Chapter 21: Tides of Dominion
The recoil spring assembly finally clicked into place, a symphony of polished steel and tempered wire that sang of contained violence. Mary held the assembled mechanism up to the lamplight, her smudged face breaking into the first real grin I’d seen since the audience chamber. “It’ll work.”
“It’ll more than work,” I said, the fatigue a solid weight in my bones, but beneath it, a pure, clean line of satisfaction. The calculations were sound. The prototypes for the sliding breech were machined. The first batch of shells, crude but functional, sat in lined crates. We had translated insult into geometry, and the geometry was perfect.
The silence of the armory was no longer oppressive. It was anticipatory.
The door creaked open. Ellie stood there, backlit by the torchlight of the corridor, a tray in her hands. The scent of mulled wine and fresh bread cut through the smells of oil and graphite. Nancy hovered just behind her, carrying blankets.
“The watch changed twice,” Ellie said, her voice soft but carrying. “You missed the night.”
“We caught it,” Mary said, setting the spring assembly down with reverence. “We have it.”
Nancy padded across the cold tiles, her eyes on the schematics, the physical pieces. “Gods. You really did it.” She looked at me, then at Mary, her expression a mix of awe and something fiercer. “You built your period.”
“Come on,” Ellie commanded, setting the tray down. “You’re coming to the baths. You’re steaming the machinery out of your pores. All of it.”
We didn’t argue. The tension that had fueled us for hours was beginning to crystallize into a deep, bodily ache. We followed them through the winding stone passages, leaving the whispers of steel behind.
The Royal Baths were a sanctuary of paradox, carved into the living glacier. The air hung thick and humid, smelling of salt and sulphur and wet stone. Icicles daggered down from the ceiling high above, dripping into steaming, turquoise pools. Frost-rimed runes glowed with a feeble blue light along the walls, their meaning lost to time. In one corner, a pool lay frozen solid, a sculpture of captured water, while next to it, water bubbled violently from a geothermal vent.
We shed our work clothes—stiff with sweat and grease—letting them pool on the dry, heated slate at the pool’s edge. The air was a balm on my skin. Ellie and Nancy were already slipping into the largest pool, their forms blurring through the rising steam.
Mary sank into the water beside me with a groan that was almost sexual in its relief. The heat penetrated instantly, unknotting the muscles in my shoulders, my lower back. For a long moment, there was only the sound of dripping water and our own ragged sighs.
Then Ellie was there, wading through the mist. Her hands found my head, fingers digging into the tight muscles of my scalp. “Your mind is still down there with the numbers,” she murmured. “Let it go.”
Her touch was an algorithm of release. I leaned into it, my eyes closed. Across the pool, I heard Nancy’s whisper. “Show me the spring.” And Mary’s low reply, guiding Nancy’s hand to her own bicep, tracing the imagined tension.
It wasn’t about the guns anymore. It was about the hands that built them.
Ellie’s lips brushed my temple. “They called you occupied. Look at what your occupation makes.” Her gesture took in the haze, the intertwined bodies of our daughters, the palpable sense of creation that still vibrated in the steamy air.
A current moved through the water. Nancy was before me, her curls plastered to her neck and shoulders, her eyes dark and serious. The gentle swell of her pregnancy was just visible beneath the water’s shimmering surface. Without a word, she took my hand and placed it low on her belly. The skin was taut, hot. I felt it then—a faint, fluttering pressure from within. A kick.
The breath left my lungs. It was a different kind of precision. A more terrifying, wonderful physics.
Nancy leaned forward, her forehead touching mine. “That’s what we’re making, too,” she breathed.
The shift was chemical. The intellectual fury of the armory melted, replaced by a need more fundamental, more urgent. My hand slid from her belly around to the small of her back, pulling her closer. I kissed her, and it tasted of salt and promise.
I guided her back to the sloped, heated stone edge of the pool. She understood, bracing her hands behind her as she eased back, the water lapping at her waist. I knelt between her thighs in the buoyant water, my hands spreading her open.
