by Nhys Glover
I was panting now, and moaning out my own pleasure. "Is what possible?"
"You! This! It's so much more intense. So much more pleasurable."
"Your heart is engaged," I told him, not knowing where that information came from. "Sexual pleasure is always so much more when the heart is involved."
"I do not want to love you," he said as if pleading with me to free him from the terrible prison I'd trapped him in.
"Then do not. I do not require it," I told him, just so he knew there were no locks on his cage.
"My heart requires it," he answered as he began lifting his hips up to meet me, increasing our pace so the slap-slap-slap of skin hitting skin was all there was. The racing beat of our hearts was all there was. And the exquisite release that sent us flying, was all there ever would be.
One minute I was poised at the top, the next I was flying free. The firestorm behind my eyelids was the last thing I knew, before I crashed back to earth and darkness consumed me.
I came back to myself lying across Trace's chest, my hair covering his shoulders. Had I hurt him? Regret rushed in to replace the pleasant languor of the moment before. Easing up into a sitting position, I looked down into his face.
If he was hurting, it wasn't visible on his face. I had never seen anyone look so... blissful and content. I smiled in relief.
"When you've finished staring at me, put your head back on my shoulder. I want to hold you." A gravelled voice told me. Trace's eyes didn't open.
I lowered myself back down and placed my head on his uninjured shoulder. I could still feel him inside me. It felt right.
"I can die happy now," he said, making it sound like a joke. But I could hear the edge to his tone and I knew he meant every word.
Chapter Eleven
AIRSHA
"You don't have to die. We can run away from everything. Just you and me."
He sighed. "Tomorrow we go."
"Where? Where are we going? Not to my father?" I heard the pleading note in my voice.
"No, not to him. I would rather die than hand you over to him."
I kissed his dark shoulder. "Thank you."
"You will not be thanking me by the time we are through."
"Why?"
"Because I am taking you back. I am returning you to the rebels."
I sat up with a start, almost overwhelmed by a sick sense of betrayal. He had made love to me, told me he loved me... No, he said he didn't want to love me. But he led me to believe he felt something for me. Could tenderness like that be faked? And now he was telling me he was turning me over to the enemy? What they would do to me was far worse than what my father would do. They'd killed my babe trying to get me to give my secrets away!
"Rebels? You would have me tortured and killed? Is this the right, not wrong or wrong alternative you spoke of?" I exclaimed, sliding him out of me so I could get as far from him as possible. Mayhap I could run and hide. He was not fit to chase me as he was. I had a chance.
"Goddess, stop! Calm down. I lied to you. It is why I knew you'd hate me once I told you. The rebels will not torture and kill you. That is what your father will do. The rebels will welcome you back with open arms."
I stared at him blankly. I heard the words but could make no sense of them. Of course they would welcome me with open arms. I had escaped them, and now I would be theirs again, so they could continue torturing me. But no, Trace said they wouldn't do that. What did he mean?!
He put his cock back into his breeches and shifted onto his side so he could look at me properly. I couldn't believe how quickly love had turned to pain.
"I do not understand," I said stonily.
Trace sighed and rubbed at his raspy cheeks. "I have never told you what my magic is. I can make people forget. I can tell them to forget a meeting, forget they know a friend, forget they have ever been in love. I can even make someone forget they are the Chosen One, the figurehead of a whole rebellion."
He paused to let the words sink in. I tried to make them, but they slid like water between my fingers. A few drops clung, though, and I explored them.
"Forget? Like I forgot who I was? You are telling me that you made me forget who I was? Why would you do that?!"
I stared at him in utter bemusement. He stared back as if I was cutting away little pieces of his heart. I hardened my own in response.
"You are telling me you took my memories?" I repeated with barely contained fury. "Tell me you did it because I asked it of you. Tell me it was because the pain of my life had become too much, and I just wanted to forget. I would understand that. I would definitely understand that."
"No, you did not ask me. I took your memories. It was the only way I could get you away from the stronghold. You would never have come with me otherwise."
"Why would I not have wanted to leave? Why could you not do it without taking my memories? I am a small woman. Surely someone like you could have subdued me. Stuck a rag in my mouth, drugged me. Anything but take my memories."
"You are more powerful than you assume. And taking your memories was what your father wanted. That was why he sent me. If it could have been done any other way he would have chosen another for the job. My magic was the only way he could overcome you. My magic can make a person forget what they are capable of."
I blinked a few times, trying to take this new information in. "Why would he want me to forget? Am I not his daughter? Would a father want his daughter to forget she even knew him? Yet, I do remember him, don't I? How do I remember him? Did you leave me that, at least?"
He shook his head sadly. "I left you nothing. I meant to leave you nothing. But you are powerful. You may not be aware of it, but more and more of your memories have been coming back. That should not happen. It has never happened before."
"You have taken a person's whole life and identity from them before?" I asked, aghast.
He looked shamed-faced for a moment, before his features hardened. "I am a soldier. I do what I am told to do. Do you look with horror on a soldier who kills in the heat of battle? I do not take lives, just the memory of those lives. And that is rare. Most often it is just of an event or a person. Just enough to allow me and my brothers to get in and out without detection."
