The Tanglewood Witches

by Genevieve Jack

  “Like how we were destined to be sisters, and Mother and Father were destined to be our parents. He is my future, my next family.”

  “Like Mother and Father?” Circe inclined her head.

  “I think so.” Medea pulled her knees into her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “If he feels the same way. He might not. How does one know for sure? I have no experience with this love magic.”

  “Only…” Isis’s dark eyes narrowed, and her fingers pressed into her bottom lip.

  “What sister?”

  Isis released a tightly held breath. “He doesn’t know who you are, not really. He doesn’t know our story. No one can love a lie.”

  Medea’s heart sank, and a stone formed in the pit of her stomach at the word. Had she, despite her efforts not to, deceived Tavyss?

  “Nonsense. What does he think she is?” Circe tossed up her hands. “Nymphs don’t do magic. After this long, he must suspect that Medea is a witch, and if he doesn’t, it’s his fault for not using his head.”

  “No, Circe, Isis is right. I’ve misled him in the most awful way.” A wave of guilt crashed into Medea as the truth of the matter became crystal clear. Her voice hitched. “He’s the Guardian at the Gate, and we are here without Hera’s permission. He doesn’t know everything about our parents or what we are. I… I have to tell him the entire truth. If I don’t, someday he’ll find out, and then everything we’ve built will be torn to shreds. When I see him this afternoon, I must explain it all to him.”

  “You’re seeing him again? Today?” Isis grinned.

  “Yes, and this time please give us privacy. If I have to use a spell, I will.” The glare Medea gave her sisters showed she was serious.

  “Fine,” Circe said. Isis reluctantly bowed her head in agreement. “But I want to hear everything when it’s over.”

  Medea waited in the grove, surrounded by golden apple trees, as the sun began to set and the fuchsia light glinted off the metallic fruit. Tavyss arrived in the blink of an eye, his wings still outstretched from flight, his gaze reaching for her.

  “You came,” she said.

  His golden gaze locked onto her, and her insides seemed to melt under the warm honey. “I couldn’t wait to see you.”

  He strode toward her. At first she thought he meant to take her into his arms and kiss her again. But then he stopped short, his expression hard to read, and took a seat beside her on the mossy knoll.

  Should she tell him now about who she really was? Their eyes locked and her stomach gave a delicious flutter that sent a bloom of sparks through her insides. She glanced away, unable to work up the courage to go through with it.

  “Have you ever wondered what they taste like?” she asked, glancing up toward the golden apples. “The nymphs who gather the fallen ones say that if you eat the fruit, it can kill you. They say it holds too much power and destroys you from within.”

  Tavyss snorted. “Centuries tending this garden and they’ve never taken a bite.”

  “It’s forbidden! If they want to remain here, they have to follow Hera’s rules.”

  “Hera is a narcissist who would rather her fruit rot on the ground than someone else enjoy it.”

  Medea gasped and looked over both shoulders. “Shhh. You shouldn’t say such things. What if she’s listening?”

  He leaned back on his elbows and stared up at the sky. “She never comes here.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know her.” He picked the side of his nail. “She gave me the job of guarding the gate after all.”

  “Then if you know her, why doesn’t she ever come here?”

  “This garden was a gift from Gaea on her wedding day to Zeus. He treats her like dirt. The god has never been faithful and largely ignores her now. This garden is a reminder of everything she was promised on the day she was wed that never came to fruition,” he said.

  “How sad. Can’t she live her own life since he’s obviously living his?”

  “Oh, she tries. The problem is no man, certainly no god, would risk angering Zeus by being with her. She’s a lonely, angry, and bitter goddess. Those nymphs are right to fear her, but the truth is that the apples are harmless.”

  She mirrored his position, shoulder to shoulder with him. The sky was streaked with purple now, and she enjoyed the stretch of heat down her side that his presence created as she stared up at it in wonder. “You suspect the apples are harmless, but how can you know for sure? Just because they were a gift from a titan doesn’t mean they are safe for those who are not gods to consume. They could be like ambrosia, deadly to others than the gods.”

