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• Chain of Gold Chapter Titles

  For fun! ;)
  

  Chapter 1: Better Angels

  Chapter 2: Ashes of Roses
  Chapter 3: This Living Hand
  Chapter 4: Half Sick of Shadows
  Chapter 5: Fallen With the Night

  Chapter 6: No More of Mirth
  Chapter 7: Fall of Songs 
  Chapter 8: No Strange Land
  Chapter 9: Deadly Wine
  Chapter 10: Loyalty Binds
  Chapter 11: Talismans and Spells
  Chapter 12: The End of It
  Chapter 13: Blue Ruin
  Chapter 14: Among Lions
  Chapter 15: The Whispering Room
  Chapter 16: Legion
  Chapter 17: The Hollow Sea
  Chapter 18: Darkness Stirs
  Chapter 19: All Places Hell
  Chapter 20:  Less Than Gods
  Chapter 21: Burn
  Chapter 22: The Rules of Engagement
  Chapter 23: No One Who Loves

  Epilogue
  
  

  02/18/20

• Cut Blackstairs scene from Queen; unedited (in all ways!)

  mortalbrooklyn said:Hey Cassie, are we going to get the Blackstairs sex extended scene before Chain Of Gold?
  

  brittychelle1708 said:Hey Cassie. Hope you’re doing well and recovering from your surgery. Just wanted to ask, are we ever going to get the extended Blackstairs scenes from Queen of Air and Darkness?
  

  silent-victim said:Ms. Clare, do you know when you will be posting the blackstairs unedited scenes? Love your work, can’t wait for more!
  

  herongaystairs said:Is there a chance you will still release the Blackstairs unedited scenes from QOAAD? :

  SO! I posted about this earlier on Twitter — I haven’t had the time or the mindspace (I’m fully, mentally, in the world of Last Hours) to do what I wanted to do, which was expand and polish an existing Jules/Emma scene from Queen of Air and Darkness. So I’m going to post a scene that was cut: in the original version of QoAaD, Emma and Julian slept together early on in the book, when they were both emotionally very raw. I wound up cutting it and changing it — they still kiss, but they’re interrupted. For me, sex scenes/intimate scenes are about changing dynamics between characters, and advancing plot and characterization. This scene was about an expression of their shared grief over Livvy, and the different ways they were coping: Emma by reaching out, Julian by seeking annihilation of the self. 

  I cut it for several reasons — sex scenes deepen intimacy and implied trust between characters, and I was concerned that Julian’s actions in cutting off his emotions after this would tip over into being too unfeeling/too painful for Emma. So consider it an AU. When authors cut scenes, we often cannibalize them for other purposes, so you may see sentences in it you recognize from other parts of Queen, wBut there’s definitely a lot you won’t. ;) My sex scenes, even unedited, aren’t that explicit, but I’d definitely call this an R.

  Emma/Jules: Starts on page 30 of my copy of Queen of Air and Darkness.

  …Julian had left the rest of his clothes in a pile on the floor. He was standing in the shower in just his underwear, letting the water run down over his face, his hair.

  Swallowing hard, Emma stripped down to her panties and camisole and stepped in after him. The water was scalding hot, filling the small stone space with steam. He stood unmoving under the spray, letting it streak his skin with the pale scarlet of light burns.

  Emma reached around him and turned the temperature down. He watched her, wordless, as she took up a bar of soap and lathered it between her hands. When she put her soapy hands on his body he inhaled sharply as if it hurt, but he didn’t move even an inch.

  She scrubbed at his skin, almost digging her fingers into his skin as she scraped at the blood. The water rank pinkish-red into the drain. The soap had a strong smell of lemon. His body was hard under her touch, scarred and muscled, not a young boy’s body at all. Not anymore. When had he changed? She couldn’t remember the day, the hour, the moment.

