by Slade, Jessa
She staggered forward, barely assisted by Raze’s dragging feet. If he fell, she wasn’t sure she could get him upright again. “Hate to say this, but that ship ain’t sailing.”
“Need has its ways.”
Yelena eyed the boat. The pterodactyl, still chained to the prow, returned her dubious stare. She couldn’t hold Raze up for long—already his weight was sagging more against her as his great strength failed him—and it wasn’t like she knew where else to take him.
Grimacing, she guided him down the steps to the sand that sucked at their bare feet. Fortunately, the awkward angle of the beached boat made it relatively easy to lever him in, though he sucked in a breath as his back skidded over the velvet throws.
She winced and glanced back at EveStar. “How does this happen? Do I just wish us there?”
The phae’s lips twisted, even more unsettling than her distorted fingers. “You werelings are as bad as the humans. You’ve forgotten the magic that made the world dance.”
“Made it dangerous too,” Yelena countered. “Or so I’m told.”
EveStar shrugged. “Is the tigress less beautiful because she bites?”
Not bothering to answer, Yelena pulled herself into the boat beside Raze. His gray eyes were sunken with pain, his dusky skin too pale under the carved geasa and streaks of ash. His lip where she’d bitten him was swollen and her heart felt equally sore.
She bent forward to kiss him gently, tasting blood and dust and his own wild evergreen scent. “I’m sorry. That didn’t go well, did it?”
“Kiss me again and make it better.”
She smiled and smoothed back his hair. “I think you must be fevered. Definitely silly.”
“Never.”
And since she was touching him, she knew he told the truth. So she kissed him again.
The pterodactyl made a disapproving noise and took to the air, flying in a tight circle at the end of its chain.
“Cover yourselves,” EveStar said. “I will push you off.”
Yelena grabbed a corner of the velvet throw and tugged it over Raze. “I just don’t see how the—”
The phae flattened her eerie hands against the stern and shoved. Sand screamed under the hull as the boat drifted impossibly forward. The pterodactyl echoed the sound then dove.
The prow wrenched down. Yelena threw her arm over Raze, trying to anchor him as the boat tilted. Sparkling black sand poured over the bulwark like a wave of night.
Raze pulled the velvet over their heads just as the sand engulfed them.
* * *
At the quiet sound of lapping water, Yelena carefully nudged back the velvet. Sand sloughed away, drifting into streamers of glittering smoke. How...? Where...?
The space around them was as dark as the sand had been and almost as sparkly.
She recognized the veins of phosphorescent light across the ceiling of Raze’s cavern and let out a relieved sigh. But just as quickly, she sucked in the same breath and flicked the cover back from Raze.
Eyes closed. So still. She settled her fingertips against his neck, feeling... She let out the breath one last time and flattened her palm over his chest, letting the steady rise and fall comfort her for a moment.
She glanced around warily. The boat floated on a dark lake, though she glimpsed veins of the same crystals illuminating the depths beneath them. She’d smelled this wet, mineral scent when Raze had first brought her to his cavern, and she’d suspected there was a spring somewhere nearby. But this...
She trailed her hand over the edge and let out a soft sound of surprise. Though the air was cool, the water was warm, almost hot. She cast a wry glance at her unconscious passenger. She wouldn’t have thought him the hot-tubbing type.
The pterodactyl floated quietly in front of the boat, its neck twisted to stare at its ghostly white reflection. The raw scales where the iron collar chafed it looked smoother, mostly healed; if the water had soothed that squawking beast, she hoped it would do Raze some good too.
She ladled a handful over his brow, and his eyes opened, the usually stormy gray lightened to silver with the crystalline light above them.
She realized she was grinning like a fool. “Rise and shine, handsome.”
“You are confused,” he said, his voice rough.
“True. I suppose it’s always night down here.”
“Not with you.” He caught her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.
This time the courtly gesture made her blush, though she knew she should concentrate on more important things. “How badly are you hurt?”
He shifted, grimacing, and she helped him sit up. “Could have been worse,” he said, with more stoicism than she thought was necessary. “We could have been stripped to our elemental components and rewoven into the illusions of the court.”
With him sitting, she was able to examine his back. His damaged trousers clung precariously around his hips. “You were mostly stripped.”
He winced as he craned his neck to follow the light touch of her fingers to his scalded shoulders. “The real damage is to the wards that locked the portals. Without the geasa powered directly through me, through my skin and blood, the wards will fail.”
She paused in her examination, a flicker of uneasy excitement zinging through her. If the locks on the portals failed, she could leave the phaedrealii whenever she wished. She had already reached the verita luna once and been close twice more; obviously her misconnection with the change was correcting itself.
His gaze was locked on her, as if he was trying to read her mind, so she kept her focus on carefully pouring water over his skin to wash away the rose-petal dust, or whatever a busted illusion was made of. “Would it really be so bad,” she asked, “if you weren’t trapped here?”
