He considered for only a moment before deciding. “I’ll get my sword.”
CHAPTER 35
They left the tower house as quietly as they could, falling into stride through the dreary, rain-soaked night. Damon suspected that his clothes were going to remain somewhere between damp and drenched for the next few hours, a reality which he forced himself to accept and begin to ignore.
He ran next to Ria at full speed out of necessity, surprised by both her speed and the range of her night vision. They broke into the trees side by side, dancing through the darkness, dodging brambles and dipping under branches.
The Malagantyan was prone to flooding on a mild scale during the spring season, and thin rivulets of water formed a flowing web of freshly fed runoff. The ghost moon was nearly full and stubborn in its refusal to be hidden by the clouds, which lent the water and the rolling fog an eerie green ambience.
Ria seemed to know exactly where she was going. It was a fact that lent Damon confidence as he matched her movements, ducking and dodging and keeping time with her every step.
Nearly an hour passed with neither of them speaking a word. Ria suddenly stopped and held an arm out to one side, falling into a crouch. Damon slowed, taking in the landscape ahead.
An ancient riverbed had been temporarily revitalized by the falling rain, with a stream cutting along past a series of steep hills leading to a cliff. Ria seemed cautious in a way that left Damon suspecting that they were close to their destination.
“We must be of silence, of shadow,” whispered Ria.
“Can you see them from here?” asked Damon.
She didn’t answer, already moving to cross the stream with a graceful loping step. Her foot tore up a patch of damp grass on the other side, exposing a spot of fresh, wet mud, but it wasn’t enough to steal her balance.
Damon got a running start, barely making it across with a fair cut less of clearance. He attempted to follow in the wake of Ria’s trail up the next hill, but soon realized that even her delicate movements through the grass left traces of her passage, ones he didn’t want to double emphasize with his own heavy feet.
They climbed for long minutes, angling back and forth to continue upward as the slope shifted dangerously vertical.
A massive boulder of exposed rock lay at the top of the cliff, center sunken inward far enough to form a cozy cave for one. Damon was about to investigate further when Ria gripped his shoulder, digging her fingernails in, and gestured ahead of them.
On the far side of their current position, in a small clearing far below them, stood several simple canopy tents and a large fire. The men around it looked miserable even from a distance, but it was the builds of their bodies that Damon noticed.
Ten in total, they were a near even mix of Merinians and Remenai, a fact not so strange in itself, but matching with what Ria had said about the makeup of Shank’s gang.
He let his hand rest on his sword, feeling a rush of nervous energy. They were outnumbered, but Ria’s tempesting and the high ground might be enough to swing the odds in their favor, regardless.
“Can you strike at them with lightning from up here?” he whispered.
Ria gave him a curious, but not complete, smile. “I can, but not as of now. The storm needs to recover its strength first.”
She glanced up, and Damon noticed what she meant. The rain had slowed to a trickle, and it had been at least a few minutes since he’d last heard the boom of thunder.
“We shall wait here,” whispered Ria.
She gestured behind them with her head. Damon followed her into the cave, watching as she shifted an old leafy tree branch sideways to conceal the entrance. He suddenly realized that it wasn’t just a cave, but her cave, a hiding spot she’d clearly used before.
A burned-out fire sat next to the opening, where the smoke could rise without pooling into a problem. A single, surprisingly clean blanket lay across a sleeping pad of layered willow boughs. There was even a rock of the perfect shape and size to sit on, which Ria immediately took for herself. Damon opted for the floor, instead.
“This is pretty nice,” he said.
“It has sufficed on several occasions in the past,” said Ria. “The only route up to this cave is of the angle we ascended.”
“Is this where you were staying before coming back to the farm?”
She shook her head. “It is not. This is where I stayed when I first began to wander. The first place I made of my own.”
Damon couldn’t resist teasing her a bit. “It could perhaps use a carpet, maybe a few wall hangings.”
“I did not stay here for that long, you fool.”
“You had somewhere else to be?” he asked.
Ria folded her arms and hid her gaze against one of the cave walls.
“Tell me,” said Damon. “I want to understand more about your path in life, Ria. You never told us, at least Vel and I, much about your time away.”
Ria held her silence for another moment before finally sighing and speaking her mind. “Of what is there to tell? I am a clanless Remenai, young Damon. Are you of a full understanding as to what that means?”
He shook his head. “I know it means that you’re limited in how you can interact with your people, but beyond that, I’ll admit that the significance is lost on me.”
Ria stood up, moving from the rock, to her makeshift bed in the corner. “To your Merinian eyes, I suspect being of no clan would seem similar to you or Vel’s circumstances, to be born of no true family. The truth is that it is closer to being of no name, afforded no rights.”
Damon stood up and moved to join her on the bed, putting an arm around her. “Ria… I didn’t realize.”
“Your pity is less than warranted,” said Ria. “I enjoyed my travels. Even if I was not accepted by my people in the way that I wanted, I became of their knowledge in many ways.”
“Well…” He shrugged. “The sex ritual you mentioned in the Hidden Gorge certainly seems like some knowledge worth having.”
