Ven looked ahead of her, towards her dragon.
She lurched forward, tried to reach him.
She should have expected the kick. Selish had not hesitated to strike Ouros when he was beaten, why would she hesitate to beat Ven?
The blow forced her to her side, her breath whooshing from her lungs.
Her hair was grabbed before she could recover, back lifted by the harsh hold so that she was scrambling to scratch at the wrist holding her prisoner, free herself from the grip.
“I did not tell you to go to him, did I?” Selish shook her hand and Ven quaked like a doll in the wind. “Now, little djinn, I have had enough fun of your line. I don’t care what power you possess or might hold in your blood. Better it be lost and forgotten than rise someday to trouble me. But I will be merciful.”
Ven could do nothing but turn where angled by the one controlling her. She managed to scramble to her knees and relieve some of the tension against her scalp in the process. It left her kneeling facing where Ouros was still held in the khan’s cruel grip.
His eyes were closed, held tipped back, unable to see her.
Blood made a thin trail over his neck where Emery’s blade had nicked Ouros before Selish took it away.
“Your grandmother betrayed me once in hiding him beneath the seas. Know that if you do the same, I will not be as merciful as I was with her.”
Images filled her mind. A woman Ven had never seen, who bore little resemblance to anyone Ven knew, any pictures of her line she had, but who could be no other than the first djinn to walk their land. The woman Ouros had once loved and been betrayed by. The woman who had been burned and skinned, tortures endured in silence because she had cut out her own—
Ven’s stomach heaved, bitter bile filling her mouth, bending her forward despite the hold in her hair.
She purged her stomach to the image of a knife slicing open a distended belly, pulling the child from it before slicing the throat of the dying mother.
Images no one should ever see, no one should ever have been forced to endure.
No one should ever be forced to know the suffering of the one they loved.
“Slit his throat, and send him from this world, or know that what I did to her will be as nothing to what I will do to him and make you watch every minute of it.”
What had Shara said? What had Selish said? That Ven didn’t know, had never been told?
Told that the grandmother who was hated and revered for her actions with the dragon had acted to save the beast, not condemn him, and been sentenced to a cruelest fate in response?
Selish held the knife before Ven’s eyes, flipped the blade so that the handle was extended towards Havence. “My blood the poison that will end his life.”
Ven reached for the grip.
“Let him go. Let him watch his lover’s approach, death in her eyes.”
Chapter Fifty
Selish was not merciful enough to make the command unbreakable by asserting her will over Havence’s.
His witch’s gaze was clear of the serpent’s intent when he was allowed to look at her and meet her blue eyes.
The blade in her hand ran black with the serpent’s blood.
He could smell the poison running over the steel, sickly sweet to the senses.
Her pawn’s venom was not as strong. The boy at his back a larva when compared with his mistress. Vicious enough that Ouros could feel the poison eating at his system, knew that as weak as he was, injured as he was, it would kill him before long, but the moment Selish’ blood entered his system, before long would be now.
He almost welcomed the inevitable except that once he was gone, the viper wouldn’t waste time in killing Havence, and there was nothing he could do to save the girl.
Ven leaned forward, the knife forgotten in her hand as she reached for him, caught him when he swayed, helped lower him to the ground, his head in her lap.
If nothing else, he would die looking up into her eyes.
This woman who he inexplicably had come to love.
He closed his eyes.
He’d forgotten, for a moment, the reason he’d come for her.
Why the thought brought him a moment of peace before his end, he couldn’t say, but it did.
His hand left a bloody print against her cheek. “I shouldn’t have let you go.”
“Hush. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does, Ven. It truly does.” He brushed his thumb against her lower lip, lips he would have liked to have kissed again. “Amece was my companion when she walked this earth. She was not my mate. She was not the one I loved. I can’t forgive her for what she did, even knowing why.” When she moved to protest, to respond, he shook his head, the rest not needed between them. “It doesn’t matter. It’s all right. Know I chose you.”
His hand slipped from her cheek though he hoped he managed to hide his grimace well enough from her.
“You’ll have to shield, Ven. When I die, make sure to shield. I won’t be able to control the fire or the storm.”
Chapter Fifty-One
Control the fire…
She’d heard the rest, the words that had made her throat tighten with emotion, hope flare in her heart for a moment before she remembered the reality they faced.
He hadn’t said he loved her, but he’d come.
He’d come for her, for no other reason than her.
And he was going to die for her.
But he couldn’t control the fire or the storm.
His blood was tacky on her cheek, pooled on the ground. The basilisk’s blood coated the knife held between them.
She was the last blood djinn and he the last dragon, and if she had the choice, she’d rather he survived than died.
What had he said?
It was will that controlled the blood, that gave it power and strength.
If she concentrated, she could feel his power seeping into the sands with each drop of crimson that spilled on the ground, the banked strength in the black poison coating the steel.
Her will. What she wanted most.
