by Nicola Shill
She was about to give up and return home when she noticed a faint glow in the bush a little to her right. It had to be coming from a fae house. If she walked towards it, it might jog her memory, or at least illuminate enough of the surrounding area to give her a hint. If it didn’t, she would turn around and walk straight back out to the agora again.
Squelching down the scary memories and fixing her gaze on the light, she walked towards it.
— CHAPTER 75 —
Anatomy
Luck seemed to be on Cassandra’s side for once.
She was sure this house was the one Tani had pointed out to her as belonging to Lorcan. She hurried up to the front door only to find herself unexpectedly hesitant to knock. What if he hated her now? How dopey and sad would she look shivering here on his doorstep in the darkness if he was over her? She backed away from the door, suddenly worried that he might open it and see her there, but she was powerless to resist just a quick peek through his window. She pressed her body against the wall to one side and slowly leaned her head over until her left eye could see into the room. That eye widened when it came to rest on Lorcan, his back turned, taking off his shirt. Her first thought was that she had never seen such muscular delineation in a back before, not even on Chayton. She hadn’t ever considered backs to be muscular: she’d thought they were nothing more exciting than broad expanses of smooth skin. Lorcan’s back was broad, but it could never be described as a smooth expanse. Muscles corded and rippled under the surface like a bag of snakes. His wings grew out of his body on thick, brawny stalks; his muscles bulged up and gripped them like a fighter’s fist. This was the back of a fae who did a lot of flying. Other girls could keep their preferences for muscular chests or tight buttocks, Cassandra had just identified her favourite part of the male anatomy – particularly fae male anatomy – particularly Lorcan’s.
While she was pondering all of this, Lorcan abruptly turned around and caught sight of her ogling him through the window. He lurched for the door, and before Cassandra could stumble more than a couple of steps back, had thrown it open, stepped outside and caught her arm. He dragged her inside and kicked the door closed.
His voice was shrill with incredulity. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he shouted into her face.
Good question. What did she think she was doing? She had actually been perving! Her face burned with embarrassment.
‘I came to talk to you.’ She was regretting that decision now. Now it just felt pathetic.
‘So talk,’ Lorcan stepped back, crossed his arms belligerently and stared at Cassandra. She was reminded of the first night they had met when she thought he resembled a dark, angry pirate. He hadn’t improved. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say. She took a step towards him and he stepped back. He wasn’t going to make this easy for her. She wasn’t going to play chasey around his living room either, so she stood still.
‘Get on with it Cassandra. I’m tired. I’ve just got back from watching and I want to go to sleep.’
‘I love you. And I want to marry you.’
He sighed and stopped looking annoyed. Now he just looked tired.
Cassandra’s gaze dropped to Lorcan’s chest. His chest and forearms were both hairless; only his obsidian pendant interrupted the smooth flow of skin. She watched him suck in a long, deep breath. Maybe she did like chests better, after all. ‘I’m sorry.’ She started stepping towards him again. This time, Lorcan didn’t back away, but neither did he alter his militant stance. She rested her hands on his crossed forearms and looked up earnestly into his eyes. In the low light, Cassandra couldn’t differentiate between his pupils and irises. They seemed to be fathomless black holes.
‘I love you,’ she repeated, and slumped her head forward on to his arms.
The breath Lorcan had been holding hissed out as he unfolded his arms to wrap them around Cassandra. He crushed her tightly against his bare chest and bowed his head to rest on top of hers.
‘I love you too,’ he moaned. ‘And I’m sorry. It was my fault. I ambushed you and then I felt rejected.’
‘I didn’t mean to reject you.’
‘I know.’ He rubbed his cheek backwards and forwards across the top of her head. ‘What are you doing wandering around in the middle of the night?’
‘Looking for you.’
‘You could have got lost.’
‘Then my boyfriend would have had to come and find me.’
She felt him smile, and heard it in his voice. ‘Yes, I would.’
He rubbed her arms. ‘You’re cold.’ Immediately she felt toasty warm. ‘And you must be tired.’ He picked her up, walked through a doorway into a dark room and dropped her into a cloud of feathers.
She shrieked. ‘What’s this?’
He threw another cloud of feathers over the top of her. ‘My bed. You can have it tonight. I’ll take you home in the morning.’ A pillow landed on her head.
Of course Lorcan wouldn’t sleep in a hammock; his was a feather bed with a feather quilt and feather pillow. Cassandra spread out her arms. A feather bed that went on forever.
She saw his dark shape moving away. ‘Where will you sleep?’
‘I’ll work something out.’ He’d reached the door and was silhouetted in the light from the other room. The joints of his folded wings peaked way above his head.
‘Lorcan?’
‘Yes?’
‘Will you lie beside me until I go to sleep?’
He strolled back into the room and stood beside the bed, gazing down at her, then he pushed her so that she rolled away from him and became tangled in the quilt. She felt the mattress sink under his weight as he lay down and snuggled up behind her, wrapping her tightly in his arms. He kissed the back of her head. ‘Would you like me to put you to sleep?’
‘I’d rather talk to you. Are you too tired?’
