by Nhys Glover
I threw up my hands. “Zem, you have the most powerful warrior magic anyone has ever seen. You are fearless! Don’t let me be your weak point. You have to remain fearless to do your job.”
It was Zem who got up and stomped off then. And I was proud I’d won that battle, even if it meant Zem turning away from me. Rejecting me.
“Not rejecting. He knows you’re right, but he’s having trouble with accepting the truth of it. He’ll come around,” Landor said, leaning in to put an arm around my shoulder.
“None of the rest of you think so poorly of me. Zem is supposed to be my best friend, as well as one of my husbands. Of anyone he should... Oh, I don’t know! Believe in me? I have enough trouble believing in myself. If my best friend, the man who knows me better than anyone, doesn’t believe in me, how can I hope to do it? And I have to be able to believe in myself. If I don’t, we’re all lost!”
Prior stroked my hair, which was falling out of its harem knot again. Salt made it gluggy and more bedraggled than usual. My nose also felt burned. Why hadn’t we thought to do our experiments in the shade? But then, I spent so much time in the sun my skin had toughened up. I must have gotten more than my usual amount of sun to have it burning now.
“Were you afraid for Zem when he climbed up onto that ledge yesterday?” Prior asked soothingly.
I didn’t know where he was going with this line of argument, but I nodded dutifully. He knew I had been. It was likely I’d been broadcasting my fears to all of them at the time.
“Did you want him to be careful?”
While I nodded again, I started to see where his argument was going.
“Did that mean you didn’t believe in him? Or didn’t trust his judgement?”
I huffed out a big sigh. “No, of course it didn’t. It was just my fears for him. Telling Zem to be careful would be like telling any of us to breathe. He’s always careful. I get your point. But I didn’t tell him not to take the risk. I was afraid for him but I didn’t say, don’t do it.”
“He isn’t telling you not to do it, either. Just not to get too cocky,” Laric put in. “I know all about cocky and how it can cause problems.”
“You too? When did you swap onto Zem’s side?” I snapped irritably. My fury was still there, bubbling away in the background, just waiting for another opportunity to overflow.
Laric laughed, falling back into the sand. He suddenly looked too handsome and carefree for the moment. Why didn’t crusted salt spoil his looks?
“I’m always on your side, spitfire. Zem was being an idiot, as he often is, in my opinion. But that doesn’t make my statement any less true. He wasn’t telling you not to do what you have to do. Just not to get cocky and take too big a risk.”
Sighing heavily, I admitted defeat at last. I was blaming Zem for my own lack of confidence. I knew how he thought. I fell back to blaming him just as he fell back to blaming me for what I did in a battle over two suns ago. It’s what we did.
And it had to stop. At least for the next moon, it had to stop.
I jumped to my feet.
“Flame, don’t make it worse. Leave him for now,” Landor warned.
I shook my head. “No, it’s all right. This needs settling now. I’ll see you all later. If I live that long.”
I meant it as a joke, but it fell flat. Three sets of eyes looked up at me filled with a variety of emotions. But I couldn’t read any of their thoughts because they were closed to me. Good enough, if that’s the way they wanted it!
I began jogging after the shape of my best friend as he headed into the forest.
“Go away!” Zem yelled, without turning to look over his shoulder at who was crashing through the undergrowth toward him. Maybe he could tell by the level of noise that it wasn’t someone bigger.
“Grow up, Zem! I know from personal experience that stomping off like this doesn’t solve anything.”
“It did last night. It got us all in the water so you could fuck our brains out.” His fury was equal to mine. If I didn’t know him as well as I did, I’d be scared he’d hurt me. But Zem might kill when his warrior was in control, but he’d never lift a hand to me. No matter what.
“Is that what I did? I thought I made love with my husbands. Excuse me for mistaking the situation!”
He spun on the spot then, his brown eyes molten lava. “What we did last night was not making love. You can’t make love as a pack. That was animalistic! And that you can’t tell the difference between what we did alone together and what happened last night makes me wonder who you really are. The Flea I knew less than a moon ago didn’t want to have sex with anyone. She sure wouldn’t have enjoyed fucking four men at the same time like a wh...”
