by Alex Lidell
“Bastard.” Raising my hands, I rake them over River’s back, the press of his hardness against my mound dizzyingly satisfying.
With a growl, he pushes me away to arm’s length, his breaths ragged, his gray eyes gleaming with barely restrained need. A predator targeting prey. With the next breath, River shoves me back and back, until my thighs press against the edge of my bed and my breaths come in ragged, desperate gasps. With a sweep of one thickly muscled arm, my neat piles are strewn across the floor.
“Those are my travel clothes,” I warn.
“I’ll get you new ones.” The sound of ripping silk swallows River’s words, the room’s cool air brushing my exposed skin for a moment before his muscular body settles atop mine.
River frees himself in one practiced movement, the thick head of his engorged cock coating itself in my wetness. Even after all these months, the size of him sends ripples of warning through my body, my channel already tasting the stretch—the fullness—to come. Gripping my thighs in an undeniable hold, River finds my eyes as he positions himself at my entrance, his eyes shining with desire and conquest. Savoring my anxious anticipation, the bastard.
“I’ll murder you in your sleep,” I warn through clenched teeth, my empty, empty sex clenching around nothingness while the thoroughly aroused apex sends zinging pulses down to my toes.
River’s teeth flash, the power of him suddenly filling every inch of air in the room. Five centuries of battle-honed muscles, of leading the realm’s greatest warriors, all flash in reminder of who exactly stands between my open thighs. “Just for that…” The warning in River’s voice shoots through me a moment before he lowers his mouth right atop my bud and sucks.
My whole body tightens, the pleasure mounting so fast and hard that it turns to liquid agony and back, a bow stretching further and further and—
River stops.
No. No. No. My body trembles in anticipation, in the all-consuming need to release that tautly pulled bow. I buck desperately, come up against River’s unyielding hold, and finally whimper.
With a pleased chuckle, River sheathes himself inside me, his thickness everything I wanted and feared. In and back, in and back, the powerful thrust thrust thrust of his cock gathers all the needy nerves inside me. My heart quickens, my breath coming in little pants while my eyes see nothing but the strong line of River’s jaw and the flex of corded muscle beneath his well-cut tunic.
Thrust thrust thrust.
River’s shaft pulses, my channel clenching around it. Every fiber in my lower body screams, feeling the approaching abyss. This time, my wild, needy, desperate bucking is beyond my control. But not beyond River’s, who holds my thighs with unyielding command.
Thrust, thrust…
The explosion of pleasure rakes through my body, lighting every nerve. Anguish so fierce, it is pure bliss. My muscles tighten, my sex clenches, my vision blurs. Tumbling into the great abyss inside me, I feel River’s own release filling my channel and realize the warrior is trembling as badly as I am.
There are four wrapped bundles, in addition to Autumn, Kora, and the males, waiting for me in the stables the following morning. Settling my saddlebags beside Sprite, the dapple-gray mare River gifted me with when I first came to Lunos, I study the gathering suspiciously. “What’s happening?”
“We—” Autumn starts, then rolls her eyes at the males and picks up one of the larger bundles, thrusting it into my arms. “I thought that your first official mission as a quint warrior was worth celebrating. So, here. This is from me.”
“Wasn’t dethroning King Griorgi the first?” I ask.
“No. That was housekeeping.” Autumn nods at the package that I unwrap to reveal a gown of soft red silk, a matching shawl completing the look. “Dress in this before you put on the veil and enter the Academy, all right?” She pulls her own shimmering silver wrap more tightly around her slender shoulders and looks down, suddenly finding its woven edge endlessly fascinating. Her eyes glisten slightly in the morning sun. “The veil can’t make you a chamber-pot girl in that. At least I don’t think it can. I—”
I throw my arms around my friend, who hugs me back fiercely, letting go only when Kora puts a comforting arm on Autumn’s shoulder, drawing her lover away.