  He chuckled, then stood in one smooth motion. Spreading his wings, he lifted off the ground and flew to the top of the tree, plucking a perfect gold apple from the branches. He landed and offered it to her. “Would you like to know for yourself?”

  Shocked, Medea stared at the forbidden fruit cradled in the nest of his fingers. The apple was the same color as his eyes. She pushed it away with both hands. “Are you mad?” she whispered. “Be rid of it!”

  “It’s fruit, Medea. Nothing more.” A talon sprang from the first knuckle of his right hand, and he sliced through the peel. The inside was strange, segmented like no fruit she’d had before, not like an apple at all. He pulled it apart and popped a segment into his mouth.

  Medea gasped. “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve had it before. It’s very good.” He took another step closer. “I’ve told you, Medea, the rules don’t apply to me. I can eat the sheep. I can eat the fruit. I can even leave the garden. The only question is, do you trust me enough to try it for yourself?”

  He gave her a wicked smile that Medea thought must hold all the secrets of the universe. Her heart thudded in her throat. His gaze locked onto hers, and he held out a wedge, juice dripping from his fingers. Her throat turned dry as a stone. If she could just taste it, taste him… Was she really going to do this?

  “But you are a dragon. An immortal! It may not hurt you, but what will it do to me?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I don’t understand exactly what you are Medea, but I know this fruit won’t hurt you. Do you trust me?”

  She searched her heart and found she did. Tentatively, she sat up and opened her mouth like a baby bird. He placed the fruit on her tongue. Sweetness burst across her taste buds, and she sucked the juice from his fingers, rolling the slice against her cheek. The taste wasn’t metallic despite the gold outer appearance. It tasted like liquid sunshine. She closed her eyes and moaned as she chewed.

  She opened them again when his lips met hers. The sweet fruit held no glory compared to the kiss. Swallowing, she gave herself over to the honeyed taste of his mouth melding with hers. If the fruit had any ill effects on her, she didn’t feel them. All she knew was the heat of his touch and a strange mounting pleasure. A heaviness formed between her legs, a throbbing ache that she instinctually knew only he could soothe.

  Her hands smoothed over his short hair, down his neck, and over his shoulders. He pulled her into his lap, his fingers stroking the thin fabric over her breast and toying with her nipple. He broke away from the kiss and bowed his head to suckle the tip. When he lifted his head again, the sensation was exquisite, the warmth of his tongue replaced by a delicious cool nip from the wet material.

  She stared at him, breathless. “Tavyss, I…” She ran a hand down her body. “I ache for you.”

  He wrapped an arm around her and tangled his fingers in her hair, the long lashes of his eyelids lowering. The purr she’d heard him make before grew louder, and she placed her palm against his chest, feeling the vibration.

  “Mine.”

  “Your voice sounds strange.”

  His hand found the bare skin of her ankle and stroked up her calf to her knee. “Say you are mine, Medea. Be my mate.”

  His fingers explored higher, stroking along her inner thigh. She panted at the heat, the way the spot between her legs grew wet and ultrasensitive. She had the stronge
st urge to shift her hips against those fingers.

  He squeezed her thigh and gripped the back of her hair. Medea’s lips parted at the feeling. She wanted him. Everything she’d read in the strange forbidden book she’d conjured about sex, she wanted to try with him.

  “Say you are mine,” he demanded. “Be my mate.”

  “Mate…” She glanced away, confused at the term, but then she realized it was exactly as she’d hoped. He was asking her to wed him, to become a family as her mother and father were a family. “You wish me to become your wife? Be with you always?”

  “I love you, Medea. Every part of me. The dragon and the man.”

  She took his face in her hands. “Yes, Tavyss. I will be your mate.”

  Mercifully, his hand crept to the tangle of nerves that throbbed between her legs and painted delectable circles there.

  “Oh,” she said, surprised by the sheer pleasure of it. It was far better than anything she’d imagined based on the book.