He smoothed her hair back from her face. ‘Never too tired to talk to you. What do you want to talk about?’
‘Do you think I’ll ever find my mother?’
‘I don’t know. If Zabeth couldn’t find her, I don’t like your chances. But I’ll help you. We can look for my parents and your mother together. How about that?’
‘Why do you think she left me behind?’
‘Has that been worrying you?’ He pulled her tighter in against his body and kissed her neck. ‘She couldn’t have taken you, Cassandra. Once you were born into the human domain, you were human, and the only way for a human to become fae is to go through the transmutation. It would kill a baby – even a child. You’re only just old enough now. If your mother had brought you back with her, she would have had to watch you growing up at human speed until you were old enough to transmute. You would have always been different from other children: a shrunken human, unable to fly, never able to make proper friends because you would be constantly outgrowing them. She made the loving choice.’
Cassandra wriggled around so that she was facing him. ‘How dangerous is the transmutation?’
He kissed her gently on the lips. ‘I’ll keep you safe.’
She discovered she truly believed it. ‘Who’s going to keep you safe?’
‘You are.’ His lips moved to kiss her cheeks, her forehead and then her eyelids so that she had to close them. She could feel herself drifting off to sleep, but there was one more question she wanted answered: ‘How old would my mother be now?’
‘In human years, a little more than a year and a half older than when you were born.’
Cassandra had always imagined her mother as a middle aged woman, the same as her friends’ mothers. She fell asleep dreaming up images of her mother as a young woman, not much older than herself.
— CHAPTER 76 —
The Ring of Fire
Seeing Cassandra backlit by a wall of flames with her hair stirring and floating in the fire’s updraft, Lorcan wanted to weep from the sheer intensity of the love he felt for her.
He pulled her in against his body, grateful that she had accepted h
im as her paladin, knowing that it would have exceeded the limit of his endurance to wait safely outside the wall of flames while Cassandra fought for her life beyond his reach.
But there was no time to cherish the moment as the flames swept relentlessly closer. They had been lucky to have so many fae elders eager to witness this ceremony. The more elders in the circle to create the fire, the larger the circle at the beginning and the more energy it contained. The starting size of the circle was considered to be a gauge of the popularity of both the proselyte and the paladin.
The elders, not only of Gillwillan but also from the crowds of visitors who had come to witness this extraordinary event, had formed a wide circle around the two of them and used their fae faculties to each create an individual little fire. There was no fuel on the ground to burn; the energy came from the creators themselves. Zabeth had hung her head, stared into her own fire for a few moments and then flung her arm outward. A perceptible throb of energy hurtled through the chain of small fires until they merged into a continuous circle of flame. The superheated earth glowed blinding orange beneath the fire as it twisted and danced, higher and tighter. The flames burned clean and smokeless, intense yellow-white with coppery tendrils flicking glowing sparks high up into the evening sky.
Despite the fact that Lorcan could feel the hopes and concerns of hundreds of fae who stood just a stone’s throw away, the contracting cylinder of flame rendered Cassandra and himself practically, utterly alone. Of course they knew it would be like this; the entire process had been explained and re-explained. They had even acted it out in dry runs, but Lorcan was nonetheless awestruck by the sudden realisation of their complete isolation. What he had not expected – what he found most shocking – was the roar of the fire. It was so loud that it drowned out any sound from outside the circle and served to deepen their isolation.
The dreadful moment of truth had arrived, and he caught himself wondering if he was ready, if he was worthy.
He glanced down to see Cassandra craning her neck to watch, awestruck, as the fire shrunk around them, blinking as the heat dried her eyeballs. He caught the back of her head with one hand and turned her face into his chest, pressing his cheek down on top to immobilise her.
The heat was becoming unbearable now. He filled his aura with protective energy and extended it to wrap around Cassandra. He needed to shield her for as long as possible and allow the fire to come as close as they could endure. The closer the fire came, the more energy he could absorb from it and the more powerfully he could repel it.
But it was only minutes before the heat was battering his defences. He dropped to his knees, pulling Cassandra down with him, and wrapped his wings around them both as best he could. The fire nipped at their heels and Cassandra began to tremble. He could feel her confidence slipping.
He squeezed her tighter and shouted over the roar of the fire. ‘Just hold on a little longer, sweetheart. Trust me.’
She nodded and stilled. He marvelled at her bravery. Her faith in him was terrifying.
When he could no longer resist, he pushed his shield away from his body so that it protected only his arms and Cassandra within them. He could barely prevent himself from pulling it back when he felt his flesh begin to fry, and it took all of his self control to suicidally absorb the potent energy until he could take no more.
Then he volleyed the fire back in an explosion of energy in all directions at once.
He became aware of the shocking sensation of his heart ceasing to beat.
Lorcan fought against death, trying to remain in control and conquer it, resisting the vortex sucking him into its black depths. He was dimly aware that he had collapsed. He thought he might have collapsed on top of Cassandra.
Cassandra.
In his desperation to hold on to life, he’d forgotten his purpose. Had he left it too late? In his last moments of consciousness, Lorcan gathered up his quiddity together with all the love he held for Cassandra.
