The Sorceress is different.
It isn't a question - just a statement of fact.
Like everything else that's part of the past, part of That Which No One Talks About Anymore, they keep him locked away, in the dungeons underneath the castle. They keep him there for months. She's the only one who comes down to see him.
She's different. He notices that.
The turn of her lips, the way her eyes look at him - everywhere she is softness and roundness and warmth when he is used to sharp angles and hollowed cheeks and a twisting look in her eye. It's different now. She keeps her hair straight instead of the rigid curls she used to keep, looser flowing dresses -
Everywhere and everything, she is trying to ooze openness and looseness and relaxation. Azkadellia used to be tight and constrained, corsets laced up extra tight, breath pushed out with all the insecurities and the fears, darkness lingering in the corners, and now, Az - not Azkadellia, just Az - is all warmth and cheeks pinked up with pinching.
She tries to pretend everything is all right now.
They all do.
He's freed soon after, and he knows he can't stay in the palace employ. He's been too marked for that.
He packs up his things, does one last tour of the palace.
She finds him, of course. Accidentally.
"Why - " she says, voice faltering. "You stayed. For so long."
He nods.
Her voice goes quieter. "I did such terrible things. I made you do such terrible things."
"Princess."
"Az," she corrects, voice shaking. Her hands tremor.
And in that moment, everything makes sense even though he isn't even sure he understands any of it. His bag drops to the floor with a loud thump and he just pushes her by the shoulders against the wall, his mouth hot against hers.
She shakes against him, but she remembers. He knows she does.
Her eyes are shut as he just pushes his hands up underneath her loose skirt, his palms skimming up the insides of her thighs.
"Zero," she whispers.
"I wasn't even sure you'd remember my name," he murmurs, swiping his tongue across her earlobe.
"Of course," she gasps, as he runs his knuckles along her. "I remember everything."
His touch is rough and demanding, pushing hard against her, the fabric rough against her sensitive skin as he just rubs in circles. Her mouth opens silently as her head pushes back against the wall, and he just takes the opportunity to push the fabric of her underwear aside, to brush her naked sex with his bare fingertips until she is hissing and surging her hips forward.
"Princess," he mumbles against her lips, and she leans back, skimming her tongue along the hollow of his throat as he pushes two fingers inside her.
He works his fingers deftly, expertly inside her; it doesn't take long.
When her breath hitches in her throat, her voice humming a little higher, he brushes her jaw with the fingers of his free hand.
"Look at me," he demands.
She isn't the hard girl he once knew - he pushes his fingers insistently against her hair; look at me - and when her eyes refocus on his, he drags the butt of his hand against her sensitive clit and she comes, her eyelashes fluttering.
"Zero?"
He withdraws his fingers, sucking them into his mouth.
He leaves first.