by Faith Hunter
Lucas glowed, a beautiful, soft blue touched with gold. His aura used to be yellow, I remembered, yellow banded with green and blue. It had changed after he came back from the Trine. And had changed again in just the last few days, deepening into a richer hue, like Gulf water on the horizon at sunset, just where it meets the sky to the east.
“Morning,” he said, his voice that soft scrape of sound that came after a long, silent night.
Warmth traveled through me, sleepy and contented. I reached up and touched his face, his beard softer than I remembered it from our marriage, but no longer than the night before. There was so much I should have said, wanted to say, but what came out of my mouth, in solemn curiosity was, “Your beard doesn’t grow much anymore, does it?”
His mouth quirked up on one side, but he answered the question as if it were of great import. “No. Not much.” His voice slid into a whisper. “Since I was a prisoner on the Trine, since I ate manna, it doesn’t grow.”
“Your aura has changed. It’s blue now.”
“I’m… different,” he agreed. He shrugged his shoulder, my head moving with the motion. “I don’t need much sleep. Don’t need much food.” He smiled and said, perhaps only half facetiously, “Even my clothes don’t seem to wear out.” His fingers followed the length of my jaw, feather-light, letting the silence speak.
Far off, a rooster crowed. Farther, the lynx called, a roaring cry. Not a warning, but a lonely sound. The warmth beneath the covers was soothing, part memory, part security, part solace. Part something more that I didn’t want to analyze.
With a forefinger he traced the hatch-mark scars on my cheek. “You’ve changed too,” he said. “You have old scars that you used to hide. You have new ones.” The smile died. “Lots of new ones. You glow. You can do magic.”
“Mages don’t do magic. We work with leftover creation energy.”
He shrugged again, the light returning to his eyes. “Whatever. You’re different now. You’re not human.”
Our forearms entwined, I stroked his jaw, finding his beard softer than down, the bones beneath sharp and distinct. “I was never human,” I said. “You just didn’t know it.” I was almost afraid to ask. “Are you? Human?”
A long moment passed. The pig clock ticked into the stillness. “I don’t know.” He skimmed a hand along my body, caressing, as if he stroked the length of an animal. I was still dressed in the soft, loose leggings and sweatshirt I had worn to scry for Lolo, the clothes bunched and out of shape, my body warm and languid beneath the covers. “I don’t really know.”
By increments his head dropped, as if giving me time to think about it, to stop him. He kissed my nose, my closed mouth, the scars on my cheek. Lips trailing to my hairline, he breathed in my scent, mouth pressed to my temple. When he pulled back, my fingers found his mouth, traced the curve of his lips, so well remembered. So greatly missed.
His eyes on me, he slid questing fingers beneath my shirt, to rest on my rib cage, tentative, waiting. When I didn’t pull away, when I just watched him, the expression in his eyes, the ripples in his aura, he deposited fluttery kisses, like butterflies, down my jaw. He touched his lips to my neck at my pulse.
“Oh,” I whispered. “Oh….” And I felt his mouth smile against the tender skin there. His lips trailed slowly, so slowly, the length of my throat to my collarbone, which he kissed, mouth open, breath blowing. Even slower, he kissed back up to my left earlobe and paused. Mouth poised, one hand still on my ribs, he cradled my head in his other palm, his thumb tracing my windpipe, back up into the sensitive hollow where throat met ear and skull. His lips opened. He sucked my lobe into his mouth.
I arched up. His palm slid up my body, under my shirt. Covered my bare breast.
And I was lost.
His mouth followed the shirt as he pulled it over my head. Settled on my breast, teeth grazing the tight point. He gripped my waist, hands just above my hip bones, and slid down my leggings, tugging them from my toes with his own. The sheets were warm and silken below me, my skin roseate against the ruby silk.
As if we had all the time in the world, as if the world itself had never ended, I peeled off his jeans and shirt, tossing and pushing the clothes aside, movements indolent. I traced his naked back, skin like heated silk, muscles long and rigid.
Lucas breathed on my breasts, his breath warm until he licked first one, then the other, his tongue hot and rough on the sensitive points, the chill air making them even tighter in his wake. He pulled one whole nipple into his mouth, sucking it down, elongating it, creating an unbearable pressure on the deeper flesh that tautened low in my belly.
