She bent her mouth to his and lifted his face to penetrate his lips with her tongue. He needed no prompting to open his mouth to her and his hands slid up to her hips boldly and sought out those nipples he had been fixated on. A slight whimper escaped her lips and caught in his mouth and the odd hollow thrumming of winds picked up speed around them and the force of the air alone began to shred the clothes from Ashe’s body. Insofar, this was not new territory to Ashe and his human body was thrilling to the ritual of intimacy, his maleness throbbing against her with the rhythm of the wind gusts around them. He felt a great heat in his mouth and it spread like liquid into his head until the pain of vertigo was gone entirely and his eyes shot open at the wonder of it. He saw that the air around them had darkened like the threat of storm and her face was glowing, not from her odd ever-changing skin, but from his own eyes that were glowing like hot white lightning, the pale blue darkening, deepening to the true cerulean of a maritime summer sky.
He grabbed at her with the greed of a hungry child, and she was a solid thing but not a thing he could hold. She touched nowhere but his face yet the winds caressed him with such immaculate intimacy that when his body shook from the force of orgasm, his seed disappeared in the gales and his body went into collapse. Zephyra’s powers suspended him on his feet and when the excitement had passed, Ashe weakly opened his eyes and saw that he was no longer naked though he could not feel the clothes he saw. Wind was obviously a constant deception to the sense of touch.
The armor that graced his limbs was in the same hues of white, gray and blue that scattered in the form of the sylph, although it was static and not a living swirl of color. He wore a silver helmet, winged and ornate, but he did not feel or see the odd piece. He could touch it when he raised his hands but it did not hinder his sight. A weightless cloak, nearly white but tinged with atmospheric blue draped from arm guards adorned with the same wing motifs. Breastplate, sword belt, gauntlets, leg guards, boots, he saw them all but felt no change by weight or movement. It was heavy armor in all appearance but operated like he wasn’t wearing a stitch at all. The slightest breezes still caressed him. His favored swords were sharper and the hilts were adorned with the silver wings as well. The silks that tethered from them were as diaphanous as the breeze and you could only see hints of it. Ashe gave the silks a try and was childlike in his excitement at how well they functioned. After his inspection of her generous gifts, he met her gaze smilingly.
Zephyra shook her head chiding him, but allowed a knowing smile.
“If only all ladies’ favor were quite so impressive,” Ashe breathed out, feeling oddly humbled and a bit embarrassed by his rapid satisfaction.
“Do not forget this one, my enthusiastic child,” she added, reaching out to remove the tiny dagger from its sheathe. “This little dove is called Nettle and she demands blood to summon me. Your own, so be warned that your calling should be limited. She will paralyze you for a bit but you will not have need of your faculties when I am summoned. Wind is instant and needs no time to reach you. I should send you off now— our little storm sent your companions rushing for cover, I’m afraid.”
Ashe was suddenly frantic. “Wait, Zephyra, I need to know what you know about Melchior before I go!”
She smiled secretly as he began to slowly descend through the sky, now darkening from the coming of night rather than the storm. Her voice still reached him as though she stood beside him though.
“My little wind caller, the elementals do not care for the motives of men and we only meddle where it amuses us. He is no friend to the Four: earth, air, water, or light. I will warn you though— the Darkness is no enemy to Melchior and it is not done with him. Be careful of the Dark one. I would have thought the Salamander, Nuriel, might have overlooked him, but I think the balances are in chaos and the elementals can ill afford not to move some pawns. Do not cling to your histories, human, the rules are being rewritten…”
And Zephyra spoke no more as his feet felt the weight of the world beneath them once more. He had almost forgotten how immense that weight could be.
