(Act I)
Dawn found the House of Silver Veils half-asleep and half-sighing.
The city outside was still quiet—canals breathing mist, towers smudged in grey, bells not yet ambitious enough to ring. But inside the topmost suite, the air was thick with the soft, uneven music of people trying to remember where their bodies ended, and someone else's began.
Kaine lay awake in the center of the bed.
The bed was… generous. It had to be. The proprietor had reinforced the frame himself after the first time Kaine stayed in this room, and the stories had nearly cracked the posts out of pure enthusiasm.
Now, its broad mattress was a landscape of tangled limbs and rumpled silk.
A dark-skinned arm, draped heavy with sleep, lay across Kaine's abdomen—muscle-defined, scar-lined, a sailor's limb even at rest, the kind only a captain earned. A lighter hand with ink stains curled near his shoulder; its owner snored softly into the pillow, a laugh still caught in the corner of her mouth. Someone's leg—he thought Saraya's—was thrown over his shin, small foot hooked as if to keep him from escaping.
He could have slipped free easily if he'd wanted.
He didn't.
The room smelled of jasmine and lamp-oil and skin. The shutters were half-closed, letting a thin spear of dawn cut across the bed and gild the curve of a hip here, the slope of a shoulder there. Silk sheets had been kicked down to the foot sometime in the night. Most of the women lay bare to the waist or entirely, blankets forgotten in the heat of what had happened and the bone-deep exhaustion afterwards.
One of the courtesans made a small, pleased sound in her sleep and rolled closer, pressing her cheek against his ribs as if he were simply the warmest thing available. Another shifted with a faint, unconscious shiver, palm drifting down to her lower belly in a slow, absent touch, as though her body remembered more clearly than her thoughts what it had been filled with.
Kaine watched the ceiling.
It had been like this for several nights now. The practices and rhythms of a city finding its new balance outside… and in here, another kind of ritual entirely.
If he closed his eyes, he could still hear echoes of the previous hours: laughter spilling over as someone lost a dare, husky voices goading each other, Saraya's breathless, "you're going to—" broken by her own helpless cry. Captain Nyala swearing in a Summer Islander dialect when he didn't let her pretend she was in control. The way their bravado had melted, one by one, into open want and unguarded sounds that had nothing to do with performance and everything to do with need.
Volantis had always been a city that believed excess was proof of life.
Kaine had simply given them someone who could withstand theirs.
A faint, muffled groan came from somewhere near his left. One of the brothel girls—Lysene, hair like spilled bronze, eyes still shut—shifted on her back, hand moving instinctively to her abdomen again. Not in pain; more the wondering, almost reverent touch of someone whose body had been worked past what she thought were its limits and now lay pleasantly heavy, as if holding onto echoes inside.
Beside her, Saraya lay on her side facing him, one arm under the pillow, the other tucked between them. Strands of dark hair clung to her throat and temple, dried sweat turned to salt in the night. Her face looked younger, like this—without paint, without the professional half-smile she wore downstairs. Mouth relaxed. Lashes fanned across her cheek. She had finally fallen asleep with her forehead pressed against his chest, as if she could burrow into the steady beat there and anchor herself.
She stirred now, nose crinkling as light stroked its way across her brow.
"Too bright," she muttered, voice wrecked and soft.
"Blame the sun," Kaine said quietly.
Her eyes cracked open, pupils slow to adjust. For a moment, there was the usual morning disorientation—the where, the who, the what. Then memory caught up. Heat washed up the back of her neck. She made a small, mortified sound and promptly pulled the nearest sheet up over her face.
He touched the edge of the fabric with two fingers. "Suffocating yourself won't change last night."
"It might," came her voice, muffled. "If I die before breakfast, the rumors will be merciful and vague."
"Doubtful," another voice rasped from his other side. "Men on the docks will be quoting the way you screamed his name for seasons."
Saraya peeked out from under the sheet.
Captain Nyala lay on her stomach, cheek turned toward them, hair a wild tumble of tight black curls threaded with a few gold beads. Her skin was deep, sun-burnished brown, the color of old teak polished by salt, marked here and there by fine pale scars that looked almost decorative—until you realized they weren't. Even half-covered by a fallen sheet, she radiated unapologetic danger. One hand still curled around the thin cord of Kaine's necklace; she must have held it there for balance last night, knuckles white while she rode out wave after wave of sensation.
