Calliope's Wings

by Guin Archer

  The same sick sort of joy that curdled in me when I killed Mathai came back at that moment.

  I liked causing Uptip pain.

  “You,” I turned my hot eyes onto the gasping Zek. He was trying to get out from under Rohahn, but the warrior was as immovable as Mount Rushmore. The Zikta’s impassive expression never faltered as he kept steady – and probably bone-breaking – pressure on the other male’s chest. “What was your aim in my itchto?”

  “Uum Innintani,” he croaked around his cracked tooth and compressed ribcage, “I am not to be blamed. I mistook Your itchto for mine.”

  My laugh was loud and probably a little manic sounding. It felt it, anyway. Between their lies and the sudden switch to deference, calling me ‘theirs’ now that they were under thumb, I was giddy from the high their groveling and sniveling brought me.

  “You will leave this Udon. Leave and never return.” I met the eyes of my two visible Lubrei guard and the Mahzri males that were pushing through to gather the duo up for expulsion from the Horde.

  I’d have liked to have seen that ejection be done via cannon, but I contented myself with knowing the Mahzri were very much capable of fucking them up on their way out.

  “Ensure they leave,” I told the warriors flatly. I wiped my bloody hand clean on a rag Mari’et offered up.

  “Aichi, uum Taytani.”

  I moved nearer to Sekhmet and met her glinting, not-eyes with my own. My demands to her were whispered so the siblings couldn’t overhear.

  “Send your Mahzri after them. Watch them.” And, feeling a niggling sense of foreboding, I added, “be cautious. They are dangerous.”

  Big Mama chirrup-coughed in agreement before bellowing out loudly. The male Mahzri dragged the two away kicking and screaming. They weren’t so regal now. Not nearly so smug.

  “They take nothing but the essentials to survive,” I commanded the Zikta while wilting back onto my lounger. “Uptip is Rahvashti no more. I want my word spread.”

  “Aichi, uum Taytani.”

  “Tan!” She bowed to me quickly and waited for my next edict. This queenly shit was kinda-sorta awesome. Not gonna lie. “You will lead some you trust to sort through my itchto. You will tell me if anything is missing. You understand.”

  “Aichi, uum Taytani.”

  “Rohahn.” When the male tipped his head low to show he was focused on me, I continued. “If it is possible, I want her kut found and given proper burial. A pyre, I believe, is what the Lubrei use to send their dead to the One?”

  “Aichi, uum Taytani. Your will be done.”

  “Brah.”

  I barely had a moment to think, to wonder about the repercussions of what I just did or even what happened, when Ruune was kneeling beside and over me, his expression caught somewhere between worried and prideful. He petted my braided mohawk, tinkling my bells. No one around us, who were still gawking like spectators at a federation-approved fight, batted an eye at his affection for me. They hadn’t last night, either.

  “You did well, uum Taytani.”

  “I fear I caused more harm than good, Ruune.”

  “Lo, Innintani,” Forte interjected instantly. “You were not stepping out of Your rights. It was that bishtak biis’a and her brago who brought Your wrath on them.”

  “We will be vigilant, uum Taytani,” Rohahn continued where Forte left off. “That biis’a will not return.”

  I hoped they were right.

  “Uum Taytani,” Mari’et whispered while sidling up to my other side. She was discreetly pointing towards a Pasha who was holding a very young boy on her hip with yet another baby in a sling on her back. The little boy, even from a distance, looked sickly.

  “Rocho. Ido.” I rolled my hand in a sedate wave to draw them closer to me. “S’a chise.”

  “We do not desire to be a bother, uum Taytani,” the mother who looked to be about my age demurred, but came forward regardless. She affected a stiff bow to Sekhmet. “I did not think you would be…busy with the Rahvashti.”

  “She is Rahvashti no more. Lopou.”

  “Innintani…”

  “Do not argue with auum Taytani, Pasha Sezza.” Ruune’s knowledge of who this female was surprised me almost as much as his speaking up, but I contained myself from jumping. Barely.

  “Lo, Xerbai Ruune.”

  What the fuck was up with everyone stressing so much today with titles? It was getting pretty annoying.

