Page 25 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

"Then stop talking and fuck me," I tell him, and he groans into my hair, and does.

I look up, and Callum is still in the chair. He's leaned all the way forward now, hands fisted on his knees, looking right at me, while his shadow has crept across the floor to the foot of the bed and stopped there, waiting. I hold his eyes while Atlas fucks into me, and his lips part.

Come here, I think at the shadow, and it comes. It slides up over the foot of the bed and wraps around my ankle, cool and heavy, pinning it to the blankets. Across the room, Callum's breath goes out of him as if I've put my hand on him. He didn't send it to me, and he doesn't call it back.

"Don't look away, Everly." His voice is very quiet and very rough. "I want to watch you come apart for them."

I don't look away until Felix crawls up beside me and turns my face to his. He kisses me through all of it and swallows every sound I make. I have my hand on his cock, but I'm not keeping any rhythm with it anymore—I'm just holding on, and he doesn't seem to mind.

"Look at you," he says against my mouth, the words hot and filthy and adoring. "Look at you taking both of them. You greedy, perfect thing."

It keeps building. I'm sobbing and clawing at Ren's shoulders, Ren's heart pounding in my chest, Atlas's charge gathering under my skin, Felix's glee fizzing down the bond, while the shadow tightens on my ankle and holds me down in it.

Then it breaks. Atlas's charge goes off under my skin, Ren's heartbeat crashes into mine, Felix's delight goes off in my chest, and I come until I can't see or hear, so far under that I'm not sure I'll come back up.

Atlas comes first. His hands crush my hips, his forehead drops between my shoulder blades, and he groans my name into my spine. Ren comes a moment after, with my name in his mouth and his arms locked around me. I feel both of them go, through my body and through the threads at once, and it tips me over again. Felix swears and comes in my hand, hot across my wrist, his eyes squeezed shut.

Afterward, I lie in a tangle of arms and legs, sticky and shaking and grinning at nothing. Atlas's arm is heavy across my waist, Ren's forehead pressed to my shoulder. Felix is lying on his back with one arm flung over his eyes, saying "wow" at the ceiling every so often.

"I want it noted," he tells the ceiling, "that I found the lube."

Atlas snorts into my hair. "Well, you went down to the Down Deep and got it. That's not finding. That's fetching."

"From Helena's room." Ren sounds sleepy and a little horrified. "We're never telling her."

"Oh, she'll know." Felix sounds delighted about it. "She'll be proud of us."

I laugh so hard Atlas has to hold on to me.

When I finally stop, the house is quiet. Somewhere down the hall, Nell is asleep, and I can't stop thinking about the slow beat under hers.

"Ren." I find his hand on my thigh. "Can you still hear it from here?"

He's quiet long enough that Felix takes his arm off his eyes. "Yes. It's slow, under hers. It hasn't changed since supper."

"Do we tell her?" Atlas asks into my hair.

"If she asks me, I'll tell her," Ren says. "I won't lie to her about what I hear. But I'm not waking her up tonight to tell her there's something in her chest when I don't know what it is." His thumb moves on my thigh. "I'll listen at breakfast, before she comes down. If it changes, you'll know first."

"And if it's the Well?" Callum asks from the chair.

No one answers him.

I hold my hand out towards the chair by the door.

Callum gets up, crosses the room, and sits down on the edge of the bed to take my hand. His fingers are warm, for the first time since the gates.

He lifts my hand and kisses my knuckles, and holds them against his mouth after. His shadow has crept up from the floor at last and curled itself over all four of us, a second blanket, heavy and soft. "Go to sleep, Everly."

"Stay."

He lies down on the edge of the bed in his clothes, on top of the covers, with my hand still in his. Felix is already asleep with his face mashed into the pillow, snoring a little. Atlas pulls me back against his chest and tucks his chin over my head. Ren keeps his hand flat over my heart, and I fall asleep listening to him listen to it.

9

BRITTANY

I've had all week to decide what to wear to my own draining.