by Jade White
With a smile, she gave it a gentle caress, and when he shivered, her smile widened. She ran her fingers carefully along the length of his arousal, and it jumped beneath her hand. He moaned and sat up abruptly, crushing her mouth to his in a kiss that left her gasping.
“You shouldn’t tease,” he said roughly. “You’ll drive me to distraction.” She couldn’t help but laugh, even as he pressed her back into their nest of cloaks and knelt between her legs again.
“Are you ready?” he asked, gentle even when he was breathless with desire.
She nodded, swallowing back a small knot of apprehension. Eleri knew she could trust him to be careful with her, but she also knew there was likely to be at least a little pain. His fingers stroked down her stomach and thighs, rousing an echo of the heat from earlier. She let her eyes fall closed. There was pressure, a stinging ache as he slowly filled her, but it was hardly terrible. He paused, looking down at her with mingled concern and adoration. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling up at him, taking his face in her hands and kissing him deeply. He moved within her, slowly and carefully, and the ache subsided, replaced by familiar warmth pooling in her belly. She wrapped her legs around his hips, more by instinct than by conscious decision, and he groaned as he was drawn even more deeply inside her.
The rhythm of their joining quickened until it was a steady rolling motion, and each movement sent the embers of desire higher until she could feel it again, the bliss that waited just over the horizon. She knew now that Carwin could feel it too; he moaned with each thrust, his eyes screwed tightly shut, and the sight of his pleasure made hers more intense until she knew she was just on the precipice.
His eyes snapped open, wide and dark, and his final thrust was wild. He cried out softly, and she felt him shudder inside her. The sensation was enough to drive her over the edge, and the second time was even better than the first, a slow burn of ecstasy that pulsed through her again and again until all thought was driven from her mind.
They trembled and panted together, and when she finally came back to reality, Carwin rested his head on her chest, and she could feel his pulse pounding in time with her own. They lay in silence for several minutes until the night air on their damp skin made Eleri shiver.
Carwin smiled and rolled onto his side, drawing one of the cloaks over them both. She curled into his chest, and he draped an arm over her waist and kissed her forehead. “Are you happy, Eleri?” he asked quietly.
“How could I not be?” she replied with a smile. “Whatever you may think about the future, this was a perfect night.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Eleri woke first, which, judging by their previous travels together, was unusual, but she was glad for it. She doubted she would have many more chances to see Carwin as peaceful as he was now. His face was buried in her hair, his arm was still cradling her close, and his breaths were deep and even. Sleep erased lines of care from his face, making him appear no older than she was. Not for the first time, she wondered about the truth of his past. How old was he, really? Where had he come from?
But that didn’t matter to her nearly as much as the future. He had said he couldn’t make any promises, and she supposed she could accept that, but what did that mean? Would he leave now and never return?
The thought made her heart squeeze painfully in her chest, but what could she do? He had his quest, and she could hardly deny him that. It wasn’t as if she could go with him. She had no skills and no way to help; she would only be in the way.
She sighed against his forehead, and he stirred against her, blinking his eyes in the golden morning sunlight. It was somewhat comical to watch his mind try to piece together where he was, but then, when he finally did, he smiled. She exhaled a relieved breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding.
“Eleri. You’re here,” he said in quiet wonder.
She couldn’t help but laugh. “Where else would I be? Did you think I’d sneak off in the night?” she teased. He scowled at her, and she kissed his cheek in apology.
“I suppose I feared it was all a dream. Or that you would wake up and regret last night’s events,” he added in a worried tone.
“I do not,” she assured him. She paused, considering her words. On the one hand, she wanted to preserve the peace of this moment for as long as she could, but she also felt that constantly wondering when he was going to leave might drive her mad. “I was only wondering. What happens now, with us? I mean, I know you can’t stay here forever, but I...”
I’d like it if you did, was the thing she couldn’t allow herself to say.
His expression was as conflicted as she felt. “I don’t want to leave you,” he said roughly, “but I fear I have little choice in the matter.” Carwin had no doubt that if Ceridwen sensed him wavering in his purpose, she wouldn’t hesitate to turn him back into a statue. “I cannot leave right away, in any case. I came here to get information, and the archdruid insisted that I wait until after Calan Mai.” He looked at her with hope in his eyes. “If you do not object, I’d like to be with you as long as I am able.”
Eleri felt such happiness that she could do nothing but kiss him in response, and she felt her relief and joy echoed when his lips met hers. For a while, they let their bodies speak in place of words.
******************
Sometime later, they walked back to the Temple hand in hand, chains of blossoms crowning their heads and filling their arms. It was Rhian who met them at the gates to relieve them of their burden of flowers, and though she made no remark, she flashed Eleri a knowing smile. The druid had been right about one thing: all of her troubles seemed much less dire after spending some hours of joy with Carwin, and now that she knew he wouldn’t be leaving right away, she could, at least temporarily, set her worries for the future aside.
