Sunlight kissed her eyelids, warm and bright, coaxing Astra out of the velvety dark between dreams. The weight draped over her hips was soft, suggestive. A palm curved over her hip, then grazed the shallow valley of her waist. Fingertips began to paint slow circles on her skin.

They wandered higher.

Intentionally, they paused beneath her ribs, listening perhaps, or memorising the beat. When they moved again, just a brush, Astra’s mouth betrayed her with a gasp.

“We need to get up.” Her lashes fluttered.

“Mmm, four more minutes,” Eydis all but purred against the fine shell of her ear, hot breath stroking her skin. Lips found the quickened pulse at her neck and closed around it, teasing it with teeth.

“If you keep that up, we’re never getting out of this bed.” Astra’s complaint wasn't fooling anyone.

“And wouldn’t that be delicious?” Eydis murmured.

Astra heard the smile hidden inside it; she felt the smile, too. “Tell me how you’re the Queen of Shadows when you can’t even escape bed sheets by sunrise.”

The fingers paused, twitched, resumed. Under that tiny betrayal Astra’s certainty stiffened, and she rolled, turning to meet the face beside her.

Golden irises shimmered, catching firelight that shouldn’t have been there. An impossibly elegant nose.

Then that lower lip—full, sinful, bisected by a slender vertical groove that begged to be traced, tugged, tasted. With her lips. With her teeth.

Her eyes lingered longer than they should have before sliding lower to bare collarbones, then the slow rise and fall of Eydis’s chest, and…

Below.

Skin, naked, radiant. Every inch of her was bared like an invitation to sin.

Astra’s eyes jerked back to Eydis’s with guilty speed. Her heartbeat went feral, but not from want.

“Like what you see—”

Steel flashed. A diamond-bright dagger kissed those tempting lips, then settled against Eydis’s throat.

Far from want.

Astra straddled her. Peach-coloured silk sheets pooled at her hips; only then did she feel her own nakedness, her body gilded by dawn.

She didn’t remember undressing. She never slept without clothes. She had never, never, slept with Eydis.

Astra repeated the mantra in her foggy head. “Name yourself.”

Eydis tilted her head, hair spilling to one side, carrying the scent of honey and citrus. “Darling, I’m the woman who knows every freckle on your thigh. Surely you recognise your own lover?”

Astra’s eyes narrowed.

Warm hands glided to her waist. She caught both wrists, squeezing until bones flirted with fracture. Diamond tip pressed deeper; a bead of blood blossomed on borrowed skin.

“Lust,” Astra hissed.

For a heartbeat the creature’s eyes widened. “What gave me away?”

“You can mimic her face, her voice, even her touch. You are not her.” Astra’s reply was deliberately vague.

The Sin sighed long and deep. “Was it my mouth? My fingers? Or that little line on my lip you love pretending not to stare at?”

Her blade trembled in her grip. She could end this now. She should.

But she didn’t.

“You are so hard to read,” Lust whispered, smiling with Eydis’s mischief, a sliver of fang glinting. “But every system has its flaw.”

“Where did you learn that?” Astra snapped, clarity hardening in her spine.

Eydis had loved the jargon of hackers the moment she’d discovered it. She’d thrown herself into internet rabbit holes, tried to crack codes just to prove she could. Never asked for help.

Always shouldered everything alone despite being the Queen herself.

And this creature…

Wasn’t Eydis. A counterfeit hope.

Astra raised both hands and drove the blade home.

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Diamond cut through skin that folded into liquid, through sheets that rippled like water. Jade waves rose from nowhere, swallowing her thighs, her waist, her neck, and her breath.

She plunged, her silver hair floating around her in slow motion, strands darkening as the light dimmed. Above, Eydis hovered on the surface, face blurring out of focus.

Astra knew it was a dream, knew it the way one knows a secret name, but knowing failed to wake her.

Wake up.

Get up.

“You see the truth,” came the voice from above, or maybe from below, “and still, you choose mercy. That makes you… exquisite.”

Laughter filled the bubbling silence as oxygen began to run low in Astra’s lungs, her silver hair billowing.

And then it embraced her.

Not water.

Not a dream.

Everything bent.

Violet flames licked her skin yet chilled her veins, burning with impossible cold. Up became down as she tumbled skyward until darkness thinned into remote constellations.

It isn’t real, she reminded herself.

A single red rose drifted into view. Petal by petal it unfurled, hypnotic, then began to spin. It danced, then burst. Thousands of crimson petals became snow, became fire, became ash, became stars.

Astra tried to grasp an anchor; anything, anyone her mind would allow in that moment. Her thoughts, always, found one woman.

Eydis.

The scent of her hair was lavender at first, with sandalwood now lingering in the base notes.

The hush of dawn becoming warmth as Astra’s cheek settled against Eydis’s slender shoulder.

Sweet batter and winter berries lingered on their lips when Astra pressed Eydis against the kitchen counter, half-eager to shrug off the royal-blue robe.

The sight of Eydis, her eyes always impossibly soft when turned on her, that hidden shyness flickering between kisses when she thought Astra wasn’t watching.

