He tugged me into his embrace and filled my mind with light. The world was rainbows and glitter as the ether opened up to us and the lounge and my mates faded away.
“Wila, which way?” Seb asked.
I hugged him close and closed my eyes, calling to Azren. Silence greeted me, heavy and ominous, and then Azren’s sweet, fresh aroma tickled my senses. I latched on to it and opened my eyes.
His scent was all around me now, how could I have missed it? And there, pressed into the ether, were his footprints—glittering gold imprints against the silver and pink world we were floating in.
“This way.” I grabbed Seb’s hand and kicked off, swimming along the trail. Azren’s presence grew stronger, and my stomach fluttered. Close, he was so close. “We’re catching up.”
“Good. Keep going,” Seb instructed.
His footprints grew deeper, darker and then the ether parted before us and a gray archway rose up out of it. This was it. Azren was through that arch.
Seb pulled back on my hand. “I can’t go through the arch with you, but we’re still connected. Just ... don’t stay too long.”
“What do you mean?”
“Certain places beyond the ether are designed for rebirth and new beginnings; their purpose is to purify, and that includes memories.”
“You mean Azren may have forgotten me?”
“It’s possible, and there’s a risk that you could forget too, so you have to act fast. Hold on to my voice in your head. Can you do that?”
I nodded. “I’ll be back.” He released my hand and the arch pulled me in and under.
***
I knew this meadow, it was the same green grass, the same azure sky that Azren had last spoken to me under. How could this be? Hills rolled endlessly in the distance and watching it all was my kindred. His back was to me, hands on hips as he surveyed the land.
“Azren?”
He turned his head slightly, his brows coming down in query. “Who’s there?”
Young blades of grass tickled and pricked my bare feet as I walked over to him. “It’s Wila. I’ve come to bring you home?”
He studied my face for a long beat. “You look familiar.”
Oh, shit. Okay, I could do this. “That’s because I’m your kindred.”
He reached up to touch my face lightly. “I was about to break my fast. Would you like to join me?”
He indicated the ground, where a picnic blanket and a simple meal of bread, cheese, and what looked like wine was laid out.
“You drink wine for breakfast?”
He smiled. “Don’t you?”
Did I? For a moment, the answer eluded me, and then, “No. I drink tea.”
A tea cup and pot appeared in place of the wine.
Azren stared at them. “Tea ... I like tea ...”
“Yes, you do, and we need to go home so we can have lots of it.” I took his hand. “Come back with me, Azren, please.”
He gazed over my head at the rolling plains and the proud sun. “I have a journey to make,” he said softly. “But first, I must break my fast.” He sat cross-legged on the ground, tugging me down with him. “Will you join me?”
Why wasn’t he listening to me? “Azren, listen. Elora wounded you and you died, or you’re dying. This place is a holding ground, and there’s still time to come back. You can live again, please.”
My eyes burned with desperate hope and frustration, because his expression was polite and unaffected, as if I’d just told him it would be a lovely day.
“Dammit, Azren. You need to .... to ...” What did he need to do? The aroma of freshly brewed tea was distracting. “I love tea ... I think.”
“Try some,” Azren said. “We can break our fasts together, and then you can join me on the journey.”
The sun was warm on my shoulders, and the bread was freshly baked. It smelled delicious. My companion cut a slice for me, lathering it with creamy butter.
He held it up to me. “Take a bite.”
His jade eyes were fathomless, his lips perfectly formed and begging to be kissed. An emotion I didn’t recognize, and yet felt familiar, unfurled inside me. I wanted to claim this man. I wanted him to claim me.
His mouth parted on a soft sigh, and he lowered the bread, leaning in to me. “The bread smells delicious, but your mouth ... I want to taste it.”
Yes. Yes, his mouth. That delectable mouth. Our lips brushed, and then our tongues tasted each other, tentative and sweet, but there was more. Something about his teeth ... sweet pain. He’d given me sweet pain laced with the copper taste of blood and then he’d soothed it away until there’d been nothing but his mouth, his body, his ... Had we done this before?
