The rooftop had been banned to minors, dragons, and anyone with a functioning shame reflex.
At 22:00 the academy's loudspeakers crackled, then died.
Every crystal orb on campus flickered to a single looping message in Seraphine's velvet voice:
"SYSTEM CENSORED BROADCAST.
EYES BELOW 18: AVERT.
EYES ABOVE 18: BRACE."
Then the sky turned off the lights.
The moon blushed crimson and hid behind a cloud.
The constellations rearranged themselves into tasteful silhouettes.
A curtain of living aurora (green, violet, rose) dropped from the heavens like the universe's most expensive lingerie.
Inside the curtain: one table, one bed, one storm.
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The Table
Carved from a fallen star, it glowed when touched.
Tonight it served a five-course meal that arrived on plates of frozen lightning:
1. Oyster nebulae that melted into vanilla thunder.
2. Dragon-heart tartare that beat in time with desire.
3. A single peach sliced so thin it was translucent; when you bit it, you tasted the exact moment you first wanted someone.
4. Chocolate forged in the crucible of a dying sun.
5. A glass of liquid starlight that tasted like Arya's first moan after twenty-one days of silence.
Alexander fed her the peach with his fingers.
She licked the juice from his thumb, slow, deliberate, eyes locked on his.
The aurora curtain pulsed.
SYSTEM (private channel, inside their skulls):
"Moan-to-level ratio: 2:1.
Current moan count: 11.
Keep feeding her and the sky will file for divorce."
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The Bed
A cloud the size of a battlefield, stitched from storm and gold thread.
It floated three feet above the rooftop, rocking gently whenever someone breathed too hard.
Alexander laid her down.
The storm-cloud robe she'd worn all day dissolved into warm rain that soaked them both.
His shirt followed, buttons popping like tiny fireworks.
Skin met skin.
Storm-runes met gold scars.
Wings unfurled (hers gold, his cobalt) and tangled like lovers who'd waited lifetimes.
He kissed her collarbone.
She kissed the hollow beneath his ear.
Every kiss left a glowing rune that spelled a promise:
MINE.
YOURS.
ALWAYS.
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The Censorship
Outside the curtain, the continent saw only silhouettes:
- Two bodies becoming one.
- Four wings becoming eight.
- A storm becoming a supernova.
Inside, there was no censorship.
Only sound:
- The wet slide of tongue on skin.
- The slap of hip against hip.
- Her gasp that cracked a lantern.
- His growl that tasted of ozone and devotion.
They moved like a thunderstorm learning how to be gentle (slow rolls, deep thrusts, the exact angle that made her back arch and his name shatter on her lips).
When she came, the cloud exploded.
Gold rain fell upward.
The aurora curtain turned the colour of her climax.
The fallen-star table cracked down the middle and resealed with their mingled release glowing inside like a trapped comet.
Alexander followed her over the edge, burying his face in her neck, whispering her name like a prayer that had forgotten how to end.
The sky blushed so hard it rebooted.
SYSTEM (voice glitching):
"Level spike detected.
Arya → 108.
Alexander → 100.
Side effect: rooftop now classified as Level-90 hazard zone.
Do not enter without written consent and a safeword."
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The Afterglow
They lay tangled in the cloud-bed, wings draped like blankets, rain cooling on their skin.
Alexander traced the new rune on her hip (a tiny storm inside a gold rose).
"Tomorrow," he murmured, "Liora and Cassia will want their turn."
Arya laughed into his shoulder.
"Let them.
We just fucked the sky into a new constellation."
She pointed upward.
Above them, the aurora had frozen into a permanent sculpture: two lovers, wings entwined, mouths open in mid-climax.
Every star in Elyssara had rearranged itself to watch.
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The Revenge, Thirty Floors Below
Cassia Emberkin stormed through the dorm corridors, coal tattoos molten.
She found Anthony Felix in the library, reshelving books by moonlight.
One look at his swollen lips and bedroom eyes, and she knew.
"You recorded it," she snarled.
Anthony's blush could have powered a city.
"The orbs were public domain—"
Cassia slammed him against the erotica shelf.
Books titled Dragon Bondage for Beginners rained down.
"Then let's give them a sequel."
She kissed him hard enough to taste copper and coal.
Her coal tattoos crawled under his shirt, branding tiny hearts across his ribs.
He tried to protest.
Once.
Then she dropped to her knees.
The library's privacy runes overloaded.
For exactly seven seconds, every crystal orb on campus flickered to a new silhouette: Cassia's head between Anthony's thighs, ember roses glowing.
Liora Frostfang watched from the mezzanine, ice whip cracking the air.
Her smile was winter at its sharpest.
"Tomorrow," she whispered, "the storm learns who really owns the dark."
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Epilogue in the Clouds
On the rooftop, Arya and Alexander slept tangled in each other's wings.
The cloud-bed rocked them gently.
The censored sky kept watch.
The new constellation burned above (two lovers, eternal).
Far away, Jonathan felt the constellation brand itself across his stolen halo.
He smiled (small, sharp, hungry).
And somewhere in the void, the next beast began to wake.
But for now, the rooftop was warm, the cloud was soft, and two lovers with brand-new runes learned how to dream in each other's arms.
The war had learned a new safeword.
And its first syllable was:
Forever.