Yeah, those were all pretty damn heavy too.
“I think we’re past the point of me being pissed because you pried a little too much,” she muttered.
“I only meant to treat with you and Railen together so you could see the full scope of what lies ahead of us.” The corners of his mouth quivered before lifting into another gentle smile, then he reached up to quickly tuck Jessica’s dark hair behind her ear. “Prying was not my intention.”
She grabbed his hand before he could withdraw and nodded. “I believe you.”
Well here was one good thing about Ahárra that didn’t end in frustration and another goddamn elixir shot. They were actually talking.
Leandras leaned closer, his other hand settling on her hip and sending a tingle of heat and anticipation up her spine. It sure as hell wasn’t from the giant bonfire right outside.
“And I want you to know this doesn’t—”
“Finally!” The tent flap was whipped aside, and the redheaded Umbál stumbled inside, brandishing a hollow gourd of darkwine. “Ah. Honored guests.”
Jessica turned around and raised an eyebrow, about to tell the guy to get lost. But his wide grin and the absurdity of his bare and ludicrously pale chest made her bark out a laugh.
“Don’t tell me you two haven’t had enough of this place.” The Umbál swept his arm to the side and rolled his eyes at the tent’s furnished interior. “I tried to hold them off. I really did. But then we drew sticks, and I’m the lucky Xaharí who got swindled into retrieving the Guardian and the Laen’aroth. So—”
He hiccupped, blinked in surprise, and burst out laughing.
“Yes, thank you.” Leandras headed across the tent and took the gourd from the magical’s already loose grip. “This is precisely what we need.”
“Oh, aye?” The Umbál sniggered. “As you wish. But I’m not leaving without the darkwine.”
“Then we’ll join you.” The fae looked over his shoulder and winked at Jessica. “Perhaps even for some dancing.”
“Uh...no.” Despite that terrible idea, she couldn’t stop grinning. “Dancing’s not really—”
“The kibrál is at its end, Jessica. Once we leave, the chance to enjoy an endless night of debauchery will cease to exist.”
“Debauchery—”
“That’s not even the half of it.” He threw his head back for a long pull from the gourd, then thrust the drink back into the Umbál’s startled hands before hurrying toward her. “A night to remember, Jessica. How long has it been since you’ve had one of those?”
“I mean, if we’re talking about the kind I’d rather not remember, then fairly recently—hey!” With a startled laugh, she stumbled forward, pulled along by the fae man’s hand clamped around her own again. “Leandras, I’m serious. I don’t dance.”
“Tonight, that is not an acceptable answer.”
“No, you don’t get it.” She struggled to pull her hand away, which wasn’t really a very motivated struggle at all as the redheaded Umbál staggered out of the tent with the gourd at his lips. “I really don’t. Like I can’t.”
He whipped her toward him again, catching her with an arm around her waist before she would have spilled right through the tent. Then his lips were at her ear, his breath a dangerously hot flutter as he pulled her fully against him and muttered, “I plan to judge that for myself.”
Jessica’s breath escaped her through a startled smile.
Screw startled. She was turned the fuck on.
“I believe you told me to get in line, Jessica,” he added, his hand now pressing against her back and sliding slowly up her spine. “Unless you have other vital business to attend to at this precise moment, this is me making you an offer—”
The tent flap whipped aside again with a thick snap, and a roaring cry of, “The Guardian!”
“Jesus Christ.” Jessica whirled around to see the redheaded Umbál standing beside the tent with the entrance flap clenched in one fist and his drinking gourd raised in the other, grinning like a drunken Xaharí.
Fitting.
So was being constantly interrupted by magicals who couldn’t get the hint that Jessica had her own plans.
The clearing erupted in an outrageously overdone cheer, the drummers pounding away as the multicolored flames leapt toward the sky and magicals danced with their whirling shadows.
“Very well.” Leandras grinned and tugged her forward with him. “We’ll dance first.”
“So the offer’s off the table, huh?” She shot him a sidelong glance and tried to hide how hard it was to catch her breath as he pulled her through the celebratory crowd.
“Absolutely not. This is merely the first condition.” He spun away from her and spread his arms, laughing as a witch whirled toward him on her path around the fire and reached out to stroke his hair before moving on. “The Laen’aroth is never refused, Jessica. Hadn’t you noticed?”
She laughed and shook her head before finding herself the center of another dancer’s attention.
The black-haired elf woman Khalili trailed her fingers across Jessica’s cheek before draping her arm over Jessica’s shoulder and leaning in, her green eyes luminous in the semi-darkness.
“What did I tell you, Guardian?” she crooned. “Tonight, we all dance.”
“Yeah, I’m—” Jessica stopped when the redheaded Umbál marched right past them, staggering forward and swinging the gourd in her direction.
Fuck it.
She grabbed the gourd and took a giant swig of the honeyed darkwine before offering it to the grinning elf woman.
Maybe she’d die in the next few days when she and Leandras returned to her own world, joined by the Order of Laenmúr from both sides of the Gateway. Maybe they’d actually survive and have something to show for the giant pain in her ass being the Guardian had become.
