The Ascended: The Eight Wings Collection

by Akeroyd, Serena

  Family wasn’t something I had in short supply, and yet, this was a link to another part of my life. One that made me feel grounded. Since I was eighteen, I’d felt alone. So intrinsically alone because those damn wings had popped up out of nowhere, cutting me out of my family as they singled me out as weird, and I’d been left with no alternative other than to hide them from everyone for fear they’d…

  Shit, I didn’t know what they’d do. I wasn’t even sure why I’d hidden them from my mom.

  We’d always been hiding from the Conclave, but maybe she’d have tossed me to them if she’d known what a freak I was? At least, I realized now that had always been my fear.

  Linford, on the other hand, didn’t think I was weird.

  Or, if he did, he found me interesting. I could deal with that. Any day of the damn week, especially if it meant he wasn’t scared of me.

  My heart pounded in my chest as I waited on his answer, the organ pounding like a drum as each second passed.

  “No.”

  I swallowed. “No, what?”

  “No, I won’t erase your memory. I have no need to. I’ll not be long for this realm.”

  “Shut up,” I rasped. “Don’t say things like that.” The thought of losing him when I’d only just found him, and not through some inconvenient amnesia, scorched me from the inside out.

  His laugh was a little ragged, but he tipped his chin at me. “I forgot how sentimental witches could be.” He surprised me by striding over to the table and resting a hand on my shoulder. Squeezing, he murmured, “Runes are rudimentary to be sure, but if you gather enough of them together, then they can be exquisitely complex.”

  “Complex enough to erase memories and craft portals?” I queried.

  When he hesitated, Daniel blurted out, “I wasn’t taught anything like that.”

  “Just how to cheat at chores?” Linford interjected, amused.

  “Huh?”

  Linford shot me a look. “The marks he made on my table, in ketchup of all damn things—the runes are a spell to cleanse the surface.”

  My mouth rounded, and with a grumble, I saw the damn cut I’d made had closed up again.

  “This is getting annoying,” I mumbled.

  “Trust me, it comes in handy out on the field,” Linford teased, and I glared at him.

  Apparently, working in the garden with his flowers had cheered him up, because in all the time I’d been with him—a whopping forty hours—I’d never seen him so chirpy.

  Dipping my finger into the purple blood, I mimicked the designs Daniel had made with the sauce.

  When a gust of wind appeared from nowhere, I gasped and watched as it morphed into a vortex of light. There was no gold, like I was used to seeing with the Fae who used magic, and I didn’t call on the wind like I did when I normally cast a spell. This came from… nowhere.

  Within seconds, the table was clean.

  Empty too.

  “Where did the dishes go?” I wondered, my tone astonished.

  “In the cupboards, of course,” Linford replied easily. “Those four runes crafted that spell. But to create more in-depth magic? It takes thousands of characters.”

  I shot him a startled look. “That’s a lot of blood.”

  He shrugged. “Small sacrifice to pay.”

  Eight

  Matthew

  “Is it?”

  A few hours later, I squinted up at the ceiling as I processed Riel’s question. But when I drew a blank, I had to mumble, “Huh?”

  “Is it really?”

  “Is what really, Riel?” I queried around a yawn this time.

  “Is it worth the sacrifice?”

  When I thought back to how Linford had ended our conversation by shuffling us out of the kitchen, declaring that we’d invaded it for long enough, I yawned again.

  “Blood is easy to come by,” I said dryly. “I mean, let’s face it, I don’t know as much as Daniel, but blood is definitely easier to get than ink.”

  “Doesn’t mean that it should be sacrificed. Especially if it can do… dark things.”

  “And witch magic can’t?” I replied. “Witch magic can stop invasions,” I pointed out. Sol, just look at what her grandmother had achieved in her lifetime with all the weird spells that none of us had even realized witches could cast.

  “True.” She curled onto her side and murmured, “I feel weird.”

  My brow puckered. “Good weird or bad weird?”

