Valerius's thumb on her lip was an anchor, dragging her brutally back to a reality she knew all too well.
It was the claiming of the flesh, the tax that men of power levied on the bodies they considered their property.
A part of herself, a ragged girl in a dark alley at the beginning of her journey, would have wanted to scream, to bite, to flee.
But that girl was dead. Catherine was the Oracle, and the Oracle did not flee. She controlled.
With calculated slowness, she raised her own hand, not to push his away, but to envelop it. Her slender, cool fingers closed around the Magistrate's thick, warm hand.
She drew it gently from her face, and before he could see it as a rejection, she brought it to her lips. She placed a kiss not on his fingers, which would have been a gesture of submission, but in the center of his palm.
A strange, intimate, and dominant act.
An act of devotion to his strength, his power.
Valerius was taken aback.
He had expected submission or feigned resistance. He was not prepared for this act of active veneration.
A growl of pure pleasure and satisfied ego rumbled in his chest. The magenta thread of physical desire intensified, becoming nearly scarlet.
"By the gods…" he murmured. He pulled her against him, his hands exploring the curve of her hips, the silk of her dress an obstacle soon to be ignored.
"You are a marvel. A true marvel."
As his kisses became more greedy, crashing against her mouth, her neck, Catherine closed her eyes. She fragmented herself, as she had done so many times before.
One part of her mind registered the sensations, simulating the appropriate responses a sigh, a shiver, a caress in return.
But her true self, the icy core of her consciousness, remained aloof, an observer and an analyst. She was both the actress on the stage and the critic in the box seats.
He lifted her and carried her to the large desk, sweeping aside maps and parchments with a backhand that sent them fluttering to the floor. It was an act of primal power, the victory of desire over order and law.
Catherine accepted it, her body molding to his desires, but her mind was a scalpel, ready to dissect.
The act that followed was brutal and selfish, the assault of a man accustomed to taking without concern for his partner's pleasure.
But Catherine was an expert in the art of feigning.
She became a mirror, reflecting his own passion back at him, amplifying his grunts with her own sighs, transforming his lust into a shared storm. And all the while, she whispered words in his ear.
Not words of love or submission.
Words of the Oracle.
"A man's power… is purest at its peak…" she gasped against his skin. "Destiny is not written, Magistrate… it is forged… in fire…"
These words, mixed with physical pleasure, acted on him like a narcotic. He wasn't just possessing a woman; he was communing with destiny itself. He was the center of the universe, his pleasure the engine of creation. His ego, already immense, swelled to divine proportions.
Catherine felt the moment approaching.
The breaking point.
La petite mort.
The moment the mind, overwhelmed by the body, lowers all its guards.
She focused all her energy, all her vision, on him.
She didn't just look at his threads; she plunged through them, aiming for the core of his consciousness.
As his body tensed for orgasm, a hoarse cry escaping his lips, his mind opened to her like a book struck by lightning.
It was not coherent thought, but a torrent of raw images, sounds, and emotions. She saw a briefcase of coins handed to a man in the shadows Silas.
She saw Valerius's panic in the face of the dancer from the Jade Isles not fear of the woman, but of her owner, a rival ambassador. But beneath all that, there was a deeper, more terrifying image. A name.
A face. A scarred man, with eyes as cold as a tombstone. And a name that flashed through Valerius's mind, not as a thought, but as a prayer or a curse.
The Rook.
The psychic backlash was so violent Catherine felt as if she had been physically struck. She gasped, for real this time, as the stolen knowledge seared itself into her mind.
Valerius collapsed on top of her, trembling, sweating, completely spent. "My Oracle…" he mumbled, euphoric. "My perfect… acquisition…"
He fell asleep almost instantly, a dead weight of satisfied flesh.
Catherine lay motionless beneath him, her heart beating at a slow, steady rhythm. Her breathing was calm, but her mind was a maelstrom.
Silas was just a pawn.
Valerius, a more important pawn, but a pawn nonetheless. Madame Eva, Dolores, all of them were part of a game of which they could only see a tiny fraction of the board.
But she, Catherine, had just caught a glimpse of the player moving the pieces in the shadows.
The Rook.
It was not a name she knew. But she felt it. It was the name of a true power, a foundation of this city's underworld, as solid and ruthless as a fortress.
She looked at Valerius's sleeping face. Yesterday, he was her mountain.
Tonight, he was just a step.
A simple springboard into a much larger, and far more deadly, game.