Blood of the Volcano: Sequal to Heart of the Volcano

by Imogen Howson

  After all, she could voice the words. “I love you,” she said, softly enough that only he would hear her. “And I think you love me too.”

  He looked at her, a sharp snap of a look, taken completely off guard. “Maya,” he said, and then, “I do. Oh gods, I do.”

  She hadn’t expected him to say it like that, so fast, so sure. The words washed over her like a head-high wave, as cold and sharp as if it had come straight from the depths of the ocean, cutting off her breath, filling her head with a dizzying rush that washed out every other thought.

  “Then nothing else matters.” She put out her hands to him, and he took them with a hard clasp that sent heat tearing through her, a wave of fire after the wave of water. “I want this. Even if it removes me from being able to become maenad ever again.”

  He shut his eyes for a moment. “Don’t. I’m trying—”

  “Don’t try.”

  “Maya.” He looked down at her, straight into her eyes, and the heat she saw in his face reflected the heat building in her body, mirrored it back to her and sent it building higher. “Afterwards, if you regret it—”

  It was hard to make one word connect to another, looking into his eyes like this, feeling his hands tighten so hard on hers that he hurt her. “I might regret it. I was maenad half my life. I’ll maybe mourn it for as long. But I know, I know, I’ll never regret losing that as much as I’ll regret not having this with you.”

  She would have reached out to touch him, but she couldn’t get her hands free. So instead she stepped closer to him, close enough that she could feel his body against hers, through the thin cloth of both their tunics, close enough that she knew the heat was rising in him too.

  “That’s it.” Philos let go of her hands. “I’m done with trying to be noble. I’m a shifter, not a super-human. Come here.”

  She gave a breath of laughter. “I’m here.”

  “No. This way.” He grabbed up his pack with the blankets in it, then his hand closed around hers, pulling her along the shelf, away from the boys, in the opposite direction from where Aera and Coram had gone. She stumbled a little, her bruised knee making her clumsy, and he checked. “Damn, I’m sorry. You’re hurt. It went out of my head.”

  She laughed softly, a thrill of awareness of power—an entirely different power from anything she’d known before—going through her. He’d never been careless like that before, not even when they were enemies and he was marching her into captivity. I made him careless. I made it go out of his head.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, and let him pull her, more carefully this time, but with impatience vibrating through the hand that held hers, along the shelf, around another curve of the ravine to where the rock widened a little, forming a place wide enough for two people to lie.

  The moment they were out of sight he turned, and his arms came round her, his hands hard against her back, burning through her tunic to brand her skin. The touch drove heat through her, a shock like when lightning stabs down into the ocean, when for an instant the water lights up silver. She reached up to him, going up onto her toes, arms round his neck, at the same moment he bent his head to hers. Their mouths met, the lightning striking, setting each one of her nerves alight.

  His hands slid down to pull her hips against his, curving over her body, touching the sensitive skin at the back of her thighs and making her shiver. She felt him smile against her mouth. He touched her again, his fingers tracing her curves, and again the shiver went through her—a shiver not of cold, but of heat—stealing the strength from her knees and making her sway where she stood in his arms.

  He drew her down onto the shelf, warm from the long day’s heat, dragging the blankets one-handed from his pack, his other hand flat against her waist, his mouth leaving hers for a moment. Then he was back, kissing along her shoulder, up her neck to behind her ear, his hands cupping the back of her head, thrusting fingers through her hair.

  “Too much,” he said, the words rough in her ear.

  “Too much what?” She hardly recognised her own voice, breathless as it was, edged with the same shiver that had run through her body.

  “Too much clothes.”

  She laughed, very quietly, putting her hands up to help him as he yanked at the neck of his tunic, loosening the laces so he could pull it over his head. They dragged her tunic off next, hands tangling in the fabric, frustration spilling over in stifled laughter. Philos leaned back down to her, and she felt his naked skin against hers, the hard lines of his collarbone, the swell of his shoulders and upper arms, and she forgot to breathe, dizzy and awestruck by the way he felt under her hands, the way his skin slid against hers.

