Ascension

by Sadie Moss

  It feels like eons ago. The Sage that walked out that front door all those weeks ago feels like an entirely different person than the one I am now. As if the old me died another kind of death—one that reformed her entire being. I think I have Kaius to blame for that, and the three men who taught me how to survive here to thank for it.

  Callum releases his hold on the weave just outside their large, luxurious house. I follow his lead, and the four of us quickly pile inside, circling up in the living room. From what I can tell, the house isn’t being watched, which speaks to the truth of Callum’s assertion. Kaius never imagined we’d be foolish enough to come back.

  It’s another oversight on his part, blindness caused by his own deep arrogance.

  “What kind of object are each of us looking for?” Callum asks me gruffly.

  “It doesn’t matter what it is. Just something that speaks to your soul. Something that you’ll want to return to. Your most prized possession, if you have one.”

  He nods, and with an unspoken signal, all three men vanish into the darker recesses of the empty house.

  Filled with trepidation, I move to the front window, my intention being to watch the street outside, just in case someone decides to come looking for us here. I know Callum doesn’t believe we’re in danger. We’d have to be mad to come here, as mad as that poor messenger in the dungeon. So Callum is right, I’m sure—Kaius won’t think to look here. As far as he knows, we’re long gone out of the realm.

  I peel back the curtain and freeze as I realize the street isn’t empty.

  Three messengers are walking down the road outside, their faces set in unreadable masks.

  And they’re headed this way.

  5

  Farse!

  I drop the curtain and leap away from the window, praying none of them noticed the rustle of movement through the glass pane. I don’t know if it’s merely a coincidence those messengers are out there, or if they’ve been sent by Kaius to check for our presence at this house.

  Perhaps the cruel god isn’t so blind after all.

  Either way, we need to go. Now.

  I rush down the hallway that leads to the messengers’ bedrooms and crash into Paris exiting his room.

  “Whoa, steady there, little soul.” He catches me by the shoulder, his blue eyes shining down at me. In one of his hands, he holds a small, polished silver mirror.

  “There are messengers outside,” I hiss, motioning to the street as if he can see them from where we stand in the central hall.

  The playful look on his face disappears, and his lips press into a grim line. He takes off toward Callum’s room with me right on his tail. But as if he can sense something amiss, Callum appears in his doorway before we even reach it, his fingers curling around a small object that rests in his palm.

  “What’s going on?” he asks in a low voice.

  “Company.” Paris jerks his head toward the front of the house.

  Callum nods sharply, then strides across the hall and shoves Echo’s door open the rest of the way. “We’re on the move.”

  Echo joins us in the hallway, two swords strapped to his back. In fact, I notice now that all three men have armed themselves, though Echo carries a second sword. This particular weapon is old and worn, the blade rusted with time. “Let’s get out of here.”

  As one, the four of us rush through the house and out into the back courtyard. I recall the men training out in this yard together, their bodies golden with sweat. And on other days, I worked with Echo beneath the beaming sun, trying to get a handle on the weave. Back then, I was absolutely sure I’d never be able to use the farsing magic I somehow had a connection to.

  Today, I think I certainly proved myself wrong.

  With a hum of magic, Callum disappears, zipping along the lines of the weave. I follow behind him, all my senses alert and on edge. A part of me is fearful that the other messengers will feel us moving through the weave the way a spider can sense vibrations in its web, and thus, be able to follow us.

  But I firmly refuse to focus on that possibility, putting my attention instead on the connection between me and my three messengers, sticking close to the three of them as we travel.

  By the time Callum drops his hold on the weave, my heartbeat has slowed to normal, and I’m facing the sheer exhaustion of an adrenaline fall. We come to a stop in an area I’ve become all too familiar with—the border of the Unclaimed Expanse stretches before us, its ever-changing terrain spreading out as far as the eye can see.

  Beside me, Paris falls to his knees with a dramatic moan. “Not here again.”

