by Alisa Woods
The kiss went on and on, and there was no doubt they were both enjoying it.
Immensely.
Fucking hell.
He thought—no, he was certain—that angels and angelings never fucked. Not each other, not angel-to-angel or angeling-to-angeling or any combination thereof. Obviously, they fucked humans, on occasion, spawning the angelings themselves, but it was considered a great disgrace in their angel status. At least, that was the lie Erelah had told him. A lie laid bare by the erotic kiss on display in front of him. And they might as well be fucking—they were practically naked—Tajael’s erection tenting out his angelic toga, and Erelah’s nipples at fabric-straining perkiness.
She lied to him.
And somehow that was worse than not caring.
Just as their kiss broke, Leksander muttered words that were bitter ash in his mouth. “I’ll leave you two alone.” And he meant every word, now and forever.
With his own sweep of wings, he shifted to dragon and lifted fast and hard out of the alley, speeding up over the towers of the city and heading for his keep. He couldn’t stomach meeting his WildLove date now, not with any chance of Tajael and Erelah nearby. But the trip had accomplished its purpose regardless.
A highly educational purpose.
It wasn’t that Erelah was incapable of love… it was that she was incapable of loving a lowly and decidedly not angelic dragon-fae hybrid.
Which made him certain of his next destination.
The Summer Queen’s bedchambers.
“Erelah? What is this?” Tajael’s voice floated across the training room.
He’d finally found her. Good.
“Prepare to defend yourself.” She said it quietly, but she knew he could hear. Sound carried well in a room made of crystal walls and crystal floors and held together with the magic of the Dominion. She strapped tight the bindings of her gloves at the wrist then gripped her blade overhand. Her wings unfurled, and she lifted into the air.
Tajael just stared up at her with concern. “I do not wish to spar.”
No matter. She would draw his blood regardless.
Her warrior cry rattled the crystalline structure of the walls, her fury righteous as she flew, blade raised, straight at him. His wings reflexively unfurled, but it still took him a moment too long to leap out of her way—she nicked a feather, the pristine white marred by the scarlet red of his blood as it whipped through the torrent of her passing.
“Erelah!” he screeched in complaint, climbing aloft.
She banked and came around again. “You have tarnished my honor!” she screamed as she bore down on him.
This time he was ready, waiting until she got close, then dropping below her and grabbing at her feet. She kicked his hands away, flipped head over heels, then sliced her blade across his chest on the way down, head first toward the floor.
He cried out, although it sounded unsatisfyingly like frustration, not pain. “Erelah, stop it! I can explain!”
She pulled out of her dive just before she would have split open her head on the floor, then she arced wide and climbed to the pinnacle of the training center again. She wiped his blood from her blade on the back of her glove then switched her grip to underhand. “Explain it to the tip of my blade.” Then she charged for him again. He was fully across the empty training hall, but that just gave her time to build speed.
He braced for her, his own hands still blade-free. Why didn’t he defend himself? Maybe because he knew he was wrong for what he did. It was shadow angel enough that he had forced the kiss—and a life kiss, no less, knowing full well she would be powerless against it—but he shamed her in front of a friend.
The fury of it drove her even faster, but when she reached Tajael, he once again dodged her, rather than facing the fight like an angel of honor. She banked and pulled up, but she was too close to the wall. Her own speed knocked her hard into it, stunning her and dropping her to the floor twenty feet below. She lost her blade in the tumult, and she landed with a loud thump. She took a moment to recover her senses, and she had to grip the wall to stand again. Her vision swam with darkness.
“Are you done?” Tajael shouted from halfway across the training hall. “Will you let me explain?”
She didn’t need his explanation. She needed her blade and a few more good runs at him. She wouldn’t kill Tajael—even he wasn’t worth a mortal sin—but she would make him feel her anger and her pain in a few more strikes before she banished him for good from her sight.
Erelah stumbled around, blinking away the black dots swimming in front of her, searching through the bleary brightness of the crystalline floor for her clear blade.
