Chapter 23:
– Amara –
Two days later, the new mansion was finally livable.
I'd expected Morgana to name it something dramatic like le Fay Manor, the Obsidian Keep, the Fortress of Absolutely Do Not Fuck With Us. Something befitting a thousand-year-old dark witch who'd toppled empires and once made Merlin himself flinch.
But when the paperwork cleared and the last of the contractors fled the property looking vaguely traumatized—Bellatrix had greeted one of them at the door holding a severed chicken head from "dinner preparations," which I suspected was deliberate psychological warfare disguised as domesticity—Morgana had simply signed the deed with an elegant flourish and declared it Black Manor.
"Le Fay is a name that echoes too loudly in certain circles," she'd said, tracing her fingertip along the embossed gold letters of the property title. "Black, however… Black is yours. Ours…"
I hadn't argued. Partly because I was genuinely touched, and partly because I'd learned that when Morgana made a decision with that particular softness in her voice—the one that sounded less like a declaration and more like a confession—it meant she'd been thinking about it for days and had already considered and discarded every possible objection I might raise.
Black Manor it was.
The estate sprawled across twelve acres of Gotham countryside. It was dramatic and beautiful and completely over the top, which meant it was perfect.
The interior had needed extensive work. Decades of abandonment had left the bones intact but the flesh rotting. Water-stained ceilings, warped floorboards, a kitchen that smelled faintly of mildew and regret. Morgana had handled the structural repairs with magic, reshaping load-bearing walls and purging decades of decay in a single evening of focused spellwork that left her slightly winded and irritable. The cosmetic details—fresh paint, new fixtures, furniture that didn't look like it had been salvaged from a Victorian funeral home—required mundane professionals.
We'd hired an army of them. Painters, electricians, plumbers, interior designers who blanched when Morgana insisted the master bedroom needed to be "darker, no, darker, I said I wanted to feel like I was sleeping inside a moonless night, not a department store."
The pool had been installed in three days by a crew who worked with suspicious urgency after Bellatrix wandered outside to observe their progress and casually mentioned she'd once drowned a man in a puddle.
Now the manor breathed with life. Our life. And it was just far enough from the city that the perpetual fog cloud over gotham didn't affect us. Those were poor people's problems…
And on this particular afternoon, with the summer sun pouring across the newly tiled pool deck, I was doing my absolute best to enjoy every goddamn second of it.
"You missed a spot," I murmured, shifting my hips on the cushioned lounge chair.
Morgana's slicked fingers traced the curve of my lower back, pressing into the dimples just above the waistband of my bikini bottoms. It was a triangle of black fabric so minimal it was less a garment and more a polite suggestion. The matching top wasn't much better, they were two scraps of dark silk held together by strings thin enough to snap under a firm breeze.
My pale skin gleamed where Morgana had already worked the oil into it, catching sunlight and throwing it back in a way that made me look carved from porcelain and sin.
"I assure you," Morgana said, her voice a low, unhurried drawl that vibrated against my shoulder blades as she leaned closer, "I have not missed a single spot. I am being thorough."
Her palm slid down my spine, fingers splaying wide to cover as much skin as possible. The oil was warm—she'd heated it with a whispered charm. Every inch of contact sent my nerve endings fizzing. Being a succubus meant my entire body was an erogenous zone, and Morgana knew this, exploited it with the casual expertise of someone who'd spent centuries perfecting the art of making people fall apart.
I bit the inside of my cheek as her thumb traced the ridge of my shoulder blade. A quiet, involuntary moan escaped anyway—low and throaty, the kind that vibrated in my chest before slipping past my lips. "Mmh... you're doing that on purpose."
"Doing what on purpose?" Morgana's tone was pure innocence, which meant she was absolutely doing it on purpose. Her hand glided along the outer curve of my ribcage, fingertips brushing the side of my breast where it pressed against the lounger. My nipples tightened instantly, aching against the thin bikini fabric.
I turned my head just enough to peer at her through one half-lidded eye. She was sitting beside me on the edge of the adjacent lounger, still fully dressed in a flowing black sundress that somehow managed to be both casual and devastatingly elegant. Her dark hair was loose, spilling over one shoulder in waves. Those green eyes held a glint of wicked amusement as she squeezed more oil into her palm and resumed her ministrations along the backs of my thighs.
