There are specific kinds of danger the Adventurer’s Academy doesn’t prepare you for. I mean, I cannot say for certain that they don’t, as I must’ve missed a third of my classes there. Yet I suspect if there had been lessons about how to fall face-first into the arms of one honey-eyed beauty with toned arms and all the right words, I would’ve heard about it. I had not, of course, and within a few hours, even though they had felt like mere moments, of sitting in the booth on the second floor of the Gilded Cauldron, I was ready to sign my soul to Chrysadora had she pushed a contract my way.

“…Well, don’t keep me in suspense! What did you do next?” she asked, her lips glistening with mead, before she licked them clean, and I followed her tongue very closely with my eyes.

“What else could I do? I played the lute.”

“No! No, you didn’t! In front of all those people?” She laughed, shaking her head as she rested her hand on the table.

Frankly, I had told my mummer disguise story before and never got such a strong reaction, but Chrysadora was being so earnest that I couldn’t believe she was faking it, even if I usually assumed that anyone acting interested in what I was saying was doing just that.

“What else could I do? Admit that I lied?” I shook my head, adamantly, but with a curl at the edge of my lips. “Nuh-uh. I’m way too proud for that.”

“Oh, alright, I see… So, how did you manage to fake playing the lute?”

“I didn’t. I strummed it, badly, for about thirty seconds in front of a wide-eyed and confused crowd.” My cheeks turned red as I remembered it. I was being cavalier about the ending, because in hindsight it was funny, but it still took me an entire year to start seeing the humour in it instead of just feeling mortified whenever I remembered. “Then the troupe leader just called for a break, and before he could talk to me… I ran.”

“You just… Ran?”

“Oh, you bet I just ran. There’s a reason I’m never showing my face anywhere east of Farnworth anymore.”

“Oh, hells…” Chrysadora wiped the corner of her eye as the laughing had caused a tear to start to well there. “Tilly, you are amazing.”

“Amazing is a word, for sure,” I snickered and raised my cup to drink some mead and wash down the taste of pork strips. “I’ve also heard ‘hot mess’, ‘a flail with a short-handle and a long chain’, and, uh…”

“Stop that,” Chrysadora said, her voice a notch more serious than before, though she was still smiling.

My tone had been playful during the depreciative recap of some criticisms. I wasn’t seeking sympathy or anything, just making a joke at my own expense. If I truly wanted to make myself look bad, I would be quoting the things my mother had told me, not what I heard from fellow adventurers. But I’m sure if I made a list of all the people I could see myself bringing to the Gilded Cauldron to meet Chrys, the two bugbears that had tried to kill me earlier in the day would likely be higher on it than my mother.

“It’s funny, I’m just kidding,” I assured her.

“But you do this often, and I honestly don’t know why,” she said, taking the last strip of pork skin and crushing it with her teeth as she looked at me in some odd way.

It was not disapproval, trust me, I have enough experience with that to recognise a look of disapproval on a woman’s face across five miles, in the dark. It was a knowing glance that seemed to urge me to do something, that expected me to. Vaguely amused, but with a hint of a playful ‘tsk tsk’. Whatever it was, Chrysadora wore it well. Was there anything she didn’t wear well?

“Do what?” I pretended not to know.

“Say mean things about yourself,” Chrysadora said.

“Well, it’s good to keep yourself humble, right?”

“There’s humble and then there’s delusional. And you sound like you don’t know how charming you can be.”

Alright. Chrysadora said I was charming. Her. I don’t think I have to explain why I was sure that had to be a joke, right? That woman could sweet-talk a rock in moving out of her way, and she made a frankly excessive use of gold look tasteful.

“Me? Charming? Are you sure you mean the person right in front of you?”

“Yes. You made me laugh more in the last two hours than I had in weeks, and you have so many fascinating stories for someone so young.”

“I’m not that young…”

“Trust me, you are.”

“And the stories are mostly about me failing.”

