by Amanda Fleet
Faran wept. “Father… she needs comfort.”
“Stay where you are,” Lord Eredan growled. “You can comfort her when Aegyir’s dead.”
Almost imperceptibly, Aegyir’s hold on me weakened. His thoughts fragmented, allowing some of me to re-exert myself. Snatches of his emotion – his hatred; his anger; his frustration – tumbled in my head, but nothing was solid now.
“You. Have. Lost!” I directed my thoughts at him, battering him out of my head. “I. Win.”
“He’s dying,” I whispered, finding my own voice again.
Faran’s head shot up, hope shining in his eyes, his breathing rapid.
As ice creeps across a lake, Aegyir’s body turned darker and the skin shrivelled. Fingers, hands, feet, then onward. His eyes still burned red, but his face was frozen, the skin contracting and tightening. The light in his eyes dimmed.
“Is he dead yet?” asked Lord Sondan.
“No.” My voice was barely a breath. “Wait. I’ll tell you when he is and you can test my leathers.”
Aegyir clung on for another few minutes, still screaming in my head, but not strong enough to command my thoughts. Lord Sondan moved closer.
“Wait.” I closed my eyes, my body broken.
And then he was gone.
I scoured my brain, hunting for even the smallest vestige of him. I couldn’t find any. Euphoria rushed through me, making me feel weightless. He was gone! We’d won! I tipped my head back and half-laughed, half-sobbed with relief.
I sought Faran’s face, desperate to ease him. “Aegyir’s dead.”
Lord Eredan moved the blade from my neck and drew it across my forearm. My leathers held.
In two strides, Faran crossed the room and scooped me into his arms.
“This would be a lot comfier if you took the cuffs off,” I mumbled against his neck.
Before Faran could release me, Lord Eredan tested my leathers in several places, then unlocked the cuffs. I wormed my arms around Faran, sobbing.
We were free.
30
We put Aegyir’s carcass in the vault, along with three vessels holding the remaining three demons. Maybe one day I’d be sent Outside to see if I could find another source of stones to destroy them, but since the demons would have to be released and ‘fed’ someone before we could then destroy them, I hoped they’d stay trapped in vessels.
Faran closed the door of our rooms behind us, still dead on his feet. His usually hollowed cheeks looked even more sunken, and dark shadows collected under his eyes. After Aegyir had been destroyed, he’d had to half carry me out of the technicians’ quarters. Only my determination to see Aegyir’s body locked away until it could be incinerated had driven me to the vault before coming to our rooms.
We shed our jackets, and I sank down on the sofa and buried my head in my hands, my hair sticking up between my fingers. Every atom of me hurt. Faran sat, sliding his arm around my shoulders.
“I thought I was going to lose you again.” He kissed the back of my neck, his lips soft.
“I thought the pain would kill me. They weren’t all Aegyir’s words.”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it would hurt you so much to destroy him.”
I rested my hand on his leg, stroking the inside of his knee. “It’s okay. I’ll live. It’s not like you had a choice. And it’s not like that was the worst thing that happened to me today, either! I thought you’d died!” Hot tears tracked down my cheeks and splashed on my trousers. I scrubbed the heel of my hand across my face.
“I did. You brought me back. Thank you.”
“Don’t you ever do that to me again.”
His breath dusted my skin as he laughed. “I’ll try not to.”
“At least Aegyir was destroyed at the end.”
His lips brushed the nape of my neck. “Was that Finn? The man with light hair that Aegyir looked like?”
“Mm.”
“Was he that tall?”
“Yes.” I looked up. “Why?”
Faran shrugged. “He’s not what I imagined.”
I leaned back, looking at him. “I thought you’d seen my drawings of him?”
“I have. It’s not quite the same.”
“No. It isn’t.” I bent my head again. A silence thickened between us.
“You wanted to kill him. Aegyir. Even though he looked like Finn?” said Faran, sounding unsure.
I was about to say, I wanted to kill him because he looked like Finn, but I caught myself.
