She shakes her head. “What? No. That won’t be happening.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
She bounces to her feet. “An arranged marriage? I won’t tolerate it. I can’t. I’m too young for starters—”
“Like I said, you don’t get a say in this.”
“Do I at least get to choose my husband?”
He stands, shaking his head, his size expanding within the tiny room. “It doesn’t work that way. Nature chooses the most compatible, resilient male to be paired with you, to ensure your House is the strongest it can be. It’s Fioren evolution. You couldn’t change things even if you tried.”
She averts her gaze as she attempts to understand this, the consequences. “So what we’ve started won’t continue past my twenty-first birthday?”
Hadeon ruffles a hand through his thick brown hair. “I shouldn’t have started it to begin with. But I’m too weak when it comes to you.” He peers at her, his eyes storming darker. “From the moment I saw you, you pulled me in, and now I can’t seem to find my way back.”
“What if nature chooses you to be my husband?”
A contemptuous smile spreads across his lips. “A Warrior won’t be given crown position.”
She places a hand on his chest; his heart is drumming fast. “I don’t care about any of that. Right now, while we can, let me be with you.”
He bends and presses his lips against her ear. “That decision’s already been made and I won’t accept anything other.”
A deep ache pulses between her thighs. He drags his lips down her throat, burning a trail across her flesh, up to her chin. His mouth catches hers and his tongue delves deep, seeking her own tongue and caressing her until she sighs. Hadeon’s arms wrap around her and tug her flush to him, her tender nipples crushing against his chest.
After a long moment, he edges away, but keeps his focus on her as space comes between them. She’s like a balloon exploding when his warmth is no longer sneaking over her body.
“Come on. The others have prepared dinner and made wine. We best join them.”
Ariana nods. “Are they angry with me?”
His mouth twists into a scowl. “They wouldn’t fucking dare.”
* * * *
Somber, determined Warriors and an eighty-odd-year-old granny, drunk on Fioren wine, surround the table. The smooth, honey liquid is as potent as a drug, and with each cup, Ariana’s body glows and thrums.
Her mouth is sore from laughing, her cheeks wet from tears, as the Warriors and Granny exchange stories of growing up and living in Fiore. What a beautiful place it must be—ripe, lustrous, and filled with immense beauty and cheer.
But then as the night deepens and the wine flows slower, the stories change and the landscape of Fiore becomes sunburned and brittle.
“Why?” Ariana asks, taking the last swallow from her cup. The warm liquid swims through her veins and sends sunbursts to her nerve endings.
“The rightful rulers of Fiore, your parents, were killed.”
Ariana gasps hearing her parents’ fate so bluntly spoken about. Hadeon takes her hand under the table and rubs his thumb across it.
“Who did this?”
Granny stands. “The Sun Queen.”
Reid presses his palms flat onto the table. “She’s formidable. Much of Fiore resembles a wasteland, burnished by her poisonous endless summer.”
Ariana shakes her head. Tears tighten the walls of her throat. She looks for more wine, grabs a bottle, and refills her glass. She gulps eagerly at the sweet nectar and slams her glass onto the table. “Why? Why did she do it?”
Hadeon shrugs. “Power. Fiore, in all its history, has never been at the mercy of such menace. She will do anything to maintain her power.”
“So the spell book…what’s that got to do with it?”
Domascus grimaces. “We can only assume for it to turn up now, after thousands of years, and for her to be so actively seeking it, that it contains the answer to her demise.”
“I’ve nearly been through the entire book, haven’t I, Gran? And it doesn’t have anything on how to defeat a Sun Queen or even that there is such a person.”
Granny, standing at the kitchen sink washing her wineglass, says, “The book is a living force. It will only reveal what it needs to reveal, when it needs to reveal it.”
Ariana nods as she thinks of all the blank pages throughout the book. “So, do you think maybe once I’m in Fiore it will reveal more?”
“We hope so, or it simply means you’re not ready to see the answers yet, and when the book determines the time to be right, it’ll show you what you need to know.”
