Chapter 75: Amazon Spice's (His POV)
She came back. Just… there. Arbor felt it first. Lights bloomed across the ceiling like dawn cracking through clouds, the air warmed cinnamon-sweet, the whole Realm exhaling relief. Our room waited just as she left it: one side messy, one side architecturally precise, her mug on the nightstand screaming Gods, I Need Coffee. She stepped in and shut the door. Home. I felt it before she even opened the bond. That whisper across my soul: My Chaos… I'm home.
I was gone. Gone to her. The bond didn't just tug, it yanked. I arrived in a blur of sound and glitter, crashing through the room with cupcakes stuck to my leg and what I think was jellyfish goo on my sleeves. Didn't care. Didn't ask. Just ran. "My Eternity." My voice cracked, half a prayer, half a sob. "You came back."
I stopped a step away. Every part of me screamed to touch her. I didn't. She'd asked for space. She stepped into me. Oh, gods. I just held her. Pressed my forehead to hers and breathed like I hadn't exhaled since she left. She showed me. Not words. Memories. The ash of Aerion's realm, the silence of its ruin, the Room where pain lived in stone. I froze. My chaos stilled. Then the rage came, silent and unbearable. My fingers twitched as the bond flared hot with fury and heartbreak.
"He made you bleed there," I whispered, not into the air but into the bond itself, voice too sharp for sound. I saw the rest. Aerion. Navir. The fight. My magic flared with every blow she took. I paced the room, hands in my hair, muttering prayers to gods less dramatic than me. "No, no! Block left! BLOCK LEFT! YES! That's my girl!"
When she pivoted, when she parried like the divine menace she is, I shouted at nothing. "You beautiful queen! That pivot? That parry? Chef's kiss!"
When she denied his command and the Law hurled it back at him, I went still. Not with fear. With awe. "The Law listened to you."
"Asha." She looked at me. "The Law listened to you."
The memory carried me to the end, Aerion choking, Asha walking away, sovereign. Then I heard it. Navir's numbers. Recursion. Constants. One fixed point. One axis. Axiom. She'd heard him. I felt that much in the memory. She just hadn't understood. I did or I thought I did.
I held her tighter, hand sliding up her back, memorizing how she felt at rest while a storm built in me. Navir knew something. I would get it out of him. Ask was such a generous word for what I had in mind. I started pacing again, adrenaline still rattling through me. "You! You absolute menace!" I spun, eyes wide, grin wider. "That blade? That stance? The divine pivot?"
I threw my arms skyward, then dropped into a bow so dramatic it nearly leveled a bookshelf. "I am in the presence of glory. Of violence. Of terrifying, sexy, entropy-born precision."
She rolled her eyes, lips twitching like she couldn't stop the smile. "You watched the whole thing?"
"Watched? I narrated it. Choreographed it. Debating a musical number." I flung myself onto the bed like a glitter-soaked starfish. She wasn't angry with me. Hmm. That was embarrassing. I had perhaps catastrophized. Slightly. Elegantly. "You know what we should do?"
"Sleep?"
"WRONG. Shower. Because I smell like frosting committed a war crime on me."
She laughed. My favorite sound. I nearly fainted from joy. Grabbed a pillow, lobbed it at her chest like a weaponized cloud. "Shower it is," she caught it one-handed. "But if there are sparkles in that soap again..."
"I make no promises." I winked. "Come on, Eternity. Let's rinse trauma in style."
The shower was quick. I washed her hair like it was sacred; she flicked water in my face whenever I got too reverent. I kissed her shoulder. She told me to focus on the soap. I pretended to sulk. Then came the bath. She stood over my masterpiece: porcelain tub overflowing with iridescent bubbles, sparkles, confetti, and a duck in a pirate hat. "This is… a war crime."
"This is art."
"Why does it smell like strawberries and sin?"
"Because you deserve both." She slid in with a sigh that cracked time. I followed, wrapping around her like smug affection incarnate. "My Eternity," I whispered against her neck. "You are an entire religion to me."
My hand drifted. She caught it. "Bath. Not battle."
"I was tactically appreciating your thighs," I protested.