  He bent his head and she worked the lather into his hair, stroking her fingers through the curls. When she was done, she tilted back his head, let the water run over both of them until it ran clear. She was soaked to the skin, her clothes sticking to her. She reached around Julian to turn the water off, and felt him turn his head into her neck, his lips against her cheek.

  She froze. The steam rose up around them. Julian’s chest was rising and falling fast, as if he were close to collapsing after a race. Dry sobs, she realized. He didn’t cry — she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him cry. He needed the release of tears, she thought, but he’d forgotten the mechanisms of weeping after so many years of holding back.

  She put her arms around him. “It’s all right,” she said. The water fell on and over them, and his skin was hot against hers. She swallowed the salt of her own tears. “Julian —“

  He drew back as she raised her head, and their lips brushed — and it was instant, desperate, more like a tumble over a cliff’s edge than anything else. Julian’s mouth was hot above hers, his lips slanting against Emma’s, jolts shuddering through her at the contact. “Emma, my God, Emma,” he groaned into her mouth, sounding almost stunned. His hands knotted in the soaked material of her camisole. “Can I —?”

  She nodded, feeling the muscles in his arms tighten. He swung her up into his arms. She shut her eyes, clutching at him, his shoulders, his hair, her hands slippery with soap as he carried her into the bedroom, tumbling her onto the bed. A second later he was above her, braced on his elbows, his mouth devouring hers feverishly.

  Frantic gestures rid them of their clothes. She and Julian were skin to skin now: she was holding him against her body, her heart. He was hot and hard, pressed against her thigh. His hand slid down, shaking fingers dancing across her breasts, stroking her skin, moving down to her hipbone. “Let me —“

  She knew what he wanted to say: let me please you, let me make you feel good first. But that wasn’t what she wanted, not now. She tilted her hips upward. “Come closer,” she whispered. “Closer —“

  He gave a half-hopeless groan, unable to wait any more than she was. He slid inside her, setting every nerve in her body on fire. They both gasped. He drew back and thrust into her again, swallowing her moans with his kisses. His hands gripped her hips; every movement was fierce, frantic and Emma knew: these were the tears he couldn’t cry, the words of grief he couldn’t speak. This was the relief he could only allow himself like this, in the annihilation of shared desire.

  Pleasure was rising inside her, sharp as pain, spiraling. Every movement drove her closer and closer to the edge; her hands slid down Julian’s back, his skin slick with sweat. He was pushing himself closer to that cliff’s edge, too, she knew, but refusing to go over; his fingers dug into the sheets on either side of her, his knuckles white with effort: he was holding on with a grip like iron, determined to push them both further and deeper into oblivion. 

  Her legs rose to twine around his waist; she saw his eyelashes flutter with pleasure, the deepening look of painful rapture on his face. He threw his head back as she arched up against him, his breath coming in harsh gasps, and Emma knew her own loss of control was fueling his. Stay with me, Jules, she whispered, and let herself go.
  

  She felt her parabatai rune spark against her skin like a brand, and she jammed her hand into her mouth just in time to stifle her scream as everything imploded, pleasure searing through her like blinding white light.

  His eyes flew wide open. His body surged against hers, his control shattering into a million pieces. He gasped her name as he fell apart, shuddering against her. Emma thought she might black out: she held onto Julian as if she would drown otherwise; she could no longer think, only feel.

  She hung in that suspended space for what felt like a thousand years and a split second, all at the same time. When the world had meaning again, Julian had rolled them both sideways, taking his weight off her body. In the darkness, his eyes shone like glass. “I can’t lose you,” he said. For the first time since the Council meeting, the awful tension was gone from his voice: he sounded like Julian again. “I can’t lose you, Emma. I can’t. I won’t.”

  She could not find words. She drew him close, kissed his forehead, and murmured meaningless noises of comfort against his skin in the dark.

  02/15/20

• ChoG snippet...

  A demon lunged for Alastair: Cordelia brought Cortana down in a great curving arc, severing its head.

  Alastair looked peevish. “Really,” he said. “I could have done that on my own.”

  02/14/20