He stopped himself just in time. But his meaning was clear.
“That’s what I am to you now? A whore? Because I enjoyed what we did last night? When did you start seeing me this way, Zem? When I took Landor’s cock in my mouth back at the palace? Do I only get to be your sweet Flea when I’m solely yours? Did you think I would be treating this harem arrangement as a duty? That I’d give myself to the others, but not enjoy it? Because, if I enjoyed it, that would make me a whore in your mind?”
Maybe Landor had been right. I shouldn’t have followed him. I wanted to make up, but now I was learning things about Zem I wasn’t sure I could accept. For the first time in our friendship I didn’t like him. And I didn’t want to make up. I wasn’t sure I would ever make up after this.
Zem must have seen it in my eyes or read it in my mind, because he was suddenly at my side, his hands griping my shoulders so tightly that, after this, I’d have yet more bruises to add to my growing list.
“That’s not what I think! You’re no whore, Flea. Never that! You’re just so innocent that you take what happened last night as a sign of how much you’re loved and wanted when it was just a sign of men getting caught up in sex.”
My mouth dropped open and tears pricked my eyes. I’d asked him this morning if he knew it was me he was taking, and he’d said yes. Now he was saying he’d just been caught up and that it wasn’t a demonstration of love?
I shuddered under the blow. Only one time in my life had I ever felt so dirty. So... used.
How I kept my feet under me as I walked away from him, I have no idea, but I did. Though my walk was more stagger, as I made my way down the animal path that led back to the beach. Once I was far enough away, I dropped to the ground in privacy and fell apart inside.
Was that all it was, just men getting caught up? Was the love I felt for each of my husbands not reciprocated at all? Had I been fooling myself?
Oddly, I was beyond tears. I must have been in shock because I couldn’t seem to feel much of anything. Like one of the Devourers. I was aware of the sandy ground beneath me, of the tiny crawling insects around me, of the smell of salt in the air and the verdant fragrance of greenery. Featherlings. There were featherlings in the trees overhead, their calls so very different to those in our world. They were colourful too, these featherlings. I wondered why the Goddess had made these featherlings bright and our featherlings muted and dull. Not fair.
But these were mindless thoughts, half thoughts. Nothing really penetrated my brain.
When I heard someone crashing through the forest in my direction, I didn’t even look up. It could have been The Jayger, and I wouldn’t have looked up.
“Gods balls, Flame!” Laric cried, throwing himself down onto the ground beside me and pulling me in close.
I let him hold me, but my body was stiff—resisting him—as I should have done last night.
Prior was with him, and he pressed in at my back, running soothing hands over my shoulders and arms.
“If you have come for more sex it isn’t going to happen,” I muttered numbly.
“What? Oh gods, he didn’t!” Prior said, reading my mind. I would have wondered about his lack of knowledge before this if I’d cared enough to. I didn’t. I was nothing to these men but a whore. So they were nothing to me.
<
br /> “I’m going to kill him,” Laric snarled. “Flame, it wasn’t like that. None of us saw last night like that. And Zem didn’t either! He said as much this morning. He’s just rewriting it in his mind because he’s let it fester. Don’t believe him. It was making love. Gods, if someone like me can’t tell the difference, there’s something wrong, so you can believe me when I tell you that what we did was truly amazing.”
I sniggered. “I’d make good money then, if I took it up as a trade? Good to know. After I’ve saved the world by fucking all of you, I’ll consider it.”
Prior groaned and pressed his head into my shoulder. He was trembling. Was he trying to control his arousal? Was he about to set me on fire? Maybe that would be for the best.
“I’m not sexually aroused, I’m furious. I know he’s your best friend, but the man is a twisted weed. That he could hurt you this way! Gods!”
That I didn’t immediately jump to Zem’s defence should have told me a lot. It didn’t. Because I didn’t care.
