Black Briar

by Avett, Sophie

  The beast was hiding in the clouds. Using them like a cloak. A downpour of water and midst poured from the sudden clash of the thunder and rain. A shadow passed over Sybille as she watched RyMjin sore over her in rambling coils, four-toed claws open and snout aimed to ram Maleficent on the back of the shoulder. It would spiral her out of flight rhythm and she’d fall. Unacceptable.

  Sybille’s staff ignited with green flame and she boomeranged it into the sky, rod spinning like a metal pinwheel. If she was lucky, it would decapitate the beast completely and Nova would be beaten. But the gargouille materialized on Ryojin’s back. He twisted in the newly formed gold and jade-crusted leather saddle and barred the blow with his staff.

  Her weapon jarred, thrown off course, and she flashed her teeth. “Give up.”

  “Never.”

  RyMjin hit Maleficent like a battering ram, but embraced her massive body and sank his teeth into her shoulder. His plumed wings beat the air quickly, holding them in flight even as they were supposed to fall. The she-dragon roiled, snapping and snarling, but the menace just wasn’t here. Her tail snapped out and bound Ryojin’s short bracketed leg, and then, she…mewled.

  RyMjin had been birthed from Nova’s soul; the gargouille’s control over it was complete. Maleficent had been captured, tamed—but just barely. Every day was a trying exercise and a constant argument. Dragons needed no riders and they were certainly born with a sense of their place in the world, which, of course, was above just about everything else. And though she had been commanded to fight, Maleficent’s will to do so with obedience was waning.

  She lowered her snout, snapping and purring at the dragon holding her captive. Her tail was raised, clinging to him. Offering him the access he needed to ravage his reward right there in the middle of the planetary coliseum.

  “You little…slut,” Sybille snapped and opened her hand, calling her weapon to her palm. She struck the tower with the bladed tip. “You’re always like this. I swear to God, it’s a wonder why I let you out to go terrorizing and pillaging at all. Over a thousand years old and needs a goddamn chastity belt…”

  The spindle witch evaporated into a scornful cloud of purple midst and small spectral dragons, and then, reappeared, saddled on an obsidian seat banded to the nape of her dragon’s neck. The lung’s gaping jaws were sunk deep into the she-dragon’s muscle and flesh, the beast’s snout pushing against Sybille’s outer thigh. Whiskers and scarlet leather lips were ticklish and warm against her ankle. Smoking. Blistering it with steam.

  The fucker. She frowned at RyMjin over her shoulder and met the gargouille’s sweeping black diamond gaze. He was peering over the side of his beast like as long as he kept her in his sights, the battle was already won. The smug fucker.

  “Submit, Sybille.” Nova doubled forward and reached for her. “I don’t want to fight anymore. I want…” RyMjin pulsed with ardor beneath him and the heat scalded her skin.

  Ha.

  Let it all burn.

  She barred her scepter at her chest like a shield and drew from fireworks. Whistle. Collision. And finally, a bomb of color exploded from the green gem, blinding everything in a mile radius.

  All fell.

  They spiraled into a double helix, fangs and claws locked in descent.

  The saddle was wide, with a high post at the front, keeping her locked in. Keeping her seated. But just barely. There were no reins as a dragon was not a mount, but a partner. Wind whipped and thrashed. Everything was blurred together. She gaped like a fish for breath, but she didn’t need sight or oxygen to fight. All she needed was imagination…and will.

  Should she die young, let that be the fucking hymn that was left behind. Etch and chisel that beneath her crooked and twisted name. Her lifeless corpse could be planted on a velvet bed of roses. Let the padded cell or the crystal coffin in the middle of an enchanted forest become her everlasting tomb. But first, let these war torn love lyrics stain her book. Let this be the ballad that was told of Sybille, Princess of Psychopaths.

