Atlas Six (Atlas Series, 1)
Atlas Six: Part 6 – Chapter 24

Part 6 – Thought

Libby slammed the apartment door shut, turning to replace Ezra waiting expectantly in the living room behind her.

The unfortunate thing about Manhattan apartments was the incredible lack of having any other space to be. That, and thin walls. Not being overheard by someone was probably never going to be an option so long as she lived in this city. She’d ruled out privacy the moment she signed the NYUMA student contract, which was a fact that moving in with her first year R.A. three years later had not improved. Funny that.

“I take it you were listening,” Libby said gruffly, and Ezra slid one hand in his front pocket, buying time before his response.

“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Listen, Lib—”

She knew what was coming next. For one thing, it wasn’t as if she’d come home to the promise of sex and chocolates or whatever. The fight had begun the moment she walked in the door, and two days later, it still hadn’t been resolved. The fact that he needed her to beat the same dead horse was starting to feel inhumane to both of them (and the horse).

“I already told you,” she sighed, cutting him off, “I’m not going to tell you anything, Ezra. I can’t.”

“Yes, you’ve made that abundantly clear,” he replied, too sharply, and then he grimaced, recognizing the combative undertones in his own voice. “Look, I don’t want to fight about it again—”

“Then don’t.”

She paced away from the door, suddenly desperate for motion. He followed, ceaselessly orbiting her until she thought she might choke.

“I’m just worried about you, Libby.”

“Don’t be.” A softer tone would help, probably.

Not that she had one to spare.

“What am I supposed to do? You come back after six months without warning and you can’t even tell me where you’ve been. Now you have people knocking on the door upsetting you, and you’re trying to… to what? Hide them from me?”

“Yes. Because this has nothing to do with you,” said Libby, still brusque with impatience. “I’ve always known you didn’t trust me, Ezra, not fully, but this is getting out of hand—”

“This isn’t about trust, Libby. It’s about your safety.” This again. “If you’re in over your head somehow, or if you’ve gotten caught up in something—”

She tightened a fist. “So you think I’m stupid. Is that it?”

“Libby, don’t. You’re my girlfriend; you’re important to me. You, for better or worse, are my responsibility, and—”

“Ezra, listen to me carefully, because this is the last time I’ll say it.”

She took three steps to close the distance between them, slamming the book shut on the last argument she planned to have today.

“I am not,” Libby said flatly, “yours.”

She didn’t wait to see if he would argue. The look on his face suggested that whatever came next, she wasn’t going to enjoy it. She thought about packing a bag, summoning her things. She thought about screaming or crying or making demands; making a mess, in general.

But in the end, it was all so exhausting she simply turned and pulled open the door, planning nothing beyond the certainty of walking through it.

Immediately: a coat would have been a good idea. She shivered in the dark, glancing up the block toward Nico’s apartment. A thought, definitely, but if there was ever anyone to be unsympathetic—or even sympathetic, but in an enormously unhelpful way—it would be Nico, who had loathed Ezra on sight.

Not to mention that if she went to Nico, she’d have to discuss the visitor she’d just received.

“Elizabeth Rhodes?” the woman had asked in her Bronx accent. If not for the expensive scarf tied around her natural hair, she might have looked like one of those campaigners who stopped people on the street to talk about the environment or veganism, or possibly the hazards of imperiling their immortal souls. “If I could just have a moment of your time—”

Libby shivered and turned left, heading for the train station.

She wondered why they had not been warned that other organizations might come recruiting. Atlas had mentioned the Forum’s existence, fine, but he’d left out that for two days of their initiation period, they would be vulnerable to interception.

Was it a trial of some sort, as the installment had been? Was her loyalty being tested?

“Miss Rhodes, surely you’ve thought about the natural elitism of the Society’s mere existence,” the woman, Williams, had said. “No one else in your family is magically trained, are they? But I wonder,” Williams mused softly. “Could the Society have saved your sister if they had ever shared what they had known?”