I trailed my hands up his body, over his shoulders, finding the indentations of bone and tendon. Wrapped my hands around his head, holding him close, hearing the whimper of my breath, my fingers tracking ridged fang scars beneath his jaw.
Shifting his torso between my legs, he balanced on elbows and knees to take away his weight. Kisses rained across my ribs, following a faint scar down my stomach, across my abdomen to the point of the hip on the other side. Cooler air followed the warmth of his mouth, the comforter sliding away to reveal me, covers caught on his body. His lips moved on my flesh at the jointure of hip and thigh, tongue trailing in circles. I heard my groans and his laughter, heated and satisfied. An almost dangerous sound.
He moved his mouth slightly slower, the circles continuing, his tongue pressing, the tissue beneath sensitive. My legs opened, and he paused, drawing down the covers so he could see me, all of me. I remembered that, that he liked to watch my body when it stole from my control, when it became some other thing, untamed and feral, needy and demanding.
Mage-heat, kept close to the surface by the presence of a kylen, blossomed and spread through me, beating in time with my heart, pulsing through me on a wash of need and want, scenting the air with cookies and almonds. Taking his shoulders, I pulled him close, but he held away, his eyes locked on mine as his mouth moved down my thigh to my knee. He lifted my leg and sucked the soft tissue behind it into his mouth, teeth grazing the tendons. I reached between us and clutched him, moaning, the timbre changing from want to demand, my fingers urging him up to me.
“Not yet,” he said, a hint of laughter in his tone, which was rough with his own need. He turned me, putting my cheek to the pillow. I struggled, trying to rise, but he held me in place with his stronger human muscles, pressing my body into the mattress. He stroked along my sides, the backs of his hands trailing from beneath my arms to my thighs, so very slowly. I shivered in want. He smelled like anise, nutmeg, and male, familiar and yet all new, different. I breathed him into me, tasting his scent. Wanting more, but unable to force my will on him.
I gave up resistance. His tongue touched just above the top of my buttocks. Swirled at the edge of the fissure and up, along my spine. Again and again, tasting me. My muscles were loose as warm oil when his hand slid between my legs. I wanted this. Oh, fire and feathers, how I had wanted this.
He lifted my hips and entered me, slowly, one hand holding my hips high, the other sliding to the front, teasing me. I shoved back against him, hard, pushing with my hands, raising my body off the mattress. Guttural breaths came from my throat as he rocked me, my hands gripping fistfuls of sheets. Mage-heat pulsed through me. I wanted. Wanted. And still he held back, moving his body so slowly, too slowly, his rhythm a bass drum beaten with a single club, vibrations pulsing out, his fingers moving only slightly faster. Heat built as waves surged and flooded through me. I could see his hand below me, his blue aura meeting and exploding against my own in tiny gold discharges, pinpoints of light.
When I thrashed, he withdrew, fast, leaving me empty. I ground my teeth, holding in a scream, reaching back to scratch him in anger. Mindless. He turned me again, all in one motion, dropping me on the mattress. I landed with a small expulsion of breath, one knee on a pillow, my head back, half off the bed. He plunged hard, slamming into me with his whole length, filling me up. I screamed then, throaty and breathless, h
ead back, my mouth open.
Lucas rose above me, braced on his hands, elbows locked, eyes on my face. His strokes filled me and retreated, rapid, rhythmic, hitting the deepest part of me in internal blows of desire. I clawed at his shoulders, wanting him close, closer.
He settled to his elbows against me, stomach to stomach, grinding into me with a deeper, corresponding rhythm. I bit his flesh on the pad of muscle below his collarbone, sucking hard and tasting the anise and nutmeg in his blood. He pushed my head aside, and his mouth found a breast. Teeth grazed along the nipple, pulling, stretching. I arched up, following him, my heart beating like thunder. My legs wrapped around him, gripping his hips hard and, arching my body, I took his buttocks in my hands, fingers digging in.