  She opened her mouth to his, melting into him, dissolving into the heat and pleasure. Miles above her, stars swam in glittering trails in a liquid black sky, burning across her vision. And down here, in the heat and darkness, his hands trailed fire across her body, burning his touch through and through her.

  But still not deep enough. She was aching the way she had the other night, emptiness spreading inside her, the way she’d felt waiting for the madness to take her, waiting for the volcano’s blood to set her free. The image swam into her head then dissolved and vanished. She moved under him, sliding her legs up to draw him nearer still, running her hands down his back to where she could feel his muscles bunch.

  “Philos…”

  He hesitated, just for an instant. She thought he was going to ask, Are you sure this time? and her fingers curled into claws of frustration. But he didn’t ask. He looked down at her, unsmiling, his eyes dark and hot, bracing himself with his forearms either side of her body, the hair on his chest soft and coarse against her breasts. “It might hurt you.”

  She clasped her hands over the small of his back, pulling him closer. “Do I look as if I’m afraid of being hurt?”

  The grin flashed through his eyes. “Not ever.”

  He braced himself again, a muscle twitched in his jaw, and she sensed that despite what he’d said he was going slowly, being careful, then he slid forward and up into her. For a moment it did hurt, but then he moved, thrust deeper, filling her where she’d ached for him, and the pain changed, just as it had when she was a maenad, changed into a flood of something too intense, too white-hot to be called simply pleasure.

  Time spread out, endless, a glittering arc like the sky above them. Her thoughts thinned, vanishing like water vapour. There was nothing but Philos, his mouth on hers, his hands so hard on her that they might have hurt if she’d been able to feel anything through the flood of white-hot sensation, his body within hers.

  She moved against him, with him, and felt him tremble, felt his breath catch. “Maya,” he said against her mouth, his voice as naked as the rest of him, mindless, not able to think of anything beyond this, now.

  The flood, the ecstasy, rose behind her eyes, a sheet of silver, like lightning, sending chimes ringing under the surface of her skin and making every nerve-end tingle. Her mind came loose, memories flashing across it, a phantom scent in her nostrils, a feeling of something going through her…

  Philos cupped her face with his hand, tipped her head back to kiss her so deeply she could hardly remember to breathe, bringing her to instant, intense awareness of the rhythm of their bodies moving together, faster, harder, his voice, shaking as he said her name.

  “Maya. Ah, Maya—gods.”

  The rhythm built and built, sending tremors through her, and he was sweating, goose bumps rising all over his arms, his gaze suddenly blank, and she went with him, caught in the flood as it washed all through her, sensations too much to bear.

  The rhythm broke and she shattered in his arms, light splintering across her vision, feeling it everywhere in her body—her legs, her belly, behind her eyes, under her fingernails—feeling him shuddering against her, inside her, hot and naked, both of them completely vulnerable, completely out of control, completely safe.

  “Philos,” she said, and found herself crying, her face pressed into his s
houlder, their bodies still joined, hers trembling against his, saying for the first time things she would never be able to say any other time. Not in the daytime, not when he could see her face, only now, in the darkness, held in his arms, liquid and dissolved in pleasure.

  “Maya,” he said, his voice overlaying hers. “Gods, Maya…” He put his forehead down to rest against hers, holding her until her tears evaporated and she lay boneless against him, slowly letting normality return.

  Philos shifted position, slid one arm under her so they could lie side by side. “That was…” His voice trailed off and he laughed, very low, at his own speechlessness. “I swear, the world stopped.”

  “I know.”

  He gathered her closer, reached for one of the blankets to drag it over them against the beginning chill of the night. His hand hesitated a little as it brushed against her arm. “And you—you don’t regret it?”

  She shook her head against his shoulder. “Never.”

  “I love you.” His voice was blurring with drowsiness. His hand lay where he’d let it fall, curled around her upper arm. “I did say that, didn’t I?”