It was a question that Libby had asked herself hundreds of times before. In fact, for a time it had left her sleepless, particularly when she was first approached by NYUMA. The thoughts, torturous and destructive, were always the same: If she had only known more, or if she had just been trained sooner, or if someone had told her earlier…

But she already knew the answer. For years, she’d researched at length. “There is no cure for degenerative diseases,” she replied, with the confidence of someone possessing dismal, intimate knowledge of the fact.

Williams had arched a brow. “Isn’t there?”

It was a trap of some sort. Whether it was a test or not, it was certainly a trap. Someone was toying with her personal history, manipulating her with it, and Libby didn’t care for it. If there was one thing she’d learned from working alongside Callum, it was that feeling too much or too fully only meant she wasn’t thinking with her head.

It wasn’t the Society’s fault, Libby had argued in response, that capitalism prevented medeian healthcare from being available to mortals. If medeian methods were priced according to empathy, then yes, fine, perhaps one could blame the research for existing privately—but it would have gone through both the mortal and medeian corporations first; it would have come at so inflated a cost that even if a cure existed, it would have bankrupted her family to try and use.

“So your sister deserved to die, then?” asked Williams blankly.

Which was when Libby had slammed the door.

She had not spoken about Katherine to anyone in years. She thought of her sister from time to time, but only distantly, as something she kept at arm’s length. As a measure of sanity, she had ruled out wondering whether something could have been done; in fact, she had already driven herself half mad considering it. The idea that a stranger might have suddenly brought everything to the surface felt a bit manipulative, and certainly unwelcome.

Was this the Society’s doing? They would know about Katherine Rhodes, whom Libby had called Kitty as a child, and whom her parents had rightfully adored. Katherine, who had died at sixteen to Libby’s thirteen, wasted away in a hospital bed at the whims of a magicless body that slowly killed her. The administrators at NYUMA, when asked, had told Libby her abilities had likely not come to fruition until after the stress of losing her sister had faded away. Katherine, they said, had been ill for years, requiring most of the attention from her parents, and thus Libby would not have focused on her abilities even if she had noticed she had them. It would take work to catch up, they said.

“Could I have saved my sister?” she asked, because survivor’s guilt was sharpest in retrospect.

“No,” they told her. “Nothing exists to reverse the effects of her illness, or even to slow it.”

It had taken Libby two years of manic research to prove them right, and then two more to finally lay thoughts of her sister to rest. She might not have managed it at all if not for Nico; “Oh, buck up, Rhodes, we’ve all got problems. Doesn’t mean you get to waste the time she never got,” was his take on the situation—confessed to him at the height of finals delirium, and clearly a massive mistake—at which point Libby had slapped him, and eventually Ezra had intervened. Nico was placed on probation and Libby told herself she would beat him in every class if it killed her.

She kissed Ezra for the first time that same night.

The Society would have known all that, minus the inconsequential details of her personal life. They would have known about Katherine, so maybe this was a test, but it wasn’t as if the circumstances of her origin story weren’t easily discoverable information for anyone who wanted them. A late-blooming medeian with a dead sister? Not terribly complicated to put the pieces together, particularly for an organization with comparable resources. Either the Society knew precisely what to taunt her with in order to test her loyalty, or the Forum had wanted to give her a compelling reason to doubt the Society.

Either way, there was only one place Libby currently wanted to be.

She passed through the doors to Grand Central and took the stairs, replaceing the medeian transports to take her back to London. It was technically too early to return—they’d all been told not to do so until tomorrow—but she had helped build their security, hadn’t she? Twice over. Nothing in the wards sufficiently defended against her entry; for all intents and purposes, it had been more of a polite request than a mandate in any official capacity.

She passed the entry rooms, heading for the reading room, but stopped at the sound of voices; a low wave of sound, meaning hushed tones. She frowned, listening closer for the particularities, and turned swiftly, making her way to the painted room.