Saraya glared weakly. "You promised never to repeat that."
"I promised never to repeat it sober," Nyala said. "I'm not sober yet."
Her accent curled around the vowels, thick as spiced rum. Even now, wrecked from lack of sleep and excess of pleasure, she looked like someone who would stab a man for shortchanging her and then step neatly over the body to go dance.
Kaine glanced at her. "Regrets?"
"Only that I lost the bet that landed me here instead of arranging it myself," she said. Then, with a crooked smile, "And that my crew will never let me live it down when they hear I begged."
"You did more than beg," one of the other women murmured drowsily.
"Sleep," Kaine said gently. "You're safe."
Saraya's eyes softened at that, some of the fluster giving way to something like contentment. She slid the sheet down enough to breathe properly and tucked herself back against him, head pillowed on his shoulder, utterly heedless of how much bare skin she was pressing against. A few others still shivered occasionally—the involuntary after-tremors of bodies that had been pushed, coaxed, teased, and steadied until they'd spilled every last ounce of tension they had.
He knew where he'd left marks without needing to look: the faint teeth along a throat, the hand-shaped bruise on a hip, the sore muscles that would remind them for days of how thoroughly he'd listened to every breath and tightened hand and stuttered plea.
He was good at this.
Not because of some monstrous appetite—though he had one, honed over more years than any of them could guess—but because he paid attention.
Long experience had taught him to be present when lives burned bright.
He let himself feel the weight of them now: not just on his body, but in the room. Servants who had never been allowed to choose touch freely before and had done so now with a kind of desperate joy. Former slaves who still flinched sometimes when a hand moved too quickly and then slowly unlearned it under his patience. A red priestess whose faith had always warned her against worshipping anything with skin… but whose lips had still trembled around his name in a way that was not prayer.
He could compartmentalize when he had to. Close off parts of himself, become the cold, untouchable thing that judged, that ended, that made decisions no one else could live with.
This was not one of those times.
Here, with dawn trying to pry its way under the shutters and the bed a battlefield of abandoned necklaces and overturned wine cups and tangled limbs, he allowed himself to be… human. Or as close to it as he chose to be.
Saraya shifted again, this time with more deliberation. Her hand slid over his chest, fingers tracing a line down the muscle there. She stopped just shy of impropriety for morning—mostly by instinct rather than modesty; there was nothing left she hadn't seen or touched the night before.
"You're awake," she murmured.
"I am."
"Did you sleep at all?"
"A little."
She made a disbelieving sound. "I don't think you did."
He thought about the hours between their last collapse and now—how he'd lain and listened to their breathing, tracking each rhythm, making sure exhaustion stayed soft and safe instead of tipping into anything else. How his mind had walked old paths even as his body stayed still.
"Enough," he said.
Her gaze roamed his face with naked curiosity. "How do you feel?"
"Fine."
She clicked her tongue. "That is not an answer, my lord."
He considered.
"Content," he said finally. "And mildly pinned."
That earned him a sleepy chorus of protests as several women realized they were draped over him and refused to move.
"You did that to yourself," Lysene mumbled into his side.
"Yes," Kaine agreed. "I did."
A soft knock at the outer chamber door broke the bubble.
It was tentative rather than urgent—someone who had been told, in no uncertain terms, to wake him only if necessary and was now deciding whether this situation counted.
Sereyna's voice drifted through wood and distance, dry as old wine. "If you're still alive in there, we need to know before noon. Volantis is short on miracles."
Captain Nyala snorted into her pillow. "You're popular."
Saraya jolted upright too fast and immediately regretted it, hand flying to her head. "Ow—"
"Slow," Kaine murmured, steadying her with a hand at the small of her back. "You're not in the pits tonight."
She caught her breath, shot him a grateful look, then scrabbled for the robe that had lost the battle with gravity on the floor, somewhere around the third or fourth time she'd sworn she couldn't take any more and then proved herself wrong.