"Their memories are their life!" I yelled back, jumping to my feet to prowl. That I did so naked didn't enter my mind. Thoughts of false-modesty were beyond me.
"What am I without my memories?" I exclaimed.
"You are a magnificent woman. If all you were was your memories, I would never have fallen in love with you."
"In love with me?" I repeated. "You don't even know me!"
"I think I know you better than anyone. I took away all the extraneous parts and left your true essence. You are not your role in life anymore. You are not the duties you have taken on. You are not what others call you. You are not what you can do. That person I would likely never have loved. This one... what is left. This is you without artifice. Without masks. The real you."
I stared at him. That rang true. Yet not entirely.
"I may not remember the events that made me who I am, but they did just that. They moulded me into this person you say you love. Did my husband really treat me as you said he did? I feel it was true, but I cannot remember it."
He shook his head. "As far as I know your husbands treat you well," he answered hollowly.
"Husband. You mean husband treats me well," I corrected impatiently.
He shook his head again and sighed. "No, Goddess. I mean husbands. You have four. That was what your father told me, and what I saw in the Banquet Hall the night I took you."
"A harem? You are saying I have a harem? But that is absurd. Of course I don't. My father and powerful men like him are the only ones with harems. It makes no sense for a woman to have one. Their purpose is to allow a man to spread his seed widely. For the Godling, it is essential. It is how he provides magic to the world."
"You are leaking," Trace said flatly. "Let me fix that for you."
I stared down at my breasts. I had started to leak milk. And the man who had stolen my memories, who admitted to doing so for my father, was asking to fix the problem for me?! He could go to blazes for all I cared. I would not give him the nourishment from my body again.
But the expression in his eyes made me relent a little. He looked like a condemned man waiting for the sentence to be given. He knew I would not let him feed again.
Yet, for all he had told me, he had still saved me from the beastling, which he hadn't needed to do. And he had told me what he had done, which he didn't need to do. His only reason for doing that was love. Out of a guilty conscience spurred on by love.
Furious with myself and him, I nevertheless moved over to him and sat down at his side. None to gently, I brought his head to my lap and let him take over from there. This time he fed without one single sexual overture. He fed guiltily, as if he didn't deserve this feast and believed it would be his last.
Was he ready to start eating solid food yet? I didn't know. I had to rely on him to tell me when he was ready. But could I trust him to do such a thing? It was obvious he loved the intimacy of what we did.
After he was finished, I stood up, found my breeches and tunic and went for a walk up the creek to a place I'd found where the water was a little deeper. There I washed him off me and replaced my clothes. I wished I could wash the memory of our lovemaking from me too.
I could tell him to do that, I supposed. Take the memories of our lovemaking, as he had taken the memories of the intimacies I'd shared with my husbands. How often do we talk about wanting painful memories gone, and yet, would we ever really want that to happen? I had said I was who I was because my experiences had moulded me. I may not remember those experiences, but I felt I was the same person I was before losing my memories. I had hoped so, on more than one occasion. But if we do not remember, how can we learn? I needed to keep my memories of Trace so I would assure myself I would never repeat that mistake again.
When I came back, Trace was lying flat on his back, staring up at the darkness above. Night had fallen while we argued, yet I hadn't noticed. I seemed to be able to see just as well in the dark as I could in the light. I was comfortable in either.
I sat down across from him and added more wood to the fire. I didn't need to worry if anyone saw it now. In fact, if the rebels were looking for me, it would lead them to me.
"Can you give them back? If you steal them, can you return them?" I asked.
For a long time he didn't answer, and I thought him asleep. Then his croaking voice answered. "No. I am sorry, but no."
That made the spot between my breasts ache. All my memories gone forever? Even if someone told me of the past, it would not be like remembering it. He had stolen so much from me. The birth of my babe...
My babe! What had happened to my babe?!
"If my husband..s are not dead, what of my babe?" I demanded loudly.
His voice hitched. "Babes. You had twins a little less than two moons ago. Early, so they told me at the Banquet Hall. A boy and a girl. You left to feed them that night, and I let you do that much, before I approached you in the corridor outside your room. I wanted your men to have time to find wet-nurses for them so they would not go without."
I felt as if the world was spinning around me. Was I light-headed? Was I about to faint? I dropped my head between my knees and willed the strange feeling to pass. Was I breathing oddly? Deep gasping breaths, as if I couldn't get enough air.
Trace was beside me in a moment, holding my shoulders. "Breathe slowly and not so deeply."
I wanted to ignore him, but I felt his strength and I needed to cling to it. Needed to cling to him. So I obeyed and, bit by bit, the world stopped spinning and I felt in control again.
When I was back to myself, I jerked out of Trace's grip. He stole me from my babes. He told me they, it, was dead. What kind of monster would do such a cruel thing? He said he was a soldier following orders. It was simply an excuse he used to keep from feeling his guilt.
"So you took my memories of my husbands and childings. And then you took me. So my father could punish me. What did I do to him that was so bad that he would do this to me?" I asked dispassionately.
