by Kim Knox
She bit at her lip—hard—to deny the tightness of her throat and the sudden hot run of tears. This was not fair.
“No it’s not.” Lucas’ soft whisper threaded through her. “But we won’t be parted from you, Ash.”
Marek squeezed her fingers, his tacit agreement with Lucas’ statement. “Well, Zorion?”
He stepped to one side and the men and dogs stood aside in the dark tunnel. The crystal in his hand thrummed and grew…insubstantial. Its use was ending. Her heart tightened, fear thick in her belly. Zorion followed her gaze, a smile cutting his mouth. “And with your agreement, so it ends…and begins.” He opened his fingers and the crystal map fell, dissolving into a flicker of light before it hit the earth. “The walls so far beneath the palace are fluid. A gift from the power that resides here. Follow it to its end.”
Ash tugged free of Lucas’ tight hold, though Marek refused to release her hand, his fingers biting into her wrist. But she had to question Zorion. If they were to die, she wasn’t going to do it in ignorance. “You knew this was down here. Why go through the act at the temple, of trying to implicate Marek?”
“I’ve fostered the hatred his fellow custodians have for him. Needed their aid to track him, watch him since his birth.” Zorion frowned. “And you. You have no idea what your blood protected.” His attention turned inward. “It’s sung in my veins for centuries, more pure, more satisfying and with more power than anything you could hope to have.” The gleam in his eyes held her and she couldn’t look away. “The marker wasn’t just a crystal map, it was a key. As are you, Ashsara Nerah, with the blood of the Kairas in your veins and the stain of emperors on your spine. Proof that you came from me.”
She blinked and whatever hold he had on her vanished. “We’ll give this beast of yours indigestion.”
“No, you will give it the feast it craves.” He stepped back and pointed to the dark tunnel. “Time to move.”
Marek strode forward, tugging Ash after him. Lucas followed, his hand at her spine, touching her birthmark through the thin fabric of her tunic. Her heart pounded. This was not happening. Marek had to have a plan. He always seemed to have a plan. They hadn’t truly bonded. Would that mean that the final binding would fail, that the beast would stay trapped? Or did Marek’s power change that and the deomos would succeed and the beast would escape to bring power to Zorion? Either way, death awaited them.
Ash pushed down the rise of fear. She had faith in her goddess. Maybe luck would fall to her when she most needed it. She tried not to dwell how fickle her goddess could be.
Dogs growled, straining their leashes, eager to get to the dark soul flesh striding past them. Ash focused on Marek’s broad back, the familiar shape of his shoulders, but even that was disappearing into the thickening shadows.
A slow, liquid roar filled the air and Ash’s head snapped back. She stared. The tunnel walls…folded…behind them in a roll of shifting earth and stone, chasing them into the dark.
“How are we getting out of this, Marek?” Ash had to shout above the roil of the moving walls. Her question was met with silence. Even Lucas said nothing. Ash closed her eyes, or at least she thought she did. Her shut lids and the pitch black of the tunnel were the same now. The heavy odor of damp earth, stone and whatever threaded through the ground giving it that distinctive stench and taking away the power of the dark souls, filled her lungs. She held onto it. It meant she was still alive. “Marek?”
Blue-white light bristled and sparked in the air. Marek lifted his fist and lit the wide tunnel with his magic. A single strand of light splintered away and arced into the wall. The magic spidered over the curve of earth, flickering, weakening until it vanished. “Even my custodian magic doesn’t work down here now. Whatever this thing is, it’s like no magic ever made.”
“And that means…?”
“No, I don’t have a plan.” His words quiet, calm somehow, cut through the din of the rolling walls. It was the touch of his thoughts over hers, pressing as she had touched Lucas in his hidden rooms an age ago.
Fear sank in a hot lump into her belly and she fought to keep her sudden riot of panic contained. Her teeth bit at the inside of her cheek. It would help no one if she screamed and bolted. They were together. She had to take her final comfort from that fact.
The darkness lightened and the tunnel ended. Marek stopped at the open mouth to a great cavern. The air shimmered, an oily film spanning the archway. Beyond golden light glistened. Ash’s heart thudded and Lucas covered her hand, his strong fingers threading through hers. She pressed her lips together. She could still taste him on her lips, her tongue. Ash pulled in a steadying breath. “What now?”
