitches up, but he keeps his eyes on her, and even his lashes are blond this close, and there’s a smattering of almost invisible freckles that she’s never seen before across his nose .

He holds up a finger, like he’s going to list something out, and somehow, it’s the most charming thing he’s done that night.

“One,” he starts, almost imperious, and Ambra giggles at his tone. “Hey, I’m being serious. One, is it safe? I have heard so many stories about demons forming odd attachments after sex.”

“Hey,” Ambra says, then shrugs, and she’s still next to him, his other hand still on the small of her back, fingertips touching her skin. “They broke my bond. I don’t think I could ever form one again.”

His touch briefly tightens, chasing away the lump in her throat.

“And also, that’s such a reduction, demons have all sorts of sex without forming bonds.”

“Right,” he replies. “Then two, are you going to be weird about it?”

“Are you?” Ambra asks, and his eyes flicker down to her lips again, then to her chin, like he’s studying her. “I don’t know what weird would be in your mind. Probably?”

His lips twitch up. “This is why I like you, Ambra, you’re fine with me asking questions that anyone else would be annoyed by and you answer honestly.”

“Light kidnapping aside?” Ambra teases, and gets another smile in return. “I like it. Gives me a base idea of expectations.”

“I like knowing where I stand,” Gurlien murmurs, then gently, ever so gently, cradles her chin.

She stills, his hand blister hot against her skin, and her lips part. Her blood seemingly swirls, like just that touch could boil up something inside of her, leaving only the small sensation of the contact in her awareness.

He swipes the pad of his thumb over her lips, and everything inside Ambra pulls her attention to that one little motion. All of her focus, all of her intensity, all of her mind.

“Tell me to stop if you need me to,” he murmurs again, then tugs her into a kiss, a slow kiss, achingly slow, like this one he’s taking his time in learning her lips. Like each moment is a scholastic study, an observation, and he can’t help but implement the research immediately.

She pushes back, unable to stop herself, and his mouth opens to hers, eager, and it’s wonderful. Absolutely wonderful, sending a thrill down her back, straightening her spine and catching in her lungs.

His hand on the hem of her shirt shifts, pulling it up, and she breaks the kiss so she can pull it over her head, so his hands can touch more of her, can have more of her skin against him.

Immediately, he presses a kiss to her neck, down her shoulder, drawing a line with his lips on her body, before his hands traces on the scar underneath her breastbone, twisting around her ribs.

“What happened here?” he murmurs, running the pads of his fingertips along the scar, where it rests between the body’s breasts.

She shudders at the graze to her chest, all of her skin wanting more of his hands there.

“Unstable magical experimentation,” she replies, her own voice high and airy from the desire, and he crooks a smile at her reaction. “You can ignore it.”

“Hmm, no,” he says, then shifts, pressing a kiss where it starts along her rib cage, and she shivers. “It’s a part of you, I don’t need to ignore it.”

Unable to do anything else, she twists her hands in his pale hair, and he smiles against her skin.

It’s a breathtaking image, of his lips against her scar, of the soft, almost reverent worship of her skin, of the soft places on her body. Of the attention he pays to every small part of her, of the meticulous focus on her reactions, every small twitch recorded away.

“You are beautiful,” he murmurs, and she shivers again, the compliment somehow unwarranted. “All of these,” his other hand moves to the scar left on her stomach, from the injury at the bar, caressing it, “are a part of that.”

She opens her mouth, but no words come out, like he’s stolen them away.

His hand reaches up, cradling her breast, and she jerks from the sudden shock of the intensity. “Okay?” He checks, gentling the touch, rubbing his thumb along the underside, sending another shudder down her back. “Too much?”

“No,” she squeaks out, and he grins at her again. The only physical contact she’s had there has been clinical or violent, and this, this is far from that.

But before she can verbalize it, before she can think otherwise or change her actions or anything, he kisses the skin right above her nipple, and she jerks again.

She wants more of that. More of the touches, more contact, more anything, and she scrabbles at the hem of his shirt until he pulls it up over his head, thoroughly messing his hair.

There’s a smattering of freckles across his chest, belying curiously strong muscles underneath the skin, and Ambra lets herself see it in a blink before she grabs him, jerking him towards her into a kiss. Until her entire body is against him, all lean long lines and his arms twist around her back.

This time, he kisses like he did while drunk. Like all semblance of self-control is gone, like she has snapped a central part of him, and she’s in his crosshairs. His tongue swipes against hers, hitching her breath, like he could taste all of her in just that greedy motion.

And she wants more of that.

He makes a small sound in the back of his throat, and she wants to hear him do that again. Wants to hear more of those noises, more of the unconscious, uncontrolled sounds, anything she’s able to wrench from him.

Anything.

His hand falls to the waistband of her pajama pants, tugging them down, and she kicks them off, her breath hitching one more. Pulling back, he glances down at her, at the body before him, at the scars and the marred skin and the small tuft of reddish hair between her legs.

Gentle, he strokes along her hip, and a shiver sends goosebumps up her arms and tightens her nipples, completely new.

