“I love you and I know you love me,” she said as she bent to kiss his forehead again and again. Like a mantra, she kept repeating the words. “I love you and I know you love me.”
“And your gods love you very much, K’yatsume.”
Malaya turned her face to the door and her body rippled with the stiffening of surprise.
“M’jan Sagan,” she breathed.
The priest was rushing with breath, having run every step from Sanctuary when he had heard of the tragedy unfolding in the Senate.
“It’s just Ajai Sagan, now,” he corrected her gently as he moved into the room. “I’m no longer a priest. And here is my reason why.”
From behind his back he drew forward a pale, prettyish little redheaded woman with Caribbean blue eyes that were wide with everything she was seeing around her.
Sagan had disappeared, had been presumed dead, after the battle with Nicoya for control of Sanctuary. The priest known for his solitary ways and his fierce love of discipline had been one of the best penance priests in Sanctuary’s history. He could dole out penance and ultimate punishment with dark efficiency and had remained ever faithful to his gods and the Shadowdweller people he protected from sin.
But history had made them leery of thinking Sagan was dead because his body had never been found. Everyone who recalled how they had once mistaken Trace to be dead, only to have him end up Acadian’s toy for so long, realized that it was a hard possibility the as-yet-unidentified creature had him in her dungeons.
Now Malaya recalled Magnus coming to them and telling them about this girl. This human girl. He had reported Sagan’s story of how Acadian’s men had kidnapped him after Nicoya had gotten through poisoning him and, on their way to wherever Acadian had instructed them to bring him, they had stopped at a cabin owned by this human girl, threatening her into defending herself with…
Magic. She was a Witch. A natural born Witch.
But to the Shadowdwellers and all other Nightwalkers, magic was one of the darkest and foulest forces on the planet. Necromancers, human magic-users as they were usually called, delighted in using the black, poisonous magic against the Nightwalker breeds to capture them, attempt to rob them of power, or simply to torture and kill them for their amusement.
And they dared to label Nightwalkers evil.
Yet Sagan would have them believe this human woman, this natural Witch, was somehow different; that she had found a way to withdraw from the evil of magic and instead use spells and power in ways that wouldn’t stain her soul.
When M’jan Magnus had relayed this news, Tristan and Malaya had been skeptical at best. Their experiences with magic-users had never ended well; every human who touched the art reeked of foul dissonance. The stain on their souls emanated an odor that warned of who and what they were to the sensitive senses of the races who wanted nothing more than to keep far away from them.
So when Malaya saw Sagan bring the redhead closer, her reaction was to bend protectively over the body of her dying mate. She had never met this girl, had no idea who or what she was, but she didn’t want her anywhere near Guin. Too much had happened to him at the hands of twisted women already.
“Sagan, now is not the time for this! Take her away from me,” she commanded.
“K’yatsume, Valera won’t hurt any of us. I brought her to you so she could help you.”
“No. Keep her away.”
Just then Magnus entered, slipping past everyone to kneel next to his devoted religious student and lay a hand on her back. The touch broke her apart, making her weep as Guin’s breaths began to hitch slower and slower.
“M’jan,” she wept, “Drenna is taking him to the Beyond. I don’t mean to be selfish, but I want him here with me! I need him so much, M’jan.”
“I know you do. I believe Drenna knows this as well, K’yatsume. I have only just met Valera, Malaya, but I can see a good soul within her. I smell no stain of malevolence on her. She swears she can help, and I believe her. But—”
“But only if he’s alive,” the redhead blurted out, daring to drop to her knee on Malaya’s left. “If he dies, the magic won’t work. Please, I want to help. You have to look at him and realize what your choices are, K’…” She floundered and Sagan whispered a soft prompt. “K’yatsume. If we do nothing, he will die within minutes…less, even. What harm is it you think I can do that’s worse than that?”
“You can stain him so the gods will not want to carry him safely to the afterlife! I would rather he die!”