Ah, so she had not been the only one to come running back, then.

Parisa and Tristan were on the floor of the painted room, drinking a bottle of something with their backs to the light of the crackling fire. Parisa, unfairly beautiful as always, had her head resting on Tristan’s lap, dark hair spilling over his thighs; the slit of her fashionable slip dress had been drawn up so high the full length of her slender leg was fully visible, nearly to her hip, and likewise, Tristan’s shirt had fallen open, left half-undone to reveal the curve of his chest below the shadow of his clavicle.

A languid smile was curled over his lips, though it was partially distorted by the bottle he drew up to them. He swallowed with a laugh and Parisa reached blindly upwards, the tips of her fingers brushing his mouth.

It wasn’t as if Libby hadn’t already known that Parisa and Tristan were sleeping together. Well—she hadn’t known, exactly, but she wasn’t surprised to replace evidence of it now. It wasn’t as if they had many options within the house, and if Nico had already made it plenty clear that Parisa was his first choice, was it any surprise she’d be Tristan’s, as well?

Libby thought for a moment of Tristan’s hand on her pulse and swallowed, shoving it aside.

It wasn’t as if she cared what they did. After all, she had a boyfriend.

A boyfriend she had recently fought with.

One she would rather not see.

But…

But.

A boyfriend nonetheless.

“Well, don’t you look distressed,” remarked Parisa drily. She drew herself upright, taking the bottle from Tristan’s hand. “Perhaps you ought to join us.”

Libby blinked, caught off guard. She hadn’t realized they’d seen her.

“I,” she began, and faltered. “This is… this is obviously private, so—”

“Have a drink, Rhodes.” Tristan’s voice was a low rumble, his eyes darkly amused. “You clearly need one.”

“We won’t bite,” added Parisa. “Unless you’re into that sort of thing, of course.”

Libby glanced over her shoulder, still compelled to leave for the reading room.

“I was just going to—”

“Whatever it is, it’ll still be there in the morning, Rhodes. Sit.” Tristan beckoned her with his chin, gesturing to the spot next to him.

Libby hesitated, unsure whether this was her precise choice of company, but the idea of not being alone was… tempting. And Tristan was right, whether he knew it or not. Driving herself mad all over again could be easily ventured anew tomorrow.

She stepped forward and Parisa smiled approvingly, reaching up to hand her the bottle. Libby collapsed on Tristan’s other side, taking a sip.

“Oof,” she said, wincing as it burned. “What is this?”

“Brandy,” said Parisa. “With a few more fermented spices.”

“Meaning…?”

“Meaning absinthe,” said Tristan. “It’s absinthe.”

“Oh.” Libby swallowed, already a little bowled over by the effect of her single sip.

“Let me guess,” Parisa sighed, reaching over Tristan to take the bottle from Libby. “You don’t drink much?”

“Not particularly,” Libby said.

Parisa drew the bottle back to her lips, which were stained a dark red. The dress was a navy blue, almost black, and Libby instantly wished she had the requisite sophistication to pull it off.

“You can pull it off whenever you’d like,” remarked Parisa, chuckling into the bottle.

Libby felt her cheeks flush. “I just meant I could never wear anything so…” She coughed. “I just don’t do trends very well.”

Parisa leaned forward, handing the bottle back to Libby. The strap of her dress slipped blithely from her shoulder, draping against her arm and floating over what Libby now realized necessitated the absence of a bra.

“I meant it literally,” Parisa said as Libby brought the bottle to her lips, and while Libby choked on her swallow, Tristan laughed.

“You must have gotten a visit from the Forum as well,” he said to Libby, who had only just recovered from an eruption of absinthe-tainted coughs. “What deeply personal revelation did they make about you, then?”

“You tell me,” Libby said, taking another swig. The last thing she wanted to be for this conversation was sober; she already felt juvenile and inept as it was.