I let my eye close again and melted into the sensation.
The pool glittered beside us. Morgana had enchanted the water to maintain a perfect temperature regardless of weather and to shift color depending on the time of day.
Beyond the pool, the grounds rolled away in sculpted lawns bordered by ancient oaks and dense hedgerows that Morgana had already laced with enough protective wards to make Fort Knox look like a screen door. Somewhere inside the manor, I could hear Bellatrix's muffled voice—she was singing, which was a relatively new development and deeply unsettling. The song appeared to be an improvised ballad about disemboweling traitors, performed with the enthusiasm of someone who genuinely believed she was the next great musical talent of her generation.
Daphne and Astoria had retreated to the library an hour ago, claiming they needed to study advanced transfiguration theory. I suspected they were actually reading the romance novels Astoria had smuggled back from her last trip into the city, but I wasn't about to spoil their fun. They'd earned a break.
"You know," I said, my voice slightly muffled by the cushion my face was half-buried in, "I'm a little surprised you moved us next to Batman."
Morgana's hands paused for the briefest moment, just long enough for me to register the hesitation, before resuming their slippery path along the back of my left thigh. Her fingers worked into the muscle with practiced pressure, kneading away tension I hadn't realized I was carrying.
"I moved us next to Bruce Wayne," she corrected, her tone carrying the precise, patient cadence she used when she believed I was missing an important distinction. "Batman is an alter ego. A mask he wears to frighten criminals and indulge his obsessive need for control."
I cracked open one eye again. "Is there actually a difference? They're the same person."
Morgana's lips curved into a smile that was part amusement, part something older and more contemplative. She didn't answer immediately. Instead, she poured another generous measure of oil and began working it into the exposed skin of my lower back, right where the bikini bottoms dipped scandalously low. Her thumbs pressed into the hollows on either side of my spine, and I shuddered, a helpless gasp catching in my throat.
"There is always a difference," she said finally, her voice dropping to something softer, more reflective, "between who someone is and who they become when they believe the world is watching. Bruce Wayne is a man—brilliant, damaged, driven by grief and an almost pathological compulsion to protect what he considers his. Batman is the instrument of that compulsion. A weapon he forged from his own trauma."
Her fingers traced the curve of my hip bone, slipping beneath the thin string of my bikini bottom just enough to make my breath stutter. I pressed my thighs together involuntarily as heat pooled low in my belly. It was a reflexive response my traitorous succubus physiology served up every time someone touched me with even moderate intent.
"Bruce Wayne," Morgana continued, seemingly unbothered by the way my body was responding to her touch, or more likely, deriving quiet satisfaction from it, "is someone I can reason with. Batman would never have killed Mordred." And there—right there, in the half-second pause between "killed" and "Mordred"—I felt her fingers tighten fractionally against my skin before deliberately relaxing. "Batman," Morgana resumed after a moment, her composure rebuilt so seamlessly you'd never know it had fractured, "would have found the fourth option that nobody else considered—the one that neutralized the danger without spilling blood that didn't need spilling. That is why I respect him, even as I despise everything the Justice League represents." She leaned down, and I felt her lips brush the sensitive skin between my shoulder blades, barely there and yet devastating. "And," she added, her breath ghosting across my oiled skin, "I am aware that you have developed a fondness for his eldest adopted son. The acrobat with the irritatingly symmetrical face."
I snorted into the cushion. "Dick is not irritatingly symmetrical."
"He is. I've studied his bone structure. It's offensive."
"You've studied his bone structure?"
"Know thine enemies, darling."
I rolled onto my side, propping myself up on one elbow. The movement shifted my bikini top in ways that would have been indecent in any context other than a private poolside with the woman who'd seen me in far more compromising positions.
Morgana's gaze dropped briefly—appreciatively—to where the silk had shifted before returning to my face with infuriating composure.
"So let me get this straight," I said, squinting at her through the afternoon glare. "You moved us next door to the Batman—the single most paranoid, surveillance-obsessed, contingency-planning human being on the planet—because you think he's reasonable, and also because you're being magnanimous about the fact that I want to fuck his son. Whenever you finally let me lose my virginity that is…"
Morgana tilted her head, considering. A strand of dark hair fell across her cheekbone. "I said I could spare him," she clarified, one eyebrow arching with deliberate precision. "When the time eventually comes for me to settle my accounts with the Justice League, I will exempt Batman and his immediate circle from whatever retribution I deem appropriate. That is not magnanimity, Amara. That is tactical restraint motivated by the desire to avoid making my lovely apprentice cry."