  Clinging to him, she worked her hips, doing what instinctively made the pleasure more intense. The most marvelous magic unraveled from her lower belly, seizing her in a cascade of golden stars that arched her back and left her gasping for air. He held her as her body spasmed with the intensity of it.

  Only when she’d come down from a great height did she remember the other things she’d read about. She reached for his breeches and untied them at the waist. Her hand brushed the long hard length of him. Would it truly fit inside her? She had her doubts.

  “You’re sure?” he asked. “My mate, once we do this, you will always be mine and I yours, until the moon crumbles into dust.”

  She thought of her sisters, of her family, for she knew to the core of her soul that this was no small promise she made to Tavyss. She was binding herself to him, the same way she was bound to them. No, in a much stronger way. She felt the magic, thick in the air around them, licking her skin.

  But she was a woman, and she was ready for this. She wanted a full life like her parents had had, with a partner, maybe children of her own.

  “Yes, Tavyss. I am yours.”

  Gently he leaned her back against the moss, her dress bunched around her hips, and settled between her legs. His breeches were gone, and he tugged his tunic over his head. Seeing him above her, a mass of dark golden power, almost flooded her body with pleasure again. She tugged her own dress over her head and cast it aside.

  Allowing her knees to fall to the sides, she bared herself to him, reached for him. His wings unfurled, reflecting the moon gloriously in the twilight. With one flex, he was over her, blunt head parting her most sensitive flesh. Slowly, ever so slowly, he pushed inside. There was the slightest pressure, then pain, but she lost sight of it in the ever-building pleasure as he gently began to move.

  Above her, his wings stretched gloriously. For weeks she’d longed to touch them, to see them up close. She stroked along the edge, trailing her fingers over the webbed flesh that stretched to his back. Fascinating. He shivered above her at her touch, and so she increased her ministrations, reveling in his reaction. Soon his rhythm grew more urgent. Gentle movements turned to firm thrusts.

  She wrapped her arms and legs about him, longing for more. Only wanting to get closer to him. Only wanting him deeper inside her. The magic was back again, and this time she could hear in his trill that it had seized him as well. Power flooded her veins, radiating pure light as they both pitched over the edge.

  Everything caught fire. The trees around her lit up with magical light as if they’d ignited a room full of candles. And all she could think was that something amazing had just happened. Something, judging by Tavyss’s expression, he wasn’t expecting.

  Chapter Ten

  When a dragon bonded with his mate, it was for life. There would be no other woman for Tavyss but Medea. He’d offered, and she’d consented. And although what they’d done had certainly sealed his fate, for him the connection was permanent the moment she’d accepted his offer.

  But as the light faded and her breath came back to her in a gasp, Tavyss realized the danger he was in. Medea was most certainly powerful. The blast of power they’d given off was nothing short of celestial. That energy was far more than what he could put off on his own.

  He stroked her hair back from her face and transferred his weight to the patch of moss beside her. Never taking his eyes off her, he asked, “Do you know what you are, Medea?”

  Her gaze broke away from his for a fraction of a second, darting to the side. He didn’t miss it. “I love you, Tavyss.”

  “I love you too. But now you must tell me the truth, the entire truth, of how you came to be here and how you wield such power.”

  Tears formed in her eyes, and his heart broke to see it. It wasn’t his intention to cause her pain, but he couldn’t protect her if he didn’t know the truth. His inner dragon chuffed at the thought. Yes, it was clear he’d need to protect her. If she was from the outside and therefore forbidden from living in the garden, that meant Hera could never know she was here.

  “I wanted to tell you the truth. More than once, I tried and failed. I just couldn’t. I… I was afraid you’d never speak to me again, or worse.”

  “But now you must tell me. There is nothing you can say that will turn me from you. I have already examined several scenarios in my mind. I am prepared. Tell me what you are.”

  In fact, he’d considered a range of possibilities. He’d guessed a witch but there were others. Perhaps she was a lesser goddess, hiding here from some sort of trauma, or a type of fairy from another land. That would explain the wings and the magic. He’d known extremely powerful fairies in his day.

