by D. D. Chance
“Can we go inside?” she murmured, already drifting that way.
I scowled, torn. “Why?”
“Because I’m supposed to teach you magic, King Aiden.” Once again, her voice took on an otherworldly quality, one that was slightly unnerving. Then she blinked, and this time, she turned and scowled back at me, her fists clenching.
“Okay, so here’s the deal. I’m supposed to teach you how to access your magic, and, news flash, I don’t know how. I’m hoping there’s some information in this little cottage that gives me a clue, because otherwise, I kind of think we’re screwed. Does that clear things up for you?”
I grimaced. I didn’t trust this place, and I didn’t trust how Belle was reacting to it either, but who was I to say?
“Then we go in,” I agreed, and lifted a hand when she would have started toward the front door. “There’s no record of this retreat house anywhere but in the academy, you know. I had Cyril check the archives. There’s no record of any buildings outside the academy proper. Which means only those who are affiliated with the academy have ever seen it.”
“Yeah?” Belle frowned. “Is that a bad thing?”
I shrugged. “It’s neither good nor bad, but it is an unknown, and that makes it potentially dangerous. When we’re inside, until we know more, touch nothing except me.”
A blush scored her cheeks, but Belle nodded. And when I held out my hand, she took it without hesitation. Linked like this, I felt how strong her anxiety was. She was gaining confidence, surrounded as she was with all the tools of her trade, but she still felt oddly unmoored to me, spinning in the wind.
Maybe what she needed to ground herself could be found within these cottage walls.
As we mounted the stairs, the door opened to the small building, and Belle exhaled a short, quick breath. I didn’t bother explaining to her that nothing could remain locked against me if I didn’t wish it, certainly not in the Fae realm, not even a construct of a Hogan witch. I pushed the door wide to reveal a room open all the way to the windows, with a cutout niche for a kitchen, and two doors off to the left that were open as well.
Belle’s manner changed abruptly, and she tugged me forward.
“It’s exactly the same, exactly!” she blurted. “I saw it a few times as a little girl, but it seemed so much bigger then.” She pulled away from me but held her hands close to her body, clearly remembering my order not to touch anything. Darting forward, she peered into the two rooms beyond their simple doors.
“All of it’s the same!” she announced again, with the delighted laughter of a far younger girl, then she headed for the kitchen. Halfway across the room, however, she stopped, her head cocking with curiosity as she stared at the far wall empty of anything but paint.
“What is it?” I asked.
She frowned, furrowing her brow. “There was a bookcase in that space,” she said. “At least, there was back home.”
I studied the empty space and made the connection well before she did, if she made it at all. I suspected her great-grandmother had stolen books from the academy, taking them to the human realm, books that Belle no longer had. But that didn’t make sense. Everything I’d seen about these witches indicated they treated their valuables with respect. So perhaps the books hadn’t been a part of this cottage? Perhaps they’d come into Reagan Hogan’s possession later?
“Oh, wow. There are more cups here—just like mine.”
I blinked to see that Belle had made it to the kitchen and had stopped in front of a display of ornate cups. She lifted her pouch and drew out the small cup I remembered from her tavern, holding it up for me to compare it as I approached. It was indeed the same style as the ones on the kitchen counter. She made a face as she rolled her treasure in her hand, her eyes darting from it to the display on the counter.
“What are you thinking?” I asked, and she shrugged apologetically.
“Man, I don’t even know anymore,” she said. “I expected to waltz in here and have the answer to my question present itself to me, plain as day.”
I lifted my brows. “Your question?”
“How to help you access your magic,” she said, still nervously running her thumb over the worn rim of her cup. The cups on the counter were pristine, while Belle’s showed the wear of long usage. “I mean, all the books back at the academy say is that I ‘help you.’ It doesn’t say how. And I know when we kissed, things—shifted between us, but did it actually do anything from a magical perspective? I mean, how can you tell? If the Hogan witches were required to…you know, hook up with their kings in order for the magic to take hold, if that were the only path, I think the witches who returned from the Fae realm would have been way more traumatized.”