Passion spiraled up from my depths, a swirling whirlpool of sensation. His eyes were open and watching, staring into mine. Waiting. Stroking. Knowing. Lightning shot from the center of my body, along my nerves. It coiled in my breasts in a sizzling surge of pleasure. My extremities curled up hard, clutching and wrenching, and I screamed. Something tore in my throat with a hoarse note of pain and pleasure. “Yes,” I breathed, the sound harsh. “Now.”
He thrust into me, brutally beating into my body. Electricity followed the swell of passion, crackling and burning, rolling through me, up through my bones, along my skin. Thrashing waves of passion gathered and folded over, tightening with surface tension. And fell. Exploded in an eruption of power from the center of my body. Through my skin, along each pore and out my fingertips. His hoarse cry echoed mine.
We lay there afterward, our bodies sweaty, heated, our breathing loud in our tortured lungs. Oxygen-starved, I sucked in air, wondering if what I had seen with mage-sight had been real, the light that burst out between us in that final moment, rose and blue, creating a lavender and purple haze that undulated out from our center. Wondering, but not really caring.
When he could move again, Lucas pulled the down comforter over us and settled more deeply against me, his weight a little to the side so I could breathe. We lay there, head to head in the dark. Warmth gathered under the covers, a languorous, lethargic ease.
My stomach growled and Lucas laughed.
He fell to the floor of his cell, tripping on the shackles, overshooting the supple resilience of his wings and rolling into the far wall. He crashed into the stone, back-first, as they intended, his severed wing humeri hitting with painful thunks. Since he had killed three of them, they had been more cruel, less willing to place themselves in danger. He eased away from the wall, leaving his blood in a long tracery.
The key to the shackles landed on the stone floor and bounced with a snap and tinkle. “Open the cuffs. Toss ’em over here along with the key.”
“Scared to get too close, Ephrahu?” he taunted, breathless with pain.
“Too smart, Watcher,” the human said, moving a bit of straw from one side of his mouth to the other. He propped a shoulder against the wall outside the cell and relaxed, crossing his arms. “Move. Or I’ll put a mage in heat across the hall from you again. See how you like it two days in a row.”
He didn’t think he could withstand another day of that particular torment, but he didn’t want them to know how close he had come to succumbing once again. So he chuckled and bent for the key. The demon-iron spat when he touched it, searing his fingers. But the key was the only way to take off the shackles, and leaving the shackles on only meant more pain.
He inserted the key in each cuff, at the wrists first and then the ankles, and let them fall to the floor. He kicked them all to the cell door, close enough so the human could reach them. He tossed the key beside them. He’d learned the futility of rebellion. Whatever he did, they always had something worse they would do to him. And now, for the first time in too many decades to count, he had a reason to live.
When the human was gone, he settled slowly to his severed feathers and lay face-first in the down. The smell of them was sweet, the remembered scent of freedom, of flight, of holiness. A state of grace he had thrown away, thinking it slavery, and now longed for as the perfect liberty. Because intense pain opened something in his mind, and was the only time he could reach them, he marshaled his thoughts and called to the seraphs. “Zadkiel. Amethyst,” he whispered.
“We are here,” they belled, their words and tones a sweet harmony.
“Little time has passed,” Zadkiel said, his emphasis on the second word. “How are you able to call again so soon?”
“It’s been over twenty-four hours,” he said, raising his head in alarm.
“Not here. Less than an hour,” Zadkiel said.
“How? Unless Forcas has found a way to dip into the river of time.”
“Danger,” Amethyst said, a paean of distress. “His plan is close to fruition.”
“Seal the covenant, then,” Barak said.
“You ask much,” Zadkiel said. “In return for our freedom we can promise to free you. That is acceptable.”
“Not enough,” Barak said, taking the chance he had been hoping for, waiting for. “I ask your oath, by feathers and fire, in the river of time and beyond. Your oath to intercede, to speak for me before the Most High, to seek a return of my seraphic gifts, transmogrification, a return of true seraphic power, a regifting of my place in the High Host of the Seraphim.”
“The time limit you propose is foul,” Amethyst moaned. “You ask perpetual intercession. Everlasting. Such has never been granted to the Fallen. And the Most High has never granted redemption to your kind for your sin.”
