“I saw Ashe out there,” Melchior admitted gently, with that damnably amused smile he shared with Ashe, and he saw Rienna flinch as her eyes glossed over with tears.
“He was fucking someone else. For weeks, I barely get to say hi to him and I turn around to find him screwing a girl that I just spent all day training with! I’ve been spending time worrying about him and apparently I’m the one who’s all screwed up for nothing,” Rienna admitted, the tears drenching his shirt. He didn’t think she even knew they fell because she kept her voice steady, even in her anguish.
Melchior released her and she sat up. With little effort he reached down and undid his pants but did not release his erection. He figured if she was still set on it that was going to fall to her. He kept his arms behind his head and watched her. At the very least, he was getting a nice show of his beautiful childhood crush weeping naked as she straddled his legs. She wiped at the tears furiously and set her eyes on him. She reached into his trousers and wrapped her hand around him. His breath drew in sharply and his eyes darkened to blue-black pools, his eyes narrowed but watching her. She released it and crawled above him, hands and legs on either side, her head hovering above his. His smile was less amused and more primal but it didn’t waver.
“I love him,” Rienna confessed. Melchior already knew that so it hardly shocked him. He really didn’t have the moral fiber to care if she didn’t let it stop her.
“Then why are you getting ready to screw his brother?” Melchior challenged. Again, the idea didn’t stop him. He might have known he still had a brother longer than any relationship he ever had with a woman but it was hardly time enough to claim he was loyal just because they shared blood.
“I want to unlove him,” she said, her voice small and pitiful. “I’m not complaining,” Melchior admitted, but he already had the feeling her blood was cooling as he reminded her of what did matter to her. As bad as Melchior was with women, he loved Rienna in a strange kind of way that never left him. He lost a hand to admit it once and the sacrifice was moot if the feelings faded. Even if the feelings faded, he always had the reminder.
Rienna slapped him furiously. “You killed my husband and my father!”
Melchior nearly choked at how quickly things had changed. He had wanted her to snap out of her self-pitying impulsiveness but not quite in such a way as that. Rienna sat up and he pulled up his pants, deciding he wasn’t keen on risking any more body parts for her. Losing a hand was one thing; there was no way he was putting his cock on the line. He propped himself up on his elbows and she pounded on his chest hard a few times in frustration. Painful but he didn’t mind watching her breasts jiggle with the effort.
“Ashe told me you like angry foreplay, but I’ve got to tell you, bringing up a murder I don’t remember doesn’t do it for me,” Melchior teased in his usual way, watching her cheeks flush. He tossed an oversized pillow to her and pulled his legs out from under her. She grabbed the pillow and held it in front of her. He sat on the bed and watched her, but she just clung to the pillow.
“I can’t believe he told you that. No, I can actually. Guy shit,” Rienna admitted, anchored to reality by her embarrassment. She wondered what else the brothers discussed, but didn’t really want to know either.
“He told me a lot of things. What he remembered, we even discussed what I remembered. He’s been drinking every night, thinking you’ve been disgusted with him for telling you. Said you were supportive but never came to him, wouldn’t look him in the eye. He must’ve given up hope, no matter how stupid I told him he was being for not going to you. He knows damn well how hardheaded you are, how unwilling you are to admit you are ever vulnerable,” Melchior told her.
Rienna flashed him a look of unhappiness, but she was also grateful he had told her the truth. She had expected him to just shut-up and take her, but she knew that she often underestimated him. She was getting damn tired of her weaknesses cropping up. Some kind of hero she was. She was playing with fire and because of the bad pun involved with Melchior being Chosen by the fire elemental she smiled crookedly to herself and laughed into the pillow.
When she was done laughing, she shyly peeked her head up to see Melchior grinning at her and for once, it made her glad rather than annoyed and wanting to smack it off of his face. He handed her little wrap dress to her and she took it. He turned his back and fastened his pants as she secured the dress back on and when he turned around, they gazed at each other, her looking thankful and him with that cocky half-smile that usually meant he was about to say something to fuck it up.