“I thought he’d killed you,” I said instead. “I thought he’d taken you from me.” It was also the truth.
Some of the tension in Faran’s body melted away. “Sondan said it was you who gave him that black eye.”
“Yeah. He told me you were dead and tried to move me away from you.”
“Thank you for saving me.”
I chewed my lip. “I think it might have been a thump I gave you that brought you back.”
His teeth grazed the skin of my neck. “Ah. The one that’s the reason my chest hurt so much?”
“Mm. Sorry… Well, no, I’m not sorry. I’d rather have hit you than you be dead.”
His breath huffed against me as he chuckled. “Mm.”
The tension in his shoulders crept back. He rested his forehead on the back of my neck, and his tears wet my skin. I sat up, smoothing my fingers over his face.
“Orian?”
His face crumpled. “I should have tried to capture him.”
“He was going to kill me. You did what you had to do.”
“He was my brother. I should have tried to save him.”
“Sh. Sh.” I drew his head down to my shoulder, rubbing the back of his neck.
The two of us wept together until our tears ran out. Eventually, Faran drew back, his eyes ringed with red.
I rubbed the remnant of a tear from his cheek with my thumb. “I wish I could take you back to my old life Outside.”
He smiled wryly. “I’m not sure Finn would have liked that. Or that I’d want to meet him in reality.”
“Yeah. True. Okay, I wish I could take you Outside and we could have a life like the one I used to have.”
I gazed at him, taking in all the shades of green in his eyes. He tucked a strand of hair back from my face and kissed me. When he finally drew back, I undid a couple of buttons of his top. “How tired are you?”
“Tired enough to go to bed.” He gave me a wolfish grin. “Not tired enough to sleep.”
“Right answer.”
I needed to lose myself in him, blot out from my mind all the things that had happened today. At least for a while. But my stomach tingled with nerves as well as lust. Would things be as good as we remembered? It had been two years for him and several lifetimes for me since we’d last made love.
We stumbled through to the bedroom and collapsed on the bed. Despite what he’d just said, I wondered if Faran had more than half an ounce of strength left in him. I wasn’t sure I did.
He rolled on his side, and I stroked his hair back from his brow. “I hope you’ve got more energy than me. I’m going to struggle to do much more than just lie here.”
He laughed, untucking my top. “I’m not doing all the work! The least you could do is undress me.”
“Okay. And then can I just lie here?”
Faran was laughing too much to be able to kiss me properly. “No. You may need to do a bit more than that!”
I tugged at his top, pulling it free from his trousers, but my arms were made of string and flopped to my sides again. He sat up and peeled his top off, tossing it on the floor, before shucking out of the rest of his clothes. He finished stripping me and kissed me, working his way over my body, his lips brushing softly. A warm buzz settled in me – a feeling of belonging, of deep connection. Of love. And lust. Quite a lot of lust, actually.
“Hey, you. Come back up here,” I murmured as he kissed my hip, his lips making ripples of electricity fizz through me.
He trailed the t
ip of his tongue over me as he moved back up the bed, his fingers doing all sorts of interesting things until I thought I would explode from his touch.
“Please don’t say you need more time,” he murmured.
“No. I need you.”
He kissed me again, drawing back reluctantly. “Where are you in your cycle?”
I caught my breath at where his wedding ring was and he laughed. “Sorry, am I distracting you?”
“Mm.”
“Where are you in your cycle?”
I blinked. “Oh. Between being Outside and here and all the time shifts, I have no idea.”
He leaned over me, his body squashing me as he reached into a cupboard next to the bed. He put a small box on the bed and opened it. Inside was a kind of diaphragm.
He chuckled. “From your face, you have no idea what this is.”
“Er. No. I mean, I can guess what it is and how it works, but I’ve no idea how to fit it.”
“Shall I do it?”
“You know how to?”
He snorted. “Aeron, I think I’ve fitted it in you more times than you ever have!”
After a gentle and very intimate manoeuvre, he kissed me, his hands back to doing incredible things to me and making my body thrum with anticipation. He moved between my legs, propping his weight on his arms. “Sure?”