“Are they?” She seemed genuinely surprised.

“Uh… Yes? Running away in my mummer’s disguise? Getting skewered in the butt by kobold javelins? Not to mention how you rescued me earlier today with the idol…”

“The idol you successfully delivered?”

“Well, I guess, yes.”

“And the mummer thing… You made it out. With the ledger, right?”

“After I embarrassed myself.”

“So what…?” Chrysadora said. “I mean, you seem to find the story amusing enough to tell me.”

“I guess…” I mumbled. “Did you just…”

“I did nothing, Tilly, you did.”

My mouth opened and closed a few times, like a fish gasping for water while they flopped on a pier. But I was gasping for a clever retort. There was none really. She had me. With a few calm, infuriatingly accurate observations, Chrysadora had backed me into a corner and forced me to admit I was charming and successful, at least on occasion. What a monster!

She was entirely heartless, though. Seeing my struggle, her expression softened, and she reached across the table. The soft hand with long fingers landed on top of mine. It was hotter than I expected, and she wheeled her longer digits under my palm while her thumb caressed the back of it. I didn’t shudder, but that was only because every single one of my muscles had been entirely paralysed. I felt it, though, the jolt firing straight up my spine. I already knew I wanted to kiss her for a while, but that was the moment I decided that I would try to. I would absolutely try to, as soon as I found an opening. She continued:

“Your honesty is what makes the stories so compelling, Tilly.” Her voice had dropped to a lower register and transformed into a warm murmur. Murmur. What a fucking word, huh? Some guy once told me no word sounded prettier than cellar door. But I bet that clown never heard someone murmuring the word ‘murmur’. “You don’t try to make yourself the hero. It reminds me a little of Gale, though without the over-the-top dramatics.”

The name landed without context. My mind, still reeling, tried to place it. A sister? A friend?

“Gale?” I asked, and I must say that my voice came out a little like a panicked squeak.

Chrysadora’s thumb brushed over my knuckles and then stopped. My eyes had been following it and the long, claw-like nail painted gold, which she dextrously avoided having touch my skin. As it stopped moving, I raised my eyes to find Chrysadora looking at me and waiting for my gaze to find hers. Her expression was serious. No guilt, no shame, but the smile was replaced with a neutral face.

“Gale is a woman I love,” she said, and to eliminate ambiguity, added after a pause, “my companion. Paramour.” There was no complicated emotion in her voice, no inflexion in her tone. She delivered it simply as a fact. She knew the weight it carried, and she didn’t apologise for it.

The bottom fell out of my stomach. Oh. Of course. A woman that incredible, that radiant, wouldn’t be unattached. A sharp, ugly pang of something that felt a lot like disappointment struck me. No, not disappointment; jealousy, in its most hideous forms. It shot through me. My hand instinctively wanted to pull back from hers, but the warm presence felt nice, and I was very aware that now that I knew it, once I pulled back, I would not be feeling Chrysadora’s skin again. I pulled it slightly, but she held me there. No, that wasn’t right. I had enough room to get it out if I wanted, but she did not pull back on her own. My eyes went to her hand, and then back to those golden eyes. I wasn’t sure what I wanted there. An explanation, maybe, to why she was leading me on like that, touching me like that, if she had a lover to return to. Perhaps I was searching for a hint of apology or awkwardness, but found none. There was only calm, open honesty, which did not help me gather my thoughts. I finally retrieved my hand, with all the will I had.

“So… This… Us… It was just…” I began, but I could not finish it.

“I apologise if I’m mentioning this too late, but it’s never clear to me what the right moment is to bring it up,” she said.

“Are you taken?”

“Taken?” Chrysadora paused, raising an eyebrow. “Ah, no, that is not what I meant. I am involved with Gale, yes, and others. But this doesn’t preclude us from other romantic involvements.”

“So… You have a lot of mistresses?”