She smashed bubbles onto my head. They dripped into my eyes. "Pffft! My nostrils! How dare you!"
"Oh, it's war now!"
What followed was chaos in aquatic form. Bubbles flew. I fake-died twice. She dunked me mid-monologue about being the "God of Bubble Supremacy." We laughed until our ribs ached, until joy clung to our skin like glitter. When the war ended, we collapsed into each other. Her head on my shoulder. My lips in her hair. My whole body finally at peace. "This," I murmured, "is my favorite ritual."
The bubbles had barely begun to settle when I looked at her. Really looked. None of that mattered. Not when she was in front of me like this, powerful, glowing, devastatingly calm.
"You're dangerous, you know that?" I murmured, voice rough, reverent.
She smirked and flicked a stray bubble at my nose. Gods. "Took you long enough to figure that out."
I caught her wrist gently, like she was made of something sacred and volatile all at once. "No. Not just dangerous," I said, brushing my thumb over the pulse beating at her wrist. "Divine." I hesitated, bashful: "I have a thing for powerful women. Especially the Amazon women."
She arched a brow. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," I grinned. "Tried to sneak onto the Amazon Island once."
Her curiosity sharpened. "Did you now?"
I conjured the journal from thin air, battered, red, its edges singed and smelling faintly of desperation and sea salt. "Tried," I repeated, deadpan. "Disguised myself as a historian. Made it forty-two steps before I was tackled, disarmed, and tied to a sacred tree for 'evaluation.'"
"Evaluation?"
I nodded solemnly. "They debated whether I was too pretty to kill."
A beat. "They voted no."
She laughed. I felt like I'd just been crowned king of the cosmos with the sound of her joy alone. I snapped my fingers. A trunk appeared at the foot of the tub. It opened with a dramatic sigh of sparkles. Inside: armor. Gold. White. Crimson. A warrior queen's dream.
She stared. "You planned this?"
"Always," I breathed. I climbed out first, water cascading off me, completely unbothered. I extended a hand. "Let me dress you. Let me worship you properly."
She took it. I dried her slowly, kissing her shoulders, wrists, the curve of her spine. The armor: White leather bodice, etched with runes of chaos. I tightened the laces slowly, my fingers lingering just a breath too long. A gold belt, slung low on her hips. Armored bracers over her forearms. I kissed each wrist before fastening them. Thigh-high boots. Finally, a crimson cloak, fastened at her throat with a sunburst brooch. When I stepped back, I nearly staggered. "My gods, you're the beginning and the end of war itself."
She pivoted, hand on hip. Posed like a goddess. "You going to survive this?"
"Unlikely. But what a way to go." I dropped to one knee. "May I?" My voice cracked. The god of chaos brought low by the curve of her thigh. She nodded. I kissed the inside of her leg first. Not greedy. Not rushed. Reverent. Another kiss. Higher. She gasped, trembling, my name spilling from her lips. When she shattered, I held her through it. I wasn't done.
"Again," I murmured. Commanding because I knew she wanted to give it. She obeyed, beautiful menace that she was, and when she came undone a second time, she was glowing, boneless and divine. I crawled up her body, grinning through the wreck of myself. "How do you feel, my commander of chaos?"
She blinked dazed at me. "Like I could murder you with a kiss."
"Tempting," I said, pressing my forehead to hers. My heart refused to slow. "Happy battle day, my love." She guided me down, straddling me, kissing me like I was sacred, like I was the altar. She took me inside her. It was reciprocity. I let her lead. Gods, I let her take. She broke me apart. Built me again. When I came undone beneath her, when I moaned her name, when she smiled down at me with wonder instead of weariness, I knew. I was hers.
When it was over, we collapsed together. I pressed my forehead to her collarbone, still shaking with the aftershocks of what she'd given me. Love so vast it nearly destroyed me. She held me, bond still open, letting me feel not just her body but her triumph. Gods forgive me, I cried. For the impossible, radiant truth of finally being wanted back. She held me through it. I knew she'd chosen me before. Gods, she'd told me enough times. Apparently some pathetic little piece of me needed to be surprised by it every time.