“Oh, you like that,” he murmurs, trailing his hand up and thumbing over her nipple, sending sparks behind her eyes.

“Yes,” she squeaks out, and again he smiles, something almost mischievous in his face, and he does it again, watching her reaction as she twists underneath his hand.

“You’re so very sensitive, aren’t you?” he asks, like it’s something good about her and not a liability. “So when I do this—”

He pinches her nipple, just hard enough, and she just about levitates off the bed, a gasp wrenched from her throat.

“—it gets a reaction,” he finishes smugly. “So beautifully.”

“Fuck,” she mumbles, and he soothes it over with a swipe of his thumb, the brief moment of intensity trailing into an all too pleasant tingle. “How…”

“Some people are like that,” he says, pressing a kiss against her breast, and her breath hitches once more. “Some people need more, some people need less.”

“And you?” She breathes out, and surprise briefly flickers over his face, before he kisses her lips so sweetly, teasing out another little gasp from her. “What do you need?”

“This is good,” he murmurs, before turning his attention lower to her body, resting a hand between her thighs, before he pauses, as if waiting for some sort of permission.

Heat coils inside her, at the touch and everything it suggests.

She stares down at him, swallowing, and he grins at her expression, winding his hand between her thighs.

“See the good thing about this, though,” he says, running a finger along the seam between her legs, parting her and wringing another little gasp from her. “Is that when people are sensitive like this, it’s so much more fun.”

All of her attention is there, on the sensation of his finger, and each breath is its own little exquisite torture.

This was nothing like sex without a human body. Nothing.

He runs his finger over her clit, and everything in her clenches, her breath, her heart, everything, before he dips inside of her. She’s wet, of course she is, and he smiles at her, slow.

Again, she jerks, as he works his finger into her core, every small twitch and motion more sensitive than the one before, before he crooks his finger inside of her.

The world explodes behind her eyes, stealing the air from her lungs, forcing a small sound from her throat, and he leans her against him, tracing a small circle on her inside wall.

“You’re good,” he mumbles, as she struggles to catch her breath, and even that small bit of reassurance crumbles away with the slow, languid touch inside of her. “I’ve got you, you’re good.”

Wordless, she nods against him, then reaches over and flattens her hand against his crotch. He hisses against her, and a thrill of triumph runs down her back, that she could make him make that sound.

If all of that was just his hand, then she’s amazed.

“I want you to enjoy this, too,” Ambra starts, and her voice is raspy, like the body forgot what it needed to do to keep that part of her functioning.

“Believe me, I am,” he responds, voice dipping low with another circle of motion inside of her, causing her to clench unconsciously.

Still, he pulls his hand out, and she makes a small noise of protest in response. He tugs the too-short pajama pants off, and he’s hard, magnificently so, and heat just tightens more behind Ambra’s stomach.

There’s a moment, a pause, a breath, as they stare at each other. At her heaving chest and his steady still. At the splotches of red at the tops of his cheekbones, so close to the color of when he gets upset. At the small blond curls around his cock, somehow neater than the hair on his head.

At the waiting, as every bit of her trembles with curiosity at what he’ll do next. At what sensations he will wrought from her, at how the body will react.

At how she will react.

The small lines around his eyes crease into a smile, and that’s the warning she gets, before he’s on top of her, an arm on each side of her, bracing himself over her.

He kisses her neck, small gentle kisses, and she needs more. Needs way more, so much more than the gentleness. So much more than the small kisses, so much more than the hints of action.

“Please,” she breathes, voice high, and she never thought she’d be one to beg for something like this.

“Hmmm,” he says simply, and before she can think, he lines up against her and presses in.

She twitches in his arms with another little gasp, and she’s so wet every little bit of skin is magnified. Every touch, every slide, everything.

Her back arching up to him, he cradles her, catching her right when she thinks she’s going to fall, right when everything threatens to overwhelm her, threatens to crest over her and drown her, taking away all it means to be her.

It’s magnificent, all the sensations and the contact and the pleasure, magnificent and so, so much, and tears crowd her eyes, despite herself.

He freezes, and she breathes out, something halfway between a pant and a moan.

“Are you okay?” he asks, alarmed.

“Yeah,” she manages out, her voice wrecked, and clenches around him, eliciting another low hiss. She scrubs a hand over her face, despite it all, and he twitches inside of her, sending another little cascade of sensation down her back. “Do that again.”

He grins, something vulnerable once again behind the smile, and he languidly thrusts in her again. “I like it when you boss me around like that,” he says, and he’s far too composed, far too coherent, when she’s on the edge of being a mess.

And so Ambra’s on the edge of something, and it sticks in her throat.

She can’t compel him, of course. Can’t make him, not in the way that people think Demons can .

But here he is, fully naked with her, and he’s telling her to be in control. She could tell him anything, make him give her as many orgasms as possible, make him lose control. Even out this complicated wretch of a playing field, until they can both be the same.

Or make him push her fully over the edge.