He had faith in her.
He was ready to put his life in her hands.
He completely relinquished control. The effect was like pulling out a plug.
Lorcan’s fae wisdom and abilities, everything that made him fae, as well as his love for Cassandra, flowed out of his dying body into hers on a stream of transmutation energy.
— CHAPTER 77 —
Resilience
In all the dry runs, it had apparently never occurred to anyone that Cassandra should practice getting out from underneath Lorcan’s huge, dead body.
That now seemed to Cassandra to have been a serious oversight.
When Lorcan had collapsed on top of her, she had expected him to release his quiddity to her without delay, but vital seconds had passed while the fire he had driven back contracted inward again, stealing what little time she was given to revive him before it killed her, too.
Just as panic began to erode her faith, the rush hit.
Fae wisdom and psychic energy flushed through her brain with an almost violent intensity that shocked her. Dormant corners that she didn’t even recognise woke up in instant overload. She became terrified that something had gone wrong and her brain would explode. But the rush subsided and terror turned to rapture. Wonderful new abilities and knowledge jostled in her head. She was suddenly aware of her exact location on the earth as though a GPS had been loaded into her brain. She sensed the psychic buzz radiating from every living thing and felt the love and encouragement of the fae standing just outside the wall of fire. But more than that – so much more – she felt a passionate and devoted love and recognised Lorcan’s imprint on it.
It buoyed her confidence and strengthened her resolve.
But it didn’t help her to get out from underneath his vast, limp body.
‘Get off me, Lorcan,’ she tried to shout, but it was difficult to breathe, much less yell. She attempted to roll her way out, but she couldn’t even lift her shoulder enough to get it started. Despite her rising panic about wasting time, she was forced to settle for a slow sideways shimmy until eventually she got half of herself past the edge of Lorcan’s body, and was able to slither the rest of the way out. She was lucky at least that his wings had closed as he’d collapsed and she didn’t have to fight her way out from under them, too.
It was then that she discovered that her panic had been justified. The fire was much closer than she’d thought it would be. The heat stung and blistered her skin and every breath scorched her lungs. She lost valuable seconds to panic before it occurred to her to search her new fae abilities for protection. She looked down at herself. Zabeth had said she should now be able to identify her aura and, although in the brightness of the firelight she couldn’t see a glow, she became aware of it cocooning her entire body.
Now, how do I fill it with protective energy?
No sooner had the thought formed in her mind than the heat of the fire seemed to abate, yet the flames had not receded. Cassandra realised that she had just shielded herself simply by thinking about it.
‘Too easy,’ she said out loud. ‘I don’t know what all the fuss was about.’
With naive confidence, she laid both her hands on Lorcan’s shoulders and visualised her protective shield extending through her hands and covering him, as Zabeth had instructed her to do.
Nothing happened.
Zabeth had said she would feel the tug as the energy began to flow.
She didn’t.
She concentrated harder.
And harder still.
Nothing.
It’s not working Zabeth! She tried to send the thought out, but she couldn’t identify Zabeth in the general buzz, and nothing useful came back.
She tried again.
And failed again.
She lifted her hands from Lorcan’s shoulders, suddenly appalled by the realisation that she might actually fail. Lorcan was really dead and she couldn’t even protect him, let alone revive him.
The fire swirled menacingly close now. Lorcan’s exposed skin had blist
ered and was starting to blacken. The hairs on his head were coiling into tight springs before disintegrating. His clothing, specially designed to withstand fire, was smouldering. Worst of all, his wings, which were supposed to carry them both clear of this fire, had become brittle and were starting to crumble, exposing the bony framework. No one had taught her how to fix wings.
Heat seeped through Cassandra’s shield. Too soon, she was running out of time. Not only was her shield almost at its limit, but Zabeth had stressed over and over that, although fae healing abilities could revive someone who had just died, it was only possible within the first few minutes, before the psychic energy had dissipated and the spirit left the body.
Terror and self-doubt took hold. Cassandra was aware of Lorcan’s fae knowledge in her brain, but sorting methodically through it to discover what he knew about healing was now beyond her.
‘Wake up, Lorcan,’ she begged. ‘Tell me what to do.’
Cassandra decided to forget about trying to protect him and instead just concentrate on reviving him; then he could protect himself. She laid her hands on his shoulders again. She closed her eyes and tried to draw on the positive energy being sent by the spectators, but it was useless: her mind was in far too much turmoil and it wasn’t worth wasting time on. She inhaled a calming breath and, as she exhaled, she tried to transfer healing energy into Lorcan. It was pure imagination. She pictured Lorcan alive and healthy, and tried to push the image down through her arms, into her fingers and on into him.
She thought she started to feel the tug. But it was gone before she could be sure.
She didn’t have the luxury of losing hope again; the fire was too close now. It was triumph or die horrifically.
Her physical connection to Lorcan through her hands simply wasn’t enough. She dropped her body down on top of his back, wedging herself between his wings and wincing as she felt fragments breaking away. His body felt impossibly hot, and she could smell his flesh cooking. She had to make a conscious effort to suppress her panic and redouble her efforts.