“No. Not in any sense,” she said, taking some offence in the words, or at least disliking the sound of it. “They know of each other, and they all enjoy the same freedoms.”

Just as quickly as the jealousy appeared, it was washed away by a wave of something else. Awe. She wasn’t hiding it. She wasn’t playing games. She was just telling me the truth. My disastrous brain scrambled to catch up. Polyamory. It wasn’t unheard of, especially among the nobles and the artists, and was pretty much the rule for most halfling communes if you believed the stories, but it wasn’t something I’d ever encountered in the wild. Or a tavern.

“Oh,” I said, managing to sound only moderately stupid. “That’s… Cool.”

The corner of her lips curled in that devastating smile again. She knew I was fumbling, but she didn’t mock it.

“Is it? I find it’s simply… Honest. My heart is generous, and I see no reason to pretend otherwise.” She leaned in a little closer, the scent of warm spice and something else, something like air before a storm, filling my senses. “I wanted you to know. Maybe I should’ve said this sooner, but as I said, it’s strange to know when to… Bring it up.”

“I… I get it,” I said, before the words she had just spoken ran through my mind for a second pass. An implication was missed on the first send; the alarm bells of my mind were tolling like there was a village on fire. “Wait… Why did you want me to know?”

She didn’t answer. She just held that smile. Golden eyes. Golden fangs. The noise of the tavern, the clatter of tankards and the boisterous laughter from the floor below all faded into a dull roar. My heart was racing, my hands were sweating, and I just realised that I had put them back towards the middle of the table when Chrysadora’s touched mine. Now she grazed her nails ever so slightly against the back of my hand.

“This tavern is becoming rather loud, don’t you think?” Chrysadora’s voice was a purr now, vibrating through the electrified air between us. “I have a suite not far from here. At the White Griffin. It’s much quieter.”

She didn’t need to finish the thought. The word ‘yes’ left my mouth before I’d even finished processing the question, my body agreeing long before my brain had a chance to raise a single objection. Not that, whenever it did, I tended to listen to it. My heart and my slit had taken me to places that my head wouldn’t go for fifty Sovereigns.

Chrysadora rose from the booth with a fluid motion. She was nothing if not graceful, and my awkward slide and scramble to leave the booth left much to be desired in that regard. But for once, I found that I didn’t care. I didn’t care that I nearly knocked over my empty cup in my haste to follow her. She placed a single gold coin on the table, far more than enough to cover our mead, the pork strips, and probably the drinks of the next person to sit there. My eyes went wide at the golden coin so casually tossed into sight, but they didn’t linger. Even in the face of a shiny Sovereign, Chrysadoras’s hips in that silky dress had a stronger pull on my attention. She walked to the stairs, and I followed in her wake like a piece of iron drawn to a lodestone. She stretched her hand out to me as I caught up, without turning, her palm facing me and behind her, as if she meant to guide me. My head said, ‘Yes, please do,’ and off we went.

The walk through the nighttime streets of Valenza was a blur. The cool air was a welcome shock against my burning cheeks, and I vaguely remember the rhythmic sound of our boots on the cobblestones and me saying something that made that warm, honeyed laugh rise again from Chrys’ throat. My thoughts were spinning freely, though, without an axle to fix them.

I remember thinking, ‘Is this happening? Am I really doing this? She has other lovers. She’s so incredible. She’s rich. She’s powerful and she… She wants me? Why? How? And why can’t I just accept it?’ The questions circled my mind, but they had no teeth. As much as my self-doubt liked to believe it was the biggest dog in the kennel of my brain, it had no power to stop my crushing doting on Chrysadora.

The White Griffin was one of the most expensive inns in the city, the kind of place I’d only ever delivered packages to. And every time I had left them at the door, with a snooty servant taking them to the owner and bringing me my payment. They don’t let strays from the street inside. Really, the place is more like a palace with rooms that the truly wealthy, or the delusional and lucky, can rent for a night, a week or, if they are the type who shits gold, a month.

