Beyond the Dark

by Angela Knight

  Emma nodded, heavy-lidded with satiation. “Of course.” She slid her hand into his and laid her cheek against his shoulder.

  Owen’s heart skipped a beat at her complete trust in him. He forced himself not to consider other ways to enjoy it, such as kissing his way down her spine and between her legs until she was begging him for completion.

  He deliberately reminded himself of the King’s Mages’ hall in London, with its ancient stonework and ever-vigilant sentries. He whispered the message spell, as familiar to him as breathing, and visualized his words appearing on the great silver message board, one by one. “Alive at Trethledan House in Cornwall. Traitor mage at Whitmore Hall.”

  Mist gathered thickly in front of Emma’s window and trembled, fighting to shape his vision.

  Emma tightened her hand around Owen’s, watching it with him.

  The mist thinned until it showed hints of stones, with a great rectangular board hanging in front. The message board! He was closer than he’d ever been before.

  Owen focused harder, demanding that his dispatch go through. Emma’s nails dug into his skin, sending a surge of magick into him like fine wine.

  If he could just write the words, letter by letter…

  The immense tablet clouded, as if someone had breathed on it. Flecks of light circled the board and gradually joined together.

  He was starting to write, and the sentries had noticed. Just a little more effort, and he’d have a true message.

  Owen pictured his words brushstroke by brushstroke.

  The word alive shimmered in the air above it and was slowly etched in pale crimson on the silver…

  Someone shouted in the distance.

  A howling wind abruptly slammed shut Emma’s window. The mist congealed into solid gray, erasing all sight of the message board.

  Owen cursed under his breath and dismissed the vision. He needed no reminder of another failure.

  Emma sniffed and lifted her head. She blinked down at him, all soft, inquisitive, dark brown eyes. “You fed the land’s magick into me before to save me, correct? Did any portion of your message reach London, with my magick’s help?”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw. If only he could keep her out of this—but he couldn’t. There was no time left to do anything except take advantage of her and anything else that came to hand. “Yes, that’s what happened. The first word might have made it through but nothing more. Trevelyan’s wall feels a good deal thinner, but it still stops me.”

  “Damn.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her for having so perfectly captured his own sentiments. And with profanity, too. This must have greatly overset her usual patterns of thought, if she was uttering those terms.

  “What if we fed more of the land’s power into you?” She nibbled thoughtfully on a slender fingertip, her expression abstracted.

  Hope trickled into his veins before he blocked it. After all, she’d nearly died only a few minutes ago.

  “Are you strong enough? We will have to be completely united for me to tap into it.”

  She waved off his concerns. “Truly, I have never felt better. Your attentions”—she blushed sweetly—“gave me more joy and strength than I can express.”

  He gave her a quick kiss. Still…

  “Where could we find a better link to the magickal confluence than here in the house?”

  “At the Druid’s Mount. It’s a small hilltop surrounded by ancient standing stones, where Grandfather built a small Grecian temple at Grandmother’s request. Legend says it was a place of power, long before the druids or King Arthur came here.” She paused for a moment, her expression abstracted, before she continued. “Grandmother could light a candle with magick and she entered the mage school trials. She never said whether she failed them or not, only that Grandfather was her destiny.”

  Owen frowned at the odd phrasing, wondering if Emma’s grandmother had had the gift of foretelling. He cupped Emma’s face in his hands, seeing the small temple through her eyes. A very feminine structure, it was round and built of white marble, with a private room in the center.

  He delicately probed further, using his magesight to see below the marble surface and the gardens around it. Something ancient and immensely wise looked back at him, uncoiling itself like a great serpent to inspect him. It was the confluence itself, part of a river of magick which flowed through all of Cornwall and, beyond that, England and Britain.

  Owen stiffened his spine, fighting not to tremble. After all, adepts occasionally saw confluences, and councilors knew how to seek them. But confluences had their own will and ways of acting, including the ability to be easily offended for no apparent reason. Making a mistake at this point, or even showing fear, had destroyed more than one mage.