So she clenches again, and gets another small sound from him. “I want you to fuck me as hard as you can.”

It dawns on his face slow, before the intelligence flashes behind his eyes. Faster than she can think, his hands close over her wrists, pinning her to the bed.

She could teleport out, if she needs. Get out before anything happens to her, recover like nothing happened.

She doesn’t want that.

Instead, she grins at him, baring her teeth at him, daring him.

“You’re going to kill me if you look like that all night,” he murmurs, leaning over her, his hair across his forehead.

He’s gonna kill her if he doesn’t do something soon, if he doesn’t work towards that need clawing inside of her.

“I’m going to kill you if you don’t do something,” she challenges right back, and he thrusts into her, hard, drawing another gasp.

Then another, then another.

She awakes to a nervous pound in her heart as the sun sets, and it’s the night of the concert. The night she has to kill Nalissa, the night she has to face Nalissa, the night she has to do whatever she can to make sure Gurlien isn’t harmed.

She pulls herself out from his cuddles, and his hair sticks up on the pillow .

They have a few hours, and Ambra can just tell by the pit of her stomach that she’s going to hate all of them.

Quickly, she changes into the outfit Gurlien bought for her, then grimaces in the bathroom mirror at herself, leaving the door open enough that she can hear everything in the house.

The pants make her legs look like unsteady sticks, and the top, made out of a stretchy and almost transparent black material, gives the impression of the torso being covered in a black mesh net.

It also shows off the scar curving underneath her chest, like it’s something to be proud of. Like she’s trying to show off where they carved her to pieces, show the world where the body cried.

Ambra adjusts the shirt, but any angle she lets it lay reveals the scars. Tempted to chuck the shirt and grab one of her normal ones, she scrolls through the reference photos on her phone, and frowns when she comes across picture after picture of other people, men and women, wearing similar shirts.

So Gurlien knew what he was doing when he bought it.

There’s now a fine layer of reddish hair on the side of the scalp, almost half a centimeter long, and when Ambra swipes her hand over it, it’s softer instead of prickly. Like it might actually grow back and be normal hair.

She can’t feel the skin beneath the hair anymore with such a touch.

“You’re definitely going to look the part,” Gurlien grumbles from right outside the bathroom, and she jumps, startled.

His hair is still a mess, falling over his face, and he’s wearing a plain black t shirt and black jeans and looks incredibly discomforted by it .

“The scar isn’t going to stick out too much?” Ambra asks, tracing it over the shirt, and his eyes trail down.

There’s a moment of silence, where he considers her blankly, before shaking himself out of it.

“Generally speaking, these shows are friendlier to bodily oddities than normal concerts,” he recites, like it’s from a textbook, which is an interesting response. “They won’t be looking at the scar.”

Ambra glances back in the mirror, and it’s the first thing she spots.

“It’ll be dark in there, and they’ll look at everything else before they notice the scar,” he continues, and she raises an eyebrow at him in the mirror. “Jesus Christ, you’re going to have guys hanging off of you.”

“Strangers?” Ambra asks skeptically.

His lips twitch into a smile before he smothers it. “A non-zero amount of people go to these shows just to pick up strangers for sex.”

She makes a face at him through the mirror, and he cackles a bit, before reaching around her and into one of the grocery bags by the sink, pulling out an eyeliner stick.

And they’re so close in the little bathroom, with the rounded mirror and pastel colors.

Without saying anything, he begins to apply the eyeliner on himself with practiced hands, and that's absolutely not a skill she would’ve thought he had, and she watches with fascination.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he grumbles.

“No,” Ambra replies easily. “This is far too interesting.”

“I used to be edgy when I was a teen, it lasted for maybe six months,” he says, but he’s watching her in the mirror, like he’s waiting for some sort of reaction.

“I’m going to keep you safe,” she insists again, and his mouth quirks up.

“I believe you,” he answers, leaning back from the mirror and blinking at himself. “God, I look like I’m trying to be an edge lord or something, this is awful.”

“It’s not a bad look,” she offers.

It’s not, though distinctly out of place for him, like a costume he’s put on instead of an addition to his face.

She ducks a kiss to his collarbone, and his eyes crinkle up into a smile in the mirror.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to do that without your glasses?” Ambra asks, as he shifts them up his nose to access his eyes with the liner?

“Not at all,” he replies, but the hint of a smile still lingers on his lips. “I look considerably more uptight than you, I need to do something to blend in.”

Ambra brushes the side of her scalp, where the reddish hair sticks a bit haphazardly. It’s less than neat, but they wouldn’t be able to easily stick the EKG’s to it anymore.

“Yup, exactly that,” Gurlien says. “I’m not going to spike my hair,” he informs her, and she shrugs at that. “And don’t you dare send any pictures to Chloe.”

She wasn’t going to, but now she’s tempted.

“No,” he says, at the look on her face, and despite all the nerves and the terror and the fact she’s going to be facing one of the Five in less than a few hours, she finds herself smiling. “Stop that. Let’s get you some food before we go down there.”