  “Get up, you idiot,” Callum grumbles. “The wild, untamed magic and shifting landscape will hide us from Kaius and his hounds for now.”

  “Are we going to discuss our next move?” Echo asks.

  His face is haggard, and it strikes me then that he didn’t get a proper healing back in the dungeon. Callum too needed more attention for his wounds than I was able to give at the time. Even Paris may still have lingering injuries, despite Echo’s work earlier.

  “First,” I say firmly, “we need to get all three of you back to a state of health. You’re all looking rougher than I’ve ever seen you.” I give Echo a shove. “Sit. I’ll heal you since we didn’t get a chance back in the dungeon. And any other leftover injuries you still have,” I add, addressing Paris and Callum.

  “You’re too weak to be healing all three of us,” Echo tells me. “We can all work together to heal the rest of our wounds. It’ll be easier that way, as close as we are to the Expanse.”

  I don’t like the reminder at how the Unclaimed Expanse dampens our attachment to the weave. Even with Callum’s assuredness that we’ll be safe for the time being, I don’t like the idea of being without magic once we step beyond that boundary.

  Echo lies on his back in the grass, carefully setting his two swords aside, then closes his eyes. I sit beside him, tucking my skirt beneath me as I lean forward. Plucking the weave, I began testing his internal injuries, finding a knot in his head and several dark spots in his torso—bleeding, or bruising, I can’t tell. But just as he predicted, I’m already lightheaded and weak from everything else I’ve done today.

  “I’ll help,” Callum murmurs, his voice close to my ear. He settles on the ground beside me, his hand covering mine over Echo’s hairline.

  My skin rushes with heat and the feeling of magic as Callum drags strands of the weave down to the vicious knot on Echo’s head. While Callum works there, I move to an injury in his chest.

  “So, the second sword.” I catch Echo’s gaze. “That’s your special possession? Is there a story behind it?”

  “It belonged to a mentor I had long ago,” the dark-haired man says, his eyes still closed. “He died during the first great war in which I fought, and I mourn his death still. This sword is my remembrance of him.”

  Pain darkens his normally teasing voice, and my fingertips slow in their work. “Couldn’t Kaius have brought him back? His death didn’t have to be final.”

  “True.” Echo’s lips turn down a little. “Although Kaius could have revived him, he chose not to. At the time, I didn’t even think to question it. It was the way of things, the choice our great god made. But now I wonder how many of his other faithful messengers he has abandoned when they’re no longer useful to him.”

  Paris, who’s resting nearby in the sunshine as color returns slowly to his cheeks, speaks up. “Many, I imagine.”

  “And what about you and your mirror?” Echo cracks one eye open to look at his brother. “Care to share that story with our girl?”

  A glow warms my cheeks at the term of affection, even as I realize how true it is.

  I am theirs, just as much as they are mine.

  “I nearly died several hundred years ago,” Paris says, twirling the small mirror between his fingers. The glass reflects the sun, the spotlight appearing and disappearing rapidly with the mirror’s rotation.

  “It wouldn’t have been an ext
inguished death, right?” I ask, moving further down Echo’s body to an internal injury near his navel.

  “No. Just a minor inconvenience. Assuming Kaius decided to bring me back,” he adds with a wry shake of his head, sharing a look with Echo. “But inconvenience or not, it showed me that I’m not invincible. I’d been cocky, talking back to Callum every step of the way, not listening to either of them when they tried to correct my form in training.”

  “He was a nightmare back then,” Echo agrees, grinning up at me wickedly.

  Paris gives him a rude gesture. “When they dragged my half-dead body off the battlefield, I ended up in a brothel.”

  I raise an eyebrow at Echo, and he just shrugs, his dark eyes twinkling in the light.

  “It was the closest place where my wounds could be tended,” Paris explains. “I wasn’t there for the naked women.” He holds up the mirror. “This belonged to the Madame. She was a lovely old crone with a kind smile. While my brothers returned to the battle, she nursed me back to health. My time with her was…” He pauses, looking at himself in the glass. “Enlightening. She gave me this so that I might never forget that the realm doesn’t revolve around me.”