Night and Pierait were watching Ashe keenly as Ashe noticed their presence, unable to disguise his shock that he was delivered directly to his friends. He wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, but after her arrogant reprimand on not catering to humans, he wouldn’t have been surprised if she decided to drop him on a whole other continent. The landscape around them was dripping with the torrents he and Zephyra had brought on. He wondered if Sea Star had any hand in it and if the babbling brooks were aching to tell Rienna what they learned— he certainly hoped not. It wasn’t that he was particularly concerned about what Rienna thought but he got the impression that he was unique to the intimate experience he experienced with his elemental and wasn’t looking to reprise the events with anyone else, even in jest. Night and Pierait were dry nonetheless, but a man draped in otherworldly darkness and ‘magicians’ of the Void aren’t normal by any means.
Pierait managed a friendly smile and a nod but Night’s expression was as dark as his namesake and Ashe began to wonder at the warning Zephyra had left him with.
“Ah, Ashe, it’s good to see you again. We weren’t worried— I could hear the whispers in the wind once we realized you could not hear us. Not that magic reaches me, but my mother taught me how to observe the world without it,” Pierait’s voice shook a little as his eyes darted between Night and Ashe repeatedly.
“Which means…” Night drawled out. “That your self-pitying story about luck is wrong after all. So which of our companions is to be left vulnerable? Which one goes without?” Night was inches from Ashe’s face menacingly. “Will it be Krose or my flower Freesia? For your sake, you had better hope it’s that impish sop that fawns over our lady warrior.”
Ashe was suddenly and uncharacteristically flashing his clenched teeth at the threat. “For your sake, Night, you had better not be entertaining any ideas to cause more trouble than we already deal with. We could protect whoever goes without— it doesn’t mean we have to leave anybody behind. None of us were less determined to stop Melchior before the elementals entered the picture at all. At this point, it’s not ideal to lose anyone. I’m under the impression that the light already favors your flower.” Ashe spat out the last word with venom and distaste. He was in no mood to let Night pout and posture. No matter how Night felt, it was never their fate to decide.
The fight drained out of Night for the time being as he grinned lopsidedly and shrugged, throwing his arms out in a grand gesture and backing away. Pierait expelled air audibly and seemed to relax. For a soulless one, he was a bit of a nervous sort, but then confrontation is probably a confusing thing for Soulless. It’s not a predictable thing how humans will escalate and probability was lost on Soulless. However, Ashe thought that maybe a few broken rules left Pierait a bit of a wild card. Cruelly, he hoped that Krose would be the one to not receive the gifts of the light. Not because he feared Night, but because Freesia was probably the closest thing to a female friend that Rienna ever had and she would worry over her.
He did not know why Rienna surfaced in his mind so much-maybe some part of him wanted to prove he was not just the monster his brother was and wearing the masks of the psycho and her dead husband. He wondered again what Rienna kept that would shed light on what was going on under the surface of this mess. She always telegraphed when she was holding something back, but he wouldn’t fault her for being careful. Then again, it was also possible that the direction of her thoughts were not helpful at all. It wasn’t cruel to say, but their lot had not been predictable at any turn and he doubted their luck would change. He realized he probably needed to give his theory on luck an early retirement.
Rienna, Krose and Freesia’s trip was quite the opposite where terrain was concerned— their steps took them gradually down into a valley, heavily forested and cut with thready streams. None of them were surprised; Krose due to knowledge of the land, but Freesia and Rienna were alien to the land and had already imagined
that instinct and genes would have made this appealing geography for rabbit-hybrid people. Most of the other Folk had blended into societies; Reishefolk still liked their high places, being the Bird Kind, but they were not shy about including typical humans or even other kinds of Folk. The Bryfolk Hole was a place almost exclusively populated with Bryfolk, since a rabbit’s shyness had not escaped their incarnation. It wasn’t anything new that some people just felt more comfortable around their own kind. Krose explained this, trying to inject a positive attitude, but his eyes still held a grim worry.
“How did you meet Dinsch?” Freesia offered suddenly, and Rienna was grateful. Sometimes she felt too keenly the underlying sorrow that others hid and she was certainly not helping Krose keep his head.