“Well, it’s all very dull for us, unfortunately. My father’s a crime boss, same old, same old,” said Tristan, adding to Libby’s look of confusion, “Nasty piece of work. Adequate witch, though.”

“Is he?”

“You’ve never heard of Adrian Caine?” asked Tristan. Libby shook her head, and Tristan’s smirk cracked slightly. “I’m joking. I didn’t expect you to run in London’s seedy underbelly.”

“Is he like the Godfather?” asked Libby.

“A bit,” said Tristan. “Only less paternal.” He took the bottle from her hand, not bothering to wait for her to release it before he took a long swig. “He’d love you,” he added after swallowing, shaking himself like a dog from the burn.

Libby glanced sideways at him, waiting to see if that was supposed to be an insult. Tristan met her glance, arching a brow in expectancy.

It didn’t seem to be.

“And I, of course, am a whore,” remarked Parisa, as Libby choked on her swallow once again. “I’m sure there’s a better word for it, but at present I can’t be bothered to think of any.”

“An escort, perhaps?” asked Tristan.

“No, nothing so professional. More like an exceptionally talented philanderess,” Parisa said. “It started shortly after I finished school in Paris. No,” she amended, recounting it in her head, “I believe technically it began while I was in school, though it was only a hobby then. You know, like how the Olympics only celebrates the achievements of amateurs.”

Libby left the follow-up questions to Tristan. “It started with a professor, I presume?”

“Yes, naturally. The academics are the most brutally deprived, or so they remain convinced. Really they’re all equally obscene, only they live in such a slender fragment of reality they’d never come out of their offices to see who else was fucking.”

“Fucking you, you mean, or fucking in general?”

“In general,” Parisa confirmed, “though also me.”

Tristan chuckled. “And from there?”

“A French senator.”

“Quite a leap, isn’t it?”

“Not really. Politicians are the least discerning and the first to expire. But it’s always important to have one and get it out of one’s system.”

“Was it enjoyable, at least?”

“Not in the slightest. My briefest affair, and the one of which I am least fond.”

“Ah. And after the senator…?”

“An heir. Then his father. Then his sister. But I never liked the family holidays much.”

“Understandable. Did you have a favorite among them?”

“Of course,” said Parisa. “I just adored their little dog.”

Libby glanced between the two of them, slightly dumbfounded. She was uncertain how they could speak so openly and so… flippantly about Parisa’s sexual exploits.

“Oh, it comforts him, really, not that he’ll ever admit it. Knowing the truth of my sordid nature only confirms Tristan’s deepest suspicions about humanity,” Parisa replied to Libby’s inner thoughts, catching her sidelong glance. “I’m confident Tristan could be stabbed mid-climax and still replace the strength to groan out ‘I was right’ before succumbing to the cavernous embrace of death.”

“You’re not wrong, though from here on I’ll be checking for knives,” said Tristan ambivalently, which should have been confirmation of his involvement with Parisa, but instead it only bewildered Libby further.

Were they something or weren’t they?

“We aren’t,” said Parisa, “and anyway, he likes you, Rhodes. Don’t you, Tristan?” she asked, turning to him.

Tristan held Parisa’s eye for a moment as Libby’s intestines twisted with silent discomfort, the rest of her unsure how to react. It was a joke, of course. True, Parisa could read minds, but it wasn’t that. It was obviously just teasing.

Wasn’t it?

“I like Rhodes well enough, I suppose,” was Tristan’s underwhelming response, as Libby briskly determined that now would be a marvelous time for an immediate change in subject.

“So the Forum tried to… blackmail you?” Libby asked them, clearing her throat. “Extort you or something?”

“Something like that,” Parisa confirmed with a roll of her eyes. “I’d have considered it, too, only it was so very unpleasant the way they went about it. So brusque and outright.” She shuddered, disapproving. “I’ve had torrid affairs with less indecency.”