Marek skimmed his fingers over the film, not touching, but the substance rippled in his wake. “It has the feel of ancient magic.” He frowned and tilted his head. “But it feels like something that shouldn’t exist.”
“It’s a dream barrier. I thought they were a myth.” Lucas winced and what that was flickered through his thoughts, but too fast for Ash to catch. “The amount of power expended to make such a thing corporeal.” A bitter laugh escaped him. “This is not good.”
Marek shrugged. “We knew that.” He flexed his fingers around her hand. “For a moment, you’re going to feel like you’re falling sleep, Ash.” His dark gaze gripped her and her heart squeezed. He blocked his thoughts. The walls of his mind were as obscured as if she could never touch, never feel them within him. It hurt and she hated that he denied their connection. His eyes narrowed. “We’re with you. Remember that.”
Ash nodded. What else could she do? They headed to their deaths. Lucas squeezed her fingers and stood at her left side, Marek her right. “We all do this together?”
Lucas smirked at her. “It’s the nature of the deomos.”
A wry smile lifted her mouth. “Yes, it is.”
“Ready?” Marek’s voice cut through her, hard, strong. “Now.”
As one they stepped forward into the barrier and heat sank over her in a molten slide. She felt the tight grip of both men’s hands, but with it came a heaviness, a desire to sink down and let her eyes close, let sleep take her.
But panic hit her, her heart racing, sudden heat and sweat gluing her tunic to her belly, her spine. Was this it? Was this their promised death with the beast waiting for them on the other side? Had Zorion lied and the truth was the beast would hold them, feed on them for an eternity—
“Don’t fight it.” Lucas’ familiar voice moved though her mind. “Let yourself fall.”
She trusted him and willed her heart to slow. Her lungs ached from lack of air, light dancing in front of her eyes in fractured golds and blues. Lucas had said she could fall. Ash closed her eyes…and she let the heavy heat press into her flesh, taking her body, her mind into another place.
* * * * *
“Ash?”
Marek’s palm brushed her jaw, his fingers stroking over her cheek, and his touch brought with it the feelings of want, of his need for her. A smile curved her lips and she let the golden warmth of the sun and him caress her skin for a few moments more. Too soon, he would want to start the day.
She blinked. It wasn’t a rush-filled mattress under her spine but the give of sand. She squinted up into a too bright and cloudless blue sky, the air heavy with heat and sharp light. The taste of gritty sand coated her tongue and she grimaced.
“You’re awake.” Marek removed his hand and she held down a regretful sigh. He gripped her arm and pulled her up. “I thought you planned to sleep all day.”
Ash ran her hand over her hair, dislodging white sand in a fine mist. It itched under her clothes and she twisted against it. “Where are we? Is this real? Where’s…” She turned and found Lucas behind her and the first rush of fear eased away. The ache to pull him to her, wrap his strength around her and find comfort in their bond tugged at her. But she couldn’t. She wanted to delay her desire for as long as she could. The beast wouldn’t take them until they had sex.
She looked away and beyond h
im to the decayed stone tiers stretching up from the sandy floor. Ash turned on her heel, following the curve of crumbling granite as it swept around them. All was strangely silent, the air still. Nothing moved and fear pricked her skin. It looked somehow familiar…
A fist tightened in her gut. The arena. The place where she’d met whatever the hell it was that the marker contained. Her hand pressed to her throat, her mouth. She couldn’t feel it. There was only the heat slicking her skin and the itch of sand. “Have you seen it yet?”
“No, only them.” Lucas pointed up to the first of many gray stone pillars ringing the edge of the floor of the arena. On the flat tops of the columns stood robed figures, black cowls hanging down over their faces, obscuring them. “They’ve not moved. Just stood silent…and sweating.”
Ash rolled her eyes at him. “And they’re human?”
Marek shook his head. “Nothing purely human could come through that barrier. This place is real. We’re not asleep this time. And only someone with ancient magic in their blood can stand here.”