He pulled back, confusion etched on his face. The aroma of freshly baked bread, the delicious tang of tea was suddenly heavier in the air, pushing into my head and shoving out the almost revelations.
He held up the bread. “We should eat.” It was almost at his lips, almost in his mouth, and something surged up inside me, a conviction that if he ate that bread then something would be lost, something precious and irreplaceable. My hand shot out and knocked the food from his grasp.
“Don’t.”
He stared at me in horror. “Why?”
Because ... because ...
You have to come back. You have to come back now. Wila ...
“Did you hear that?” my companion asked. “Who’s Wila?”
Wila ... Wilomena ....
You can’t forget, Wila. You can’t forget. Bring Azren back. Come back to me.
“Wilomena.” The jade-eyed man cupped my face. “Wilomena.” He kissed me softly, then harder. His teeth broke my skin and his tongue healed it, over and over. Tiles against my back, legs wrapped around his waist. Tears locked in my chest. Blood. His blood on the arena floor.
Azren! I pulled away, heart slamming against my ribcage.
“Wilomena?” There it was, a flicker of recognition.
I stood and grabbed his hand. “We have to go. We have to go now.”
This time he stood and allowed me to tug him along. We had to get out. Get to ... someone important. But to do that we needed to find the ... fuck! What did we need to find?
Wila ... can you hear me?
“Yes. Where are you. I can’t find you.”
Look for the arch.
Arch! Fuck yes, that was it.
It materialized in front of us, gray and forbidding, and beyond there was nothing but inky darkness.
Azren stopped in his tracks. “No. This isn’t right. I need to take the journey.”
I turned to him and grabbed his chin. “No. You’re not taking any fucking journey. You’re coming home with me. You fucking got that?”
The haze that sat like a veil over his gaze lifted and his focus sharpened. “Wilomena?”
Finally.
“I ... I died.”
“Yeah, you did, but are you done being dead now?”
A myriad of emotions passed across his face and then he stood tall, his expression hardening. “I owe Elora pain. I will not die without delivering.”
“Oh, goodie. Now, let’s get the fuck out of here and get a real cup of non-enchanted tea.”
We took several steps toward the arch and then it was rushing toward us, swallowing us whole.
***
I tore into reality to bellows and yells and a blur of limbs.
“Calm down, dammit, Azren!” Valance had both palms pressed to Azren’s chest while Tay grappled with him from behind, pinning his arms to his sides.
Azren’s eyes rolled in his head, unseeing, furious, frightened.
“Stop, stop it.” I struggled in Seb’s grip, but he held tighter.
“Give him a moment,” Seb said. “He almost died. His soul was on a journey and we pulled him back. Give him a moment.”
“What’s happening?” Amber stood in the lounge doorway with a harassed-looking Trevor at her heels.
Noir blocked her view and herded her out of the room, closi
ng the door behind him.
Azren cried out one last time and then fell limp in Tay’s arms. Valance glanced over his shoulder at me and nodded before removing his hands off Azren. Tay held on, the only thing keeping Azren upright.
Seb released me. “Go to him.”
I crossed the room and cupped Azren’s face. His eyes were closed.
“Azren, it’s me. You’re home with me.” My voice was thick.
His eyelids cracked open, jade shards filled with torment. “Wila ...” He grit his teeth. “Let go of me.”
I glanced up at Tay and nodded. The troll blood released Azren, and I caught him as he swayed.
“You’re okay.” Oh, God. He felt lighter. Thinner. “Can you give us a moment, guys?”
The room around me emptied out but it was all peripheral because all that mattered was Azren. All that mattered was his broken body in my arms. His knees buckled, and we slid to the ground together. Cradling each other as my tears soaked into his tunic, as my hands flexed on his back.
His hiss pulled me up short to look at his face, contorted in pain.
“What? What is it?” I scrambled around him, picking at the hem of his tunic.