  “Rocho,” I murmured to the little boy clinging to his mother’s side, his face buried in the crook of her neck. His small fingers kneaded at the lavender silk of the wrap draping her shoulders.

  The fabric jogged my memory and I felt my brows climb high as I looked at the still lingering crowd. And, surprise of all surprises, there stood the Zikta I’d aimed to kill me back in Blackburhn.

  Small fucking world.

  “You were the los’kah in Blackburhn,” I noted passively as Sezza tried to extricate her son from herself.

  “Aichi.”

  “Then I must thank you. Dashka.” My grin was a little wry when, after pushing my aura against the boy’s hunter green and rusted gold one, his eyes snapped open wide and he launched himself headlong into me. Ruune and Mari supported me when I would’ve flopped back.

  “Why? It is what any Zikta would have done once an Innintani was found with us.”

  Why indeed. If you would’ve told me weeks ago that I’d be thanking, not cursing, these people I was dragged into being with, I’d have slapped you silly. Slap slap slap! Even back at the beginning of the Jiktau I was ready to bolt and disappear.

  Now, though?

  Now, dare I say it, but I liked – for the most part – where I was. I liked these people. I loved having a bed and meals and people I cared about and loved surrounding me. It was a little surreal.

  “I have seen much. Too much.” I sighed when the boy peered up at me and I could see the physical echo of the taint in his aura. His nose hadn’t formed right and it was clear he couldn’t breathe easily. It also looked like he had an infection near where his nostrils would have been, turning his skin a pukey-green hue.

  Poor baby.

  When I swaddled his aura with mine, the boy made a growling coo that ripped at my heartstrings.

  Fuck. I desperately hoped I wasn’t getting baby-blues. God only knew what kind of havoc a half-orc baby would reap on my lady-bits. I doubted it was even possible.

  I tried not to linger in those thoughts. No use upsetting myself. Not like I’d know, anyway, if Kor managed to knock me up that first time. The only upside to my body’s changes and my constant state of upheaval was that I no longer suffered a menstrual cycle. Not that I was aware of, anyway. Blissfully period-free for years now.

  Could be attributed to fucking dying so many times, but there wasn’t really a handbook for the shit I’d gone through.

  Mores the pity.

  “Pretty baby boy,” I cooed right back to the kid in English as he snuggled me like I was suddenly his favorite stuffy. I stroked his back languidly and pushed my energy into him, knitting the scars and sick in his body to something better. “Feels good, doesn’t it? Mmmhmm. Nice, warm heat taking away your booboos. We’ll get you all better in no time.”

  The spectators that were the Horde drew closer, their eyes comically wide as they saw things I couldn’t by right of me being in the middle of the scene playing out. Quick, furtive whispers bounced from one Tauren to another, many of them breaking out into titanic smiles. Tusks flashed everywhere I looked while they watched.

  …it was a hair awkward being gawped at so blatantly.

  Offhandedly, I could hear Mari’et talking to Sezza. She was giving her a clay jar and telling her how to use the poultice inside. It was a salve the boy would need to apply around his nose – and the cavity of where the bulk of it should’ve been – that would keep bacteria from settling in. The mother nodded to my healer friend, clutching a band of cloth in one hand that I figured to be akin to the veils I wore in Granzee. />
  I was a damned good magical healer, but I did have my limits. If I could regrow body parts on a person, I’d never figured out that particular trick. It was amazing the kid was even alive now, seeing as Intau was so medieval, and his deformed nose would be something he’d have for the rest of his life.

  I felt bad I couldn’t do more besides wipe out the infection and push his body at least a little way into knitting skin into a more solid, healthy mass where it had been so brittle before.

  I think I could’ve gotten away with just kissing his forehead and chanting some hoodoo over his head for how elated the mother was when I handed her boy back to her.

  “What is his calling, Sezza?” I couldn’t resist stroking my fingers over his still-diminutive mohawk while he succumbed to sleep against her once more.

  “Equan,” she husked back to me, tears shining in her blacked-out eyes. I resisted squirming.

  Just barely.

  “Bring Equan back to me in five sol. I will check him again then. I think he will be well, though.”