I ran my hands over his back and down to trace light patterns over his buttocks. “Mm. I’m sure.”
He slid inside me, and I groaned lightly.
“Okay?” He paused, eyes questioning.
“God, more than okay! I want you all night.”
He laughed. “I can’t manage that!”
I tickled the top of his leg, grinning. “I know. But damn, you’re good.”
***
Afterwards, I lay curled in his arms, stroking the hairs on his abdomen, listening to the steady thump of his heartbeat.
“Don’t tickle me,” he grumbled.
“Don’t be a grouch.”
I tilted my head up, happy. He rolled us so that he lay on his side and traced his finger over my throat, his eyes sad. “The scar is very bad.”
“But I’m alive. In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t much care what I look like. I’ve got a broken nose and wonky ribs.”
“And have cut your hair and had images inked on you, and holes put in your nose and ears.”
I stuck my tongue out. He wasn’t ever going to like my tattoos. Or my piercings.
“Well, as long as you don’t care about how badly scarred I am, it’s fine,” I said. “You didn’t marry me for my looks, anyway!”
He drew me closer. “I’m just glad you’re alive. And you didn’t marry me for my looks, either.”
I stared at him, amazed. “Faran, you’re gorgeous.”
He laughed, sheepishly. “I’m not considered to be a handsome man.”
“Are you serious? Outside, you would be considered to be incredibly good-looking.”
“Why?”
I outlined his lips. “Your mouth. Full lips. Sharp points to your top lip. Outside, that’s called a Cupid’s bow after a myth about a matchmaker… I can tell you it sometime. Your cheekbones.” I ran my finger over them. “Sharply defined, making your cheeks look hollow. Your eyes… the slight slant to them – the outer edge is higher than the inner one. Why are you laughing?”
“You’ve just listed all the reasons I’m not considered to be handsome here. I’m too finely drawn. My cheekbones make my face look gaunt. My eyes aren’t straight.”
“Well, Outside, people would pay to take pictures of you.”
His brow creased. “That’s a role Outside?”
“Mm. People have to buy things, so the companies making the products want to entice people to buy their clothes rather than another company’s. So, they pay good-looking people to wear their clothes and take pictures of them. The people paid to have their pictures taken are called models. If only you could prove you were from Outside, you could earn a load of money!”
He drew me closer. “Could I get proof? I mean, it would be false, but…”
“Well, people do get forged papers, but I wouldn’t know how to get them for you. There’d also be the problem of your first language not being one spoken anywhere Outside.”
“But if you taught me English…”
A bubble of hope formed in my chest and I propped myself up to look at him. “Do you want to live Outside? I mean, we probably could if you didn’t mind working for people who didn’t ask too many questions.”
He held my gaze, then his brow crumpled. “No… I’m sorry. I know how much you want me to say yes.”
The bubble burst and I cuddled back down.
“You might like it,” I said, my voice clotting. “Will you at least come and visit it? If your father lets us go.”
“Yes.” His lips dusted the side of my head. “And you never know. Maybe…”
I rested my chin on him, shaking my head. “Don’t get my hopes up.” However much I yearned to go Outside with him, Faran would hate it there.
We lay cuddling for a few minutes, Faran drawing circles on my skin.
“So who’s thought of as good-looking here? Who’s the best-looking Guardian?” I asked, eventually.
“Sondan,” he said without hesitation. “Orian was always considered to be more attractive than me.” His face fell as he remembered his brother.
“Not to me.”
“Hm. You prefer me now. There was a time when Orian caught your eye. Before we were together.”
“That’s a long time ago. Several lifetimes in fact.” I smirked. “So why is Lord Sondan regarded as good-looking? What features make him handsome?”
“His jaw and brow are very strong. His eyes are straight. His brows are thick and dark. And his cheekbones don’t make him look as if he’s been starved.”
I laughed. “And which women are considered good-looking?”
“Lady Morgan—”
“Said just a fraction too quickly for my liking. Go on.”