  Let her story be of a mighty sorceress and dragontamer, a sinister dreamspinner with a wild and heavy heart. To love and to be loved would never be her prayer. Her book could be paved with glorious moments of defeat, but let her be free. And let her fame begin and die there.

  Amen.

  Thrashing wings nicked her cheeks and chapped her lips with scalpel kisses, air pummeled her furiously. Universe caving in around them.

  But Sybille Prince was no ingénue.

  She clung to one of the dragon’s onyx scales and screamed, “Maleficent! Fly!” Tears. “Free!”

  A bone-cracking roar and the she-dragon’s wings unfurled with tattered black fury, disengaging Ryojin’s hold. Wind filled the membranes of her wings, banking the fall, slowing it, but they’d fallen too far. Too fast.

  They pounded a crater in the planet.

  Pain. Bones shook within the confines of flesh. In corporeal reality, Sybille’s body lurched off the mattress as she was nearly flung from the saddle, her staff lost sometime during the fall.

  Her headdress was gone, blonde curls waving wildly as Maleficent roiled, refusing in royal outrage to land on her back. She bucked her wings and heaved the landing male off her. It was a short reprieve. He rolled back only to snap and slash forward. She ducked and popped him with a stinging backlash. The tip of Maleficent’s tail snapped into Nova’s back. Ripped it. Finally.

  Peering over his mangled shoulder, Nova flashed teeth as RyMjin roiled. “Crazy bitch.”

  Sybille sank low over her dragon as they rounded one another in the pit. “Watch your ass, Maleficent,” she sneered and spat out a tooth, blood dribbling from her the corner of her red lipstick, “Or we die here.”

  RyMjin slashed. Claws met claws. Roars, fire, brimstone. Her blonde tresses and billowing velvet skirts swept in the wind. Onyx eyes peered at her through the whipping waves of jet locks. Dragons fighting between them. Blood and gore. Destruction. Death. And two dreamspinners watching each other, reaching for each other, through the smoke and devastation. Star-crossed lovers.

  Why won’t he just die already? She shouldn’t be looking at him, she shouldn’t have been dividing her focus, but she did look. And she was damned for it. The minute the thread of her control over Maleficent snapped, the animal was thrown into a conniption. A roiled mass of fury, screeching and crying out, trying to find its bearing. Black bridal veil finally lifted.

  The tower shook, brittle briar cracking.

  Sybille was thrown completely from the pit, landing with a crack and heavy roll on vibrant green grass. She didn’t know where the patch of earth had come from. She hadn’t willed it into existence, but she couldn’t think. Couldn’t focus. Pain radiated from one end of her nervous system to another as she rolled onto her back, breath coming in labored pants. Wet soil clung to her fingers. My dragon…She clawed into the earth and tried to pull herself into a seated position. I can’t leave her…

  To lose one’s consciousness in the Fade…

  Her dirt crusted eyes fluttered open, long lashes covered in copper powder as she stared at the battle field in horror. Absolute, anguished horror.

  Maleficent was gone.

  Kicked from her sphere of control by a ruthless gargouille, poised and mounted still on his beast. Before she knew it, RyMjin was lumbering toward her, footfall similar to that of a cat. Low, slow, and prowling. His tail flicked from side to side as he crushed the soil near her hand beneath his massive claws and bared his chest to the moons, snout raised. Victorious at last.

  She collapsed into the plush grass. Laughing. Crying. And then, she was simply…lost.

  Chapter Four

  To lose grasp on your consciousness in the Fade was to leave yourself open to possession, body theft…utter madness. It was to leave yourself open and defenseless to someone else’s sick little world. And, of course, there were some dreamspinners who lost themselves completely, cursed to wander the Fade. Separated from time and reality, most forgot who they were in life
all together. They forgot how to wake. Comatose. Doomed to slumber forever. Sleeping Beauties. Resting in peace.