She thought he might object to the word “trapped” as he had when the Queen had said “confined,” but instead he just sighed. “You saw what our Queen can do. What she will do. It’s true her power is concentrated here in the phaedrealii because all our magic is focused in one place, but there are relatively few triggers to set her off.” He dredged up a smile. “Other than yourself.” His smile faded. “In the sunlit realm, with her court gathered close and temptations all around, she would be a force unlike any the world remembers.”
Yelena resisted the urge to remind him that the Iron Age was long passed. For him, it wasn’t, not really. “Maybe the world is finally ready for magic again.”
“Maybe you are seeing what you want to believe.”
Since she was touching him, she knew he spoke only the truth, at least as he saw it. “You think I’m taking stupid risks because I lost the verita luna.”
“I think you could change anytime you choose, but you won’t until the world changes with you.” He took her hands, stopping her ministrations. “The Queen’s phae magic is trouble enough, but you, Yelena Morozova, with your dreams are more terrifying yet.”
“I don’t dream anymore.” The worried admission popped out of her. “Not since I got the concussion. If I sleep too deeply, the nightmares come and...”
He waited a moment, watching her with a seemingly endless patience no wereling could ever match, and she found the steady gray of his eyes strangely peaceful. Even the prowling beast inside her, always so edgy, rested in that twilight gaze.
Eventually, when she didn’t go on, he stood. The boat rocked a bit, and she gripped the gunwale. “After I carve a geas, I come back here to soak. The pool has curative powers from a source older than the phae.”
He stripped out of his shredded trousers, making the boat rock even more. Or maybe that was just her suddenly rocketing pulse. His sideways stance gave her a coy view of only his flexed thigh and curved butt cheek, ramping up her sense memory of their earlier encounter in his bed.
Who needed dreams when she had a fantasy in
the flesh?
She swallowed hard as he climbed up onto the narrow seat across the bow and held out his hand to her.
“Come,” he said.
Impossible to resist.
She grabbed the hem of her skirt and peeled the gown over her head, though the spiderlings’ bejeweled web still clung to her hair. He hauled her up onto the seat beside him and, hand in hand, they jumped.
The water took them with barely a splash. It felt thick and buoyant around Yelena, and it held her up without any effort on her part. As she floated on her back, her skin tingled delightfully, but from Raze’s breathless muttering, she guessed his open wounds must be faring worse.
She pulled him closer so his head rested on her stomach and ran her fingers through his wet spiked hair. “Shh. Breathe. Let it go.”
He panted a few more times. “I thought cats hated water.”
“Tigers love to swim.” She kept up her petting until his breath evened. “We’ll even hunt through water.”
He rolled to kiss her navel. “Do you have any prey in sight?”
She looked down between her breasts at his glittering silver eyes. “Maybe. If he can be caught.”
“Odds are in your favor. He seems vulnerable.”
The raw truth froze her despite the luscious warmth of the water around them and the particular heat of his lips on her skin. “Raze, you don’t have to—”
“Arazael. When we are alone, it would please me if you used my real name.”
She hesitated. This revelation had not been forced by her touch; she had not asked him his name.
Something forlorn moved across his face, softening the stark lines. “I have not heard it since we retreated to the phaedrealii.”
Had anyone ever asked such a small thing of her? So small yet so precious, as if she held this potent man in the palm of her hand. She shivered with the power of it. “Arazael,” she said softly.
He closed his eyes, one arm curling under her backside to hold her closer. “Thank you.”
“Arazael the flute player.” She smiled.
Without opening his eyes, he smiled back. “I have not played in even longer than I’ve heard my name. After a few millennia I would be inexcusably rusty, although I always relied more on enthusiasm than aptitude.”
“I might have guessed nymphs aren’t picky.”
He cracked one eye to peer at her, silver glinting between his dark lashes. “And cats?”
She sniffed. “Cats are very picky.”
His arm tightened on her. “Then I shall need enthusiasm and aptitude.”
“Practice makes perfect.”
He rolled up alongside her, sleek and powerful, the water seeming to cocoon them together. She caught her breath as he kissed his way up from her belly, pausing between her breasts where he must have heard her thundering heartbeat, before swiftly claiming her lips.
With the glimmering crystal above and below them and the soft darkness in between, she wasn’t sure if they were floating horizontally or upright or if the pool even still existed. All she knew was her prince, playing her body as if he’d been waiting forever for the chance.
His kiss tasted of the mineral water and his own unique flavor, like a brewing storm, and she reveled in the wildness of it. He clenched her backside with one large hand and kneaded her breast with the other until she felt a conduit of liquid desire arcing between his hands, deep in her core. She twisted against him, making desperate little encouraging noises, until he thumbed her aching nipple; at the same time he slipped one long finger from behind into her cleft, and the arc went molten, fiercer than the magic that had been unleashed against them.
She threaded her fingers behind his head, angling his head to deepen the kiss. Suspended in the pool, there was no up or down, no need to hold themselves against gravity. She let her hands roam down his broad chest, felt the rasp of the remaining geasa under her palms and the leap of muscle as he gasped soundlessly. Lower, she cupped the heavy weight of him, and the hard length of flesh surged eagerly into her hand. Maybe the phae had conflicted feelings about touch, but this phae wanted it, wanted her.
