“You’re going to have to fall asleep for this to work,” whispered Vel.
“I can do that.” He slid his hands down the front of her body. He heard Vel sigh and bend forward to take off her girlshorts.
“Does this help?” she asked.
“Immensely.”
Damon pulled his shaft out of his own undershorts and shifted into position behind her. It felt so wonderfully lewd for Vel to be offering herself up to him so casually. She was taking a risk, with Kastet and Lilian no more than a room or two over. She loved him enough to take that risk, to put her own reputation at stake simply so he could get off.
He slid his cock into her. She was wet, and he wasn’t sure whether he was surprised by that or not. Thinking back to his earlier consideration, he was the only man under the inn’s roof. He had bedded Kastet, Lilian, and Wrath, and yet Vel was the one with enough confidence to come to his bed, to let herself be claimed by him for the night.
He took her slowly from behind, hugging her body to his chest. He cupped her breasts as he began thrusting with enough vigor to make his bed creak. Vel set her hand on his leg and squeezed in warning, which he found insanely hot. It was almost like being back in the tower, coupling in secret just outside of their aesta’s disapproving gaze.
Damon went slow, easing himself in and out of Vel’s womanhood with restrained movements. It was torture of the most pleasurable sort, and not just for him. He could feel Vel’s tiny, stifled reactions, as though him going slow made her that much more aware of her own noises and needs.
He whispered her name into her ear, over and over again. She moaned his name back, squealing breathlessly as he played with her nipples. She was too hot, too cute, and too tight for him to hold out for very long.
Damon had enough sense this time around to finish against Vel’s nightshirt, rather than inside her. She let out an annoyed, sleepy groan, dazed from her own pleasure.
“You made a mess on my shirt,” she whispered peevishly.
“I’ll give you one of mine to wear instead.”
“As though we could make it any more obvious what we’ve been up to,” she said.
“You’re already wearing one of my shirts, Vel. It’s not as though it’ll make a difference.”
“I guess.”
“I love you.”
She turned her head to kiss him. “I love you.”
They stayed like that for long minutes, long enough for Damon to start to forget their initial purpose. He wasn’t sure who fell asleep first, but eventually, they both drifted off.
CHAPTER 16
Damon was on horseback, with Vel sitting in the saddle in front of him, an echo of their posture in bed. They were galloping through the hills in the midst of a massive storm, black clouds thick enough to choke out the sun’s light and make day feel like night.
Rain came down in a constant deluge of pelting drops, which he tasted each time he took a breath. Throughout the surrounding area, Damon could see a range of enemies, from Avarice’s copper spiders, to rampaging tau, Merinian knights on horseback, Merinian mercenaries on foot.
One of the copper spiders leapt toward Damon and Vel from the left. Damon fumbled for his myrblade, which wasn’t where it should have been, but there was no need. A bolt of lightning tore through the air, striking the copper spider in mid-leap and flinging it backward.
A familiar shout came from the top of the hill they were heading toward. Damon saw Ria riding a jet-black stallion, one hand extended upward in the air to direct her tempesting magic at the numerous foes pressing in around her.
He shouted her name, but she was too far off to hear him. She started riding toward the core of the enemy army, a mass of men and monsters marching forward to overwhelm her. Damon spurred his and Vel’s horse forward, trying desperately to catch up with her.
The sensation of the dream swept him up. It was seductive and emotional, a feeling more of power and vengeance than fear or desperation. Ria was unleashed here, within her dream. She was fighting the battle she wanted most, with the storm at her back and countless enemies against which to test her might.
Damon pushed his horse harder, setting a course to draw up next to Ria as she charged toward the enemy army. Speed was relative and malleable within dreams, and soon enough, he was alongside her. He shouted her name and saw her glance over and grimace at them.
“Damon, Velanor,” she said over the sounds of the storm. “It is not safe for you both here!”
“How about we go somewhere else, then?” he asked.
