by A L Hart
When I opened my eyes, he was gone.
*****
I couldn’t sleep. Despite the lethargy pounding in my head, the steady closing of my eyelids, I forced myself to stay awake, not wanting to sink into whatever dreams might haunt. Because I knew they wouldn’t be dreams, but memories. Jera’s memories, and after learning what I had, I couldn’t take the chance of seeing those awful things.
But with Tathri gone, Valen and Neer quietly wanting to rip Jera’s head off but choosing not to solely because of my aid to them, and my life back in Wamego rapidly deteriorating, I couldn’t help but feel awful things was all my future held.
Which was likely why I’d climbed into bed beside Jera, only to moments later pull her into my arms, a lock of jet black curls wrapped in my fingers. I studied its silken softness. I studied the rhythmic beating of her heart, and at once, I forced away the memory of the scars I’d seen piled over the flesh there. I refused to think that all of the pieces of herself she’d given to Lia had been for nothing.
No, I simply held onto her, the only constant I knew. The variable whose output was as predictable as the alphabet, one plus one. I didn’t understand this world or the things going on around me, but this immoral female with the tragic past, I could recite the path of her mind in my sleep.
“I can practically feel your sappy thoughts.”
I shifted. “Why do you do that?”
“What?”
“Pretend to be asleep.”
She twisted in my arms, head tilting back against my chest, greys peering up at me. “Who said I was pretending to be sleep? Perhaps I wanted nothing more than to relax here.”
Unlikely. Very unlikely. How long had she been awake? It was a good thing Tathri had put up whatever spell he had to create privacy. I didn’t want Jera to know that I knew of her past. Knowing her, she’d only assume everything I said and did was out of pity.
“Where am I and where are the rest of my clothes?” she asked drowsily.
“The faery-giants’ home—”
She bolted upright, only to clutch her head and topple back against me. She growled at her own limitation.
“Be careful, you’re not fully healed after so kindly trying to burn down an entire city.”
More guttural noises. “I should have been able to do more damage than that.”
“Um, I have to disagree. You hurt a lot of them, Jera, and for what?”
“To find you!” She braced against me, shifting to glare at me, and it was all I could do to ignore her weight below. “We were so close to catching that smug, infuriating little beast, when I sensed you come through the portal—why did you come through the portal?”
“To find you!” I shot her words back at her. “You jumped through the portal without a second thought, ignoring everything Inoli said to us. We were supposed to go with Graves and Jai.”
“You saw what happened to Lia. You saw what she turned into.”
“I did,” was all I could say.
“Then of course I went after her. I want answers. I want my sister back and nothing’s going to stop that from happening, not even that annoying, meddling dog. Where is it, by the way?”
“Tathri? I’m not sure. He said some vague things then just disappeared.” Secrets, they were the bane of future problems, but how could I tell Jera everything Tathri had said? How could I convince her Lia was dead—especially if I wasn’t sure myself. Which was what I needed to figure out.
“Of course he did,” she muttered, laying her head right beneath my chin.
“You smell like burned wood.”
“Not burned faeries?” she retorted drily. After a moment, she shook her head. “You shouldn’t have come here. To these faeries’ land, to the Shatters.”
I frowned. “You need me.”
“And had the faeries killed you? Then what, Peter?”
I looked to the hearth, muscles tensing. Inoli said the four of us had to stay together, but that hadn’t been the reason I’d gone after her. I’d chased after my constant, nothing more. Not stopping to think that had I died, so too would she.
“You can’t be reckless here. You can’t do that thing where you follow your heart and think everything will just work out. You got lucky with these faeries. It won’t happen again. And should you get hurt . . .” She turned completely, straddling me, her heat dimming half my thoughts as well as the fact she was only in her underwear. “I’m trying to be better—not for the pathetic notion of my immortal soul or the pitiful creatures around me, but for you. I figure, if you’re willing to cope with the bad parts of me, I should at least try to rid of some of them, but had those faeries hurt you—were anyone to hurt you apart from me, I can’t promise I wouldn’t return the favor.”
And there went the other half of my thoughts, submerged beneath two realizations. One, this was it, Jera was trying to be open with me in her own crass, subtly brutal way via threats onto another’s life. Two, the dark energy inside of me not only made me aware of hers, but went spastic at her proximity, her warmth, and when she settled her weight on me completely, I gave up the futile battle of trying to prevent it. The slow stiffening and rise within my pants, stealing her own concentration as her lips parted and she glanced down.
“Sorry,” I said quickly, hurrying to move from under her.
She pressed me back against the headboard. “No.”
I stilled. Not because of the fire below, but the one in her eyes. “No?”
Hands curling in the belt straps of my shirt, she leaned forward and pressed her head to mine, the pointed tips of her horns whispering over my scalp. “I can’t go on like this,” she said. “My powers, when the mutt and I went after Jinxy, I had to save the last of my strength in case you came through the portal. Which you predictably did. What you saw in the dining court, that was it. I can’t use my powers anymore, Peter, and give it a few days, I’ll become immobile. I won’t be able to protect you.”
