Shelter of Sighs

by Bethan Johns

  “Nothing so formal as a proposal Aubliette. I don’t know you that well yet.” I winked at her.

  She sighed “What is it that you want Sierade?”

  “A few things” I whispered as I quickly moved in front of her. I pushed her gently into the steps and she grasped her hands on the step and moved to seat herself, her chest rising and falling as I gripped her waist.

  I ran my finger lightly along her thigh, letting the tip warm with my fire magic as I moved to stand between her legs. Her breathing quickened.

  I smirked at her now “You like the feel of power against your skin, don’t you?” I said gruffly.

  She swallowed and moved her hand up to trace my shoulder and bicep, my body so much harder and rougher than hers. She was fresh; though so much older, still fresh.

  Where I was solid, she was soft and supple. I had been with the Tundra for awhile now, so I was also much thinner.

  “Tell me what you want.” she said softly when she looked back at me.

  “I want the same thing you do Aubliette. I want power. I want it for different reasons than you do though.”

  She sighed as I traced my fingers up her side. “You said even if you weren’t the most powerful, you owned the most powerful. I will tell you Aubliette I will never let you own me.”

  I gripped one breast flicking my thumb across her nipple and her cry out was swallowed by my mouth on hers. I kissed her fiercely. Pushing her back into the stone. She gasped into my mouth as her back scraped against the hard stone and as I pinched her nipple harder. I bit her lower lip and pulled back.

  Her eyes glittered like fire. I snapped my fingers and the sky above us turned into a starry night. She lifted her face to look up and I placed my finger in her mouth and dragged her face down gently to catch her eyes again.

  “I can give you the power you seek, but I wish to own you.” I said.

  She flicked her tongue along my finger and sucked on it delicately while I pulled it from her mouth.

  She stared at me for a moment. “What would you have me do?”

  I kissed and nibbled my way along her collarbone as she opened her legs further, begging my fingers on her thighs to explore her further.

  “Nothing yet, continue as you are. I don’t have an answer for you. Perhaps just to have you in my pocket to anger Gaelen before I finally kill him. I have not decided yet.”

  She sighed as I let my fingers drift lower and lightly graze her tenderly between her legs. A tease.

  “Yes.” She breathed, and she ran her hand along my back. She pulled my hair dragging me on top of her and kissed my lips, biting, begging me with flicks of her tongue. I kissed her gently and lifting her from the water, I answered her begging with my own tongue, teeth, and fingers.

  When she cried out above me and she was shining like golden spun silk, I rifted her into the bed and kissed her deeply, letting her taste herself on my tongue. She pulled me close and dug her fingers into my back.

  I pushed off her, letting my hair fall around us like an obsidian curtain, watching as it mingled with her golden locks among the bedspread. The bedspread as soft as her skin.

  “I am going to share something with you now. Are you ready?”

  She nodded, her eyes glowing. I felt for the heartbeat of Tundra. The pulsing that I had grown used to hearing constantly, but that to others might be a shock.

  I gently stroked her magic, asking her to be let in, I felt her hesitation before she opened up for me.

  Her back bowed out as I let my magic rub gently against hers, I had trained in siphoning and it no longer had to feel like such ecstasy, but that did not mean I didn’t remember. I felt her body shake beneath me as I let our magics merge and she found her release again.

  I stroked gently, willing her to calm and when she did I whispered into her mind Listen

  She stilled, and I could tell when she felt it because she froze. Her eyes widened, and she looked up at me.

  “The Tundra.” She whispered. I held on to our merge and I lifted my hand revealing an ash blade. A touch of fear showed in her eyes before I used it to slice open my hand.

  I pulled her to sit up resting her shoulder against my chest as she sat between my legs and I offered her my hand. She met my eyes for a moment and licked my blood slowly up my palm onto my wrist.

  She closed her eyes as I followed that blood, flowing, I guided it through her and into her fingers on her right hand.

  I signatured it there, I put a block on it and created a single silver thread to Tundra. It was tiny, I could break it at any time, but it fed her a small amount of power. Enough for her to feel as though she had never lost any.

  I let go and drew out of her kissing her lightly on her forehead.

  I stood up by the bed and she lifted her hand flexing her fingers. She snapped them, and the sky overhead changed back to a glowing sun. She beamed at me then.

  “Tell me what you need from me Siera.” She said to me.

  “Nothing save for your discretion. I choose if and when the knowledge of our tryst comes out and to whom.” I said.

  She nodded. “When will you come see me again?” she asked, blushing lightly.

  I smiled, she was eating from my hands now. “When I want to.”

  I left her then.