“Wila, don’t ...”
But fuck that, I had to see, I had to ... Oh, God. Oh, fucking God. His back was a mass of raised, pale welts crisscrossed with pink and red scabbed up wounds. Wounds that should have healed but hadn’t, because the bitch ... the fucking bitch hadn’t given him a reprieve. My vision blurred, hot and furious, as an elastic band wrapped around my heart. I ran my fingers over his scars, over the map of his pain.
“Wila ...”
“She wanted this, didn’t she? She wanted to leave her mark.”
“Yes.”
“I should have killed her. I should have killed them all.”
“That isn’t who you are.” He sounded weary.
“It is. It really fucking is.”
His skin slid beneath my fingers as he turned to face me.
“I’m sorry, so fucking sorry I didn’t come for you sooner.” My voice cracked as the ball of emotion that had been building up inside me ever since he’d been taken shattered.
He held me together. Comforting me, me. Fuck this. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pressing tear-stained kisses to his cheeks. He turned his head and captured my mouth in an achingly soft kiss that lingered, piercing my soul with all the unspoken words of the last few weeks.
He pulled back, his gaze still on my mouth. “I thought I’d never see you again. I thought ... I thought I’d die with our story unfinished.”
I shook my head and pressed my hand to the side of his face. “I should have come sooner.”
“No, you got there just in time.” He gripped my hand and turned his head to press a kiss to my palm. “I’m proud to call you my kindred.”
He pulled me into his arms, and I hugged him back, careful not to press on his wounds, and then an idea bloomed in my mind.
“I can heal you, I mean Seb can. He can take away the scars.”
Azren tensed and sat up straighter. “Who is Seb?”
“Sebastian. His name is Sebastian.” I smiled tentatively. “It’s a long story, but he’s my ether-kindred.”
Azren nodded slowly. “I always suspected there was more to you, Wila. Seeing you in that arena, talons and scales ... You were glorious.”
I swallowed hard. “There’s more ... I’m Ivan’s daughter, and my mother is the Shedim queen, Liana.”
He sucked in a sharp breath. “The queen lives?”
“Yes.” I couldn’t help the terseness that crept into my tone.
“Wila?”
I filled him in on my heritage and then scrolled back in my mind, filling him in on everything, every vital detail since his capture. Valance being exiled, my stint into the maximum-security facility, saving Quinn, my time in the Everdark and finding Valance, meeting my mother—yeah, his face went all funny at that point—and then liberating my ether-kindred and finally becoming whole. I told him about my mates and he nodded, slowly. I held his hand, stroked his face, brushed light kisses across his chin, and ran my fingers through his thick tresses in reassurance that it didn’t change anything, it didn’t change the way I felt about him.
He stared long and hard at me, as if peering into my soul. “I know you, Wila. You have the capacity to love us all. I’ve always known. Thank you for bringing me back. I promise you I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure we have a future.”
“There’s only one way to do that. Use the map on your chest to find the key before Elora can get to it.”
His jaw hardened. He pulled up the front of his tunic to expose a bare, un-inked chest.
My pulse spiked and then dropped sharply as my brain made the connections it should have done in the arena. How easily she’d given up Azren, how quickly she’d been willing to end him after wanting to keep him alive. I’d thought it had been out of spite, but on reflection, with the evidence of his bare chest before me, it was clear ... He’d served his purpose.
“Wila,” Azren said. “Elora already has the key.”
***
Azren’s hand went to his neck again, his fingers grazing the spot where Elora had cut him open. He was propped up against the sofa in the lounge, one leg hooked up with a forearm resting on his knee. Amber was in the kitchen with Trevor being distracted by photos of his circus days. Noir, Valance, Quinn, and Leopold had stationed themselves around the room. Daria was seated on the floor by the door, legs out in front of her and crossed at the ankle. Tay stood with his back to the French doors. But Azren’s gaze kept drifting to Sebastian, lingering on my ether-kindred in open scrutiny. Seb stood with his arms crossed, my tension reflected in every hard line of his body. He was dressed in dark colors now, navy shirt and black jeans, as if in mourning for what he’d just learned through our connection. His silver hair fell onto his forehead, obscuring one blazing turquoise eye, and his mouth was a thin line.
