“Just go to sleep. Soon I’ll have my wards re-built, and then we can figure a way out of this. I will hold you in my arms again. I promise.”
She shivered from both excitement and sadness. She wanted that so much. But, “How, Kean?” What if this was just another dream? A vision. Her mind playing tricks. “How do I know this is real?”
“Shh. Just trust me, where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
Bri closed her eyes with a smile playing at her lips. When it came to will, Kean had the market cornered. “You always keep your promises.”
“That’s right.”
Her cheek grew cold, and she smelled roses.
“I love you, Kean,” she said, in case this was the last chance she had.
Though she could feel the tingle of foreknowledge and knew it was true: Kean was a Lumere. His soul was stuck between incarnations, his body encased in spelled stone. The practical side of Bri analyzed that problem and thought, I can work with this. Nothing irrevocable had taken place yet. His body was preserved in magic, and his soul hadn’t turned on the Wheel.
She was a Skydancer.
It meant she had the ability to throw the Universe out of balance if she wasn’t careful, but couldn’t it work the other way? Couldn’t she set things back in balance, too? Maybe she’d been given these extra powers so she would be strong enough in this life to right the wrongs she’d done before. She had already vanquished the Soul Eater. Not by herself, but by virtue of the people that had been drawn and bound to her by Fate.
She’d lost so much in the process of becoming Zyne, but somewhere in the middle of it all, she’d found herself. Her heritage had shattered her illusions of a tranquil life. Destiny swept behind in a blaze, decimating everything she tried to hold on to. She was left alone, like the solitary tree standing after a forest fire. The first days after losing Kean, she’d thought she would crumble to ash, just another memory on the wind. But as blackened pieces of her cracked and fell away, she saw the truth. Under all that charred wreckage was the heartwood. Bruised. Scarred. But still good. Still capable of growth. When she looked in the mirror, she no longer saw a victim, but a survivor.
Now Kean had appeared to give her hope, like the first healing rain. Nothing would get in her way of setting things right. If harnessing her powers and taking Fate by the reins meant she could have Kean back, she was up for the challenge. He had given his life for her. Two lives. She owed it to him, no matter how long it took, no matter the cost.
In this life, she was going to settle all debts.
Want some more?
Bri’s story continues in Book 2! And look for the first in the Zyne Legacy Romance series, To Tame a Wild Heart, available September 21, 2015.
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SKYDANCER BOOK 2: VEIL OF THORNS PREVIEW
Available December 21, 2015
When a fallen angel arrives on Oracle Briana Spurrier’s doorstep promising a way to free her true love from his cursed imprisonment, she’s willing to defy both Zyne Law and Cosmic order to bargain with him. But the journey will take her to the far reaches of the globe and into an enchanted forest that is the lair of an ancient and evil sorceress. To battle another Skydancer, she will need her Familiar. Still raw from facing the Soul Eater, can she survive an onslaught of magical booby-traps, her own volatile powers, and the draw to her past-life lover long enough to break Kean’s curse, or will she be a pawn in Fate’s plans again?
Prologue
Toulouse, France
1594
A lone howl echoed into the humid night.
The birds’ shrill answer fluttered through the leaves and broke to the sky.
Vivianne followed a winding path through the midnight forest. A path she’d never trod before, but knew by heart. The path to her lover. The dewy ground caught faint traces of light and reflected it back in an ethereal wave. As it should, on such a night. One charged with potent power.
Though she was barefoot, the darkness did not fault her. She knew when to step over roots and ducked on instinct under the low-hanging branches. She could never have spotted them in the inky darkness under the canopy, so she relied on her internal compass to guide her in the general direction and her Second Sight to fill in the rest.
Fairy mounds glowed pink and blue-green in the distance, shielded by misty invisibility wards. Darker things lurked in hollows — greedy eyes watching, waiting. Others cowered and drew back as she passed. Magic licked at her from above and below. She closed her eyes, letting her other senses guide her. A bouquet of rich loam and ripe berries filled her nose. The sound of water grew closer and closer, until she finally stumbled upon an ambling creek.