What followed was chaotic in a way he secretly enjoyed: women scrambling for discarded clothing, tugging on gowns inside out, hunting for sashes under pillows and earrings under someone else's thigh. There was much whispered cursing, more than a little laughter, and far too many sideways glances at him that said plainly: if we didn't have to go, we wouldn't.
He watched them move, equal parts indulgence and assessment. No one was limping badly; good. No one's hands shook in a way that suggested anything but exhausted nerves; better. More than one brushed her lower belly without seeming to notice, palm resting there for a heartbeat, as if warding or welcoming something unseen.
In weeks, some of them might count days and realize what those nights had given them. He would not be there. Whatever children came of this would not carry his blood, not truly. That was one advantage of being what he was: when life took root from his nights, it belonged to its mother entirely.
But for this brief, bright sliver of time, he was the axis their orbits bent around.
By the time he rose from the bed, the suite looked almost respectable again. The worst of the spilled wine had been dabbed up. Hair had been tamed into coils and braids. Necklines were re-laced, some higher, some proudly not.
Saraya was last, of course.
She stood at the foot of the bed, tying her sash, robe a deep blue that set off the warm tone of her skin and the faint new marks along her throat. When she finished, she came to him again, suddenly shy.
"Will you… be staying, my lord?" she asked. "Another night?"
"Perhaps," he said. "If the city allows it."
Her mouth quirked. "It never has before."
"Then it's time Volantis tried something new."
He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers, a fleeting, gentle thing that had more weight than any of last night's rougher indulgences. Her eyes shone too bright for a heartbeat; she swallowed it down with practiced grace and bowed.
"I'll have hot water sent up," she said. "And breakfast."
"And strong tea," Nyala called, already halfway to the door. "And tell your father not to faint when he sees you walk."
Saraya flashed Kaine one last, lingering look and slipped out with the others, their whispered giggles and low murmurs spilling into the corridor before the door closed.
Silence rolled back in like a tide.
A different knock followed almost immediately, brisker, sharper.
"Kaine," Sereyna called. "Open the cursed door before Vaerynna starts guessing what you're doing in there and sets something on fire out of spite."
"I do not burn things out of spite," came Vaerynna's equally muffled protest. "I burn them out of principle."
Kaine sighed.
He pulled on a robe—simple black, cinched at the waist—tied his hair back with a loose strip of cloth, and padded barefoot across the floor. The stone was cool under his feet, a welcome counterpoint to the lingering warmth of the bed.
When he opened the door, Sereyna was leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed, one boot braced behind her. Vaerynna stood beside her in her humanoid guise: tall, silver-haired, eyes like molten gold, dressed in fitted leather that did very little to hide the fact that she was only pretending at being human. Behind them, the House staff pretended very hard not to exist.
Both women's gazes swept him in one practiced, synchronized motion.
Both pairs of eyes immediately narrowed.
"Oh, good," Sereyna said. "You're upright. I half-expected to find you as a corpse under a pile of exhausted women."
Vaerynna's nose wrinkled delicately. "It smells like you tried."
"Repeatedly," Sereyna added.
Kaine stepped aside so they could enter if they wanted. They did, of course, brushing past him with the casual entitlement of creatures who had long ago stopped asking whether a room belonged to them.
Their eyes moved, cataloguing: the rumpled sheets, the half-emptied wine decanter, a forgotten hairpin on the floor, the smudged print of a palm on the wall where someone had slapped it last night for balance—or in surrender.
Sereyna made a low whistle. "Busy evening?"
"Busy week," Vaerynna corrected, toeing a garter off the path before it could snag her boot.
Kaine closed the door behind them. "You came to comment on the air quality or for another reason?"
"Oh, we have several reasons," Sereyna said, turning back to him with a predatory little smile. "But let's start with the obvious."
She gestured vaguely at the bed with two fingers. "Done with your debauchery for the morning, or is this just… intermission?"
Vaerynna folded her arms, bouncing once lightly on her heels, catlike. "We were considering sending in reinforcements. For them, not for you."
"You seem very concerned for their well-being," Kaine said.
"Someone has to be," Sereyna shot back. "You've been rotating through half the city's willing women since we arrived. Servants, freedwomen, priestesses, bored noblewives, pirates… At this rate, Volantis will change its sigil to a bed."