Valera sat back on her heels, biting her lip anxiously as she looked to Sagan for guidance. The young human woman had only her experiences with Sagan, the man she had come to deeply love, to draw on. She needed to prove herself, but had to do it carefully. Some of the more aggressive magic made her emanate a strong blue light. A light that would burn and destroy the Shadowdwellers around her.
Suddenly she reached out and grabbed the four inches of exposed blade of the dagger in Guin’s chest. She squeezed until it cut her hand—just in time, because Malaya reached out and backhanded her across the face.
“Don’t you dare touch him!” she screeched as she loomed over the fallen girl.
“K’yatsume!” Sagan reprimanded her, kneeling to help the woman he’d brought to her with good intentions.
“No, it’s okay,” Val said, sniffing as her nose began to bleed. She got back to her knees and thrust her hand out, bloody with the cut of the blade, so Malaya could see.
“Inomous acante mious medico halti agonus!”
Valera’s hand began to heal, the gashes she’d subjected herself to knitting together before the eyes of all her witnesses. When it was done, there wasn’t even a drop of blood from her nose left on her anywhere. For a suspicious moment, Malaya sniffed the air, searching for that stench she knew so well and that terrorized her people.
When it didn’t come, her eyes went wide with realization and understanding.
“Yes…yes! Yes, please…” She grabbed the human by her extended hand and dragged her closer to Guin. Valera paused a moment and then cautiously laid her hands on the big chest of the man in need.
“Magnus, I need to start my chant first, but when I repeat the phrase for the second time, someone has to pull out the blade.”
“I will do it,” Magnus agreed.
“It has to be as clean as possible, sir,” she said softly. “One pull, straight up.”
“Understood.”
Valera closed her eyes, took a breath, and prayed her magic was up to the task. She began to chant quietly and firmly, and as promised, Magnus grabbed the blade and removed it with a powerful jerk. Guin was barely alive and hardly reacted to the pain. Malaya was terrified to see that and the fixed, glassy stare coming into his eyes.
Magnus reached out to close Guin’s eyes and with his free hand took the arm of the Chancellor in his grasp. She was barely holding herself together, and Magnus prayed for Valera’s sake that it wasn’t too late already. Malaya would blame the Witch if she failed, and it would ruin the fragile trust they desperately needed to build. Valera’s existence proved that good magic could exist in the world, and that meant other Nightwalkers must be warned to have a care. They could no longer just assume they could kill all magic-users. And since Valera had recovered from her accidental foray into black magics, the stuff staining her and overtaking her like an addiction at the time, it proved that natural witches turned necromancers might actually be saved from the sickness they had chosen.
Sagan saw Valera was trembling, and he knew it was both with her efforts and her fear. She was a brave girl, tough when she needed to be, but he knew she couldn’t stand to see people hurt. After watching necromancers hurt other Nightwalkers, all Valera wanted to do was make amends. She was afraid she would fail at it; afraid she would fail Sagan. His third power of telepathy fed all of this to him as he knelt behind her and reached to caress her back in support. The touch seemed to strengthen her, and her posture grew firm, as did her voice as she demande
d her magic work good work.
After sixty seconds of rapid spellcasting, Guin took a smooth, visible breath. Malaya was holding hers, unable to believe but hoping all the same. His breathing went very quiet, but he was breathing, and Malaya clung to that knowledge as she stared at the gentle rise and fall of his chest.
A minute later, he opened his eyes.
“Hello, my honey,” he said softly as he looked at her.
“Oh gods! Oh gods!” she cried, wanting to reach to touch him but afraid she would disturb the working Witch.
“Go ahead,” Valera said with a smile, “you can smooch on him. It won’t disturb me and it won’t hurt him unless you knock my hands away.”
Magnus withdrew from Malaya’s right so she could hover over Guin’s head, her hair a curling black shield as she bent to kiss his lips. She was shaking so hard, tears still persistently falling, that she almost missed her target and hit his nose instead. He laughed softly and reached to steady her with his left hand on her neck.