“Like us.” Ash rubbed more sand from her hair. Damn, the stuff was everywhere. “Aren’t we lucky.” She squinted into the distance, the heat haze rising off the floor to blur the stone, eddies of sand rising and twisting. “So we just wait?” She frowned. The air was still, dead. What was lifting the sand?
Marek took her hand and urged her behind him, Lucas standing at her back. The turning ribbons of sand skittered across the arena, merging, splitting, and the cut of them through the air hissed and spat. Ash lifted her shoulders. Was this it? The beast meant to devour them regardless. Fear cramped her belly, but she ignored it, willed it from her thoughts, her feelings…because hell, she knew that Lucas did the same. Marek—she resisted the need to let her forehead drop against his hard shoulder—was a wall of granite. Private. Unknown.
The small twists of spinning sand drew around them, circling where they stood. It formed strange shapes, almost combining into a body before dispersing into a vortex of sand. Words formed in the hiss, soft, sibilant and in a language long dead. They moved through the air, shifting as the sand did and forming shape sounds she recognized.
“Kairas blood, from the one who trapped me here eons ago.” The nearest funnel darted closer, scouring the floor to reveal a dark stone beneath, worn and pitted with age. It dipped towards Lucas. “Pure Dardanas, though from low, polluted stock, and you…” The curve of sand arched away, spinning long and thin, drawing almost level with Marek’s head. The whirling, open mouth of the funnel drifted over and almost looked at his face.
The vision of it held her and she stared into the shadow of its interior, expecting something…but there was only more twisting, hissing sand within. The thing recoiled and the smaller whips of sand thickened, spitting and whirring, the distaste almost palpable. “You are a mix of Dardanas and the new magic, a nasty twist, the taste of it like acid.”
“Thank you,” Marek said.
The swirls of sand and grit cut a path across the floor, clearing more of the dark, pitted stone beneath. “You’re bound together, though not completely. Not yet deomos. But you will be.” The hiss grated with a harder edge, one that rubbed against her like satisfaction. She shivered, disturbed by the unexpected push of lust under her skin. “I will regain my form and your final act of joining will release me.”
“And if we refuse?” Ash blurted out the question. She had to know which would be the quicker fate. Dying in their arms or struck down by the beast’s wrath.
Laughter echoed across the arena. “I am Caheus. The sprinkling of ancient power in your veins is nothing. You won’t want to refuse.”
The eddies and twists of sand skittered away, coalescing into a weaving funnel that whipped over the floor of the area. “Kairas bound me here. And her blood will set me free.” It broke apart beneath one of the gray columns and grains of sand wreathed around the stone, climbing up to the fist of the cowled, unmoving figures.
Ash closed her eyes, almost thankful that the brief surge of desire had faded in her flesh. Her release meant her—their—deaths. The more she delayed, the longer they continued to breathe. “What is going on?”
“That is your beast,” Marek said, his gaze fixed on the column. “And his breaking of his confinement has begun.”
“He’s sand…” Her voice trailed away as the sunlight caught the grains of floating sand and a shape shimmered on the wide top of the column. Hands, the straight length of a broad back, solid thighs… “A tail?”
“Older royalty have tails.” Lucas also fixed his attention on the column, his hand tight around hers and the heat in his blood pulsed through her own. It was strange, she could almost taste the desire in the air, the hard need to fuck and be fucked. Lucas pulled in a deep breath. “It’s him, Ash. Dark souls are sex and magic…the older souls, they charge the air with lust.”
Ash bit at the inside of her cheek, wanting to deny what Lucas said was true. But it was raw around her, hot against her skin, and she could only watch the glittering shape at the top of the tower. It ran the image of its hands over the hood figure and the material fell back, dropping to a puddle at the woman’s feet. She stood still and naked before the beast and Ash wanted to will herself to look away…but she couldn’t.
The taste of need, of hot desire filled her mouth and the throb of it down through her flesh made a mockery of her fear. She fixed her gaze on the woman on the column. Something about her was familiar and with a start, Ash realized she looked like her.
She opened her eyes and Ash sensed the curl of heat and lust growing within the other woman’s flesh. Whatever she was, she wasn’t human…in the way that Ash herself wasn’t human. Somehow, she felt the connection, as Lucas had known that Marek was Dardanas…she felt it in her blood.
