A/N: So, I broke my own rule and started a multi-chapter fic for a series that isn't finished yet. I'm guessing this'll probably be six chapters max. Unfortunately you're going to have to wade through my painful attempt at a plot to get to the good stuff. Just hang in there.

Home

Being back at Court after months in Palm Springs was a jarring experience to say the least.

For one thing, I'd forgotten how restrictive Court life could be. Sure, I'd spent most of my time here partying and hooking up with dhampir girls – much to my parents' disapproval – but I'd been as trapped in that lifestyle as Sage had been trapped with the Alchemists. I wasn't a college art student here. I was nothing, just a troubled party boy with no real friends and no future.

The phone call that brought Sage and me back here had taken us all by surprise. Not the call itself – we'd been waiting for Lissa to give us the all-clear for months. But it quickly became obvious that Lissa wasn't just calling about the possibility of her sister's safe return to Court. She wanted to speak to me. And one other member of our group.

"It's a preliminary discussion," she'd said, in that new Queenly voice of hers. "I think it should be safe for Jill to return soon, but alongside the new bill, there are a few more matters that have to be settled. Jill's Guardians should stay with her, of course." She'd paused. "I wonder if you could spare the older Alchemist girl? I've heard interesting reports about her involvement in the Strigoi experiments, and I'd like to discuss them with her. Face-to-face."

My blood ran cold, and I forgot that I was speaking to my Queen.

"You're not getting a drop of Sydney's blood," I warned her. "I don't care what you've heard. If that's your plan, forget it."

Lissa sighed. "Sonya told me you'd react badly," she said, all formalities gone. "Please, Adrian, you know I'd never harm a guest of my Court. I just want to talk to her."

I'd started to ask just what exactly she wanted to talk to Sydney about when Sydney herself had prised the phone from my hand. It was time, she said. She needed to find out what exactly made her blood so special. A few minutes later, the matter was decided without me. Sydney and I were going to Court.

And now, here we were. Or, here I was. Sydney was still sleeping, attempting to adjust to Moroi hours so she'd be ready for our 'early-morning' meeting with Lissa. I'd woken early, unable to fall back into my old sleeping patterns. Yesterday, I'd woken to sunshine. Today, I'd woken in the early afternoon and then wandered around the shadowy Court in a daze for almost an hour before realising that since most vampires still lived on a nocturnal schedule, the day wouldn't begin until sunset. When had I started to like the sun and heat of Palm Springs regardless of how sick and drowsy it made me? I hadn't even realised I'd grown accustomed to living diurnally.

I wandered into another hallway, wondering how early would be too early to visit Lissa. She'd arranged a meeting for nine o'clock, but I could always hang around in her rooms for a while. I couldn't go back to my parents' house; my father was away on business, thank God, but seeing my mother's belongings packed up in boxes and storage crates made me feel ill. And my own rooms looked wrong somehow, like they belonged to someone different now. Or maybe it just seemed that way because I was different.

Just a couple of months ago I'd resented being forced to live in Palm Springs. Now, I couldn't imagine returning to the life I'd had before, and no matter how much Lissa insisted that this was just a preliminary discussion, I knew what this meeting really meant. She'd done it. The new law was all but signed, and Jill was safe at last. Meaning we'd be returning much sooner than expected.

The prospect of coming back here and going about my old routine – waking as the sun set, avoiding everyone I knew, drinking until the sun rose – drove me crazy. The rational part of my brain knew that things were different now. I wasn't that person. I didn't have to stay at Court. I could stay sober, I could get a job, I could rent an apartment and pay my own bills. I could stay with Sydney in Palm Springs until she took down Alicia and reformed the Alchemists once and for all, and then we could buy a small place somewhere close to St. Vlad's so I'd be near Jill. But those plans seemed flimsy and stupid when I tried to think about the specifics. I didn't know what Sydney would make of the future I envisioned for us. Would it fit with her plans? What were her plans? Neither of us knew what the Alchemists had in store for her, and that terrified me way more than my own impending future.