Ria shook her head dismissively, leaning forward to commit to her battle charge into the enemy lines. Damon gave Vel a squeeze and felt her nod. She tipped her head back, and there was a sudden, unexpected flash of light.
The three of them hit the ground as the horses faded from existence and their surroundings shifted. It wasn’t raining anymore, and on the contrary, the day was warm and sunny.
They were sitting together in a place they all knew well. They were in the clearing, next to the lake, by their old home on the farmstead. The tower’s shadow cast a dark line across the otherwise green grass.
Ria was the first to groan and pull herself to her feet. She ran a hand through her hair and gave Vel and Damon a questioning glance.
“Is this all of my dream, of my mind, or…?”
“It’s really us,” said Vel. “I thought it made sense to check in using my dreamspelling.”
“Ria…” Damon stood up slowly, shaking his head as he saw her standing before him, alive and unharmed. “I thought you’d… I thought…”
“I feared the same, young Damon.” Ria blinked, tears coming to the fore of her eyes. “I feared the same.”
They ran to each other, and Damon embraced her so tightly that he felt a slight gasp escape her chest. He held Ria as though he worried she might die again upon waking, as so often was the case with dreams.
They pulled back just enough to kiss and then leaned their foreheads together, both shaking with relief. Damon saw her face then, noticing the slim black line of tattooing along one cheek. He brushed his thumb along it and furrowed his brow.
“Ayisa,” she said, simply. “She thought to wed me to the Athlatak after he had already been slain by Avarice. She was desperate to ensure a path forward for the Remenai people.”
“You stopped her?”
“Of course,” said Ria. “Does that surprise you, husband? That I would remain faithful, even though I have promised myself to you?”
There was an edge to her voice that was playful, but also a bit annoyed. Damon rubbed her shoulders and then set his hands on her hips, shaking his head.
“No, it doesn’t,” he said. “I love you so much, Ria. I guess my heart is still brittle after thinking I’d lost you for good. Where are you right now?”
“I am safe,” she said. “I returned to the Malagantyan. It is as much of a true home as I feel I still have now. I visited Sharika and have been working with her to help the refugees of Yvvestrosai.”
“Ria,” said Vel. “We’re back at the inn. We’re leaving soon, but if you wanted to, you could catch up?”
Ria’s expression sank, and she gave a small shake of her head. “I cannot, as of yet. I am still needed where I am.”
“It’s enough just to know that you’re safe,” said Damon. “We’ll see each other again soon enough.”
He recounted to her the arrival of Kastet, Lilian, and Wrath at the inn, along with their plan in progress. Ria listened, her reactions hinting at her concern.
“Take as much care as you possibly can in your dealings with them,” she said. “I understand why you need their help. If Malon has begun working with Lascivious as a true crest sorceress, the situation could get… complicated.”
“I know,” said Damon. “I’m not going to lose sight of what’s important. Our family comes first.”
He pulled Ria back into another hug. Vel walked over to him, and Damon opened his arm to sweep her into the intimacy of the em
brace. He felt more confident in his ability to keep them safe than he had in a long time. He wasn’t alone, and neither were they.
“Could you reach out to Malon right now?” asked Ria.
Vel shook her head. “I already tried earlier. I’ve been trying every night.”
“She is a powerful sorceress,” said Ria. “It may simply be a facet of how she guards her mind.”
“It’s possible, I suppose,” she said.
“You should both be ready for when you next see her,” said Ria. “She is our aesta, but at the same time… you must view her role as Lascivious’s crest sorceress as a thing separate from that.”
“What are you saying?” he asked.
Ria shook her head and didn’t answer him directly. “Just… tread with caution.”
She kissed him again, and Damon kissed Vel afterward, not wanting to leave her out. He squeezed them both tight to him, wishing they could stay as they were for longer. The dream was already starting to fade, and he could sense the farmstead clearing giving way to the previous scene within Ria’s mind, the battle raging through the storm.
