"Damn you, Lira..."
It was barely a mutter. Low. Ground between his back teeth like gravel.
She smiled. Small. Victorious. The particular smile of a woman who had just detonated something very small in a very precise location and was internally cataloguing the damage with profound satisfaction.
Ytrisia, pressed warm and unmoving against his right side, said absolutely nothing.
That was somehow worse.
The steam still ran thick and slow along the tiled ceiling, curling lazily above the three of them—two bare women, one increasingly exasperated man, every inch of skin making contact in a configuration that could not possibly be mistaken for anything other than exactly what it was.
Cruxius exhaled through his nose.
Long.
Controlled.
The exhale of a man renegotiating his relationship with the concept of dignity in real time.