“Thank you.” I kiss Autumn’s cheek before looking up at her brother, who holds his package with uncharacteristic hesitation. Taking River’s gift, I unwrap the paper gingerly and feel my chest tighten at the intricate handiwork. Four cords in different sparkling shades of gold woven together into a braid, the pendent hanging from them a complex knot of the same strands. I look closer and gasp in recognition. One strand is studded with amethysts—Coal’s strange purple magic; one with deep brown-red garnets—River’s earth magic; one with yellow-orange diamonds—Tye’s fire; and one with gleaming silver—Shade’s healing. “The cords of your four magics plaited together with my weaver’s gift,” I whisper, running my fingers over the priceless piece. “This must have taken the jeweler months.”
River shrugs one massive shoulder, but there is a bit of color in his cheeks when I turn to let him fasten the treasure around my neck.
Shade steps up next, his package holding a pair of gray mittens. Inhaling the wool’s familiar earthy scent, I narrow my eyes at the shifter. “Where exactly did you get these?”
A flash of light has a wolf replacing the male, the animal’s long tongue licking the tip of his nose virtuously. Now that I’m paying closer attention, I see the wolf’s shortened coat and wince. “How many weavers did you bite in the making of these mittens?” I ask.
“Four,” Autumn informs me dryly. “Two of them submitted resignations.”
The wolf, suddenly finding a tree in need of careful sniffing, trots off while Tye hands me the heaviest package yet. Instead of paper, this one is wrapped in sturdy cloth, rolled up tightly and buckled closed. He winks as I take it, making my heart beat faster. He’s ridiculously handsome in his fitted leather riding pants and billowing white shirt, opened at the collar to reveal the muscled flare of his pectorals. And he knows it. I roll my eyes, making him grin wider.
Laying the bundle on a nearby tree stump, I unroll it carefully and stare at the thin polished instruments. No. No, it can’t be. “Are these…”
“Lockpicks,” Tye supplies helpfully. “Aye.”
River curses.
“These are…” I struggle to find the right word. “Gorgeous” doesn’t seem to fit the objects and “a sure way to get arrested” doesn’t fit the mood. “High-quality tools of a trade I don’t quite know.”
Tye sighs gravely. “I was afraid of that. I will have to teach you, then, lass.” His emerald eyes sparkle. “Though I must warn you, I’m a very hands-on type of instructor.”
I snap the kit closed very quickly, then stuff it into my saddlebag. When I step away, I find Coal’s blue eyes watching me from the side. Five fae and four packages. Coal isn’t the type for sentimentality. I nod my understanding at him.
Coal turns away.
A heartbeat later, a glistening boot dagger whizzes so close to my ear that I hear the whistle of air as it flies by. With a dull thump, the blade impales itself into a tree, the hilt still vibrating from the impact. Saying nothing, Coal mounts his horse, leaving me to collect my final gift in silence.
With everyone mounted up, River lays a large hand on his sister’s shoulders, Autumn reaching up to grasp his muscled forearm. The siblings trade no words, and I wonder how many such goodbyes they’ve exchanged over the centuries—each time knowing they might not be quite the same beings when they meet next. Before I can dwell on the thought, River clicks to his stallion and leads us to Great Falls Academy.
5
Lera
The ride to Mystwood’s edge is quiet and efficient. Letting the horses rest and water before we enter the warded forest, River pulls out a saucer-sized disk carved with runes—one of the few keys permitting the bearers passage through the forest. The magic radiating from the relic tickles my
skin, drawing me toward it.
“Stay together. We’ve a small radius,” River says, his calm voice a beacon as I ready to step into the Gloom—one of the new and rare skills my fae body came equipped with. Which makes entering it no more pleasant than it was when the males had to tow me along.
The air around me thickens, a moment of viscous blackness pushing against me on all sides, and then I’m in the dull echo of the world. The colors and noises and smells are all short of what they should be—shades of gray and strange echoes. Wrong. But travel is faster here—and when it comes to Mystwood, traveling through the Gloom is the only way possible to traverse the place. Even with the key.
