I kissed him back, I couldn’t help it. The soft pattering rain wasn’t real, except for the amphisbaena thumping down at intervals; the beautiful trees and the garden weren’t real, the pavilion wasn’t real, they were all just awful hollow lies, but he was real: his mouth and his arms round me and his body overheated against me, trickles of rain and sweat trapped against my cheek and his breath gasping out of the sides of his mouth even as he tried to keep kissing me, wanting me, his heart pounding so hard I could feel it through my chest, unless that was my own heart.
