by Zoe Chant
“Then we’ll continue to move in pairs, back to alert status. Everyone, get a meal, and rest in four hour batches. We’re all tired.”
He watched them troop off, then turned to Jen, who drifted up next to him. He felt her effort not to throw her arms around him right then and there, in front of the hetairoi—an effort intensified by his own desire. But duty first; the castle was a mess, the zigzag path—the only way for the non-flying to reach the castle—in rubble at a crucial juncture. Keraunos was still . . . somewhere.
So he mastered himself, and began issuing a stream of orders.
The rest of that morning they went everywhere together, as if being apart would hurt. His unicorn hummed within him, a deep note matched by the crystalline purity of the phoenix’s chiming hum. Layer by layer disorder became order: the former prisoners were duly handed off to Medusa.
The watch that had been awake longest was dismissed to their rest. Everyone else got a hot meal, while the staff was busy with their part of restoring order.
Those who’d rested most recently departed on patrol, both high and low, and in pairs.
At last, Nikos and Jen were alone. As one they shifted and flew to the aerie, unicorn and phoenix side by side, then shifted back. Nikos delighted in the way Jen gave a little hop as she shifted from bird to human.
They walked into his room as he said, “I don’t know if I should admit this, but the sight of your body in my clothes this past few—”
Her hand shot past his head. Slammed the door.
Then she was on him.
The kiss was sweet for about two seconds, then it was hungry, tongues clashing, searching. She bit his lower lip, and he gasped, heat nearly blinding him. They stumbled toward the bed, kissing, touching. Impatient fingers ripping at buttons, zippers. Clothes dropped in a path of fabric leading toward the bed, where they fell together.
His entire body lit up, every nerve a brilliant blue. He was so deeply attuned to her by now that he lost his barriers as her sensations were his, and his hers: he felt the sun’s molten gold running through her veins, and deep within her core the white-hot heat of yearning.
She roped her hand through his hair as he bent to devour one breast, then the other. She arched her back and he licked the hollow of her throat, rolling with her, skin to skin. He forced himself to slow—their first time was not going to be over in ten seconds, she deserved better than that—and so he took his time running his hands all over her, cherishing every curve as he mapped her body. He felt it as her skin sizzled and the sunlight hummed in her veins, narrowing to the pulse beating between her legs, until he pressed a long, soft kiss there—and then darted his tongue deep within her.
And her body ignited, igniting his.
She opened to him. One thrust and he was home at last, at last, his thrusts slow at first until she angled her hips just so, to invite him deeper, and then he was helpless against the tide of desire that built and built until the sun obliterated them both.
Sweet pulses slowly began to fade, leaving them lying there, her head on his shoulder, her fingers playing with his hair, which had somehow come loose. Laughter tremored through him when he realized she was playing with his hair the way she played with his unicorn’s mane.
“The windows are wide open,” she said, her voice husky with sated pleasure. “I guess the high patrol got quite a show.”
Laughter ran through him again, a stream of sheer joy. “They don’t fly this high. Keraunos can’t possibly get up here. If he’s even still around. He might very well have slunk back aboard the yacht.”
“Speaking of.” She rose on an elbow, looking endearingly tousled, though her sea-calm eyes were steady. “I know everything came out all right. And I’m so glad.”
“I noticed.”
A grin flickered, but then she said, “I think I need to apologize for how very close it came to not being all right. I walked straight into the stupidest trap—and it’s not like you didn’t warn me. And I know I worried you. I felt that pulse of fear on my behalf.”
“What was that you said once? First rule in the villains’ playbook,” he said, running his hands over her soft, smooth skin. “Yes, it was an old fear, but it was a reflex of habit. I’ve known since the day we fought Cang’s minions that I did not have to guard you, that we would stand together side by side.”
He felt her own tremor of joy. “Side by side,” she whispered into his neck. “Yes.”