Trace returned to his spot by the fire and, from the way he lowered himself down, I knew it had been painful for him to come to me as he did. As it had been the last time I was sick. When he told me my husband had treated me like a whore! Gods, how could I have believed him! And yet it had rung true. Someone I loved had treated me like a whore, and it had almost killed me.
"Who treated me like a whore? Not my husbands. Who told you that I was so skilled in bed-play? Someone did. You said that by accident."
"I do not know who treated you as a whore. Your father, when he recaptured you? It was he who put you in a hole and had you whipped. You were supposed to die for your crimes, but the rebels rescued you. Mayhap he told you you were a whore. And worse. As to what I heard of you − well, the Godslunders told many tales about the abomination who called herself the Goddess Incarnate. How she had to be amazing in bed to keep four men satisfied. That you had power beyond what is normal magic and it manifests in bed. That sort of thing. I did not believe any of it. Until... Until I did." His voice was flat and emotionless, as if telling a tale a hundred suns old.
"Goddess Incarnate? You are telling me that I am supposed to be the Goddess Incarnate. I did not even know there was a Goddess. I thought... well, I do not know what I thought," I stammered out.
"I saw you wield incredible magic. Wind, ice, fire and you made the earth quake. But it was the speech you gave that was the most magical. Had I not been so hard-headed and focused on my job, I would have been won over by you then. The arena was packed with at least a thousand people and every one of them screamed out, 'Aye!' when you asked if they were with you." He gave a little laugh. "I did too. Though that was mostly to fit in. I had to blend in with the other rebels so I could get to your food at the feast. Just enough of a certain herb to make you feel a little sick, so you would leave early. I am not sure what I would have done if that big dark-haired husband of yours had come with you. I probably would have taken his memories too."
I stared into the fire. I could do all that? But women didn't have magic. How could I have all that magic? It wasn't supposed to be possible. Mayhap Trace was lying to me again. But why, when what he was telling me was driving a bigger and bigger wedge between us? Because of him, I had lost my babes and husbands, and I had slept with a man who was not my husband. He'd lied to me to get me into his bed. Why lie about something this outlandish after all of that?
"You made me betray my husbands," I said finally, settling on the worse crime of all. The rest could be fixed. Well, except for my memory. But I could go back to my babes and be their mother again. I could go back to the rebels and be their Goddess Incarnated − or whatever she was called − again. But I could not go back to my husbands and expect to be their wife again. Not after what I had done. No matter how unknowingly, I had been unfaithful to them. I had taken pleasure, incredible pleasure, from another. How would they ever forgive me that? How would I ever forgive myself?
"It was not betrayal. You did not know you were not free," came the quick reply.
"You made me betray my husbands," I repeated stonily.
"And for that alone I will die," he admitted tiredly. "Once I return you to them, one or all of them will kill me. I knew that would be the end result of telling you the truth. But losing your love... or whatever it is you felt for me so briefly, feels far worse than death in this moment."
"It was not love. How could it be, when I did not even know you? I loved an illusion."
And I wanted to believe it was true. I wanted to hate him or feel nothing for him. But it wasn't true. And that made my betrayal all the more terrible.
I loved this man.
Chapter Twelve
FLEA
Telling Zem what we would be doing had been difficult. Probably more difficult than Darki
n found telling his brothers they would have to leave off their search. But I wasn't there for his part, so I couldn't be sure − though I did hear the yelling and thumping as furniture and/or bodies hit the walls of their apartment that evening after everyone had returned.
Zem didn't throw things, or yell and roar. He just stood in the stable, where I'd tracked him down, and stared at me as if I'd stuck a knife into his chest. His head started moving from side to side, not so much a 'no' as an ineffective attempt to shake the words I said out of his mind.
He was not a leader of men. In fact, he was more of a weird lone wolf. Leadership had fallen to him when Airsha had selected him to be in charge of the archers during the battle against the Godling's airling troopers. And he'd continued to retain his position of joint leadership of the recruits ever since. Not because he wanted it, not because anyone had actually declared it his role, but because he'd developed this odd way of taking control of a situation. He was a planner and a strategist. We all saw that.
Supposedly, when Airsha put him in charge of the archers she'd told him to move barrels up into the garden for them to hide behind. Zem had known there was little time, had looked about for another option and chosen the henling coop. Someone else wouldn't have seen its strategic value, but he did. And it had worked. The other lads trusted him now, and he'd adjusted his odd compulsive behaviour to accommodate. A feat in itself.
But to suddenly be told he would have to take charge of grown men, some older than his own father would have been had he survived, sent him into a spin. His head was literally going from side to side, as if spinning.
"Zem, get control. Airsha needs you. The Airluds need you. You're the only one Darkin could trust with this important job. You'll make sure no stone goes unturned as we continue to search for the Goddess. For Airsha. And the soldiers will follow you."
Zem shook his head over and over again. "No they won't. I'm hopeless. I can't even get out of bed in the morning without... without making sure my boots are just where they need to be. And my feet fall either side of them when I put them over the edge of the bed. If I get it wrong I'm stuck. I'm stuck. How... How can someone so stupid and mad take charge of grown soldiers?"
