This man didn’t say that.
“Well, good evening,” he said, the words slurred. “What’s such a lovely lass doing on the wharves at night?”
She had observed enough over the centuries to sense the meaning behind his question.
“I’m… I’m looking for someone.”
“I was hoping so,” he said with a leer.
She didn’t fully understand, not until he dug into his pocket and produced a handful of coins.
“This enough to buy a bit of warmth for a bell or two?”
Droë didn’t think he noticed her hesitation. “I don’t know. Let me see.”
She sauntered closer, marking the way his gaze raked over her body, her face, her hair.
“You’s a beauty, and no doubt,” he said, his voice dropping.
She didn’t answer. Reaching him, she glanced at the coins. “Yes, that’s enough.”
“Well, good. Why don’t we–”
Droë grabbed hold of him with both hands, lifted him off his feet and clapped her mouth over his throat. He fought her, the coins falling to the wood with a clatter and roll, but he was helpless in her grasp. She shifted a hand to cover his mouth, and went on feeding. He could no more break free than he could fly up into the moonlight.
When she had taken all his years, she lowered him into the water that lapped at the dock, and let him slip under. She nearly laughed aloud. Never had a hunt been easier. Now that she was grown, she might never again need to pursue prey at speed. Human men were so eager to mate, like beasts in rut, that she could simply lure them to her by standing in the street.
With the thought, came an echo of Qiyed’s last words on the strand. Something about this encounter related to what he’d said to her. She couldn’t yet make the connection.
Still hungry, she resumed her prowl of the wharf. She found a woman next, and approached her as boldly as she had the man.
“What are you doing here?” the sailor asked, her tone as hard as her words. “You with a ship?”
The woman held a small blade in one hand. She could overpower the sailor, but not without risking injury, and probably not without drawing the attention of others.
She opened both hands to show that she held no weapon. “No, I’m just… I’m walking. That’s all.”
“Walking. I’m sure. Why don’t you walk somewhere else?”
There was implication here as well, Droë knew. Clearly the woman felt differently about her presence than had the man. In this case, she would have been better served by her child form. A lesson – about the realities of these changes, about the way she would have to hunt from this night forward. Some women, she knew, would be drawn to her as the man had been. Not all, though. Not even most, if her past observations of humans could be trusted.
Again, that echo. This was something Qiyed wished to discuss with her. Or anticipated she would wish to discuss.
She retreated from the wharf, watched closely by the woman, and made her way along the waterfront to a strand where the town’s poor often congregated. Those without comfortable homes, without jobs, some of them.
Strie and Kreeva would not want her hunting in this place, but she was too weary to hunt the road or another village.
This time, she kept herself out of sight until she singled out her prey. Even then she rushed the man at speed, unwilling to be seen. Sated, and convinced that these final changes had not diminished her ability to hunt, she returned to the lanes.
Kreeva and Strie rejoined her within moments.
“Where were you?” Strie asked, a rebuke in his expression.
“The strand, west of town.”
“I thought we were hunting sailors tonight.”
“My first human was a sailor. The second…” She shrugged. “I had to leave the wharves. A woman saw me, and she had a weapon.”
Strie’s frown remained.
“One night doesn’t matter,” Kreeva said. “But maybe we should go to another village tomorrow night.”
“That’s a fine idea,” Droë said, her voice falsely bright.
She knew she couldn’t stay here much longer. She tried to tell herself that this was inevitable. She couldn’t have remained forever, even if she hadn’t submitted to the Arrokad’s magick. The time had come to resume her search for Tobias.
The truth was more complicated. She had no idea where Tobias might be, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to find him.
That echo reached her again – Qiyed’s words, his hints.
She’d made up her mind to leave soon because she no longer wished to hunt with the Tirribin. She was too mature for them; as Qiyed had warned, she didn’t belong with those who had been her kind.
For the following several nights, Droë, Strie, and Kreeva hunted the road, the farming village west of Barleyton, the wharves, and then the road again. Strie contrived to keep Droë from taking prey within the town. She hardly cared. She fed and she tolerated their company. Mostly, she pondered Qiyed’s words. She was on the cusp of understanding what he wished to discuss with her.
More than once, she used her beauty to lure a young male human to her so she could take his years. On one occasion – their final night along the road – Strie and Kreeva saw her do this. They found it greatly amusing, and spoke of it as they walked back to Barleyton at human speed.
“They’re such fools,” Strie said. “They can’t think of anything other than their need to couple.”
Droë nearly stumbled at this. She righted herself, and the Tirribin took no notice of her. But at long last she understood what Qiyed had meant.
Elements of what you seek require further attention.
Indeed.
“I have to go,” she said.
They halted and faced her.
“Go where?” Kreeva asked.
“To the strand. I need… I’m supposed to speak with the Most Ancient One.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes. I only just remembered. I… I’m late as it is.”
Kreeva and Strie exchanged glances and shrugged at the same time.
“All right. We’ll see you back in Barleyton.”
