When you wake, it's to the lingering trace of his scent on the sheets, your skin, the very air. Your body feels foreign, a landscape of tender aches and faint marks, every muscle trembling like a bowstring pulled too tight. Memories of the night before return in fragments: the impression of unyielding hands, the low, rough sound of your name in his throat—again, again, again—until the world dissolved into a heated haze.

Mydei is already awake. Of course he is.

He stands at the foot of the bed, wearing nothing but the golden cuff on his bicep and the sapphire that glinted in his ear. He's washing himself with a cloth, water tracing the hard planes of his back, over the faint, half-moon marks you left on his shoulders. He doesn't flinch, doesn't hurry. Every movement is deliberate, as if last night's fervor was just another battle, another storm weathered.

Another flash returns, fragmented: his hand tangled in your hair, gently tilting your head back to meet his gaze—golden, unblinking, intense. The sensation of his mouth tracing your collarbone, not gentle, not cruel, but utterly consuming. The way he'd held your wrists above your head with one hand, the other tracing every shiver, as if committing the rhythm of your surrender to memory.

You try to sit up. Fail. A soft sound escapes you—something between a sigh and a whimper.

He turns, golden eyes cutting through the dim light. "Awake?" The corner of his mouth twitches, not quite a smile. "This time, you lasted longer than I expected."