  ✽✽✽

  Gaelen

  I strode through the halls of the Faery Courts making my way to the Queen’s bedchamber. I hated when she answered my calls from there instead of the council chambers, it usually meant she tried to seduce me, or she was currently with another lover and used it as a foolish attempt to make me jealous.

  I walked into her chambers without announcing myself and strode through, climbing up the dais to her bed to find her on the other side drifting in her pool. She had her eyes closed, she looked peaceful and young and I could almost see that beautiful young Fae I had loved nearly 11,000 years ago. In the time when we had been friends, when we had been lovers, the time before her coronation. She had been a dreamer of beautiful dreams, of peace and love. In her time of ruling she had instead become corrupt and twisted.

  I ended up being assigned to guard her son when he became old enough to join the military and falling for him instead.

  Instead of peace during her rule, we were now on our third war.

  “Aubliette.” I said as a way to announce myself before walking down the steps.

  She opened her eyes and looked me up and down lazily.

  There was a bite mark on her breast that had yet to heal and she smiled softly when she saw I noticed it.

  “Gaelen. Would you like to join me?”

  I looked into her eyes, there was no seduction here. I snapped my fingers and my boots disappeared, sitting on the edge of the pool I rolled up my denim pants and let my feet float in the comfortable water. It was such a perfect temperature that it seemed to drift like silk over my skin.

  “Why have you called me here?” I asked.

  “I heard of your battle with Sierade Gwaynten. I would know how you fare.”

  “I am fine. How did you hear so quickly?” It had only been a few hours, usually it took awhile for news to arrive with her, she simply did not operate that quickly; she trusted others to do the work for her.

  She shrugged. “I was told. That is not your problem. Your problem is Sierade. I would like to know what information you have on her and what you plan to do about her.”

  I sighed “She is very strong. I do not yet honestly have a plan to defeat her should it come to that. I am actually hoping against hope that I can find a diplomatic solution.”

  Aubliette nodded “That would be ideal. I never thought I would see the day that my Stormcleaver would be outmatched.”

  I scoffed “Aubliette, you could throw me, and every army we have at once at her and we would all be outmatched.”

  I watched as my Queen shivered. “I do not like the feeling of her having the upper hand like that. We need to think of a solution.”

  “I am trying.” I s
aid, suddenly frustrated.

  “Try not to sound so happy Gaelen.” She said, sarcasm dripping from her words like the water from her body as she stood from the pool and snapped a dressing gown onto herself.

  I leaned back on my hands, my feet still in the water. “Is this truly all you asked me here about?”

  It was strange, she could have communicated much of this information via letter.

  She shrugged and sat down next to me. “I suppose, that I was feeling nostalgic. I heard about your fight with Sierade and for some reason was reminded of the Gaelen without the tension and the history, but the Gaelen who was once my friend. The Gaelen who once followed me because he believed in me.”

  I shrugged, thinking it strange she felt that way when moments before I had felt the same.

  “I know I lost your faith somewhere along the way. I lost the faith of many, including myself some days. I wanted you to know. I haven’t forgotten, what it was like back then. Forget the sex, I speak of everything else.” She spoke carefully as though afraid I would flip and push her in the pool.

  I laughed lightly. “They were good times, but the past is the past. I do not know if we could ever return to that.”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m not here to ask you that. I think I just heard of today’s battle and it frightened me, to hear that she couldn’t just be destroyed easily by you. That you might have an enemy that is hard to defeat. You have always been immortal to me in a way that the rest of us immortals just aren’t. You have been a mountain that will be standing long after the rest of us are gone.”

  I shook my head. “Even I cannot see when my own death will be, but I know I can’t be truly immortal. My time will come, just like everyone else’s.” I stood up. “If you don’t mind, I fought a madwoman today, I would like to get some rest.”

  Aubliette was watching the trails in the water that her toes made. “Is that what she is? A madwoman?”

  I walked away. “That’s what I hope she is, because if she is sane, we are all doomed.”

  Chapter 16 – Breaking Boundaries

  Year 10,425 AC

  Sierade

  I had figured out what I needed to do. I understood where I had been caught up with my creations.

  I had been trying to create something that was not susceptible to all magics, something that could withstand anything.

  I had been wrong, nothing could withstand anything. I had been looking to create something truly immortal. A foolish endeavor, especially while connected to the Tundra.

  I knew now that I needed something not invincible, but strong. I needed numbers. Numbers so vast that nothing could touch them.

  I watched my newest creations battle it out. They were strong, they had the speed of the Fae. The bloodthirsty nature of the Howelltie. The quick-wittedness of the Elfin and the magical skills of the Fae.

