“I don’t understand what this means,” Silence murmured.
“We must draw down Mum’s, Jasmine’s, Rose’s and the magics of all the other Nadirii who fell,” Elena explained.
“And it must be yours,” Melisse told the prophesied. “The four of yours.”
“I would include Serena,” Elena said.
Melisse inclined her head.
Ha-Lah was glancing around before she asked, “Is this not normally done?”
“It is avoided, unless needed, such as in a time like this,” Rebecca shared. “We, all of us, absorb magic naturally. It is not done to make maneuvers to take more than we can organically absorb. But beyond that, it is generally agreed it is not right to take more than our fair share. But mostly, too much magic is a burden to bear. It can get unwieldy. It can make your command of it unreliable. And unreliable magic is as you would expect, not good, especially for those who try to use it.”
“As my command of it is already unreliable, is this wise?” Farah asked.
“Risks are never wise, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be taken,” Nandra answered.
“And I would assume, as you are the prophesied,” Melisse put in, “that you would be able to wield much more than most.”
Although this made sense, none of the women at the stones looked comfortable with that.
But none of them said a word against it.
“And thus, we have a plan,” Melisse decreed.
All nodded.
“We understand our assignments?” Melisse pressed.
All nodded.
Melisse looked amongst them.
And then she whispered…
“So mote it be.”
137
The Shimmering
King Mars
Guest Bedchamber, Sky Citadel, Sky Bay
AIREN
“I do not like this,” Mars growled to his wife who sat astride him in their bed as he rested his shoulders against the headboard.
She was wearing far too many clothes.
This being naught but a nightgown.
Though she was also wearing his marital chain, which soothed him.
But after she had shared what she had shared that she’d learned from the Great Coven, even his chain she wore so proudly, something he loved immensely, did not provide enough comfort.
“They think it’s the right thing to do,” Silence replied.
“You are admirable with your magic, bellezza. But it is new to you. Is it not important you have a firm grasp on what you have before you take in more?”
Silence put her hands on his chest and leaned down to get closer to him.
“I think that evidence suggests that the Beast has risen, Mars. And if he has, I think we need all the power we can get.”
Mars looked beyond her, the feeling in his stomach not one he enjoyed, even if the words she said were right.
She tugged on the point of his beard and his gaze came back to her.
“We are prophesied,” she reminded him.
“The prophecy is that we are the only ones who can fight this creature with any hope of victory. There is no guarantee of defeating it,” he reminded her in return.
“We are formidable,” she whispered, using his own words of months ago as to what he felt of their union.
And they were. He believed that to his bones.
In truth, his unease in that moment was not simply this information shared after she went with the other women to meet the Coven.
It was the news that the Beast was amongst them.
Men, he could and would fight, doing this at all times with great confidence he would prevail.
And he was learning his wife had skills and power, which she used deftly, and of which he was tremendously proud.
But Silence flinging balls of fire at sorcerers and Silence facing the Beast were two vastly different things.
“Mars,” she called, and the focus on her he had lost, he again gained.
“I wish to make children with you,” he said softly.
“I know,” she replied in the same tone as her beautiful face grew gentle and her eyes turned quicksilver.
“I wish to watch you grow old,” he continued, moving his hands from her hips to her waist and upward.
“And I the same with you. Both, my darling king.”
He slid one hand up her spine to the back of her neck and around, to cup her jaw while he wound his other arm around her to pull her closer.
“It is a contradiction,” he murmured. “For if this had not befallen us, this fate we share, I would not have met you. But now that it is here, I dread it with a power that is almost paralyzing.”
“We will prevail,” she assured him with a strength in her tone he wished he could find in his heart.
“I have never felt this feeling before,” he admitted.
She cast him a playful grin. “Welcome to the world we all inhabit where we understand we are but human and not gods walking the earth.”
He did not share her humor, but he gave her a smile regardless.
Silence read it was false.
“Mars,” she said soothingly, moving one hand up to stroke along his collarbone.
“I do not mind the weight of Triton on my shoulders, Silence. I mind it on yours.”
“We will prevail,” she repeated, trailing the fingers of her other hand low, down his chest, his stomach and beyond.
“My love,” he grunted when her little hand wrapped around his thickening cock.
She dropped closer, stroking him as she whispered against his lips. “We will prevail.”
He surged into her hand.
Her eyes grew lazy.
He liked that look on his wife, always very much liked that particular look on his wife, so much so, he slid his fingers back into her hair and formed a fist in its silk.
His Silence positioned his hardness to her sex and impaled herself on him.
“Silence,” he murmured against her mouth as she took him, her eyes open, staring into his.
She breathed against his mouth.
He traced his hand at her hip to a cheek of her arse and squeezed encouragingly.
Silence obliged.
“I love you, Mars,” she said.
“And I you, my beautiful Silence.”
