"A special herb, meant to bring about many years of happiness," he said. "They truly wanted to bless us." His rough fingers brushed my cheek. The robe slipped off easily, pooling on the bed. The soft silk brushed my exposed shoulders and arms as Dorian brought me close to him again for another kiss.
How many times had I wanted to kiss without being able to? I would fight every arbiter in existence if they tried to take this away from us. My hands roamed across Dorian's strong chest. It was a joy to feel the hardened muscles of his body beneath my touch. He was a warrior, through and through. Strength radiated off him. My husband. The phrase came to me over and over again as our lips met.
“I love you,” he told me as we broke away.
“I love you, too.” It felt like a sin to be this happy.
My muscles relaxed as I leaned against him. He wrapped his devious hand around one of my hips, thumb brushing over the bone. I shivered against him and deepened our kiss, desperate to be closer. My body needed him. I had waited so long to have this moment together. Before, I'd been scared.
Things had changed since we faced the end of the world together. He had always been worthy of my love, but both of us were ready for this moment. We fell into a natural rhythm.
I couldn't help that some of it felt like a fight. Our movements were hard and forceful in some places and soft in others. I was starving for his kisses, but he pulled away. I held back a whine about the betrayal of him leaving my lips, but that sound died in my throat as his lips trailed down my neck. He knew what he was doing. I raked my hands across his back and tugged at his wedding shirt.
"We can't tear them," I managed in a husky whisper. "Juneau would be so disappointed." The ruler had spent a lot of time on our clothes, simple but luxurious outfits that could last a lifetime. Dorian smirked.
"I'm not a complete animal," he reminded me. I yanked the tunic off impatiently.
"Maybe I wasn’t worried about you."
I silenced his laugh with my lips again. His hands went behind my back to help me untie the laces of my dress. The white fabric fell away, leaving me exposed. His eyes widened in delight. I pulled him against me again and felt a rush of heat that made me dizzy now that our naked torsos touched. My body craved every inch of him. His fingers darted down the length of my spine, making me shudder.
The aching anticipation for more kisses and fewer clothes overtook us. In the soft light, we lay naked in front of one another.
"Have I ever told you what I find most beautiful about you?" Dorian asked suddenly. I flushed under the intensity of his gaze. It was different from when he looked at me when we were together like this before, in the Higher Plane and in our apartment in the Mortal Plane, where we always stopped short. This time, we were married. Intimacy stitched us together in a soulmate's embrace. I stiffened pleasantly under his loving but hot gaze.
Playfully, I tugged at my hair. "My charming smile and ability to glare daggers at my enemies while thinking of ways to take them out?"
He chuckled. The vibrations in his chest sent a tingle of delight down the length of my body from the top of my head to the ends of my toes. My husband. Mine.
"Your smile is beautiful," he whispered. "But it's your strength that's always drawn me to you. Your physical strength is one thing, but your inner determination is unrivaled by any warrior I've ever met."
I soaked in the compliment, letting his words rush over me.
"Then show me how beautiful you think I am," I demanded. His eyes danced with delight at my challenge. He kissed me ravenously now, his hands wandering. I returned the favor, searching for every inch of skin that I could find. My heart couldn't get enough. I knotted my fists against his chest, growing impatient as desire coiled tight in my stomach.
I wanted him. I told him so.
He was naked now, hovering over me, sweat glistening on his body. The sight made me lightheaded… The way he looked at me made me feel like a warrior in a very different kind of fight than I was used to.
I ran my fingers over his lean muscles. For a moment, our hot breath filled the space between us. I inhaled his scent. The jasmine fragrance blanketed us. I pushed his hair from his face, wanting to see his eyes as we became one.
It hurt at first, but then there was nothing but pleasure. Nothing but Dorian and his love for me. Every touch was filled with love and desire. I breathed his name, enjoying the way the vowels flowed between the soft consonants.
His finger brushed lovingly over the tip of my cheekbones. "Together forever," he said.
I met his lips again. "Forever."