“You know I can still pleasure you if you’re hard-up. You might be amazed by what the mechanical hand can do,” Melchior offered, wiggling the fingers perversely. Rienna frowned and threw the pillow at his head. He laughed as she stormed for the door.
“You’re such an asshole!” she yelled back with her hand on the doorknob. He pulled down the pillow, his eyes twinkling with that infuriating self-amusement. Her voice softened, almost to a whisper. “Thanks.”
Rienna left the room and walked off into the cool night air, down corridors and to that spot she had liked on the battlements. With a cooler head, she was unhappy by how childish she had been. She was always chastising other women for being silly and impulsive but she saw now just how wretchedly stupid love made even the most rational of people. Ashe was standing there, his hair wet and smelling like cherry blossoms. She guessed he had realized that running into her smelling of sex would probably be a bad idea, although knowing he knew that wasn’t much comfort either but she was done being angry over small things.
“I… deserved that,” Ashe spoke up after a long silence. His voice was distant, a little sad but not accusatory.
“I wanted you, moron; why didn’t you just come to me? Did you really think I was disgusted?” Rienna asked, stopping ten feet away, leaning on the short wall and crossing her feet at her ankles and her arms under her breasts. Her words were angry, but her tone was not. She didn’t really demand answers now, but she was hurt that he hadn’t come to her and hardly happy that he had confided anything in Melchior.
Ashe looked at her guiltily.
“I should have talked to you. I was a coward,” Ashe admitted.
Rienna agreed but she was a coward too. If not for Melchior being the voice of reason (words she never thought could be together), she’d have a lot more to regret. Even now, she couldn’t piece together why he had given her the ammunition she needed to clear her head. Ashe was looking into the distance and Rienna couldn’t bear to hurt him. She knew any excuse she had to give was going to sound weak and useless, but she opted for something short and honest.
“We… didn’t have sex. And I can’t even take credit for stopping it. But he did see me naked, so I guess there’s no avoiding that,” Rienna admitted unhappily. She was already miserable with the fact that he now had more accurate visuals for his perverted fantasies. She was sure he’d pick some embarrassing moment to remember a mole on her breast sometime in the future.
Ashe turned to look at her but she couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes.
“Melchior did that… He must love you still,” Ashe told her. Rienna was startled that Ashe would think that. Melchior just liked to torment her. She told herself that, but it wasn’t like him to talk a woman out of sex.
“If that was all it was, he wouldn’t have convinced me. I think you’re the reason he wanted to persuade me to stop,” Rienna confessed, but the subject wasn’t something she wanted to keep on about. When she looked up, Ashe was standing close to her but did not reach for her.
Rienna didn’t want to talk anymore, so she closed the distance and brought her mouth to his. His hands touched her midthigh and slid the dress up, exposing her butt to the night air. Rienna didn’t care if the whole world saw. When he lifted her and set her in the nook, he stepped back unsurely but she pulled off the wrap dress, spread her legs and grabbed the tops of the stones on either side of her. He took her on the battlements and didn’t
stop until her final orgasm wracked her to a boneless, sated and happy woman.
It was hard to believe that amidst the outpouring of love against all odds, there was a terrible threat ahead. The small group rarely had time to themselves and even Verity had shyly admitted to Rienna that her and Finn were not quite lovers. They slept together every night but the war preparations took so much of their energy that beds meant sleep until the bells woke them the next day. Rienna saw that Verity wasn’t so happy about that (and there were quite a few challenges getting sleep sharing a bed with a man who had great wings on his back), so Rienna had tried to comfort Verity but her thoughts ran towards wondering what interesting challenges it made to a Reishefolk’s sex life anyway (cowgirl was out in a traditional sense, but then she was sure Finn was a good enough lover to improvise). Again, Rienna had to wonder how she was going to fare going to war with these silly things in her head. Admittedly, after that torrential downpour with Ashe after her dry spell, she definitely wasn’t quite so preoccupied with sex. At least not for lack of it.