She clamped her hand on his neck and moved faster.
“We will prevail,” she gasped, beginning to move wildly atop him, his queen, always running so hot.
“We will prevail,” he growled, assisting her by bucking up inside her.
“The formidables,” she breathed.
“Yes,” he grunted.
And then he felt her sex tighten around his cock, drawing his climax along with hers.
But right before they both gave over, Mars clutched his queen tight in both hands.
For he saw the silver in her eyes disappear completely when they blazed twin flames of fire.
King Aramus
Guest Bedchamber, Sky Citadel, Sky Bay
AIREN
“They have had experience of this. For fuck’s sake, Elena is a bloody warrior,” Aramus groused, pacing the floor before their bed in their bedchamber. “You have not.”
“It was not unknown to us that we would reach this point, my husband,” Ha-Lah pointed out, sitting atop their bed, her legs crossed under her, wearing a brief, surf-blue nightgown that he knew from seeing it right then, but also having seen it before that he liked on her.
Though he liked more taking it off.
She also had a webby, teal shawl wrapped around her arms to keep out the chill.
“It is not. It is also not unknown that I would not like it when we did.”
She sunk her white teeth in her full lower lip.
This was always something he enjoyed watching her do, thinking of those lips under his, around his cock, or just watching them move with her words.
He did not like it in the now.
“Do you not think it’s best you understand the
powers you have when you must use them in times like these before you take on more?” he demanded.
“Yes,” she said calmingly, “but I don’t have that choice.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “And that’s the part I do not bloody like.”
His queen threw off her shawl, pushed up to her knees and then fell to her hands, whereupon she crawled to the edge of the bed, calling, “Aramus.”
Due to their current circumstances—his queen travelling distances magically to meet with the Great Coven, learning she must draw in power that might be a burden, and most importantly, the bloody, sirens-damned Beast possibly having risen—the biting of her lip might not have had its regular effect on him.
But watching her crawl to him did.
He moved directly to the bed and stood before her as she again sat back to her arse and reached out to him with both hands, wrapping her fingers at the skin of his waist.
“You do know, this is why I was brought to you,” she said softly.
He shook his head and said, not softly, “I know no such thing.”
Her lips parted.
That, he also felt.
But he ignored it and carried on speaking.
“Why you were brought to me was to show me your love and allow me to give you mine. It was to open my eyes to the true understanding of what being the Sea King meant and delivering me to the place I would do something about it. It was to mitigate my temper so I would be a more patient ruler. It was to make children with me. It was to reign at my side. It was to leave Mar-el to our son stronger, showing him the way for any future is to be brave enough to make righteous change. It was so that we could argue and reconcile, debate and decide, make each other laugh and make each other climax.”
He took her head in both hands, bent to her and finished.
“I refuse to believe the Beast had anything to do with us finding each other, Ha-Lah. What I believe is that you were destined to be mine and I was destined to be yours and that is the beginning and the end of it.”
Her crystal eyes warm on him, she pushed up to her knees, skating her hands up his bare chest as she did so, and curling her fingers around his shoulder in the end.
“A love like that can defeat all evil,” she whispered.
He wished he had that same conviction.
“You must trust in that, my darling,” she pushed, one hand disengaging from his shoulder to glide down his chest. “And you must admit, there is a lot to trust in.”
He definitely could admit that.
Though in the now, he did not for he made an unintelligible noise when she pressed her hand into his sleep pants and found his cock.
“Wife,” he grunted.
“Trust in us. Trust in our friends,” she urged, her fingers tightening, and he automatically thrust in her hand. “Trust in love.”
“I trust in your love,” he muttered.
Her eyes smiled. “That will work.”
Then her body dropped, she released his shaft, pulled his sleep pants down and treated him to the vision of her beauty on her knees at the edge of the bed, working his cock with her mouth.
When her fingernails dug into his arse, he took her cue and thrust gently into her moist suckling, groaning when she began to suckle harder.
He was about to drop his head back and close his eyes to concentrate on it fully, when her gaze shifted up to his.
At what he saw, at what he had never seen before, but it was right there before him in that moment—the blue crystal of her gaze turning to the blue and white crash of the waves of the sea—Aramus suddenly withdrew.
He ignored Ha-Lah emitting a sound of protest at the loss of him as he took her under the arms, dragged her up the bed, then put a knee to the mattress that he’d hauled her into.
He came down atop her, disposed of her panties with a violent tug along with a ripping noise, and then he buried himself inside his queen.
“Darling,” she breathed, wrapping her legs about his arse.
“Yes,” he grunted, driving fast and deep into her tight wet.
“Aramus,” she said urgently, lifting her hips to receive more from his thrusts.
He put his lips to hers, stared into the seas of her eyes, and rumbled, “Yes, baby.”