She’d stored and exerted all of her energy for that moment in the dining hall, hoping to retrieve me before she was rendered powerless. That was why she’d been so . . . fired up.
“The first rule of the Shatters—never hesitate to kill; they will not. When you set out for something, you give it your all and more because no one here is your friend. Good doesn’t exist here. And it’s for that very reason that I can’t set out to find Jinxy if I’m . . . weak,” she deigned to say, the word wounding her more than any price could
My brows creased. I found my hands firmly clenched at my sides, my breathing gone shallow with the closeness of her lips, the inkling fall of her curls against my jaws.
This wasn’t how I wanted it to be. Her first time, it deserved to be as perfect as her first Christmas—the morning portion, that was.
But then I felt them against me, her lips an air brush of gentleness, trailing down my nose, teasing at the corner of my mouth and gradually, the scent of charred wood began to melt into a glade of orchids and lilacs. Mellow, sweet, her lips against mine dragged me near a ledge I knew I wouldn’t have been able to come back from.
Which was why, against the lesser parts of me that wanted to give in, I turned away from her. “Jera, it’s not supposed to be like this,” I said, even as the taste of her served as a persistent memory, beckon. It didn’t cloud my opinion. Her world had been screwed up since the day she was born. Correlating sex as a means for strength wasn’t a good way to break the cycle.
“Tsk.” She shoved me against the headboard, seemed to consider the action, then bristled as if at war with being apologetic and wanting to throttle me.
I shifted forward. “I know—”
“After all of the nagging you did to me back in your little depleted town, and now the moment I present myself to you, you reject. How typical.”
When she started to rise, I grabbed her arms and made her look at me. “Don’t do that. Don’t think you can guilt me into doing something like this. That’s not how the world works. That’s not how this works.”
/>
“Do you understand what happens if I fade—if we wait for your romantic moment?” At my nonresponse, she quipped, “We don’t find Jinxy or Graves or Jai and therefore we lose Lia and likely any chance of repairing the gateway. Worlds die, Peter.”
“I get that, I do,” I grated. I knew she was right, there were high stakes to consider, but I couldn’t shake my own confliction. “I just don’t want to do something you’re not ready for—”
“How dense are you to think I’m ill prepared? The fundamentals of intercourse aren’t so convoluted.”
“It shouldn’t have ‘fundamentals’.”
“So we lose everything because you insist on technicalities?”
Resting my head back against the headboard, I watched her, but what did she want me to say? Especially when she was right. I couldn’t put her before the world. Inoli hadn’t specified how long we had before the gateways became irreparable and if Tathri was right, there was no telling what Jinxy had gotten up to.
I wasn’t the fighter here; Jera was. If we were going to get through any of this, I needed her.
Like the predator she was beneath her faux human skin, she sensed my defeat then, hands trailing up my chest, gripping my shoulders. But the look in her eyes wasn’t triumphant; it was hesitant. Why?
“Go ahead,” I breathed, unable to retract the mild venom beneath the words.
She looked at me, saw that I wasn’t going to move, then sat back. “Really?”
“You want to use me as your fuel, go for it. I’m not required to participate.”
Her glare became cutting, and without warning, her hips were moving against mine. And then I tasted her there on my lips again, devouring my resolve, challenging my erection. My restraint.
The savoury dip of her tongue, I would have relished it as long as she’d have let me were it not for the sudden pain to kick in my abdomen, causing me to tear away from her.
She looked at me beneath a lustful, hooded gaze. “I was gentle.”
Before I could speak, we both whipped her heads to the sudden shadow in the room.
Neer. She stood with arms crossed, regarding us with a look of mixed emotions. When she spoke, it was clear we wouldn’t be continuing where we left off any time soon. “It is a wonder when you are to set off,” she said to me specifically.
Jera casually moved from over me as I said, “Set off? We’ve hardly been here a day—” I stopped at the look she gave, hearing her loud and clear. My rest and well being was exactly at the top of their priority list and the longer I stayed within the estate, the longer they went without their daughter.
Rubbing my hand over my sore stomach, I grimaced, but still, I said, “We can set out in a bit.”
The look she gave Jera said the evening couldn’t come fast enough.
Ch. 8
“You can trust me,” I said with honesty. “I will bring your daughter home.” Neer and Valen refused to accompany us seeing as I refused to set out to find Jinxy without Jera. Looked like it would just be the two of us. Though Tathri was an Imperial Beast, I couldn’t say for sure whether or not he could open a portal back to my world for them, namely because I’d had countless more pressing questions. Needless to say, it looked like whatever two man search party he and Jera had formed had met its end.
The man was nowhere to be found.
“It is not you we find hard to trust,” Valen said, but even that sounded like a forced truth. “It’s the abominable demon you chose to accompany you.”
“What I fail to understand are the rumors,” Neer said quickly, gaze flicking between us. “The Maker was supposed to be mated to the Succubus Queen, Ophelia.”
“A lie formed to legitimize his rule over the incubi,” Jera lied breezily. “But it was never truly so. Peter has always been mine. Now, if you would stop your line of inquiries and get to the part where you supply us with weapons to see our mission through.”