Ria snorted. “Yes, it was rather enjoyable, even though I partook of it only with another woman.”
She turned to face him, smiling more with her eyes than with her mouth. One of her hands shifted to rest on his thigh, and it was suddenly as if they were picking up from right where they’d left off in the lake.
“Did you know that clanless women fall outside the normal bounds of monogamous restrictions in many clans?” whispered Ria. “Would you like to be of awareness about how many Remenai males have taken me as their own, young Damon?”
Her words were both disconcerting and intriguing. He wanted to know, but he didn’t want to hear her say it. He ran a hand up the front of her tunic, gently cupping one of her breasts as she leaned in closer to him.
“None,” she whispered. “In fact… I have only ever been taken as a woman by one man, and that particular encounter was not of a satisfying conclusion.”
“Is that right?” he replied.
He kissed her, feeling an illicit thrill surge through them. They hadn’t kissed in the lake, both of them still clinging to the shroud of deniability about what they’d been doing. He kissed her now, and instantly felt shame and arousal recoil through him.
“Ria…” he whispered. “Maybe we shouldn’t.”
“We are of time and of opportunity.” She gestured to the rain falling outside the cave, which still hadn’t picked back up. “There are many wise Remenai parables about the importance of finishing what has been started.”
She kissed him and gently rolled him onto his back, lifting and dropping a leg to straddle his crotch. He felt himself hardening at a rapid pace and reached up his hands to hold Ria by the shoulders and slow things down.
“This wouldn’t be the finish, Ria,” he said. “It would be the start. We would never be able to see each other how we used to, how it was when we were growing up together.”
“I have been within reach of many opportunities to bed with other men,” she said. “Remenai males see me a
s an object, open and willing to be of their taking. Merinian men see my ears and my body, a chance to indulge in a fetish. Damon… you see my eyes.”
“Of course I do,” he hissed. “But that’s not reason enough, by itself. If we do this, things will change between us. Forever.”
“Change is a rule of life.”
“Ria…” he said.
“You sound afraid,” she whispered, pushing past his guard to kiss his neck. “Are you anxious about satisfying me properly?”
Damon shifted his hands to grip her hips, his irritation only building in light of her teasing and dismissal of his concerns. Ria reached down and pulled her tunic up and over her head, leaning forward to let her naked breasts dangle in front of his face.
The rest of their clothes followed with a borderline silly amount of tugging and fumbling, leaving them in the same positions, but newly naked and aroused. Damon’s heart pounded in light of what they were about to do.
In a sense, it felt almost like they were young again, curious and experimenting in the way that children so often do. The nature of their relationship created a different sort of intimacy, one that held so much more depth than Damon’s one-night encounters, but also a fragility of its own.
“Ria,” he whispered. “This is your last chance to stop me.”
He gingerly guided her hips upward, lining his cock up with her womanhood, pushing it up to tease against the soft petals of her opening.
“To stop you?” Ria let out an amused sigh. “Young Damon, your concern is appreciated, but so very…”
She trailed off in midsentence as he pulled his downward, sinking his tool deep into the tight embrace of her sex. A shudder ran through her, and Damon took a perverse amount of enjoyment in seeing how much pleasure he’d given Ria with just that first entrance thrust.
She leaned forward, kissing him with hungry, horny lips. Damon gripped her buttocks and guided her to start pumping her hips on his cock. Her breasts jiggled as she rocked back and forth. He kissed one, seeking the nipple of the other with his mouth and missing as Ria arched her back.
She set her hands down on his chest, moaning as she began to experiment, grinding and undulating, bouncing up and down. Damon ran his hands over her body, down her long, smooth legs. She leaned over to kiss him again and he cupped her face, letting a finger trail over the pointed edge of her ear.
“Oh…” Another shudder ran through her. “Damon!”
She hugged him tight, leaning so far forward that his cock felt the pressure of the angle, and shivered with what must have been an intense release. Damon ran a hand through her hair, still feeling his own lust, and gently rolled her over.
With Ria spread out on the blanket, he got his first real glimpse of her as a true sexual partner. Her face was flushed. Her breasts fell to either side at slightly odd angles. Her thin Remenai body was naked and revealed. A faint layer of silky hair covered her crotch, black with streaks of pale silver that made him think of a skunk’s stripe.
He started thrusting into her, each one rewarding him with an intoxicating burst of pleasure and the sound of her pleasured breath. He kissed her, feeling her lips move clumsily, as though literally drunk on the sensations of sex.
Memories of them together as children came unbidden to his mind. He remembered spying on her in early adolescence, feeling such confusion over the nature of his own arousal back then. Ria let out another moan, voice so familiar, but so new. A forbidden secret she’d kept from him for so long, finally exposed to the open.
“Oh, True Divine,” he muttered. “Ria!”
He pumped into her one final time, pulling her downward by one shoulder to thrust his cock as deep as it could possibly go. Ria shuddered as he released inside her, seeming unworried, despite the issues it posed.