“We will see each other again soon,” whispered Ria. “I love you both.”
“I love you,” said Damon, with Vel echoing his words. They hugged again as the dreamscape dissolved back into the natural ambience of night.
CHAPTER 17
Damon met with the others in the common room the next morning as the party prepared to set off for Silke. Kastet had taken the initiative and made them all breakfast, one of her old habits from her time pretending to be Kain.
“We’ll be setting off within the hour,” said Kastet as she set a bowl of porridge down at the table in front of Damon. “It’ll take us a couple of days to reach Silke.”
“A couple of days?” Damon shook his head. “It’s a longer journey than that, especially in the winter.”
“There won’t be as much snow as we head toward the coast, will there?” asked Vel.
“Even so, I’d be surprised if we managed it in under a week,” he said.
“Wrath said she has a carriage which can traverse this weather,” said Kastet. “She left earlier to bring it here.”
Damon opened his mouth and then clamped it shut, unsure which of the many questions he had was most worth pursuing. What kind of carriage could be suited for traveling through knee-deep snow? Did she have it waiting somewhere nearby, and if she did, how did she get it there in the first place? What would they be feeding the horses with, given they’d be unable to graze?
Lilian sat down across from him. She was heavily bundled, which made sense. It wasn’t the cold which would be a threat to her during their journey, but the sun. Her skin was intolerant to direct sunlight. The winter gave her a small reprieve, given how often the sky was overcast during the day.
He downed his porridge and was in the midst of double-checking his supplies for the journey when Wrath made her appearance. Through one of the common room’s windows, Damon watched as two massive horses tramped up the road, dragging a carriage behind them which seemed to slide over the snow as much as roll through it.
“Their eyes…” whispered Vel. “Look at their eyes.”
Damon did, and was immediately left tamping down the urge to glance toward Lilian. Each of the horses had jet-black eyes, visible even from outside, at a distance. Muscles bulged underneath their skin, and their teeth looked decidedly wrong, more like the sharp jaws of pack wolves. The animals had been corrupted, which left him with little doubt of where they’d originally come from.
“A gift from Famine, I take it?”
Damon asked Wrath the obvious question as he helped load the carriage outside. Its interior was spacious, more than capable of seating all five of them and their bags.
“Good guess,” said Wrath. “She wants us to succeed. On my advice, she’s limited her direct contact for the sake of preserving the party’s morale.”
Damon let out a gruff chuckle. Famine had preyed on Lilian’s near-death experience to turn her into what she was now. He and Ria had fought her deep within the Malagantyan to save the life of Bylia, his old lover. He could see how having Famine around, constantly voicing unholy opinions, might chafe the atmosphere.
He made sure the inn was locked and that everyone had everything they needed before their final departure. In his heart, he still held hope that he might come back to their humble roadside abode one day in the future. He, Vel, Malon, and Ria, if she could settle things with her people.
It was a hope that he didn’t let himself cling to with much strength. The kind of hope that felt like fresh sparks on soggy tinder, technically capable of blooming into more, but too tenuous to trust, too desperate to arouse excitement.
He kicked the snow off his boots as he climbed into the carriage. Wrath was up front in the driver’s seat. Lilian and Kastet sat together on one of the long passenger benches. Damon took a spot next to Vel on the one across from them, and the carriage began to move.
The effect of the snow on the carriage’s cadence along the road was surprisingly gentle, smoothing out what would have otherwise been a boulder and pothole-filled experience down the road.
Practically no other travelers were out, and Damon was content to make himself comfortable on the bench. Vel took her boots off and set her feet in his lap, and he began absentmindedly rubbing them, cute and tiny as they were.
Hours passed by in uneventful silence. It was still cold within the carriage. Vel brought a quilt out at one point to wrap around her shoulders. The benches were cushioned, and come afternoon, Damon found himself tempted to lie down alongside her. Kastet had fallen asleep resting her head against Lilian’s shoulder — he doubted either of them would notice or care.