“You actually considered it?” Libby spluttered through her swallow, somewhat unable to differentiate between the burn in her stomach and the one in her chest at the thought. “Seriously?” Her voice, much to her dismay, had gone shrill with disbelief. “But what if it’s—”

“A trap? I doubt it,” said Parisa. “That doesn’t seem the Society’s style.”

“But the installation—”

“Was them placing us out as sitting ducks,” Tristan supplied, “but not technically a trap.”

Libby supposed he was right, though she frowned to recall Parisa’s original point.

“Still. You considered taking the Forum’s offer?”

“Oh, of course,” Parisa confirmed, taking the bottle from Libby’s hand and pausing its path in front of Tristan. They exchanged a glance; Tristan’s brow arched. Then he tilted his head back, permitting Parisa to pour a little absinthe down his throat, and licked the excess moisture from his lips, choking up a laugh as she spilled it down his chin. “Oops,” she said, smoothing it away with the pad of her thumb, and then drew the bottle to her lips. “Anyway,” she said, taking a swallow and handing it back to Libby, “it’s not as if I have any reason to be loyal to the Society yet. I’m not initiated, am I?”

“Well, no,” Libby conceded, frowning as she accepted the bottle. “But still, isn’t it a bit—”

“Disloyal?” Parisa guessed. “Perhaps, though I’m hardly known for my fidelity.” She gave Tristan a sidelong glance. “What about you?”

“Me? I’m a one-woman man, Miss Kamali,” said Tristan, half-smiling. “Most of the time.”

“Most of the time,” Parisa echoed with approval. “But surely not all?”

Libby took a long pull from the bottle, suddenly feeling she needed much more of whatever poison it contained.

“Why, um,” Libby began, and Parisa turned to her. “Can I ask you—?”

“Why sex?” Parisa prompted, as Libby’s cheeks burned again, heartily chagrined. “Because I enjoy it, Elizabeth. And because most people are idiots who’ll pay for it, and existence in society costs money.”

“Yes, but isn’t it…” She trailed off. “Well—”

“You want to know if I replace it demeaning to have sex with people for money,” guessed Parisa flatly, “is that it?”

Immediately, Libby wished she’d said nothing. “I just… you’re obviously very talented, and—”

“And I use my talents well,” Parisa agreed, as Libby drew the bottle back to her lips clumsily, if only for something to do with her hands. “And it is attitudes like yours which make certain I will never be denied. After all, if we could all have boundless, fulfilling sex whenever we liked, why would we ever bother with monogamy? Stigma like yours keeps you subjugated, you know,” Parisa remarked, tipping Libby’s bottle upwards to ensure a longer sip.

Libby felt the liquid spill around the sides of her mouth and closed her watering eyes, suffering the still-unfamiliar sting. The taste of anise marinated the thickness of her tongue, foreign and bittersweet.

“Don’t you ever detest the necessity of emotional attachment?” Parisa murmured, the tips of her fingers brushing Libby’s throat before toying, idly, with the tips of her hair. “Men in particular are draining, they bleed us dry. They demand we carry their burdens, fix their ills. A man is constantly in search of a good woman, but what do they offer us in return?”

Flickers of Libby’s irritation with Ezra filtered through her mind. “On another day, I’d have a better answer to that,” she muttered, and felt the reward of Tristan’s most disdainful laugh against her elbow. She shifted, leaning into his chest, and let the vibration carry through her bones. “But still, you’re a telepath, Parisa. Those are rare, and you’re exceptionally good, I know you are. I just…” Libby shrugged. “I don’t see what you gain from it.”

“You do things, don’t you, to make things easier for yourself?” asked Parisa. “You don’t use your magic to walk up the stairs, but you defy gravity all the same, don’t you?”

“So?” asked Libby. Tristan leaned over for the bottle, his fingers brushing hers. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“Well, because to you, sex is purely physical, when in fact the mind opens along with everything else,” said Parisa. “To try to overpower someone’s mind, to make it subject to my own, is a waste of time. When he’s inside me I hardly have to lift a finger to know precisely what he is, what he wants. He’ll tell me so himself without my asking. And why impress my demands unnecessarily, wasting energy and effort? I can make people loyal to me simply by offering them something they want above all else, which costs me nothing to give.”

