The words echoed in Sylas’ ears over and over again, as though the steam in the room had caught them and refused to let them go. The first time. Everything he had learned about the Demon World suggested that it had been an enemy of the Real World from the very beginning, that the two were so fundamentally opposed there had never been any choice but war.
But Xarvenya spoke as though that wasn’t the case at all. Or rather, it had only become true after the Madness System lost its mind. And there was something hidden beneath her words that mattered far more than who had fought whom, something that made Sylas’ blood slowly heat.
Before the Madness System began pushing, there had been no communication between the Real and Demon Worlds at all. Perhaps it went even further than that, and neither side had known the other existed. If the Madness System had been so desperate for challenge that it pierced a hole through the walls between universes and dragged two of them close enough to function as one, then the question was no longer how the war began...
The question was how many other worlds were out there that had never been touched.
Sylas didn’t particularly care about the answer. There were still five Heavens he hadn’t stepped into, and exploration for its own sake had never been something that moved him. If it had, he wouldn’t have leaned back the moment he believed he understood the ceiling of something, and he would have kept pushing until he reached it instead.
Even if there were an infinite number of worlds, if they held roughly the same level of power as this one, he saw no reason to bother with any of them. What interested him was something else entirely. He wanted to know if those other worlds had a Dragon and a Phoenix as well.
If they did, then whoever created them had left their imprint on countless worlds at once. It would mean that their power was great enough to pigeonhole an infinite number of realities while hardly lifting a finger. That was a ceiling worth reaching for, and it was the first one in a long time that Sylas couldn’t see the top of.
That... that was enough.
Sylas felt his heart shift, and the emerald in his eyes burned even brighter. He slowly stood, water streaming down his body as the three women watched him rise, and he turned toward Cassarae without a word. His hand found her neck, lifting her until she rose to the tips of her toes, her lips already leaning forward in search of his.
He didn’t give them to her. Instead, he stepped over the edge of the tub and onto the tile, turning her around and pressing her cheek against the wall with his palm. She didn’t struggle in the slightest, arching her back and wiggling her ass against him with a grin he could hear in her voice.
"Well, hurry up, then," she said, her tone thick and sweet. "Give me my reward."
Sylas didn’t make her wait. He pressed forward into her in a single, slow motion, and Cassarae’s breath left her in a long, shuddering exhale that fogged the tile beside her mouth. Her fingers splayed against the wall as though she might claw her way through it, yet her hips pushed back to meet him the moment he stopped.
Behind them, the water sloshed. Nosphaleen didn’t bother climbing out gracefully, all but pouring herself over the edge of the tub with a look in her eyes that had nothing to do with patience. She sank to her knees on the wet tile between their legs, her hands grabbing onto both of them for balance.
Her tongue ran a long, unhurried line from the base of Sylas’ balls all the way up to Cassarae’s clit, and Cassarae’s knees very nearly gave out beneath her. Sylas caught her by the hip and held her in place.
She had nowhere to escape to when Nosphaleen did it again. Cassarae’s moan broke against the wall, far louder than she had likely intended.


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