Ariana shudders. Goosebumps spread over her arms. “I think I’d much rather stay here than go to Fiore, especially after everything I’ve seen.”
Granny wipes her hands on a dish towel and faces Ariana. Her gaze flickers between her and Hadeon. “Well, sometimes how one feels and what one wants are not what’s needed.”
Hadeon’s chair scrapes along the stone floor as he stands. “Just come out and say it, instead of hiding behind veiled accusations.”
Granny throws the dish towel onto the countertop. “You and Ariana should not be together. It’s not meant to be.”
Ariana flinches at Granny’s forthright words.
Hadeon slams his fist onto the table, and it breaks, glasses and bottles crashing to the floor. “I determine my own future!”
The other Warriors push their chairs backs and stand to avoid the carnage. Ariana does the same, barely standing in time before the table cracks down the center and tumbles inward.
Granny stands in front of Hadeon. Her head bends back as she looks up at his face. “Even if that jeopardizes Fiore?”
His lips twist. “I do everything for Fiore. But I won’t deny my own destiny or my own intuition.”
Granny shakes her head and sighs. “Then you will fail.”
Fury pulses around the room. The pots and pans in the kitchen clang. Ariana steps backward until her back brushes the wall, her heart racing. She has never seen Hadeon this angry. Ever.
His muscles quiver. A low rumble sounds deep in his chest, like the sound of an angry lion. Reid and Domascus stand rigid, cautious.
“Do not throw your fury around here,” says Granny. “I speak the truth and you know it.”
“It’s not truth! It’s blatant doubt! Doubt for my ability and my position. Something I’ve worked relentlessly at my entire life. I don’t need your doubt. I won’t accept it no matter how well intended.” He turns to the other Warriors, muscles poised. “Ariana and I leave for Fiore in a week. Where there is doubt, there is death. It’s a plague that destroys even the strongest among us.”
* * * *
Ariana’s knuckles graze Hadeon’s door and she enters. He’s lying on his bed, wearing only a pair of sweatpants, with an old book in his hands. Fire crackles in the fireplace, blanketing the room in warmth and a soft orange glow. Hadeon watches her over the pages of his book as she closes the door behind her.
“I can’t sleep without you,” she whispers.
He places the book on his nightstand and pats the bed beside him.
Ariana tiptoes to the bed and nestles against him, chest to chest. His arm slings around her waist. He’s warm, big, and the power pulsing off of him tingles up her spine. Addictive. Her fingers find his strong, stubbled jaw and trace along the square bone. Her thumb edges across his bottom lip.
“I’ve fallen hard for you, Hadeon,” she whispers, voice shaky from the tears prickling her eyes and tightening the back of her throat. “I never thought I could feel this way about someone. I didn’t think my heart would let me. I won’t apologize for it. Even if Granny condemns us and thinks it’s unnatural. Even if the whole of Fiore condemns us. I can’t help the way I feel about you. God knows I tried.”
Hadeon fists her hair and drags her lips against his, his tongue seeking hers and stroking it until she whimpers. His cock presses into the curve of her belly and
she trembles. The air is sticky with his energy.
He tears his mouth away, breathless. “You’ve altered my world. It now spins on a different axis. Where there was once me in the world, I now only see you. I would die for you. I would kill to keep you in my life. You are mine, do you understand?”
She nods, letting his words caress her like a firm touch. “And you’re mine. No one else ever again, Hadeon. No one else will ever be enough, has ever been enough for me. I’ve been waiting for you, and when I couldn’t wait any longer, I sought you out, seeking you in nameless faces and in nameless bodies. I’ve been waiting and painfully aching for what you give me and for what I can give you.”
Fingers tease under her panties and he slips one inside her. A shiver fans up her stomach.
“Can you take me again?” he says, hot breath and lips on her cheek then throat.
Her sex clenches around his thick finger. God, she could take him again, pure painful desire ignoring any residual soreness from the afternoon activities.