That made a bit of sense to Libby. Tristan’s arm slid around her back as he adjusted his posture, brushing the inch of skin between the top of her jeans and the hem of her sweater.

“So you use them,” Libby said, clearing her throat. “Your… paramours?”

“I enjoy them,” Parisa said, “and they enjoy me.”

“Is it only men?”

Parisa paused to moisten her lips, half-smiling.

“Most women are less in love with the partners they choose than they are simply desperate for their approval, starving for their devotion,” she said. “They want, most often, to be touched as no one else can touch them, and most of them inaccurately assume this requires romance.” She reached forward, taking the bottle from Libby’s hand. “But the moment we realize we can feel fulfilled without carrying the burdens of belonging to another—that we can experience rapture without being someone’s other half, and therefore beholden to their weaknesses, to their faults and failures and their many insufferable fractures—then we’re free, aren’t we?”

It took Libby a moment to realize that Parisa had set the bottle aside, forgotten. Instead Libby had been feeling Tristan’s arm against the small of her back, smelling the roses from Parisa’s long hair, draping like a curtain within reach. She could see the little gloss of alcohol on Parisa’s lips, and the strap of her silk dress she still hadn’t fixed, slipping further down her shoulder. Libby could hear the undertone of suggestion in Parisa’s voice, as spiced as the absinthe, as warm as the noisily crackling fire.

“You underestimate your power, Libby Rhodes,” said Parisa.

Libby held her breath as Parisa came closer, half-straddling Tristan’s lap to take hold of Libby’s face, smoothing her hair back from her cheeks. Libby, paralyzed, sat perfectly still as Parisa’s lips brushed hers, warm and soft. Delicate and inviting. She shivered a little despite the heat, and meanwhile Tristan’s hand stole up her spine, traveling carefully over the notches. She kissed Parisa back tentatively, lightly.

“You’re mocking me,” Libby whispered to Parisa’s mouth, withering a little in agony.

Parisa pulled back halfway, pausing to glance at Tristan.

“Kiss her,” she suggested. “She needs to be convinced.”

“And you’re leaving me to do the convincing?” prompted Tristan drily, as Libby’s heart pounded in her chest. “I rather thought that was your expertise.”

Parisa glanced at Libby, laughing melodically.

“Oh, but she doesn’t trust me,” murmured Parisa, reaching out to toy with Libby’s hair again. “She’s curious about me, fine, but if I do it she’ll only get up and run.”

She let her hand fall, sliding her palm around the slats of Libby’s ribs.

“I’m not mocking you,” Parisa offered Libby softly. “I’d be happy to have a taste of you, Miss Rhodes,” she mused, and Libby shivered again. “But it’s not simply that. You’re useful, Libby. You’re powerful. You,” Parisa concluded with another fleeting kiss, “are someone worth knowing well, and fully, and—” She broke off, the tips of her fingers stroking up the inside of Libby’s thigh. “Perhaps deeply.”

Libby was startled by the sound from her lips, mouseish and yearning.

Parisa lifted a brow knowingly, turning to Tristan.

“Kiss her,” Parisa said again. “And do it well.”

“And if she doesn’t want me?” Tristan asked, glancing at Libby.

The moment their eyes met, Libby tried to conjure Ezra. She tried to think of something, anything, to remind her that she had left him at home, left him behind, but she could see only glimpses of her own frustration, her fury, her irritation. She tried, fruitlessly, to see him, and saw only Tristan instead.

Helplessly, Libby felt the pounding of her heart the way she had once felt Tristan’s touch, ricocheting through her chest like tribal drums. She had stopped time with him, once. This was the problem: that within these walls she wasn’t Ezra’s, wasn’t one of his trinkets or possessions or pets, but entirely herself. She had stopped time! She had recreated a mystery of the universe! Here she had done as she pleased and she had done it well, fully, deeply.