We stayed like that until he collapsed against me. Our hands lazily found one another again and again over the next few hours. I asked him anything I could think of. The desire to know every part of him filled me with new motivation. It pleased me that there were more things to know. We kept discovering things about one another, physically and emotionally.
"I never imagined my wedding night with my vampire husband in the middle of a supernatural forest in another dimension," I told him. "Well, there's a lot of things I didn't imagine."
"Disappointed?" he teased.
"Never," I said. I kissed him fiercely, and he laughed, rolling me onto him. I propped myself up on my elbow as I stared down, leaning on his chest.
"Do you like marriage so far?" Dorian asked.
I drew circles on his bare chest and smirked. "It has its charms." I pressed his hand against my lips and kissed his palm. We were tired. I sagged against him as I struggled to keep my eyes open. He looked at me with all the love and belonging in the world. I drank it in greedily.
"I never want to be apart again," I told him as I settled in by his side. He pulled the blankets over us as the chill began to creep in. He was warm against me. I marveled at the way our bodies fit together, like puzzle pieces meant for one another.
His lips covered mine for the last time before he blew out the last candle beside our bed. In the darkness, I searched for him. His fingers laced with mine. "Never again, my wife."
I fell asleep to the sound of his breath, rising and falling in his chest.
Everything was perfect.
43
Lyra
Two weeks after our wedding, we left Chicago to go on our first “consulting” mission. Inside our borrowed government plane, I attempted to relax. It was true that we were in an interesting new situation with our company, but it didn't make it any less stressful to be leaving on a mission again. There was something about narrowly avoiding the end of the universe and having to follow that up with a successful mission with my new consulting company that shook me up.
"Flashlights?" I read out. Bryce bent over a pack to check the inclusion of Reshi's latest design, a flashlight that would work in both the Immortal and Mortal Planes. We would need them if any humans got separated from the vampires. Reshi had sent along a few of her more experimental designs, some of which she worried might act up in the Mortal Plane during transport. She wanted us to take precautions even though the instruments should act fine in the areas left over from the meld, since they were partly Immortal Plane. After the invisibility charm mishap, she wanted to be cautious. I twisted my wedding ring as he checked the number and stability of the objects. We couldn’t be too careful.
"Aye. They’re good."
I marked off a note on the checklist. Bryce placed the flashlights back into the gear bags with a hum. He seemed cheery about our first mission for this new company. I was pleased but nervous. It was hard to be back in the field so soon after our big battle to save the world. And yet, nothing felt more like home than going back into the fray. Things moved fast when there was supernatural mischief afoot.
"Flares?" I asked
"Got them."
He rewrapped them carefully in their special fire-retardant packaging. We went on like that for some time as I made my way down our list of supplies. Bryce and I had spent hours crunching numbers the previous week, trying to plan and foresee all the trouble we might encounter on our adventure. I
smiled to myself as Bryce took stock of the mysterious contents of an unlabeled box. He caught my eye.
"What?" he asked, raising a brow.
"Just thinking of old times," I said with a shrug, recalling the way I used to work underneath him. Before Dorian had showed up and kidnapped me from a mission, I was under Bryce’s command.
He grinned. "Old times? If you want old times, I'll hand you a full report on why we don't include unlabeled mystery boxes. Bombs, for one. Second—"
"Oh, that was me," Dorian said, cutting in with apologetic charm as he removed his headphones. He'd taken to regularly listening to the news for updates on human-vampire relations. "Sike said he wanted to bring along some special recording instruments. I didn’t think to mark them, since they were the only unmarked thing we had. It’s fresh out of the workshop, whatever’s inside.”
Bryce frowned at the box. "Hope they weren't fragile…" I stifled a laugh as he gently set it down.
"Hope what weren't fragile?" Sike asked merrily as raised his head out of a thin, weathered volume on human satellites. He looked taller than I remembered. It could've been the size of the plane we were in. Or maybe I'm shrinking from stress.