I snorted. “Do you now?”
“I totally do. But maybe I’m missing a more obvious trigger.” She held up the cup. “You filled this full of mead the first time you saw me, back in my bar. Why?”
I shrugged. No reason to lie, now. “To tie you to the realm, and to me. You drink it, we become more tightly linked. You can’t as easily get away from me, after that.”
She snorted. “Clearly. But there you go—the cup was the star of that show, you know? Not anything we did together. I mean, I’ve kissed you twice already. Do you feel any more magical because of that?”
I lifted a wry brow. “No, but I don’t think we have nearly enough experience yet with that approach.”
She flashed me a quick grin so radiant it made my heart stutter a beat, then pressed on. “But we do know that drinking from the cup matters—even Cyril involved it in his little ceremony.” She set her cup down next to the others on the counter. “There has to be some sort of trigger connected to its use, and there has to be a reason why my great-grandmother brought only one cup back.”
I tightened my jaw. That was the most logical thing Belle had said since we’d entered the cottage. “She split the cups,” I mused. “The bond was broken, but now it can be remade.”
It made sense, even by the slippery, dangerous logic of the Fae. I gestured to the cups. “Perhaps the simple answer is, we drink.”
And just like that, a soft hush of magic swirled through the air, and two of the cups—including Belle’s—started filling with mead.
23
Belle
This was a trap. I knew it was a trap.
I felt like I was running toward the edge of a cliff that I knew would crumble beneath me and yet I couldn’t stop. I watched the cups filling with that intensely sweet liquor I didn’t even like, had never liked, yet I could feel my fingers twitch toward the cup, wanting to snatch it up and drink the contents down. Part of it was nerves, part of it was fear. But most of it was hoping that this resolved the problem, that it was as simple as two people drinking from ensorceled cups to return the magic to the High King of the Fae.
Even thinking that made me want to roll my eyes. “There’s no way it will be this easy,” I muttered.
Opposite me, Aiden huffed a low chuckle, but I could hear the intensity that lay beneath it. He was reacting the same way I was, maybe more. He was making this into some sort of intimate act when it shouldn’t be. Then again, everything with Aiden was an intimate act. Even him standing two feet away from me felt like an intrusion on my personal space—not a violation, exactly, but I was so damned aware of him that it made it difficult to breathe.
“Nothing about working with a witch is easy,” he agreed. “But there is some magic here. And it’s magic on hallowed ground, where your great-grandmother and all who came before her had sworn to protect the high family.”
I snorted. “The high family she then left.”
“Left, but didn’t leave bereft, at least not in her own mind,” Aiden countered. How could he be thinking rationally? The cups had stopped filling, which had taken far too long, the liquid bubbling merrily along. I knew that meant these cups were fuller than we gave them credit for. This would be a truly deep draft.
I couldn’t wait any longer. I reached out fo
r my familiar cup, then jerked my hand back, my gaze lifting to Aiden’s. He watched me with his icy-blue eyes. “Do you have any sense of how this is supposed to go?”
He grimaced. “No. I don’t even know if this ritual was performed during my grandfather’s time—Cyril had no information about how King Orin learned his magic from Reagan Hogan, only that he had. I guess we drink and see what happens.”
Instead of reaching for the cup, however, he moved his hand to mine, clasping it. I shivered despite myself, thrilling at the touch of his skin. There was no way he missed the sudden uptick in my heartbeat, the flush of my cheeks. I always reacted to him, but even he seemed to realize this was too much.
“You’re safe, Belle,” he murmured, which only served to twist my nerves more tightly. I wasn’t safe. There was nothing about this Fae that was safe, yet I only squeezed his hand harder. We both reached for the cups, me slightly awkwardly as my right hand was clasped in his. My left hand was no slouch, though. I managed to find the cup and lifted it without spilling any contents. We brought the cups closer, and Aiden lifted his slightly toward me.