  Laughter trembled through her. “You did.”

  “I’m sorry, I want to stay awake…” The sleep in his voice drew her into the soft dark beside him, where the skin of his shoulder was warm and smooth against her cheek, where she could smell his scent.

  “You don’t need to,” she said, in the dark, her mouth against his skin, but the warmth, the dark, made her slow, and by the time she’d got the words out she knew he would not answer.

  She stretched a hand out to pull the edge of the blanket closer, felt her fingers close on it and thought vaguely, from a blur of drowsy happiness, that the nails were, if not longer, then harder, maybe sharper-edged than before. But they can’t be. I lost my power days and days ago. If I move farther out into the starlight I might be able to see better, might be able to tell…

  But real sleep came over her then, a dark wave of exhaustion that dragged her into its endless depths. She tried to surface, briefly, but it was too strong, too deep. She went under, drowning, and was lost.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next morning heat gathered in the ravine, turning the air heavy, like warm wine against the skin. As the day stretched on, towards midday, then past it into the long afternoon, tension gathered too, thickening in the air the way that dregs collect in and thicken wine. They had nothing to do but rest and wait, aware all the time that every hour took them closer to the moment when they must climb out of the ravine, walk out across the sands and into danger.

  Leos paced, as best he could in the limited space upriver, past the rockfall. Coram’s shoulders kept twitching as if he was having to resist changing shape. Venli and the two boys talked too fast, too brightly, the sharp tones of their voices betraying their nervousness.

  And in all Philos’s life he had never been so happy.

  Oh, there’d been enough times he’d been happy before. But this was something new. He was stuck in this hot ravine, waiting to go into peril, and he was neither bored, nor restless, nor afraid. He was just… He glanced over at Maya where she sat, her legs stretched out along the shelf, her tunic filthy and wrinkled and her hair wet and scraped off her face, and all his thoughts fell off track, like little mining carts losing their wheels.

  He’d been stupid to worry about this, stupid to be afraid it was too soon for her, for him. He’d known, last night, beyond fear or doubt, that she, with all her complicated mix of fear and courage, strength and weakness, was the woman he’d been waiting for his whole life. There would never be anyone else for him, not now, not ever.

  Maya looked at him and smiled, and he smiled back, for a moment forgetting what his face might betray, not caring who saw him.

  For an instant, the night before, her emotions had come through to him. A blaze of lightning, white fire filling his head, the sound of chimes sparking an out-of-place memory.

  Then afterwards she’d cried, held close against him, her tears soaking into his hair where it lay under her cheek. For a horrible moment he’d thought it was loss, thought what he’d picked up was her memory of the madness and she was grieving for it, and his stomach had turned over. But then she’d moved so she could whisper into his ear. And it wasn’t grief. It wasn’t grief at all. It was happiness.

  Somehow, that—knowing that he’d made her happy—was more overwhelming than anything else. At points during that long, shining day he found himself thinking that he wouldn’t even care if what she felt for him was love or not, as long as he could love her, as long as he could keep bringing that look to her face, as long as he was able to hold her and listen to the words, spoken in that tear-trembled whisper, that she’d probably never be able to bring herself to say out loud. Philos, I didn’t know, I never knew… I didn’t know anything could feel that way.

  When the last edge of the huge red sun had melted into the ocean, as twilight spread over the desert, they set out. Once out on the sands, exposed and visible, for the first time that day Philos felt fear trickle through him. It wasn’t just the accepted dangers of their plan, it was the sight of Maya, slim and slight, weakened by her still-recovering leg, walking with the rest of them into danger. Alone amongst all of them, she had no powers, nothing to defend herself with.

  She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t have come.

  It wasn’t his choice. And she’d be furious with him if he tried to tell her or if he asked her to turn back. She needed this, as he did, needed to strike a blow at the priests who’d controlled her life. But, having finally admitted to himself how precious she was to him, the idea that he’d ever thought this was acceptable struck him as horrific, senselessly irresponsible, like sending a scarce-weaned child into battle.