When they were beyond her seeing, Droë blurred to speed. She cut through copse and lea. Before she came to the shore, she spoke the Arrokad’s name aloud. “I would speak with you.”
She thought she heard laughter.
She reached the water’s edge before he did, and paced as he swam to land. Even after he emerged from the waves, she did not stop.
“You summoned me,” he said, amusement curving his lips. “I expected you would do so sooner. Did it truly take you this long to grasp the truth of what you lack?”
She paused to eye him, her cheeks flushing. “That’s rude.”
She resumed her pacing. He didn’t apologize.
“Is this something you can give to me?” she asked after some time.
“Is what?”
Droë halted again. “You know what you withheld, and so do I.”
“I would hear you speak of it. If you cannot, you are not ready to possess it.”
She opened her mouth, closed it again. Her cheeks burned. Her scalp tingled with embarrassment.
“I see.”
She stared past him at the breakers and the reflection of starlight on swells.
“Would you like to know what it is I see?”
“Not really, no.”
“I see a creature, brought magickally to maturity, but still mired in the puerile limitations of her kind.”
“That’s–”
“Rude. Yes, I know. It is also true. Now, tell me what I withheld from you.”
Droë wet her lips, her gaze on the sea again. “You did not give me desire,” she whispered.
Qiyed’s smile was knowing and cruel. “No, I did not.”
“Why would you deny me that, of all things?”
“Because I brought you to maturity in a matter of a turn or so. Had I changed you – an Ancient – so thoroughly and also given you desir
e, you might have gone mad.”
Something in the way he said this bothered her.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Do you accuse me of lying?”
“Not of lying,” she said, contemplating what she had heard in his explanation. “Of using one truth to obscure another. You may have given thought to my well-being, but you have other motives.”
“Perhaps I do. The question is, do you want me to impart this last element of your transformation? I can, of course. It is a rather simple act of magick, at least when compared with what I have accomplished already. Do you want it?”
As before, the Arrokad’s manner gave her pause. Since their first encounter, her trust in him had been fragile. She had long wondered about his motivation for helping her. Now, she understood. They had come to the crux of his machinations. She wanted to refuse him, to walk away and never call for him again. Much of what she wanted she had. She was grown, a creature capable of loving and being loved as humans did.
Yet even she, ignorant of such matters, understood that without desire she might as well have reverted to her old form. Fascination with love – the act and the emotion – was not enough. To grasp it fully, she needed to understand what drove humans to pursue lovers, to sacrifice all for them, to pledge their lives to them, to betray them for new ones, to kill for them as their kind were known to do, to pay coin for them in the absence of other choices, to build their lives around this single quest. Some love, she understood, could be separated from desire: love between siblings, and friends; a parent’s love for her child – although, of course, desire was integral to the origins of such love.
Those loves didn’t matter to her. She wanted to love a mate. She wanted to love Tobias. For that, she required what Qiyed had withheld.
“Yes,” she said, exhaling the word. “I want you to impart desire to me.”
“A wise choice,” he said. “It would have been a pity to waste all that magick, and all you endured to become what you are now.”
“And what is that?”
“Right now? Something incomplete.” He lifted his hand. “Allow me to correct that.”
She took a step toward him, and then another. Water cooled her toes. She inhaled his scent.
“Will this hurt?”
The Arrokad laughed. “No. At least not tonight. There may come a time when you seek pain as part of it. I envy you, Droënalka. You are about to step into a new world that will make this one you have known seem dull and colorless.”
He didn’t wait for a reply, nor did he ask her permission again. He touched his fingers to her brow.
Magick swept into her, cold and then blazing. This fire, however, was nothing like what she had experienced with his previous pushes. It tickled her lips, danced along the skin of her breasts, feathered over her belly and hips, insinuated itself into the cleft between her legs. A moan escaped her. Her knees weakened and she collapsed to the wet sand.
Qiyed kept his fingers on her brow.
Fire swept over her again, more insistent and yet as gentle as a planting turn breeze. She laughed, throaty and unrestrained. Never had she heard herself make such a sound. Her skin was ablaze and yet there was no pain. Seawater lapped at her legs, and that too turned to fire. Every sensation was transformed into pleasure, and every instant of pleasure left her desperate for more.
Another wave moved through her. Liquid, flame, sensation – they were all one, filling her blood, her mind, her most private places. A molten alloy akin to quicksilver. Wave followed upon wave, building a rhythm, obliterating all other thought. Heat was everywhere, but it settled most forcefully deep down inside her. She laughed again, heard the laughter tip over into an ecstatic groan. And still it grew. Nothing in her life had ever been so exquisite. Not the sweetest years of a child. Not flying with the Shonla. Nothing.
She felt herself rocking to a pulse that emanated from the sea and the earth and the stars. Faster and faster. Her toes curled, she tipped her head back, her breathing ragged. At last she spasmed, pleasure lifting her bodily off the sand and dropping her back down. She gave voice to a cry that was torn from her chest.
Some time later – a spirecount, a bell, a day; she couldn’t possibly have said which – she became aware again of surf and strand. Gentle waves of brine. The cushion of cool sand. Qiyed no longer touched her brow. Her breathing had slowed.