“This for your freedom,” Barak bargained. When they didn’t reply, he ground out, “Agreed then. For your freedom, I ask only your oath for intercession between the Most High and this Fallen one, such negotiation to last one decade in the river of time.”
“If the Most High does not consent, the Host may imprison you,” Zadkiel warned, “until the end of days.”
“I understand,” Barak said. “And I accept.”
Zadkiel breathed out in resignation. “Mate?”
“I agree to all he asks. I long for paradise.”
“Don’t we all,” Barak snarled. “You have been apart from the Most High, lost in the river of time on this accursed world, for a century, cherub. I have been lost for all of human history.”
Knowing their time was short, neither answered that it was his fault, his choice, his failure, and for that he was both resentful and grateful. Instead they belled together, “A covenant is sealed between me and thee.”
“A covenant is sealed between me and thee,” he said in return. A covenant between seraphs of the Light and one of the Allied, once an impossibility. “Who is this mage?”
“We have memories of her. We can share our knowledge. And perhaps we can show her to you,” she said.
“We shall try,” Zadkiel murmured.
A vision opened in his mind, of the surface of the world. The sun’s rays blazed across the sky in a golden wash. Snow, crusted and coarse, glistened with the light. A soft mist traveled across the ground, pale and white, touched with the brightness of the sun. It was winter. But his mind didn’t linger there, in the cold air and the sunlight, but swept with the swiftness of flight, down to a town, and inside a building made of stone.
Instantly the sweetness of winter was replaced with the heat of sex and mage. He focused on the woman, the magewarrior, her body radiant, scars shimmering brighter still. She stood before a sink, her hair loose and curled in a scarlet tangle, a worn wool robe belted over her. She wasn’t lovely. Wasn’t beautiful and perfect of form. But there was terrible strength to her, and a fragility as well. The dichotomy was arresting. Intriguing.
Water poured over her hands. Suddenly her head came up, nostrils flaring. In a burst of mage-speed, she raced to a window. His perspective moved with her and followed her gaze out into a street. Below her, standing on the snow, was a man, his face tortured with desire and need and the agony of… transmogrification. A kylen.
Barak remembered his sons, the childre
n he had sired on the neomage he cherished. This being belongs to me. Speaking quietly, so softly that his breath barely brushed the feathers near his face, he said, “Zadkiel. Amethyst. A new bargain. I can bring unto us the mage. And gift to you a kylen as well. What would you give me for this?”
“A kylen?” the cherub belled. “One lives among men?”
“For you to keep such a one free breaks a covenant only now sealed. Are you not allied with the Light?” Zadkiel asked. “What game do you play here?”
“What game? Long, long ago, I was a member of the High Host. Then, a Watcher of men,” he said. “Tempted, I was lost from the Most High. Yet, in the War of Heaven, I fought with the troops of Michael. In the Last War for Earth, I was allied with the High Host fighting with the winged-warriors. Though I gave my body to be burned, I remain unredeemed, unforgiven. It is the way of my kind to renegotiate.” Barak smiled into the crook of his arm. In the hallway, the smell that caused his most recent sin grew. A mage had been placed nearby. Humans laughed.
Small red lights appeared in his irises. And began to grow.
Chapter 21
I rolled over, reaching for him, to find the sheets warm but empty. His smell was heated, comforting, and my body tired and at peace. Lucas wanted me back. How could he want me back? And how could I possibly be so stupid as to want him? So stupid as to spend the night with a cheat and a scoundrel? a wiser part of me asked. That was a question I couldn’t answer. He claims to be a changed man. I banished the tempting thought.
Once again, Audric didn’t come after me for savage-blade practice. Maybe bruises from real battles were as good as bruises from play battles. Stiff and sore, I rolled out of bed and got ready for the day.
Downstairs, Jacey and Rupert were standing at the remaining front window, staring out into the street, the aromas of coffee and tea strong on the air. Though it wasn’t yet ten, they were dressed for work in the back, as was common on Mondays, when the shop was closed. Spawn blood and broken glass had been cleaned up. From somewhere they had found plywood and covered the missing windows, which made the shop darker than usual. In the confusion that had followed the battle, I had forgotten the mess in the shop. They had done a mountain of work while I was elsewhere, working on the injured.