“What happened, exactly?” Valance asked.
Azren sighed. “She activated the map, which forced me to lead her to the key in the Everdark,” Azren said. “There was a fortress. The key isn’t an object, it’s a girl. A djinn child with the gift of prophecy.” Azren looked to me. “Elora found the child in the Everdark over a century ago and adopted her. And the child had a vision of the earth’s destruction at the hands of the Shedim, which was why Elora killed Ivan.”
“What?” Valance asked. “Why would a vision motivate her to kill Ivan?”
“Ivan wanted to give Shedim equal status,” Azren said. “He wanted peace, but Elora believed that allowing the Shedim freedom over their destinies would fulfil the prophecy. She felt that controlling them would prevent disaster. She approached Ivan with the information and the proposition but he disagreed. He felt that oppression would be more likely to lead to war and the end of our world.”
“He was right to turn her down,” Gilbert said. “Oppression always leads to war.”
Noir met my gaze, and I looked away. It was no surprise that Gilbert would understand Ivan’s motivation. Liana may have taken his memories but she hadn’t erased who he was.
“They fought,” Azren continued, “and in the end, Elora bowed to his better judgment.”
“But she didn’t,” Taylem said.
“No,” Azren agreed. “She didn’t. She took matters into her own hands. The child could see the future, and so Elora employed old djinn magic to invert the child’s power. She forced the child to manipulate the present and the past. She used the child as a conduit for an ancient, dark magic and then locked her away in the fortress in a pool created to suspend souls. As long as the child lives, so does the dark enchantment.” He locked gazes with me.
As long as the child lives ... I didn’t even want to think about that.
“And now Elora has her.” Valance made a sound of exasperation.
Was this why Elora had been so blasé about what her people would think about her losing to me? She knew
that she’d be altering minds again on a grander scale than before, and she’d known she would be doing it soon.
No. I shook my head. “No. There has to be something we can do. I mean, she hasn’t activated the amplifier thing yet. There’s still time. We just need to get the key off her.”
“She’s waiting for the next full moon,” Azren supplied. “She needs its ethereal lunar power.”
“Which is in three days,” Gilbert provided. “We most certainly have time.”
“To do what?” Daria said. “Storm the Keep and take the key?”
I gave her a hard look. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”
She rolled her eyes. “Be serious. Elora will have the key heavily guarded.”
“She thinks Azren is dead, and as far as she’s aware, he’s the only one that knows about the key. She won’t be expecting an attack.”
“She won’t be expecting it, but she will be prepared,” Valance said. “Daria is right, it’s too risky.”
“Riskier than sitting back and letting her nuke our brains?” I stood up and began to pace. “No, we create a diversion. A diversion big enough to force her to redistribute her resources and distract her long enough for us to sneak in and grab the key. No key, no amplified spell, right?”
“And then we find a way to neutralize the key?” Quinn added.
There was only one way to neutralize the key that we knew of, and no one was about to discuss that. Luckily, Noir jumped in to steer us away from the uncomfortable topic.
“And how in the world are we going to distract her?” Noir asked.
I turned to the guys, hands on hips. “We’re going to do the one thing we’d promised not to. We’re going to give her a war.”
Chapter 20
A war.
We’d have to go to war.
There would be death whether I wanted there to be or not. My stomach roiled and squirmed as I waited for one of the guys to step up and tell me I was wrong, that there was another way. But the room was silent.
“We’ll need an army,” Azren said. He pulled himself off the floor and onto the sofa. He still looked pale, and his eyes were dark smudges in his face. “Liana has the army we need.”
Chronicles of Arcana (The complete collection books 1-4) Page 68