Premise
Nine months into estate life, the physical discipline and ritual draughts push Thomas to his sensory limits. When the confrontation in the study leaves his nerves raw, Selene guides him through the dark garden corridor back to Maya's care.
From the Manuscript
Rue turned from the fire.
"Selene." Plain. "Take him back to her. Make sure he gets there in one piece."
Thomas was still in the wingback chair — pupils blown, shirt open at the throat where the heat had found him, Draught still peaking through his blood. Talia's taste ghosted his mouth. Her no set in his jaw anyway. Maya's name underneath like something he could climb back to.
Selene felt it in her chest before she named it. *Home. Whole.*
"Okay," she said.
Rue's mouth moved at the corner. "Talia and I have the rest."
She crossed to him and put her hand on his shoulder — the same touch as supper, the same steadiness he'd leaned into when she'd fed Maya first and still found him afterward. Shop heat met ivory silk through thin cotton. His skin was scorching.
"Up," she said.
He rose when she rose, unsteady once, and her other hand caught his elbow. His face went hot. Talia's mouth was still in his blood somewhere, embarrassment and want braided so tight he tried to walk straight and failed. On the second step his whole weight listed into her — denim and muscle and Draught, heavy enough to change her breath.
She didn't pull away. Her palm spread on his back and held.
"Take all the time you need," Rue said. Not to him. To her.
Heat answered low in Selene's belly — the hunger she'd told Rue about in the shower, finally a man in her hands instead of a sentence, his heat conducting through her palms like the Draught had nowhere else to bleed.
Thomas cleared his throat. "Maya—"
"Yes." Simple. "We're going to her. I've got you."
They moved toward the door. At the threshold she paused with his shoulder under her palm, coals behind them, Talia still in the chair by the fire, eyes on him, and wanted the next room to go right for Maya. For him. For what she'd believed since supper.
Then she guided him out.
The corridor ran garden-side and cold, October pressed against the glass. Thomas swayed once on the second turn and she caught his elbow until his weight found hers — chest to shoulder, his breath hot at her throat, iron and sweat under the Draught's sweet wrongness. Still peaking — skin too loud, nerves wide open — but Talia's no lived in his jaw and Maya's line held. Everything else the Draught had opened had nowhere to go yet except south.
"You're doing fine," she said.
"Okay." Rough in his throat.
When the lit windows showed through the garden glass his shoulders dropped — relief aimed at the jacket on the hook, the woman inside. *Every time.* She heard it without sound.
She stopped him at the long window overlooking the garden. Cold on the glass, his heat at her side. His breath had to find hers before she let him move — inhale, exhale, his chest rising against her arm.
"Almost there," she said.
"Yeah." One word. Aimed right.
She knocked once, waited, knocked again.
Maya opened on the second sound in a sweater and bare feet, hazel eyes on Thomas first — on his blown pupils, shirt open, the wrong sweetness on his skin.
His face broke open when he saw her.
"He's with us now," Selene said — warm, loving, the register Maya had always known. "He needs you tonight."
Maya's hand found his chest. Heat through wool and cotton. Her fingers curled once against his sternum — inventory, claim — and he leaned into it like the kitchen promise had a body memory.
"Okay," Maya said. "Come in."
— Belief and Love, Chapter 6