Greedy hands find his sweatpants and pull them down. His cock springs out, the thick head glistening with arousal. Oh, he smells so good, like man, like sweet sex. Eagerness ensues and a primal aching need ignites. He rolls to his knees and pulls off her pajama bottoms and panties in a single sweep, then his own. She shimmies her shirt off, nipples hardening.
His gaze trails over the concaves of her body as his tongue wets his lips. He is like a beast watching its prey. He lies beside her again, chest to chest, and lifts her leg onto his hip, opening her up. He grips his cock and positions the head at her entrance, sliding it along the length of her, coating him in her slick lust. A ferocious need surges and her clit swells as he teases her. She grips his thick black hair, pulls his lips to hers, and delves into his hot mouth with her tongue.
Ariana pulls back just long enough to say, “Oh please, God, fuck me.”
A guttural grumble sounds deep in his chest. He pushes inside her, filling her completely. She tilts her ass back and rocks to meet his next thrust. She grips his hair tighter and his thumb and finger find her nipple, coaxing it, rolling it, setting her body ablaze as he continues to enter her.
Ariana whimpers against his mouth, swings her pelvis again and again, seeking gluttonous pleasure. She can come already, the third orgasm in a matter of hours. The pressure, the pleasure, builds deep and low, fingers her flesh, fiery and intense.
“Oh fuck,” she hisses against his throat as she erupts around his dick.
He lifts her chin, her gaze meeting his as pleasure pulses through her. Hadeon finds his rapture and explodes within her. Breathless, she rocks him deeper, craving his seed.
The waves eventually subside to a gentle ripple and they fall against each other, muscles weary and pliant. Ariana takes a deep breath through her nose, replenishing her body, and smiles wistfully.
Hadeon’s lips curl, his eyes burning bright. “I love you,” he whispers, deep and throaty.
Tears form. Has she ever heard those words whispered before? Has she ever felt the tingling pulses of love emanating so strongly and slipping across her skin, burning a path through her soul? Her chest heaves, and her tummy warms.
She smoothes a thumb over his cheek and says the words she knows to be truth, “I love you too.”
Chapter 16
Granny smacks Ariana on the ass. “Pay attention. You’ve only got four days until you leave for Fiore, and we need you to be ready.”
Ariana grins. “You’re a hard taskmaster, Granny.”
“And don’t you be forgetting it.”
“I’ll miss you,” Ariana says.
Granny smacks her again. “No getting all emotional on me. Now, mind on the task.”
Ariana grins. “Fine.”
She turns to face the small jumble of trees behind them. They had to drive the car today to find a spacious location far enough away from the house to perform her spells. So far she has created windstorms to strip the land and conjured storm clouds to rain, thunder, and thrash lightning bolts upon the nearby loch.
Ariana lifts her hands in the air and points them at the mass of oaks and pines—it’s not a necessary requirement, but it gives her more focus—and recites, “Breath gives and takes life to that which is corporeal. Animate the inanimate, grant breath, move and come alive.”
A thunderous crack, like the limbs of the trees are being felled all at once, rises around them, echoing off the sky and vast expanse. The row of twelve trees at the front yank their long roots from the ground, as though they are enormous legs, and take a crashing step. Then another. Their branches bend and swing like long, wooden arms.
Ariana’s eyes widen and she hastens a step back. Another. She tramps on a loose branch lying on the grass and falls onto her ass.
“Oh, my fucking…”
Granny cackles, pleasure in her smiling features. “You’ve just performed your first animation spell.”
“I can very well see that.” The towering trees stride toward her, their thunderous steps pounding.
“Now remember, you’re their mistress, so control them.”
Ariana nods and lurches to her feet, her breaths shallow. “Okay, okay.”
“Strong voice! And I don’t think you should be wasting time unless you want to be crushed.”
Ariana glares at the trees, wide-eyed, and yells, “Stop!”
The trees freeze, though their trunks expand and contract with their breaths.
Ariana shakes her head, mouth gaping. “You,” she says, pointing to a large pine leading the pack. “Bend down and touch the ground.”
The enormous tree, green spindly leaves, bends from mid-trunk, cracking and crunching, and touches its long branches to its roots.