“Besides. If anyone is to blame it would be me. I realized it too late a few nights ago when I ran up the mountainside with you dancing in the air around me, visible from tower to shore. Visible and beautiful—every shifter on the island who saw us knew I had a mate at last, and I couldn’t find it in me to regret it. I wanted to shout about you from this window right here. It would have been a criminal act to try to hide you away for your own safety.”
“I would have gone back to California if you found that necessary,” she admitted, her voice full of regret. “I lived in a box, those last few years with Robert. It seemed right at the time, but it will never be right for me again.”
He sensed that she had made a profound shift in her emotions regarding Robert, but it was for her to bring it up or not. So he said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
Jen was silent, then she said, “Can I tell you what happened?”
“I would be honored if you would,” he said, knowing she sensed his sincerity.
This was one of the many glories of this bond. Lying to one another wasn’t even a possibility. He hated lies, and he knew she would scorn to lie to him. But there would also be no misunderstanding one another, which could be so much more insidious; she had lived faithfully with someone who had loved her, but who had never understood her in all their years together.
She began, slowly, “I could never face that day. When Robert died. I tried to get past it, but for a long time I couldn’t sleep, as I fought for numbness. To forget that day altogether. But my dreams . . .Well, I tried a therapist, who tried to get me to work through that day, and I walked out, angry with the doctor, angry with the world.”
She let out a quiet sigh. “Medusa arrowed right in on it. And she very nearly defeated me. That’s what makes her so terrible, she digs out real feelings, and magnifies them. Distorts them. In a way, I guess I set myself up, four years ago. It clearly didn’t do me any good to keep things bottled up. The guilt I felt, first that I survived, then later little moments of feeling free. Relief. Just little stuff, like not having the news blaring every evening. Then after I threw out all the ketchup, even though it was past the expiration date.”
He tightened his arm around her when her voice got ragged. “I was feeling guilty for beginning to live my life instead of his. But instead of looking for the cause of the guilt, I shoved everything down. I guess it festered. Medusa tried to force me to relive it, but I was still wiggling out—it was my phoenix who got me to go back to that horrible day and see the truth. It’s weird, I know I heard Robert say ‘Live,’ that day. It was his last word. But the meaning escaped me. At the time everything was too raw, and then I couldn’t bear to think about that day.”
“I can understand that,” he said.
“But here’s the thing I’ve come to realize,” she said. “There are so many kinds of love. Maybe I was never in love with Robert, but I did love him, and I admired his life. But it was his life all along. After he died, I felt guilty because of the relief, first those little things, then bigger ones. I no longer had to spend my days and nights with my nose buried entirely in the sordid parts of the news. Robert thrilled to the chase. I never did. I was always happiest after a piece was done and turned in, and maybe the bad guys got caught. Robert loved the process. He was a crusader for good, and I felt guilty because I wanted to take time for the beautiful things in life. And I could, once he was no longer there.”
“Like you should be carrying on his work, though it was never your work, it was always his?”
Her eyes widened. “
Exactly! That’s exactly right. It was always his work. He picked the gigs, and I was his helpmate. And it was fine—until I hit fifty. Even before he died I felt it was disloyal to feel boxed up when Robert began turning down travel gigs in favor of projects that let him sit at home doing research on the net. I wonder if he wasn’t feeling right that last couple years. He went for regular checkups, but he was never really in touch with his body—to him it was merely the suitcase that carried his mind. Well, you get the idea.”
“I think,” he said, tugging her close, “we should go back to your appreciation for how there are many kinds of love. And you should not feel guilty for whatever love you were able to give.”
“I know. I see it now. My phoenix insisted I look, and it was like I finally had clear vision, and then, oh, and then we were in the core of the mountain.”
As she described what happened, her words came more rapidly, at first raw, then lilting with happiness when she described her phoenix’s and her union. He realized he should have seen that before—that her phoenix would respond to the pieces of the sun in the earth’s core. Maybe she might even have united earlier.
No should have, his unicorn hummed, and higher came the phoenix, All is well.