I heard yelling some distance away, and in my mind I could see Landor in a rage unlike anything I’d seen from him before. He was spewing foul words at Zem and shoving him so hard the warrior mage fell over. Landor grabbed him by the tunic and hauled him to his feet. He shook the shorter man, yelling in his face all the while. Zem didn’t fight back. He just let it happen. Let the man he’d come to love almost as much as he loved me, shower him with cruel words.
Just before he left Zem, Landor punched him in the face. My peace-loving, healer husband punched a man he loved in the face. For me. He did it for me.
And I didn’t care.
I knew he’d joined the other two when fast footfalls coming closer warned us all. Landor threw himself onto the ground and Laric relinquished me to Landor’s arms. He gathered me up so tightly I wondered if I would be able to draw breath into my lungs. I didn’t care.
Landor drew away and looked into my eyes, his pale blue orbs were burning fiercely. “Stop this now! Flame, stop this now! He is afraid for you, and he struck out at you because of it. There was no truth to his words. Do you hear me! Nothing he said to you was true! You know better.
“We love you more than life. We would give our lives for you. And what happened last night was magical. Perfect. Do you think we could have done what we did today if we hadn’t created a loving bond between us last night? Wasn’t that what the Goddess said had to happen? A bond of love and respect? Do not let Zem’s feelings about himself change what happened between us into something dirty. Please, Flame, don’t do this!”
I remembered what Airsha had said as she channelled the Goddess. The bond I had to forge was more than physical, it had to be loving. Respect had to be part of it. How could anyone call what we did last night loving or respectful? Zem was right. It was just animals caught up in a mating frenzy.
“If that was true, then how were you able to communicate with Calun? Six strides. That was the distance you could reach before last night. Now you can reach a place seven days voyage away. The bond was made. A loving bond filled with mutual respect between us all. It had to be! A mating frenzy would not have achieved anything,” he argued.
But I was beyond thinking. Beyond caring. And Landor must have realised that because he sighed heavily and drew me close.
“Oh, my beautiful lass, he’s made you doubt yourself in the worst way possible. He’s taken something beautiful and made you doubt it. How could he have done that to you when you are the reason his heart beats?” he crooned in that deep, hypnotic voice of his as he rocked me.
For the first time I felt something. And tears stung my eyes so savagely that I couldn’t do anything but let them free. And I cried, and cried, and cried. My heart was breaking, and I couldn’t stand the pain of it. I was a whore as far as my beloved Zem was concerned. He could deny it all he liked, but what else could I be to have enjoyed the sexual excess of last night? Gods, it hurt!
Chapter Nine
It was Prior who carried me back to the beach. Back to our little camp at the far end of the beach. And Laric who brought me fresh fruits from the forest and cold meat from last night. And it was Landor who sat rocking me in his arms and crooning soft, loving words to me until I drifted off to sleep. Oblivion was a blessed relief. Until the dream.
I stood before the Devourer High Priest, listening to him chanting words over me. I was terrified. I fought to escape. I didn’t want to die! I didn’t want to explode into a bloody mess of flesh and bones! But hard hands held me down. Kept me in place.
When I looked up, I saw that it was Zem who was holding me down, his face cruelly impassive. I wanted to plead with him to let me go. That I was sorry. That I would do anything he said if he’d just let me go. But nothing I could say would make a difference.
The High Priest finished his incantation and I felt myself begin to split into a million pieces. Felt the excruciating pain of being torn apart. Panic drove me mad. I didn’t want this! Gods, why would Zem do this to me?
In the next instant, I was in a familiar alley. I could smell the foul odours around me. Hear a screeching wadja somewhere nearby. Terrified by what I might see, but knowing I had to look, I turned my gaze upward.
Zem stood above me in a Devourer’s robe, but his cock poked out from the folds. He had a cruel smile on his face. I had never seen an expression like that on his face before.