The doorman, clad in crisp white and gold livery, bowed to Chrysadora as if she were a queen, his eyes sliding over my decidedly less regal attire with a flicker of disdain I was all too familiar with. Chrysadora gave him a nod so dismissive it was an art form, and he reacted as if he had been whipped. I must admit it was satisfying to watch. But I couldn’t linger on his dismayed expression. Chrysadora led me up a grand, carpeted staircase that led into the inn’s main room.

Her suite was at the end of a long and quiet hall on the second floor. She produced a polished brass key and opened the door, stepping aside to let me enter first.

It wasn’t a room; it was a small kingdom. A fire was already crackling merrily in a stone fireplace shaped like a yawning mouth, casting a warm, flickering glow over a plush velvet chaise, a table set with a decanter of dark wine, and a bed so large it could comfortably host a family of four. I can’t say the bed was larger than my apartment, but it was very damn close. The poles that held the canopy fabric were as thick as trunks. The sheets were turned down, revealing pillows that looked as soft as clouds. Everything smelled faintly of cinnamon, old leather, and that same unidentifiable, electric scent of air that clung to Chrysadora herself.

Perhaps what shocked me most in the room, though, is that despite its size, it still felt accommodating. There was a lived-in atmosphere that was hard to put into words. A tray with two cups sat on the small table in front of the fireplace. There were a couple of tomes open on a desk facing the window, and the trunk by the foot of the bed was not open, but the lid had not fully closed, and a strip of dark silk slithered out of the gap like a blackened tongue.

The click of the lock behind me snapped me out of my scrying of the surroundings. I turned to see the adamant, thick wooden door closed, sealing us in and the rest of the world out. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat in the sudden, heavy silence. I stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, acutely aware of my worn tunic and scuffed boots in that temple of luxury. For a moment, I was sure that Chrysadora was about to clap, and twenty cultists with crooked rusty daggers would come from behind the curtains and from under the bed to drag me to the undercity for a sacrifice. That would almost explain why a woman like her would be bringing a woman like me to a place like that. Almost.

Chrysadora moved past me, shedding her cloak on a chair, leaving it hanging over the backrest. She turned, her golden eyes seeming to drink in the sight of me, her expression unreadable. For a moment, I felt true terror. I would love to say that it was because of the not-entirely-implausible cultist theory, but the truth is that I could almost swear that I heard my mother’s voice in my head, warning me that Chrysadora would see the irresponsible, impulsive mess that I was if she looked for too long.

But when Chrys spoke, her voice held no judgment, no ice, no edge. Just soft and warm comfort. First, she sighed, then she sat at the edge of the bed and reached to remove her sandals.

“So much better,” she murmured, her gaze idly scanning her own room while she removed her sandals. They dropped by the side, and she raised her gaze to me. “Don’t you think?”

“It is quieter…” I said, suddenly aware I was just standing in the middle of the room doing nothing with my arms. My stupid arms. What did I usually do with them when standing still? “And much nicer,” I added, deciding to cross them. Only to make it halfway through and then decide not to cross them.

Chrysadora seemed amused by my awkward standing. She gestured with her head to the bed next to her. Or maybe she was pointing to the chairs to my right, as it would be vaguely the same direction. But in that moment, I thought she meant the bed, so I moved to sit next to her. Because I craved the closeness and that inexplicable warmth. Her hand raised, touching my biceps with the pad of her index and dragging it down, finding a small scar I had there, barely visible. Her nail grazed across my skin, but it was so soft it didn’t even leave one of those white marks that disappear in seconds. It was like the perching of the lightest hummingbird.

“These are the arms of a survivor,” she whispered, her voice filled with a genuine, startling reverence. Her fingers traced the edge of a faint, silvery scar near my shoulder next. “A warrior.”