Her passage along the rocky bank was as smooth and swift as the eddying water, only she was silent. Stealth and her heightened psychic abilities were the only tools she allowed herself as she walked deeper into his realm.
She wasn’t in any physical danger, but each step took her closer to an act she knew would cost her dearly. An act that would certainly cause her pain, eventually. That didn’t matter now. She’d made up her mind.
He is worth it.
The forest was utterly still, but for the faint babbling of the creek. The living things around her remained mute. They understood a hunter was out tonight.
She was willing prey.
She’d worn his favorite rose oil and nothing else under her skirts, and had built up a painful wanting for him over the past few days. He would scent her. She’d left her hair loose, so that it swayed against the cloak she wore. It was his favorite color, the color of passion and sin. The color of blood.
The wolf would see it, even in the dark.
She emerged into an eerie clearing — stark and bare of shrubbery but for a solitary oak in the center. Large boulders anchored the four directional corners like stout sentries of a sacred place lost out of time. The full moon poured forth power, drenching the misty circle in a gauze of light. With her first step onto the grass, Vivianne felt the charge of the altar that had been built of the very bones of the earth. A Prism. A gathering place for the energies of life, constructed by nature itself. No wonder the wolf had chosen this for his lair.
The magic we work here will not fail.
She knew beyond any doubt when the power of the circle washed through her, coating her insides with raw, elemental charge, that she would succeed in what she set out to do this night. For good or ill. She blessed the corners, infusing her own magic into that of the Prism, strengthening her connection to the Conduit. Then she sat down to wait.
She didn’t have to wait long.
He stalked out of the shadows as if he owned the night and everything it touched, a predator fixed on delicious quarry. His tawny-copper figure shimmered in the moonlight, but for a mantle of black across his powerful shoulders. Stormy grey eyes flickered golden in the dark, and long white teeth gleamed. He was tall enough at the shoulder to dwarf her as he approached, but had nothing to fear. She smiled and reclined into the leaves, spreading her cloak beneath her.
The wolf nosed at her ankles, then her knees.
She gazed up through the clearing at the glimmering stars in the velvet night sky, her heart fluttering near her navel. On her next exhale, she had a very warm, very naked, very aroused male pressed against her, nuzzling and kissing her. Growling at her gently.
Her lover. Her wolf.
“Gods above and below. woman, you know you should not be here.”
Vivianne smiled. He always made some half-hearted protest when they came together. He never really meant it. They were both equally helpless against the forces entangling them. Slaves to the lash of destiny. Their spirits communicated on some baser level, called to each other. Fate always tangled their paths, no matter how hard they tried to stay away — as if the Heavens themselves had tied them to one another.
She co
uld not ignore the truth of it anymore: she needed him.
She rolled them over and straddled his lap. Broad hands slid from her waist to her hips and gripped her possessively, seeping heat into her skin through her clothes. The almost painful need in his expression reminded her of the first time he’d taken her, in the rough hay of the stables, amidst her husband’s prized horses. They’d been crazed with desire for each other, beyond reason or judgment. Beyond right or wrong.
His chest rumbled in approval as she slid against his hardness, and he helped hike her skirt up her thighs. The visage of the wolf still rode him in her Second Sight. The markings across his back and shoulders never went away, but his features were still cast over by those of the beast, severe and lupine. His eyes were disks of amber flame with barely a pinprick of black in the center. Black claws gently scraped her milky skin, and she whimpered when their bodies sealed together — sharp relief.
He rubbed his face into her bodice, licking, kissing, and lightly nipping with sharp teeth. Vivianne quivered in his arms, and he drove into her, deep and satisfying. And then came his slow, languorous torture. He glided against her with aching precision that made her belly coil tight, her breath catch. Slow, steady, controlled. Concentrated not just on her pleasure, but on drawing it out as long as possible.
Until she begged for completion.
Her wolf asked for one thing in return.