“How shall we spend the rest of our day?” she asked, beaming in Carwin’s direction.
“Oh, I suppose there’s plenty more dancing, frolicking, and feasting planned, but if you want my opinion, after all of our traveling, what I’m most interested in is a nap. However, I suppose breakfast should be first on our agenda.”
Luckily, food was not hard to find, and after they ate, they sat out in the late morning sun. Carwin asked Eleri about her family, and she found it did not hurt so much to tell him. While she recounted memories of her childhood, he sprawled in the grass with his head pillowed on her lap.
After a while, he stopped commenting, and when she looked down, she saw that he had fallen asleep. He hadn’t been teasing about being tired, she thought, tracing her fingers lightly over his cheeks and through his hair. The journey had been hard on both of them, but he’d been the one doing most of the work, and it made her feel a stab of guilt for even thinking she might continue on with him.
A gust of wind blew past, bringing with it a loose flower, probably dropped by another returning couple. Twisting it between her fingers, Eleri smiled and began to braid it into Carwin’s hair. She was nearly finished when she noticed that his eyes were wide open, watching her with an amused grin. “Am I so unlovely that you feel the need to decorate me?”
She blushed slightly to be caught in her mischief but shook her head with a chuckle. “If you must know, I find you quite pleasing to look at. Perhaps I am simply trying to make you look silly, to dissuade any other girls from glancing your way.”
Her mouth snapped shut in horror as soon as the words left it. Whatever she felt for him, surely such a remark was out of line. She had no right to lay claim to him. Carwin opened his mouth to reply, but a commotion near the temple gate made him sit up in alarm.
“There’s an army coming!” a villager cried out in breathless panic. Eleri could hear the gate guards questioning him, but she couldn’t make out what they said. The answer he gave, however, made her blood turn to ice in her veins. “Shadowy, horrible things! Hundreds of them!”
Carwin surged to his feet, pulling Eleri up with him. “I need to get my weapons,” he sai
d, “And I should speak to the archdruid about the defense. You should get to safety within the temple.”
She shook her head in defiance. No matter how much he might protest, she was determined to stay by him as long as she could. “I’ll go get your things while you talk to them. Don’t do anything crazy.”
He frowned at her but released her hand, and they ran in opposite directions. It only took a moment to get to his room, and there was his sheathed sword, along with the familiar jerkin and bracers of tooled leather. She also gathered his bow and quiver, and after a moment of thought, also slung her own, smaller quiver over her back. This time, she wasn’t just going to wait helplessly.
It was slow going on the way back, carrying all that gear, but finally, she dumped the pile at Carwin’s feet. He was consulting with the druids and the small force of armed temple guards, and he started putting on his armor without pausing in his conversation. But then, the others left to take up their positions, and the two of them were left alone in the courtyard. Carwin buckled his scabbard onto his belt and looked up at her with an intense expression. “You will not go inside?” It was more of a resigned statement than a question.
“No,” she replied, shouldering her quiver with a defiant set to her chin. He sighed and then, to her surprise, crushed her to his chest and kissed her with a kind of desperate fervor. She was still reeling when he pulled away and cradled one of her cheeks in his hand, his eyes scanning her face intently as if to memorize every detail. He is afraid, she realized, her heart thumping painfully in her chest.
“You are a stubborn woman,” he said, with a shake of his head. “And I love you. I want you to remember that, no matter what you see.” He didn’t give her any time to reply, but turned and strode through the gate without another word.
For several seconds, Eleri stood stunned, her hand straying up to her cheek where she could still almost feel his touch. He loved her? She loved him, of course. She knew it without question, though she had hardly dared to think on it before that moment, but she had never expected him to return those feelings. After all, he was planning on leaving.
Her mind traveled back to the night before. He had said he would have liked to promise her everything, but he couldn’t, and now she knew for sure that he meant he physically could not, not that he was unwilling for emotional reasons. Unfortunately, that still didn’t make much sense. Was it only because he feared he could die at any moment, or something else?
“Eleri!” someone shouted her name, and she jumped in surprise. It was Rhian, and she was beckoning her toward the gate. “Come up to the guard tower,” she said. “You’ll be able to see what happens. And you might even find a mark for those arrows.”
“Gods bless you,” Eleri replied with an explosive sigh of relief as she hurried over. It was bad enough watching Carwin go off to battle nightmare monsters, but not knowing what was happening was the worst of all. As they ascended the stairs, Eleri prayed to every deity she could name that she would see him again.
********************
Carwin was shaking his head in annoyance at himself as he found a perch on a boulder overlooking the path. Why did you say that? he chastised himself, but he knew the answer already. Because it was true, and he could not now bear the thought of dying without telling her. You’re only making things harder on the both of you, continued his internal scold. It was terribly selfish.
