by Amy Sumida
Something light and effervescent bubbled in my chest and carried away my pain. I sighed out fear and shock, then breathed in peace and love. My muscles went liquid. I nestled closer to my husband and smiled. All was as it should be.
“It's so beautiful here,” I said.
“All for you, my eternal goddess,” Azrael whispered. “Think of a thing and it is yours. Oceans will form at your whim. Mountains will rise beneath the ground. We can spend forever strolling through the gardens you imagine into existence and then recreate them above for the humans to enjoy.”
“That would be lovely,” I murmured.
“Our sons will play under this magic moon and when they are grown, they will fly with the Wild Hunt and remind the world of our power.”
“Dominic and Sebastian,” I whispered and then frowned. I had the strangest feeling that was wrong; that another set of twin boys were supposed to ride with the Hunt. Boys with wings of leather, not feathers.
“Yes. Our boys,” Azrael went on. “They will have Heaven, Hell, and Earth. Vast domains to explore and command.”
“Azrael, something is wrong.” I frowned as my lioness lifted her head inside me and roared. “Put me down.”
“Not yet, beloved. We are almost there.”
“Put me down!”
“Shh, little one. I have you now and I won't let anything hurt you... or our children.”
“Azrael, what did you do to me?!” I struggled but his arms became a vise around me.
“Not me, the magic,” he insisted calmly. “It took away your sorrow and doubt. That pain was unnecessary. You cried for those who would have killed us if they could. I adore your compassion but it is misplaced, Vervain. Those who would oppose us must be weeded out of our garden.”
“They aren't weeds, Azrael.” I turned his face toward me. “Baby, please, try to remember. You are the God of Compassion. You don't want this.”
“I still am but now my compassion lies with the entire world,” Azrael explained patiently. “Some must suffer so that the Earth survives.”
“But when you're finished, it won't be the Earth.”
“At least it will live.” He looked up and smiled. “Here we are.”
I turned my head to see that we had emerged from the maze into a circular meadow ringed by an apple orchard. The scent of ripe apples seeped into me and made my mouth water. Even in the moonlight, the perfect fruit shone red, just a deeper shade. A bloody shade. I felt their power through that scent and knew then what had made Pan bite the apple. Anyone would be drawn to them but especially those with power for the fruit to magnify.
“We don't need magic apples,” Azrael said to my longing looks at the trees as we passed through the orchard. “The power is ours already. But if you'd like one...” he paused near a tree, letting the offer hang as temptingly as the apple before me.
I reached out a hand, then hesitated. The memory of Pan dancing around one of these very trees—for this was the original patch of fey land—came to mind and made me drop my hand. “No, thank you.”
Azrael chuckled and started walking again. The orchard opened on another circular space—a meadow within a meadow; a circle within a circle—and at its center, a glimmering sheen hung in the air, just like the raths of the other MZs. But this rath was shaped like an elongated oval, not a circle. It had a more purposeful feel to it—as if the other raths had been trial runs until the magic had finally got the hang of things. And the rath did more than shimmer. It was almost like a mirror in its center except that it moved, rippling with magic.
As we drew closer, I reached for the magic and demanded that it retreat. I didn't believe Azrael when he said that he couldn't close the rath. Directing the magic but not its master? No way. He had commanded it up on those battlements. But he'd also given me partial command over the fey magic and I was going to use it to end this. I pushed it back toward Faerie and tried to close the rath.
It didn't work.
Azrael's eyes flashed as he shifted his stare to me. “I told you that I couldn't close the rath. Did you think that I was trying to deceive you?”
“No, but I had to try,” I lied to Azrael for the first time in... well, the first time ever.
His eyes flashed.
“Don't try that again,” his voice went low and dangerous. “I will not be pleased. Remember that you rule by my grace. The magic flows through me and into you, but only if I allow it.”
He set me down on my feet and I backed away from him. I didn't want to leave him like this but perhaps it was time to make a tactical retreat. I could return later. Stronger and more prepared. I tried to trace away but I couldn't reach the Aether. The magic wouldn't touch me.
Azrael frowned deeper. “Within the castle, we are protected. It's like a god territory. You cannot trace out of it unless I permit it.”
I glanced at the shimmering rath.
“Do not anger me further, wife of mine,” Azrael growled with the rumble of a beast.
The darkness clothing me turned into mist and drifted away as vines snaked out of the ground and twined about my arms and legs. I cried out as I was jerked onto my hands and knees in the soft grass. Furious, I snarled and blew fire over the plants. They turned to ash and fell away, but Azrael was on me before I could get to my feet. He bent his body over mine and held me down as I thrashed and bucked. Despite the blows I landed, he didn't do more than hold me.
“I won't hurt you, my love. Never that. But I won't lose you either,” he spoke into my ear.
The vines regrew and spun up my thighs. They pulled my legs apart and parted my sex with questing tendrils. I gasped and tried to scramble free.
“Shh,” Azrael whispered as he stroked the hair away from my neck. “Let me love you. It's me, Vervain. I'm still your Azrael.”