Tomorrow, they would march. The unicorns could keep the barrier around the army for a few days but it would be hard to keep up while mobile and somewhere between Myceum and the Walk they would need to rush once the barrier dropped. It was a lot to ask of the creatures that did not live in this world but they assured all of them that the old gods ceasing would end them just as swiftly. There was nothing in existence that would be preserved with their loss. That being said, they wanted to hear no more arguments. Some would join the battle and some would even stay behind so they could be sure Mythec was not compromised if they needed to retreat. It was both a generous contribution and a wise one.
Sadly, they really had no idea what they were up against. The ones they were facing did not parade around armored soldiers and deadly machines. The enemies, for all of their ego and insanity, were calculating and cruel; that much they could be sure of. Their unfortunate disadvantage was the fact that they didn’t have real insight into true evil, no matter how horrid they had seen it thus far.
Viper had been careful to only give them a taste, deep enough to wound but not enough to kill. He had touched them with darkness just enough that they were blind to the pitch black beneath, so that they could not truly stomach looking into the heart of what he was capable of. The old gods themselves had never dreamed it; the elementals could not look deep enough to see it. It was a place that only Erised had gone because only the darkness had reached it and it had twisted even the darkest creature with its horrors. Viper would get hard as a rock just thinking about his impatient vengeful adversaries’ reactions to the first of his real horror shows. Yes, they thought it would end with their heroic victory and save the world, but they were dead wrong. The ones that lived would beg for death and the old gods would wake weeping for their children and destroy their own creations with their despair.
The barrier was big enough to cover an entire city, but once they got moving, it would not be so huge or stable and they had already discovered that their movements would need to be quick, precise and compact. It would be uncomfortable; they would need to march close together and when it came time to rest, they would unfold cots to sleep on. Half of the unicorns would need to be transported while resting and the other half would need to hold the unstable barrier. It was still only about a dozen and a half of them holding it with one third on standby as warriors and the last keeping up the barrier on Mythec. They would need to hold it for 12 hours at a time and the change would need to be done at a standstill that would take around 30 minutes to switch before moving again. It was a scarily precise march and Melchior had been seeing to it meticulously. Rienna almost wished she had ignored Melchior and screwed him because he hadn’t even had time to appease his overactive libido in his rush to make sure they would be ready and he was extremely cranky when it came down to organizing. Scratch that, not her—should’ve sent the girl she found screwing Ashe but wasn’t sure if she liked that idea much better. Although, it would have done precious little to help anyone else in the long run other than a gloating Melchior so it really didn’t appeal to her either way.
The elementals (other than the wounded Erised) had gathered without being summoned shortly before the march and the group had been on edge. The elementals had oddly enough bestowed them with stronger armor, augmented with signs they had affinity for; earth and water, wind and fire, although Finn and Verity’s Life endowments were already strong in their dual gifts. Light and dark were not particularly aligned with nature but the heat of light would benefit from Nuriel’s fire and Krose’s armor had taken on a simmering glow that seemed impatient to glow like the sun. Their armor was now a thing to behold and Rienna was very near to angry tears as her armor was even sexier but no less strong; just rather form-fitting and ultra-feminine. She could swear the gods simply mocked her teenage claims that she was not a woman by shoving in her face how wrong she was. She had some suspicion that being linked to Dinsch’s elemental was the thing that married her to less clothing as well, but he seemed quite content with his constant state of near-nudity. No surprise there. In truth, once she was done pouting about it, she rather enjoying the mixed looks of appreciation and intimidation she was getting. The men would ogle her then look away so fast, their heads snapped like rubber bands.