“Easy, love,” he whispered to her. “Be easy now.”
“I can’t,” she wept. “Not until you can hold me again.”
“Well, I don’t see how that’s going to be a problem in another minute,” Val informed them between chants.
True to the Witch’s word, Guin was completely healed in another sixty seconds. Val drew away, leaning back into Sagan’s arms. He wrapped her up tight and suddenly everything just felt better. She still couldn’t believe sometimes that this man belonged to her. He had given up his status of priest, a role he had known for over two centuries, just so he could freely love her. She worried he would miss it, worried he wouldn’t be happy, but she would do everything she could to see that he would find contentment in a new life with her.
Their most immediate task would be a tour of all the different Nightwalker courts so that Valera could prove what she was to them. They had to know there were good Witches out there. They had to learn how to save those who didn’t know the right way to use magic, those who, like her, had accidentally gotten caught up in necromancy.
She smiled as Guin sat up and wrapped up the beautiful queen of the Shadowdwellers with enormous arms, dragging her into his lap and kissing her soundly. Val sighed. The queen even cried prettily, it seemed. Had it been her, she would have been covered in snot and who knew what else.
Sagan was monitoring her thoughts, so he chuckled when that one slipped through her. She grinned up at him sheepishly and watched Guin get to his feet with Malaya still cradled in his arms.
“Holy Hannah,” she gasped when the giant Shadowdweller towered over her. He’d looked a bit smaller lying down. Not a lot, but not like a skyscraper either.
“Yeah, a lot of people react that way to Guin.” Sagan chuckled.
“Cripes, he makes you look undernourished…and that was something I’d never thought I’d say!” Valera was clinging to thick biceps, her hand smoothing over them. She felt a little sad because his band of office was no longer around his arm. He had removed it along with the title of M’jan.
“Don’t be sad, little love,” he whispered to her. “It is not an end, but a wonderful new beginning. With you.”
“And the cats,” she reminded him.
“And the cats.” He chuckled.
Guin carried Malaya the entire distance from the Senate to the palace and directly into their suite. The entire time, she had her arms tight around his neck and simply wouldn’t stop crying. He was focused completely on her and trying to reassure her, so he didn’t even mind the heavy contingent of guards that followed them the entire way. Actually, considering recent events, he welcomed their added security. Anything that would give him several uneventful days with Malaya.
“I didn’t even see it,” she said. “My stupid visions showed only the part where you were making love with me in exciting places, but didn’t even warn me this would happen! What good is precognition if it won’t work when it’s most important?”
“It worked with Acadian. It warned us of how she would try to play us. It helped.” He sat down on the divan with her, still cradling her closely. “But it’s a little arrogant to assume you deserve omnipotence, Malaya. And anyway, fate had its way. Maybe you weren’t warned because I wasn’t going to die and fate already knew that? Who knows. I’m here now. Safe. Well. Holding you. Be calm, my honey, and focus on that.”
“I will. I am. It’s just…twice in just a few days! I feel like I’m being punished for taking you for granted for so long!”
“Let me get this straight. I’m almost poisoned and then I’m stabbed in the heart, but you’re the one being punished?”
That made her laugh. She sniffled and swatted his shoulder.
“Don’t make jokes.”
“Who’s joking?” He grinned before kissing her softly. Her nose was stuffy from crying, so he had to let her up for air frequently, making her laugh again. The laughter was full of relief and tainted with the remaining threads of the fear she had felt as she had watched him come so close to death. “Well, I guess I might need some guarding after all. Not used to being the target. More used to jumping in front of the target.”
“Like the time you got shot!” She shuddered at the memory.
“Then there was that spear in my leg. Still have the scar from that. Wanna see?”