I went still, only my panting breaths moving me. I felt his shaft nudge me intimately, more vines angling it into me. As he sank into my flesh, the plants receded, trailing over me like soft fingertips. Hot breath warmed my neck before his teeth closed around it. The beasts in me obeyed that primal command and went limp. My body opened to my mate—my breasts and sex swelling for him—and he started a deep thrusting.
Only then, with my gaze angled down at my hands upon the ground, did I see my Ring of Remembrance and grasp what it meant. Ironically, I'd forgotten about it. I could have used it to escape; I'd have been gone in seconds—back to where I'd started in Faerie or even to the God Realm. But it was too late. I was lost to lust. Lost to primitive instincts and pleasure. I closed my eyes and blocked out the sight of my path to freedom. Later. I could use it later if I had to.
Azrael growled through his bite, sucking at my skin as his hips began to pump in a primal claiming. The ground beneath us was silvery gray in the moonlight but started to turn gold. Light seeped up from it, through my fingers, into my hands, and then my arms. Up my knees and through my thighs. Into my sex and belly. Across my breasts and back. Fire made me burn with desire, Water turned me liquid to ease Azrael's thrusts, Earth steadied me to receive the savage mating, Air blew away my concerns, and darkness invaded my emotions until all I felt was the need to be filled. The raw urgency to receive all that Azrael could give me—flesh, seed, and magic. My vision went golden for a second as my husband slammed into my sex and the land shoved magic into my blood. I lifted my head and screamed in rapture but also with a wild craving for more.
Inside me, the Trinity Star blazed to life at last, its silver beams bashing through the invading gold. Just before I was taken completely, starlight shone through fey light and seared it away. I gasped, fully myself once more, then huffed out that breath as my husband bucked into me savagely. I dug my hands in the grass and braced myself—against his brutal love, wild magic, and the knowledge of what he was fighting. I had nearly become what he was in the space of a few heartbeats. Mere moments to lose myself. I knew now the power that moved through him and how it was nearly impossible to deny. Azrael didn't have a star inside him to defend his soul; al
l he had was me. So I would be his star.
“I love you, Azrael,” I said firmly.
Azrael's teeth withdrew and his head angled down to mine. “I love you, Vervain,” he said brokenly before he covered my lips with his.
As Azrael's hot tongue and hard shaft speared me, I let myself enjoy the ecstasy his body offered. I pushed back onto him and went as wild as his magic. But I stayed in control of my mind and even as I shivered through my climax, I held firm against the magic that kept seeking entrance. It filled me in the end, despite my efforts, sneaking in through my lover's release. Azrael shouted out my name as he emptied into me, his head lifted and hips jerking forward to slap my flesh. But as he filled me, my star brightened again, battling back the devious fey magic. My claim on the land and control over the wild magic burned away with it, but what did that matter when Azrael's will superseded mine? Better to stay in control of myself than keep the dubious power he granted me.
Azrael finally dismounted. He rolled onto the grass and pulled me down beside him. His antlers gleamed in the moonlight—once again the only light there—and his eyes shone but they didn't glow. I nestled up against him and wound my hand in his long hair. He eased me across his chest and sighed.
“Lay atop me, my love. The feel of your body gives me strength,” he murmured.
“I'm here, Az,” I covered him with my body. “I won't leave you.”
Azrael sighed but it came out ragged, and I knew that somewhere inside him, he fought to get free, and he'd keep fighting for me. I could feel the real him rising and falling through our bond—struggling up only to be pulled back under.
“I've got you. I won't let go,” I repeated the words that he had said to me so recently. “No matter what happens or what you do, I will always love you, Azrael.”
“Carus,” he whispered, “I...” his voice broke. “Help—”
I jolted up to look at him. “Azrael?”
Green light flared in his eyes and Azrael sighed. “Yes, my love?”
“Nothing,” I said in disappointment and rolled onto my back to stare up at the magic sky.
Azrael turned onto his side, following my movement, and his hand went to my belly. I stared at him and shivered, seeing someone else—or perhaps something else—stare back at me. But more than that, I was afraid. Not of him but for him and for the babies that might be growing beneath his palm. If I was pregnant, what had my star done to my sons when it cast out the golden light? Had it saved them from the magic or destroyed them? I couldn't sense them inside me, as I had sensed my other children.
Was it the fear, the ward Azrael had set on me to separate me from the other men, or the fey magic around me that kept me from feeling them? Was something muffling my senses? Or perhaps I hadn't conceived. Just because he'd removed my birth control spell and declared me fertile, it didn't mean I'd gotten pregnant instantly. Maybe my womb had been empty when my star blasted through it.
I didn't want to get pregnant again, not so soon, but faced with the possibility that I could have lost my precious sons before they were born, I desperately hoped that if they had been conceived, they had survived the starlight. They wouldn't exactly be safe inside me—let's be honest, my children never were—but at least they'd have a shot at being born.