"An accurate one," Vaerynna mused.
Her gaze lingered on a faint scratch along Kaine's collarbone, then dropped meaningfully lower before flicking back up with a knowing look. "You do realize no human man is meant to keep up that pace?"
"I am not a human man," he reminded them.
"Exactly my point," Sereyna said. "Most men need sleep after a long night. You walk out looking like you just finished a light training exercise. It's unnerving."
"It's also unsustainable for them," Vaerynna added, tilting her head. "They will be walking strangely for days."
Sereyna snorted. "You say that like it's a disadvantage."
Kaine crossed to the washstand, pouring water into the basin. "They are adults who asked for this. I did not drag anyone into my bed."
"You didn't have to drag anyone," Sereyna agreed. "They've been throwing themselves at you since your boots touched the dock. 'Crimson Reaver, take me,' 'Lord Reaver, bless my house,' 'My lord, I heard your… endurance is legendary.'"
Vaerynna's lips curled in amusement. "They're not wrong."
Sereyna shot her a look. "You're not helping."
"I'm not trying to," the dragon-woman replied.
Kaine splashed water on his face, letting the cool wash away some of the lingering haze of the night. In the mirror's dull reflection, he caught the two of them watching him with a mixture of affection, exasperation, and something more complicated they hadn't yet found words for.
"I am serious when I need to be," he said quietly, dabbing his face dry on a towel. "You know that."
Sereyna's expression softened a hair. "We do. Which is probably why the contrast is so… jarring."
Vaerynna drifted closer, circling him once like a curious predator. "That, and no truly human man has the stamina to satisfy that many women in one night and then stand here arguing with us at dawn."
She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "If half of them can still walk by noon, I will be impressed."
"Half of them," Sereyna echoed, eyes narrowing. "You do realize that if your track record from other worlds holds, at least some of them will end this year with… souvenirs."
Her gaze flicked toward the bed, her tone deliberately dry. "Volantis is going to have an entire crop of children whose mothers swear blind they were blessed by the Reaver himself."
Kaine folded the towel, set it aside. "Some will," he said calmly. "But they will be theirs, not mine."
Sereyna raised a brow. "You keep saying that. Explain."
He met her eyes. "What I am doesn't pass on. When I share a bed with someone, whatever life comes of it is drawn from her alone. Her flesh, her spirit. I'm not written into it. I can… nudge, if asked. Open doors that were closed. But what walks through belongs to her."
Vaerynna's expression flickered with that particular fascination she reserved for things that brushed against the edge of gods. "So all these children they will beg you for—"
"—will belong to their mothers," he finished. "Their features. Their lineage. Their legacy. I am… an instigator. Not a father."
Sereyna leaned back against the table, arms still crossed. "And you don't care?"
"I care for them as I care for any child," he said. "As lives. As possibilities. But they are not mine. I am not meant to have a line after me. That isn't how I exist."
Vaerynna nodded slowly. "Good. I would hate to have to tolerate a brood of miniature you."
Sereyna smirked. "One is quite enough."
He flicked a droplet of water at her; she dodged, surprisingly slow, still tired. Her grin widened anyway.
"And your trainers?" Vaerynna continued, clearly not done. "They spoke of you like some kind of storm given orders. And yet half of them still look at you like they'd cheerfully be struck by lightning again."
Sereyna's eyes gleamed at the memory. "Second-year training," she said. "We thought the first year under your pupils was bad. Then you took over, and we realized your definition of 'hell' had more… layers."
"Yet here you are," Kaine said mildly.
"Yes," Sereyna said. "Alive. With trauma. And an unhealthy appreciation for your hands."
Vaerynna snorted. "That last part is your problem."
"I never said it wasn't."
Another knock interrupted them—this one more formal, knuckles precise against wood.
"Kaine?" came a cautious male voice. "My lord? There is a message. From the palace."
Sereyna's posture sharpened. Vaerynna's head tilted, listening.
Kaine crossed the room in three easy strides and opened the door just enough to see the messenger: a young man in Volantene livery, eyes down, hands white-knuckled around a sealed parchment. He looked like someone delivering a dragon's egg—terrified to drop it, more terrified to keep holding it.
