by Logan Jacobs
For her sake, I smiled and nodded, but I knew I wouldn’t really be able to rest until our mission was complete. Yvaine gave my arm a gentle squeeze, and I did feel myself relax a bit.
“I’m just going to take a few more minutes to get some fresh air,” I told her. “I appreciate you checking in, but you don’t need to wait up for me.”
“Aren’t you sweet?” Yvaine murmured. “I didn’t come just to check on you, though, Gabriel.” She brushed a lock of hair away from my forehead, and her fingers were cool. “You’ve saved my life twice now, and I’ve never gotten the chance to thank you properly. I think it’s high time I made up for that.”
Given the lavish gifts the noblewoman had showered over our guild and the countless favors she’d done for us, I wasn’t sure her assessment was entirely fair, but when she placed her hand on the back of my neck and drew my face to hers for a kiss, I wasn’t about to argue with her.
I wrapped my arms around her waist, and my blanket fell to the ground. I hardly noticed it, though, as I pulled Yvaine closer to me and her tongue darted into my mouth.
The noblewoman’s hands moved down between us, and then she slipped them under my shirt and ran her cool palms up my chest. Goosebumps prickled on my arms, but they were from excitement, not the chill of the night air, as Yvaine, and I broke our kiss just long enough for her to pull my shirt over my head.
I kissed her again as I slid the straps of her dress from her shoulders, and she giggled against my mouth as she shimmied enough for the dress to flutter to the ground. I pulled her with me onto my fallen blanket and ran a hand down her spine while she tugged off my pants and straddled my hips.
The noblewoman’s long, dark hair tickled my chest as she sank down over my erect penis with a moan of pleasure, and I caught her mouth in another fervent kiss as she began to roll her hips in rhythm with mine. I cupped one of her perfectly shaped breasts and ran my thumb over her nipple as we increased our tempo, and Yvaine tightened her grip on my shoulder. I continued to fondle her breasts as I thrust faster, and Yvaine’s breaths came faster too until I felt her walls began to twitch and tighten around me.
“Ohh, Gabriel!” she gasped as she leaned forward against my chest and trembled.
“Did you like that?” I whispered into her ear.
“Yesss, soooo muchhh.” Her breath came out in pants, and it felt like she was still climaxing around my cock.
I pressed a few kisses onto her jaw and nipped at her earlobe as I shifted our position so she was lying on her back, stretched out over my blanket on the grass, and then trailed my tongue down her neck to her collarbone as I began to thrust into her again.
The marchioness’ eyes closed, and she threaded her fingers through my hair as I pressed kisses to her collarbone and breasts. Then I shifted onto one elbow and slid the other hand between our bodies and gently pressed a finger against Yvaine’s clitoris. Immediately, her breath hitched, and she let out another moan of pleasure, and I moved my finger in time with my hips until Yvaine gasped and came again.
“Don’t stop,” she managed to get out as I knelt, still inside her, and held her hips up to mine.
I said nothing, but I started to thrust again even as Yvaine came down from her second long orgasm, and she leaned her head back, and her hands curled into fists around the blanket. She looked so beautiful there in the moonlight, her dark hair pooled around her head like ink, her full lips parted just slightly.
I felt my own release coming and snapped my hips faster, encouraged by Yvaine’s panting breaths. When she came for a third time, I allowed myself to have my own release, and my cock and balls tensed as I began to fill her accepting womb with my seed.
“Ohhh!” Her eyes opened wide when she felt me fill her, and her lips curled up into a seductive smile when I kept coming. Finally, I felt the last bit empty into her and I leaned down so that we could passionately kiss.
As we stretched out, side by side on the blanket, Yvaine turned to me with a smile.
“Mm,” she hummed as she reached up to caress my cheek. “That was long overdue.”
“You’re right about that,” I replied as I stroked her hair, “but I don’t think you’ve ever been wrong about anything before, either.”