Either possibility existed in a different time and place, and it wasn’t like Jessica had anything to hide anymore. All her secrets were out.
Right now, none of them were chasing after her to tear her apart.
Might as well dance.
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO know how many bodies moved against hers in an endless sea of dancing, how many times she drank from the darkwine gourds being passed around like joints at a reggae concert, how many Laenmúr pulled her briefly aside to introduce themselves and remind her of the loyalty they’d all pledged millennia ago to the Guardian. Keeping track of anything during an endless bacchanal like this, in a forest existing outside of time without a clock or a last call or a rising sun, was even more impossible.
But honestly, Jessica hadn’t felt this good since she’d found her first family in Corpus. She had no idea who most of these magicals around her were, but it didn’t matter. As she moved to the drums and laughed and finally let herself enjoy something for the first time in almost a year, she kept finding Leandras’ face among the crowd and the flickering firelight. And every time she did, he was grinning at her.
Some offer, all right.
Only when her own sweat dripped down her forehead to sting her eyes and her legs ached from dancing did she finally remove herself from the thickest ring of celebrating Laenmúr to catch her breath and take a break.
In under a minute, Leandras had done the same. Now he headed toward her, stumbling a little across the beaten dirt and chuckling. He widened his eyes and slowly lowered himself to the ground to sit beside her at the dark, somewhat quieter edge of the clearing. With a heavy, contented sigh, he drew his knees toward his chest and draped his forearms over them. “I haven’t seen a kibrál like this in...”
“A few thousand years?” Jessica smirked at him, and they both laughed.
“Accurate, yes.” He smoothed his hair away from his forehead with both hands. “It’s easy to forget how much difference small pleasures can make.”
“I definitely wouldn’t call this small. I don’t even know how they can keep this up for so long.”
“Practice.” Leandras barked out a laugh and raised his
hand when a group of stumbling Laenmúr caught sight of them and raised another cheer. “Millenia of it, obviously. Though I imagine the Guardian’s presence has added a certain level of heightened stamina for the occasion.”
Jessica snorted. “Wow.”
“That elf is particularly fond of you, for one.”
“That’s...putting it lightly.” She couldn’t help but smile when Khalili stopped spinning around the fire, looked right at the pair resting at the clearing’s edge, and spread her arms in invitation. But the elf woman was distracted again almost immediately by another scantily clad woman offering her a drink before they whirled away again and disappeared in the crowd. “I get the feeling she’s not used to being denied, either. For anything.”
“Hmm.” He slowly turned his head to fix her with another one of those smirks, this one far more suggestive than usual. “I won’t hold it against you if the temptation’s too much to resist.”
“What?” Jessica leaned away from him and couldn’t tell if he was serious. “Not that I need your permission, but I’m just not interested.”
“In Khalili.”
Was he serious with this right now? He’d basically tried to jump her in the tent, then he’d forced her into this giant dance party she didn’t actually regret, and now he was trying to set her up with an over-eager elf?
“Yeah.” Jessica cocked her head and plastered on a smile. “In Khalili.”
“Your witch with the pink hair is a different story, is she not? Mel.”
She rolled her eyes and leaned back, propping herself up with her hands behind her in the dirt. “Mel doesn’t have anything to do with—”
“But she did.”
Biting her lip through a smile that hadn’t really faded since they’d left Ahárra officially and forever behind them, Jessica for the life of her couldn’t think of anything to say to that. And she couldn’t tell if this conversation was going somewhere else or if the fae now expected her to swap stories until they passed out.
“It wasn’t the appropriate time to bring it up in the warehouse,” he added. “Naturally.”
“Ha. Naturally.”
“It was, however, particularly difficult to ignore the dynamics between you two.” Leandras straightened one leg to stretch it out in front of him along the ground and shifted to face her, his arms draping around one bent knee now as he raised an eyebrow. “You were lovers?”
“Damn.” Blinking furiously, Jessica couldn’t stop the sharp laugh escaping her and had to end this line of questioning right now. “Whatever we were, it’s none of your business.”
He shrugged. “I’m merely interested in your preferences. And curious.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Without judgement, of course. When you’ve lived as long as I have, the exclusionary aspects of desire become far more myth than preference.”
“Okay, I really don’t need to hear about your mythical desire.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”
“Why?” When he studied her face, the tiny frown flickering above his eyes made him look completely naïve. And anyone who’d met Leandras Vilafor knew he was anything but.
“Because it’s...” She chuckled wryly. “You’re moving from cold to hot and everywhere in between, and I don’t think I can keep up.”
“Oh?” The fae man wiggled his eyebrows. “You’ve been criticizing my lack of honesty with you for quite some time. Don’t tell me it makes you uncomfortable now.”
“I’m not uncomfortable. I’m just not into...swapping war stories.” Jessica wrinkled her nose.
So much for a night to remember.
“Well, then.” He leaned toward her and eyed her up and down. “I suggest we—”
“Leandras!” The drunken bellow cut through the chaotic noise in the center of the clearing. Ardicus the buffalo-man stormed through the dancers, snorting and peering at all the faces in the semi-darkness around the bonfire. “I swear by Akskashirim, if you’ve taken my talisman, I’ll swing you upside down by your scrawny fae legs!”