Krose smiled ear to ear, so it was clear he was grateful to have something to add as well. They kept a fast pace but knew they would never catch up to Dinsch at his terrified pace, even with horses, and rushing into this would put them all in great danger. Rienna had wanted this group in the first place because they were the smallest and stealthiest, which would be an asset in the maze the Bryfolk called home. She needed no history lesson to know that those who burrowed built labyrinths. They did it on instinct to spread out precious resources and slow predators from their attack.
“Well, Rienna knows my brother Seije. Seije and I were close as boys but when our parents abandoned us to Hargreaves Orphanage, it was clear that older boys were rarely taken together. Seije was a good candidate for the Merschenez army, but I was just a skinny little troublemaker with no taste for confrontation. When my brother was recruited for the army, I was lonely and angry and I escaped that same night. I ended up heading in this very direction but I stayed off the main roads and went south, due to some bandits I had seen on the road so I was northeast of the Bryfolk Hole in a little hamlet. I’m not sure if that’s even there anymore because it’s near that very hamlet that I could see Melchior hoarding those damned machines…
“In any case, I was only able to find so much to eat on my travels and when I stopped at that hamlet, I was so desperate that I staked out an empty building walked until I found a vendor and stole food to take back to that building. I had been eating what I stole and thought I was in the clear, but the giant of a man that I stole from was a lot lighter of foot than I had anticipated and caught my arm in a crushing grip, drawing out a mean looking blade and I knew he meant to have my hand.
“No amount of tugging was getting me free and just when my heart sank with the acceptance of what was to come, I saw that great barrel of a man heaving off of his feet like a leaf in the wind, but his body slamming on the far wall was hardly as graceful. It was Dinsch bouncing about, looking amped and happy, and he grabbed that same sore wrist to pull me to my feet and threw me over his shoulder and sped off. I had been in the Ersenais area my whole life like Rienna and I had been just as shocked to confront my first Bryfolk.
“When the shock wore off, I was bouncing about, clenching my jaw to keep my teeth from rattling out of my head. I was completely blown away by how strong and quick Dinsch was. Gathering my wits, I managed to ask him to put me down and by then the Bryfolk Hole was already becoming more visible and Dinsch had complied.
“He grinned at me and didn’t take offense as I paced around him and looked my fill. I had to laugh a little when he shook his little tail at me once my eyes had settled there. Dinsch and I had made out introductions and became fast friends. Dinsch was young too and we were both ready to stretch out our legs and see the world so he became my travel companion. I sent messages to Seije whenever I could and let him know when I would be staying for a while or where I would be moving onto next and he never failed to write me back.”
Krose frowned a bit at this point of his recollection. “Things kept on as they were for many years and then Dinsch and I got too damn close to Scryshaw, he got curious and got himself captured. I headed up towards Merschenez to look for a mercenary and ended up sending a letter to my brother from Neibelung. He had mentioned your wedding about to take place, Rienna. I had no idea that the twists of fate would send me that very bride to aid me, but I have indeed seen stranger things than an armed woman in a torn wedding gown. I am glad that Seije had gathered his wits enough to bring us together. I don’t think either of us would have gotten so far without the other. Whatever else happens, I won’t forget that.”
Rienna did not argue with that point and felt a little guilty that since the mention of Melchior and the machines possibly in that hamlet, her mind had wandered in and out of Krose’s story. She had never imagined the gentle boy Melchior would be a villain in her story. Her mind wandered back to earlier days…
Melchior had been a quiet boy, strong but nothing prodigal. He was handsome but with a roughness and roguish charm and Rienna had always been curious of this stranger covered in tattoos. He had been one of the rougher finds her father had brought in— where most of the orphans were straight from Hargreaves (and Melchior had been but only for a bit), Melchior had been out on his own for most of his childhood, used to doing what it took rather than what he was told. He was not the sort to laugh or smile, and Rienna thought maybe EVER because even after he had been there for many months, she had still never seen him betray anything. Belias was always annoying her with his wildfire way of being the center of talk and she imagined that she would have to nip that in the bud eventually. At the age of 13, she was already getting different looks from the boys and did it ever annoy her that they were so keen to focus on her new attributes. Her father Canis had assured her that he had said nothing to them and she was simply becoming a woman. Probably not the best thing to say for she had screamed a blue streak about being a warrior first and stormed out.