“After all this, haven’t I earned a little selfishness?” he muttered into the eerily silent forest. He supposed Ceridwen would disagree. Rewards were for people who succeeded in their tasks, and for this, his only reward would be death. A final rest.
When he had made the deal, he had thought of it as a peaceful relief, but now... He could not, would not, take back the bargain he had made for Eleri’s life. After all, it was only her that made him wish that he had more to give.
He might have suspected it was a punishment designed especially by the goddess to torture him, but, as vengeful as she could be in anger, she wasn’t the type to resort to emotional manipulation, and he doubted she would bother to meddle in affairs of the heart. If there were any deities involved in his meeting with Eleri, he prayed that they would take pity on the two of them.
He could feel it in the distance, a sickening aura of fear. Dywell’s minions made no sound as they approached, but now Carwin knew they were close. He straightened, banishing maudlin thoughts from his mind, and nocked an arrow. Regular arrows would do little to the shadow creatures, but he was the champion of a goddess. Her blessing was enough to make them deadly.
The first ranks of the enemy appeared, more an oozing mass than an orderly line. Carwin looked for something that stood out. These troops never appeared to have any sort of discipline or hierarchy, but one could usually tell how dangerous they were by their size. There was something that resembled a huge predatory beast.
He let the arrow fly. It hit the mark with a horrible squelch, and the creature disintegrated. He felt something, like a beam of focused malevolence, as the monsters now turned their attention to him. Arrow after arrow he fired into the seething mass, as many as he could before they reached him, and as they roiled around his rocky perch like a sea of darkness, he grasped the pendant around his neck, casting his armor and weapons aside.
It always felt like his spirit was unfolding from a container grown suddenly too small. The world shrank, and the horde of monsters below him seemed as insignificant as scurrying ants. They did not know fear, and so did not react to his change in form, but when he beat his wings and soared into the air, he could hear shouts of surprise from the temple.
Luckily, the defenders did not fire on him; the archdruid had told them what to expect. He supposed he should have told Eleri as well, but when the time had come, he couldn’t even find the words to begin that conversation.
He could see the whole of the temple and attackers spread out below him. It was a much larger force than he had ever faced before, but at least this time, he had backup. In dragon form, he could feel the threads of magic around him, and as he watched, the druids completed the shielding spell he had requested.
Fire would be the best offense on such a large group, but he hadn’t wanted to burn the forest down. Now, that wouldn’t be an issue.
He dived, the air screaming over his ears, and set forth a blast of emerald flame from his mouth, leaving a swath of burning and death below. He swooped down, scooping the dark creatures up in his claws, piercing and rending their oozing forms as he flew and tossing their remains into the burning corpses of their comrades.
He loosed another jet of fire. It was eerie, fighting these monsters; they made no sound as they died, no screams of terror or pain, no taunts. Only their decrease in number was proof he was having any effect at all.
Then something happened, something he had never seen before. The mass of shadows, both living and dead, began to ooze together, coalescing into something new. It was huge, whatever it was, and no matter how many times Carwin tore at it with his claws, it kept getting bigger and bigger. Monstrous shadowy wings sprouted from its back, and it fixed him with a pair of baleful red eyes. Now it would be dragon against dragon. So be it, Carwin thought with a hint of grim finality.
*****************
Eleri couldn’t see Carwin when she first looked through the narrow window, but she could see the effects of his efforts. A creature of darkness exploded into smoke, and the whole group turned in the direction of the arrow. She drew in a frightened breath as the flood of evil shadows roared toward the unseen archer. A cloud of dust swirled up from the ground, blown by a gust of wind that came from nowhere, and a dragon rose into the air.
It was long and sinuous, with glittering emerald scales and golden wings that flashed with brilliant sunlight. “That dragon... Where does it keep coming from?” she muttered to herself, watching in fascination.
“You don’t know?” Rhian said from beside her. Eleri frowned at the young druid.
“No. Why would I?” she said
in confusion, glancing at the dragon and then back at Rhian. “It keeps showing up at the oddest times. I even dreamed about it once, but I have no idea why.”
Rhian raised an eyebrow in reply. “I don’t think I should be the one to tell you if… no one else has.”
Eleri scowled. She didn’t like knowing that something important was being kept from her, and she liked even less that she couldn’t comprehend what it might be. The dragon spewed a spout of fire on the monsters and circled around, interposing itself between the shadow creatures and the gate. It’s guarding us. Why would a dragon try to protect humans? Weren’t they supposed to be violent, rapacious beasts?
The sun reflected off its scales, fracturing into scintillating green light, and an image came to her mind unbidden. Sunlight reflected in holly green eyes.