“Our animals are smarter than we are,” Jen commend with a soft chuckle.
“They’re certainly more direct,” he said, still running his hands along her skin.
She snuggled up against him, and when she slid one knee up his thigh, there he was, ready again. Her hand promptly moved across his stomach, caressed up and then, down, down, and . . .
After the second, more leisurely lovemaking, they both fell asleep, still in each other’s arms.
It was full dark when a quick rap on the door woke them abruptly, and Mateo’s voice doused Nikos with cold water through the veins when he called, “Boss, we’ve trapped Keraunos. Shall we take him out?”
Nikos’s first instinct was to say yes, but he was so sensitized to Jen now that he waited as she turned a troubled gaze his way, her eyes gleaming in the darkness. “No,” she whispered.
She sat up, her gaze going distant, then she said, “I have to go.”
“Mateo. Do nothing unless you have to,” Nikos called. “We’ll be right there.”
They showered together, but quickly. The first of many, Nikos promised himself—and felt her flicker of laughter, and anticipation.
They dressed and went hand in hand down to the training ground, where they found all the hetairoi gathered in a circle around Keraunos. They held weapons in one hand and in the other lanterns, flashlights, and one torch, which Tassos had brought from somewhere. Keraunos stood alone in the center of the circle, hands in the pockets of a long, fog-gray coat, blond hair adrift as lightning flickered in slow patterns all over his body.
When he saw Jen, his head came up. “I killed you,” Keraunos spoke at last, in a soft voice.
Nikos, still highly attuned to Jen, felt her recoil—and then gather herself, and reach on the mental plane.
Nikos thought he was strong in that skill, but now that Jen had integrated with her phoenix, she left him at the gate. He followed in wonder as she touched Keraunos’s psyche, and then began sifting the scars of psychic pain until deep down, she sensed a bewildered puppy.
“Look at me,” Jen said, not angrily, or even scolding. “Look,” she invited, and he heard the echo of her phoenix in the crystalline note in her voice.
His pale eyes lifted briefly, then flinched away.
“Look, Keraunos,” she murmured even more softly—an invitation, not a command, the very opposite of Medusa’s distorted power.
He shuddered all over when she said his name, and his gaze flicked back to hers—and held. “You can control the lightning,” she said, her phoenix speaking through her in that pure voice that was phoenix and Jen united. “You always could control it. But those who wished to use you forced you apart from everyone else. Alone. They wanted a weapon. The cost to you to become that weapon was immaterial to them.”
Silence stretched between them as lightning flickered, blue and lethal, all over his body. He stood in arm’s reach, but he did not move. Deep in that icy gaze she sensed the truth of him, far below the many scars of pain and utter loneliness, and Nikos shared it.
There is no one for me, they said. The thought was a mere breath, almost too soft to catch.
But Jen caught it. Not true, she thought back, just as soft—only for Keraunos, and only permitting Nikos to hear. I can sense her. But she too is bounded by walls of iron and spikes. And because he had been lied to for so long, she drew him into her mind, and let him glimpse that tiny gleam on the mythic plane that had nothing to do with physical distance.
Then his gaze dropped, he shuddered again, and he did what nobody ever would have expected. The lightning faded to a mere flicker.
Then he bowed, low. Turned. And dashed between Ava and Delos, the two who were not mythic shifters. They drew back, looking to Nikos for orders.
He opened his palm: stay.
Keraunos reached the low wall. Everyone gasped when he threw himself over. But he turned an expert somersault in midair, then shifted. In ice-blue wolf form he landed on a rocky precipice, glanced briefly back, then with a flick of his tail he was gone.
The hetairoi turned wondering gazes to Jen, and in that moment, he knew that they had truly accepted her as their kyria.
AFTERWARD
JEN
She hadn’t had time to think about her future, until she woke up in Nikos’s arms and knew she was home at last.
She liked the island very much, and knew she would grow to love it. But she, a globe-trotter for so much of her life, recognized that wherever her mate was, that was home. For him, this island was home—his roots were there—but in finding her, his life was complete.