  Emma’s hands wrapped themselves around his wrists, offering her family’s ancient connections to the confluence as comfort.

  Calm flowed back into him. Inside his head, Owen bowed, offering his duty to the King and his link to Emma as bona fides.

  The confluence reared up in consideration, before nodding to him. It shimmered briefly, like hands making a magickal pass.

  A breath later, Owen and Emma stood within the Grecian temple. Fluted white columns circled them, while a white ceiling etched in gold rose high above them to form an elegant pavilion. The furniture was equally simple, primarily a carved ebony and rosewood bed raised on a dais, with a white gauze panel sweeping down from the ceiling at each corner. It was made up with the finest white linens, while white and red roses floated in bowls.

  Emma moved to the temple’s edge, where its white marble steps began, and looked out. More accustomed to magick’s workings, Owen stepped up behind her, enjoying the scent of warm, well-pleased woman. If he had to rip himself open to allow another mage entrance to his magick and his heart, at least it would be Emma, someone whose motives he trusted and who he found infinitely attractive.

  Broad meadows and ancient woods flowed into the distances beyond the temple, and a brook sang softly to itself. The Channel glimmered under the moonlight to the south, caressing the land’s edge. The view was slightly cut off by Trethledan House, to the southeast.

  Three ancient stones, rough-edged yet unmistakably created by men, stood in the herb garden just below the temple. Four other stones, equally old, marked each corner of the compass. An immense, ruined castle looked back at the temple from atop a ridge which ran east of Trethledan House. As obviously as the temple was the center of the confluence, the castle and the marker stones indicated its boundaries.

  Under the land’s surface, his magesight showed golden magick shimmering and pulsing, rising toward the moonlight. It was the land’s pure strength running through the temple and leaping exuberantly across it in fiery chains. It twined itself through the marble, too.

  Moonlight’s silver gilded the temple’s roof and the trees. It clung to his shoulders and sparkled across his skin before diving into his signet. It was the magick that could reshape men, as the moon itself was reformed. Joining himself with Emma meant opening himself utterly to the land’s magick and every possible change that could follow.

  “How did we come here?” Emma asked, spreading her hands to encompass the world beyond. Her eyes, however, lingered overlong on him, noting the breadth of his shoulders and the rise and fall of his chest.

  “The confluence brought us,” Owen answered, heat whispering through his veins where her gaze touched him. “It must greatly want to be rid of Trevelyan and sees this as the best step.”

  “Enough to act directly?”

  Owen nodded, stepped behind her, and pulled her close, seeking contact with warm flesh and blood rather than insubstantial webs of power. “What are those stones out there?” he queried and kissed the top of her head.

  “The Morthol, or hammer.” She melted against him, her heart beating against his arm in the irregular pulse of desire. “The Gwythias, which means guardian, flows at the base of the cliff on the other side.”

  “They were buil
t to guard the confluence. Can you see the power beginning to gather?” Owen cupped her breast, teasing her gently through the fine cotton. His pulse thudded ridiculously hard in his throat, sending an answering surge into his loins.

  “Mm-hmm.” She wriggled against him.

  She wasn’t speaking in complete sentences now, he noted with considerable satisfaction. She had the most responsive nipples he’d ever had the pleasure of teasing. “How old is the castle?”

  “The site is—oh, Owen!—supposedly from Arthur’s time. But it hasn’t been inhabited since Tudor times.” She managed to put her hand on his hip, pulling him forward, and rubbed her exquisite derriere against his cock through her thin skirts.

  He grunted something encouraging, sparks skittering through his veins, and nuzzled her neck. All around him, magick pulsed in the land and sang through the air, foreshadowing its hot ripeness at harvest time.