"My lord Reaver," he stammered. "From— from Queen Nyessa. She bade it be brought at once."
Kaine took the letter. "Thank you."
He reached into the inner fold of his robe, drew out a single coin, and dropped it into the boy's palm. A bright, heavy glint—gold, and not the clipped, miserly sort minted in Volantis.
The messenger's eyes went impossibly wide. "My lord, I—this is—"
"A fair trade for climbing all these stairs," Kaine said. "Don't argue. Spend it somewhere that will make you smile."
The boy made a strangled, half-bowed shape and fled, nearly colliding with a maid coming up with fresh linens. His footsteps pattered away down the hall like someone who'd just been brushed by a myth and wasn't sure whether to tell anyone.
Kaine closed the door and turned the letter in his fingers. Wax seal: the stylized Elephant that had once been a faction's sigil and was now the mark of Volantis's new queen. He broke it with a thumb.
Sereyna hopped up onto the table, legs swinging. "Well? Does our newly crowned trouble magnet want something?"
"She usually does," Vaerynna murmured.
Kaine unfolded the parchment and read aloud, voice smoothing unconsciously into the cadence of Nyessa's careful hand:
To Kaine, who has left this city standing and confused in equal measure,
Volantis would properly welcome the man to whom it owes its continued existence. I will host a private dinner in three nights' time at the palace, for you and your chosen companions. There will be no Triarchs; they know how to arrive when summoned. I wish to speak not as a ruler to a conqueror, but as someone trying to build a future out of the ruins left behind.
Come. Eat my food. Drink my wine. Let us see whether we can make a bargain that leaves neither of us ashamed when the city wakes the next morning.
— Nyessa of Volantis
Sereyna whistled low. "She's getting poetic."
"Dangerous sign," Vaerynna agreed. "Humans get their most reckless when they start dressing their desires in pretty words."
Kaine refolded the letter thoughtfully. "She wants an alliance."
"She wants you," Sereyna said, entirely too quickly.
Vaerynna's mouth curved. "In several senses of the word."
Sereyna pointed at the bed again. "If we go to this dinner, we are buying new clothes. This room has seen more naked politics in the last week than the palace has in a decade."
Kaine glanced at his robe, then at the scattered garments around, then back at them. "You disapprove of my current wardrobe?"
"Your current wardrobe smells like incense and sex," Sereyna said bluntly. "We're not wearing that to a queen's table unless the plan is to end the evening exactly like this."
"It might anyway," Vaerynna mused. "Have you seen the way Nyessa looks at him?"
Sereyna's jaw tightened. "Yes," she said. "I have."
Kaine chose not to comment.
Vaerynna drifted toward the balcony, fingers brushing the curtains aside. The city beyond was properly awake now: barges moving, hawkers calling, temple bells arguing with each other. "A dinner," she said. "With a queen trying to prove to herself she can invite a storm into her house and still call herself hostess. This will be entertaining."
"Or disastrous," Sereyna said. "Or both."
She hopped down from the table, already in motion, mind ticking through details. "We'll need something appropriate from the House's wardrobe. And masks, metaphorical if not literal."
"We do not wear masks," Vaerynna objected.
"We do," Sereyna said. "We just pretend we don't."
Kaine tucked Nyessa's letter into the inside pocket of his robe. It lay there against his skin, warm from his fingers and faintly scented with the ink she favored—a subtle spice that was more Elephant quarter than Triarch palace.
"Three nights," he said. "Enough time to listen to the city. See how it breathes under her. Decide what to say at her table."
"And enough time," Vaerynna added, eyes glinting, "for you to exhaust the rest of the House of Silver Veils so they can walk properly again by then."
Sereyna groaned. "Please don't. I would like at least one evening where the servants aren't blushing every time they pour your wine."
"They're not blushing," Vaerynna said. "They're remembering."
"Exactly my point."
Kaine smiled, small and fleeting. "We shall see."
He moved to the wardrobe, pulling out a fresh shirt, dark trousers, and a sleeveless tunic that gave his arms a freedom they'd need if the day turned ugly. Behind him, Sereyna muttered something under her breath about needing to bribe the House's seamstress, while Vaerynna quietly cracked the window to let in the morning air.