The noblewoman laughed. “Correct.”
We were silent for a few moments as the sweat cooled on our skin.
“You really filled me,” she sighed with contentment. “Your warm seed feels exquisite.”
“Uhh, I—” I started to say, but she continued.
“Thank you for making love to me,” she purred into my ear.
“The feeling is mutual,” I chuckled.
“Perhaps,” she whispered, “but there is something special about you. I knew it from the first moment you saved me, and I knew I wanted you.”
“And now you have me,” I said as we kissed again.
“I am glad you let me join you on this mission,” Yvaine whispered after we kissed. “I must admit, I was a bit worried you would think I wasn’t up to the task.”
“You handled yourself pretty well against that gorgon,” I told her with a grin. “I think you have a natural talent as a matador.”
“How kind of you to say,” Yvaine replied with a little laugh. Then her expression became more serious, and she sighed. “I am glad, though, truly. I don’t tell people this, but I took up fencing as a girl because I’d always hoped to become an adventurer.”
“Really?”
“My parents were just as surprised,” Yvaine said drily. “Outraged, actually. They didn’t think that sort of life was fitting for a woman of my stature and pedigree. They insisted I remain a proper lady. I kept up the swordplay as a hobby, though. I just couldn’t bear to let it go.” She smiled again. “And now here I am, an adventurer like I always wanted to be, and with such a handsome and stalwart companion, no less. I mean it, Gabriel, thank you for giving me this chance.”
“I’m glad you came with us, too,” I said sincerely, “and not just because you’re a champion fencer.”
Yvaine grinned and leaned forward to press a kiss to my lips. I caught her cheek and held her close as I deepened the kiss. When we broke apart again, Yvaine’s expression was rueful.
“We’ll need to get back soon, won’t we?” she asked.
“I think we can spare a little more time,” I replied and I kissed her again.
Chapter 13
We set out before dawn the next morning after a quick breakfast and some coaxing of Dehn’s pony to allow the halfling to secure the severed gorgon’s head to its saddle, and after just a few hours of steady riding, the high, white walls of Ovrista were visible in the distance. As we took the long road through the open fields toward the city, I scanned the countryside for any sign of the cave entrances to the Sunken Caverns, but of course, nothing stood out. Perhaps the only way was to go under the city, like Lavinia had suggested, but if there were other entrances, they weren’t anywhere I could see from here. In truth, I hadn’t expected anything more, but I couldn’t help but look anyway.
There was already a line of merchants passing through the gate going in and out of the city when we stabled the horses and started down the main street. The same tired guards stood alongside the gates, not bothering to try to disguise how hot and bored they were. No luck regarding our petition to amp up the security, then. Maybe Dehn would have better luck this time.
We walked together into the heart of the city where the mirrored Arcane University Tower stretched into the clear blue sky.
“Okay, everyone knows what we have to do,” I said as we stopped in the shade of a looming oak tree off the side of the walkway. “Lavinia, Aerin, Emeline, and I will check the records at the library and see if we can find any clues about where there are entrances to the Sunken Caverns. The rest of you come find us there when you’re done.”
When Dehn had left for the guard headquarters and Maruk and Yvaine for Madame Julienne-Elizabeth Delafose’s studio, the other three women and I went inside
the University Tower.
“Ugh,” Lavinia said, too loudly as we crossed the marble floor of the lobby to the stairs, “this place is creepier than that old house where the gorgon was hanging out. How often do they have to polish this floor to make it so reflective?”
“You’ve never been in here before?” Emeline asked, clearly shocked by the idea.
“I’m not a mage,” Lavinia replied simply. “Why would I?”
The ladona ranger had drawn the attention of a few students who were gathered around on the couches, and they shot us dirty looks as we passed.
“Keep your voice down,” Aerin warned.
“I’d be more than happy to wait outside if my kind aren’t welcome here,” Lavinia told her, with no effort to lower her voice.