After Tajael had foisted his unholy kiss on her, she’d come to her senses to see Leksander had rightly flown off in disgust. Anger boiled anew as she dropped to hands and knees to search for her blade. Just when the dragon prince had moved forward with finding a mate… just when he’d agreed to let her stand guard with Tajael in helping make that happen… Tajael ruined everything. For an angeling storied for his perceptive talents with humans, he’d messed up the entire thing… and with a repulsive act she couldn’t begin to comprehend.
“Is this what you’re looking for?” Tajael stood calmly about ten feet away, holding her blade.
She scrambled to her feet, growling her frustration. “An angeling is more than her blade.” She sucked in a fast breath, and Tajael’s eyes went wide. Then she let loose her siren, that screaming angelsong that knows no mercy, shaking the very foundations of magic and pulling it apart at the seams. Tajael dropped the blade and clutched both hands to his head, but she was light and song and power, mighty in her righteousness. She lifted up on magic power alone and spread her arms wide, her entire body given over as a harmonic, enhancing the angelsong’s power.
Only when Tajael dropped prostrate on the floor, which was jumping and warping with her song, did she stop. As soon as it cut off, she was subject to the resonance, the waves of it bouncing off the walls and slicing back through her. It wracked her hard, dropping her to the floor as well and forcing her to scramble back and brace against the wall. Thus was the danger of angelsong—that it might rip apart the very one who made it
Quickly, though, it subsided, attenuating out into nothing but an ache inside her head.
Tajael shook his, side to side, a weary protest as he rose up from the floor. “Holy angels of light, Erelah.” He peered at her, rubbing the back of his head. “I pity the fool who makes you his enemy.”
“You are that fool.”
“I am not.” He gave a small smile, the kind that twisted her heart… because it was the same smile he’d always had. The kind and gentle smile he bestowed on everyone.
And that was what hurt the most—not the kiss or the shame, but that she lost two friends because of it. One who betrayed her, Tajael; and one who felt betrayed. Leksander. She knew what he must think. All those times she insisted on the purity and chasteness of angels and angelings—that they only ever were tempted by humans, and not by each other. Which was truth. Because angels of the light could not easily stand a touch, much less a kiss or other sexual acts. The life kiss Tajael used to overcome that natural repelling of angelkind-from-angelkind was some kind of cleverness born not of any Virtue. It was not an outright Sin, but it had all the appearance of one.
And what did that make Tajael?
No friend of hers.
He wiped the blade clean of his own blood. The trail of red across his chest was still fresh, but already healing. His angel nature was strong, so she knew he could take it, even as she took out her frustration. Then he turned the blade grip toward her and offered it up, flat on his palm. “If more sparring will allieviate your Wrath, then let’s have at it,” he said gently. “Far better than to have it trapped inside you, festering and turning you dark.”
She stared dully at the blade, hesitated, then took it. Then she glared at him, but when he spread his arms wide, offering himself to her for carving up into small angeli
ng pieces, she sighed in disgust and sheathed it in the holster strapped to her leg.
He nodded and said, softly, “You are far more angry than I suspected you might be.”
“Is that what passes for an apology from you?” Her voice was still bitter, and in truth, she was far from forgiving. Far, far from it. In fact, it was possible she left forgiveness back in the human realm when she raged and fled to the safety of the Dominion, where her angeling powers would harm no one on accident.
“I am not sorry.” Tajael stood before her, saying those words and daring her with those blue eyes of his to ask why. It was a game she did not want to play, and yet… her fury was such that she couldn’t walk away from him, either. Even though that was what he deserved.
“Explain yourself,” she said tightly. “Before I decide it was a mistake to sheath my blade again.”
He flicked a look to her thigh where the blade was strapped but seemed unmoved. “Erelah, my friend, you are as righteous as any angeling I’ve ever known.”
“Flattery will not fix this, Tajael.” Her voice hiked up. “Only truth.”
