Audrey made a pained face, which she tried to hide from him. “It doesn’t really matter.”
“The weather in Nova Scotia is much harsher. You’d probably go stir-crazy trapped inside eight months out of the year.”
“But London is so far away.”
“So much to see though. So much history there.”
She shrugged again. “Maybe you should go, then.”
He frowned, thrown offbeat by her sullen attitude. “Are you so anxious to be rid of me?”
Her posture relaxed on a sigh as she looked at him. He kept his eyes on the road, reading her energy rather than her face. He felt the echo of his own longing at the center of her being, and it gave him hope.
“Of course not,” she answered in a hoarse voice. “Everything is just changing so fast.”
Realization sang through him like a bowstring let loose.
You are blind.
In all of his pondering of what would happen after today, he’d never stopped to consider how the very act of transition would be upsetting to Audrey. She’d never been able to settle down anywhere. Here, she had found a purpose, a routine, and a rag-tag family of sorts. Now it was all being thrown into question again.
He squeezed her hand. “My feelings for you will not change, no matter what you decide.”
“That doesn’t make it easier,” she muttered under her breath.
He scowled but let the topic go as he pulled onto the dirt road that would lead to the lookout. They unpacked the Rover and geared up for their hike. He had a special perch rigged to his backpack so that Honey could ride hooded. Smoke flew ahead, scouting the path.
The clouds of the morning had burned off by the time they reached the summit, and the sunny sky was crisp and clear above them. Smoke was happily snacking on some wild berries and greeted them with a caw. Honey’s thrill at the scents and sounds of the mountaintop made it hard for Corvin to discern any of Audrey’s feelings from the mix. She was silent as she surveyed the view of the forest carpet below and the snowcapped peaks in the distance.
Honey issued a sharp cry that echoed through the canyon. She shifted her weight impatiently and tugged at her jesses. Audrey put on her gauntlet, and he handed Honey off to her. The three of them stepped toward the rock ledge.
“Say your good-byes,” Corvin said softly as he untied the jesses and removed Honey’s bracelet.
Audrey stroked the eagle’s silken chest as a fat tear rolled down her cheek. “Take care of yourself, girl. No more hunting by the road.”
Honey lowered her head closer to Audrey’s and clicked her beak, asking for a neck scratch. As she complied, Corvin stood behind Audrey and wrapped her in his arms. He reached out to Honey with his magic and found her nervous and excited, as he’d expected. But she surprised him by also feeling concerned—as much as an animal could express that emotion—as if she could sense Audrey’s sadness.
He took Audrey’s hand, passing the message to her silently through feelings.
She gasped, her eyes widening before she smiled at Honey. “Don’t worry. I’ll be okay, girl.”
“Ready?” he whispered against her ear.
She nodded, and he reached up to remove Honey’s hood.
Honey blinked, adjusting to the light, then tilted her head, taking in her surroundings. She stared at Audrey for a long, charged moment, and both of their psyches met through his magic, binding together in silent understanding. Honey turned and stretched her wings, then bounced a few times.
Audrey held her breath.
Corvin helped lift her arm higher. Sunlight rippled in a golden wave across Honey’s bronze wings. With a touch of magic, he whispered to the eagle, Fly home.
She took off, the strength of her wings forcing Audrey to lean back into him. Honey dove below them off the ledge and out across the treetops as a piercing cry echoed through the valley, then slowly spiraled higher and higher into the sky.
Corvin held his connection with her and passed her feeling of complete, unbridled joy to Audrey. Freedom, without regret.
Audrey relaxed into his embrace, laughing, with tears in her eyes. They watched until Honey was a small spec on the horizon and then stood there staring at the vista for several more minutes. He would have been content to hold her like that for hours, but her stomach had other ideas, breaking the calm of the mountaintop with a loud rumble that made them both laugh.
He kissed her neck. “Come on, I have a spot picked out for a picnic.”
They had a quiet snack by a secluded pool Corvin had found many years before. It was fed by a small glacial waterfall. The water was cold, but he built them a fire and had packed plenty of blankets. They ate, and swam, and made love on the beach, keeping each other warm.
For the first time, he kept the empathic connection between them open wide the whole time he loved her, allowing them each to feel the other’s pleasure and the swell of emotions behind it, until they were both practically drunk on it. He told Audrey again and again that he loved her, and she said it back, with a thread of desperation that made it nearly impossible to let her go.
What if this is good-bye?
He wanted to stay on that mountain for days. Forever. To be lost there out of time. But as the sun started to sink and the sky darkened, they packed up their gear and hiked out in silence.
Questions started to compound in Corvin’s mind, putting more and more pressure on his decision. What if he was wrong? What if she wanted to stay? Why couldn’t she just tell him what she wanted? Whatever it was, he would give it to her. If she wanted space, he would give her space. If she wanted a home, they could make one anywhere. The only thing that mattered to him was that it was her choice. He had already made his.
***
When Audrey stepped from the tower that evening, the air was crisp with fall, the light of the full moon gilded the forest floor silver, and change was on the wind. The seasons were turning, and so was her stomach. All day, she’d been searching for some sign of Corvin’s intentions.