The room shifted around them—from den of last night's indulgence to staging ground for whatever came next.
Outside, Volantis stretched, shuddered, and started its day.
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(Act II)
Five Days Earlier
Volantis after midnight smelled like wet stone, sour wine, and the sea—every pleasure and crime blending into one humid breath. The harbor lanterns burned low, boats rocking against the tide, and the taverns sang like temples dedicated to salt and sin.
Kaine walked alone.
Or rather, he moved like a man who looked alone but had never once been vulnerable in his life.
Tonight he wore a sailor's shirt, open at the chest, sleeves rolled to the elbow, dark trousers tucked into boots that had walked more shores than half the Narrow Sea had maps for. He looked like a man returning from a voyage, not the one who had conquered a city.
Men glanced at him. Women stared.
The Salt Street tavern ahead was loud—tables shaking, cards slapping, dice rolling. Pirates drank here. Smugglers. Half the harbor whispered it was suicide to enter uninvited.
Kaine pushed the door open.
Noise collapsed.
People turned.
He did not smile, but some part of him enjoyed the attention. The sea had always liked him—storms bent, winds shifted, sailors followed—and pirate bars were built of the same bones.
Before he reached the counter, a voice cut through the hush:
"Well, fuck me," a woman drawled. "Aren't you prettier up close."
He looked left.
Nyxara of the Red Wake sat alone at a table made for five. One boot up on the chair opposite her, jacket open to the waist, throat glimmering with sweat and sea salt. Coins lay scattered across the wood, though she wasn't playing. Her eyes were sharp enough to gut a man without touching him.
Amber, bright, alive.
She grinned. It was a dangerous grin. Predatory, amused, and—most telling—curious.
"You're the Reaver," she said, voice thick with island's accent. "The one who broke Volantis in half."
Kaine raised a brow. "People exaggerate."
"Oh, fuck off." Nyxara waved him closer. "I saw the harbor. No exaggeration leaves scorch patterns that clean."
He pulled out a chair opposite her and sat without asking.
Her grin widened. "Confident. Or suicidal."
"Depends on the company."
Nyxara leaned forward, elbows on the table, shirt slipping slightly, enough to show the firm line of muscle beneath sun-darkened skin.
"Buy me rum," she said, "and I'll decide which."
Kaine waved the barkeep over with two fingers. "Rum. The strong one."
Nyxara laughed. "You don't even know which one that is."
"I do." Kaine tilted his head toward the right barrel. "That one. The fumes alone could drown a priest."
The barkeep blinked. "How would you know—?"
Kaine just stared.
The man hurried off.
Nyxara whistled low. "Now I'm curious. Sailor? Soldier? Pirate? Something worse?"
"All of them," he said simply.
Her laughter turned softer, more honest. "That explains the walk. World-walker's stride. I fuckin' knew it."
Rum arrived.
She took the bottle, knocked back a mouthful, then hissed.
"Seven hells," she gasped, "that's strong."
"Told you."
"How the fuck did you know?"
"I can smell the wood it was aged in."
Nyxara blinked—slowly, like a cat noticing another predator in its territory.
"You're not what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
"A brute." Her gaze slid down his arms. "Or a prince." Back up. "Maybe a madman."
"And now?"
Nyxara leaned across the table, voice dropping:
"Now I think you're trouble. The right kind."
His lips curved. "And what kind is that?"
Nyxara's voice roughened. "The kind that ruins sleep permanently."
They held each other's eyes.
Air thickened.
Her pupils dilated—slightly. His breathing slowed—barely.
There were two storms meeting at sea.
Kaine broke the silence first. "People tell me you raid at night."
"Mm." Nyxara shrugged. "Better stars. Better wind. Less screaming."
"And more blood?"
She smiled."You say that like you've never spilled any."
He did not answer.
Nyxara drank again. This time, she watched him over the rim.
"Why are you here?" she finally asked.
"To see whose world this city really belongs to."
"Ah." Nyxara tapped the table. "And? Found an answer?"
Kaine reached out, slowly.