My breath hitched. No one had ever touched my scars like that. Don’t get me wrong, I had been with other girls who enjoyed the whole ‘tough adventurer’ look, and they did nuzzle and caress me where they saw those marks of bravery, or foolhardiness, depending on who you ask. But Chrysadora? She touched them as if appraising embroidery, as if they were marks of immense value. It was hard for me to feel my core starting to melt, and with the furnace heat it produced, it also melted away my insecurities under the warmth of her touch. I had been looking at her with puppy eyes for that whole evening, and to see someone so beautiful, so secure, so genuine look at me with a worshipful gaze? I would need to be a steel golem not to feel something.

The tightness in my chest came next, along with the heat in the pit of my stomach. The jolt down my spine was familiar, but it now spread over my skin, and my nipples tingled, growing into awareness and stiffening. I inhaled her scent. Feminine, rich, but marked by a dark note. Leather and smoke. Or that smell that filled the air in the presence of really hot iron.

She leaned in towards me, her lips touched the exposed skin of my shoulder in a light peck, and her golden hair tickled my arms. Her mouth hovered an inch from my skin, and her breath felt like hot steam laving down my arm. The scent of honeyed mead wafted as she lifted her face, golden fangs biting her lower lip.

“You know what they say…” I said, because I’m stupid and bad at flirting, and should’ve known we were past talking at that point. “That each scar is a story…”

She smiled and looped her hand behind my neck. Those nails grazed across my scalp, and I felt my toes curling inside my boots. My eyes wanted to roll in my skull as the sensation of something ethereal and warm dripped down from my head and across my shoulders.

“Let me see the rest of your stories, Tilly,” she purred. And then, she closed the distance between our lips.

Her lips parted slightly, but didn’t open enough for our tongues to meet, at first. For a moment, they just moved softly against mine, and I tried to follow. When I did open my mouth to beckon her to bring her tongue out, and pushed mine, she pulled away. Just an inch. Just enough to flare a burst of lust and frustration in me, before coming back again. As she returned, I felt her tongue licking my lips, and I shook where I stood. If her skin was warm, her tongue felt almost uncomfortably so. Not enough to hurt, but it was still a feverish thing, and my whole mouth sought its warmth. We both tasted like mead, but beneath that, there was the flesh-sweet taste of her saliva.

I felt a sting. The golden fang pushed against my tongue, which I first assumed was an accident before she did it again. And next, she bit my lip. Not hard enough to draw blood, but so damn close I could nearly taste it. She grazed the inside of my lower lip with her fangs and broke our kiss to lick my chin, from the edge of it right to my mouth. A hand then splayed on my chest, and I didn’t fight as she made me lie down on my back.

Chrysadora was in charge; she had made it clear without speaking a single word, and I surrendered to her in absolute. She straddled my waist, pulling her hand down until it melted the buckle of the belt holding the tunic in place. I do not know how she undid it in a single motion, but one second it was there, and the next the leather slipped up from under me to be tossed away. Her palm pushed my tunic up, and my taut stomach came into view. I had ink there—a thorny branch around a sword. A long story, really, tattooed just over my hip. Next to it, there was a scar from a quarrel from a kobold’s crossbow. A small, star-shaped white mark. That was where those hot lips kissed me. And then they kissed closer to the middle of my stomach, just above my navel.

Her hand pushed my tunic up to reveal my breasts, and I placed my hands on her shoulders. Her skin felt as if it were on fire. It gave me pause, for just a second.

“Chrys, are you al-…”

I interrupted myself by swallowing dry as the edge of her claw-like nails touched the puffy end of my nipple. I should be terrified of being cut in such a sensitive spot, and yet, she moved with such a confident, light touch that I even raised my chest, bridging over the bed and pushing into it as I gasped.

“Can you… Handle pain…?” she asked softly as she kissed that valley right in the centre of my ribcage, looking up at me.

“I… Can…” I nodded.

“Do you… Like it?”

“S-Sometimes…” I said, my voice shuddering.

“Do you want it…?”