  “Dashka, uum Taytani.” When she ducked forward rapidly to press our foreheads together, I wasn’t too surprised. I was getting very used to that display of affection. “Dashka. Dashka. The One has blessed us with You. Dashka.”

  “Ido, Sezza.” Her Dorai came to us with a formal show of hands and head-bow before gathering his family up into his arms despite Sezza’s protests. “Auum Taytani appears tired. The Xxyx is anxious. She must rest now.”

  Now that he mentioned it, I was feeling a little tired. Maybe not enough for a nap, but at least enough to lazily strum on my lyre and just generally be a lazy slug. Between my confrontation with Uptip and then little Equan’s healing, I was tapped out.

  Sekhmet snorted and barked at the crowd with clear intent. ‘Go back to your own business,’ she was saying. She clacked her mouthplates at Mari’et and Ruune until they vacated their spots right next to me to make room for her. She nestled in quickly, fixing me between her forward set of legs and the rear, my back and my lounge pressing into the place where her baby was growing. Her two babies, one unborn Mahzri and me the mutated human, safe and snug with her.

  The babying treatment could be a bit tiring with her and the other Mahzri, but I’d admit, if only to myself, that it felt good to be coddled in a purely platonic way.

  Ruune was slower to back away from me this time, though Mari returned to her apothecary work with only a grimaced, sideways smile for me.

  I hated this distance and awkwardness I instilled in everyone. Absolutely fucking everyone.

  I puffed a hard, heavy sigh.

  “Go,” I told him with an absent wave towards where my other attendants were back to their tasks. “I understand.”

  That could’ve been a lie since I didn’t have a way to read minds – wouldn’t that have been awesome – but I wasn’t oblivious. I knew my fit from last night created a rift. I needed to mend it, somehow, and get back to where we had been.

  Heat crept up my neck and bloomed in my cheeks as I watched Ruune’s tight asscheeks clench and release as he strode solemnly away from me. I ogled them without shame and knew the blush I sported wasn’t from embarrassment. It was from where my thoughts strayed, to where I knew I needed to go tonight for myself and him, too.

  Sweet baby Jesus, give me strength.

  Chapter Twenty

  I don’t think I’d ever been so nervous in my fucking life! I sure-as-shit never felt nervous about having sex before.

  But that was before Intau. That was before I was damaged in every way a person could be. That was before these Tauren with their thrice-damned, prehensile cocks and brain-melting pheromones.

  I was pacing my pillau on bare feet, naked in the ‘privacy’ the released shell provided me. I’d had the ladies untie every single one of the solid panels so it wasn’t just netting separating me from the outside world.

  Mari’et could read me better than the others, her peachy aura feeling the anxiety in mine. She’d been reluctant to leave me alone, but when I reassured her I’d be fine and then asked Tan very deliberately to send Ruune in with my dinner, she clued in to my aim. Her cheeks were even darker than mine with her flush and that wasn’t entirely attributed to her darker skin tone.

  My tent was going to be rockin’ tonight if everything went well. Not according to plan because I was winging this shit, but well.

  Did I even know how to seduce a man? I couldn’t remember. Mac liked my spunk and assertiveness. I’d never been coy. We played, sure, but if I wanted a fuck, I’d say so. Any of my Johns after him were to scratch an itch. They knew the score and I was always upfront about what I wanted.

  Could I do that with my sweet Ruune? Was it even still in me? I mean, it was clear I was still capable of arousal and want, but I felt so different even in this way compared to how I used to be.

  I used to like a man who could take charge and throw me around. I liked it rough. Now, though? It made me sick just imagining a male looming over me, grunting as he slammed his dick into me. I shuddered, feeling powerless already.

  I shook my head.

  No. I could do this. I just had to be…creative. And Ruune was perfect to be that with. It wasn’t just my love for him, though that was a big part of it. It was his subservience. His submissiveness to me.

  Holy fucking shit. Am I really about to play at being the Domme?

  Fuck yeah I was.