Malaya knew he was using humor for comfort, and it was working. The more she felt his vital body under her hands, the better she felt. In fact, she thought as her touch roamed finely muscled shoulders, it made her feel safe, secure, and centered. His strength and his presence had always done that for her. And now, as she shifted in his hold to straddle his lap, she began to kiss and touch him until she felt his life-force emanating into her everywhere. This would calm her, she realized. Only this would ever make her feel protected and assure her of his permanency.
“I guess,” he interjected between kisses, “you actually do want to see my scar.”
She chuckled, pausing to slowly lick her tongue over his bottom lip. It was the same seductive action that had so unraveled his control when she had done it in the bath. It pretty much had the exact same effect. Except this time there would be no need to stop, and no reason to hold himself in check.
“I thought I’d never feel you touch me again,” she whispered as she grabbed for his hands and moved them up over her body. She had worn a traditional sari to the Senate. The short blouse underneath the drape of it left her midriff bare to his touch and it was nothing for him to slide his fingers up under the bottom hem so they could run up the bottoms of her breasts. He stopped when he encountered her nipples, brushing over them and plucking lightly at them.
“Where’s Rika?” he asked, grinning against her kiss.
“Guin!” She laughed. “I don’t know, she was in the Senate last I saw. You dragged me into an empty room after we left, remember?”
“Oh yeah…kinda hard to forget that. I was planning on fucking you fiercely against that door, damn it. Was working on a heck of a hard-on, too.”
“You are incorrigible. And you need to pull just a little harder,” she informed him.
“Is that right?”
“Oh yes, much better.”
She stripped down the drape of the sari, pulling the pleats free of the underskirt and shedding it somewhere behind her. She reached to remove her blouse next.
“It’s the middle of the night,” he warned her. “I just got stabbed and the whole world is in an uproar. People will be here very soon and I won’t let them find you naked.”
“Then you better take me to bed,” she warned in return. “If I’m not mistaken, you’re working on a heck of a hard-on…and I want to go for a ride.”
Guin hardly needed any more convincing. Her back hit the bed within seconds, the door slamming shut even as he reached to shed his leather vest, bracers, and shirt. He paused to stick a curious finger through the holes in both garments, but stopped when he got nudged in reprimand. Malaya was only wearing the sheer underskirt to th
e sari by the time he had removed his belt and began to work on his jeans.
She sat up and got onto her knees as he stepped out of them and had her hands around him instantly. He was, as noted, mostly aroused already, but there was no “mostly” about it the moment she brought him to the press of her lips. Guin dropped back his head and exhaled a hard sound of pleasure as her tongue swiped across him. With hardly any other introduction, he was in her mouth. What she did to him, it was with a hunger he couldn’t describe. He realized it was like she wanted to suck the life out of him, to hear that primitive cry from his soul she always wrought from him when she did this. For her, it would affirm his life to her.
But Guin had other ideas. He let her continue as long as he could take it, unable to deny that her almost desperate enthusiasm was blinding in the wonderful way it felt. After a few minutes, though, he couldn’t bear it anymore and he stopped her.
“No, I want—”
“I know what you want,” he said roughly. “Let me show you what I want.”
She was on her back again and he knelt between her knees. Pushing the nearly transparent skirt up her thighs, he snagged hold of her panties and tossed the delicate things away. Then, just as direct and blatant as she had been, he spread her legs and her woman’s flesh apart and fitted his mouth to her.
He heard her gasp and even felt her resist. He knew she wasn’t in the mood to be passive and that he was too far out of her reach for her liking, but he didn’t want this to be all about her fear at almost having lost him. If this was about affirming life, then he would make her feel alive. Any way he could. It didn’t take long for her resistance to melt under the dance of his tongue. He nibbled at her and sucked dozens of places besides her clit until there was no place untasted. He thrust his tongue into her, one thumb circling her clitoris, the other sweeping back past her perineum and against the highly sensitive nerves of her anus. The sensation of being overrun made her cry out for him, her whole body curving and grasping for him, from her fingers in his hair to her calves against his back.
Pleasure: The Shadowdwellers Page 32