Vel let out a small sigh as he joined her, slipping under the quilt and pulling her soft body into his. Damon hadn’t anticipated how the carriage’s rocking would move them against one another and felt himself acutely aware of each small bump, every shift in the angle of the road or the speed of their progress.
It was distracting, though not in a bad way. Quite the opposite. Vel let out a tired moan and wriggled against him. Damon shifted one of his hands up her stomach, holding her tighter as the carriage swayed from side to side around a corner.
“Damon,” she whispered. “Your hands are cold.”
“Help me warm them up?”
“Mmm…” Her sigh was sleepy and playful. “I shouldn’t.”
He knew it was a bad idea. Kastet and Lilian were close enough to them that he could poke either one with his foot if he shifted it across the wagon’s aisle. With that said, they were underneath a quilt, and Vel felt awesome against him.
He let his hand run up the length of her body, delighting in the lilting, unnamable noise it drew out from her lips. He felt her open her legs for him and then playfully pinch his fingers between her thighs, as if to tell him he could only go so far and no further.
“Now that’s warm,” he whispered into her ear. “Vel. That’s practically scalding.”
“Damon… I’m trying to sleep.”
“I’m trying to warm my hands up.”
He moved a hand, slowly rubbing against her crotch. He indulged himself in feeling her reactions, the way she’d lean her hips, the steadiness of her breathing, each shudder of surprise or pleasure as his fingers began to touch her in a place they shouldn’t.
“This is a bad idea,” she whispered.
“I know.”
She drew one of her legs back to clack her heel into his shin. Damon stifled a chuckle and pulled her closer, his hand shifting toward safer pastures. He inhaled, smelling her hair, and planted a kiss on her neck that seemed to do more for her than his exploration of her womanhood.
He might have continued and done much, much more over the coming minutes and hours. The wagon drew to a stop, which he noticed as much through the way it made Vel’s body go still against his as from Wrath’s sharp whistle to the horses.
Damon got up from the
bench and grabbed his myrblade. He joined Wrath, who had her head covered by the hood of a heavy cloak, in the front of the carriage. The difficulty which had brought them to a stop was immediately apparent.
A dozen armed men stood around a fire behind a pair of movable wooden palisade barriers which they’d set up to block the road. One of them stepped forward, waving far too jovially for Damon’s liking.
“Hi-ho, travelers of the road,” he called. “This area is dangerous. Me and my boys here, see, we’ve been keeping it safe. Small toll we’ll be needing from you to keep doing our work responsibly.”
“Dirty, filthy bandits,” muttered Wrath. “Such a lazy operation deserves no mercy from me.”
Damon set a hand atop hers. “Relax. Let me handle this.”
He hopped down from the carriage and was immediately surprised by how deep his legs sank into the snow. He made his way over to the gap within the palisade barriers, where the leader of the toll bandits waited for his payment.
“Let me be entirely clear with you,” said Damon. “I’m not going to pay you. The only real consideration for you and your men, at this moment, is whether you’d prefer to get out of our way, or to die.”
The bandit stared at Damon blankly for a few seconds and then burst out laughing. With a smooth, reflexive motion, Damon drew his myrblade. As tempting as it was to simply run the man through, instead, he stabbed it into the snow, exhaling frozen condensation as he focused his will.
An ice elemental rose from the ground behind the leader of the bandits, immediately pulling him into an embrace both deadly and vaguely sexual. The claw points of the nude ice elemental’s fingers prodded against the man’s neck. Damon saw his jaw muscles flex as his eyes bulged with surprise.
“We… I… What I meant to say was…” The bandit tried to clear his throat. “You can go by. Not everyone has to pay the toll.”
“I think it’s best if the idea of you and your men imposing a toll in general is put to rest.” Damon summoned more ice elementals, enough to loosely surround the entire group. “If you’re still here when we come back through the day after tomorrow, I won’t be so merciful.”
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