by R. F. Long
Rough bark scratched into her behind as she pressed down against a sudden ache deep in her hips. Her fingertip left the warmth of his mouth too slowly. Another firm fruit rose and she felt powerless to refuse it. Mimicking him, she flicked her tongue over his skin as the berry entered her mouth. Taric drew a harsh breath. Against her lip, his finger strayed, tracing the fullness along the bottom.
“I like the chilled berries.” She didn’t know she spoke until her voice whispered out. The sound broke whatever haze surrounded them and he dropped his hand. Loss rushed around her like a winter’s breath.
Taric avoided her face and tugged his boots over his wet feet. “I’m glad. I wanted to leave on a pleasant note. I ride for Claverham tomorrow.”
His words chilled her, an icy river on her sun-heated flesh. “Yes, I know. The treaty is vital to ensure the safety of the southland border but I do not trust the Lutas. How many men do you take?”
With a weary sigh, he cupped her elbow and drew her back into the meadow. “A half crew I believe will be enough. It doesn’t seem fitting to ride into peace talks with a full war battalion.”
Myla reviewed the men mentally and nodded her approval. “Yes, it should. I shall be on guard as well.”
“When aren’t you?” he laughed. “Half a crew in full regal dress and a series of long, boring meals, chess games and archery exhibitions when fifteen minutes of frank conversation could accomplish the same. Sometimes it just seems like a waste of energy, doesn’t it?”
“Perhaps, but the civil tone will be aided by the formality. You like the pageantry of the crown, do you not?”
“Most times.” Taric plucked a stray stalk of grass and whirled it idly while they walked. “The rituals are…grounding, familiar. I know what’s expected, what’s been done by a hundred generations before me and my role in the play. Sometimes that’s exactly what I feel like, a performer repeating lines and scenes cast long ago and known by everyone. It’s not me, Taric the man, speaking then, but Prince Taric Batu, Heir Apparent to the Segur throne. He’s the one who wears a diadem and speaks with formal tones and civic duty. I’m just along to swing the sword and clean up the blood.”
“Would you cease to be prince if you had a choice?”
“It’s not a choice I was ever given. No, I like the role enough, have been taught from birth what’s required of me and don’t know any other way. I just wonder what being a prince in a time of quiet is like or will I always be a ruler in wartime?” He flung the blade of grass, now twisted and limp, far into the wind. “But enough war talk. Tell me about you.”
“Me?” Myla halted abruptly and he walked a pace ahead before turning to her. “You know all there is to know of me.”
Tall butter-yellow wildflowers danced in the breeze and he ran a skimming hand over the tops, stirring them further. A bright orange-and-black butterfly flitted about his head and he batted it away with a flick.
The play of colors around him—the shading of a single hue into a million dimensions—captivated her. Somewhere in her breast a fire grew, cast from those same brilliant tones from copper to cream. It warmed her from within like the sunbeams warmed her flesh. Taric was beautiful, golden among the yellow.
One delicate bloom plucked from a willowy stalk appeared before her eyes, held in a hand she longed to feel touch her once more. She took his offering with hesitant fingers.
“I know nothing about you, Myla. Well, I know you’re fierce and stronger than any man. You’re a beautiful woman or a massive cat. Strawberries and blackberries make you close your eyes in pleasure. If needed, you have and will kill to protect me.” His curious eyes searched her face for more. “But tell me about you. Do you dream, Myla? When you’re part of me, do you miss the sunshine? Are you ever apart from me without my knowing? Have you ever thought of me in any other way than a duty?”
Words locked in her throat and choked her. She existed for no reason other than to serve as his guardian. She knew everything about him yet nothing of what made him how he was. They were closer than two beings ever should be and yet separate and alone. Sadness touched her, a butterfly of rainbowed beauty drenched by a sudden rainfall. Steeling her face to hide her emotion, she cocked her head to the side.
“I do not dream within you. I accepted this duty and I stand guard. Sunshine touches your flesh and I know of its warmth through you. I am with you every minute, Taric, even if you do not behold me with your eyes.”
Something close to anger colored his face and he jumped in front of her, his chest brushing her breasts. Vehemence emanated from his body in sheets of blistering heat. No, not anger, something…close…burning…needing. “But have you ever thought about me as other than a prize to be protected?”
Myla didn’t have the ability to lie to him but strategic maneuvers could be employed. The wilting flower became a tool of distraction and she twirled it between her fingers. The spinning buttery color quivered with her fraud. “I do not allow those thoughts to linger in my mind.”
A dimple appeared above his jaw and the right side of his lip inched upward. “But you have felt…something for me other than protectiveness?”
Lips parted, she remained silent. For all the strength in her supernatural structure, she couldn’t break from his gaze. She saw herself reflected in pools of burnt umber, reminding her she belonged within him. Then the image was gone as he angled his head. His mouth pressed to hers, the burst of blackberry vivid and potent.
So this is how his kiss feels…like magic. Without thought, she mimicked his motion, tasting his lips and then allowing her tongue to touch and stroke his. Heat arced between them, a power she didn’t recognize but one that consumed her. He nibbled the lip he’d touched earlier, his fingers straying to her cheek, firm and gentle. A quiver grew from her marrow and spread, wracking her bones, and she trembled in sudden fear.
The pale yellow flower fell to the ground. Taric was her charge, her responsibility. She should not behave in this manner with him. Only the magnetic lure of his touch held her within this realm, halting her escape. He felt so…right. It was so wrong.
Taric shifted and tried to pull her closer, his arm around her waist, but she pushed away from him. “Do not. I should not have allowed that to happen. It can not happen again.”