“Fuck!” Ariana lets the word stream from between her lips. The trees move toward one another. She flaps her hands in front of her. “Oh no, no, not fuck, not fuck. Stop!”
Granny is cackling in the background and wiping tears from her eyes.
Ariana’s lips curl upward. “Okay, I’ve had enough, go back to your forest and take standing position.”
The trees turn and march back from where they came.
“Animate reverse, steal breath, take life, and return to the state that is true.”
The trunks and branches stiffen; roots slip into the soil and grow rigid; breaths exhale, sending leaves swirling and swaying.
Silence.
Ariana, panting and shaking, turns to face Granny. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Granny laughs. “Well done, lass. Well done.”
Ariana falls to her knees, muscles weak and depleted. Sweat mists her skin. This amount of magic over a long period of time has robbed her of energy. She lies back on the cool grass, reeling.
Granny takes a drink bottle from a backpack and hands it to Ariana, along with a handful of nut-like morsels, which restore balance in the body. Ariana sips the water, throws morsel after morsel into her mouth, and lies there waiting for the sensations to pass.
But there’s a long rustle in the forest, more than from a bird or even a forest animal. The sound grows louder, joined by a deep rumbling chorus of moans. Ariana inclines onto her elbows and peers through the trees.
Granny stands, her eyes peeled. Something is moving in there—flashes of color within the shadowy depths.
In the distance, splashes and gushes sound from the loch. Water ripples across the surface. People are climbing out from it, hundreds of them, and scattering across the landscape, their ugly moaning joining with the wind and swirling around her and Granny’s heads.
Ariana jumps to her feet, though her body is still trembling, still worn-out. “What the hell are they?”
“Can’t be,” Granny says, her head shaking in disbelief.
The bodies run, swaggering. Ripped clothes and bloodied flesh. Eyes white and dead. “Fucking zombies?” screams Ariana. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”
“Corpse Thieves, lass. They must’ve been hiding in the loch. Run!�
� Granny screams. “As fast as you can back to the house. Get the Warriors. I’ll handle this.”
“No way. I’m not leaving you.”
“I can handle it,” roars Granny.
“No. I’m staying.”
Ariana sends a firework from her fingertips high into the sky, and it soars the distance to the house, letting the Warriors know there’s trouble. They are so far away from the house and have the car with them; it could take at least ten minutes for the Warriors to get here, even if they sprint the entire way.
She faces the Corpse Thieves, her chest heaving. Adrenalin sparks in her body anew and eats away some of the weariness. Their rotting flesh and deathly moaning make her heart clang. A scream is trapped in her throat; she wants desperately to hurl it from between her lips, then curl into a ball and cry until it is all over. But when there are fifty haggard, rotting bodies trouncing toward her, that isn’t an option. Water sluices down their limbs, wet clothes clinging to their blackened flesh.
“How do we stop Corpse Thieves?”
“Any spell that will explode the body. That’s the only way to release the soul,” Granny says in a trembling voice.
Ariana nods. She breathes deeply, mentally scrolling through her menu of spells, but with her energy wasted, she doesn’t know if she will be able to master them sufficiently.
A barrier?
“A circle around to protect with strength, nothing can enter or penetrate.”
The grass ignites, drawing a vast circle around them.
The zombies run over it.
“They’re dead. A barrier spell doesn’t stop the dead,” says Granny.
“Fuck it!”
They’re so close she can smell their decomposing flesh, rancid like roadkill. Granny’s arms are flailing as she flings invisible force at each Corpse Thief, chanting words low under her breath. Bodies explode, flesh splitting and rocketing around them. Blackened streams, like dark steam, rise from the mess and swirl in the air around their heads. Ariana shudders as their evil energy pulses in the atmosphere.
Ariana joins in on the spell, nowhere near as fast as Granny, but she keeps going until she is on her knees, dizzy. And still they come, their moans chorusing and piercing her body with dread. The Thieves are dominating in numbers, penetrating closer and closer.
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