I couldn’t even imagine someone as powerful and proud as Skallagrim begging. I wouldn’t put him through that on top of everything else.

“Alright,” I murmured, blinking to keep the hot prick of tears at bay. “But I will be back with food later. I guess just... try to rest for now.”

He gave a scraping grunt in reply, as if he’d expended too much energy talking to me already and couldn’t have cobbled together another sentence now even if he’d wanted to.

I saved him from having to use any more of his power and pulled the door closed myself.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Suvi

One day became two. Became three. Became four. Skalla did not emerge, though he did eat at least some of the food I brought him. We were both eating less than usual – him because of what he was going through, and me because I was so worried about him. He didn’t seem to get any better, but nor did he get worse, as far as I could tell, so at least that was something. He spoke very little, and sometimes the only clue I had that he was in there was the periodic draining and refilling of the bathtub.

I didn’t accompany Jolakaia to the temple again. I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Skalla up there alone. But neither could I pace back and forth in our room all day. So, I made myself at least somewhat useful. I learned which plants were weeds, and pulled them by the root out of the house’s garden. I collected the spider-chicken bikri eggs, blue as polished sapphires, and tried my hand at cooking a few dishes that got Zev’s enthusiastic approval. Sometimes, I watched her work on two-wheel machines and other appliances in her workshop, but I couldn’t focus well enough on the alien tech to actually learn much there. My mind and gaze were constantly slinking upstairs to the suffering behemoth in the bathroom. Luckily, Jolakaia and Zev were kind enough to let me use their facilities for bathing and washing clothes and things like that. I was pretty sure that if I walked into the currently-occupied upstairs bathroom, undressed in front of Skalla and then opened my legs to pee, he very well may have had a fucking stroke.

And through it all, I didn’t feel even a whisper of heat. Not a twinge, not a flicker of sensation. No fever, no extra arousal, no sense that anything had changed in me at all.

Before, I’d had so much dread surrounding the starburn.

Now I was filled with dread that it wouldn’t come.

Why is it not happening yet? How long is it supposed to take?

Maybe there was something I could do to hurry it along. I fell asleep chewing on that problem, and on the morning of the fifth day I had a startling thought that sent me racing from the bed the second I woke up.

I slammed open the bathroom door.

Skalla wasn’t leaning back against the tub, but rather forward over its edge, the way someone might do if they thought they were going to throw up but didn’t want to do it in the water. His hair, ropy with tangles and moisture, dragged along the stone ground. His wings were slack, broken-looking, hanging downwards.

“Not hungry,” he said haggardly.

I had no food to offer him.

But I had something else.

If I’m wrong about this...

I pushed that thought away and marched into the room. The humidity kissed along my bare skin.

He grew stiffer and stiffer on my approach, limp exhaustion replaced with torque and tension.

“Skalla, look at me.”

Slowly, like a thousand invisible kilograms pushed down on the back of his neck, he raised his head.

His nostrils flared, and all the lethargy in him evaporated.

“What are you doing?” he snarled. He threw himself backwards and away from me. When I took a step closer towards the bathtub, he leaped right out of it, kneeling on the stony floor with the tub between us like a shield. “Why are you naked?”

“I have a hypothesis,” I said, slowly walking around the tub towards his side.

He hissed and started moving sideways on his knees to get away from me. My cheeks burned, but I kept my chin held high.

“I think I might need to be near you to trigger the starburn.”

That stopped him dead in his tracks. Or rather, his knee-slides. His eye bugged.

“What did you just say?”

“I think... I think I have to be near you. Physically.”

He tensed, like he thought I was about to pounce on him or something.

“No.”

“What do you mean, ‘no?!’” I cried. “It’s already been five days! We have to at least try something!”

“Five days?” he asked with what looked like horror. “That’s it?”

He groaned, long and low, and I took his moment of despairing distraction to hustle around the tub towards him. But his reflexes were still damn good, and in a flash he was up on his feet, stumbling backwards and away from me until his wings hit the wall.

He stood there panting, digging his claws backwards into the wood planks of the wall behind him, as if to anchor himself there when the rest of him wanted to rip away and come straight to me.

And for the first time in five days, I saw all of him. I saw what the starburn was doing to him. This entire time, I’d kept my distance, and most of his body had been hidden by the metal walls of the tub.

But not anymore.

His cocks were out. Already huge in normal circumstances, they now looked painfully engorged. The bigger, bottom one had changed since I’d last seen it. It now had a thick swelling in the middle of the shaft, bruising, pushing outward like a tumour. The blood drained from my face when I realized that was the knot. That massive, bulging thing would have to fit inside me.

“Oh, Skalla,” I whispered, wanting to cry at the state of him. “Has it been like this the entire time?”

“That is none of your concern,” he heaved out raggedly. “I do not need your pity, Suvi. I need you to get out of here. Now.”

His eye was wild with panic. Panic at my proximity. Panic at what he might do if I got any closer.

I took a step towards him.

“Suvi,” he growled. He looked like he wanted to say more but couldn’t. His throat worked uselessly as I approached, the muscles of his chest and abdomen hard as carved stone. His jaws unlocked, apparently against his own will, and his tongue tasted the air. At the same instant, a hot spurt of seed erupted spastically from the upper cock, soaking the lower one. His claws sank deeper into the wall as he shoved himself backwards.

It was like he wanted to escape from me. It was a bizarre reversal of our roles – him, the original captor, now wanting to flee from the one he’d abducted. But I couldn’t even laugh at the absurdity of it. He was suffering so much. He almost looked afraid. And if I were completely honest with myself, I hadn’t wanted to escape from him for a long, long time.

“Just... Just let me try,” I breathed, coming to a stop before him. Skalla’s head strained back, but his hips bucked forward mutinously, trying to unleash themselves from his deteriorating control. I was close enough to him that his cocks made contact, bumping then sliding against my bare abdomen.

His upper cock ejaculated instantly, hot and slick on my skin. Skalla gave a tortured moan, his voice disintegrating into something choking and convulsive when I brushed my fingers along his distended knot. I gasped in horrified fascination at the heat emanating from him. It was like the knot itself was inflamed. No wonder he’s been soaking in cold baths this whole time...

“Oh, Skalla,” I said again, hating how much he was hurting. Even though I knew it wasn’t my fault, I felt guilty. If I’d joined him in this heat earlier, he could have gotten some relief. We both could have. We could have sought that soothing touch in each other.