  Sybille’s eyes fluttered open. Obviously, she was still dreaming. Well, it was a dream, but it wasn’t her dream. If it were, she would recognize the Mongolian blue sky. It was the kind of sky that convinced you the world was round. Domed over like a snow globe. A perfect, pristine, azure bowl with fluffy white clouds spun into sensual shapes of tengus and dying phoenixes.

  She couldn’t see most of them, her view obscured by the arboreal canopy. The bed’s headboard was the center. The heart of two dragons, bodies carved out of an ancient cherry blossom tree and the mattress made from a wash of flowers held between their folded wings. Airbrushed pink petals raining, akin to sweet snowfall. Where am I?

  Pillowed in her hair and a valley of cherry blossoms, she lolled her head to the side and drank in the sprawling rock gardens and bamboo fountains. Shrines. What wasn’t sand and tranquil bridge was water. The pond beveled out, home to schools of mystical white and orange splattered bearded koi fish. In the middle of the elegance was a small black pagoda roofed house walled away behind a labyrinth of black roses with plum thorns. And emerging from the storm of blooms carried on the winds was a samurai striding through the schism as is he’d simply been born from it.

  Her heart danced like a koma on a board, and she turned her cheek. “Come to claim your winnings…?”

  The samurai’s shadow was an omen stretching over her as he crushed the grass growing near the bed beneath his boots. Hair wild and unkempt, licking down the side of his kimono. “It’s never been like that. I think you wish it was. I think you’ve tried to make it so in the past. Easier for you…” He sank to his knees. “Perhaps you’re right. Because if it were like that, if I touched you that way, this,” he lowered his mouth, lips hovering inches from hers, “wouldn’t pain us so much.”

  She was never the one to pull that trigger and kiss him first. Not ever. If fucking hard was on the menu, kissing while you did it wasn’t. That’s how silly girls caught feelings. She simply would not and could not allow those kinds of rules to be broken. But Nova…

  Nova allowed for no law to exist but the one he hammered into eternity himself.

  There was no timid touching of the lips. No shared breaths and sighs—he covered her mouth with his and owned it. All of it. Devouring oxygen out of her mouth like he was determined to wake her from slumber with the threat of suffocation. Her thighs quaked and she kicked out, fingers rooting through the mass of blooms in search of purchase.

  No mercy. None.

  He drew her tongue into his warm, metallic mouth—sucking on it, nibbling. Giving it an abnormal amount of heated sensual attention. So erotic. Different. Perhaps he was teaching her. And as always, he taught her through example. She caught his dexterous tongue between her teeth and suckled on it, lavishing the same attention on it as she normally gave his cock.

  The gargouille stiffened, face going slack with pleasure as he ate his way deeper, caving forward until he’d covered her lithe body with his. If felt like a grave.

  Dig. His nails tore into her wrists as he pinned. Dig…deeper.

  Legs straight, almost parallel. Sprawled and melting into each other. Their mouths fused, black and blonde tresses wound together in the flowers. She imagined that is how Tristan and Isolde were found that once upon a time. Or perhaps it was Romeo and Juliet. Hades and Persephone.

  And my, were those tragic fucking tales…

  But still, what would it be like if he was the emperor, and she were the veins of his countries and sprawling cities united. What if she could be the dragon and he the tamer? What if she could be the black, bottomless sky Nova shone in for all time?

  Perhaps this gargouille would be her home. Perhaps he would accept the responsibly of being the fire that warmed her every single night. Perhaps they would exist in a holy circle, half-black and half-white, chasing one another in an endless perpetuity of love and war, destruction and creation, and an enduring reckless devotion to both. Serenity. At last.

  Nothing was forever, but they could write their own tale. She’d always promised herself that if she could find a home, if she could steal her mother away and set brick into place with her own two hands, perhaps she would find peace. Maybe she’d plant a garden like the one her gargoyle had shown her with these dreams. Perhaps there was joy to be found in crafting with light. In learning to mold with both mediums.

  Perhaps if she decided to call somewhere home, the broken piece might start…healing.