She forced her eyes open. The Arrokad loomed before her, impassive, seemingly chiseled from stone. She dragged her gaze over the length of his body, something she had never allowed herself to do before. He was stunning. Arrokad were said to be dangerous lovers, sensual, but rough, even violent at times. What would that be like?
“That is desire,” she said. Did her voice sound deeper than it had after the last transformation?
“That is one flavor of desire. There are others.”
She took a long, deep breath, eyes on his. “Do it again.” “No.”
Droë hadn’t expected him to refuse. “Why not?”
“Because you are new to passion. It can be as perilous as it is wondrous. You must learn control.”
“And I will. But… but first I want to experience it again.”
He stared down at her, unmoved.
She forced herself to her feet, straightened her damp shift. The memory of what he had given her receded, replaced by embarrassment that he should have seen her so, helpless in the throes of her arousal. How did humans treat with each other after coupling? How did they reconcile love for each other with that loss of composure?
“I can find it elsewhere,” she said. “I don’t need your magick.”
“No, you do not. Are you prepared to share what you just experienced with another? Are you ready to subject yourself to the passion of a human male? Someone who is a stranger to you?”
She wanted to tell him that she was, but the words wouldn’t come.
“That is an element of the peril. In time it will be an element of the wonder, as well.”
Droë wasn’t sure she understood. She guessed that Qiyed sought to use her uncertainty and innocence to bind her to him.
“I will not share it with you,” she said. “I will not couple with you. Not ever. I won’t touch you. That wasn’t part of our bargain.”
He didn’t reach for her brow again. He didn’t so much as gesture in her direction. Only a twitch in the corners of his mouth warned her.
A frisson of pleasure shot through her, rekindling the fire. She drew a sharp breath, her legs nearly giving out again. She waited, anticipating more, needing more. Nothing.
She opened her eyes, her face hot with shame and want.
“I do not need to lie with you to give you pleasure.” He paused. Agony flared in her breasts, as if something had taken hold of her nipples and given them a vicious twist. She shrieked, folded in on herself.
A heartbeat later, the pain vanished.
“Nor do I need to touch you to cause torment.”
“Why would you want to?”
Before he could answer, she heard a footfall on the dry sand behind her.
“Droë, are you all right?”
Gods, no.
Qiyed’s glare snapped up. Too late, Droë caught the scent of Tirribin years.
She pivoted. Both of them had come, tiny shadows in the darkness. “I’m fine,” she said. “You shouldn’t have followed me.”
“We were curious,” Strie said.
Kreeva gave a small shake of his head. “We were worried about you.”
“This creature is not your concern,” Qiyed said.
This creature?
“She’s our friend,” Kreeva answered, a rasp in his voice.
Droë wanted to warn him against speaking to the Arrokad so. Not that she needed to. He was Tirribin. He had lived for centuries. He knew the risks.
“You should come back to town with us, Droë,” he said. “It’s time we were hunting again.”
“She will remain here. You will go.”
“I be
lieve that is her choice to make.” Strie’s voice had taken on a rasp as well. “Powerful as you may be, there are three of us. You are but one, Most Ancient or not.”
“Numbers mean nothing to me,” Qiyed said. “I can destroy all of you. I prefer not to, but you are interfering in a matter of commerce, a bargain freely entered and fairly sworn. The Guild might frown on the bloodshed, but they would never sanction me. You know this as well as I.” His smile could have frozen Kheraya’s Ocean. “Leave us, cousins, and all of this will be forgotten. And do so at speed. My patience thins.”
Both Tirribin looked to Droë.
“It’s as he says, and as I have explained to you before: he and I have a bargain. Freely entered. Fairly sworn.”
“He hurt you.”
“He demonstrated an ability, one I did not fully grasp.”
“And before that? He’s been hurting you a lot.”
Her face burned hotter than it had at any time that night. “That was part of our bargain,” she said, gaze averted. “You should go.”
Kreeva frowned. “There’s no need to be rude.”
“I didn’t… I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t have come.”
“Fine,” Strie said, turning from her and starting back across the sand.
Kreeva lingered. “Will we see you tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. If not… I’ve enjoyed hunting with you. I’m grateful to you both for welcoming me to your town. It was a kindness, one I would like to repay someday.”
If anything, this further darkened the Tirribin’s expression. He wheeled and followed his friend.
Droë wanted to call them back, but wouldn’t have known what to say. She stared after them, her heart tight.
“You did well to send them away.”
She rounded on the Arrokad. “You threatened their lives.”
“Yours as well.”
“You have no right. Plus, you lied. The Guild would indeed find fault with your actions.”
He shrugged, his calm infuriating. “I wanted them gone.”
“And what do you want of me? Tell me now, or I’ll consider our commerce complete.”
“That would be unwise on your part.”
“Why? Our bargain was vague. You stipulated no price for the boon I requested. I remember your exact words. ‘In time, if we do this, and if you are pleased with the result, perhaps we can revisit the matter.’”
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