  “I am a witch,” she said.

  Tavyss sighed as the truth settled in. As he’d suspected. He closed his eyes against the pain of the revelation. “You lied. You were not born in the garden as you said?”

  Her eyebrows rose toward her hairline. “I was born here,” she insisted. “As were my sisters. I didn’t lie about that. But I let you assume that meant we were creatures of the garden, and we are not. Our parents were from the outside.”

  “How?” He pulled back. In his home world of Paragon, dragons did not often consort with witches. A witch’s magic was strange. While a dragon’s flesh was inherently magical, lending to their talent for invisibility and for protecting their treasure, a witch could command the elements. Witches, most certainly, were not allowed in the Garden of the Hesperides.

  “A long time ago, my parents performed a service for the Egyptian goddess Isis that involved them journeying into the underworld. When their work was done, the goddess hid them here so that they would be safe from the retribution of Hades for what they’d done. My mother was pregnant and gave birth to me and my sisters here in the garden.”

  “That’s impossible. As an Egyptian goddess, Isis could not get past me or through the gates. Hera’s own wards protect this garden, and my own ensure I’d never miss a soul trying. Hermes, I’d believe, or Zeus himself. But not Isis. It’s impossible.”

  She sat up and tugged her dress over her head and down around her ankles. The neck fell over one shoulder in a way that made him long to take her in his arms again. It was dark now, but his dragon sight ensured he could see her clearly.

  “My father sang you to sleep.”

  His eyes widened at the thought. Wouldn’t he remember if something like that happened? “No.”

  “Yes. His name is Orpheus, and he is a descendant of the sorceress Medea, my namesake. He inherited a powerfully magical voice. Not only did his song soothe you to sleep, it wiped your memories of him and my mother.”

  Tavyss’s fists clenched. Medea could not be held responsible for her parents’ indiscretions, but the idea that Orpheus had used his sorcery to overpower him caused his throat to burn with pent-up rage.

  “Even if he charmed me to sleep, he couldn’t have made it through the enchantment in the gate. That was placed by Hera herself.”

  “That would be the wo
rk of my mother Alena. She is a descendant of Circe and a master of transfiguration. She transformed a worm into a key while it was in the lock. You see, the worm conforms—”

  “I see.” He didn’t need it explained to him as if he were a child. He stood, swept his tunic from the ground, and began to dress.

  “Tavyss, I’m sorry. I should have told you before.”

  “Yes, you should have. Your parents have broken the goddess’s law. You are not to blame, and I will make it my mission to protect your place here, but Orpheus and Alena must be punished for their trespassing. Hera must be informed.”

  “No!” Medea scrambled to her feet. “She’ll kill them. You can’t tell her.”

  “I won’t have a choice.” He looked at her desperately. “When the goddess installed me as the Guardian at the Gate, she ensured that I could not lie to her. If she asks, I will have to answer truthfully.”

  “Then say nothing. Give her no reason to ask.”

  He glared at her, his wings snapping open with his burgeoning anger. “And let them get away with it?”

  Medea recoiled as if he’d slapped her. “If they hadn’t, I, your mate, would not be here. I would have never been born.”

  Her words sliced into his heart and made his breath hitch.

  “What harm have we done, Tavyss? We’ve lived here our entire lives, and my parents and sisters have never touched a sheep or taken a bite of an apple until the one you fed me tonight. We live on fish, roots and berries—nothing forbidden. The nymphs have helped us from the beginning. We belong here. This is our home.”

  Tavyss heard the pleading in her voice, saw the tears forming in her eyes, and for a moment he wanted to comfort her. He longed to stroke her hair and tell her everything would be all right. Her wild-orchid scent grew stronger with her anger and fear. But there was an undeniable truth that he had sworn an oath to Hera. If he didn’t fulfill his duty to the goddess, what did that say about him? Was he no better than his corrupt brother and sister, having no regard for duty or loyalty if it inconvenienced his will?