  She’d never forgive me if she heard me make that analogy. The thought made him laugh ruefully to himself. It wasn’t true, either, he knew that. She hadn’t had her powers when she’d nearly killed him with a rock, when she’d saved him from the spider poison. She was no child, but a grown woman, capable of taking care of herself.

  Maybe, after all, there would not be so much danger. There would be guards patrolling the outer walls; they knew that and were prepared for them. But once inside the sleeping temple, there would be little chance of discovery. The inside of the temple had no guards at all.

  Coram had asked about that, he remembered, and both Maya and Aera had laughed, their eyes meeting in shared amusement.

  “Inside?” said Aera. “Why would they need them? Do you not know—” she gave her voice a mocking twist, “—that when you enter the temple you tread on ground sacred to the god? Who in the city would ever dare to enter without permission?”

  Just as well. The priests’ arrogance had choked him before, but at least they could use it to their advantage.

  Twilight turned to night while they were halfway across the sands. They could not light a lantern, of course, but the stars gave enough light to walk by. In the concealing dusk, Philos slackened his pace to draw next to Maya, stole a hand out to touch her arm. Her smile glinted up at him, the starlight catching her eyes.

  “Promise me you’ll be careful,” he said, low, for her ears only. “Don’t risk yourself. Let me protect you.”

  For a moment her face hardened, then she leaned her head a little closer to him so an edge of hair brushed his arm. “Today, yes.” Her eyes glinted up at him again. “But only for one reason.”

  He felt himself flushing. Stupid to be embarrassed, for the gods’ sakes, but he wasn’t used to this, had forgotten what it felt like. Not that it ever felt like this before.

  He’d nearly put his arm around her—damn the others, what do I care if they know?—but at that point she stopped dead, rigid with terror.

  “Run,” she said, a breath of a word that nonetheless caught everyone’s attention, brought them all to a stop as immediate as her own. “They’re coming.”

  Aera’s face, a pale blur in the dark, jerked round to loo
k at her. “The guards?”

  “The maenads.”

  No one hesitated. No one asked her how she knew. They’d practised this, and although fear swept through them all, so strong Philos could feel it prickle over his skin, it sparked speed, not panic.

  Leos shifted even as he turned to run, and Iraus clutched his mane and swung himself onto the lion’s back, clinging like a creeper-monkey with feet and hands. Sufi flowed into a tiny furry shape and was off in a looping motion, covering the ground impossibly fast, almost keeping pace with Leos’s huge lion-form. Venli flung her arms out and spun. Sand whirled in a cloud around her, thickening till the body within it had disappeared and there was nothing but a hanging sand-cloud that blew up into the night, blurring a patch of stars, and dissolved into the darkness.

  Aera alone didn’t move, but her body was all at once a glowing beacon, sparks sizzling from her hair and falling like tiny stars on the sand. As long as she stayed in her lava form, she had nothing to fear from maenads or anyone else. She would cover the retreat.

  Coram was shifting too, but slower than the animal-shifters, the stone seeming to creep over his body, his wings unfurling with agonising slowness.

  Philos grabbed Maya’s arm. “Pick her up, now, now. Get her out of here—”

  “I’m doing it.” Coram gritted out the words. “I—”

  And, shrieking, the maenads surged out of the darkness and were on them.

  Philos went down immediately, dragged under by a wave of clutching talons, feeling his head wrench back as claws fastened in his hair, smelling the smell he thought he’d forgotten, blood and sweat, sharp and thick and acrid. He heard Maya scream, heard the harsh sound of talons on stone and knew Coram had shifted, he was safe. But Maya, oh gods—

  Something else screamed, a sound neither human nor animal, so wiped of sense that it was more like the sound of rending cloth than anything that could come from a living throat, and the maenad scent was wiped out by the horrible smell of burnt flesh.