“Maybe she is from a hive in another part of the woods who has become lost?” Orel suggests. I sincerely hope that is the case. My confidence in my brother’s plan is waning even as my heat soars uncomfortably.
From ahead, Shavish calls back to us. “Not much further. The seer said she will be at the edge of the great meadow where the trolls grow narcissuses and other flowers for their potions.”
My lip curls in distaste. Trolls. I generally don’t care for many of the ugly zaabi—the large beings who populate our world. Their great size is hideous, and they lack of the internal glowing fires of the pixies. Our females offer silks to the trolls for ounces of gold flakes to make medicinal potions for our kind. It is a lucrative arrangement for the queens but that doesn’t make me any fonder of them. The way they spy on our mating flights is enough to make me queasy. At least that is one thing in favor of finding our queen away from the ponds… There won’t be any trolls to experience the euphoria of our mating flight nor enjoy the dust our bodies create for her alone.
As the trees zip by, I wonder if we are going the right way. As far as I know, no one in our hive has even been to the edge of the forest, much less seen the meadow. Cursing Shavish for always being quicker than the rest of us, I labor to catch up with him again. In his excitement, he is making no effort to keep his pace reasonable for the rest of us. This mating flight is going to be a disaster if he doesn’t restrain himself.
Once I get within grabbing distance of his foot, I snag it and pull back, ripping my brother right out of the air. Together we drop, my wings beating in double time to slow our descent as we crash into a poppy.
Grumbling I stand in the bowl of the flower, brushing clumps of yellow pollen off me as I give Shavish a dirty look. He sits in the center of the flower, coated with pollen, his wings buzzing with fury. I snort in disgust and renew my efforts to clean myself. He’s mad, but I’m the one allergic to poppy pollen. I can feel my eyes tearing up and my chest constrict. I really should have chosen my moment a bit better.
I sneeze, sending myself shooting backward into the velvety red petal. A grin breaks out over my brother’s face and he laughs. Dazi and Orel’s lights bounce off of us as the males hover just above the flower. They look at me in concern, but I wave it off. Thankfully, I didn’t breathe in much of the pollen before I got it off of me. With a vigorous shake of my wings, I shoot up to their side as Shavish’s laughter dies down and he works to unbury himself from the massive amounts of pollen that fell over him when he crashed into the flower.
“I would like to know what you were thinking!” he calls up to me, amusement still clear in the timbre of his voice.
“I was thinking that our mating flight isn’t going to look very impressive to our queen if you are wildly streaking a dozen paces out ahead of us,” I answer as I evade a clump of pollen he throws at me. “We did not spend all that time planning and practicing drills for you to blow it before we even arrive.”
His grin turns sheepish. “Was I truly that far ahead?”
Dazi snorts, his normally somber features breaking into an amused grin. “To put it mildly. You pretty much decapitated our formation.”
Shavish sighs and, with another brisk shake, he pops out of the flower. I wrinkle my nose and back away until he succeeds in removing the rest of the pollen from his frame.
“Perhaps I was going a bit fast,” he concedes. His expression is suddenly uncharacteristically glum as he looks over at us. My brother is frequently arrogant and stubborn, but rarely is he glum.
“This is our last shot,” he admits. “You may think I am not aware of this as stubborn as I’ve been, but I know it is. Perhaps it makes me a bit overeager, but I will do anything—anything—to protect our hive. If I must be a bit reckless at times, then so be it. It can make me lose sight of some of the important things,” his eyes trail over to Orel and Dazi, “but my goal is always focused on us. I will try to be more aware and be more reasonable with my expectations—starting now.”
He draws away from us, moving at a slower pace toward the sunlight that pierces the woods just up ahead in stark contrast to the dark depths of the woods from which we are emerging.
Dazi nods his head and zips over to Shavish, his silver light sparking in flares of excitement. “Let’s go get our queen!” he shouts back with such enthusiasm that Orel and I laugh. We immediately give chase, following our brother out of the darkness.
