There was a pause before she answered him. It had little to do with his question. There was much he did not know and it stood behind them in the room. When their ways parted for the first time, he had been a 16-year-old boy. A lanky, fragile-looking creature that was reminiscent of a juvenile bird of prey; ruffled and striving for gravitas that was not yet there. He had black hair that hung into his face and he regarded everyone with suspicion. She was in a different social sphere entirely. He remembered being acutely aware of her, when they were in the same room. But it had seemed so impossible for their paths to join together in a consequential way that he did not even think about it. Their shared moments were, if he even recalled them accurately at all, ephemeral. Until last summer.

"Well," he said, "You walked into my office and you saw right through me. Through whatever idea people usually get. And I was not sure what to think of it."

He moved his head a little, his gaze traveling upwards the long way across her body, along her gentle lines, up to what he could see of her face. Still, his words came from somewhere unpredictable. "After you left I stood at the window to smoke." He smoked too much, perhaps, he thought—a consideration he did not entertain often. "I thought about my plans for the remainder of the summer. I was to go to Paris to meet my friend Etienne. But mostly to be distracted. I had been looking forward to it. But when I stood there at the window the thought was suddenly unbearable."

Her hand was in his hair and he moved towards it, moved his head up further in her lap, until the crown of his head touched her stomach. Where he was going with his words seemed worrying to him, but he could not quite get himself to stop. "I met a woman there. We crossed paths a few weeks earlier at some odious soirée in London, and then again in Paris. She could have met me at a more discreet place, later."

The pressure he held on their entwined hands on his chest increased. This could be taken as him lording his ability to access other women over her. That was not why he mentioned it. He remembered Miss Blackwood well. She had been good looking and smart and too young for his preference—he entertained the flirtation regardless, because she was high-born. It was always like that with him, he was not all that driven by pleasure for it's own sake, he always needed more. To compromise the honor of future or current husbands of women like this was a major part of the appeal; it was a sordid form of entertainment that had much to do with his proximity to the upper class through his work, and his deep contempt for it's self-satisfied members. And it had to do with his drive for true intimacy that in his self-imposed solitude had nothing worthwhile to be directed towards, and drove him instead towards distasteful games. He was not proud of it. He should not tell her about it. But it had really been that evening that he first knew something was changing. Themis had shifted his inner sense of direction, pointed it towards her. The only thing that apparently could still veer him off course lay in the graveyard of his past.
"She did not show up in Montparnasse and I was relieved. At the time, I did not understand why. I think I was not ready to see it. What I mean to say by this—" feeling restless now, and a bit unsettled by the way the guarded truths of his life were spilling out of him, he searched for her gaze. "You got me just by walking into my office and seeing me. You did not even have to try. Changed me just like that. I was comfortable in my ways and I lost my taste for them after spending an hour in your presence."
Then he added: "So you have nothing to prove yourself worthy of with me, least of all that you can hold my attention. You've already done it. I have something to prove to you."

---

Themis grinned at his assessment of her vision. She didn’t bother confirming or qualifying his words, she had watched him at their first encounter. He entered the castle as an unknown, something she couldn’t let rest without further investigation. What Samuel didn’t understand was that most people failed her inspections. People were complicated beings, but most seemed determined to blunt their potential, preferring simplicity and certainty. Samuel was a labyrinth of his own making and she had entered willingly.

The mention of Etienne triggered an additional flicker of affection for Samuel. She’d enjoyed the dinner hosted in the visiting man’s honor, found him completely ridiculous, amusing, and not at all whom she expected Samuel to associate with. The party had been a glimpse of Samuel at his most magnanimous, the most benevolent host and master of ceremonies. She’d seen him in a new light that night, as they drank wine at his window, examining the stars. But Samuel had stood at that window weeks earlier, after he escorted her to her tower.