Fuck. Fuck, gosh damn it. Yes. I did. I did. I didn’t say that, though, I just nodded like the terrified, overwhelmed, soaking wet doe I was. She dragged those claws down, not against my nipple but still scratching deeper on the lower part of my breast and against my ribs. The skin didn’t break, but the pain was there. It only made my mind flare. The sensations were more vivid.

“Oh… More…” I want to say I commanded, but really, I was begging.

She delivered. The second dragging of nails actually broke skin. Just small drops of blood welling from one spot or another. I cannot explain why that felt good. All I can say is that it did. There was a tension that was released, and the aching left in the path of her claws made my skin feel raw. Alive. Screaming.

She cut the lace in front of my breeches, in a sudden and precise motion, and I felt the pressure released on my waist. Then her hands pressed under my thighs, shoving me further onto the bed. There was a sliding sound, smooth steel going into a sheath, and when her fingers grabbed the edge of my pants, the claws were absent. I still felt her rings—the clinking of her jewellery. The tug was vicious, but I aided it by raising my hips from the bed.

I had not shaved. I had not expected that date to go far, and honestly, I had been in the woods for days chasing bugbear idols, so ungroomed was a fair description of my state. I could feel the dew clinging to some of the hair framing my petals, but Chrysadora didn’t flinch, didn’t pause. Despite my immediate concern that I could’ve been more presentable, she dove immediately between my thighs. Not onto my sex right away, but first, dragging teeth and fangs across the sensitive skin of my inner thighs.

Her breath washed over my thighs, my sex, my lower stomach, and each time that warm presence came closer to my slit, I ached for the final contact with her smouldering tongue. And three, four times I was denied. Teased.

“Chrys… Fuck… Please…” I said, breathy and heady.

She did not make me say, at least then, what I wanted her to please do. But the little murmuring chuckle on her throat against my thigh made me sure that it was something she would do at some point, if we were ever to be together again. She would want to hear me begging. And, fuck, I would beg for it. So much.

But then and there, that please was enough. She pushed her nose into my sex, against my clit, while her tongue lapped across my folds. Her fangs were placed just outside my more sensitive labia, but I felt them pushing into the skin around my sex. Her jaw moved, up and down, pressing against my sex while her face moved rhythmically. The wet sounds brought me shame for just a moment. But there was no shame that could withstand the storm of bliss and heat that spread from the deepest parts of my core. That pressure built up inside me. It expanded and tensed, and my whole being shook. I released her shoulders to grab the sheets into balls first. My ankles pushed against the bed, the air. The muscles inside my thighs were wound so tight they began to ache. Each second, I felt my climax was closer. Just around the bend. On the next lick. And each second the sensation grew, and the final glorious explosion was delayed for yet another heartbeat. But with the wait, the promise also grew. At some point, I was scared of how hard my heart was beating. And then, boom.

I cried out, my breath hitched, and I squirmed. Toes curled again, harder that time, and my stomach started to rise and fall uncontrollably as that pressure finally released as a tidal wave around me. I remember coming, feeling like I was going limp; a spasm or two, and then melting. That was something else. It was electric, jarring. My legs kicked, my hands opened and closed across the bundled sheets, and I only realised I was arching my back when my muscles gave in, and I collapsed back on the bed. I was shaking. All over. And throughout it, Chrysadora had not stopped worshipping between my legs with her tongue. She eased out, though, in the wake of my climax. And when I finally collapsed, she lifted herself, kneeling on the bed, between my legs and reaching behind her neck to unclasp that golden collar that seemed to hold her neck in place. Her lips were soaking with my nectar, as was her nose and her chin. She licked her lips clean, with the same gusto she had with the mead, if not more, and then, with a click, her collar piece fell. The silks revealed her breasts and the full extent of those golden tattoos across her chest, and I felt like I was staring at a goddess.

Not quite, it turned out, but as I was gonna find out soon, I was close.