She was powerful on her own. She did not need his oversight. She did not want it.

“You’ll have to tell me what you want, Rhodes,” Tristan said, and if his voice was gravelly with something, it might have been the absinthe. Or it might have been the fact that he was looking at her like he had already undressed her, already kissed her, already peeled her underwear from her hips with his teeth. Like he was already glancing up at her from the foot of her bed, his broad shoulders securely locked between her thighs.

“Shall I tell him, or will you?” Parisa asked with a quiet laugh, giving Libby a knowing glance. She stroked Tristan’s cheek with the knuckle of one finger, teasing along the bone until she brushed his mouth, beside his lips.

Libby couldn’t decide what was more troubling; the thoughts she was having about Tristan, or the fact that Parisa could see them and still didn’t believe Libby was capable of taking what she wanted.

What did she want?

Libby glanced at Tristan and felt it again; that little sway, the pulse of time stopping. It had been so unlike her, so much more about feeling and instinct than anything she’d ever done before. Whether a result of her sister’s loss or her own psyche, Libby thought constantly, relentlessly, perpetually wavering between states of worry or apprehension or, in most cases, fear. Fear of ineptitude, fear of failure. Fear she’d do it wrong, do it badly; be the disappointing daughter who lived instead of the brilliant one who died. She was afraid, always, except when she was proving herself to Nico, or letting Tristan lead her blindly, forcing her to trust in something she couldn’t see.

She took hold of Tristan’s face with one hand and pulled him close, dragging his lips to hers, and he let out a sound in her mouth that was both surprise and relief.

She kissed him.

He kissed her back.

It was enough of a thrill to have Tristan’s tongue in her mouth, his arm wound tightly around her ribs, but then Libby reached out further, replaceing the silk of Parisa’s slip dress. Parisa’s hand slid over Libby’s hip and when Tristan pulled away, catching his breath, Parisa kissed Libby’s neck, the tip of her tongue tracing a line across Libby’s throat. Libby slid a hand gracelessly up Parisa’s thigh and Tristan groaned in Libby’s mouth; evidence Parisa’s other hand must have found an equally suitable location.

Was this actually happening? It appeared it was. Remnants of the absinthe burned in Libby’s chest, sending her thoughts scattering. Tristan pulled her astride his lap and Parisa tugged at her sweater, casting it aside to join the near-empty bottle.

For a moment, half a lucid thought flashed through Libby’s mind before reverting to base sensations: hands, tongues, lips, teeth. Somehow Tristan’s chest was bare, and she dug her nails into the fibers of his muscle, his skin sparking where she touched it.

Things progressed hastily, drastically, euphorically. She tasted from them both like sips from the bottle, and they each had her like the last laugh. If she would regret this, that was for tomorrow to decide.

“Don’t let me wake up alone,” she whispered in Tristan’s ear, and it was quiet and fragile, crystalline, like glass breaking, the splinter of a hairline fracture that crept up from an unsteady base. Her vulnerability was misplaced among the multitude of sins, but she didn’t care. She wanted Parisa’s hair wrapped around her knuckles, she wanted Tristan to put her in positions she’d undeniably shiver to recount, but she wanted this, too. To be connected to someone undeniably, even temporarily, at least until the first garish rays of light came through.

Fleetingly, at the back of her mind, Libby knew things would always be different between them now, irreversibly so, and a saner piece of her wondered if that had been Parisa’s intention from the start. She’d practically spelled it out already, that sex was a means of asserting control—of creating strings, chains of obligation, where there had been none before—but whether Libby was being used or maneuvered or devoured, she didn’t care, she didn’t care, she didn’t care. It was enough to taste, to feel, to touch, instead of think. Enough to be that free of feeling.

Enough, for once, to feel, and nothing else.