"I wouldn't cry—"
"You would cry. You would be devastated, and then you would be furious with me, and then you would refuse to sleep in our bed for at least a few months, during which time you would dramatically relocate to one of the guest rooms and I would be forced to endure Bellatrix's cooking without your company at the table, which I refuse to do. Her pancakes are admittedly exceptional, but the dinner conversation is..."
"Unhinged?"
"I was going to say vivid."
I couldn't help the full laugh that shook my shoulders and sent ripples through the oiled skin of my stomach.
Morgana watched me with an expression I'd come to recognize. She loved making me laugh or just seeing my smile. She'd never admit it in those exact words.
I reached out and caught her wrist, pulling her hand to my lips and pressing a kiss to her knuckles. Her skin was slick with oil and warm from the sun.
"Thank you," I said quietly. "For thinking about all that."
"You are the most important person in my existence," she said simply. "Your happiness is not a concession. It is a priority."
The words settled into me—they were warm and glowing and faintly painful in the way that genuine tenderness always was when you'd spent most of your life without it. I held onto that feeling for a moment, turning it over in my mind. And then, because I was still me and sentimentality made me itchy, I said, "So when exactly is this revenge plot supposed to happen? Because from where I'm sitting, it seems like you've been pretty comfortable building a coven, buying mansions, and letting Bellatrix redecorate the kitchen with skull-shaped salt shakers."
Morgana's expression didn't change, but something behind it went very still. Her hand, still resting in mine, didn't twitch or pull away. She simply looked at me with those ancient, fathomless eyes, and for the space of three heartbeats, I saw the abyss that lived beneath her composure. The place where a thousand years of rage and loss and bitter, corroded grief pooled like black water at the bottom of a well.
Then she blinked, and it was gone.
"Revenge," she said mildly, "is not a meal best served in haste. It requires preparation. But when the moment arrives, the strike is absolute!"
It was a good answer I guessed. The truth—the one I would never, under any circumstances, voice aloud while Morgana's hand was anywhere near my body or my tail—was that I'd been watching something shift in her over the past weeks. Something subtle and gradual, like a tide retreating so slowly you didn't notice the shoreline had changed until you looked up and realized the water was a hundred yards away.
She talked about Mordred less.
Not that she'd ever discussed him frequently. It had always been oblique—references to "my son" folded into larger conversations about Merlin's betrayal or the Justice League's sins. But even those references were thinning. The raw, serrated quality they'd carried when I first became her apprentice—the way his name had sounded like a wound being reopened every time she spoke it—had softened into something closer to a scar. Still visible. Still tender if pressed. But healed enough to become less and less of an issue.
Maybe it was because she had me now. And Daphne and Astoria. And Bellatrix, however manufactured that particular bond might be. Maybe the family she'd assembled—piece by damaged piece, held together with dark magic and genuine affection and an alarming amount of sexual tension—had filled enough of the hollow that Mordred's absence had carved that revenge felt less urgent than preservation.
Or maybe she was just waiting for the perfect moment, as she claimed, and I was projecting my own desperate hope that she'd choose the life we were building over throwing it all away for one final epic battle with the league.
Either way, I kept my mouth shut, smiled sweetly, and let her continue rubbing oil into my hip.
"Speaking of cultivation," Morgana said, and the shift in her tone told me the Mordred thread had been neatly severed and filed away, "you mentioned visiting a rather interesting shop before we left for the cruise. Madame Xanadu's establishment, yes?"
I nodded, settling back against the lounger and adjusting my bikini top with a lazy tug. The fabric had slipped again during our conversation, and at this point I was barely wearing it at all.
"Xanadu's," I confirmed. "Tucked away in one of those impossible Gotham alleys that only appears when it wants to be found. The kind of place that smells like old parchment and makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up the moment you cross the threshold."
"I'm familiar with her work," Morgana said, her voice carrying a complicated weight. "Xanadu and I have... history. She's one of the few practitioners in the Western Hemisphere whose abilities I consider genuinely formidable, though her insistence on operating a retail establishment has always struck me as beneath her station."
