I try to sew, but it’s not fun without company. I should practice my staff-work like Aron showed me, but I don’t have the heart. I can’t concentrate. As companions go, I’m pretty useless, and it fills me with panic.

I don’t have a way home. Not any longer. I’m here now, forever. It hits me by degrees. Sometimes I’ll be fine with it, and sometimes I’ll think of how distant Aron has been for the last few days and want to vomit over the choice I’ve made.

I love him. I just am utterly terrified for what the future holds, because it feels like we’re barreling toward it.

And I can’t stop thinking of the thread that the Spidae pinched off as if it were nothing. I see it every time I close my eyes. Are they going to pinch off the front of my thread like that when it’s my time? When Aron has to ascend again? Or do they pinch Aron’s thread with the same carelessness? The thought makes me sick.

I take to my bed, pulling the covers over my head and sinking into a fitful nap.

I wake up to a hot mouth on my neck, and a big body pressing mine into the mattress. Electricity—that delicious static that always builds between me and Aron—crackles in the air and I moan as he pulls my gown open, exposing my breasts.

“Faith,” Aron murmurs. “Wake up.”

I jerk awake with a gasp as I realize what’s happening. Aron looms over me, his eyes troubled, but they’re clearer than they were before. I grab his jaw and study his face, trying to see if any remnants of Apathy remain. “How are you feeling?”

“I am a god,” he says. “Why would I not be fine?”

Well, that sounds like Aron, but I’m not entirely sure. Time to test the waters a bit more. “I’ve been thinking about getting kinky in the blankets. You finally down for some butt stuff?”

“That depends.” He kisses my nipple and gives it a gentle tug with his teeth. “Are we talking your butt or mine?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not to me.” He grins wickedly.

For a moment, the breath catches in my chest. The relief I feel immediately turns to ice. What if…what if something happened to Hedonism and that’s why Aron wants to have sex? “I changed my mind,” I say quickly. “No butt stuff. No anything. Can we just talk?”

Aron tilts his head. “Talk?”

“About anything but sex,” I say desperately. “What about strategies? How are we going to get to Yshrem without an army? Is it safe? Or should we go back to Novoro?”

He snorts and reclines on the bed on his elbow, gazing down at me. “I will sooner walk all the way to Glistentide before I take an army of Novoran fops as my protectors. Do you know that their idea of a combat tourney involved capturing flags? Flags! Because they did not wish to hurt themselves.” His lip curls in disgust. “If I am to acquire an army, it has to be the best one possible. You know this, Faith.” And his hand goes possessively to my stomach. “And the best are most certainly not Novoro’s pathetic troops.”

That’s Arrogance and the god of battle, all wrapped up into a pretty bow. He’s not Hedonism. I don’t need to check the strings to know that, and I’m so relieved that I burst into tears.

“Shh,” he murmurs, and pulls me against him. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been myself for the last few days, have I?”

“Apathy,” I manage to choke out. “Apathy is dead.”

“I know.” He strokes my hair, letting me weep against his chest. “There is only one left, which means we cannot stay any longer. He will move to meet us, and I would rather meet him with an army on the fields of Yshrem.”

I nod, but all I can think about is my thread. How easily the Spidae plucked it from its moorings and snapped it. How it fell against the Aos world web so limply. How it’s only tied to Aron now. “And once we beat him…what happens to us?” I whisper. “What happens to me when you win?”

“If you worry that I will send you away, the answer is ‘never,’” Aron says. He holds me tighter. “You’re not leaving my side. I won’t let them part us.”

It might not be his choice. I hug him close. “Just promise me that when you absorb the last guy and then re-ascend, you’ll never forget me, all right? Even if we can’t be together, I need you to always remember me. Promise it.”

His hand clenches possessively in my hair. “You are not going anywhere, Faith. I have promised.”

“All right,” I whisper, but I’m not entirely sure I believe him.

He holds me close, but I don’t want to leave it at that. I need him as much as he needs me, I think. Maybe more. I turn toward him and kiss his cheek, kiss the scar that crosses the left side of his face. I kiss his mouth, and when he kisses me in return, I push him onto his back. I straddle him, hiking up my skirts, because in this moment, there’s nothing I want more than to feel him deep inside me. I need him to claim me and remind me why I do this. It’s not just the sex. It’s never been just the sex. It’s everything Aron is, and how much I believe in him.

How we’re good for each other in all the right ways.

Aron tilts me forward, pulling off his leggings, and then I ease down against his cock. I’m not yet wet enough to take him, so he snags a hand behind my neck and pulls me down for a harder kiss, his mouth fiercely claiming mine even as one hand grasps my breast and teases the nipple. He works it to a hard point with his thumb, rubbing back and forth as I rock against his cock. I want to take him deep, need the connection between us, and when he gives a little push, I sit back, letting gravity do what my body won’t.

That’s not enough for Aron, though. He growls my name, a single syllable of need. “Faith.” One hand clamps on my hip and the other goes to my clit, and he rubs his thumb against it as I rock over him. Oh, fuck. That does it. I close my eyes, losing myself to pleasure as he rubs my clit and slowly I sink onto the hard, thick length of him.

I ride him, my hips working as I move over him. I need this. Need him. I’ve missed him, even though it’s only been a few days since he was lost to me. It made me realize just how much I’ve come to crave him. Not just my body, but my heart.

Maybe even my soul.

“I love you,” I tell him as our bodies work together, faster and harder. “Love you, Aron.”

He doesn’t say it back. I didn’t think he would. But when I climax and collapse atop him and he flips me onto my back and uses me for his pleasure, he growls out something that sounds like “mine.”

It’s enough for now.

I’m not sad to leave the Tower of the Spidae.

Well, I am in a sense. I want to stay at Aron’s side and do nothing but simply exist. I want to have those lazy, blissful days forever…but I know that won’t happen. That’s not in the cards for us. Aron has to defeat his other Aspect and I’ll end up…who knows where. I’m not dwelling on semantics yet. But staying at the tower? That’s a no-go. The feel of the place has changed since Aron had his apathy spell. Maybe it’s the memory of the Spidae snapping my string right before my eyes. Maybe it’s that, or maybe it’s the Spidae telling us in a subtle way to leave now that they have Yulenna all to themselves. It feels a bit like we’ve fed her to the wolves, but when we pack our final supplies to leave, she’s there to send us off with a smile and a wave.

And she looks…happy. Renewed. Like she has a purpose, even if it’s just to be the servant of a trio of creepy spider gods. So, good for her, I guess. I certainly can’t judge.

Kerren loads our supplies onto the cobweb raft (I recognize the material now after being surrounded by it for weeks) and poles across while the woales wade on through, gliding through the water with light bounces as their feet land and hit the shallow bottom. The lake is wide, but it’s not deep in the slightest, and if I thought it was dead before, it’s a tomb now.

I worry a little, though, thinking of Vitar. “It’s safe,” Markos reassures me from the woale ahead of mine, his grip on the harness as we swim-bounce-plow through the water. “Lord Aron killed everything in a single breath when we arrived and it’s been safe to cross ever since.”