I tried to get up but I couldn’t. Zem held me down as he pushed into me, his tongue in my mouth. Not a kiss. I could never call what he did to my mouth a kiss. I tried to breath, but I couldn’t. In the next instant it wasn’t his tongue in my mouth but his cock. I was suffocating on his cock. He was coming in my mouth and it was too much. I was choking and coughing and drowning on his come.
I came abruptly awake to find Landor shaking me hard and calling my name. Scrambling out of his grip, I backed into another body. Another man who wanted me. Would this one burn me or suffocate me for his pleasure?
“Gods, Flame! You’re safe. Please, sweet love, you’re safe! No one here will harm you. You know that! You know it!” Landor cried.
My fear began to ebb. A dream. It had been a dream. Zem had said terrible things to me, but it was only a dream. I looked around at the three anxious faces of my husbands and breathed a sigh of relief. Just a dream.
Then where was Zem? Why was he not sleeping with us?
I heard a moan from Laric as realization hit. Not a dream then. Zem had called me a gullible fool to believe what we’d done was anything but sex. I’d thought that I could bond my men together using my body, but I’d done nothing but meet their sexual needs.
“Stop it!” Landor snapped in agony. “Stop thinking like that! He didn’t mean it. He’s tearing himself up about it right now. You know how much he loves you!”
“That’s not love!” Laric snarled, wrapping me in his arms protectively. “No one who loves someone hurts them like that. Zem’s fraggin’ twisted up in the head, and he took it out on the one person least able to handle it. He’s not a man! He’s a fraggin’ weed! If a woman loved me enough to dive off an airling in the middle of a battle for me, I’d be singing it to the rafters, not criticising her for it.”
“He was afraid for her. He’s still afraid for her,” Landor said tiredly. But even he didn’t seem interested in defending Zem to the others anymore.
Gods, all the effort I put into forging our bond, and now it had fallen apart. I should never have followed Zem. Landor had warned me to leave him be. But, oh no, I had to do exactly what Zem complained about. I jumped in, thinking I had it all under control. All I had to do was say I understood and would do better, and we’d kiss and make up. Maybe even have sex, to let him know that I still loved him deeply and completely.
But it had all gone terribly wrong. And I’d broken the fragile bond we’d established.
“Fraggin’ shite!” Prior exclaimed. “You didn’t break anything. He did this. And it was always going to happen because he’s been a jealous, possessive prick right fro
m the start. I saw it that first night, walking with his arm around you like you belonged to him. And nothing has changed. He’s accepted us because he had to, but in his own mind you’ve always been his. And that you don’t see it that way? Well, of course that makes you a whore.”
I grimaced at the use of that word again, even though I knew Prior wasn’t directing it at me. His fury with Zem was out of control. I was surprised he wasn’t burning up the bedding beneath us.
This was my fault, and I had to fix it. Now, before the Devourers won, and the world was destroyed because of my mistake.
“You’re right,” I said slowly. “Zem is having trouble with our bond. And he’s afraid for me. I should have known better than to try to smooth things over when he was still mad. But he isn’t any of the things you called him. Any of you. He’s just Zem having trouble changing. He doesn’t do that well.
“And we can’t afford to let this interfere with our mission. Tomorrow... or is it today... the Devourer’s priests will be here and we must defeat them. Then we have to find a way to defeat the monster itself. We have no time for our petty squabbles or hurt feelings. I should never have let it get to this.”
Landor gave me an approving nod, and I wished I felt up to accepting it. The truth was, I didn’t believe any of what I’d said about Zem. I just said what I had to, to plaster over the crack that I’d created in our bond. Maybe it wasn’t enough. Maybe the crack was more like a break and no amount of plaster would put it back together. But I had to try. I had to put my own hurt feelings aside and try.
I rose to my feet. They were shaky under me. “Anyone know where he is?”
“He went up to Sky’s cave,” Landor told me cautiously. “You can’t go up there. Spot would never be able to manage the ledge in the dark.”
He was right, of course. And this was one of those times where I needed to heed Landor’s advice. I would go at dawn. Hopefully there would be time to resolve our differences before the Devourers arrived.