“She’s Kairas…and she’s…me.” Ash mirrored the rise and fall of the woman’s chest, felt the fast flow of need and the burn of unseen hands on her flesh. Heat flooded her at the first lick of a hot tongue against her breast, the expert curl of it around her nipple.
Marek cursed and his body grew tense. “He’ll take every one.”
“Marek…?” She scrabbled for his hand, needing his touch to balance the surge of fire in her flesh. Ash couldn’t rip her gaze away from the column, from the woman—her—arching into the shape of glittering hands. The heaviness of them pressed against her own flesh and joined with the increasing press of the hot mouth tasting and teasing her breast. “What is Caheus doing?”
“He will bring pleasure to each woman.” Lucas’ words were tense. She glanced at him and his jaw tightened. “Gain flesh and bone with each release. And his lust…” He swallowed, heat cutting across his cheeks. “Will drive us together.”
“But it’s me…” Ash bit back a gasp at the ghostly hand gripping her ass. She crushed her eyes shut, but it didn’t stop the push of shadowed fingers. “How can she be me?”
She didn’t get her answer, didn’t hear it as Caheus’ hot mouth slid from her breast to lick his way down her stomach to the curve of her belly. Ash groaned, crushing Marek’s hand, fighting the fire in her veins. She would find her release at the beast’s command… No. Ash willed her eyes open and glared at Marek. The rise of ancient words beat with her blood, the soft keen of her binding song filling her thoughts and rising on the still air. “I can’t fight it, Marek. You can’t either.”
Desire darkened his gaze and he nodded to Lucas. He released her hand and stepped back. “Prepare her.”
Lucas closed his eyes and pulled her to him. His lips touched her ear, his hot breath sending a shiver through her skin that had nothing to do with Caheus and that monster’s clever fingers. “With my last breath, I love you.”
Ash fisted his tunic, the mix of pain and desire burning up through her chest. And then he was kissing her, deep, slow, as he drew up her tunic, his fingertips light on her skin. He eased her arms up, broke his mouth from hers and pulled the material free. His hands found her ass and he inched under the band of h
er breeches, pushing them down, exposing her.
Ash let her forehead fall against his chest, knowing that Marek watched, that the reveal of her skin brought him pleasure. She drew in Lucas’ familiar scent, leather and linen mixing with the warmth of male skin. Her pussy throbbed and the rise of binding words arced over her.
Lucas pushed the breeches down and knelt before her, his breath brushing her thigh. She stepped free of the last of her clothes and the final grains of sand sticking to her skin dropped away. Lucas smiled up at her, the wicked shine in his eyes bringing heat to her skin.
“Your gift from me. Sharing in what is mine, Lucas.”
Her gaze snapped to Marek and the need in him fisted her fingers in Lucas’ hair It would kill them all, this insane need, but she couldn’t deny it. “Thank you, primary.”
He looked beautiful, so powerful. He folded his arms across his chest and a nerve twitched at his temple, but his eyes trailed down over her nakedness. “Spread your legs a little for him.”
Lucas’ hands eased over her thighs, guiding her, his mouth so close to where she ached for him. He pressed a light kiss and then another on her mound and Ash fixed her attention on Marek. From the corner of her eye, the moving shine of Caheus was of little importance, not when Lucas’ thumbs stroked the sensitive inner curve of her thighs and Marek… Marek swallowed and heat slashed his cheeks.
Lucas dipped his tongue and found her sweet spot. She gasped, the sudden rush of heat spiraling up through her flesh with the flare of magic. Ash willed her eyes to stay open, wanted to see Marek watching her, seeing the pleasure that his secondary brought.
Lucas groaned, his fingers tightening against her thighs. “You taste…”
He pressed slow kisses to her folds, his tongue teasing her, licking her, spinning hot need, and light danced before her eyes. She swayed and strong arms caught her. Marek pressed to her back, his hands finding her breasts. His mouth moved against her ear.
“Shall we watch him, Ash?”
She glanced down with Marek, seeing her pale fingers caught in Lucas’ dark hair and his mouth on her pussy. The lap of his tongue, the sound of it, the feel of it, deepened the push of need and magic in her body.