He touched the gold ring woven into her braid—two fingers brushing hair, brushing skin. The contact was light. Deliberate. Intimate.
Her breath stuttered just slightly.
He murmured:
"I think it belongs to the ones who don't ask permission."
Nyxara froze.
Then she grinned.
"Gods. You speak pirate fluently."
"I am fluent in many things."
"And modest too."
She leaned closer, breath brushing his jaw.
"What else are you fluent in, sailor?"
"Kissing," he said.
Silence.
Then Nyxara's lips parted—surprised, delighted, hungry.
"Well fuck," she whispered, "that's blunt."
"Truth usually is."
Nyxara pushed her chair back and stood.
Her boots thudded against the floor, hips rolling just enough to draw every eye in the room. Without breaking their stare, she walked around the table and stopped behind him.
Her hand slid into his hair.
"Stand up," she breathed against his ear.
He did.
Nyxara turned his face toward hers and kissed him.
Not polite. Not tentative. A pirate's kiss—salt, heat, bite, and confidence sharpened into taste.
He cupped her jaw, deepening it, her tongue brushing his—slow first, then demanding. People around them gasped. Someone cheered. Dice fell silent.
Nyxara broke the kiss, panting just a little.
"Fuck," she whispered hoarsely. "Do that again."
Kaine did.
This time, she shuddered. Her nails dug into his shoulder through his shirt.
When they separated, Nyxara stared at him like she'd forgotten air.
"Come with me," she said.
"Where?"
"My ship. My cabin. My rules."
He brushed his thumb over her bottom lip.
"We'll see whose rules survive."
Nyxara laughed, breathless.
"You're gonna be a problem."
Kaine grinned, tugging lightly on her braid.
"You have no idea."
Nyxara grabbed his shirt, pulling him toward the door.
Her voice dropped to a promise:
"I'm going to fuck you senseless."
Kaine leaned close, lips almost touching hers again.
"Not before I kiss you breathless."
Nyxara's eyes burned.
"Oh, you arrogant—"
Her mouth crashed into his.
The room erupted.
And the night swallowed them whole.
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Night dripped into Volantis like warm wine as Kaine followed Nyxara down the gangplank of The Red Wake, her ship creaking at the dock's pulse. Lanterns swayed overhead, painting her in ribbons of flame-light—bare arms corded with sailor's muscle, coat hanging open to expose the line of her collarbones, hair braided tight to keep the sea from claiming it.
She didn't look back at him once.
She didn't need to.
Her stride said everything: If you have courage, follow.
The crew watched him come aboard, the way wolves watch another wolf. Female, all of them—lean, hungry-eyed, clothes hanging loose or open where sea salt had eaten stitching.
Some wore shirts cropped at the ribs, weathered leather leggings clinging to long legs. Others had simply stripped to shifts in the heat, breeze lifting the hems to show flashes of hip and thigh. Tattoos coiled up throats and across knuckles. Piercings glinted along ears, brows, navels.
One of the officers—barefoot, shirt half-buttoned—whistled low. "So the rumours were true," she said.
Nyxara just laughed and pushed open the captain's cabin."Inside," she told him.
The door slammed behind them.
The space smelled of salt, sweat, women, and rum—like every memory carved into a pirate's spine. Maps littered the wall. A sword belt hung on a hook. A length of rope rested coiled on the table with the lazy promise of future use.
Nyxara poured rum into two cups. "You know why you're here," she said.
"To talk terms," Kaine replied.
Her grin flashed white. "And to ruin my night."
She stepped close—boot toes touching his. He could feel her breath on his mouth, warm, rum-sweet.
"My crew thinks they've seen real men," she whispered, voice low and sharp. "They haven't. Not once. Most men break when we ask for a second round."
Her fingertips brushed down his chest, slow and claiming. "They say you don't."
He caught her wrist gently, thumb stroking the pulse beneath her skin. "They're right."
Nyxara's pupils widened. "Good."
She leaned in and kissed him. Hard. Starved. With teeth.
Her hand slid into his hair, yanking his head back with a pirate's lack of hesitation. His answering grip at her hip made her gasp—not afraid, not resisting—hungry.