“We need your help to look through the old records,” I said. “There are no rules against non-mages coming in here.”
Lavinia pursed her lips but said nothing as we took the several flights of stairs up to the tower’s vast library. The library took up three floors all on its own and housed the most extensive collection of records in the city, so it was the best place to start looking for the kinds of old maps that might give us a clue about secret tunnels or other ways to get into the Sunken Caverns.
“This way,” Emeline whispered, and she led us past rows of towering shelves absolutely stuffed with volumes toward a section of the library where the maps were kept. “Etienne and I used to come here all the time,” the panthera mage explained, and I remembered her telling me about her interest in cartography. It was shared by her brother, whose knowledge of the city’s layout and history was what enabled us to break Emeline out of prison when she’d been falsely accused of practicing blood magic.
We followed Emeline as she scanned the shelves and then pulled down a few maps for us to start with and set them down on an empty desk.
Lavinia looked at the rolled maps that the mage had selected, and then at the hundreds of others tucked away on the shelves around us and frowned.
“Are we really just going to look through all of these until we find one that mentions the Sunken Caverns?” she asked.
“We don’t really have another way,” Emeline replied. “This is how research is done.”
“If we don’t come up with anything by the time Dehn, Maruk, and Yvaine get here, we can ask around in the black market,” Aerin suggested. “Someone there might know something.”
“Good idea,” I said as I took one of the maps out of its protective wrapping and unrolled it on the desk. “Let’s get to work.”
“It might not be labeled Sunken Caverns, so look for any kind of marker around the city that isn’t labeled or seems out of place,” Lavinia said, apparently resigned to her fate for the next hour or so as she pulled out a chair and took out a map of her own to examine.
Lena and Emeline joined us at the table, and then the only sounds were the shuffling of papers as we pored over the maps and exchanged the ones we’d already checked with those that we hadn’t. Just as Lavinia had instructed, I was careful to make a note of anything that didn’t mesh with what I knew of the landscape outside of the city, but the only thing I found of note was an old windmill that had been destroyed in a storm about seventy years prior. The replacement had been constructed a few miles away from the first, and neither made promising secret entrances to bandit caves.
I switched out map after map, and the others did the same as the minutes dragged on. As important as this mission was to me, and as crucial as it was to figure out how to get into the Sunken Caverns, going over all these old maps was tedious work, and I felt my focus drifting. I wondered if Dehn was having any luck with the rest of the guards, and whether Yvaine and Maruk would be able to secure costumes for us for the masquerade.
I thought of Cygne, the mysterious masked mage, and the mastermind behind this heist. None of the bandits had mentioned what sort of magic he practiced. I supposed it didn’t really matter, given that I was a manipulator, I’d be able to counter him no matter what he tried to throw at me.
Still, I found myself hoping that he wasn’t a blood mage like Cuvier. I had plenty of reasons, naturally, to disagree with a lot of the Mage Academy’s rules about magic in my situation, but I understood the prohibitions against blood magic. There was something distinctly evil about it, and it was designed for harm, not good.
I was pulled back to the present when Emeline jumped out of her chair with a gasp.
“I think this is it!” She waved Lavinia over to check her findings, and Aerin and I got up to see as well. The map Emeline had was from close to one hundred years ago, and its depiction of Ovrista showed that the city was much smaller than it was now. Sure enough, a few miles north of what would now be the edge of the city, the map showed a few caves scattered near one another, and a marker indicated that they were connected at the center in a cavern.
“That could be it,” Lavinia admitted, and she took out one of our maps and marked the locations of the old caves. Where one of the cave entrances was meant to be, however, was listed as private farmland on our map.
“Someone must have bought that land so they could keep using the cavern,” Aerin said.
“Maybe the cave-ins that destroyed the other entrances weren’t an accident,” I suggested. “Do we know when that farmland was purchased?” If we could discover who the owner was, it might give us a clue about Cygne’s identity.