When we finally spill out into the open air, it is the most overwhelming of sensations for me. Suddenly, I am thrown into a vastness that I never could have imagined in the comfortable depths of the woods. A field stretches out before me, fragrant with blooms, the yellow blooms of the narcissus beautiful in the light of the sun dipping toward the horizon, bobbing their heads with the movement of the light breeze.
My gaze lifts, and my breath catches in my chest. Where the daylight is pulling away, I can see the first traces of stars. Stars! Pixies revere them as our ancestors, but I have never seen them with my own eyes. Few brave the conditions to go high enough above the canopy of the trees to seek a glimpse of the heavens. Seeing it now, all stretched out before me, tiny specks of light dancing in the darkening sky… I am in utter awe and feel a longing in my heart that I never knew I possessed. For the first time, I wish to leave the colony and establish my hive at the edge of the forest where I would always be able to see the beauty of the starlight every night. Even Shavish has stilled, fluttering in place as he blinks his eyes in awe.
“This… is indescribable,” Dazi whispers as he draws to my side.
“It is very… open,” Orel agrees, a frown of obvious discomfort tugging at his mouth.
My wings flutter as I move around, looking in every direction. “Shavish… I don’t see any sign of a queen.” I don’t have it within me to panic, though part of me wants to. Instead, the crushing weight of acceptance is settling over me.
It’s over.
All that is left for me is to wait for my light to burn out. It won’t be satiated. My life force won’t be sustained. I tilt my head back and look up longingly at the stars. Just maybe I will be one among them and regain my light when I pass through the void to where our ancestors dwell.
Shavish’s wings buzz anxiously as he darts among the flowers, drawing my attention. “This is not possible. The seers said she is here. He’s never been wrong.”
“No one is infallible,” Dazi says, his wings buzzing as he slowly sinks to a branch of the tree. As he settles on it, his head drops. His silvery light still runs riotous through him, almost cruelly, as despair settles over him. Orel drops, his hand reaching out to comfort his brother when suddenly the wood beneath Dazi cracks and gives way. His startled shout follows him, his chitin chiming in alarm as our hive brother plummets into the greenery of the field below.
Orel immediately bellows with fear and zips down among the blooms. I descend with Shavish close behind as we follow after him. He was so close to his brother that I hope he caught Dazi before he hit the ground. That hope lessens as the petals of the flowers brush by us and the column of its stalk provides a clear path to the ground. When we arrive, Orel skims over the ground back and forth without success.
“Where can he be?” he cries out. “Dazi!”
We join in, calling out our hive brother’s name, without answer.
6
Orenda
Fuck, my head hurts. I blink, and panic slowly sets in as I realize just how dark everything is around me. The stalk of the gigantic plant life looms over me menacingly. No, not gigantic. Somehow, I’m small… very, very small. I can feel the bubble of panic threatening to return but resolutely I push it aside.
How long had I been out?
I swallow against my fear, battling the urge to vomit. All the plants are freakishly terrifying in the dark. At least there’s a glow from something nearby, so I’m not completely swallowed in darkness. Instinctively seeking out the light, I notice movement beside me from the corner of my eye and I freeze. Very slo
wly, I turn my head and come face to face with the source of both the movement and the light.
My breath catches as I stare at… whatever it is. It looks like a man, but not. His face is sharply angled with large eyes that are currently closed. Though he glows brilliantly, his skin is so pale that it makes me think of moonstone. From his skin, there is a silvery material that pushes out and overlaps like armor over his brow and forehead, stopping just below the antenna that juts off his brow. His face and neck are free of the shimmering chitin armor, as are his lower torso, forearms, and calves. But the rest of his body is covered in the segmented plates. He lies belly down, but the parts of his body that I can see are corded with lean muscle, and silver hair falls down his back in a tangle. With his every breath, a pair of gray wings rise and fall. In the center of his abdomen seems to be the source of his light.
How strange. How… beautiful.