“Why?”
The question threw her. Why? Because… She floundered, searching for why his touch should be forbidden, why she could not submit to the raging beat of her pulse, why she could not bask in the taste of his kiss. He was long past the age of manhood and could choose his own path. If he wanted a woman, he had the right to take her be she willing. Myla reluctantly admitted she was most willing to step into his kiss once more. But she was not a woman. Not really.
“I am not real, Taric. I am an enchantment, a spell designed for your protection, not your pleasure.”
Flushed color drained from his face at her breathless words.
“I bid you farewell, my charge.” She drew on every smidgeon of control not to zing back inside his mark. A tiny breath of lilac vapor swirled regretfully through the yellow blossoms before it too trickled into his body. Sorrow turned the last wisps to dark violet.
Caught between love and duty, can she make an impossible choice?
Heart of the Volcano
© 2009 Imogen Howson
Five years ago, Aera was called away from everything she had ever known: her home, family, and Coram, the boy she was growing to love. She was given no choice. As the only living lava-shifter—able to transform her body into molten rock—she is destined to serve the volcano god as his fire priestess. Now, before she takes her ordained role, she must face her final test. Execute a criminal sentenced to death for the most unforgivable of all sins. Blasphemy.
She’s shocked to discover it’s no anonymous law-breaker waiting chained at the center of the labyrinth. It’s Coram. For the crime of being a gargoyle, a winged stone-shifter. A gift akin to hers…except his gift is unsanctioned by the temple, his powers proclaimed unho
ly.
If she refuses the test she will betray her god and condemn her family to dishonor. To pass it she must kill the boy she used to love…the man she still does.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Heart of the Volcano:
“You want to know what it is?” said Coram. “Will it make it easier to know? Easier to kill me, when you see the abomination I’m hiding?”
“No.” Nothing will make it easier to kill you. But she couldn’t say that aloud, standing here as they were, priestess and victim.
He shrugged. The chains swung down as his arms fell against his body. “Very well. Watch, fire-priestess, servant of the volcano-god, standing with all your power in your very own labyrinth. See the path laid before me.”
And he changed.
She was looking into his eyes, and change came there first: a swirl of grey spiraling out from his pupils, swallowing up the colour, spreading to transform the whole of both his eyes into the lifeless stare of a statue.
Then it poured over the rest of him like water soaking through fabric, a tide of grey washing from his face down over his neck and chest and arms, hardening every angle of bone and curve of muscle until they looked like contours on a cliff face. He’d been big at fifteen, and bigger still now he was grown up, but as the stony colour seeped over his skin, his chest and arms grew visibly even larger, muscles bulging under the folds of his toga-tunic.
He moved, just a little, and it made a horrible grating noise, stone on stone. His head went down, his shoulders tensed, then wings unfolded, huge, stone-feathered wings, arching above their heads like a temple roof.
When he spoke even his voice sounded different, hollow, echoing, like the wind blowing through empty caves. “Blasphemy or not, then, priestess? Do you believe it now?”
Of course it was blasphemy. Terrible blasphemy, the worst kind, the kind that was a travesty of her own gift. Turning, not to fire that came from the god, that purified and destroyed sin, but to something less than human, even less than animal. She’d not seen or heard of it before—what is he? Does the gift even have a name?—but she knew all the holy gifts, the fire gifts, and this was none of them. Yet, all the same…
It’s like my gift. Living stone. Like me. And he’s—oh, I cannot say it to him, but he’s beautiful.
The words swelled inside her, hurting her chest, making her breath catch. She’d never imagined anything like the way he looked, never imagined that stone, her own substance, the thing she thought she knew so well, could look like this, all smooth grey planes, every line of his body somehow more defined than it had been in flesh.
Helpless to stop or control it, she heard her voice go back to a whisper. “What are you? A—a stone-shifter, a—”
“Gargoyle.” He spread his arms a little, looked down at himself. “Or so they said when they came for me. Stone-shifters don’t have wings. So they said.” Contempt and anger flashed through his voice.
Gargoyle. An ugly-sounding word. She had heard it before, she realized now, but hadn’t known exactly what it was, and had taken little notice. No one expected her to know the many horrible permutations of the unholy gifts. It was not her task to find them or identify them, only to destroy—
She stuck on that last thought, her mind stuttering over the word. Destroy. Coram had never asked for this, would never have deliberately gone against the god’s will. And he…this thing he was—it wasn’t horrible. But all the same, she must—
She couldn’t think it, not yet. In a minute she would face the thought, the reality of what she must do. Not yet. Not yet.
Above her, his wings bent, drew downwards to fold onto his back. The stony rustle grated on her ears and echoed around the walls of the labyrinth eye. The grey colour receded from his skin, and his body changed, shrinking, redefining its shape. He stood wholly human before her.
“You can stop staring now.”
She looked away, embarrassed. “I’m—I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for staring? Or sorry you’re going to kill me?”
The words stung. She flinched, not looking at him. “For staring…”
“Oh, don’t worry.” His voice was as hard as if it still came from the stone lips. “I know very well how appalling I am—an abomination to gods and men. I hardly expect you not to be revolted.”
I’m not revolted. She swallowed. I’m not revolted, and I should be. Even if I’ve not seen an unholy gift before, I’ve been a priestess for five years, I’m one with the god’s power, I’m supposed to be one with his mind. I should see this as the abomination it is.
“Go on.”
She jerked her head up to look at him. “What?”
“Go on. You’ve seen the justification. Do what you came here for.”
“You mean…”
“Kill me. Do what your god tells you. Fulfill your destiny.”
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