An explosion of laughter filled the clearing, and the celebrating Laenmúr found a new source of amusement as they tried to draw the buffalo-man into their dancing.
“Wow.” Jessica turned toward Leandras with exaggerated surprise. “Scrawny, huh?”
“He’s clearly reimagining to suit his purposes. That Boldrak has never even seen my legs.” Leandras gestured toward the magical on a fae-hunting rampage. “Honestly, compared to those haunches, even the mother goddess would be considered—”
“There’s nowhere to run,” Ardicus barked, his red eyes flashing as he searched the clearing. “After last time, I’m disinclined to be so forgiving!”
“I believe that’s our cue,” Leandras muttered, eyeing the drunken beast-man warily as he slowly rose to his feet.
“Why’s he so pissed?”
“Ah. He believes I took something of his.”
She snorted and accepted his hand before he hauled her briskly off the ground. “Obviously. I meant did you actually take it.”
Leandras eyed her sideways and shrugged. “I had no idea he’d grown so attached to it.”
“Great. You’re stealing from the magicals who’re supposed to help us once we leave.”
“Well it was mine in the first place. I merely left it in his care for safekeeping.” With a cocksure smile, he grabbed her hand and tugged her after him. “Still, I’m not a fan of losing my dignity upside down.”
“Leandras!” A laugh burst out of her as the fae jerked her along with a renewed gust of speed. “What are you—”
“Quickly.”
Jessica scanned the clearing again and found Ardicus easily enough. He loomed over a group of laughing Laenmúr, who passed around another darkwine gourd and nodded in the direction of their fleeing guests. The buffalo-man’s red gaze landed on Jessica, and he growled before stomping forward toward them.
“Looks like you might have to pay up pretty soon.”
“Not once we’re inside.”
“Inside where?”
Leandras whisked her behind the closest tent in the long stretching line of them curving around the edge of the clearing.
“Oh, yeah. Great idea. Hide behind a tent.”
After all the running and hiding and dangerously close calls they’d had in this world, Jessica should have been pissed they were doing this now in a place where they were supposed to be safe. But she couldn’t stop laughing as Leandras whisked her past tent after tent while Ardicus, in his drunkenness, assumed they were still in the first.
This wasn’t life or death. This was a game of cat and mouse, more good-natured than anything else. When Ardicus’ angry bellow rose behind them, Leandras burst out laughing himself, throwing his head back as he ran and truly enjoying the moment as nothing more than a good prank played on an apparent friend.
“Leandras!” the buffalo-man thundered one more time. “I’ll tear every single one of these apart if you don’t come out!”
“Here. In here.” They skirted around the side of another tent, and Leandras whipped the tent flap aside before hauling Jessica in after him. They stumbled through, laughing and trying to keep their voices low as they huddled beside the entrance and listened for the approach of stomping bipedal hooves.
“You don’t think maybe you should clear that up?” Jessica whispered, fighting to catch her breath.
“Absolutely not.” He chuckled, and when she tried to peek through the tent flap again to peer outside, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back. “Jessica, a drunken Boldrak cannot be reasoned with.”
“So you just wanna hide here until he rips down the tent.”
“He’ll give up far before that.”
The fae man’s breath was hot in her ear again, his chest pressed up against her back as he held her to him and they listened to the raucous partygoing outside the tent—the drums, the uninhibited cries and shouts of enjoyment, the sharp crack of the bonfire t
hrowing multicolored sparks over the gathering.
He didn’t let her go but brushed his lips against her ear instead and murmured, “This feels familiar.”
Jessica smirked and tilted her head slightly away from him. “You’re probably thinking of somebody else.”
“There is no one else.”
She blinked, her senses heightened by all the darkwine and her inhibitions clearly demolished by the same.
It had to be the darkwine. For both of them. Leandras would never say something like that, and Jessica would never take him seriously if he had.
But the heat of his body against hers, his hands sliding slowly across her hips as he breathed softy in her ear didn’t lie nearly as well as the Laen’aroth. Especially when they were alone in a tent where time literally didn’t exist and wouldn’t move forward again until they decided to leave.
Obviously, the fae man had a few more plans before they moved on.
And he had promised her they would finish what they’d started.
Chapter 9
Screw it.
There was no way to ignore what was going on here.
Jessica turned slowly in Leandras’ arms, and the fae man loosened his hold on her, his silver eyes wide as he studied her face. “What does that mean?”
“Jessica, I should think you realize by now—”
“I need to know the difference,” she muttered, her gaze drifting back and forth between his eyes and those lips inches away from hers. “Because everyone’s been telling me there’s no one else who can do what I’m supposed to do after all this. Which is fine. I’m past trying to fight my way out of that. But if you’re just jumping on the Guardian train because you used to be dead and now you’re not...”
He licked his lips and dipped his head, still drinking her in with his gaze but now much more slowly. “Do not think for a moment my gratitude for that does not extend beyond the Guardian train.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
His smile flickered. “It means exactly what it means, Jessica. I don’t fully understand it myself, but you... You have changed everything.”
The Spellcast Gate (Accessory to Magic Book 5) Page 9