  Visions of a future…

  Fickle and weak, skewed and seldom what they seemed…

  Or wasn’t that how the tale was told?

  Sybille tore her mouth from his, chest rising and falling as she panted. She pierced Nova’s flushed mouth with a sharp look. “What did the witch offer you? What was the pact, Nova?” She flashed her dull, white teeth. “Was this,” her legs dropped open like a crass cadaver, “what the Hag promised you? Are we turning back the clock to the Dark Ages? Did she promise you my hand in marriage? Am I chattel? Am I to be claimed like winnings?” He opened his mouth, and she snapped. “Answer me properly, goddamn you. No more riddles.”

  The gargouille oozed between her legs, accepting her unwelcoming invitation with grace, and pinned her to the grass with harsh hands. His mouth teased the curl of her ear, his breath burning it. “There is no need to claim what is already mine.”

  Shut up. She tried to lift her arms, tried to shove him off her, but he’d staked her with both body and mind. They were in his sphere of control, in his part of the Fade. Without severe exertion on her part, she was right wherever he wanted her.

  “Sybille,” he whispered, hands slipping down her rib cage. “What if I told you that the Hag offered me nothing? That I wanted you to come, so I asked a favor? That I had never intended to arrive wounded, but was attacked by a rabid animal on my way home from the second shift at Club Brimstone. What if I told you that I’ve tried to forget and I can’t? Would you forgive me?”

  He…lied? Was he serious, right now? Hers was the type of gargoyle who frowned whenever the cap was left off the toothpaste, how was he living with himself having turned to this life of sin and trickery? How could she be worth it? To him, was she worth…honor? Was she worth…anything?

  “Sybille,” he kissed her neck, “what if I said that you move me and I am helpless to go against it?”

  Shut up.

  Hysterical tears lined her thick blonde lashes as he eased the fabric up her thighs, the look in his eyes—the mastery there. The confidence. The serenity. “What if when you look me like that, I want to conquer,” he rent her skirt down the side, “all of it.”

  Yes, yes, but what did he know of nightmares?

  What did he know of waking up, only to cry out in agony because you hadn’t simply died in your sleep? What did he actually know of a girl named Sybille?

  He crushed his mouth to hers and her eyes drifted closed. Everything.

  Twin dragons embraced, they smoldered into one another’s mouth. Tenderness and pain, and the graceless beauty of absolutely needing both. Nova started to pull away and she doubled up from the blossoms, rising like a corpse from the grave to wrap her arms around his neck. He hissed a little noise of surprise in her mouth, like he really hadn’t been sure he was winning up until that point. As if there could ever be a day he lost. Never. Not him.

  And there was nothing to fear here. Just white cicadas fluttering in the breeze. She was safe. Stone was so soft. Even when she was screaming, she was safe tucked beneath his bulk. He was heavy, pressing her so far into the bed she was crushing the flowers beneath her. Skirts from a long, simple, white dress she’d never seen before were bunched at her waist in a wanton knot. Cool air kissed her skin and her legs shook around his narrow hips.

  He caught her milky thighs with calloused hands and pulled them higher up around his waist as he laid wet and reverent kisses down the side of her neck, sucking softly on th
e intimate curve as his spine curved into a flex against her center. Contact—even through clothing, it felt like being electrocuted with desire. Fever running. Hot. Blistering. Anything to scrabble closer to the heat. Nothing to fear.

  And then…

  Nothing.

  He was gone.

  Completely and utterly vanished. The Fade vanished behind a blink and Sybille found herself lying on top of silk sheets in a shadowed bedroom.

  Groggy. Weak. Tired. She was awake again, her body still thrumming with the aftershocks of so much pain. From within and without. She almost felt like she was glowing yellow. Irradiated, saturating the room around her with poisonous radioactive fumes. “Nova,” she croaked, searching by way of the moonlight spilling through the barred windows.