  It was because I wanted sex. It was because I wanted to be with Ruune. It was because I needed to prove to everyone that my past didn’t rule me even if it sometimes took a couple gut-shots against me. I wasn’t – I hoped I wasn’t – irredeemable. I was going to be a mangled mess of a woman for the rest of my life for everything I’d been through, but I deserved the chance to reconcile with it in as healthy a way as I could.

  In this case, that reconciliation included bumping uglies with my hermie-homie.

  The front flap, my front door, rustling let me know Ruune had arrived with my food. I stopped pacing and he froze at the exact same time. Peering over my shoulder at him, I could see that Ruune was all but swallowing his black tongue as he surveyed me hungrily. I could feel it in his aura and smell the tinge of his ooroo in the air.

  “Stop,” I commanded him immediately and firmly. His face jerked up as though I’d slapped him. I softened my tone. “You will not use your ooroo this lune with me. Am I understood?”

  “Aichi,” he gulped, his hands shaking finely as he carried my tray over to the low seating and table.

  “‘Aichi’ who, uum Xerbai?”

  His shoulders locked up and a shiver visibly skated down his spine through his bindings and the vest I gifted him last light. I heard him gulp audibly.

  “Aichi, uum Innintani?”

  “Lo, uum los’kah. Try again Ruune.” I made his name a purr on my tongue. The horn cups on the tray rattled when he all but dropped them onto the wooden surface.

  “A-aichi, uum Calliope.”

  Ooh yeah. That felt good to hear my own name on his lips. And, if I was honest with myself, a lashing of erotic heat slithered through me at his stutter.

  My poor man was nervous. Nervous, but aroused. I knew that because he was subtly trying to shift his legs as his cock tried to push its way forward out of its sheath. I felt my lips tipping up into a lascivious smirk and padded up to his back. When my hands found his hips outside of his trou, he jolted like I’d sent a pulse of lightning through him.

  I pressed my lips to his spine, kissing the leather of his vest.

  “We are going to play tonight, Ruune. We will play and you will let me lead, yes? You will do only what I say.”

  “Aichi, Calliope.”

  “Good boy,” I murmured in English. Then, in the Tongue, “turn around.”

  He did, his movements stilted. He’d never looked more like that first day I met him and thought him a woman than right now. His gained confidence and honed grace were gone now that he was aroused, but unable to do anything about it withou
t my say-so.

  It was mean of me, but I didn’t speak any more and not for a while. Instead, I kept my hands deliberately soft and gentle as I stripped him of first his vest and then his bindings. I watched the play of his muscles as he tensed from my focused stare on his slight breasts and the copper-pierced nipples he’d been hiding. His knuckles creaked and cracked as he fisted his hands at his sides.

  Naughty, naughty me, I pinched both nipples and tugged down with enough force to have him understand that he needed to be on his knees. He hit them heavily.

  “Good boy,” I repeated kindly. A tad husky, too.

  “Good boy,” he echoed me, his lids getting heavier with want.

  As tall as he was normally and as tall as he still was on his knees, I didn’t have to contort myself much to mouth one of his nipples that I so recently tweaked. It was…strange to have a breast in my mouth. Not that his were plush, but they were certainly different than the hard pecs I was most used to on men. I figured, though, that if I did some of what I liked done to my own breasts to his, he’d find joy from me.

  I was right.

  I used my teeth to lightly graze his nipples and tongued the piercing, one breast to the other and back again. Through my lower peripheral, I watched his hands fly to the sides of his trou so he could shuck them.

  “Bad boy,” I hissed, removing my favor and slapping my hand hard against the side of one ass cheek where I could reach. Ruune made a wanton, moaning whimper before dropping his hands once more. His breasts bounced as he breathed in doggedly.

  “Bad boy,” he agreed, though I knew he didn’t know what the words meant. The meaning came across with the swat and my tone, but he didn’t know English any more than any of the other Tauren did.

  To show him I wasn’t upset with him, I pressed my lips to his while also rubbing our foreheads together. His mouth was tight. He didn’t know what kissing was, but I was determined for him to learn. So, suckling his lips and smooching languidly, I teased him into responding. By the time his mouth opened on a sigh, I had his wrists clasped in my hands and was bringing them up to my own tits.