Neer gave Jera a less than savory look before turning to me. “Please, bring our daughter back to us.” There was unspoken, genuine trust in her eyes, a trust apart from Valen’s forced one.
I nodded.
The list of objectives:
Find Jinxy/Lia.
Patch up the gateways (figure out how).
Bring Niv home.
Pray everything was fine back home, though this objective I had the least amount of faith in.
One of the faery-giant’s scions arrived at the estate’s threshold, clad to the teeth with knives and odd contraptions I didn’t even try to understand. It was Jera who went to town with them, having already taken up a trench blazer with hefty slots at the back. Enough to carry the two long blades she stashed there. Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail, what may have been firearms of sorts holstered at her hips, she was every bit as lethal in appearance as she’d been the other day.
Which, come to think of it, how long had it been daytime? Not once did those purple skies darken, the sun seemingly in the same spot it’d been when I first laid eyes on this world.
“What ever happened to your pet?” Neer wondered, glancing around for Tathri.
Jera ignored the question, instead giving me a side-eye. “Choose a weapon. You’ll need it.” I heard her unspoken words loud and clear. I’d need a weapon seeing as I wasn’t offering myself to her so that she could become the weapon.
With a sigh, I shook my head. “I’m good.” Opening my palm, I gradually willed a pocket dagger to form, the metal composing itself from thin air. “See?”
They all shared a dubious look before Jera shook her head solemnly.
“What?” I looked over the dagger. I thought I did a pretty good job.
“And if, say, a dragon were to come at us, then what?” Jera asked. “You’d use that?”
After a moment of silence, I said, “Your world has dragons . . .”
“We may as well kill ourselves now,” Jera sighed, marching past me.
The path winding through the high grass disappeared off into a foggy distance. Valen had given us an explicit relay of the terrain. Jera had told us Jinxy’s last known general direction was north towards the demon’s land, which was our sole destination.
Even though Neer and Valen argued the succubi and incubi had all gone missing, Jera was convinced otherwise, which could only originate from her mutual dislike of the faery race. She had to see it for herself.
I made to catch up with her but hesitated a moment, looking back to the two faeries. “Those two mages, the son and father, what’re you going to do with them?”
They crossed their arms simultaneously.
“Is it too late to add one more request to the list?” I asked knowing the chances were slim.
Neer shook her head but there was a smile there. “Very well, Peter. We will release the mages, but should they breach our border once more, it will be the last thing they do.”
“I understand; thank you.”
“And Peter.” I stopped when Valen caught my shoulder. “While I do not particularly care for your female of choice, I can see that you care for her. If you are who you say you are, if this is not all some elaborate lie, I should caution you against traveling in the open. Though the giant race was not knowledgeable of the Maker’s appearance, the same cannot be said for others. If you are spotted, you should know you and that demon have many enemies. If what I saw when I first met you is the extent of you, then your demon was correct, you may as well kill yourselves now.”
Was this supposed to be reassuring? “It’s not like I have very many choices,” I pointed out. “You and Neer refuse to accompany us.”
“That demon would cut us down the moment she got a chance.”
I glanced out into the field of blue grass, the shadow from the giants’ wall stretching far into the distance. Jera walked the path from the land with a fluency different from how she moved back home. It reminded me of Graves, the disturbingly vague man from the Sanctuary. It wasn’t so much a walk but a prowl, and I think I finally understood that was ho
w everyone here was. The prey or the predator.
I wanted to say Jera wouldn’t hurt them if I asked her not to. I wanted to take her words from earlier at face value, that she wouldn’t hurt those undeserving, but deep down, I knew I would be speaking an uncertainty.
Did I want Neer or Valen’s blood on my hands if she did something unspeakable to them?
If she was mine, so were her sins.
I stepped down from the estate’s loggia, fingers clenching around my dagger. “We’ll be careful—thank you,” I ceded before running to catch up with Jera.
“Did they say anything of interest?”
“Such as?”
“How wonderful I look from behind.”
“Maybe if you had an arrow in your back they would have said that.”
She chuckled.
The dirt crunched beneath our boots, the path neverending as it wound through the high grass to no definite endpoint. No structures in sight, not even irritable bugs. Were the faery-giants’ lands always so barren outside of their city walls and the outer estate?
“Why do they hate demons so much? Why do you hate them?”
“We’re the superior race. Faeries in general don’t take well to superiority.”
“I find that hard to buy. No one hates someone so deeply just because they perceive them as superior.”
“Well it’s true. The Maker created the succubi and incubi before he created all of the other creatures here. He originally created all faery castes to be subservient to demons. It was fine for a time, until the Maker went crazy, slaughtering the faeries he created, remaking them, slaughtering. It wasn’t until Lia convinced him not to that he stopped, but because no one here knows the Maker is the creator of this world and everything within it, the faery-giants only knew him as Lia’s mate. So they blamed the King and Queen of the demons for the death of their kind. However, when they retaliated, it was to the oblivion of the succubi and incubi who had no idea what their king had done.”
“So the Maker started the war only to vanish?”
“Who said he vanished?” Jera asked, peering up at me with grey eyes turned amethyst in the odd daylight.