"She thought I was you at first," I said. "Nearly hexed me before I got a word out. Then she figured out I was younger and relaxed. Barely."
Morgana's lips twitched. "Did she ask if you were my daughter or my clone?"
"Both. I told her we were going with 'twin sisters' per the current family mythology." I paused. "She looked like she wanted to ask follow-up questions but decided she'd rather keep her sanity intact."
"A wise woman." Morgana squeezed another palmful of oil and began working it into my calves, her fingers pressing firmly into the lean muscle. I let out a low, appreciative groan that I didn't bother suppressing.
"So." Morgana's thumbs dug into a knot behind my knee, and my toes curled reflexively. "What did you find for your half-demon paramour? I confess I've been curious since you mentioned it. Raven is... an unusual creature. Powerful in ways that most mortals cannot perceive, yet crippled by self-loathing and repression. Choosing a gift for someone like that requires a certain delicacy…"
I reached into my inventory and withdrew a small wooden box. The wood was dark, almost black, with a grain that shifted subtly when you tilted it, as though something moved beneath the polished surface. I set it on the lounger between us and lifted the lid.
Inside, resting on a bed of deep violet silk, was a bracelet.
At first glance, it looked deceptively simple. But when I picked it up, the metal warmed immediately in my palm, and the symbols pulsed once with faint light before settling into dormancy.
"Shadow-wrought silver," Morgana identified instantly, leaning forward with genuine interest. Her hair fell in a dark curtain around her face as she examined the piece without touching it. "Forged in the twilight realm between the physical world and the dimension of shadows. Extraordinarily rare. I haven't seen craftsmanship this refined in..." She paused, calculating. "At least three centuries."
"Xanadu called it a Veil Chain," I said, turning the bracelet slowly so the afternoon light caught the etchings. "The enchantment is made for empaths like her. It has automatic emotional dampening. Raven's had to filter out other people's emotions herself all her life. This is more like... a filter to take some of the load off of her. It takes the raw empathic input she's constantly drowning in and softens it. Reduces the volume without cutting the signal entirely."
Morgana nodded slowly. "Empaths of Raven's caliber are perpetually overwhelmed. Every person in proximity becomes a source of emotional noise—joy, grief, lust, rage, all of it pressing against her consciousness simultaneously. A filter that allows selective engagement rather than forced absorption would be..."
"Life-changing," I finished quietly. "Yeah." I turned the bracelet over, revealing a single small charm dangling from the central link—a tiny crescent moon carved from what appeared to be solidified darkness, its surface somehow absorbing rather than reflecting light.
"The gift is exceptional," she said, and I heard the genuine approval beneath her measured tone. "Raven will treasure it. Though I suspect it won't be enough for you to fully corrupt her half-black heart…"
I groaned at her playful jab.
The air around the manor suddenly shimmered!
Something large, fast, and decidedly not a bird had just slammed face-first into twelve acres of interlocking defensive enchantments designed to repel anything short of a ballistic missile.
"Ow!" The voice came from directly above us—high, bright, and carrying the particular tone of someone who was more surprised than hurt. Like a golden retriever bonking its nose on a glass door it hadn't noticed.
Morgana's hands stilled on my calf. I watched her fingers curl slightly—not reaching for a wand she didn't carry, but gathering ambient magic to her palms the way most people would ball their fists. A reflex born from a millennium of people trying to kill her when she wasn't paying attention.
I followed her gaze and squinted against the afternoon sun.
A woman hovered roughly forty feet above the pool deck.
Starfire floated with her legs tucked beneath her, one hand pressed to her forehead where she'd presumably collided with the invisible wall. Even from forty feet away, I could see the way her costume—if you could call two strips of alien metallic fabric stitched together with hope and Tamaranean engineering a costume—struggled valiantly to contain the physics-defying curves beneath it.
She suddenly glanced down. Her luminous green eyes found me on the lounger. Her entire face transformed with a delight so immediate and unfiltered that it was almost blinding.
"FRIEND AMARA!"
Starfire began waving with the full-body enthusiasm of someone who hadn't learned that a simple raised hand would suffice. Both arms windmilled in wide, exuberant arcs, which caused certain aspects of her anatomy to move in sympathetic rhythm beneath that inadequate costume.
Morgana's eyebrow climbed to a height I'd previously considered anatomically impossible.