River once explained the Gloom as an underlining to the normal world—what we call the Light—a slippery undercloth that shifts and moves with the main cloth but is separate from it as well. Some of the stitching, like many of Mystwood’s ash and maple trees, penetrate all the way through. Other pieces, like much of the shrubbery, exist only in the Light. Poetic, but I’ve worked out my own, more practical, definition.
The Gloom is where creatures of darkness and evil thrive and roam, unseen in the Light until they are ready to rise and strike. Something that can never be permitted to happen in the mortal realm.
This is my second time crossing Mystwood, the first being when the males whisked me away from servitude in Zake’s stable. Now, returning as a fae warrior myself, I expect the forest to seem less oppressive. In reality, the opposite is true.
“One nice thing about being human is that you don’t know what goes bump in the shadows, Lilac Girl,” Tye says, stretching lazily beside me—seeming to read my mind as usual. “Which is why I make it a personal goal to know as little as possible about everything.”
We move along with little conversation, Shade’s wolf keeping as close to us as the horses will tolerate. When the five of us clear Mystwood less than six hours later, stepping into the Light just before the edge of the mortal realm, the muted oppression of the Gloom finally melts away—only to reveal a new set of shackles one step later. My magic. Lashed down as tightly as a ship’s furled sails.
Having lived most of my life without the magic, I thought this part would little bother me, but the emptiness grips my throat. Looking around with my immortal’s heightened senses, I mourn the loss of Lunos’s lush intensity even as I pick up each sound and smell the way my human body never could.
With so few humans willing to live anywhere near the edge of Mystwood, it’s relatively easy to keep out of the humans’ sight during the four-day ride to the town of Great Falls, which takes its name from a tall, narrow waterfall rushing over a cliff high in the mountains on the right. Its roar echoes distantly around the small, steep valley, over the patchwork sheep meadows and neat timber-frame houses. The lonely screech of circling ravens and a stiff breeze mark our passage across a bare, grassy ridge above the valley.
Stopping at an overlook a mile off, I raise my hand to block out the sun as I examine the Academy’s estate sprawling at the top of a foothill overlooking the town. An immense walled-off fortress of gray stone, blending into the mountains behind it, its gilded red standard flapping on the cold wind. The hiss and crack of the fabric cuts into my hearing. I frown. Even with my fae senses, the flapping cloth is too far away to be heard. No, the hiss and crack is coming from something else, though it certainly sounds like a flapping flag.
I glance around, Sprite dancing beneath me enough to earn a disapproving glance from Coal. Nothing about him or the other males suggests they hear anything amiss. In fact—I realize with a start—River is speaking.
“…A generation of influential youth all in one place.” The quint commander pats his stallion’s neck, his voice filled with a responsibility he can’t help. Perhaps that need to take charge is what makes River who he is. “I hope the staff have a firm bit in the youngsters’ mouths before the would-be kings decide to compare the size of their cocks and do something unusually stupid.”
Hiss crack crack.
My pulse jumps.
“Lass?” Tye frowns. “Are you—”
“They aren’t children,” I say quickly, forcing my voice into mild outrage to knock Tye’s inconvenient perceptiveness off scent. After all my insistence over us coming here, at the first sight of our battleground, I’m already hearing phantom noises. “Twenty years might be nothing for fae, but for a human, it’s rather significant. It also happens to be my age.”
“My point exactly,” says River. “Let’s get this done. Remember what Autumn said about muted bonds and brace yourselves for the change.” Taking out the veil amulet, the male snaps it around his neck with no ceremony, the others wordlessly following his example. The intricately carved wood medallions fall against their sternums until they each tuck them away under their shirts.
Hiss crack crack.
I fumble for my own amulet, a chill running over my skin as I settle it around my neck. The soft click of the clasp is one of the loudest sounds I’ve ever heard—a slamming door cutting me off from the males. My lungs tighten painfully, and it takes all my willpower to keep my hands light on Sprite’s reins. To raise my chin. To smile with a cockiness I wish I felt.
“So, then,” I say, realizing too late that I’ve forgotten to don the dress Autumn gave me. Damn it. I’ll do it as soon as we find a less exposed spot on our way to the Academy. In my black pants and favorite fitted blue tunic, belted around the waist, the magic could give me a disguise for just about anyone. “What am I now?”
