"I got lucky." He'd had help from Sion, from Elyurias. Otherwise he would have certainly succumbed to those wounds long before the end of the Holy Day. Instead he'd survived and walked away, stained and bloody, but whole. "Luckier than I deserved."

Sion had deserved it. Other, better people had deserved it. Rat had simply been gifted in enduring here better people couldn't.

He tilted his head thoughtfully, dropping a kiss on Marius' neck before he could think with his brain. When they'd crashed into that room at Kagura, they'd been clouded and lusty but they'd felt so very alive despite it. Even if only for a moment, he wanted to feel that alive again. He wanted to feel Marius.