"I have arrived to visit you before everyone else for your housewarming ceremony!" Starfire announced, her voice carrying across the grounds with the effortless projection of someone accustomed to being heard over the vacuum of space. "I flew as fast as I could so that I would be the first! I believe on Earth this is called 'getting the worm,' yes?"
I stared up at her.
Then I looked at Morgana.
"Our what?"
Morgana's expression had settled into the particular configuration she wore when reality was presenting her with something she hadn't anticipated and wasn't entirely sure how to categorize.
She shrugged. The most eloquent shrug I'd ever witnessed, communicating in a single economical gesture—I have no idea what this creature is talking about, I did not plan this, and I am choosing not to expend energy being alarmed by it.
I turned back to Starfire, who was still hovering and still waving, apparently content to remain floating indefinitely until someone addressed the situation.
"Starfire…?" I called up, shading my eyes with my hand, "there's no housewarming ceremony. We just moved in."
"Yes! That is the ceremony! You have warmed the house by moving into it, and now friends come to celebrate! This is Earth tradition, is it not?" Her head tilted to one side like a confused, gorgeous bird. "I researched this extensively on the Google."
Morgana made a quiet sound beside me that might have been a sigh or might have been the early stages of an aneurysm.
"Hold on," I said, sitting up fully on the lounger. "Let me get the ward to—Morgana, can you?"
Morgana was already raising her hand, fingers moving in the precise geometric patterns of her ward-manipulation technique. I felt the barrier ripple outward in concentric waves as she carved an opening large enough for a Tamaranean to pass through without triggering the defensive protocols. The last thing we needed was Starfire getting zapped by something Morgana had designed to repel interdimensional intruders—which, technically, Starfire absolutely was.
"The barrier is open," Morgana called upward, her voice carrying the measured politeness she reserved for situations she found bewildering but not immediately threatening. "Please enter before something else decides to test my wards. And next time please use the front door…"
Starfire shot downward with the speed and trajectory of a cheerful meteor. The air cracked around her as she decelerated from what must have been several hundred miles per hour to a dead stop approximately two feet above the pool deck. She landed with the lightness of a falling leaf, bare feet touching down on the warm tile without so much as a whisper of impact.
She was taller than me. Her shoulders were broader than mine, tapering to a waist that was narrow but muscled rather than delicate. Her thighs were thick with corded strength, her calves carved from whatever impossible material Tamaranean physiology was built from. And her chest—there was simply no way to avoid noticing it, because Starfire's breasts existed in a state of aggressive prominence that defied both Earth physics and the structural integrity of her costume. They were large, firm, and riding high on her chest with the casual confidence of someone whose species apparently didn't believe in gravitational limitations.
She beamed at me with that thousand-watt smile, the one that was simultaneously the most genuine and the most devastating weapon in her considerable arsenal, and then closed the distance between us in three long strides and swept me into a hug that lifted my feet off the ground.
"Amara!" She squeezed with enthusiasm that would have cracked a normal person's ribs. My enhanced durability absorbed the pressure, but I still felt my spine pop in three places. Her skin was hot—not warm, hot.
My succubus instincts purred. They always purred around Starfire. The woman radiated desire and sensuality.
"You look so beautiful in your tiny swimming garment!" Starfire exclaimed, pulling back just enough to hold me at arm's length and conduct a thorough, shameless visual assessment of my body. Her glowing eyes traced the contours of my bikini-clad form with the unabashed directness. "The black fabric complements your pale skin in a way that is most striking. I am very jealous of friend Raven for staking her claim upon you first. If I had known you were available for the claiming, I would have pursued you with great vigor on the cruise ship instead of wasting time with those other humans."
"Star—"
"Their lovemaking was adequate but uninspired. Nothing like the sounds friend Raven made when you—"
"STAR—"
She blinked, registering my expression with mild confusion. "Was that too much information for Earth conversation?"
I sighed. "Little bit."
"I see." She nodded solemnly, filing this away with the same diligent attention she applied to all cultural learning. Then she released me and turned her smile toward Morgana.
"Supervillain Morgana!" Starfire greeted, with the same cheerful warmth. "It is lovely to see you again! Your home is most beautiful. The grounds remind me of the imperial gardens on Tamaran, though I noticed your villa has many more poisonous plants growing around it from the air."
Morgana blinked.