“You…your…by Medusa, darling, your…” She clasped his head in both hands as his balls got tight, he lifted her hips even further to take his thrusts, and right before they both came, she cried…
“Eyes.”
King True
Guest Bedchamber, Sky Citadel, Sky Bay
AIREN
“Caro,” Farah said soothingly.
“I suppose it wouldn’t matter if I said I didn’t like it,” he replied.
He was sitting at the end of the bed.
She was sitting with her legs curved under her on the rugs on floor before him, her thick, dark hair down about her shoulders, the silk of a rose-red nightgown peeking from the opening of her pine-green velvet dressing gown.
And she had just told him that she would need to attend a ritual with the other women, her Sisters of the Beast, to draw in more power.
Power she not only did not yet fully know how to wield, apparently, it wasn’t the most sterling idea for her to hold that much at all.
“I know not what to say to make you feel better,” she murmured miserably.
“And this is the crux of the matter,” he replied gently. “Our lives are not our own.”
She tipped her head to the side and curled her lips slightly up. “Is anyone’s life truly their own, bello?”
“Not just anyone has to confront the Beast,” he replied.
“This is troubling you,” she muttered, causing him to blink very slowly.
“It doesn’t trouble you?” he asked.
“My love, even if we were not prophesied to confront the Beast, we have no control over the lives we lead. You know that.”
“I like to think I have some control,” he grumbled.
At that, his wife grinned fully.
“Yes, well, you are king,” she teased. “So, I suppose you have more control than most everyone else, outside of other kings, of course.”
“Of course,” he murmured, his own lips twitching.
The humor in her lovely topaz eyes changed to warmth when she shared, “I have faith.”
This was True’s issue.
The things he had seen. The things he had done. The things he had lost. All of this dogging his every moment, even following him into his dreams.
He lacked faith.
“True,” Farah called.
He focused on his wife.
“We have different gods, no?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered.
“I do not know a great deal about your gods. Though I know they look after you. They give you wisdom and power and magic. My gods give energy and balance and clear-headedness. If we listen, if we believe, they guide us to where we need to be. They give us the gifts we need to see things through.”
She pushed up to her knees and moved toward True in a manner he opened his legs, and she settled between them, her hands on his thighs up high, close to his groin.
“My gift is you,” she whispered, her words taking his mind from her touch so close to his groin.
He took her jaw in both is hands and whispered in return, “Darling.”
“I have to have faith in my gods that they did not guide me through my life…to you, only to take you away. But True?”
“Yes, my beloved,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to her mouth not only to watch her speak, but because her hand had moved to cover what was stiffening between his legs.
“Even if we only have our now, what we have shared…” Her fingers moved to the string of his sleep pants and pulled it, diving in so he had her, skin-against-skin at his shaft. “I could not wake up in the morning, and I would have lived the life I needed, having fallen asleep at your side.”
“Farah,” he growled.
She surged up, pull
ed her dressing gown off her shoulders and let it fall, pooling at her feet.
She then lifted the long skirt of her nightgown to her hips and pushed down her panties, so they fell to her ankles.
She kept her nightgown up as she stepped out of her panties and climbed astride him, knees to the bed on either side of him.
He held his cock ready for her to lower upon, which she did, and when he had her, he groaned, a noise mingling seductively with her moan.
She touched each of his eyes with her lips before she rested her mouth against his, not to kiss, to be close to mingle her breath with his, her gaze with his as she curled her fingers around the sides of his neck and moved atop him.
“Does this not feel like it is the life we need?” she asked.
He curved his fingers in her bottom, digging the pads in, answering, “I will not argue that.”
“Every minute with you is a treasure,” she whispered.
At her words, automatically, his fingers dug in harder.
She started moving faster.
“I have earned you,” she said fiercely, squeezing him with her sex, making him grunt and use her arse to urge her to go faster. “I fought in this life, and I won,” she declared. “You are my victory. I have that and I will never lose it. No matter what happens.”
“And you are mine,” he replied, moving one hand to clasp her about the waist and take over, drawing her up and slamming her down.
“We have already won, True.”
“Yes,” he groaned, his balls contracting, his orgasm imminent. “We have won, my darling.”
“Yes,” she hissed against his mouth.
He was about to close his eyes with his climax, knowing with the way she tightened like a fist around his shaft, she was on the verge of hers…
When he caught the topaz of her eyes fading to vibrant leaf green.
And the instant she cried out her climax, he shot his seed inside his wife.
Prince Cassius
Bedchamber of the Prince Regent, Sky Citadel, Sky Bay
AIREN
“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to collect Theodora and Aelia, board a ship, and sail for The Mystics at the break of dawn on the morrow?” Cassius suggested as Elena walked in from her dressing chamber wearing a pair of slouchy-knit socks and the long-sleeved undershirt he had worn that day.
The Rising Page 20
