by JA Wren
Kally and Nissa hovered nearby, her bestie shielding the juvenile phoenix with her wings protectively surrounding her. A strange look had crossed over her face, her features set into a tight frown.
Disappointment?
Fear?
Neither fit the expression, but she couldn’t decipher it, and it sure didn’t seem happy. She’d done what they wanted, right? Controlled her abilities. Was she upset Rayna hadn’t done it sooner?
Asher, however, smiled at her. His breathing was ragged, his chest rising and falling rapidly. But there was no denying the joy on his face. “You did it, Rayna.”
She had. She’d controlled her powers.
And they terrified her just as much as before.
But what scared her the most was how good it felt. How at home the darkness felt teasing her skin and how desperately she’d wanted more. To let it consume everything.
Everyone.
Let the red sparks seep from her to saturate the black clouds.
Controlling her abilities wasn’t the only thing she’d have to learn. She’d need to figure out how to control her own desires as well.
For now, she kept that part to herself and celebrated with Asher and the others. There’d be time for new worries again. Right now, she allowed herself to feel a shred of happiness at discovering a taste of true control.
“Too bad I needed to think Tink was mortally injured to do it,” she grumbled, still stroking the Wisp’s flamey head.
“It’s a start,” Asher said, leaning in to kiss her temple. “In no time, you’ll have full control. Then you’ll be safe.”
Safe from the gods who wanted to use her as a weapon.
Safe from Nyx and her threat to send Rayna back into the night sky.
But she wouldn’t be safe from herself.
Twenty-Three
Two days passed and Rayna was quickly learning to manifest her powers.
Once she got the feel of it, control came easier and easier thanks to extended training sessions with her personal group of instructors and sparring partners. Sometimes they still had to resort to a little violence to get her worked up enough to fight back.
But she was getting there.
She was also quietly fighting her inner desire to let her darkness out full force, to cover the entire globe with it. It was easing the more she used her powers. The need didn’t feel nearly as strong as it had that first night.
Maybe she’d only felt that way because it had been so long since she’d flexed her power muscles. A thousand years trapped in a star. Then another couple decades thinking she was just a normal human. Her darkness was rusty from disuse.
That’s all it was.
Like finally coming home after a long vacation. Once she got used to her powers again, the longing to let it pour over everything would go away.
It had to.
They cut training a little short the day of the December Solstice Ball. Which was kinda nice. She knew how important it was for them to keep going, and she was desperate to fully control her abilities, but…she didn’t like the constant battling.
That, more than anything, proved she’d be an awful weapon in the godly wars. Of course, it only made her more determined to get her shit together and then feel guilty for taking a couple hours off.
Especially when they were down to their final two days before Nyx was scheduled to place her in a star.
Had she gained enough control to convince her mother she wasn’t a risk?
“Maybe we should skip the dance,” she said to Asher as they got ready in his room. “We could train while everyone else is busy. Our own private sparring session.”
They never got to spend enough time together. There always seemed to be someone or something else demanding their attention. Some other crisis to manage or work to do. Even so, she doubted she’d ever get enough of him.
He gave her a devilish smile and stopped fastening the tiny buttons of his white shirt. “Private sparring session, you say?”
She shivered as his look darkened, turning molten copper as he stepped closer. He wrapped his arms around her and his hands smoothed over the fabric of her black lace dress—one she’d only bought the day before on a quick shopping trip with Delilah once she’d gotten out of the infirmary.
Still no official lead on who was responsible for attacking her and Ethan since the Seers hadn’t been able to determine anything concrete. But at least the two were okay. Mostly recovered thanks to magical healers.
Asher’s voice lowered, coming out in a deep, rumbly growl. “I think we can arrange a private sparring session.”
“Really?” she asked. “Don’t you need to spend that time with Nissa?”
He went rigid at her back, and not in the fun way. The more control Rayna gained, the more time he spent with the juvenile phoenix, helping her train and leaving Rayna to work with the others.