All I wanted to do now was find somewhere to sit and sketch while I waited for Sydney to wake up, but being back here seemed to suck all the inspiration dry from me. I paced back to my rooms and checked my phone again, deliberating. Sydney was only one room away – Lissa's men had offered to house her in a hotel not far from Court, mindful of the usual Alchemists hang-ups when it came to being under the same roof as thousands of vampires, but my Sage had fixed them with a steely, authoritative gaze, and said that the rooms next to mine would be just fine, thank you very much. If this trip had come at any other time, we'd probably have been more cautious, but Sydney's sister had been a constant stifling presence and despite the circumstances, we'd welcomed the chance to actually spend some time alone together for a change.

Of course, we hadn't counted on the time difference. So far, we'd spent most of our time here sleeping. In separate rooms, unfortunately, since Lissa's guards had lingered for a while and we'd been too tired last night to risk sneaking into each other's rooms.

I reached my guest apartment and slumped back onto the four-poster bed as soon as I entered, but an odd hissing noise made me sit back up almost immediately, staring at the front door. Green smoke was issuing from it. The doorknob sizzled and fell to the floor. The door swung open, and there was my girl, standing right front of me as if my thoughts had summoned her. Her entire aura was alight with the fiery glow of magic.

"Ever heard of knocking, Sage?" I asked mildly, trying not to look too taken aback. "You could have caught me in any state of undress."

She rolled her eyes as she closed the door and sealed it with some sort of charm. "Lissa is housing other guests just next door," she reminded me. "I was being cautious. Knocking might have alerted them, but I can easily fix this with another spell."

I gestured to my smouldering carpet. "Do you have a spell for fixing burned rugs, too?"

Sydney looked down and covered her mouth with her hand. "Oops," she said, staring at the still-smoking doorknob in dismay. "That's not going to go unnoticed by the cleaning staff."

I laughed, too pleased to see her to care. "This is Adrian Ivashkov's room," I reminded her. "The cleaning staff will be relieved that it's not worse."

Sydney rolled her eyes again at that, but in the next instant she was on the bed beside me, greeting me with a too-short kiss on the cheek. "Sorry about the break-in," she mumbled into my shoulder. "I just wanted to see you before our audience with the queen."

"And you wanted to catch me naked too," I teased, "admit it."

She shoved me back onto the bed and crawled on top of me. "I wouldn't have minded that," she said, grinning against my lips. I leaned forward and tried to kiss her, but she was in a hurry. She leaned back, her hands sliding down my chest as she began to quickly, methodologically unbutton my shirt. I groaned as her soft, warm hands met my bare skin.

"Jesus, Sage," I managed. "You're not even going to kiss me first? I feel used."

Sydney sat upright, resting her palms on my abdomen as she straddled me. "I haven't been able to think of anything but this for days," she admitted, her voice husky. "Not since... you know."

I did. The day before we'd been summoned to Court, one of our daily make-out sessions had gotten a little bit more heated than we'd planned. Okay, a lot more heated. We'd been practically seconds from tearing the rest of each other's clothes off when Sydney had regained her senses and stopped us both for Jill's sake. Ever since that moment, things had been different between us. The tension had been so thick on the plane journey over here that I'd been half-tempted to invite her to join the mile high club with me. I still wanted her first time to be special though, and the counter of an airplane bathroom didn't really scream romance.

Sydney didn't seem so in control of her senses now. Her cheeks were rosy and she stared down at me with lidded eyes, biting her lip as she slowly traced her fingers across my chest. Fuck, she was so gorgeous like this. I let my head fall back onto the pillows and shut my eyes as she bent over me, teasing me with kisses on my throat and jaw and cheeks – anywhere but my mouth. My hands left her hips and I tugged her shirt up, my fingers finding familiar flesh and digging in. In moments like these I just wished I could crawl beneath her skin and live in a world of yellow and purple light and warm curves and soft moans and that fiery, all-consuming heat that always burned between us.

