****Warning. Content in these two chapters will steam glasses and offend your parents****

"Are you sure they won't need you for something?" Helia asked as Vice walked down to a new wing of the Sol castle.

Though few Sols wandered the halls after their daylight scuffle with the Cinders and Songs to see him, Ghost had donned some mage attire so she was embarrassed to walk with him in spandex. With a mage half cloak over a pitch, long-sleeved mage shirt she was used to seeing on Stone, he looked stylish for a change. Though rude to say considering Stone hadn't had an memories, Ghost just wore the clothes better, confident in his stride and posture as well as silent as he kept his eyes on everything around them.

They'd both passed out for nearly twelve hours straight, Ghost cuddled at her side protectively while Stone went about whatever it was he did. There hadn't been much time for Helia to ask about Vice's position within the Sols, though she knew he was very close to Talamayas. That made him important, but he was apparently only a Sol in name and not blood.

Vampire politics were too hard for her to figure out.

"While I normally accompany my master, it's best I give him and Wren space," Vice said, Ghost's voice so soft and calm compared to Stone's chipper tone. "Without his memories, Wren is warry of our kind, and it would not sit well if he found me stalking him. It would make Wren feel as if Talamayas didn't trust him and had me watching him for any misstep."

"I guess I can see that." Helia sighed as they headed to her new room.

After the exhausting fight with Riff, they'd collapsed in the first open room they'd found, but it had been a cluttered bedroom that hadn't been cleaned in ages. Inappropriate for Helia, though she wouldn't have minded going through the odds and ends left there generations ago. Exploring was a secret hobby of hers, and she wouldn't mind spelunking through relics of a house as old as the Sols.

"Shouldn't someone be watching Riff though? Even though you managed to shackle him, that man is freaky as hell. I've never seen a mage that strong, and it's honestly a real pity that he's hung up on revenge from a century ago. Without that holding him back, he could climb ranks and do some real good."

It was a common loss, war generals unable to integrate back into society, a problem both human and mage soldiers suffered from. There was no place for him in the battlegrounds when the mages were trying to keep the peace, and a man with such violent urges would never fit in with society. Riff might not be shell-shocked, but he stood outside of the circles they'd all settled into. A fallen warrior. An outsider.

"Adagio Song is watching Riff until Wren regains his memories," Vice said, like one guy would be enough. Another Song though? How was that not a huge risk of him escaping?

"I thought all the other Songs were dead. Except for the ones I've seen of course."

"They are," Vice said only that, and she rolled her eyes. Vice was one person, so to speak, but their vessels varied at point of contact enough that she could easily tell them apart. Stone was chatty where Ghost only spoke if he couldn't avoid it.

"So then Adagio is dead," Helia said in hopes that it would get Ghost to answer the question she had already asked.

"Yes. Very," Ghost answered simply, his expression changing none from the flat set of his mouth and the flick of his eyes. Hell he was good at showing nothing of what he was thinking, but his stiff expression cracked with a smile that had her slapping his shoulder. The jerk was messing with her on purpose.

"You just yank him out of the void for parties?" Helia growled, twisting Ghost's smile further.

"Something like that." Ghost kept his act up, and she near stomped the stone floor next to him.

"Oh I see, I'm not a Sol so you can't share that information." Helia tossed a verbal jab at him, but instead of taking it as such, he stopped and turned about face right in front of her.

Soft grey eyes found hers, and he fidgeted with the collar of the grey mage attire he'd donned at her insistence. "Helia," Ghost looked like he wanted to say something more, but he dropped his eyes. "I trust you and do not withhold information because of who you are."

"Truly," another voice whispered into her ear, and she turned to Stone standing behind her. In his skintight body suit, it was like he was pressing against her naked, and she stuffed her arms in as Vice crowded her from both sides. "Your room is ready." Stone teased her ear lobe with his fangs, and she quickly shuffled out from between the two of him to go in the door.

Before she could close it in his face, she lost herself in what was supposed to be her space. Cinder tapestries covered the walls between the windows, something Stone would have had to leave to get. All around her, crimson and cream layered with vibrant vermillion to trim the windows, hang from the bed, and even cover the floors in thick rugs. Helia stepped out of her sandals to sink into the plush fibers, and she groaned with pleasure as she flopped down on her ass.

"Do you like it?" Stone asked, an expectant smile shaping his skinny face.

"This is a lot," Helia whispered, glancing up to the open wardrobe full of mage attire and a sizable desk carved with dragons down the sides. That didn't belong to the Cinders, but the mahogany gleamed beautifully under the sun.

"Too much?" Ghost asked as he dropped to sit on the rug next to her, cross-legged in suit pants. The only skin they showed were his ankles from the lift of fabric. If Stone joined him on the floor, it would put his junk front and center in all that spandex, and she was not sure if she could handle that.

"No," Helia whispered into Ghost's legs. "It just makes me feel like I owe you one hell of a hotel bill. I don't think I can afford the luxury sweet."

Vice exchanged a look with himself, which was weird when she pondered it, but Stone was the one who spoke.

"These are not temporary accoutrements. This is your room for any time you might... wish to stay in the Sol castles." Vice understood how the last part sounded, and she smiled gently as she reached out a hand for him to join her and Ghost. Spandex clad dick be damned. "I know you might not want to ever be here, but if you so happen to be, I'd like you to be comfortable. So would Talamayas, if you can believe that." The love and affection Vice showed her was also more than she deserved.