And the breathless sounds she made when Astra answered that need.

Her anchor.

Blink.

Astra stirred beneath the hush of morning light. Warm fingers drew idle circles over her waist before gliding higher.

“We need to get up,” she muttered.

“Mmm, four more minutes,” Eydis replied, teasing the edge of Astra’s royal blue robe before nipping the skin just below it.

“Keep that up and we’ll lie here until sunset.”

“How romantic.”

Astra rolled her eyes. “Tell me how you’re the Queen of Shadows when you can’t even escape bed sheets by sunrise.”

“All that power,” Eydis breathed, lips grazing Astra’s jaw, “and light still wins. Your light. I love yielding to it, letting it burn.”

“No one’s burning anything,” Astra’s cheeks flushed. “Especially not in my room.”

Her room?

She scanned beige walls, a beige wardrobe, a light-oak desk. All the same washed-out shade of bland.

Well… Eydis wasn’t wrong about their dorm.

Astra smiled and pulled the sheet higher. The cloth felt soft, silky, not the scratchy St. Kevin’s standard-issue set she had never replaced because she was rarely here. A puzzle piece jammed into the wrong space: almost right, never perfect.

At the window, vines crawled along the frame. They looked like Adam’s.

The thought froze her blood.

“Astra, what—?”

Eydis’s question ended as Astra pressed a blade to her throat.

“Lust,” Astra snarled.

Eydis’s lips curved in wicked amusement. “I didn’t know you enjoyed bloodplay.”

Astra’s lips thinned.

“Honestly, the eagerness to stab your lover is kind of alarming. Right at the throat, no less. Should I tell her to invest in turtlenecks? Is pain just part of your foreplay?” Lust purred. “Kinky.”

“Do not confuse yourself, Lust.” Astra’s words spilled icy and low. “Your disguise is thin, your taunts thinner.”

She leaned closer, watching golden eyes widen. “You can copy her face, her voice, even her touch. You are still not her.”

Lust’s smile twitched. “Are we sure? Your hands are shaking.”

Astra poured radiance into the blade and drove it deep into flesh that was never flesh.

Violet smoke shrieked, spiraling upward to claw at her face.

“What power is this?” it spat.

The room buckled. Waves crashed across the ceiling, roses opened in every corner, and Astra found herself back in her St. Kevin’s uniform while a black panther padded from the shadows.

Lust.

Eydis had once given the Sin that form in Mythshollows; whether Lust remembered or simply liked it, Astra no longer cared. It was a mistake.

She attacked. Radiant crescents flashed from her diamond blade, each swing carving the shadowed animal. The panther roared, smoke bleeding from its wounds.

“You are forged of Light,” the panther panted, all seduction stripped away.

Astra offered no answer. She remembered Adam, crumpled under hallucination in a warehouse, and accepted that none of this was real.

The panther bared fangs. “Light and Shadow. Do you believe the Pantheon smiles on their union? Did your lover neglect to mention the price?”

“The Pantheon?” Astra’s sword kept singing. “We write our own laws.”

“Children of Day and Shadows are omens. Gods call them betrayals, we call them delicacies, even shared aura corrodes—”

“Good thing we are both women.”

Lust hissed, its form blurring and expanding, covering her vision until only purple haze remained.

“You still don’t understand? Aura blending kills. Stay with her and she will erode your light, drain you until only night remains. That is why a Sin’s bearer is banned in your kingdom.”

“Drain me?” Astra’s eyes sharpened. “Only one way to find out.”

She rose upward, or downward, or somewhere between. Gravity slipped sideways as if the world had forgotten its rules. The purple haze clung to her skin like memory.

Another diamond blade bloomed into her left palm. She crossed them until they carved a brilliant X through the haze. Gold fire cleaved smoke, shadows, and every lie at once.

“You should’ve stayed silent,” Astra said, though the words barely survived the roar of Lust’s agony. “Your breath reeked of rot.”

The light finished what her words could not. It surged forward, smothering the sound, silencing the scream. Shadows tore apart like fabric.

Astra found herself on a snow-capped ridge beneath a sky the colour of blood. It rippled like silk steeped in sin, undulating, twisting, spinning in patterns that made her stomach turn.

It wasn't the sky. It was a lure, a hypnotic cue.

It took real effort to tear her gaze away. She gritted her teeth and drove both blades into the frozen earth.

Blink.

Sunlight burst from the impact, stabbing her eyelids, but it was not the light that woke her. It was Eydis’s mouth, warm and exploring, swallowing her gasp.

Eydis drew back. “Morning, sleepyhead.”

“You’re up early,” Astra whispered, still gathering her senses. “That’s a first.”

There was something she had forgotten, like a dream, like a nightmare she thought she remembered, until morning yanked it away without apology.

All she knew was the weight in her chest hadn’t left with it.

Mischief danced in Eydis’s eyes. “There is a first time for everything. Change can be exhilarating, wouldn’t you agree?”

“But—“

“Hush.” Eydis leaned in again, and Astra’s question was devoured by her kiss.