“Will you mate me, my Ana?” He drew back to look into her eyes. The burn of hunger in his gaze told her he wanted her as much as she did him. Wildness crept just beneath the surface. Desperation. But he’d told her to stay away until she could accept his wolf, his magic, and his soul.
“You’ve come to tell me you’ve changed your mind?” When she didn’t answer, but only smoldered at him, he teased against her until she cried out, a prisoner to his exquisite knowledge of her body.
There had been nothing that required changing except for her futile efforts to walk the higher path, to be unselfish. She’d failed. Or she’d surrendered. Did it matter anymore?
“Well?” he asked through clenched teeth.
Vivianne didn’t fear the wolf. And she no longer cared of the consequences. She needed him.
“I will mate you, my wolf,” she said with heavy breath on his ear. Then she moaned as the heat of him touched so deep she broke out in a sweat.
He rolled her over and laid her back, on their forbidden marriage bed of crimson velvet, rich earth, and fallen leaves. Already buried within her, he pulled her legs tighter around him and ground against her in a luscious, sinewy movement of pure, supple muscle. His rough stubble abraded her neck and chest as he devoured her. He trailed his tongue to the tops of her breasts, biting harder, marking the pale, giving flesh with crescent rings of teeth marks.
“Our souls are one. For all time, I will love only you.” He claimed her mouth, this time holding nothing back. He drowned her in the tempest of his own ancient power, that of an immortal. The charge of the extra magic took her breath away.
There was no turning back from here. They were committed. Tonight, they re-forged destiny… Tonight, she would veer from the path she’d sworn herself to with a blood oath. Follow her heart. Forsaking one of the sacred Threefold Laws.
Her body cried for release. Power hummed over her skin, seeped into the ground below, and vibrated back in a rush.
Vivianne unsheathed her athame.
Her lover released her mouth, grunted with excitement and quickened the pace of his fervent thrusts. She rolled them over, rode him down to the ground, and pinned his shoulders until he quieted. His chest heaved. Claws dug into her thighs. She dragged the blade across her palm until blood beaded, then did the same over his left breast, whispering the incantation again and again until it coiled around her bones. She could see the weaving of ancient and forbidden magic glowing behind her eyelids. She breathed the words that would bind them together eternally.
The sky seemed to bear down on their circle. The energy inside roiled and bubbled. With all the power she could channel, under the full moon, in a sacred Prism, Vivianne placed her hand over her immortal lover’s heart, and willed them to become one.
Their heartbeats crashed together like lightning bolts meeting in the sky. They both cried out, backs bowing. Still joined and dangling on the precipice of release, they clung to each other as the spell sizzled in the air. Power seeped from the ground in whorls of hazy mist, sparkling in the moonlight. It flowed into them, between them, out of them. Their bodies tensed and then melded together, their consciousness intertwined as sure as their lips were locked.
“I love you, Ana,” he said, before plunging them over the edge of fulfillment. He stared at her face, his eyes swirling like clouds in a fierce thunderstorm.
“I love you.” She clung to him in the desperate throes of desire, free-falling through bliss, with the eternal mate of her soul. “Lucas.”
Chapter One
San Juan Islands, Washington
Present Day
How does one begin a letter to a werewolf lover from a past life? There was no correct answer to that question. Emily Post herself would be stumped. Dear was too endearing. Hi was too familiar. To was too…something. Bri tapped her pen on the table and stared through the rain-slicked glass of the kitchen nook’s beveled windows. The lilies at the edge of the yard swayed in the mid-morning breeze. If she took much longer, she would miss the ferry. Sighing, she bent back over the paper.
Lucas,
Okay. She could do this. She’d put it off for long enough. For months she’d meant to sit down and write something, anything. Just an answer to his letter would have been simple. Could he call on her — yes, or no? She couldn’t even write either of those words, because both would mean so much more. But whatever unresolved feelings she had for the immortal half-demon who called himself Lucas Moncrieffe, they weren’t lessening with his absence. Her regressions hadn’t stopped. And the dreams of late had become…very frustrating. The next logical choice was to face him and hopefully train herself into seeing him as something else through exposure therapy.