“To magic,” he said, and I smiled, not knowing whether to laugh or sob.
“To magic,” I whispered back. Then we both tipped back the cups and drank.
Aiden’s hand on mine was the only thing that allowed me to remain anchored to this plane. The mead coursed through me, full and sweet, transporting me to what felt like a state of pure ether. I was a weightless wind, blowing out in all directions, with only one fixed point, his grip on me. I couldn’t see, couldn’t smell, couldn’t hear—but for one moment, I felt like I was everywhere and nowhere, all things and nothing, knowing everything, yet as blind, deaf, and innocent as a newborn kitten.
Something far away cracked across my senses, the sound of metal on stone, and all my awareness swept back into sharp focus. My eyes jolted open and I clapped my hands to my mouth. Aiden lay crumpled on the floor, both cups on their sides next to him, empty.
“Aiden!” I dropped to his side, rolling him over, laying my head on his chest. His heart beat, but frantically, erratically, and as I pulled my head away, I realized he breathed only in shallow fits and starts. I wanted to pull him upright, but it was like moving a mountain. I lifted a shaking hand to brush his hair away from his brow, but his mouth went slack, and his skin began losing color.
“Aiden,” I tried again. This is all wrong! He couldn’t be harmed here, not on the grounds of his own castle. My great-grandmother could not have created any sort of spell that would cause him harm. We were healers after all. It was our greatest gift. We could kill the king if he attacked us—maybe—but Aiden hadn’t attacked me. He’d lifted his cup to me and drank, nothing more. So what was happening here?
“Think, think, think!” I ordered myself. The cups. The cups were important. They had ensured some magic, some movement, but what else seemed to work? I mean—there was the kiss. That certainly had helped me, but the whole point of this was—
“Belle?” Aiden moaned. My heart leapt into my throat as I saw an ashy, blue pallor slip over his face. I needed to think, but there was no time!
Instead, I lifted my hand to his cheek and touched my lips to his.
Nothing happened. Or at least, nothing happened to Aiden, not that I could tell, while a sudden jolt of fire ripped through me. His breathing was deeper now, fuller, and I leaned back over him, putting both hands on either side of his face, cradling his strong jawbone. I leaned down to kiss him again.
This time, his body stiffened, then convulsed, and I was half afraid he would toss me off him and throw me up against the wall, jacking me up good in the process. Instead, his arms clamped around me, his broad hand gripping my hip and hauling me onto him, while his other hand snaked up and grabbed me behind my neck, pressing me close. I had no choice but to deepen the kiss.
Oh, darn.
Some distant part of my brain recognized the irony that here we were kissing again, while the whole point of the cups was to avoid that, but the far greater portion of my brain truly didn’t give a damn.
I wanted Aiden. I wanted him so badly, more than I’d ever wanted anyone before. I could feel him hard and ready beneath me, and even though I wasn’t all that experienced with sex, I knew enough that I could figure out how to get this particular job done. A deep and profound ache woke within me, a kindling fire that spread from my belly outward, radiating with need. Abruptly, Aiden pushed me up, away from him, and I stared down into his eyes, which sparked with fire.
“Is it the need of you or the taking that I require?” he gasped, and I widened my eyes in horror. I understood what he was asking, but I didn’t know the answer.
“I don’t know,” I moaned, though every inch of my body screamed against the idea that I would need to delay my gratification even a second longer than I had to. There simply wasn’t any way that his ability to wield magic was fueled solely by lust instead of fulfillment. Right? That couldn’t be a thing. Hogan magic healed, it didn’t leave a gaping hole desperate to be filled. And, for fuck’s sake, the Fae had never been known for delaying their gratification about anything…right?
Softly, almost tentatively, I rocked against Aiden, pressing the vee of my thighs up against his hard shaft. He huffed out a sharp breath.