  In the silence that follows, I can tell Echo and Paris are on the edge of their seats, metaphorically. They want me to ask about the small object I saw in Callum’s hand back at the house, which is now safely tucked away in his pocket.

  “Yours belonged to Layla,” I say, finally releasing the weave. I’ve done all I can for Echo’s wounds. Exhaustion is slowing my magic, and I trust Callum to finish. “Didn’t it?”

  The broad-shouldered messenger looks taken aback. He shifts slightly to draw the object out of his pocket, and as it glints in the light, I get a better look at it.

  An arrowhead.

  I have a sudden memory of Paris telling me how skilled their sister was with a bow, and I’m sure I’ve guessed right even before Callum speaks.

  “Yes,” he says softly. “How did you know?”

  Because I know you.

  I don’t say the words out loud, but he seems to hear them anyway. His gaze grows somehow softer and more intense at the same time, and something hovers in the air between us. Then he drags his focus away from me, refocusing on the last of his brother’s injuries.

  “What about you?” Echo says, rotating his head so that Callum can get to a small gash near his clavicle. “You need an object of your own to bind you to this existence.”

  “I do,” I say carefully. “But in order to retrieve it, we’ll need to return to my village. I know exactly what I need,” I rush to add.

  I’m fully prepared for Callum to say absolutely not, in no uncertain terms. Going to my village was what put us in this debacle in the first place, and I’m not so arrogant as to not be able to admit that—or to admit the part I played in everything.

  But instead, he just nods, keeping his attention on the task before him as his fingers pluck the weave. “A quick journey to retrieve the artifact seems necessary.”

  Surprised, I return his nod. “Thank you. A quick journey.”

  Then my brows pull together as I watch him tilt his head, revealing a trickle of red on his neck near his hairline.

  I scoot toward him. Using the weave, I probe the area and find a laceration at the back of his head that I must have missed in the cell.

  “Nish. Paris, can you come help me? I don’t think I have the strength to do this alone.”

  “Of course.” The blond man comes to my side, sitting so that my body is between his knees, and leans over my shoulder to eye Callum’s wound. Meanwhile, Callum continues his work on Echo. “That’s not too bad. Here, we can combine our strength.”

  He places his hand on top of mine and entwines his fingers through my own. Suddenly, I’m very aware of his nearness, of his body pressed against mine from behind, and of the nearness of Callum in front of me.

  “Reach for the weave,” Paris murmurs, his breath tickling my ear.

  I do as he says, though my hand trembles beneath his. The moment I touch the weave, the power flows through me, strengthening between our two hands. Then we move as one to bind Callum’s wound with the magic. As the strand wraps into the open gash, something clicks into place. The essence of the universe connects us—all of us. It flows in a perfect river from Paris, through me, into Callum, and then into Echo. Paris, obviously cognizant of the sensation, gently grasps Echo’s knee, completing the circuit.

  I gasp as energy flows back into Paris. With the magic cascading freely between all four of us, our connection feels stronger than ever. I’m aware of every emotion in each of my men as we finish healing. I can sense Paris’s arousal from being pressed against my back, and beneath my fingertips, Callum’s need becomes a living thing.

  We’re so tightly bound, I’m not sure where they begin or I end.

  And it suddenly strikes me then just how close I came to losing all three.

  I pull my hand back from the now-healed wound in Callum’s neck, and he looks up quickly, as if the absence of my touch is painful. The breath hitches in my chest as our eyes meet. There’s so much emotion contained in his green gaze, more than I could understand with just one shared look.

  But then his gaze moves to my lips, and I’m no longer interested in what he’s thinking.

  All I care about is what he’s feeling.

  What I’m feeling.

  I could have lost him. I could have lost them all.

  My heart aches as I close the space between us and capture his lips. It’s only meant to be a simple kiss, something to show how much I care, how happy I am that we escaped with our lives, how glad I am to sit against him and feel his heart beating.