He’d been infuriatingly neutral any time talk of her guardian training had come up.
Not that you’ve been any better.
Their days together had started to feel surreal, like slips of time in some other dimension sandwiched in between the layers of reality. She’d been afraid to get real about the logistics of their situation, worried that it would break the spell. She couldn’t shake the feeling that her happiness with Corvin was fleeting, that it would evaporate like mist, just like every other dream she’d dared to have.
She had no idea how to have a long-distance relationship—she’d never even had a short-distance one work out. They were in love, but she wasn’t naïve enough to think that meant everything would just work itself out like in the movies. They were still two very different people, who wanted different things. She was illegally bound to a rogue Hohlwen and magically compelled to keep it secret from him. He’d already tried interrogating her, and they’d gotten into an entrenched argument over it. He kept pressuring her to make a decision on where to complete her guardian training and yet stayed indifferent whenever she asked his opinion.
She’d agonized over how to even breach the subject of what the future held for them, but tonight was the night.
No more stalling.
Corvin was waiting for her at the gate of the main courtyard, dressed in his black Synod robes. His hair was smoothed back and braided at the side, raven feathers woven in. His face was clean-shaven, and the ridged scars she’d come to love feeling beneath her fingers were no longer hidden. The sight of him made her breath catch and her toes start to curl. The hard angles of his jaw and nose contrasted with his full lips.
A mien of power had settled around him since their battle with the sorcerers. His demon blood seemed so obvious now that she was aware of it—from the feral grace of his movements, to the way his dark eyes captured and reflected just a bit more of the torchlight than a normal man’s. Beneath the sleeves of his robes, his leather gauntlets were poli
shed to a shine. He held his staff in one hand, and Smoke was perched atop it, bobbing excitedly.
Corvin nodded to the other white-robed initiates and their mentors as they filtered through the gate ahead of Audrey, but he froze when his eyes settled on her.
Her nerves buzzed and her cheeks heated as she walked toward him, feeling as if she was floating, drawn by some unseen force. She’d dressed in the traditional white robes, with her hair unbound and loose around her shoulders and her feet bare. She wore no adornments except for her mother’s pendant, but the way he looked at her, she felt like the moon come to earth.
He took her arm silently, a small smile curling one side of his mouth as they walked through the gates side by side. The paths through the courtyard had been strewn with a thick carpet of flower petals, and the sweet scents of ripe fruit and crushed greenery perfumed the air. Candelabras filled the space with warm, twinkling light, which reflected off the gold and silver ribbons woven through the branches of the auburn-tinted trees. Long banquet tables lined the far wall, laden with heaps of magazine-cover-worthy food.
It was as if she’d stepped into a fairy tale, complete with her very own tall, dark, and brooding prince. Maybe she could have the storybook ending after all.
Many of the Zyne they’d rescued from the sorcerers were still seeking sanctuary at the fortress, and a sea of friendly faces greeted her as they made their way toward the large cauldron and giant bonfire at the center of the courtyard. As the crowd slowly grew, people visited in small pockets, voices low. She spotted Lilly and Peter. She took one step in their direction and Corvin pulled her back and whirled her into the shadows behind the nearest tree.
Smoke chewed them out from a nearby branch, then took off.
Corvin chuckled, and then his mouth and hands enveloped her with hot urgency. He didn’t stop until they both needed to catch their breath. He held her face in his hands and stared down at her, those flames dancing, beckoning.
She grinned. “Is that for luck?”
“No.” He tucked her hair behind her ear. “Not kissing you just takes too much effort.”
She ruffled her fingers through the glossy black feathers beside his face. “Then don’t ever stop.”
He leaned his staff carefully against the tree, then squeezed her hips and pulled her closer. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”
Though she’d meant to have this conversation, she hadn’t planned to have it so soon. Her heart thundered in her chest, and she swallowed hard. “Me too.”
But she still wasn’t ready to break the spell.
A heavy silence echoed between them for the next few beats as a faint strain of music came from the fortress. The procession of the Council was beginning.
“I don’t want to force you into anything,” Corvin blurted out.
She shook her head in confusion. “Force me?”
“You are free to go anywhere you want, do anything you want. I don’t want you to limit yourself on my account.”
“I never thought you did.” She frowned, holding her breath.
This was the part where he was going to tell her that she should see the world, find her new place in it, find herself, blah, blah. Maybe he would tell her that he would wait for her, that they could visit. That somehow nothing would change, even though everything would.
He tilted her chin up so she met his smoldering gaze, and the still depths there helped calm her. “I didn’t want to hold you back or impede your decision, but…”
“I understand,” she said. “You haven’t, and I’ve been—”
He placed a finger over her lips. “Let me get this out before you take your oath to the Legacy and commit yourself to the Threefold Path, because I want you to know, I love you without it. And I want you—no, I need you to know, whatever you choose, wherever you go, I want to go with you.”
She blinked as his words sank in. “You do?”
He nodded, wetting his lips, looking like it took all his considerable self-control not to kiss her again. He could probably feel her relief and excitement as they drowned out all her nervousness and uncertainty.