"Vice, I'm not that special," Helia breathed with sinking depression. Now that Stone had found his way home, regained his memories, and didn't need her anymore, he shouldn't be fawning on her. "I didn't care about saving you from the void when I did. I was selfishly seeking out my mother, and yet you act like I did this great feat and am worthy of all this." Helia flailed her hands. "I'm not—"

"You are everything." Ghost knew that his words had more weight because he used them so sparingly, and his hand trailing down her face had her trembling with so many emotions she couldn't pin one down.

Fighting Riff had made her feel so worthless, and yet Vice was here waiting on her like a servant. Helia loved him, as she knew he loved her, but the extent of those feelings seemed to be so far apart comparatively. Like she didn't even know how to love him right.

"No matter what fears plague you, nor what inadequacies you feel you have, you are the owner of my heart, and there can be no greater perfection." When Vice said words so sweet with lips that firm yet deceptively soft, a single emotion beat all the others out.

A man too perfect to be real sat on both sides of her, touching her gently, speaking softly against her face, and reassuring her of her greatness when she felt the smallest she ever had. No one, mage or vampire, could ever steal her heart quite as well as Vice did when he dropped his lips to her fingers to kiss them.

The question of whether she'd ever want to be here with the Sols was too difficult to broach, as well as what might happen if she couldn't handle it. Thinking about losing Vice was too much to bare, and yet she knew he would not walk away from his master. The Cinders needed her now, more than ever, as a leader to pick up the pieces of her house, and she couldn't do that here. To be with Vice would be as selfish as she'd been in searching for her mother at the cost of her life.

Helia knew what she wanted, and that was for this moment to last as long as possible before reality came crashing down on her.

"I want you to take me," Helia whispered into Stone's face, and the hand twirling her curls around his fingers ceased its twiddling.

"Helia," Stone breathed her name before inhaling her scent with a flare of his nostrils. Deft fingers brushed the curls they held over her shoulder, and he lifted her chin up just so much that he could comfortably place his lips on hers. The touch was so soft that Helia wasn't sure she could call it a kiss, gentle and careful as Stone always was, but she didn't want to be handled like a glass apple.

Helia wanted Vice to lay her face down on this rug and weigh her into the cushy fibers with the heat of his body as he took her with every ounce of passion she knew he held within him. Helia wanted to writhe in passion with him and feel the power beneath his fingers as he commanded her flesh for his pleasure. With her tongue, she conveyed what she couldn't with words, thrusting into his mouth and urging him to do the same as her fingers ran to the back of his shoulders.

The clip at the top of his body suit had it opening the neck enough that she could peel it down his body, and Stone did the rest in a quick movement and ruffle of fabric as it was cast aside. Bare as he'd come into this world, he fell on her, using that delicious body to pin her back to the carpet, and she opened her legs for him. It had her bumping into Ghost where he still sat, and he quickly shuffled to the side before standing and leaving them on the plush rug.

"Where are you going?" Helia asked, keeping Stone's body an arm width away as she lifted herself up on her elbows.

"I, uh..." Ghost seemed perplexed at what she could possibly want. "Do you prefer this vessel? I thought since you spent more time with Stone, you would want him. Plus, he doesn't have any cravings for blood, so you wouldn't need to worry about that."

Great, he was really going to make her spell it out. Heat near swallowed her face as she hoped she could say what she felt without sounding like a complete pervert.

"I don't want to be with Ghost or Stone. I want to be with Vice."

"Oh." Ghost's hand dropped to his pants so fast that she knew he was covering a very abrupt and rock hard erection. "You want both of me... together?" Ghost voiced what she wanted verbatim, as if he somehow might have misunderstood what she was trying to convey. Still, he panted the words, and it made Helia feel a bit better that he was into it and didn't think she was weird for asking.

"Won't it feel better if both of you, you know, at the same time?"

"Yes," Vice said with two sets of lips, one panting down onto her face and the other closing the gap between them in an instant to whisper it where Ghost now stood at the edge of the rug.

"You would want me that way?" Ghost knelt and touched her face gently, just as he had the night they'd made love under the stars, stroking and feeling every part of her that he could get his hands on.

"I want you, Vice," Helia said, emotion bubbling up into her that had tears watering her eyes. They made as much sense to her as they did Vice, but he froze up. "I'm not upset, at least not in a way I can explain. You are just so unreal... gentle, loyal, protective, but calm and respectful. Jealous enough of other men to care, but intelligent enough to walk away instead of causing issues.

"You're this perfect man any woman would give anything for, and I want all of you. I was afraid of having your fangs near my throat when we met, but I'm not anymore. I don't want you to have to hold back with me, to hide parts of yourself, or to settle for having half of what you desire if any of that makes sense."

"Promise you'll tell me if it's too much?" Ghost murmured as he popped the collar of his shirt. "I want you this way. Badly. But not enough to jeopardize what I have with you."

"I'll say something, Vice." Helia's heart was hammering in her chest, and she saw the way it had Ghost licking his lips as his fangs lengthened. His compulsion to cover them with a hand won out over Helia's words, and she sighed until he dropped it. "I trust you."

"You will never truly know how deep the depths of my love for you extend, Helia," Vice said, the both of them together as Ghost lost his clothes quicker than a well-paid stripper.

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Word Count: 2386