She was already wet, glistening, her folds swollen and pink. The unique, sweet-musk scent of her, heightened by pregnancy, filled the steam around us. I didn’t tease. The time for subtlety was past. I put my mouth on her and licked a broad, firm stripe from her entrance to her clit.
She cried out, a sharp sound that echoed off the ice. Her hips jerked. I held her down, my hands firm on her thighs. I feasted. My tongue delved into her opening, tasting her intimate salt, then circled her clit with relentless pressure. I fucked her with my tongue, shallow and quick, then sucked that sensitive bud between my lips, worrying it with my tongue.
“Fuck, Amy… right there, oh god, right fucking there.” Her words were gasps, mingling with the steam. Her hands tangled in my short, wet hair, not guiding, just holding on.
From the corner of my eye, I saw movement. Ellie had Mary pinned against the frozen backdrop of the still pool, their bodies a stark contrast of heat and cold. Mary’s head was thrown back, her throat exposed as Ellie’s mouth traveled down it. Ellie’s hands were on Mary’s breasts, kneading, her thumbs scraping over nipples hardened by the chill air and arousal. Then Ellie sank to her knees in the water, taking Mary with her, their mouths meeting in a desperate, sliding kiss.
My focus snapped back to Nancy. Her legs were trembling. I added a finger, then two, curling them up inside her, finding that rough, spongy place. Her inner walls clenched around me rhythmically.
“I’m gonna come,” she warned, her voice high and thin. “Don’t stop, please, don’t fucking stop.”
I didn’t. I redoubled my efforts, my tongue a ruthless piston on her clit as my fingers fucked her deeply. Her orgasm hit her like a seizure. Her back arched clear of the stone, a guttural scream tearing from her throat as she convulsed, her cunt pulsing wildly around my fingers, her juices flooding my mouth. I drank her down, staying with her until the last tremor subsided and she collapsed back, boneless and breathing in ragged sobs.
I rose from the water, moving to her side, cradling her head. She turned, nuzzling into my neck. “Thank you,” she whispered, her voice raw.
Across the pool, the scene had evolved. Mary was now on the submerged ledge, her legs hooked over Ellie’s hips. Ellie was rocking into her, their bodies moving together in a slow, deep rhythm. Mary’s face was a mask of intense concentration, her eyes locked on Ellie’s. “Harder,” Mary breathed. “I need to feel it… all of it.”
Ellie obeyed, her movements becoming powerful, driving thrusts. The water splashed around them. Mary’s cries were shorter, sharper, punctuations to each deep stroke.
Nancy stirred against me, her hand sliding down my abdomen beneath the water. Her fingers found me, parting my own slick folds. “My turn,” she murmured, her exhaustion gone, replaced by a lazy, possessive hunger. She pushed me gently back against the stone. “Let me taste your work.”
She sank beneath the turquoise surface. The world became muted, silent but for the thrum of my own blood. The heat of her mouth, the shocking, perfect softness of her tongue on my clit was an entirely new shock. I gasped, my head hitting the stone. Her hands held my hips down as she licked and sucked with an artist’s devotion, learning what made me shake. She was relentless, as thorough as I had been with her. The pressure built, a coil of pure sensation tightening low in my belly, distinct from the warm water, from everything.
When I came, it was with a choked, silent shout, my body bowing up as the climax ripped through me, vision whiting out at the edges. She surfaced, smiling, her lips swollen, and kissed my stomach.
The four of us eventually regrouped in the hottest pool, a tangled, sated heap of limbs in the mineral haze. No one spoke for a long time. The runes glowed. The ice dripped.
Ellie finally broke the silence, her voice echoing softly. “The guns are ready.”
“They are,” I said.
“What happens tomorrow?”
Mary answered, her head resting on Nancy’s shoulder. “Tomorrow, we teach them the new grammar.”
The steam rose around us, carrying our scent, our heat, our resolved fury out into the cold, waiting dark of Eldoria. We had built our answer. Now we would deliver it.