She got to meet Grandmother Demi at last, and a great many interesting characters on the island. She loved their food and their music, loved waking up to the fragrance of citrus and wild thyme, loved flying everywhere. Including down into the volcano’s molten core, which she did occasionally, if her phoenix seemed to need a jolt of qi. Shifting was as easy as breathing. She could even blink, as Cleo called it—turn invisible to any but mythic shifter eyes.
Best of all, she said one morning to Nikos, knowing he’d appreciate it, “I can travel as much as I want, but my carbon footprint will be zero.” She could imagine Robert smiling in agreement about that!
Jen brought her own, Cleo’s, and Petra’s belongings over in small transfers over the next few days, staying long enough to replant her window orchid and hire a neighbor kid to do her watering. She meant to report back to Doris and Bird, but somehow it was easier to grab what she needed and go, promising herself a longer visit the next time.
Especially as she was writing again.
The first night, she jotted down the next scene in her magical Finland book as a surprise for Nikos. He loved it when she read it to him before bedtime.
Over the next few days, once the evening closed in, if there was nothing else claiming her attention, she was drawn to her desk in what used to be that guestroom, which was now her own study.
One night she was writing away when Cleo called outside her study, “Kyria Jen? There’s a concert going down at Ionas’s place. Come with us pleasepleaseplease?”
“I’ll be right there!” She just wanted to finish this sentence. . .
She finished that sentence and three more, then tore herself away. She found Nikos leaning against a pillar, smiling. “More on that story?”
“Yes! I think I see my way to the end. I think.”
“Do you know what changed?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m writing about me. And here.”
His eyes widened in mock alarm. “You’re setting it here?”
“Nope. Still in my magical Finland. And you wouldn’t recognize anybody, though they’re all there—I learned that from Godiva. It’s thanks to you.”
“Me! I’m glad I inspired yo
u, but how?” He caught her hand as they fell in step.
“Because you gave me this life. In two ways, actually. Saving me, of course, from electrocution, but also by reaching for my phoenix. I am surrounded by the magic I always craved. It was this life I always wanted. I don’t know if it is due to that phoenix DNA or what, but, well, I realized that if I disguised everything, I could write about how wonderful my life is, for somebody who also wants this life but isn’t lucky enough to meet her mate.” She kissed him. “Or to turn into a shifter. Of course, that’s what I’m trying for. I might fall flat on my face, but at least it’s fun trying.”
He laughed, then they jumped up onto the low wall, shifted, and flew side by side down to the harbor.
The days slipped away, turning into two weeks, then three, always with so much to do and to see. And to discover—life with Nikos was filled with those moments of great beauty or great surprise when time seems suspended, and then with a sudden rush is reborn into a new and even more delightful normal.
Then one morning she woke to a new thought. At first it was not pleasant at all. She’d been vaguely aware of breast tenderness, but shrugged it off as the result of so much terrific sex for the first time in her life. Fifty-five year-old bodies took time to adjust. Even fifty-five year-old bodies that kept feeling more like twenty-five or thirty at most. But when her stomach seemed to do a flipflop, and the usual breakfast smells that she loved made the flipflop even more flippy, she sat on the edge of the bed, trying to remember the last time she’d had a period.
Nikos came in, took one look, and sat beside her. “What is it? You look a bit pale.”
“My mother,” she said, “didn’t hit the change of life until she was sixty-two. She was forty-nine when she had me. And I never took birth control in my life. I didn’t think about it . . .” She raised her troubled glance to his face.
It was his turn to go pale, but then a rush of color heightened his cheekbones, and his eyes blazed. “Do you mean . . . is it possible . . .” He ran his hands up his face into his hair. “I never thought about it either. It’s just been too many years, and—” He turned to her. “The mate bond, even for humans mated to a mythic shifter, will extend lifetimes. But you becoming a phoenix, I think . . .”