  She hummed. “Bad weird, but not in pain or anything like that, you know? Just on edge.”

  “You want to go sit outside for a while?” I questioned, my voice low. The others hadn’t stirred from their sleep, so I saw no point in waking them.

  “Yeah. I think I do,” she rasped, and I heard the tension in her voice more than ever now.

  As we rolled out of bed and headed out onto the terrace, I curved my arm around her. It felt odd to do that. Odd because I’d never done it with a woman before. I could never have been called demonstrative in the past. Focused? Sure. Determined? Yep. Even in relationships. I knew what I wanted and didn’t, and wouldn’t budge. But demonstrative or affectionate? Nope.

  She pressed her hand to my bare belly, and the simple touch had the skin where every single one of her fingertips rested feeling like it was tingling.

  When I peered down, I saw the glow, and my lips twitched—at least the tingle made sense now.

  When she saw where I was looking, a gasp escaped her, and her hand shot back. Quickly, I grabbed her wrist and put her fingers back where they’d been.

  “You didn’t hear me complaining, did you?” I questioned lightly, inherently pleased that she was happy again. That glow could only mean that, right?

  “N-No,” she replied, but her voice was shaken.

  “Happy again?” I asked, needing confirmation. Sol, needing affirmation. I wanted her to be happy with me. So basically content that her magic could manifest for no real reason or out of a potentially dire consequence.

  Her silence was contemplative. “I’m happy to be with you, confused about other stuff.”

  “Figures.” I shrugged. “Lot going on.”

  “Understatement of the century,” she grumbled, as I steered her toward a swinging sofa that overlooked the paradise that was Linford’s backyard.

  Seriously, the old guy had a major green thumb. I’d never appreciated flowers and shit in the past, but seeing just how expansive this tropical paradise was? I’d have to be a freakin’ robot not to be impressed.

  Of course, I’d been accused of being a robot in the past by exes, so…

  When she slumped down on the seat, I maintained my hold on her, realizing I needed the connection as much as she might.

  There was something strange going on with her, and where she was concerned, it wasn’t like strange with other women. She wasn’t thinking about how I wasn’t great at second guessing her needs, or wondering if I was only into her for sex.

  This was a whole other ball of wax.

  This wasn’t a relationship where the woman was insecure in my feelings for her. Riel knew, point blank, what we were to one another, knew we were going to allow her to claim us, so her thoughts were in a different stratosphere to most women’s. She wasn’t focused on us, but on what was happening with her, and that was a major concern.

  Because, in that too, Riel was different.

  Not necessarily bad, even if the clusterfuck hovering over us had ramifications I couldn’t predict, just… different.

  “What are you thinking?” I rasped, brushing my lips against her temple, even as I wondered why I wanted to do such a thing.

  The Matthew of just a few weeks ago and this Matthew were so alien to one another, but then, from what she’d told me, the Virgo bond itself was alien. I figured that it would stir things in me that had never been requisite before, too.

  The urge to be with her, constantly, the need to touch her, at all times, to protect her, always, was like an ache in arthritic bones.

>   “I feel different.”

  The short statement had my brow puckering, even as the word she used to describe herself and the word I’d used were exactly the same. “Different how?”

  “Different as in the magic did something to me.”

  “You only cleaned the kitchen table, honey, it wasn’t like you opened a portal or anything,” I half-chided, trying to stop my amusement from bleeding into my voice.

  She pinched what little there was on my belly to pinch, but when you’d been sliced and diced by a sword since you were a kid, pain tolerance became a natural part of anyone’s self-defense. She’d squirmed and squeaked when she’d cut into her forearm earlier. Daniel hadn’t even flinched. I wasn’t saying that pain was something we sought, but it was something we accepted, and our bodies adjusted to it over time. She was softer than us, and like she’d vowed from the very start, not a warrior.

  Before all this had happened, I’d thought her weak for that. Now? I didn’t want her to be a warrior. I just wanted her to be herself.