“We’d have to keep going through the records,” Emeline said, but before we could begin to sort through any of that, there was a commotion by the stairs.
“Hey, I’m walking here!” Dehn shouted at a pair of elven mages on the stairs as he climbed up the last few steps. The elves sneered at the halfling but didn’t try to provoke him further and wisely opted to carry on their way while Dehn strode into the library. The halfling glowered at the shelves and the mages around him like he was trying to see if anyone else might challenge him, but when no one did, he made his way over to us.
“How did it go with the city guard?” I asked.
“They’re a bunch of bastards,” Dehn answered irritably as he climbed into one of the free chairs, propped his feet up on the desk, and took a long drink from his flask. It wasn’t a celebratory drink, I guessed. “They thought my gorgon head was a fake,” the halfling went on, his mouth twisted up into a pout. “Shoulda opened its eyes. That’d show ‘em.”
“He meant ‘how did it go with requesting back up for the masquerade,’“ Lavinia informed him.
“Oh,” Dehn replied, and he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “They still don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”
“We’ll do it without them, then,” I said. “That’s what we’d planned for, anyway.”
Just then, Maruk and Yvaine entered the library and going by the orc’s positively giddy expression, I expected the pair had had better results from their task. They saw us immediately and came over to take the last two chairs around the desk where we’d been working.
“Madame Julienne-Elizabeth Delafose has lent her aid to our cause,” Yvaine reported with a smile. “We’re all to go to her shop for a fitting.”
“Now?” Lavinia arched an eyebrow, and I knew she wasn’t looking forward to getting all dolled up.
“The sooner the better,” the marchioness replied. “She’ll need to make some alterations before the masquerade tomorrow evening.”
I looked over at the maps still spread across the table. I was still curious about who had purchased the land above the Sunken Caverns, but that mystery would have to wait. We could return after our fitting or in the morning tomorrow.
“Let’s go now, then,” I said, and we packed up the maps and returned them to their places on the shelves.
“You should see the designs Madame Delafose came up with,” Maruk gushed as we made our way down the wide, curved tower stairs. “I’ve never seen anything so--”
I didn’t get to find out what Maruk was going to say next, however, because as we reached the next floo
r where the professors’ offices were located, Eamon Maderel was waiting for us. Maybe it was better to say that he was waiting for us, rather than that we’d just happened to run into him. He couldn’t have known we’d even be back today, but there he was, standing in the hall as if he’d been expecting us to show up at precisely that moment.
The High Mage stood with his hands clasped behind his back in the center of the hall. There was no one else nearby who he could have been speaking to before we came up, and he smiled when he saw us. Maybe it was meant to be a disarming, friendly expression, and maybe it was just the particular nature of our relationship, what with me being a manipulator and Maderel being the leader of the Mage Academy, but his expression seemed to me less like how someone would smile at a friend and more like how a wolf would smile at a rabbit.
“Ah, if it isn’t the Shadow Foxes,” Maderel greeted with a slight incline of his head. “How goes your latest mission?”
I steeled my nerves. “We’ve made a lot of progress,” I told him. “We’re planning to infiltrate their headquarters tomorrow night, actually, and stop them there, before they enter the city.”
“Are you?” Maderel raised his eyebrows. “That is certainly reassuring news. The people of Ovrista are fortunate to have such capable defenders.” His gray eyes flicked past me over the rest of the guild behind me, and I felt suddenly acutely aware of how we all must look. We hadn’t stopped to get cleaned up since we’d gotten back, and we were all dusty and travel-worn. Dehn and I still had a fair amount of the gorgon’s blood on our clothes.
I couldn’t tell by Maderel’s tone if he was offended by our haggard appearance or not, but I felt somewhat defensive anyway. We were prioritizing the mission, that was how it ought to be. Our job was to stop this heist, not stand around and look pretty.
I was about to make some excuse to leave if Maderel had nothing else for us when I realized that the High Mage might be just the right person to help us.