She wanted Ouros to burn. Burn so bright and so strong that even the dry sands of the basilisk’s desert seemed like a jungle oasis in comparison. She wanted the rains to pour until the streets were flooded and the golden grains that could hide the snake were washed away.
A drop of her blood to complete the bond.
She stared at the knife in her hand.
Looked down to meet his stare.
“Burn. I want you to burn, Ouros. Burn and heal and remake this world as you remake yourself.”
“I cannot heal—”
But she could.
She’d healed her mother in the cell, before the snake emerged.
She’d healed her hands, even not knowing she’d willed the same to occur.
Ven brought the blade to her palm.
The world stilled, the basilisk screaming to stop Ven, the king and the prince jolting to obey, Ouros’ eyes widening when she pressed the tip into her skin.
She pulled the goddess’ power from Selish’s blood on the blade even as the poison swirled in Ven’s veins. Ouros didn’t need to transform, didn’t need to will himself to be engulfed in flames when Ven could command it of him herself.
He jerked in her arms, spine bowed out of her grip when the fire caught and spread through his system, jumped from his flesh onto the sands around them, swirled into a plume that enclosed Ven, consumed the khan and the phai as they screamed and tried to back away.
The flames licked at her skin, at her hair. She could feel the way her skin turned to ash when touched by the fire. Her eyes were closed, gaze focused inwards as she watched her flesh burn and heal as she wished it to, willed her flesh whole and untouched by the inferno, and she was saved from the heat’s kiss. She laughed, swallowed a mouthful of liquid fire, fed it through her system the way it fed through Ouros’, morphing blood and bone into something new, something old and reborn.
It would be so easy, to will herself
wings to soar the winds on.
Scales as green as the grasses of Ouros’ sanctuary.
Another time.
She forced the fires to settle within her breast, a match for the heart of flame that lived inside her dragon, that sputtered with weakness from his injuries, that threatened to die out with the basilisk’s venom.
Havence willed her heart to beat for both of them, turned her mind to the other problem at hand.
The goddess who had called sand to close around her, a dripping prism of molten glass that she could not escape and thought Havence could not break through.
The woman was more snake than female, her legs gone, twisted into a serpent’s tail coiled beneath her, the black of her scales crawling over the pale skin of her stomach, lines down her shoulders to the backs of her hands. A flared cowl around her face where once black hair had been.
A second form, that Selish took when Ouros burned out of control and she forced what energy Havence hadn’t stolen into creating a cocoon around herself for protection.
Ven blinked and the fire burned brighter, the glass of Selish’s barrier melted and the snake screamed.
The basilisk had killed her mother. Had threatened Ven. Had done her best to end Ouros.
But Havence couldn’t kill her.
She closed her eyes and willed the rains to fall.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Ouros woke to the melding of fire and ice around him. Hardened crystals of water with frozen sparks within their depths fell against his scales and burst upon the sands beneath his claws.
Where fire and water met, the sand sizzled and dissolved, the earth turning from golden grains to rich loam, soil giving way to the first shoots of green in a world that had long been denied water to bring it life.
A djinn’s blood with a dragon’s magic.
Creation given form.
She’d wished to save her people, wished that he would save her people from the desert.
Ven hadn’t needed him after all.
He turned his neck, careful not to move too far lest his wings or tail strike against the buildings surrounding the great square.
His body ached where he’d landed on human limbs, how long ago?
The broken leg felt hale enough. His lungs weren’t hampered from bruised ribs with every breath. Red flecks of poison overriding his system no longer danced before his eyes.
He shouldn’t be alive.
Twice over he should have died. More than that, and yet he looked down at his arms, the blue scales smattered with matted black, a remnant of the poison that would forever taint his appearance, but he was alive.
Where was she?
His heart froze, head jerking up, eyes staring unblinking despite the rain that tried to hamper his gaze.
A beat echoed the stuttering in his chest.
Sand and rain and snow and flame, blood tinged and pulsing in a vortex around the beat.
I control the fire. And I control the storm.
He knew that voice, the mind who spoke the words into his, sepulcher and strong.
Gone was the woman who had debated her choices, who had wallowed in her own doubts, didn’t know or trust herself.
The woman who stood before him was something much more than she had been.
But I’m still yours, if the choice remains.
The winds calmed and the frozen drops from overhead became a mist that cleaned the air between them.
“I chose you once, Ouros. Know my choice is the same if you’ll have me.”
The gold of her skin burned brighter now, red tinging between the tears in her clothing, not the stains of blood he thought they must be, something other that hadn’t been before. He remembered the feel of her curls between his fingers, but the twists of her hair were straight, gleamed against her shoulders where her tresses sat.
She kept her gaze away from him, turned down so he could not see her eyes.
He wanted to touch her chin, make her meet his gaze.
Such a risk, when his claws were so sharp and her skin so soft.