I realized this was possibly one of the few times I'd ever seen Morgana genuinely thrown off-balance by someone's sheer force of personality.
Starfire was a six-foot-tall alien princess with the combat experience of a seasoned warrior and the social approach of a golden retriever who'd just discovered you had treats. There was no template in Morgana's thousand-year-old playbook for how to respond to someone who called you "Supervillain Morgana" with genuine affection and zero irony.
"Why... thank you," Morgana said after a beat, her voice modulated to a careful neutrality that I recognized as her I'm going to accept this situation and move forward because the alternative is admitting I'm confused register. Her lips curved into something that was almost—but not quite—a real smile. "The gardens are still being established, but I appreciate the comparison. And yes, I am a fan of poisonous plants… I appreciate the comparison with Tamaran's royal gardens though."
Starfire's eyes widened with genuine delight. "You know of Tamaran?"
"I am over a thousand years old, dear girl. I've had conversations with beings from rather a lot of star systems. I've known we weren't alone in the universe for a very long time…"
"Oh! Then we have much to discuss! I would love to hear about your encounters with—"
"Starfire," I interrupted gently, stepping between them before this detoured. "You said something about everyone else coming?"
Her attention swung back to me, and her expression shifted to something pleased. "Yes! Friend Dick discovered that you had moved into the residence beside his own. He was... very animated about this discovery." She paused, searching for the right word, her brow creasing with the effort of translation. "I believe the Earth word is 'flustered.' He contacted friend Raven and friend Kara, and they agreed to visit today to welcome you to the neighborhood!"
"And they told you this... how?"
Starfire's lower lip pushed forward, her brows drawing together. "They did not tell me," she admitted. "I overheard Raven speaking with Dick through her communicator." The pout deepened. "I do not think they intended to invite me…"
Something tugged in my chest, it was a feeling that sat awkwardly between sympathy and discomfort.
I knew the story. Dick had walked in on Starfire with three strangers, Starfire had been genuinely baffled by his devastation because Tamaranean culture didn't frame communal intimacy as betrayal, and the ensuing emotional wreckage had severely damaged the Titans as a team. Dick was still raw. And Starfire genuinely couldn't understand why sharing physical pleasure had cost her the person she loved most.
It wasn't my place to fix that. I wasn't even sure it could be fixed. But I couldn't bring myself to point out that her presence here was going to make the next few hours approximately ten thousand percent more uncomfortable for everyone involved if Dick was also going to be here soon.
"Well," I said, "you're here now, and I'm glad you came. Can I get you something to drink?"
The pout vanished like storm clouds parting. "I would enjoy one of the frozen fruity beverages with the small umbrella! Cyborg introduced me to these recently, and they are my new favorite Earth invention!"
Damn, we needed to get some house elves or something because I was sure none of us knew how to make anything like that…?
"I'll see what we have…" Then I paused and looked back over my shoulder. "Star, one question—when you said Dick was coming today, did you mean—"
The front gates chimed. I felt the wards pulse gently as they registered three distinct presences at the front door—one human, one half-human, and one Kryptonian.
"—now," I finished flatly. "He meant now."
Morgana, who had settled back onto her lounger, glanced up at me with an expression of pointed amusement. "It seems your suitors have arrived, darling."
"They're not my suitors—"
"Three heroes arriving simultaneously to visit you at your new residence, all of whom are currently competing for your romantic attention?" Morgana ticked each point off on her fingers with deliberate precision. "In my era, this would have been called a courtship procession. Though admittedly, the courtship processions of my era involved significantly more jousting and fewer skintight costumes."
"Nobody is jousting for me."
"And they won't if you keep up that defensive attitude..." Morgana teased me. "...I suppose it's all the same. I happen to have a—meeting—scheduled for later with some old associates I've only recently gotten back into contact with."
I looked down at myself. The black bikini that had seemed perfectly reasonable for a private afternoon of sunbathing and being molested by my mentor was now, in the context of receiving visitors—superhero visitors, multiple of whom had unresolved sexual tension with me—looking like a liability. The top had been gradually losing its battle with gravity throughout Morgana's massage, and at this point, the silk triangles were covering approximately sixty percent of what they were nominally responsible for. The bottoms weren't much better. The oil Morgana had rubbed into every accessible inch of my skin caught the light with a slick, golden sheen that made me look like I'd been specifically prepared for consumption.