He smiled. “My mother. Lady Talia.”
A loud knocking on the outer door of our rooms startled us. The outer door opened and shut behind someone, and Faran scrambled out of bed, snatching up his clothes from the floor. Whoever it was, now knocked on the bedroom door.
“Faran? I know it’s late, but I need to talk to you,” said Lord Sondan.
“Um. Give me two minutes?” said Faran, yanking on his trousers.
Lord Sondan snorted from the outer room. “Of course. I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
“Speak of the devil,” I said. “What’s bringing him here at this time?”
I dressed and followed Faran out to the outer room. Lord Sondan perched on the chair, sporting another new black eye and a split lip. He’d brought three bottles of beer, which Faran opened. Faran passed me one, handed one to Lord Sondan and sat on the sofa next to me, sipping from the third.
“What’s happened?” Faran asked. “It’s almost curfew. Who hit you? Do you want salve?”
“Sorry if I disturbed you both.” A smile briefly lifted the corner of his mouth. “I’m in trouble.” He took a long drink from his bottle and we waited. Eventually, he looked at me. “Lady Aeron, I need to be able to speak in confidence.”
“Shall we drop the titles?” I said. “And anything you say will stay within these four walls.”
“Have you told her?” Sondan turned to Faran.
“No. I swore to you I wouldn’t. You can trust her. She won’t gossip.”
Sondan drew in a long breath and rested the cold bottle of beer against his swollen eye. “It’s been a difficult day. I needed comfort.” He peered at us around the bottle, smirking slightly. “As have you two.”
Whatever had brought him to our door at this time of night, it didn’t seem to be too awful.
Faran took a slug of his beer, blushing fiercely. “Yanna?” Lord Gaedan’s wife.
“Yes.” Lord Sondan’s lightness disappeared.
Lord Gaedan had always been a staunch supporter of Sondan’s in the past. So much for Sondan respecting loyalty.
“Your rooms or hers?” asked Faran.
“Hers.”
Faran shook his head. “Idiot. Let me guess, Gaedan came back sooner than you expected? Is it Gaedan who hit you?” He handed over a pot of salve, but Sondan put it on the table.
“Mm. And he beat Yanna and threw her out. She’s in my rooms at the moment.”
Faran sighed heavily. “Does he know about the baby yet?”
Baby? I blinked. Sondan was in deep shit if he’d got Yanna pregnant.
Sondan bowed his head. “Yes.”
“Does Gaedan think it’s his?”
“No.”
I took a long gulp of my beer. No wonder Lord Gaedan had hit Sondan.
Faran crossed his arms, eyeing his friend. “Have you spoken to my father yet?”
Sondan nodded. “He says the Council will need to discuss it tomorrow. I don’t know what to do.”
Faran leaned back, pushing his lips out. “It’s not difficult. I assume Gaedan will formally accuse you tomorrow of debauching his wife. You’ll have to confess. Gaedan will divorce Yanna, and you’ll be expected to marry her. Both of you will be whipped – you publicly and Yanna by Gaedan. You’ll probably be whipped by Gaedan, too. He’ll be given the option of administering it. Mind you, his arm is weaker than Father’s so that might be a bonus.” He stared at his friend, despairing. “Sondan, I told you months ago that you should stop seeing her!”
“There’s another problem.”
Faran closed his eyes. “Oh. Don’t tell me you’re still also screwing Lady Talia? I thought that had ended?”
Oh, so I had been right. At least Lady Talia was unmarried. Sondan nodded, embarrassed.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I muttered.
“Lady Talia could object to your marriage to Yanna, on the basis that you’ve essentially formed a marriage agreement with her by screwing her. Sondan, you’d better marry Yanna the moment it’s announced, otherwise, you’ll lose all respect! Does Yanna know about Lady Talia?”
“No.”
“Since she’s on the Council, she’ll find out very soon,” I said. “Better that it comes from him. But maybe not tonight. You’d better talk to both of them before the Council meeting tomorrow.”