  I did not create them to be strong in multiple magics. I made each one extremely strong in one magic. I would create legions, each unstoppable in just one kind of magic.

  I had been creating them and would continue to do so. I personally trained some commanders and had them pass on the training. I could not create armies that were already trained.

  Tundra taught me how to recycle energy, how to alter my creations once they were made so I did not have to start over. I had sent out a blast covering the army I was building to cover their mouths, they did not need to speak, they could be telepathic, that way they would be silent.

  Tundra said it was sick of hearing their cries of fear and anger. The creations hated me. It was hard to make creations that were smart enough to do what I needed them to do yet have them be loyal and not try to rebel.

  I had one rebellion of the army so large I had to simply destroy a massive amount of them and rebuild the numbers. I had then discovered that if I held them on separate planes, their telepathic powers could not reach each other, and their smaller numbers made rebellion less likely.

  I would keep building them, they did not need sustenance. I gave them entertainment in the form of games. The planes they stayed on were beautiful enough.

  Tundra told me they were not suffering, I responded that I didn’t care. Everything is temporary.

  That was when Tundra showed me how to destroy planets, how to watch the tendrils of pure energy flow out of those planes into new planets, into suns, into my creations if I wanted it. Tundra let me see how it handed out prophecies and how even those prophecies could be altered if the being had will strong enough.

  Tundra told me many things, it told me about the ancient past. It told me it remembered when Angels had appeared and brought humans with them. It remembered the first time it had felt a human death and drawn in its energy, how it had tasted different than the Fae and the Sidhe.

  Tundra told me the Angels could speak to it, and that once the Angels had disappeared it had become so lonely.

  I wanted to know where the Angels had gone.

  Tundra said they went back where they came from over forty thousand years ago. They had brought many planes here for the Tundra to care for, but that they had to go back themselves.

  It had been a long while since I had spoken to another person.

  I still sent out legions of simple creations periodically trying to keep Gaelen off the scent of what I was really doing.

  I watched as the war raged on without me, I watched as Faust fell in battle and as Rislin took over command. The Rustlavayne accepted her wholeheartedly.

  I followed the trail of Faust’s energy and I moved it to create a star in the sky over the musical planet that Tundra had created for me all those years ago.

  Standing among the winds that blew through the tall wooden trees, trees that acted like the reeds in woodwind instruments, I watched as his star twinkled down at me.

  “I do not remember how to grieve Tundra.” I whispered.

  “There is no death” it whispered back.

  Tundra could not understand my sadness. I could hardly understand anymore.

  ✽✽✽

  Gaelen

  Year 10,440

  I stood on the cliff face looking down upon the rocky plain below, the plain that just a few hours ago had been covered in Fae and Howelltie. The battles were becoming more and more brutal, everyone could feel that there was a large blowout coming soon. The numbers that each side were sending out had started to get larger.

  I leapt from the cliff and slowly wound my way down to the plain on drifting cross winds.

  Letting my feet skip lightly over the blood-stained rocks, I felt a light footstep inside the abyss that I had in my mind. I closed my eyes. It felt like someone testing me. Tasting me.

  That meant they were close by. I let them continue to think they may be undetected. Most psychic users had no idea what to do with the dark nothingness they found when they entered my head. They thought it meant I did not know they were there.

  I threw out my creation magic in a wide net. There.

  I looked up and saw a large outcropping partway up the cliff and, without hesitation, I rifted.

  Arriving, I was surprised to find a tall Howelltie male. He was sitting cross-legged on the outcropping. The whole area was probably only ten feet long and four feet wide.

  He opened his eyes and turned to look at me without surprise. His eyes were clear and bright. His tall form was covered in a forest green cloak and comfortable looking leather pants.

  His feet were bare and had many cuts on them, and his hands were also torn.

  I looked over the ledge. We were well over two hundred feet high, the cliff sheer shale. “How the hell did you get up here?” I asked him.

  “I climbed.” he responded.

  Looking back at him I raised my eyebrows and looked at his fingers again, they were bloody and sliced in many places.

  “Do you want a flight down?” I asked him.

  “Thank you for the offer; maybe in a few minutes. Sit with me Gaelen.”

  “Who are you?”
<
br />   “I am Sylek Darque”

  My heart beat faster, I could not help but remember the devastation I had witnessed this male cause over the decades. I sat down and inquired, “Why are you sitting up here probing my mind?”

  “Well, the two things are unrelated actually. I am sitting up here because I needed a moment alone after this battle. I was probing your mind merely because I was curious when I saw you fly by.”