Chapter 110: Shadow and Gold +18

Chapter 110: Chapter 110: Shadow and Gold +18

Dinner on the top floor of the TIG tower was loud for the first time in two weeks.

Garrick had cooked, and although he’d done it badly, with far too much pepper, nobody complained. At the far end of the table Damian sat with his back to the wall, the way he always did, eating in silence, while Helena sat beside him. Twice Donald saw her pass him the bread before he asked for it.

Leo talked through the whole meal. He wanted to know about the airship, the Council Hall and the Archive, and most of all whether Sylvia had really been stabbed by a statue.

"It was a halberd," Sylvia said. "The statue was holding it."

"Did it hurt?"

"Yes."

"Did you win?"

"Yes."

That seemed to satisfy him, so he went back to his food.

Helena set down her glass and turned to Donald. "I went down to the Glass Field before dinner. The anchor has climbed while we were away, and I won’t give you a number until I’ve measured it properly, but it’s higher than I’d like. I’ll start the turn at dawn."

"What do you need?" Donald asked.

"Quiet, for ten days, with Damian on the perimeter." She didn’t look at Damian when she said it. "Nobody else gets within two hundred meters of me while I work."

Damian only nodded once, and that was enough.

At nine, Evelyn stood up and took her sword from the back of her chair, and Starfall’s guard caught the light from the window as she lifted it.

"I’m on the Wall tonight," she said. "Leo, bed by ten. Garrick, thank you. That was terrible."

Garrick laughed. On her way out Evelyn walked behind Donald’s chair and rested her hand on his shoulder for a second, and then she was gone.

---

Sylvia put Leo to bed herself.

Through the open door of the boy’s room on the floor below, Donald could hear her reading to him for twenty minutes, until at last she turned off the light and sat on the edge of the bed to wait for his breathing to slow. She had done the same thing every night since the Aegis Detention Block. When she came out, she closed the door without a sound and stood in the corridor for a moment, and then she came upstairs.

Donald’s room was at the very top of the tower. One wall was made entirely of glass and faced the Glass Field, with the city lights spread out below it and the Wall standing beyond them. Along the ramparts, a small gold point moved slowly from one end to the other. That was Evelyn.

Sylvia stopped in the doorway.

She had changed out of her combat gear into a black silk robe tied at the waist, and her feet were bare. Her dark hair hung loose past her shoulders, still damp from the shower. Though her violet eyes were steady, her hands were not, so she held them together in front of her.

"I’ve been an assassin for nine years," she said. "I’ve walked into rooms with men who wanted to kill me, and I’ve never been this nervous."

"You can still go back downstairs," Donald said. "Nothing changes if you do."

"I know." She stepped inside and shut the door behind her. "That’s why I’m not going."

Crossing the room, she stopped in front of him and spoke quietly. "The Lotus used my body for nine years, as a weapon and as bait. They decided where I went and who I smiled at, and I never once chose anything for myself." She looked up at him. "I’m choosing this. I want you to know that."

Donald took her hands, which were cold.

"Then I’m glad you chose me," he said.

She kissed him.

It wasn’t like the kiss in the Training Matrix. That one had been fast and almost angry, as if she was afraid he would stop her, but this one was slow. She leaned into him and let him take her weight, and for the first time since Aldmere he felt her shoulders loosen.

Around them, the lights in the room dimmed. Shadows spread up from the corners and across the ceiling until the only light left was what came through the glass from the city.

"Sorry," Sylvia said against his mouth. "It does that when I’m not paying attention."

"Leave it," Donald said.

He untied the robe, and it slid from her shoulders to the floor.

Sylvia was built like the fighter she was. Years of climbing, running and killing had given her a slim body with lean, hard muscle along her arms and stomach, and in the city light her pale skin looked almost white. Her waist was narrow, and her hips curved out from it, soft and full. Her breasts were small and high, rising and falling quickly with her breathing. Across her left ribs ran a thin white scar where the halberd had cut her in the Archive, and an older one crossed the back of her right hand.

When she saw him looking at the new scar, she said, "Helena says it’ll fade."

"I don’t care if it does or doesn’t," Donald said, and laid his hand flat over it.

She shivered, then reached for his shirt. Her fingers were still a little unsteady as she pulled it off him. She ran her palms over his chest, mapping the shape of him, then down to the waist of his pants. He let her take her time. When she pushed his pants and underwear down and he stepped out of them, her eyes dropped to his cock, already hard. She swallowed, then wrapped her hand around him carefully, like she was testing the weight and heat of him.

"Sylvia—"

"I know," she said. Her thumb stroked once over the head. "I want to."

They went to the bed together. She pushed him down onto his back and climbed over him, her knees on either side of his hips and her hair falling around both their faces. For a long while she only kissed him, slowly, with her hands on his chest, as if she was learning him. When he ran his hands up her back, she arched into them and made a small sound she clearly hadn’t meant to make.