  Emma shivered and threw her head back against his shoulder enthusiastically. “There’s still a—ah!—Druid stone altar where the southwest tower overlooks the Channel and the Gwythias, though. Grandmother always said that tower was why the Morthol was originally built.”

  She undulated against him, moaning happily under his hands.

  A thought trembled in Owen’s head and was gone before he could grasp it. But it was distant and insignificant next to her eagerness and the blood throbbing in his veins. Magick skittered up the columns and across the roof’s etchings.

  Owen gathered her skirts up in his hands, teasing their fullness over her legs. His cock swelled desperately against his breeches.

  Emma trembled and tried to hook one slender leg back around his ankle. “I’m wearing too many clothes,” she muttered crossly. Her stockings slipped down, one embroidered garter coming delightfully undone.

  He snorted, half in laughter and half in disgust at his own tendency to torture himself. He tossed her up onto the bed, sending her skirts tumbling around her. Magick gathered deep within the temple’s marble, suffusing every stone vein with gold and silver.

  Emma blinked up at him, her brown eyes fathomless pools of desire. He kissed the inside of her knee, exposed by the sliding stocking, and she blushed hotly.

  “Dearest, dearest Emma.” He caressed her lightly, smoothing his thumb over her, savoring the hot leap of her pulse at his slightest touch. Magick poured deeper into his veins, matching every beat of her heart, every catch in her breath, every bead of cream gliding down her thigh.

  He slipped her shoes off and drew her stockings down, revealing more of her exquisite limbs to him.

  She threaded her fingers through his hair and pulled him closer, moaning his name.

  Hunger sank deeper into his bones and his cock, tightening his lungs, until breathing was necessary only to bring him closer to her. Heat prowled through him, his magick coming alive in every cell of his body.

  He drew her sleeves over her shoulders and grimaced at her stays. Removing them—sweetly seducing her out of them—would necessitate changing their position and losing her passionate hold on him. No and no and no.

  A single spell later, Emma’s clothes lay precisely folded on the temple’s floor.

  Her breasts were taut and flushed, her nipples ripe as springtime berries. Her narrow waist was perfectly formed for his hands to grasp while he rode her. And, oh dear heavens, the curve of her hips and the dark feminine mysteries between her thighs…

  His mouth went completely dry, and he tried to decide what part of her to taste first.

  Fire sparked across the ceiling, forming itself into ropes of flames that ran from column to column. Flashes of crimson and gold flickered against him and Emma, his magick answering hers.

  “Your shirt,” Emma sighed. “I need to touch your skin.”

  Owen snapped his fingers, and his clothing immediately removed itself, settling onto the floor in a neatly folded pile together with Emma’s.

  “My Owen.” She kneaded his shoulders, her fingers digging into his muscles, and her nails scratching his skin.

  He growled, his senses leaping at the heightened, more precise contact. She was his, dammit, his. No matter what else happened, he would claim her completely.

  He kissed her breasts, swirling his tongue over her fine skin and tasting her plump nipple. Again and again and again, he suckled her, light arising wherever he touched.

  She moaned his name, cream rippling over her thigh, and her musk enriched the air.

  His cock hardened against her. Pre-come slipped forth, hot and eager as the flames dancing around them through the temple and the gardens beyond.

  She writhed, twisting herself against him. He teased her pearl, circling it, toying with her folds, stroking her directly, ruffling her folds again—until she was sobbing with passion and his own cock was screaming in desperation.

  Every breath rasped his throat. Hunger stabbed through his balls, locking them high and achingly tight against his cock. Silver poured over and through him, until he was barely recognizable to himself, yet he paid no recognition. Only Emma and the pleasure they found together meant anything now.

  He gathered her up and lifted her hips to meet him.

  Her eyes opened, and she smiled slowly. “Finally,” she purred and arched to meet his thrust.

  He growled and pulled her down onto him, gloving himself in her hot cream. She moaned happily, eagerly fondling his hips and waist—any part of him she could reach.