Bryce apologetically passed over the box, and Sike sighed, opening it up to check his instruments. Sike had worked with Reshi on a number of projects for our mission, and he was trying to do more scientific research. He’d grown close with all the Hive scholars and makers after the meld. His knowledge of human and immortal technology made him a valuable team member.
“Oh, they’re fine,” Sike confirmed with a relieved smile. “You had me worried for a second. I’m hoping to get some good data when we head into the Leftovers.”
I nodded appreciatively and studied my three companions. I trusted these men with my life. The four of us cut quite a figure in our new uniforms. I'd picked a slate gray with violet detailing. Bryce spent a few weeks agonizing over our symbol until finally we settled on an embroidered rendering of the amber flowers from the Immortal Plane. When the wildlings told us the name for the flower, it sounded like cavanish. Bryce was chipper about that. He suggested the name Callanish for our group, citing the stone circle in Scotland, as it was an important historical sight in his home country and a reference to the flower in the native wildling language. Dorian had confirmed it was an additional portal site. It worked for me.
I adjusted my weapons belt around me, feeling it snug against the new uniform. Everything was a bit too starched and scratchy after months of walking around in weathered fatigues, but it wouldn’t be long before our uniforms looked broken in. I was glad for the newly improved belt, though. I had taken to wearing Reshi's knives in my belt and a thin, modified bracer with Lanzon's stone. In my gear bag, I kept my trusty rifle. Can't give up on gunpower just yet…
"I checked all the supplies before we left," our fifth member piped up in a grave tone. He’d been watching us for the last several minutes, his brows stitched together. "Was there a problem with my performance?"
I glanced over at the newest member. It was always a surprise to see him and Bryce near one another. Cam, Morag's oldest son, was scarcely twenty, with red hair clipped neatly to his scalp and a uniform shirt buttoned all the way up. He seemed like the opposite of Bryce. He also had two younger sisters, but he’d been away at a technical military program when we originally came to Scotland.
He wasn't at all what I expected from Morag, but Bryce had asked for him to be included on the team. Cam wanted to work in paranormal relations, but not in Scotland with his mother. I didn't pry into that, but I could imagine that living in his mother's shadow in his home nation might have something to do with it.
"We’re double-checking our supplies before we land, since we have some more sophisticated equipment here," I explained to him. It was his first mission dealing with anything supernatural, though he’d been in combat before. "Magic is finicky. These tools are very different from what we’re used to."
He nodded, very serious. Bryce gave an amused, tolerant snort, and we continued with the checklist, almost done. We had enough supplies for each of our five members. As I finished the checklist, I leaned back in my chair to see the plane growing closer to immortal trees. I never got tired of seeing the trees, sticking out like wicked, thorny omens in the air. I found them savagely beautiful, even while they promised danger. Perhaps Dorian’s connection with the Immortal Plane had made me softer, or I’d spent too many late nights poring over photos that the Bureau managed to take of the Leftovers.
All across central Nevada, sections of Utah and California, and areas in the Midwest, the meld had left behind reminders of what happened. Vast areas were changed forever on the day of the meld. Nobody could make sense of them. The plots of land were from both the Mortal and Immortal Planes. New pockets were constantly being discovered all the time, but we'd come for the biggest of them all. The Black Rock facility stretched into the eerie wilderness.
It was where my parents had been when they vanished. An icy sense of anticipation crept over me, and I shut my eyes for a moment, turning my wedding ring over and over. It had become my ritual, something to soothe me when I remembered that my parents weren't safely tucked away in Chicago. They were out there somewhere, hopefully alive and safe.
They are trained professionals. If anyone has a chance, they do. No amount of rationalizing made it any easier. They were professionals, but they hadn’t dealt with the Immortal Plane before. I’d always had vampire help with me, but my parents were alone. I remembered how shocked my father and mother were on the brief phone call I managed to have with them before my final showdown with Alan. Part of the reason we took this job as our first mission was to look for my parents and afterward, Dorian’s own parents. There was so much I had to tell my parents, too. Zach weighed heavy on my mind in the early hours of the morning, when grief found me most easily. The wildlings had arranged for me to get his body back. We didn’t cremate him or bury him, because I didn’t want to have his funeral without my parents, and neither did Gina. Instead, the wildlings offered to do something that they never did for anyone outside their own kind. They performed a preservation type of magic that turned Zach into stone, forever immortalizing him. It was the best decision in order to allow my parents to feel like they could actually see their son.