  “I know that,” she grumbled. “But the magic felt different, and it called on me in a different way.”

  “Only natural.”

  She gulped. “Maybe.”

  “I definitely want to work on using Fae magic more. It seems to have other capabilities than the witch magic offers us,” I mused.

  “You’re only saying that because Daniel can do it and you can’t.”

  From her snort, I knew she was teasing, but my words were deadly serious as I told her, “If it’s another means of protecting you, I want to learn it.”

  “You want two types of magic and combat skills to protect me, hmm?” she asked softly, her voice a low hum as she stared out into the beautiful garden. It wasn’t well lit, but there were lights that illuminated certain parts, casting long glows and deep shadows on certain areas. The palm trees were all sprinkled with string lights, and there were a few spotlights here and there that beamed upward through clusters of plants, the names of which I didn’t know.

  “I think you need it,” I replied.

  She sighed. “Considering I’d make a useless spy, it’s strange the AFata want me on their side. Especially as they probably know more about my skills with magic than I do.”

  “Well, they don’t know that,” I said reasonably.

  A laugh escaped her. “Maybe we should send them a text?”

  Snickering, I said, “That’s definitely one option.”

  “What’s another?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t think anything will convince them that you don’t fit into their plans. Let’s face it, this is generational. They’ve been waiting for you for a long time, and they expect you can do one thing, and because they expect it—”

  “That makes them more dangerous to me if I can’t deliver. And, let’s face it, I won’t be able to, will I?”

  Grimacing, I admitted, “I doubt it. Not the way you are now. I mean, if I hadn’t seen you cast that day, I’d never have added you to the troupe.”

  She sighed. “I mean, I got through the exam somehow. I doodled. Doodled. There’s no way in Sol I should have passed that exam, and yet, here I am. In a troupe because of that test.”

  Hesitating, I asked, “Do you think someone on the faculty is in league with the AFata?”

  “Until recently, nope. But my grandfather told me that most witch born Fae he’s managed to squirrel out are all instructors. None ever became warriors, and none were admin.”

  “Sol,” I breathed. “So, there could be several spies at the Academy?”

  “Maybe. They might not be spies for the AFata but—”

  “The Conclave. If they do have spies at the Academy, they, along the way, might have had suspicions of their own if they saw a hint of magic about you. Let’s face it, you have started glowing bright pink all of a sudden.”

  “Yeah.” She grimaced. “Not easy to keep incognito when you look like a bright flamingo in stressful situations. Plus, it would make sense for there to be spies at Eight Wings. Good way to keep an eye on the Fae, right?”

  “It’s certainly one way. The Assembly doesn’t exactly reveal hidden secrets to the student body though.”

  “No, but they don’t need to, do they? All the instructors have a nice gleam of respectability about them. They’re the teachers of the future generations of warriors. They’re respected, even if they’re not well liked. It gives them a certain gravitas in society, which makes them perfectly placed to spy and get closer to people who count,” Riel reasoned.

  A sudden surge of feeling appeared in her voice, and it amused me because I knew exactly where it was aimed. “You’re hoping Leopold is one too, aren’t you?”

  She snickered. “Maybe. The douche. Although, with the way he treated me, it makes him more of a dick than a douche.” As her laughter died, she twisted so she could press her face into my side, then she whispered, “I never needed things like this before.”

  “Like what?”

  “To sit with someone in a quiet garden at night, to talk about things that matter, to be held and to hold.” She blew out a breath. “It comes as a surprise, that’s for sure.”

  “You won’t hear me arguing,” I admitted softly, tilting my head back to stare up at the sky.

  “You didn’t need it either?”

  I snorted. “No. Of course not.”

  When she smacked me in the stomach, I didn’t bother faking an ‘oof’ sound. Her fingers spread out to cover the area she’d hit, and I felt them pressing down against the muscle, testing the strength there even as she murmured, “Why not?”