She rewarded him with a long, lingering stroke, and he thrust against her with a groan. The agitation of the water stirred up a phosphorescent glow around their bodies. It took just a deft shift to impale herself on his cock.
“Yelena!”
His shocked gasp made her laugh, tightening her inner muscles so he groaned and thrust again.
“Phae aren’t the only ones with tricks.” She gripped his sac and eased her finger along his seam. He shuddered against her, his face tucked into her neck so that his gusting breath riffled over her peaked nipples. She arched her back in entreaty, lifting one breast to his mouth, and he licked a tightening circle around her areola, echoing the rising tension within her.
With each dart of pleasure, she clenched tighter until he was all but trapped, his abs taut and quivering, groin grinding her swollen nub until she...
“Now, Arazael,” she moaned. “Now!”
He pulled just free enough to plunge again—one, two, and the magic three—and she came apart in a shuddering wave that spread through all her limbs and returned to her core in ever-expanding rings.
He stroked himself into her spasming center, how many times she didn’t know since she’d forgotten how to count, before he too arched with a shout. She steadied his big body, feeling the shivers deep inside him, until he collapsed with a splash and a snort.
She giggled, making him groan again from the teasing squeeze on his cock. “When did the water come back? I swear it had disappeared.”
“Maybe it did. I’ve never played with it like this.”
She rolled with him in the water until they were floating in a loose curl, her head on his shoulder. She ran a wondering hand over the rounded musculature. “It’s all but healed.”
He tilted his head and frowned. “The Queen’s magic scoured the geasa away entirely, but I always had a hard time keeping the carvings unhealed enough to maintain the locks.”
Maybe the power in the pool didn’t approve of his self-mutilation, either. Yelena decided not to say that aloud. “How long will it take you to...to replace the geasa?”
He stared up into the pearly glow above them. “I’ve been sealing the portals with my blood since the end of the Iron Wars.”
It was a good thing the water held her gently suspended again or with her mouth hanging open so far, she might have drowned. “But that’s...”
“A long time.” His frown deepened to a scowl. “But as your appearance reminded me, yet again, doorways do not like to stay closed. The merest touch and a desire to pass through is enough to crack the seal.”
Her idly tracing fingers paused on his chest. “You don’t want that touch.”
“I want it too much.” He crowded against her. “You werelings can’t understand. Even while the phae fight against the truths forced skin-to-skin, we hunger for its special power. It was our Undoing.”
She heard the special emphasis he gave the word. “Werelings aren’t immune. My father should never have gotten a human woman pregnant—half-blood children almost always suffer the il-luna—but he was so distraught after my mother left, I think he came a little undone.”
He stroked her back in soothing patterns, like an invisible geas locking out the pain. “Your mother left you?”
“Some werelings are more deeply their beast than others. When I was old enough to control the verita luna, she felt her task as a tigress mother was done. I see her sometimes, but...” Yelena let out a slow breath, sinking closer to Raze. She’d never told anyone, not even her father, how much the abandonment had hurt. She’d wanted to be stronger than the anguish, but a man who’d cut himself to pieces for his people could feel what she’d held inside. “I don’t think my mother unde
rstood how much I still needed her. Yes, I could control the tigress; the adolescent angst, not so much.” She tried to dredge up a laugh. “But by then my father had remarried, and my stepmother was amazing. Even when I was at my snottiest—teen tigers are the worst—I knew she would never leave her daughters, not even me, to fend for ourselves.”
“That’s why you want to help your sisters.”
She nodded against his chest. “They’re my family. I love them, and I’ll do anything for them.”
They floated in silence for a while.
“I...feel,” he said haltingly, “the same way about the phae. Except instead of freeing them, the only way I can save them is to lock the court. During the Iron Wars, I fought for them with everything I had. But it wasn’t enough.”
The sorrow in his voice—and the finality—chilled her despite the heated water, and she snuggled closer. “Maybe my mother left too soon, but what if you are holding on too tight?”
“So I should take a lesson in raising troublesome youngsters from your stepmother?”
Yelena imagined him seated at her stepmother’s table in their Siberian dacha. Maybe it should have worried her more that he, dark and rather dour, would fit in so well. “She’d have a lot to tell you.”
“Just as she warned you to stay away from the phae. Yes, I can see she taught you well.”
Yelena nipped his pectoral. “She made a home for me, but she also gave me room to roam. That’s what I want for my sisters, for all werelings, even those born into the il-luna.”
He rubbed his pec then tilted her chin up to kiss her. “Your stepmother would let her daughters walk away from her with their beasts unchecked?”
Yelena frowned. “She knows they would never hurt anyone.”
“And will no one hurt them? Do you believe the world will welcome such strange ways with open arms?”
“Maybe not right away, but—”
“And how much will you risk on that ‘not right away’?”
She pushed away from him, bobbing upright. “I went into a war zone without a weapon. I guess I’m willing to risk my life.”