I laid my hand over Azrael's and looked deeper into his eyes, beyond the savage magic and to the god drowning in it. His stare softened and the savagery receded.
Chapter Forty-Five
Azrael and I turned the night to day and basked in the heat of a magic sun. We swam in an underground ocean and rinsed away the salt with the spray of a waterfall. We lazed in the grass and swung in a hammock of darkness. We dined at an elegant table in the middle of a jungle and drank wine near a lava flow. And through all of it, I tried desperately to reach my fading husband.
Over and over, I tried to pierce the magic and touch the real Azrael. I kept getting glimpses of him but then he'd be yanked away and the Faerie God would take over with a knowing glint in his eye. The landscape would transform, sometimes becoming a seascape, and Az would whisk me across a ballroom floor, or sail with me in a pirate ship, or make love to me in the air—anything to dazzle me and keep me from calling to the real him. I had to hand it to the magic, it was clever and relentless. And a bit of a show-off.
“Are you hungry, Carus?” Azrael escorted me down a garden path, between a tangle of rosebushes, their blooms the exact color of fresh blood.
I knew they were that exact color because they bled, dripping over their deadly thorns. And no, in case you're wondering, it wasn't paint. My beasts had scented the blood as soon as the garden appeared and had been prowling anxiously inside me throughout our entire stroll. In fact, I was pretty sure that Azrael had made those wounded roses precisely for that reason—to keep me on my toes. I drew those toes back from a drop of blood that fell on the white stones near my foot, thinking absurdly of Snow White. It felt like a fairy tale, walking through the strange and wondrous lands Azrael created, and I suppose it was. I just hoped I didn't end up in a crystal coffin... again.
“Sure,” I answered. “I could eat.” I knew we'd eaten once already down there but my belly gurgled at his words so more time must have passed than I'd realized.
“Yes.” Azrael laughed at my rumbling belly. “I see—or hear, rather—that I've been lax in seeing to your needs. That shall not happen again.”
I wasn't sure if I liked the sound of that.
A clear, circular platform appeared before us and Azrael stepped upon it. He helped me onto the disc and it began to rise, then expand. Soon, it was over forty feet across—large enough to hold the dining table that appeared on it. The table had gilded legs, carved in swirling designs, and a creamy marble top. On the marble, crystal plates and goblets waited with golden flatware. Azrael sat me in a throne-like chair and then took the one beside it.
“What would you like to eat?” He asked as the scenery changed below us.
I glanced down to see the garden go hazy as if it were a wet painting and the artist had just swiped a brush across it. The colors blended, diffused, and changed. Garden became desert—great rolling dunes beneath a warm sun. My clothing shifted to suit the scenery, becoming thin layers of silk, embroidered with gold. Something Scheherazade would have been proud to wear. But then the dunes started to shimmer and shift. Golden sand took on other colors, vibrant shades, and I realized that it wasn't sand at all but gemstones. Millions of faceted jewels sliding over nuggets of gold. A hoard that made my dragon squeal. And she never squeals.
“Strawberry shortcake,” I whispered in awe.
“As you wish.” Azrael inclined his head and a golden-brown shortcake, covered in strawberries and whipped cream, appeared on my plate.
I gaped at it and then at him. “That was an expletive, not a request.”
“I know.” Az grinned broadly. “But I couldn't resist.”
“Oh.”
“You can have all of the precious jewels that you want, my love,” the Faerie God declared indulgently. “Your dragon can roll in them like a cat in catnip. Whatever you desire, I will provide.”
“Az...” I trailed off as I looked down and spotted the shortcake again. I was really hungry. I took a bite and groaned in pleasure.
“Yes?” he prompted me.
“How about a steak?”
A huge slab of perfectly cooked prime rib shimmered into existence on the table in front of my dessert. It had a baked potato and sauteed green beans with it. I sighed and put the shortcake aside in favor of the meat. Azrael chuckled as a slice of beef wellington appeared on his plate. He began to eat but continued to slide smug gazes my way.
“Why don't you invite some friends to visit us?” I casually suggested.
“Friends?” He narrowed his eyes at me. “What friends?”
“The other horsemen: Sam, Ira, and Thaddeus. You haven't seen them in awhile and I'm sure they would love all of this.” I waved my fork at the landscape below as we glided over it.
“I don't think so,” he murmured.
“Why not?” I asked innocently.
“You know why, Carus,” Azrael chided me. “They would not...”
“They wouldn't what?” I looked up at him as if I didn't know what he had been about to say.
“This is not the time for guests. We'll invite them when things are more settled.”
“What about your parents? Surely, you want to see your mother?” Yeah, it was a low blow, using his mommy against him, but I was getting desperate.
Azrael flinched as if I'd struck him and, for a moment, his eyes flashed blue. I gasped and reached for him but the hand that took mine did so with a punishing grip, its claws right on the verge of drawing blood.
“I want to spend this time with you alone, Carus,” the romantic words were said in a low, threatening tone. “We've just started a new life; we need to settle in with each other first. Don't you agree?”