“Please look at me.” His voice rumbled with a growl, no softly whispered word to calm her towards him, not in this form when he could not take her in his arms, when the only choice that mattered was the one she’d already made. “Look at me, love.”
The corners of her eyes tightened, squeezed shut, locked him out.
Ouros breath caught, tongue tied at her rebuke until she tipped her chin up, and it was not just his breath that caught when her eyes met his.
Blue eyes, where the sky met the sea, that held the depths of the storms and the calm of the deepest oceans. Eyes that spoke to peace and salvation and devastation all in one.
Eyes that had calmed the dragon when first he met her gaze, that enthralled him to her now, human no more, not dragon nor snake.
Djinn. She was Djinn.
The bonds of her families’ truths and betrayals, of her people’s fears and hatreds, of his doubts, swept away in the birth of her power.
I control the storm.
The balance to the tempests he could call.
Sweet Winds, she was everything he’d never realized he wanted.
“My choice will never change, Beautiful Witch.”
I can trap you, Ouros. What Amece did to you, I can do with a fraction of a thought. You are a god of the land and sky, the master of storms, and I can stop you.
He dipped his head forward, his jaw resting on the ground before her, the distance between them allowed only because it was not a supplicant’s place to approach a god. “I never claimed to be a master of anything. I only ever said I was as I am.” His lips split in the only smile a dragon could offer, a baring of fangs held tightly closed, an offering of peace between them. “I hoped Amece could temper my storms. I knew she could not. You,” he breathed her in, this djinn of will and wanting, who brought the scent of the sea with her though she’d touched its bounds just once, carried the spring of fresh grass in her essence regardless of only stepping in a single field. “You, Havence, are all I’ve ever wished for.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
Havence drew in a ragged breath, her fingers clenched in Ouros hair while he did wonderful, beautiful things to her body. His mouth teased her until she ignited, fire burning through her nerves with pleasure, the keening cry that slipped from her lips begging for more, met with his growl of satisfaction and promise to give.
If it was an hour or a lifetime, she couldn’t say, but his body curved around hers, the heat of him keeping away the cold of the winter snows falling just beyond the entrance to their cave.
They had stayed a year.
One year, and the world had changed.
Grasses grew in the great city streets of Alaluat. The temples of water were opened freely to the public. The sands were retreating, consumed by the spread of green over the landscape, the fresh flush of new life brought by the coming of the storms, the falling of the rains, both summer squall and fall shower.
They had remained in the capital, and the people, the Khanastani who had always feared her, had walked up the stone steps of the citadel to kneel before the throne the dead khan had failed.
Apologies, pleadings, the begging prayers of men and women hoping to repair the destruction centuries of ignorance and fear had wrought between Ven and her family and the people they had served, had echoed in the silence of the room, heard and unanswered, because she didn’t know how to answer.
She knew the guards who had come to stand before her and beg forgiveness.
The priests, all of them, who had called her name with the same misplaced reverence they had offered to their snake goddess had prostrated themselves before her chair.
Her chair, or the dragon who stood sentinel at her back.
And at the setting of the sun each day, he would walk through the fires to stand at her side as a man, and she would turn to his strength, the boundless strength of the world in motion around them, and he would hold her as the clouds filled the skies and t
he storms let loose their bounty, and she fed her will to the rains to calm them when the earth was watered or continue the deluge if it needed more.
But the rains were not for her.
And she no more trusted the people who bowed before her than they trusted her.
So she had stepped upon the dragon’s shoulder one morning, wrapped her arms around his neck as tightly as she could, and he had flown her home.
Back to his, their, cave.
And the rains still came.
The seasons relearned the natural changing of the world, moved from winter to spring and spring to summer to fall.
Ouros placed his hand over her stomach, let his palm drift slowly up her abdomen, cup her breast, settle in the valley between, over the beating of her heart, timed to the beating of his.
She had red scales now, to match the blue that he bore.
Red, faint scales that edged the ridges of her collarbone and shoulders, made ringed patterns down her arms and across her spine.
He’d kissed each one the first night after Selish…
Until you learn to love more than yourself, to yearn for more than a power that will never fulfill you… Until you learn and can use the power you possess to save the life of another creature, you are bound to this form. Basilisk in name only. God of nothing. Just a woman, like any other woman, wishing for more. By my blood, so mote it be.
Ven hadn’t killed the snake. She’d stopped Ouros from killing his sister, the broken creature that had crawled away, broken to two legs, no second form to ease her journey into ignominy.
No one had emerged to help their fallen goddess.
If they had, Ven wouldn’t have stopped Ouros from severing the ties between the pairing.
She raised her hand and linked her fingers through his. The snow dampened the sounds of the world around them, enclosed them in their little haven beyond the thoughts and prayers of those who would call to them. “Can we fly from here? Can we see the world beyond these hills?” Can we choose to leave, when we are the hope they have prayed for all these years?
He couldn’t have failed to feel that faint pulse that beat out of time with their hearts.
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