Rolling over on my belly, I crawl over to him, catching the scent of warm honey and cinnamon. He smells almost like a Cinnabon. It’s delicious. Just the scent of it is warming me throughout and doing interesting things to my body. An awareness tingles over my skin as I scoot closer. Something about him feels so right. It’s the same sense that I get when I am antiquing, and something calls out to me that it is mine.
That’s absurd, of course. This is another living being. Still, I can’t help being drawn to him. Not one to lie to myself, I acknowledge the feeling and it sparks my curiosity. I stretch one hand forward to brush his hair out of his face to reveal a strong chin and nose and pink lips parted ever so slightly. His breath warms my hand and I rest my palm on the side of his face.
I draw in a sharp breath. By the queen of the heavens, he’s wonderfully warm. His body is hotter than I would expect, and I have to resist the urge to curl up into him. The air was already cool in the forest, but now that the sun is obviously going down, the temperature has dropped quite a bit. I watch in fascination as his wings twitch and suddenly still. I wonder what…
Dark eyes snap open and a large hand, tipped from the last knuckle up with a chitinous claw, snaps up and closes around my hand, holding me in place as he removes my hand. His lips are drawn down so furiously and his plates rattle with a fierce sound like a cacophony of bells. He doesn’t look pleased at all. His grip slips down to my wrist, and as he holds my arm out above my head, I know I’m in deep trouble.
Squawking, I attempt to pull my hand free of his grip and fail. All I can do is back down as his large frame rises from the ground. If I’m only seven inches tall, he’s easily nine… and a half, maybe. His expression is forbidding as hell as he looks down at me, his voice rumbling out of him, resting on a questioning note.
I shake my head helplessly. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
The plating on his brow lowers over his eyes in a scowl, but he gives me a sharp nod. With one hand, he reaches behind him to gather up a small amount of dust from his wing. He mutters over it and my mouth drops open in awe as the dust begins to glow. He lifts it up to my face and leans over so that his mouth is poised at the heel of his hand. He draws in a breath and pauses. Suddenly, he leans in closer, brushing his nose over my jaw and up into my hair. He grunts and before I can even consider having heart failure, his head pulls back and dips down to blow the glittery dust into my face.
I cough and choke as the dust invades my lungs and my eyes tear up in reaction. His face is blurry as he leans in closer.
“Do you understand me now?”
I nod my head helplessly.
“Good. Now, who are you and what are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry!” I blurt out, nearly blubbering to my mortification. “I don’t know how I got here. I was looking at a gold medallion and then somehow got transported here. I’m no one. I just want to go home!”
He cocks his head at me, his wings buzzing behind him as he moves them. “Curious. A strange being brought through a dimensional portal. The portals usually allow individuals to pass, not suck them in against their will. At least that is my understanding. Pixies have no use for portals and moving between worlds.”
“You… are a pixie?” I squeak. When I think of pixies, I think of… well… Tinkerbell or Fern Gully. Cute girls with wings… not… this. Every line of him practically screams threatening. There’s nothing cute or soft about him. Even his obscenely long, pointed ears are exaggerated in length rather than pert, which makes him look creepier than anything else.
“What would you assume that I am?” he asks. There is no note of disdain in his voice that I can discern, although his tone is clipped and somewhat impatient. Still, there seems to be an intense curiosity in his eyes.
“I… that is… I don’t know,” I finish lamely. From how he’s glaring at me, demon jumps to mind, but I don’t want to offend him. Not when he already looks tempted to flatten me. “I’m just a human. I’m not familiar with the species of fae,” I admit.
“Human?” The word comes out as a curious, deep hum. “I am not familiar with this species.” He twists me a bit from side to side, getting a good look at me. “What happened to your wings?”
“Humans don’t have wings,” I huff, trying once again to yank my wrist from his iron grip. “I look exactly as I should for my species.” I think about my piercings and green-dyed hair and smile sheepishly. “Well, more or less, anyway. I’ll admit I probably have a few more modifications than some.”
“Modifications?” he hums again.