Her coat fell first. Dropped off her shoulders to pool at her feet.
Her shirt followed, pulled over her head in a quick, practiced movement that left her bare to the waist, muscles shifting beneath bronze skin. Scars glimmered silver. She stood unashamed, chest rising with quickening breath, body lean and powerful and female in every line.
She bit his lip again and laughed: "That look on your face? I want to see it on every woman aboard by morning."
Outside, the crew heard the door lock. And cheered.
The next hours were a storm.
There was kissing against the cabin wall—Nyxara shoving him there with a groan, Kaine spinning her back and pinning her wrists above her head. Rope looped loosely around them, suggestive restraint rather than true binding.
There was the sound of her breath breaking into ragged laughter, then into something deeper—raw pleasure muffled against his throat.
Her voice was wrecked with want: "Harder—gods, yes—don't stop—" followed by laughter that trembled on the edge of delirious joy.
And when she finally collapsed across him, panting, trembling, hair undone from its braids—she whispered into his ear, "Stay."
He stayed.
Word spread down the wake of the ship like wildfire. Whispers turned into bold knocks. Then into bodies.
Two officers entered first—shirtless beneath open jackets, hair damp from sea spray, cheeks flushed with rum and daring.
"We heard the captain screaming," one said. "We want to find out why."
Nyxara sprawled sideways on the cot, drunk on sensation, and waved them forward. "Try him," she slurred. "If you can still speak afterward, I'll be impressed."
The first kissed Kaine. Slow. Deep. Hands in his hair, body pressed flush to his.
The second kissed him from behind. Fingers tracing his shoulders, breath on his neck.
The cabin filled with gasps and tangled limbs. Clothes slid off skin—shirts shrugged loose, belts unclasped, trousers pushed low enough to leave hips and thighs bare to wandering hands and mouths.
Someone moaned into someone else's kiss, legs tangling. Two crewwomen ended up kissing each other against the map table, laughing breathlessly between mouths.
The air turned hot. Human. Ferocious.
Women begged through clenched teeth. Laughed into his throat. Whispered curses and prayers, and nothing coherent at all.
By dawn, the cot was buried under bodies—half the crew sleeping naked against Kaine or each other, limbs sprawled over his chest and stomach, heads on his arms and thighs.
Nyxara lay on his left shoulder, utterly gone, lips curved in a savage, satisfied smile. Two officers curled against his right side, legs tangled with his, faces resting on him as if they had simply melted where they fell.
Another woman rested on his stomach—asleep mid-kiss, hair fanned like ink across his skin. One lay draped over his thigh, murmuring faint little breaths of pleasure in her dreams.
Beyond the bed, on the floor, three crewwomen slept in a loose pile—shirts gone, skin pressed to skin, murmuring soft laughter even in sleep.
Someone whispered, half-dreaming: "Gods… I can still feel him…"
Nyxara murmured without opening her eyes: "Get used to it. We're not done."
That was night one.
Night two was worse—or better, depending on who spoke of it.
More officers arrived. Then deckhands. Then the ship's quartermaster, already unfastening her shirt as she walked in.
The Red Wake rocked at its moorings until taverns onshore joked that Volantis itself must be shifting tides.
Women knelt to kiss him. Women kissed each other atop him. Bodies glistened with sweat and sea salt. Voices choked with pleasure, with hunger, with surrender.
And through it all, Kaine stayed impossibly steady—switching between gentle teasing whispers, and rough commands spoken in a pirate's growl, and slow kisses that made hardened women whimper.
By the end, Nyxara whispered hoarsely to her first mate:"…if he asked, we would follow him into the Smoking Sea… naked and laughing…"
And when Kaine finally left the ship—
he did so walking barefoot down the gangplank at dawn, shirt half-buttoned, hair loose, neck marked with kisses and teeth, eyes bright with amusement.
Behind him, Nyxara and her officers stood on deck—leaning on railings, robes slipping from shoulders, breathless, trembling, smiling like sinners blessed.
Nyxara called after him, voice raw but triumphant: "Come back tomorrow—my girls aren't finished with you."
He didn't turn around. But he did raise a hand in lazy promise.
That same hand would later push open the door of the House of Silver Veils—