Had my parents been able to survive in the wilderness below me? The initial Bureau visit with Fenton said there was no human life, but the human technology scanners were shown to be faulty. My doubting voice liked to remind me that I hadn't truly experienced anything until I saw the Immortal Plane. My parents had decades more experience than I did, but fighting off immortal beasts like the shrieking decay wasn’t included.
A red light came on, signaling for us to prepare for landing. I buckled up, riding the waves of turbulence as the plane descended. The winds were always wild around the Leftovers, according to reports. We only had scant information from the failed teams that had been dispatched to these areas. Cam knew these reports by heart and could recite them word for word. He seemed equally intrigued and disturbed by some of the witness statements describing strange creatures, which Bryce teased him over. Of course, that’s always a good sign if Bryce is actually trying to train you. I hoped we would have a better report to bring back to the government. Part of the reason for Sike’s presence was to get better data.
This was the inaugural mission for our paranormal consulting group. It was a big step for all of us. With a check in my account from the government and the ability to look for my parents while on the job, I felt determined. Although, a part of me was sad to leave behind my little respite with Dorian. Yesterday was Valentine's Day, and we’d had a quiet dinner in our Chicago apartment. Dorian could tell that I was anxious and impatient for the mission, and the holiday didn’t hold much meaning for him, though I tried my best to be festive with him. I tossed and turned last night, images of my parents running through my mind. Sometimes, I dreamt that Zach was sleeping in his bedroom next door.
/> As Fenton said, the US government was an ideal first client. They had virtually bottomless pockets. I suspected he’d helped pull some strings to give us the credibility we needed. Money and connections talked. The government had hired our crew to work with the Bureau on the project I wanted most—the search for Black Rock survivors. Nobody else had the skills and experience needed to traverse such a dangerous area.
I still couldn't believe the amount of money the government had paid us to do this. It was such a nice change from fighting to acquire supplies to being handed a giant check. Military spending is wild. I braced myself as the plane prepared to touch down. I needed to review with our team, mostly for Cam’s sake.
"Remember what we're here to do," I told the others through our comms over the sound of the roaring engines. Dorian and I were in charge of this mission. Our goal was to get in, investigate the area, and find out what had happened to the missing cities near Black Rock and the surrounding areas. Several other small towns had vanished too, swallowed up by both Mortal Plane and Immortal Plane vegetation. Our priority was to bring back Black Rock soldiers, but civilians were obviously another concern as well. What had happened to them after the meld?
It wasn't just my family we were looking for. It wasn't just Kane or Dorian's parents. We needed to ensure the safety and rescue of human lives… if we could. Unfortunately, we might be heading into mass graveyards. We had to investigate what went down to figure out exactly what we could do with the Leftovers from the meld. The government was lost when it came to the Leftovers. Their meetings were fraught with Congress members trying to shove the problem onto the Bureau. Our small company was happy to help.
I frowned as the plane's landing gear hit the ground, mulling over everything.
"What's below us is completely uncharted," Dorian said calmly into the comm. Cam stared out the window without expression. I’d seen his scores for his brief military service before he left, and they were excellent. His references were sorry to lose him but warned he had some stiffness. That, I could easily see myself. "We expect immortal beasts. We can no longer assume that the landscape will act like it would in the Mortal or the Immortal Plane. It appears to be a mixture, from all reports. The Bureau has tried to get soldiers in this area on foot and by plane, but they've had limited success. We do know that the barrier is permeable by certain monsters, but the Bureau has their hands full across the continent. They don't have time to deal with this mess."
Darklight 7: Darkfall Page 40