“A pain in the ass,” says Coal, the carved angles of his face still as he cocks a brow at me.
“We know you, cub. The amulet won’t spin a veil for those who know the truth,” Shade, now in his fae form, says gently. “We look like ourselves to you too, do we not?”
“Right. Of course.” I rub my eyes with the heel of my hand.
“What’s wrong, Lilac Girl?” Tye asks.
“Nothing. I mean I can’t feel you with the amulet. And—”
Tye winces. “It does hurt me to see you lie so poorly, lass. We need to work on that. What is it?”
I sigh, shaking my head. “Just an odd noise I heard. A hissing sound, like…static, but louder. Do you hear it?”
They pause, cocking their heads in concentration.
“No,” says Tye after a moment, Shade, Coal, and River echo their agreement, their eyes kind—and somewhat worried.
Heat fills my cheeks, but River raises his hand, stopping my attempt to apologize. “Us not hearing it doesn’t mean nothing is there. Your magic is unique, Leralynn. A human made fae, a weaver to boot. It is entirely possible you are hearing escaping magic. Perhaps the very rift we are here to find.”
“Or my own imagination.”
River shrugs one shoulder. “Indeed. But, being immortal we’ve the time to check. Where is the sound coming from?”
“It’s…” The words die in my mouth. Nothing. I hear nothing now but my own racing heart. The heat already touching my cheeks spreads to make the tips of my ears tingle. Swallowing, I close my eyes, willing myself to find the sound again. Nothing. “May I take the amulet off? Perhaps it’s interfering with the sound.”
River’s gaze weighs the distance to the Academy before he nods. “For a bit.”
I open the clasp and shove the amulet into my breast pocket, relief flooding me as the mating bonds call to me once more—and the static. At least I wasn’t imagining the noise. “This way.” Nudging Sprite into a trot, I lead the males toward the sound, which grows louder with each step. Overwhelming. We cross into a whispering green aspen wood, light flickering through the leaves in dizzying patterns. My muscles tense, my breath and heart speeding as Sprite picks up a gallop along a narrow uphill trail. The hooves of the males’ stallions keep pace, staying far enough back to avoid sending the horses into a competitive race, which would likely end with me on the ground.
Hiss crack crack. Hiss crack crack.
The trail swings sharply to the right, but with sound co
ming so clearly from behind a cluster of huge boulders on the opposite side, I nudge my mount that way. Sprite takes the left at alarming speed, her body angling sharply. I have no time to twist around and make sure the males saw me turn off the trail, no ability to do anything but cling on with every muscle fiber. Sprite’s hooves pound the uneven ground, the horse out of control as she races for the boulders, which prove farther away than I’d guessed. Branches whip, clumps of earth flying into the air. I grab the pommel of my saddle to keep my seat, the reins loosening in my hands. My legs squeeze the horse’s sides, my instinctual clinging unfortunately signaling Sprite to run faster still.
HISS. CRACK—
I see the crumbling rune-carved stone embedded in the ground a heartbeat before Sprite trips over it. The tenuous hold I have on my saddle breaks, sending me to the ground. My head cracks against a rock, the sound coming before the pain. Then the world flashes in a blaze of blinding light before darkness comes.
6
Lera
I wake with a horse’s nose poking my back, the clicking aspen forest sprawling its spring glory before me. My head hurts, but I find no blood when I touch my skull. Small miracle. I also find no one else beside me.
“River?” I call, my pulse hammering. “Coal? Tye? Shade?”
Silence. A few paces away, the rune-carved stone Sprite tripped over is broken into hand-sized bits. By the looks of it, the thing was a square slate about the length of a man’s forearm on each side and pushed into the cold earth like a misaligned paving stone. The noise from it—if there ever was a noise—is gone. Picking up one of the shards, I realize the thing wasn’t stone all the way through, but rather just a hard shell protecting a softer claylike core that leaves dust on my fingers.
“River?” I call again. “Anyone?”