As much as their group had wanted to stay close, it wasn’t possible; it had been their greatest comfort on their journey to Mythec to begin with but now they had their troops to lead. Rienna was to lead the vanguard and it was quite the task to be the ones to set the pace. While they marched, they would be beside Melchior’s magicians and Finn’s archers. But once the charge started, Rienna would lead, with Melchior and Finn falling in behind. They did not plan to charge Myceum in neat lines but there was simply no element of surprise to be had once the barriers had dropped; Myceum was a kingdom of treeless flatland on a patch of cracked red dirt and miserable thin rivers. Other than Dinsch and Finn, there were no Folk to charge with them, but then most of the Folk had been blessedly avoided by Myceum’s wrath. They had no terrain advantage and it was pointless to scatter and sever communication.
It was time to march and for a quiet moment, Rienna remembered Pierait and silently wished he was okay. When Pierait and Lyria had been sent on their way, they were not happy to be leaving their idyllic love nest; to get any rest, eventually Lyria had to send Pierait back to his suites. It was not easy for either of them, but Lyria had known Pierait was worried about his friends and they would need rest to catch up to them.
When morning came (or rather afternoon), Pierait had been curious as to whether the king had known anything about what Myceum was up to and the king seemed confused and shrugged, sure that the army had abandoned the city to guard the Walk and the kingdom itself was peaceful. Pierait did not like the sound of that. He knew better than most what Myceum had done and there was no way that they weren’t prepared to meet the angry throngs seeking revenge. Although the former city of Sorrow was tucked in a mostly abandoned pocket of the world, it seemed they would know something more about the nearest kingdom. Pierait did not dwell on it but he made a mental note of it and moved on.
Pierait and Lyria hadn’t needed much, since they wanted their journey to be as low key as possible. Pierait had dressed in the clothing he had bought when he first arrived with a few wellcrafted ornate pieces of armor to add to it (courtesy of the king) and Lyria in her dark battle-maiden ensemble. They only took what they could carry, each on a strong desert-trained horse and the king had packed as many decadent long-lasting foods as possible, soft blankets, accommodating tents and so on, so that they were much better off than they had been even as wellstocked as they had been between Maharyjab and the Wailing River.
Lyria had been curious what changes occurred to the Wailing River. Did the Lost Souls vanish too? Was it still a deadly icy current that caused her such dread? She was not terribly anxious to approach it again, especially knowing it could be no less repulsive. Pierait had seen her tre
pidation as they approached it and he smiled at her reassuringly.
“Everything was different when we first crossed it, Lyria. The mountains were walls that hid the sky, the air was tinged with green, the sky a somber purple. This time there is sun all around us, a bright blue sky…” Pierait told her coaxingly.
Lyria nodded and smiled weakly, wanting to believe him. Already, she was noticing something different; she could hear the sound of water babbling without rhythm as they neared. When they approached the Wailing River, it was devoid of the dark shapes that had moved beneath its surface and Lyria could see green water plants waving along the bottom. She could see that it moved lazily now and did not look like an introduction to a dead land any longer.
“Damnedest thing I ever saw,” came the voice of the dwarf as they watched the water. “Those things in the water just shot up and vanished and I could swear the river actually sighed and then there were ripples, plants and noise.”
“What do you think they’ll call it now? Wailing River doesn’t suit it anymore,” Lyria asked distantly, her relief turning to unsuppressed joy.
The dwarf shrugged, his usual curmudgeonly posture in place. “Hell if I know, miss; Iric sent word that they already changed the city to Abundance and the whole lands to Wellspring Valley. A few ragged travelers that had avoided the Walk due to Myceum’s strict regulations have already rolled through planning to start settlements and the like,” the dwarf told them. “I ought to get paid more if they want me to keep track of all this. Before, it was wall, city, river and most of the ones that actually had the nerve to cross turned right back around. Iric says you were the ones responsible…”
The Truth about Heroes: Complete Trilogy (Heroes Trilogy) Page 50