  “Because I had no intention of getting wrapped up with a woman,” I told her simply. “That wasn’t my goal.”

  “No, your goal was to bring the vil der Soes into a new period in the line’s history, am I right?”

  Her moody tone had my lips twitching. “Yeah, you’re right. Not so much anymore, of course, but that was my original purpose.”

  “I’ve even wrecked that, haven’t I?”

  I reached for her hand and raised her fingers to my lips. As I pressed a kiss to the tip of her pointer finger, I informed her, “Yes.”

  She snorted. “Way to make me feel better, Matt.”

  Laughing, I nipped the same tip I’d just kissed. “Goals change, Riel. You wrecked that, but you made a different goal for me. That’s okay.”

  “Not for your family,” she pointed out.

  “You know I believe in kismet,” I rasped. “It’s obviously not the line’s time to be forgiven. That’s okay. My uncle should never have done what he did, and I shouldn’t have to be the one who makes up for his sins.”

  Pressing her face into my arm, she whispered, “Family makes things really complicated, doesn’t it?”

  “It does. It also makes things simple.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean, where would we be without the people who will die to protect us?”

  She gulped. “I wish I understood why my grandmother had lied to me. Not just when she was alive, but when she came to me in that vision.”

  “Because she was doing what she thought was best. She probably thought she was protecting you.” I sighed and reached up so I could cup her chin, then slid my hand through her hair so the black silk cascaded down my arm.

  When her face was tilted to mine, the creamy gold of her skin glinted in the moonlight. It might have been a cold kiss in contrast to the sun’s rays, but Sol, she gleamed like mother-of-pearl in front of me. Her beauty was off the charts to me. I’d never seen a woman like her, and knew there’d never be another for me.

  She was right.

  She had wrecked my goals.

  All my life, I’d been steadfast in my determination to right my uncle’s wrongs, and after less than a week with her, those desires were all gone.

  It might have made me seem flighty, but I wasn’t. The things she inspired in me were older than time itself, our connection had no clock, no time limit. It was not gauged the w
ay a regular relationship was.

  This was as old as the Earth itself, and as real and as pure too.

  As she took in the expression on my face, her breath caught in her throat, and I reveled in the surprise. She was thoughtful tonight, pensive. Maybe this wasn’t the right moment to make a move, but it wasn’t like it had been in the past. This wasn’t about sex. This was about the union. And if I had to thank the bastards who’d thought to steal her from us for lighting a fire under my ass, for making me see her, then I’d begrudgingly be grateful. Wouldn’t stop me from killing them if they tried to take her from me again, though.

  She surged upward, seeming to have sensed my hesitance to make the next step, and took the choice away from me. The second our lips joined, we both groaned, and I slipped my tongue into her mouth as soon as I could, loving the thrust of hers against mine, the eager way she fell into the caress, her generosity as she let me take what I needed.

  When she clambered up onto the bench so she was kneeling on it, it came as no surprise. I let her do as she wished, and when she straddled my lap, I took full advantage. She wore a simple vest and baggy sleep shorts that gave me total access to whatever I wanted. One hand caressed her waist before sliding up to cup one of her breasts, and the other tunneled between her legs, taking advantage of how open she was.

  I kept things clean at first. Touching her over the fabric, just feeling her, rubbing and caressing here and there as we toyed with each other’s mouths. Then, when I felt the dampness through the fabric of her shorts, I grunted and pulled away from her lips. “You want more?” I growled, my tone husky and hoarse with the need she pulled from me.

  “O-Of course,” she whispered, her lips kiss-sore, her chest heaving with panting breaths as she looked at me through chocolate eyes that made me feel like I’d set the moon in place.

  I willed her clothes and my briefs away so that we were sitting outside in the garden buck naked. I could feel the gold dust whispering along our limbs as my spell was cast, and she whimpered as it drifted along her skin, causing gooseflesh to surge wherever it touched.