The climb back to the Astronomy Tower seemed to take longer and no time at all that night, the two of them climbing the stairs in peaceful silence. When he finally delivered her to her room, she’d collapsed into bed as she was, her limbs suddenly too heavy to lift, her skin prickling at the sweat drying on her skin. She was drained in a way she couldn’t remember, her magic almost hibernating just out of reach. Had she tested her spellwork then, Themis would have been surprised if she could create the sparks of a beginner. Her magic felt far away, but the drained sensation didn’t frighten her. She was not alone, her power was there but resting. She had never considered her magic as a finite resource, but as she lungs burned from the climb, the world spinning behind her eyelids, she recognized just how easy it might be to burn out altogether. She wondered if that was something you survived. There was a dark, intriguing wizard in another tower that made her imagine a different sort of survival of the fittest. Samuel had not burned out, like the stars above them were destined to do, but his magnificence came with scars. She fell into an exhausted sleep then, her dreams of melting copper and two dark eyes across the circle pinned on her.

She parted her legs slightly, allowing him to settle closer to her body, though ‘allowing’ implies she gave thought to the action. There was no need to think, her body reacting to cradle him closer. With his head pressed to her belly, she allowed the hand in his hair to cup his cheek, stroking against the stubble she found there. She stuttered for a millisecond at his mention of this woman, but she did not move from him, she had no reason to. Samuel was well within his rights to bed whomever pleased him. He had freedom others did not, dalliances seemingly expected of men in his position. That didn’t keep her from wondering what the woman who enticed him might be like. Her first image was the easiest one, some young, frail thing egged on by an overbearing mother to flirt and simper for his attention. The image was distasteful, but amusing. That was what he was meant to want at this place in his life. He’d mentioned once, not truly joking, how his mother thought it well passed when he should be making proposals. But Themis couldn’t see him tolerating some well-bred princess, someone Society deemed worth bearing his heirs and nothing more. Of course, he never said he meant to marry her, something self-satisfied reminded her. Samuel broke fragile things; but maybe he still played with them.

She held two truths as she held him. The first was fully aware she had no place or right to feel anything at the mention of this intended rendezvous. The flicker of envy she felt, coveting a moment that wasn’t hers to have, was irrational, silly even. The second was that no matter how sordid this tale would get, Themis would hear it without judgement of him. Whomever the woman from Paris was, she wasn’t in bed with them now; she wasn’t holding this precious man in her lap. This moment belonged to Themis and she would relinquish it for no one. It didn’t stop the little bubble of relief that formed at the outcome. Mentally thankful for the flightiness of this unnamed girl, and Themis had no interest in her name, she felt the cue of his eyes and met his gaze. He’d only begun to overwhelm her.

They both favored omission to direct mistruths, misdirection seeming allowed, but lies somehow distasteful. There was no question that she and Samuel were full of secrets, his body a map of them. There was an unspoken agreement not to pry without invitation, not to name what was seen if it was too vulnerable to be commented on. It meant she trusted his words, believed what he told her even as she examined each utterance with care. Samuel didn’t choose to waste words; what he gave her; she knew was significant. What he gave her now was a gift she didn’t know how to receive. The hand on his chest, she pressed against his heart, the beat beneath her palm answering hers, perhaps steadier than her own. She pressed, because she lacked the words to meet him. She shifted closer against him, putting slight pressure to every inch of him she touched. She needed him to feel her admiration, to know just how much his presence meant.

She bent at the waist, pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead, her hair falling around them. She rested there a moment, the intimacy of their proximity something she would treasure in every second of his absence. “There is nothing left to prove. You have me.” Her hand over his heart was buzzing, the magic in his scars calling, coaxing her. Almost in wonder, she added. "I think you’ve marked me already.”

---

"There really is much left to prove," he replied, lifted his head and turned around on his side. He ran his hand up her leg, feeling that their detour into the past was coming to a close. "I need to do right by you, in so many ways." He needed to be good to her, be good for her, keep her safe and alive—he would not say it out loud after his prior statements, but it was on his mind. If they were to continue with their experiments, that was his responsibility. He could not afford failure. He was concerned he would fail, in some way he did not yet understand. She was different from what he knew and would need different things from him. Beginnings were winged by passion, but he did not plan for this to be a short-lived dalliance. She held so naturally to her convictions; her authenticity was a part of her he was not sure she was entirely aware of. It shone like a beacon in the night to everyone else with eyes.