  But a small sound in Callum’s throat sends fire racing through my body. One arm wraps around my waist, and he draws me closer, pulling me onto his lap as my legs fall to either side of his lean hips.

  Behind me, Paris’s hands drift over my back, and he leans in to slide his lips along the exposed skin at my neck. The velvet sensation of his mouth on my skin makes me gasp into Callum’s lips, and then Echo sits up to join us. He gently shifts my dress off my shoulder and kisses the skin there. It should be completely chaste—shoulders are by no means an erogenous zone. But I moan, turning molten beneath their lips.

  My kiss with Callum grows fiercer, and I rock against his body, rubbing against the growing hardness I feel pressing against my core.

  Everything that’s happened, everything we’ve been through in the past twenty-four hours, rushes up on me like a tidal wave. I’m nearly bowled over by the strength of the emotions rising in my chest. They feel like they might burst out of me, like my small frame can’t possibly contain them.

  Callum groans again, and I tear my lips away from his, resting my forehead against his as our noses brush together and our heavy breaths mingle in the fraction of space between us.

  “You promised if we lived through this, you would show me how glad you were,” I whisper. “So show me.”

  6

  My voice is husky, full of raw and open need, and I make no effort to disguise it. I don’t think I could even if I tried.

  It’s more than physical desire.

  It’s more than roiling emotions.

  It’s a soul-deep demand to be closer to this man, to cement the bond between us that’s been forming since the first day we met.

  Callum’s body tenses beneath mine. I feel Paris and Echo shift back a little as their brother fists my hair close to the roots, using his grip on me to tug my face away from his. His eyes find mine, the bright green of his irises seeming to churn like leaves rustling in a heavy wind.

  He doesn’t speak, just stares at me with an intense gaze. His fingers in my hair are like iron, holding me in place, as if he’s trying to keep me still so he can commit every one of my features to memory.

  My heart thuds hard and heavy against my ribs, my core throbbing with need as I shift against him. I see everything in his eyes. So much that it scares me.
So much that it inflames me.

  “Please, Callum,” I whisper, tugging against his tight grip on my golden strands, trying to bring my lips closer to his. My eyes water, but it’s not from pain. “Please. I need…”

  “Do it, brother.” Echo’s voice is soft and serious from where he speaks just behind me. “She needs this.”

  “You need it.” Paris too sounds quiet and almost reverent as he presses a kiss to my opposite shoulder, mirroring the brush of Echo’s lips earlier. “We’ll keep watch. Make sure we aren’t discovered.”

  From my periphery, I can see both messengers rise and move to stand a little way off, keeping a lookout at the edge of the small sheltered area. Callum’s tight hold on my hair keeps me from turning my head, but it hardly matters—there’s nowhere else I would rather look than into his burning green eyes.

  I know what my other men have done, and I think I understand why they’ve done it. They must be able to feel as much of me as I can feel of them through the bond we share.

  And if that’s the case, they must feel the way my entire body is buzzing, humming with electric energy, demanding just one thing.

  That I complete the circle.

  That I complete the bond.

  My skin still remembers the soft press of Echo’s lips and the gentle caress of Paris’s fingertips. I wish fervently for a moment that we were somewhere—anywhere—else. Someplace where we could let our guard down for a minute, where all four of us could lose ourselves in each other, where we could give in to the desire that hangs heavy between us without fear.

  But this is not that time.

  So Paris and Echo, two of the men who know my soul almost better than I know it myself, have given me the next best thing.

  A moment with my other soulmate.

  “I need you, Callum,” I whisper softly, finally finishing the thought I couldn’t articulate before. “I need you so much.”

  “Little soul…”

  His words are a rumbling growl, and they ignite a fire inside me. I grind shamelessly against his hard cock, which presses against me under my skirt. The thick length is constrained by his pants, but it still manages to provide friction where I need it most, sending sparks flaring through my body.