“And you shall have it.” He squinted at her. “But I doubt you will like it.”
“Patience is my least favorite Virtue, Taj.”
“Then I shall not press it.” A small smile glimmered on his lips then faded. “At first, I took Leksander’s anger, back at the keep, as a simple frustration at our angeling interference in their dragon mating rituals.”
“There is much of that,” she conceded. “They are a proud people, and rightly so. The House of Smoke has a long history of righteousness.”
Tajael tipped his head in acknowledgment of the obvious. “Yes, but that doesn’t explain how he looks at you, Erelah.”
She frowned and pulled back. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he does not look upon you as a friend.”
“Of course, he does. We’ve been friends for many years—”
“Erelah.” And the way he said it arrested her heart. Patient. Kind. But she was missing something. Something important. “He looks upon you as a lover does.”
She blinked. Her heart, still thudding from the fight, pounded an insistent gong inside her chest. Her head shook in time with it, twitching its denial, but no words came out of her gaping mouth. Then finally, she whispered, “He does not…” but she couldn’t finish the words. Did he? Did Leksander look upon her that way? The horror of it was creeping up on her like an eclipse sweeping over the land and shrouding everything in darkness.
There was sympathy on Tajael’s face. “It is easy to miss. He hides it well. I suspect he has had to because…” He gestured to her with open hands.
“Because why?” she demanded, even though she knew. Because she could not return that love. Her faction was Chastity. She took a vow. She may struggle with the other Virtues, but at all times, Chastity was her bedrock. It was literally what made her an angel of the light.
“Erelah…” His voice softened, and he stepped closer. The blood still wept in small red tears from the gash on his chest.
Erelah couldn’t tear her eyes from it. How could this be true?
“You didn’t see it because you didn’t want to,” Tajael said softly. She looked up sharply and met his gaze. But there was nothing but Kindness there. “You wanted to be friends, and you knew that you couldn’t if… if you knew he felt more.”
Erelah let out a small gasp. Because Tajael’s words rang with the clarity of truth. She still didn’t want to know this! Because it changed everything.
“I’m sorry, Erelah.” He frowned. “You didn’t know, and truthfully, how could you? I suspect he only let it loose when it couldn’t be helped. Like today, when you slayed that demon. The look on his face… I’ve seen it before, during my walkabout, and it never ends well. Not for our kind. Or theirs.”
The horror came creeping back and seemed to envelop her mind, dulling it, making it thick with despair. “Why didn’t you just… just tell me, Taj.”
He nodded. “I thought of it. For a moment. Maybe even two.” His frown came back. “I didn’t want to cause you pain, but it’s not just your heart at stake here. Or your wings. This is a prince of the House of Smoke. The final prince. He must mate with someone who can bear him a dragonling.”
Something was breaking inside her. Something as hard and fragile as the crystalline floor underneath her bare feet. But she nodded because, of course, Tajael was right.
“You didn’t see his face, Erelah,” he said, and now his voice held the apology he refused to give before. “He would never have let you go. Not in a million years, and we don’t have that kind of time. I knew your honor could take a little bruising. I knew I could stand to lose you as a friend. But the world cannot afford to lose Leksander Smoke to a doomed love affair with an angeling.”
The breaking was sharp and tearing, and she wasn’t sure, but she thought something might be physically wrong with her. She pressed the heel of her hand to her chest, right above her heart, where it seemed she might be dying inside.
“I’m so sorry, E,” he said.
She just nodded, dully.
“I had to…” He swallowed. “I had to make sure.”
“So you made me a liar,” she gasped, finally looking up at him, the pain inside threatening to bring on tears. Tears. She had only ever cried once, and that was only for joy… when Markos had blessed her and accepted her into his faction.
“I made you unavailable,” he said, his voice a little more stern. But he softened it immediately. “And a liar. And someone who never saw his love but easily enjoyed my kiss. It was wretched, and I’d gladly pay for it with more strikes of your blade. But it was necessary, Erelah. Not all our choices are easy or righteous.”