“Tell me something you’ve learned today,” I urged. “Some magic that you haven’t been able to wield before. We should be able to figure out if it’s the wanting instead of the having that fuels you.”
“Ohhh,” he moaned, as I pressed more intimately against him. “Vision,” he gasped out, and I didn’t need to turn my head to see the portals opening up around the room, windows to his kingdom. I lifted my head, gaping, and Aiden growled beneath me at the pressure my movement applied to his body. His hands dropped to lock on my hips, and his voice sounded so tortured that I tore my gaze away from the portals to stare back at him.
“Don’t…move, Belle,” he whispered. “Don’t even breathe.”
24
Aiden
My mind was dizzy with need, but I felt unmistakable magic coursing through me. This wasn’t some illusion. Belle perching on top of me was definitely having an effect.
Was that effect purely physical or was it magical as well? There was no disputing the portals that had opened up around the room. I’d never been able to summon them so easily or so well. They were as sharp and clear as the portals that the djinn had pulled up during our training.
But what did that mean exactly? I anchored Belle to my body, not at all wanting to acknowledge the possibility that it was need that fueled this magic and nothing else. She whimpered a little, and her heat swept over me, her desire cresting high. She was human, and humans were by nature at a disadvantage to Fae desire, but she was a witch as well. That normally served to blunt all other impulses. The animosity between the Fae and witches went back millennia because of this, apparently all the way back to when Fae first walked the earth.
But she was my witch, which turned everything on its head yet again.
“Aiden, please,” she whispered, and I glanced back to her, a second before she leaned down to take my mouth with hers. The spasm of her kiss deepened into a frenzy as my body responded, and for a long, delirious few moments, I gave myself over to her mouth, her tongue, her hands tangling in my hair, her body pressing so close to me, I felt as if she was going to fuse to my skin. It was all I could do to keep us both clothed, because I knew if I didn’t, it would be all over.
At length, she drew in a long, shaky breath and leaned back from me, staring down. “What the hell is happening to me? What is this magic?” Her hair was tousled, her skin flushed, her lips full and red from the roughness of kissing me.
“You tell me,” I bit back. “I know you didn’t know your great-grandmother well, but pretend for a moment you did. What is she doing here? What magic is she instilling?”
“A bond of escalation,” Belle said, then blinked as if she was surprised by her own words. As soon as she
said them, though, something hard and certain shifted within me, this time something definitely not entirely physical.
“What is this bond?” I growled as she leaned back more, though if she hoped to get away from me, she was sorely mistaken.
She blinked down at me, but her eyes were unfocused, as if she was pulling from a long-ago memory.
“I can see handwriting in a book,” she murmured. “Writing out the spell, but above it, there’s the explanation already inked in careful lettering. A magic that grows by what it feeds upon, a magic whose wielders are stronger together than apart.”
I turned my head, taking in the portals that I’d conjured out of thin air with the help of the Hogan witch sprawled over my body with the abandon of a lover.
“So it is intimacy that’s needed here.” I could think of no better way of augmenting my own magic, but Belle remained lost in her visions, her hand lifting as if to trace the words as they were written.
“No—I mean yes, but it isn’t required and I don’t…know if it’s desire or fulfillment, or both. I can’t see the hand that writes the spell. It’s gloved, but feminine. I assume it’s my great-grandmother.”
“I assure you no Fae would write into being a spell that stopped them from taking their pleasure,” I informed her dryly.
“See? I totally thought the same thing, but you did stop,” she countered, pushing herself up higher on my chest to stare down at me. “If you were so set on ‘taking your pleasure,’ which is the goofiest way I’ve ever heard that stated, by the way, why did you stop?”
It was a reasonable enough question, but it was the emotion behind it that pricked my attention. Was that frustration I felt? Was Belle as eager as I was to take this physical connection further? And the question remained, because of course it had to, was the magic I was able to wield stronger because of her desire? Would it serve me better to keep her wanting me, needing me, than to take her completely once and for all?