  He bent his knees and brought her up into a sitting position, keeping them joined. She gasped at the changing sensations, a thousand flavors of delight passing across her face.

  Owen kissed her, tasting her pleasure, as if it were his own, bringing her breasts against his chest. Their breaths swirled between their mouths, echoing every thrust of his cock, every eager pulse of her loins.

  Magick ripped up from the confluence and through the pavilion, filling every stone and seam. It poured down from the ceiling and across the bed, setting the air alight more brilliantly than any royal display of fireworks. It surged into him, more dizzying and exhilarating than a wild weekend in a wine shop.

  His own magick blazed up to meet up it, deeper and stronger, demanding everything his blood and bones had to give as fuel. Madness or ecstasy was the unknown destination…

  Yet Emma was his anchor and his reality, from the taste of her on his lips, to her sweat gliding over his skin as if it were his own. They flowed together as smoothly as water and wine, completely unlike what he’d found before with any other mage.

  He thrust again more slowly, and she twisted slightly, sending a stab of delight across his hips, through his balls, and up his cock. Her channel caressed him and clung. They moved together as one flesh, with even their breathing united.

  He closed his eyes, groaning in ecstasy. Emma, dearest, dearest Emma…

  Gold spun through him from wherever they touched, while silver rippled deeper and deeper into his skin—carving away his inhibitions and pouring new life into his veins.

  They began to move together, faster and faster, in a dance whose pleasures only they fully understood, highlighted by their moans of delight, punctuated by harsh gasps and the fierce smack of flesh meeting flesh.

  She arched, flinging her head back in a paroxysm of joy. Orgasm tumbled through her—and snatched him, vaulting him into ecstasy through their link. It blasted through his balls and out of his cock, erasing everything he’d ever thought he’d known about his own magick.

  He howled, moonlight pouring over him, and became one with her and the land in delight. Crimson and gold surged through his magick, bright and strong as their pleasure, remaking his vision of what passing magick to another mage could mean.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Owen considered the lacing to Emma’s stays, decided they would do well enough, and briskly tied them off.

  Dawn shimmered in the east, barely disturbing a heavy bank of clouds. Dew gleamed on the grass, a silver reminder of the magick locked in the land. A few birds chirped awkwardly,
as if practicing for the coming day, while a breeze rattled the heavy grass briefly and retired.

  His experience with women was not enough for him to gauge how well he’d performed as a lady’s maid, especially in this more intimate arena. Husbands helped ladies with their stays, not occasional lovers—a terrifying and exciting prospect.

  But even if he was now admitted to all the boudoir’s secrets, at least he’d still kept command of his own most essential elements. They’d never linked as adepts, naked to each other’s minds while they passed magick and worked a spell. Lust blinded a mage too much to make him similarly vulnerable, unlike a conscious lowering of barriers. If the magick was worked without physical contact, it would mean that the union was truly without any barriers.

  “Since you managed to reach London this time,” Emma poked her head out of her dress like a tortoise to address him, “how soon do you think someone will come?”

  “Since Trevelyan is allied with a French mage, who has a coterie and several warships, they’re sending a party of adepts and some frigates.” He began to button her. “They want us to lie low until they arrive.”

  “Noon, perhaps?” She bent her head forward for the last few buttons, muffling her voice.

  “Or sooner. The Navy will be very eager to catch that French mage, since he destroyed one of their sloops.”

  She pursed her mouth, considering that strategy. “They’re so certain of finding him here? Why would the Frenchman still be hunting you? Surely you’ve already delivered your dispatch.”

  “I am the message, sweetheart.” He handed her a pair of half-boots, glad the confluence had provided a complete set of clothing. “I cannot speak or write it until I reach Whitehall.”

  “For safety’s sake?”

  “Yes. Courier bags can be stolen or destroyed. A courier is much more difficult to erase from the scene. It’s why the French must kill me rather than simply destroy my pouch, which they’ve already done.”