Somehow that only made it worse. That there couldn’t be a way through this that was pure and righteous in all things.
“I… I need to…” The pain in her chest continued to grow. The darkness was encroaching on her mind. She swallowed to clear the thickness in her throat. “I need some time to… understand this.”
“Retire to your cell,” he said solemnly, stepping back. “I’ll ensure no one disturbs you.”
By which Erelah was sure he meant he would go straight away and tell Markos all that had transpired. And if the House of Smoke needed anything further from the angel realm, Markos would not be calling on her. Or perhaps even Tajael.
Her friend had risked much to make this happen.
To save the world from a mistake she had made.
She nodded, and with wings dragging limp on the floor behind her, she willed her feet to move toward the door. Toward the safety and security and normalcy of her cloistered cell. Toward a future that suddenly was tilted sideways and uncertain…
Except for the fact that Leksander would never again be part of it.
Leksander pounded on the door to Leonidas’s lair.
When he got no answer right away—which, to be honest, was only about two seconds—he pounded harder, nearly denting the bronze dragon relief draped around the edges as he gripped it. Only when he’d waited an interminable amount of time, fuming that his brother wasn’t answering, did reason take hold.
He checked the time. It was nearly ten.
And his brother had a newborn baby.
What on earth was he doing?
Leksander stepped back and scrubbed his face. He’d nearly broken the speed of sound flying back to the keep, all on an urgent mission to visit the Queen of the Summer Court now. His fury should be directed at Erelah, but there was nothing to be done there, and besides, she was always on him to “do his duty.” So he was determined to bury himself in some sizzling hot sex, the kind he’d been denying himself forever, all for some hopelessly stupid obsession with an angeling who wasn’t even what she pretended to be.
She lied to him.
It ate through his gut all the way home, and by the time he folded his wings and dropped into the keep, he was hollowed out inside. There was nothing left but
rage and a driving need for sex. He had no idea what hours they kept at the Summer Court, but the queen wasn’t sleeping anyway, he was sure of that. She was getting off with some dragon—Dirk was his name—but Leksander was ready to pull rank and take a turn.
Very ready.
Just as he decided he was a fool—not to mention inconsiderate and generally an asshole—for pounding on Leonidas’s door and probably waking the baby, and that he should slink away and find some other way to contact the queen, the door creaked open.
Rosalyn stood in her pajamas. “Oh, hey, Leksander. You’re back already?” She frowned and rubbed her eyes.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have woken you.” He really should just leave now.
“No, it’s okay.” She backed up and opened the door. “Come on in. I was just catching a little shut eye while Leonidas watched the baby. Have to sleep when I can. He’s still getting up all hours of the night.”
“I really shouldn’t…” But he desperately wanted to talk to his brother, just for a moment.
“Don’t be an idiot.” She waved him in, so he complied.
Leksander followed her into the great room of Leonidas’s lair—his and Rosalyn’s now, he guessed—where his brother was walking a slow circuit around the room, gently bouncing baby Thorn and singing. Leksander was so arrested by the sight, he stopped halfway into the room. The song was ancient and in dragontongue—Leksander recognized it instinctually, the way one knows something they have no direct experience with. Like the idea that deep water is dangerous. Or that a mournful cry signals danger. Only this was an instinctively soothing sound, one that said—you are home; you are loved. It snuffed out his anger and made the hollow inside him whistle even more empty and cold.
He shook that off. He couldn’t afford to be sentimental, not right now. What he needed right now was a revenge fuck, and he figured the Queen of the Summer Fae was perfect for that.
“Where is Dirk?” Leksander asked, walking the rest of the way into the great room, but keeping his voice hushed so as not to wake the baby.
“Dirk?” Leonidas asked, puzzled, as if Leksander had asked whether the moon was blue today. Then his brother scowled at him. “What happened to you? I thought you were…” He shrugged, as though he really didn’t know what Leksander was doing in the city.