If Dick, Raven, and Kara walked around that corner and found me like this, nobody was going to be able to maintain eye contact for longer than three seconds. Which, under normal circumstances, would have been entertaining as hell.
I wasn't above enjoying the effect my body had on people, especially people I was attracted to. But with Starfire already here, and the emotional history between her and Dick hanging in the air like unexploded ordnance, this afternoon was going to be complicated enough without me looking like a centerfold.
"I should change," I said, already heading for the glass doors that led into the manor's ground floor.
"Why?" Starfire asked, tilting her head with genuine confusion. "You look wonderful. On Tamaran, we would consider this formal attire."
Morgana made a sound that might have been a laugh, quickly suppressed behind a cough.
"Because," I called back over my shoulder as I pulled open the door, "the last time superheroes showed up unannounced while I wasn't wearing pants, I ended up fighting in the nude in front of an underground society of masked aristocrats, and I'd rather not make that a pattern."
I heard Starfire lean toward Morgana and whisper, loudly enough to carry across the entire pool deck, "Is that a common occurrence for her?"
"It only happened the one time, but that's still more than a normal person might expect," Morgana replied.
…I took the fastest shower of my life!
Not because I was particularly dirty, though Morgana's oil had turned my skin into something that could have greased a slip-and-slide. It was because I could feel the emotional pressure building downstairs the way you feel a storm front rolling in before the first crack of thunder. Three superheroes and one uninvited Tamaranean ex-girlfriend, all crammed into a house they'd never been inside, with no host present and only my mother Bellatrix as their welcoming committee!
The water was still running when I heard Bellatrix's voice echo up the stairwell, cheerfully informing someone that "the sitting room is through there, don't touch anything, some of the artifacts bite, and if you need the toilet it's down the hall but the third door on the left is cursed so don't open that one."
I didn't even bother drying my hair properly. I threw on the first dress my hands found in the walk-in closet Morgana had insisted I needed, a tight black number that stopped well above mid-thigh and clung to every curve like it had been painted on. The neckline plunged low enough to show the inner swells of my breasts without crossing into outright obscenity, and the back was cut to just above the base of my spine, leaving my shoulder blades exposed. It was the kind of dress that said I'm not trying to impress you while simultaneously screaming please look at me, which was basically my entire aesthetic philosophy distilled into fabric.
I shoved my feet into a pair of simple black flats, finger-combed my still-damp hair into something approximating intentional dishevelment, and bolted for the stairs.
I made it exactly four steps down the main staircase before nearly colliding with Daphne and Astoria, who were ascending from the opposite direction.
Daphne pulled up short. Astoria stood one step behind her sister.
"Where's the fire?" Daphne asked, her blue eyes sweeping over my outfit with the particular kind of appraisal that was fifty percent aesthetic judgment and fifty percent something considerably less innocent.
"We have visitors," I said, slightly breathless from my sudden sprint. "Superhero visitors. Three of them. Possibly four, depending on whether Starfire counts as a visitor or an atmospheric event."
Astoria's eyebrows climbed. "The ones you told us about? The acrobat, the empath, and the alien girl who could bench-press a building? And one more as well?"
"That's three of them, yes. Starfire arrived first. She flew directly into our wards at approximately the speed of sound and then announced she was here for our housewarming ceremony."
"We're having a housewarming ceremony?" Daphne's tone sounded upset.
"Did anyone think to inform us? I would have worn something presentable!" Astoria added while staring at her own frilly white dress.
"You both look incredible and you know it. But no, we're not having a housewarming. These are just some of my—friends—stopping by for a quick visit," I said and noticed neither of them looked pleased regardless.
Daphne's expression shifted through several complex configurations. First came recognition of the names, because she'd heard me talk about all of them. Then came the calculation, the quick mental sorting of who these people were and what their presence in our home meant for security, secrecy, and the delicate equilibrium of our coven's operations. And finally, settling in last came the jealousy.
Daphne was far too composed to let it show overtly. But I saw it in the way her jaw tightened fractionally and in the slight narrowing of her eyes that she probably thought was imperceptible.