He was not that steadfast. What were really his convictions? Samuel often struggled to know them. She just embodied them. The only danger for her was allowing others to strongarm her into acting despite herself. He needed to aspire to do better. "Hold me to that," he entreated her. His cheek was at the soft inside of her thigh, then his mouth. He would not say more on that. Time was ticking away from them. He was more determined than ever—he needed to make things right. Getting bitten by his past actions was not a tolerable option anymore. Neither was leaving to escape imprisonment.

He needed to stay here and get himself on steady ground, whatever the cost. Themis was above him and under his hands, at his lips, alive and warm in the dark. Everything in him was flowing towards her now and he surrendered to it easily and naturally. He thought back to the first time in his office earlier and he was very glad to have accepted her invitation tonight, for they had never before so belonged to each other as they did now.

---

Themis wouldn't argue with him; there was no place or point for it tonight. Still, his stubborn insistence that he owed her something, that the scales between them needed balancing, only reaffirmed her position. What could be owed between the two of them? What more could he possibly do? Samuel had saved her life, saved them both from her inexperience and curiosity. He introduced her to a world that existed in her dreams and showed her a strength she never knew to look for. He'd become her north star, the light in the dark that called her to venture further, farther than she had ever dared go alone. Samuel ignited a world of sensation, of emotion that existed somewhere unheeded inside her. An agent of chaos to her need for order, he challenged her, and made life's status quo unacceptable. She could list what he had given her for days and still avoid the greatest example beating firmly in her heart.

She wouldn't dismiss him. She couldn't deny what he asked of her with conviction. Selfishly, she would deny him nothing that brought him closer. "I will." And she would.

She shivered at the brush of his cheek, then his lips on her thigh. All thoughts of her past or tomorrow were forced away by the heat of him. Her body reacted even as confusion showed on her face. His mouth on her answered a curious "Sam?" and confusion was replaced with wonder. The stars that danced in her eyes made no constellation she recognized, the way he touched her somehow anchoring her to him and the earth. She surrendered to him. There was no better word for how all awareness seemed to exist where he touched her, where she began and ended blurred by his hands, his wicked mouth.

Themis could feel every cell, every hair on her body, alive and at his mercy. The places his hands contacted buzzed with her magic, begging to answer the strength of his blood. Some dizzy part of her hoped he did burn those marks into her skin, branded her as his in a way no other could claim. He should terrify her, signal some danger to her autonomy. Samuel was all-consuming; it was impossible to give herself to him and remain whole. Some part of her knew this, should fear it, but there was no going back. Themis had no desire to run.

She shattered for him, which only made her hunger worse. She begged for him, reached for him, and refused to be satisfied until he was with her, on her, and Merlin, in her. It was so different from their encounter in his office. This time, there was nothing to dull the sensation of their joining, no barrier to blunt the wonder of them. He consumed every sense, forced the breath from her lungs, and left her gasping his name. She melted, tensed, and transformed for him. Somewhere in her mind she recognized that they created an alchemy of their own.

---

The morning did come, grey and sallow. Pale sunlight flooded in through the window. Samuel was already awake. He had not slept much, and he could not say that he was rested. He was thoroughly spent. When he cast up his eyes towards the light, he felt the muscles in his back relax in a way he was not used to. It was the newly appointed body of a man who had made love all night, not only in name, not for sport; he had given as much as he received and received as much as he was given, and the sum was yet greater than its parts. It was much beyond what he could reasonably describe. Samuel was, if he was honest with himself, at peace. It would be fleeting. He felt sad that tomorrow had come.

He vaguely knew that this layer of warmth on his skin would fade and take the serenity with it. Somewhere below, things had gotten out of place. Something he thought would not happen to him anymore in his life had happened. It seemed he had gone and attempted to change the foundation, and now everything that rested atop was shifting out of its place. He did not know where the pieces would fall, at all.
Samuel stood up and went to the washtable. With a sigh, he began the work of washing away the traces of the night and getting himself presentable for the day. It would be a long one.

Now and then he looked over to Themis, who slept in her bed. There was a great innocence to her face when she slept. When he awoke her to say his goodbyes, her eyes were very bright and her mouth very vulnerable and the expression of her brow full of trouble. There was nothing to say; there was too much to say. "We will see each other. I'm coming back, I promise." He kissed her one last time and left.

What else? He went to London that day, and tried to make sense of what he was even setting out to do, and couldn't.

---