Damon wrapped his arms around her, catching up with the moment and the pace of his own breath. Ria hugged him back, burying her face against his shoulder, and it was only then that he appreciated the reality of what they’d just done.
CHAPTER 36
They continued to lie on Ria’s old bed, listening to the rain outside the cave, pooling warmth while they waited for what lay ahead. Ria stroked Damon’s hair gingerly, and he knew that she was watching him with concern.
“Are you alright, Damon?” she whispered.
“I’m fine.” He shrugged. “Just confused. I… can’t believe that just happened.”
“Is it truly so hard to accept?” asked Ria. “We have been close of relationship for many, many years.”
“More than a close relationship,” said Damon. “We’ve been family, basically. What are we supposed to do when we go back to the farmstead? Do we tell Malon and Vel? Do we keep it secret?”
“The decision is yours,” said Ria. “I feel no responsibility to adhere to Merinian social norms. If you wish for us to never touch one another again, I will also understand.”
“That’s not what I want.” He sighed, rising up on one elbow. “What was this, Ria?”
She glanced downward, only drawing her gaze up to meet his after several contemplative seconds. “This was what men and women are of in their truest moments. This was a bonding, two people who trust and love one another expressing the depths of those emotions. This was us, young Damon, regardless of what Vel or Malon or the world wishes to say about it.”
There was a strength in her voice, not confidence exactly, but more of a deliberate firmness that was so in line with how Damon now knew Ria had chosen to live. She didn’t have time for self-doubt or questioning her past decisions. She made her own way through life, writing her own rules as she went.
“I will have to brew some, ah, maiden’s tea.” She cleared her throat and gave him a chastising look. “Could you be more careful next time?”
“Next time, and the time after,” said Damon. “It was hard to stop myself. You feel so good, Ria.”
“As do you,” she whispered.
She kissed him again, and despite how recently they’d been together, Damon felt his lust burgeoning in hopes of a second round. He was in the middle of reaching to pull Ria’s thighs open when the sound of booming thunder brought them back to their main objective.
“It is time,” she said.
“I’m ready,” said Damon.
They dressed quickly, Damon strapping on his sword belt and checking his weapon, Ria tying her hair back into a short ponytail to keep it out of her face.
Watching from the edge of the cliff, Damon saw Shank’s gang scrambling into their tents as the intensifying rain extinguished their fire. Lightning rippled through the sky overhead, crisscrossing over the ghost moon, coupled with bone rattling thunder.
“I’ll get close,” said Damon. “You bring the tempesting from up here.”
“There is too much danger in facing them alone,” said Ria.
“I’m just the distraction,” said Damon. “I’ll be relying on you for the heavy hits. Just, uh, make sure to keep your magic from targeting me.”
“I will be sure of aim.” Ria grabbed his hand, lacing her fingers through his and squeezing. “Still, be cautious, Damon. The danger here is real.”
“You too.”
He pulled her to him, kissing her for a long moment before starting his trek down the hill. The visibility was low, and the sound of the storm was more than enough to cover the noise of his approach.
There was an obvious area for him to sneak toward as he drew near, a thick clump of bushes away from where the entrances to the group’s tents were pointed. Damon nestled into it, hesitating as he began to wonder if Ria needed a signal to attack and what might serve the task.
The signal, in fact, came from her, in the form of a bolt of lightning striking the largest of the tents and lighting it on fire.
There was a yell from inside, followed by another volley of directed bolts to the other tents. The thunder boomed so loud that Damon’s ears ached from its intensity.
It was far more power than Ria had brought to bear against Malon,
and even though he’d seen such a preview earlier in the day, he still felt a measurable sense of awe, enough to briefly stunt his reaction.
A Merianian rushed from one of the burning tents, waving an arm at where he saw the fire. A bolt of lightning cut him down as though in punishment from the True Divine, his body falling limp to the ground, unconscious or dead.
Not all of Shank’s men appeared content to serve as target practice for a tempester. It was mainly the Remenai who took their chance at fleeing, perhaps fearing the spellblood magic more than the expected dangers of the Malagantyan at night.
The four Merinians stood their ground, but even they seemed unaware and unprepared for what has going on. Damon managed to close the distance into their camp before they even appeared to realize that they were in a fight.
He slashed out at the first man who saw him, catching him completely off guard. The edge of his blade sank deep into the man’s arm, deep enough to maim if not render the limb completely useless.
He’d used that same strike with a blunted edge dozens, if not hundreds, of times before. In performances, drawing blood was a controlled, calculated affair, orchestrated for the audience and avoided when by accident.
There was nothing accidental about what he’d just done or the trail of dark red leaking into the dirt behind his retreating foe.
It was Damon’s first experience with real, unbridled violence, but too much else was happening for him to care, shouts and movement and the brutal chorus of thunder.
He had no time to examine his own actions. Another opponent rushed toward him, this one with dual daggers.
Damon fell into a guard stance, but it proved unnecessary as lightning struck a nearby rock, jarring the other man out of his attack before he could fully commit. Damon slashed low, taking him in the calf to drop him down to a stoop, and then slamming his knee into the man’s face.
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