Astoria, who had never once in her life been subtle about anything, was considerably more direct. "So," she said, crossing her arms beneath her chest and cocking one hip in a pose that managed to be simultaneously adorable and accusatory, "the famous hero friends are here. The ones you apparently go on dates with and dance with at nightclubs and fight sea monsters alongside while we sit at home studying transfiguration like good little students?"
"You were just reading romance novels instead of training," I reminded her. "I know this because I can smell the pages from here."
Astoria had the grace to blush, but she didn't back down. "Casting magic all day is boring and tiring! That's beside the point!"
She and Daphne had given up their old lives, their family connections, their safety, to align themselves with Morgana's coven. Their world had contracted to this manor and the people inside it. Mine kept expanding.
I reached out and caught Astoria's chin between my thumb and forefinger, tilting her face up so she had no choice but to meet my eyes. Her skin was warm and impossibly soft beneath my touch, and I felt the familiar tingle of my [Lewd Touch] ability stirring at the contact.
"Nobody," I said huskily and noticed her shivering, "is enough for a succubus. But I need you to hear something, and I need you both to believe it—you and Daphne are not replaceable. You're not interchangeable. You're not placeholders I'm keeping warm while I chase prettier distractions."
Astoria's blush deepened from pink to crimson, spreading down her neck and across the exposed skin above her neckline. Her lips parted slightly, and I watched her pupils dilate as the sincerity in my voice hit something vulnerable.
"The heroes downstairs are... complicated," I continued, releasing her chin but letting my fingers trail briefly along her jaw. "They're people I care about in ways I'm still figuring out. But this, what we have here, this coven, this family, you two and Morgana and even Bellatrix and her unhinged breakfast songs? This is the foundation. Everything else gets built on top of it. Not instead of it."
Daphne, who had been watching this exchange with the careful attention of someone cataloging every word for later analysis, finally spoke. Her voice was quieter than usual, stripped of its habitual composure. "You mean that?"
It wasn't a question, but I answered it anyway. "I mean it."
Something shifted behind Daphne's eyes. The jealousy didn't vanish entirely, because Daphne was too honest with herself to pretend emotions away on command, but it settled. Filed itself into a manageable compartment. She straightened, smoothed an invisible wrinkle from her blouse, and gave me a nod that communicated approximately seventeen things simultaneously, chief among them: I believe you, I'm still not entirely happy about it, and we will be discussing this in greater detail later, preferably while naked.
"Well then," Daphne said, reaching back to hook her arm through Astoria's and pulling her sister gently away from me. "I suppose we'll leave you to your heroic guests. Come on, Tori. Let's go finish our 'transfiguration research.'"
Astoria allowed herself to be tugged but twisted to look back over her shoulder. "Tell the empath girl I said hi. And tell the alien one that her outfit from the cruise was fantastic. I saw the pictures online."
"There are pictures online?" I mumbled as I watched them go back to the room they shared together. And Astoria—the pureblood princess—knows how to use the internet?
Then I took a breath, squared my shoulders, and headed for the sitting room.
The sitting room was one of the spaces Morgana had personally overseen during renovation, and it showed. The walls were a deep charcoal grey, the kind of color that absorbed light and made everything inside the room feel more present, more saturated. An enormous stone fireplace dominated the far wall, its mantel carved with symbols I recognized as Old English runes mixed with something far older and less identifiable. The furniture was dark leather, arranged in two facing configurations, a long sofa against the left wall and a matching sofa opposite, with a low glass-topped coffee table between them. Tall windows lined the right side, their heavy curtains pulled back to let in the afternoon sun, which fell in warm bars across the Oriental rug that covered most of the hardwood floor.
Bellatrix had, as I predicted, deposited the guests in this room and simply left. I could hear her somewhere deeper in the manor, the faint sounds of what might have been singing or might have been an incantation drifting through the walls. With Bellatrix, both were equally likely and equally concerning.
The scene I walked into was exactly as uncomfortable as I'd feared, except somehow worse because it had apparently been marinating in silence for several minutes before my arrival.
Dick, Raven, and Kara were crowded together on the left sofa. Dick sat in the middle, which I suspected was less a deliberate choice and more the result of Kara and Raven having independently claimed the two end positions and leaving him no alternative. He was wearing civilian clothes, a fitted navy shirt with the sleeves pushed up to his forearms and dark jeans. His dark hair was slightly windswept. He looked uncomfortably handsome in the way that Dick Grayson always looked uncomfortably handsome.