She was not his long lost love Vivianne. No matter how much Lucas wished it to be so. She didn’t love him. She didn’t even know him. Pretty cut and dried. But he had risked his life to save hers, and she had treated him unfairly. What had happened to Kean wasn’t Lucas’s fault. It had taken her a couple of months to finally accept that. They would all be dead now, if not for Lucas. She owed him her thanks, at the very least. Nodding to herself, she scribbled the next line.
We should talk.
Was that the same as saying he could call on her? Or would he take it too literally, being centuries old? She had to be careful not to extend an inadvertent invitation. She didn’t want him just showing up. This confrontation was going to take preparation, planning. And lots of pep talks from Astrid. No, he definitely couldn’t call on her. But…
You may call me on the telephone. If you can’t use a telephone, please write back and we’ll make other arrangements.
She signed her full name, wrote down her phone number, and sealed it in an envelope she’d addressed and stamped over a month ago. She tucked the letter in her purse, made sure Max and Maggie had food and water, and left a note for Kean on the pad by the hall phone. The moon was almost full. He might show up, and he’d wonder where she’d gone.
The tourist season on the island was picking up again, thanks to a recent blast of warmer weather. Making your intended ferry back from the mainland had become a rarity, and she had lots of errands, plus the extra stop for Astrid. She would try to keep that short, but with the Fitzgerald clan, you never knew. It might be nightfall before she returned. Her body hummed with excitement, as it always did when she knew she would see Kean soon.
Despite the sun-breaks, winter’s chill hadn’t released its hold on the islands yet, and the heater in Kean’s clunky old pickup had stopped working. Again. Bri pulled on her forest green pea coat made of thick wool and the knitted mittens and sca
rf Astrid had given her for Yule.
Two German shepherd sentinels stood at attention by the truck as she walked down the back steps to the driveway. Bri shook her head. “Not this time, guys. Just guard duty today.”
Max stretched, yawned, and walked up to Bri with his tail wagging. They exchanged licks for scratches, and he took his post on the back porch. Maggie sniffed Bri’s hand as she walked by, but otherwise didn’t move. Bri climbed into the truck and then heard a skitter of claws and a thump behind her.
She checked the rear-view mirror to see a brown and black lump of fur trying very hard to blend in with the rusty truck bed. It’s hard to sound firm and grin at the same time, but Bri tried. “Maggie. Out.”
Maggie reluctantly complied and watched with a forlorn curl of her brows as Bri backed down the drive. Once on the road, Bri laughed to herself about the antics Kean’s dogs — just his dogs — put her through on a daily basis. Her life was infinitely more complicated than before. Imagine what the flesh and blood man would do to her, if they ever had the chance to settle into a life together.
No…bad idea. She wasn’t supposed to imagine that. It made things too difficult, and so much more unfair. Later, she would see Kean. He would see her. They could talk and be in each other’s presence — a blessing she thanked the Stars for every night. But they couldn’t touch each other. They couldn’t feel each other. It was maddening. Like some sort of sensory deprivation torture. Adding anything remotely sexual into it had just served to frustrate the hell out of them both and result in them being at each others’ throats when they needed to be working together to figure out a way to break his curse.
Kean’s body was still in the mortal plane, encased in stone and under a powerful curse. But thanks to a protection spell on a blessed amulet and Kean’s stubborn will, his spirit was somehow bound to her grandmother’s house. Within the magical and physical barriers of the house he could take a form, though not a corporeal one. Which was why she’d spent the last three months driving his junky truck, even though she could afford a new car. She liked the idea that Kean was with her, even when she left the house. She shared her bed with his two obnoxious dogs because their body warmth and soft snores reminded her she wasn’t alone, that soon Kean would be there to hold her again.
Rain of Ash: Skydancer Book 1 (The Zyne Legacy) Page 31