It had been late that night when she stormed out into the empty practice yard and hacked at the log dummies with her epee, not even caring that she wore little more than a thin shift and it was raining. No one was out here this late and that was par for the course. She slashed at them until her body cried out in anguish and her palms were thick with raw blisters, busted open and bleeding, soothed and cleansed by the steady rain. That dummy was her father, Belias, and that nitwit handmaiden who had dared to try to lecture her on being a lady. Damn them all for their good intentions and sensibilities!
When she had spent her energy and wilted onto a rough splitlog bench, she suddenly noticed she wasn’t as alone as she had thought. Her eyes were growing accustomed to the dark and she noticed the presence of an amused young warrior, muscled and tanned, arms folded, legs crossed and propped against the wall leading into the barracks. Rienna stumbled gracelessly to her feet, still trying to catch her breath as she pointed her epee towards the young warrior.
“Show yourself!” she had warned, hoping at this point it was Belias moping in the shadows. She would find the strength to knock him down a peg or two.
Her stance relaxed ever so slightly when she noticed it was Melchior stepping out of the shadows, chewing on a sprig of sweet grass but smiling his usually non-smile (which translated to amusement that went no lower than his deep cobalt eyes).
“Not bad, I wouldn’t expect less from the lineage of Canis,” Melchior drawled out in genuine admiration. This was perhaps a statement worded well to avoid her wrath, since any mention of her being a woman might have added him to her shit list right about now. Yet, as his eyes crept down her scantily clad body, shift clinging to her curves, it was not anger she felt but curiosity and a bit of self-consciousness. She wasn’t quite sure what his expression meant. He wasn’t quite looking at her like a woman, but he wasn’t disliking what he saw either. Melchior always unsettled her because she could never quite read him.
Rienna was losing all the strength to argue as the adrenaline was draining away from her. She just felt sore and a little deflated. She swung the epee in a flourish and drove it into the bench where it sung with the vibration of the strike. She then crossed her arms and decided against it when she realized it pushed her budding breasts into a bit
of cleavage. There was a recognizable flash of interest from Melchior in that moment that she had no intention of acknowledging.
Yet when he sauntered over towards her slowly, she suddenly felt a degree of panic and took an involuntary half-step back. It was then that she was rewarded with an elusive laugh that fled as quickly as it came. He held his hands out in a gesture of harmlessness. But Melchior was 16, an age so adult to a 13-yearold girl, and he did not have the body of a child at all. He might be a few years yet from his full size, but training had taken the boy out of him. She could feel the heat from him though he still stood a good foot away. Her eyes dropped to the tattoos on his arms so she could avoid his unsettling gaze. She was not a slight girl, already curving and blooming and as muscled as an agile fighter could be, but as a young woman, she was only half as thick in limb as he. She was a sapling to his towering oak. Why was size intimidating now? She had taken down men twice his size. Melchior took advantage of her curious inspection of his arms.
Melchior closed the distance with a single step and her eyes snapped up to meet his and his mouth was immediately covering hers. It was not a hard kiss and her limbs went weak as her eyes fluttered closed. His hands gripped the tops of her arms to keep her on her feet. His lips moved over hers but he did not enter her mouth like she had heard some of the bawdy maids talking about. Rienna opened her mouth to taste his lips and his eyes shot open for a second in shock then he smiled and pulled her against him for a moment, releasing her body from the kiss before things heated further. His intent hadn’t been to deflower the young girl but being a teenager himself, he knew his control only went so far when a girl responded as she had. When he pulled away, his face was still serious and unreadable. He started to walk away backwards, still facing her. It was her first kiss and it shook her.
The Truth about Heroes: Complete Trilogy (Heroes Trilogy) Page 11