“Yeah, my hair color and piercings aren’t natural.”
His black eyes roam as he seems to take in the details pointed out to him with interest. At some point through this process, his nostrils begin to flare, and his hum deepens noticeably.
“Is your hive nearby?” he asks casually. I’m pretty sure I’m imagining any inflections of personal interest. I’m not even really sure what he is asking. Maybe he’s lost too. I sincerely hope not. I can’t help myself, much less lend a hand to a lost pixie.
“Hive?” I glance down and frown as I notice that my foot is mired in some particularly thick mud. Cursing silently to myself, I start to wiggle it back and forth, trying to break it free.
He lets out a gusty breath. “Your males, your mates. They must be looking for you.”
“Mates? Hmm? No mates,” I mumble as my scowl intensifies at my damned boot. Come on, how sticky can mud get? This is ridiculous and I’m thankful when the pixie releases my arm so that I am able to throw my weight into it.
Son of a fucking bitch… budge already!
I heave one last time, and my leg pops free with a loud sucking sound, but I unfortunately also throw myself off balance so that I slam into the pixie’s warm body.
“So sorry,” I chuckle as I back my ass off of him.
To my surprise, he doesn’t respond but his hum grows noticeably louder. It’s now also accompanied with a bright flicker and a sweet chiming sound very different than the angry buzz from just minutes ago. I squint at the pixie and freeze in surprise.
What the freaking fuck is going on now?
I know I’m gaping in a way that my mother would scold as being unladylike, but I doubt anyone would blame me if they saw this. The pixie is pulled up to his full height, his muscles on display, a long loincloth the only thing preserving his modesty. His gray and white wings are flared around him in a beautiful demonstration, vibrating as his abdomen flashes with a silver light like a lusty firefly. That wonderful Cinnabon smell is getting stronger and I gasp as the scent causes a flash of heat to travel through me and gather low in my belly.
Blue, red, and green flash over his silver chiton like a disco ball and I breathe in wonder. “How pretty!” I whisper. I reach a hand forward to touch my fingertips against the light dancing over his chitin when he pulls away and lifts into the air just above me, his wings buzzing as he zips up several feet. I can see him dancing through the air among the blooms, his light briefly illuminating the flowers as he passes among them.
I frown. Wait… Not just his li
ght.
He’s joined three others. They are moving in a fashion that’s almost hypnotic, their patterns coming together and breaking again as they circle me in a beautiful display of flight. I have no idea the purpose of their impromptu show but for a moment I want to imagine that it’s all for me.
Have I ever had anything all for myself? My family certainly had very little interest in me over the years. I can’t even recall a time when a boyfriend even made more than a token effort.
By now, I am pretty sure I’m panting. My mouth is open and I can feel my breath draw in as I drink in more of the intoxicating scent. With more of them, the scent has become richer and more complex as it floods into me. I feel completely caught up in it and my sex clenches and throbs with urgency. Arousal fills my underwear, soaking the scrap of cloth.
The males glance at one another as if sharing a sort of silent communication I’m not privy to. Their circle becomes tighter as they continue to weave in and out, their lights flowing together, merging and dividing as they move in a close formation, drawing nearer to me.
My skirt flaps against my thighs, creeping higher, and my hair billows around me from the small cyclone that they are creating as their circle tightens and drops lower. Amidst the cyclone of dancing lights, hands reach out and lightly caress me in passing sending shivers skating over my skin. That’s not the only thing that is giving me shivers. Their peculiar song is getting under my skin.
They draw back, their circle expanding, their shimmering lights bouncing and flickering as they continue their dance. Their scent withdraws and clarity returns. I recognize this for what it is. A chance to escape them, to refuse their odd courtship. I have no doubt that’s what it is. Some sort of dance of seduction. Rationally, I admire that tactic even as my entire body instinctively screams ‘hell yeah!’ There’s something so sexual about their display and flashing lights that my body reacts to it on a primal level.
Blooming Desire Page 30