I opened my eyes as the weight above me lessened, and had the pleasure of seeing Sydney sit up to yank her shirt over her head, revealing a bra I'd never seen before – delicate and green and lacy. I sat up, rucking her skirt up to the top of her thighs as I bent down to kiss her skin where it was softest, just above her breast. She sighed, wrapping her fingers through my hair as her eyes fluttered closed. I took full advantage of her momentary distraction, turning us both and pinning her to the bed, covering her body with my own. She opened her eyes and smiled up at me.

"Can I at least kiss you properly before this goes any further?" I asked.

I didn't wait for an answer. I pressed my mouth to hers, teasing her bottom lip with the barest of brushes. She tasted of mint – a sure sign that she'd come here deliberately for this. I grinned and licked her lip with the tip of my tongue and her hand tightened in my hair as she crushed her mouth to mine, finally letting me kiss her properly.

Jesus. As much as I loved all the other stuff, I could do this forever. Just kissing. Long, deep kisses. Slow, languid kisses. Clumsy, sleepy kisses. Fierce, passionate kisses. My Sage was an expert kisser – not surprising, since she'd always been better at everything than anyone else. If I ever had to justify our relationship to anyone, human or Moroi, that's what I'd tell them first. That Sydney Sage was incredibly gifted in the art of kissing, and it would be a crime for them to deny me the pleasures of having her as a kissing partner.

I dragged my lips away from hers, sliding down her body. Her neck was my second favourite place to kiss. We had to be especially careful nowadays not to leave any visible marks, but I loved the reaction I always got from her when I kissed the soft spot just below her ear. A breathy little moan, no louder than a sigh. It was one of the first sounds I'd ever elicited from her, when we'd kissed for the second time that night in the fraternity house. No matter how many times I'd kissed her since or how many other sounds I'd heard from her, I still loved that one the most.

I was rewarded by her signature moan and a short gasp when I sucked and then carefully nipped at her summer-smelling skin. I grinned again, and my hands left her thighs, ducking beneath the silky-soft skirt she wore and venturing higher. Sydney's eyes flickered open in surprise.

"I know," I panted. I inched my traitorous hands back down. "We need to stop. For Jill's sake." It was like a mantra now. We need to stop. For Jill's sake. It didn't matter that Jill had seen me do much worse. We always stopped at whatever Sydney felt comfortable with Jill seeing her do.

Sydney grabbed my hand, stopping its descent. "It's okay," she gasped.

I froze. "What?"

Sydney drew back and met my eyes. "I wanted it to be a surprise for tonight," she mumbled, but after a short pause to catch her breath, she carried on. "Remember that charm Alicia had that blocked you from using your magic against her?" She spoke in a rush, as if she'd been keeping this from me for a while and now she couldn't wait to get the words out. "Well, I looked into it. One of my sisters in the Stelle knew of a spell that blocks vampire magic, and she helped me recreate it." Sydney flashed me a sly, triumphant smile. "I phoned home just before I broke in. Right now, Jill is wearing a pendant that completely blocks the psychic link between you two. It's only temporary," she added quickly. "I know how important the bond is to both of you. I just thought some privacy could be useful in times like these." She bit her lip and squeezed my hand. "Is that okay?"

Was that okay? For a moment, I could only gape at her, once again awestruck by my girlfriend's brilliance and ingenuity. Then it hit me.

We could do anything.

No limits. No more stopping for Jill's sake.

And then, before I could say anything, before I'd even decided which hidden part of her I wanted to kiss or touch first, an interruption came in the form of three sharp knocks on the door. We both froze, staring at each other.

"Mr. Ivashkov?" The Guardian's voice was dull and professional and probably the very last thing I wanted to hear. "The Queen will see you now."