“What about your post? The birds?” She bit her lip.
He groaned. “If you do that, I’m going to get so lost kissing you we’ll miss the whole damn ceremony.” His thumb was gentle as it passed over her lip, a contrast to his words. Both lit an entirely different type of fire in her belly. “The birds don’t really need me. It was more the other way around. I can find a teaching post with the Synod wherever you go to train. And after, if you’re not truly called to service, my mother has promised to grant us a coven license with no strings attached. We can go anywhere we want and start anew.”
“Anywhere?” She felt light-headed and wondered if she was imagining this, having all her discarded wishes served to her on a silver platter. She’d been so prepared to scrape together a halfway-decent compromise that may or may not end up straining their relationship to the point of breaking.
Corvin smiled, the bright gilded one he saved only for her. “A very wise woman once told me there’s a whole wide world out there. We can see it all.”
She held back her giddy smile and cleared her throat. “My turn now?”
He chuckled and pulled her close. “Of course.”
“I’ve thought a lot about the future the last couple of months. More than I ever have before. And I don’t know what I plan to do with the rest of my life yet.”
His eyes darkened, and his hands squeezed her hips a bit tighter.
“But I do know that whatever it is, I don’t want to live without you.”
He sighed, and a pulse of intense satisfaction—not her own—moved through her in a luscious wave. His kiss was full of heat and promise. It left her breathless. “You will never have to. Loving you will be the greatest adventure.”
Patricia’s words from months ago tickled the back of her brain, and Audrey laughed.
“What?”
“Just your choice of words.”
“Am I talking like a dinosaur again?”
“It’s not that. Just something an Oracle told me once.”
“Ah, I see.” He lifted his staff from where it leaned against the tree trunk and gazed over the crowd to the ritual that was beginning without them. “So, are you ready to be indoctrinated into the cult?”
She took his arm, beaming. “Yep. Let’s go make me an official witch.”
Dear Reader
Thank you for reading To Tame a Wild Heart! I truly hope you enjoyed Audrey and Corvin's story and the world of the Zyne Legacy. There is much more to come. Keep reading for a previw of my other Zyne witch series.
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PREVIEW
RAIN OF ASH
Skydancer Book 1
Briana Spurrier turned her back on her heritage as a reincarnating witch to chase her dream career. But when a tragic accident calls her back to her small town island roots, a spell cast in her grandmother’s dying moments opens her to Oracle powers she’s spent her whole life avoiding. Now, an enemy of old has surfaced, hungry for vengeance… and Bri's soul. Unprepared and untrained, she must harness the magic buried deep within her before the demon of her past hunts down everyone she holds dear.
Chapter One
Toulouse, France
1595
Vivianne tipped her head back to welcome the rain. The sky’s gift revived her parched throat and washed away the days of caked blood and grime from her body, though it could not cleanse the stains from her soul. Water ran over her bruised shoulders and down her gouged arms, stinging where it met skin rubbed raw by rope bindings.
Thunder
roiled, inciting a murmur of anticipation from the jostling crowd. Fat droplets spattered the brick platform, stirring a haze that distorted their eager, hateful faces.
She closed her eyes, longing for the peace that would soon come.
“Brule la!” someone shouted. Burn her.
Yes, she would burn. Fire was cleansing too. She had much to be cleansed of.
“Madame Vivianne Regina Spurrier, Comtesse de la Feronique du Guard,” the herald began. The crowd hushed. The air thickened with a thirst for carnage and their fear of what she symbolized.
Witchcraft.
She had committed heinous, malicious acts against members of the French court, attempted to wile influential men to her bed for personal gain, bargained with the devil, and forsaken their Lord God. She’d been branded heretic and whore and a diseased piece of flesh to be cut from the arm of society. As the oration of her sins rang out, loathing seeped from the crowd into the rain-bloated sky and made her stomach churn like the clouds above.
For certain, she was a witch, but she had done none of those things. Zyne were not supposed to get involved with mundane affairs. But when she’d foreseen the plague, she could not stand by and let hundreds, mayhap thousands, die needlessly. She’d used her powers to try and help them, yet they hated her. The Synod would not come to her aide. They were more concerned with her trespass against Zyne writ. She had thought they would intervene rather than let the rest of her coven suffer, but no. They would leave her to face the justice of her accusers. And she would carry the cost of all their lives into her next.
The herald continued. For her crimes against God and the crown of France, to which she had given full, documented confession…
She searched the dais for the man who had taken said confession. Father Dolores oversaw the proceedings with a look of cold detachment. Vivianne’s heart throbbed with fury as she stared into his eyes and glimpsed the shadow floating in their depths. She had tested her mettle against the darkness consuming him, while he had delighted in watching the breaking of her flesh and repeated violations of her body. Still, she had emerged the victor. Unclaimed. Unbroken. The strength of her bond to Lucas—the very thing that made her an outcast among her own people—had helped her to withstand the Dark One’s treachery and keep her family’s secret safe. She had broken many rules, but her vow to protect the Legacy still held fast.
To Tame A Wild Heart: A Zyne Witch Urban Fantasy Romance (Zyne Legacy Romance Book 1) Page 25