"Again," she said.

So he did it again, sliding his hands lower this time, over the curve of her ass, then between her thighs. She was wet already. He stroked her carefully, fingers sliding through slick heat, and she rocked against his hand with a shaky breath. Shadows stirred at the edges of the room.

When at last she took him inside her, she did it slowly. She reached down, lined him up, and sank down onto him inch by inch, her eyes closed and her fingers tight on his shoulders. She was tight and hot around him, her body adjusting with little flutters. She stayed still for a long moment once he was fully inside her, breathing hard, then opened her eyes, looked straight at him, and began to move.

Donald let her set the pace. At first she was careful, testing, rising and falling in short, cautious rolls of her hips as if she expected something to go wrong. Nothing did. After a while her breathing grew rougher. She leaned down and pressed her forehead to his, and the shadows in the room moved with her, sliding across the sheets and over the floor in time with the slow drag of her cunt around his cock.

He put his hands on her hips and helped her, guiding her down so she took him deeper. She moaned, quiet and surprised, and started moving faster. Her small breasts swayed with each roll of her hips. He lifted his head and took one nipple into his mouth, sucking gently, and her rhythm stuttered.

"Donald—"

He rolled her onto her back. She went with him easily, wrapping her legs around his waist and pulling him closer so he stayed buried inside her. He braced himself on his elbows and thrust into her, slow and deep at first, then harder when she dug her heels into his lower back and wouldn’t let go. The wet sound of it filled the quiet room. Shadows pooled under the bed and stretched toward them, twitching every time he drove in.

She said his name once, very quietly, as if she was testing how it sounded, before she said it again, louder. Her nails bit into his shoulders. He could feel her getting tighter around him, her whole body drawing up.

"Don’t stop," she whispered.

He didn’t. He fucked her steadily, hips snapping forward, and the shadows snapped with her. When she came apart under him, her whole body went tight, cunt clenching hard around his cock in pulsing waves, and every shadow in the room surged toward the bed at once. The glass wall rattled in its frame. She bit her lip to stay quiet, eyes squeezed shut, trembling under him.

A moment later, Donald followed her. He buried himself deep and came with a low groan, spilling hot cum inside her in hot pulses while she was still shaking around him. The shadows settled slowly as the aftershocks faded.

---

Afterward they lay together with the sheets pushed down to their waists and Sylvia’s head on his chest, while the shadows drifted back to the corners where they belonged.

The System window opened in front of Donald’s eyes, where Sylvia couldn’t see it.

[Asset Bond Deepened: Sylvia.]

[Bond Stage: 1 → 2.]

[Dividend Paid to Asset: Sylvia.]

[Level: 50 → 54.]

[Mana: +40. Speed: +30.]

[Shadow Sovereign upgraded: storage space doubled. Shadow travel range increased from 30 meters to 60 meters.]

[Dividend Paid to Investor.]

[New Skill Acquired: Shade Step (B-Rank).]

[Description: Step into a shadow and out of another within 20 meters. Cost: 40 Mana. Cooldown: 10 seconds.]

[Dual-Cultivation Synergy: now linked to 2 Assets (Evelyn, Sylvia).]

He read it and closed it.

Sylvia lifted her head and frowned at him. "Something just happened. My core is warmer, and my shadow feels bigger." She paused. "Was that you?"

"Must be the bond," Donald said, which was not exactly a lie.

She studied him a moment longer before she lay back down on his chest.

"Evelyn said this would happen," she said. "She told me on the airship that every time, something gets stronger, and she’s stopped asking why."

"She’s smart."

"She’s in love with you," Sylvia said, "and so am I. I don’t think either of us minds sharing, as long as you keep coming home." She closed her eyes. "Don’t make me say that again. Once was hard enough."

Donald put his arm around her. Out on the Wall, the small gold point had stopped moving, and for a long time it stayed where it was, facing the tower, before it finally moved on.

---

At six, his tablet buzzed on the nightstand and woke him.

Sylvia was still asleep, curled on her side with one hand under the pillow and the other resting near the dagger she’d left on the nightstand, even in her sleep. Donald slid out of bed without waking her and answered.

It was Helena, with the black glass of the Glass Field stretching away behind her in the early light.

"I took my measurement," she said. "I’ll send you the number, but that isn’t why I’m calling."

"What is it?"

Instead of answering, Helena turned the tablet around. Someone had cut a mark into the surface of the black glass, directly over the anchor: a small circle with short lines around its edge.

A black sun.

It was the same sun that had been printed in the corner of Park Jae-won’s letter.

"This wasn’t here when we left for Aldmere," Helena said, turning the tablet back. "Damian has been over the whole perimeter, and nobody came in or went out." She held his eyes through the screen. "Donald, whoever made this did it from the inside."