She tried not to feel jealous, but she missed him. Missed spending more than a few hours together in bed each night, too exhausted from her training to do more than snuggle up against his warmth.
“Rayna—”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to make that a thing.” She wriggled out of his grasp and moved to slip on her shoes. “Really. Forget I even said it.”
She couldn’t meet his eyes as she perched on the end of the bed to strap her heels into place. Black to match her dress. While her room had been cleaned up after Nissa burned it to a crisp, she’d stayed with Asher in his.
Secretly.
Sure, it was probably against academy rules, but technically they’d been together longer than most people had lived, so she figured they could get away with it.
“You know I love you more than anything, right?”
“I do.” Rayna smiled as she walked over to the desk where she’d left her crystal necklace.
While she was supposed to let Tink go, off to her home realm, she hadn’t been able to force herself to do it. Hale was distracted after the security breach, so she was stealing as much time with the Wisp as she could. She didn’t know how she’d ever say goodbye to Tink. It truly felt like trying to cut a piece of her own soul away and toss it out into the wild. She’d never be whole again.
She reached for the pendant where she thought she’d placed it under the lamp, but it wasn’t there.
Shit.
She must have left it back at her room earlier when she showered.
“I forgot Tink in my room.” She turned and kissed Asher on the cheek, just a light brush of her lips that definitely didn’t portray the love she felt for him. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
He held on, not letting her leave his arms. “Promise you believe there’s nothing going on with me and Nissa.”
“I promise,” she said. He gave her a look that said he wasn’t buying it. “Okay, fine. I promise I trust you, and I believe you. It’s just…”
“Just what?”
“The way she looks at you sometimes. With utter adoration. It’s kind of hard to ignore when she hangs onto you, or clings to you like a lost puppy craving attention and cuddles. Not to mention she has those sad, love-me eyes that make everyone feel sorry for her and want to protect her. You can’t deny that’s definitely in your nature. Plus, she’s a phoenix, like you, which means you’d have plenty in common.”
She sucked in a hard breath. “And I realize I sound like a total mad, jealous woman for even saying that after everything we’ve been through in the past, whether I fully remember it yet or not, but I can’t help noticing it and wondering if you’d be better off with her. No threat of your soulmate bringing a fucking apocalypse to the world.”
Her heart was racing a mile a second when she finished her ramble. She clenched her hands against his chest, hating how clammy they’d turned, despite the marked one still icy cold. She shouldn’t have said anything. Should’ve pretended everything was absolutely fine.
Still unable to meet his eyes, she stared at the spot of skin visible at his collar, where the two sides of his s
hirt met. She wanted to lick it, taste his skin beneath her tongue, but now really wasn’t the right time.
“How long have you felt like this?” he asked, voice so low it was barely a whisper.
She shrugged. “Since the night she fried my room.” She’d tried to push it down, hated feeling like a silly, jealous teenager, but it got harder when he spent so much time with Nissa.
Asher tightened his arms around her and buried his face in the curve of her neck. “Rayna, love. There is no one else on this earth, or any other realm for that matter, I could possibly love even a fraction as much as I love you.”
She closed her eyes and drank in the feel of him, the warmth of his lips against her neck. So delicious. So right. There was no way she could deny he loved her. They’d been through hell and back, broken apart, and finally found their way into each other’s arms again.
“Maybe it’s not love that you feel for her,” she mumbled.
He pulled back and cupped her face, forcing her to meet his eyes. They’d turned into a raging inferno. She’d never seen him look so fierce. Or at least she couldn’t remember it.
“You think I’d even consider touching another woman when I have you?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. “You’re my soulmate, Rayna. My other half. If I could explain what it’s been like without you these past thousand years, I would. It nearly destroyed me. Tore me apart far worse than that volcano.”
He closed his eyes for just a second, a long blink really, and when he opened them again, they swam with moisture. “Only the thought of you, of finding you and being reunited with the rest of my soul, kept me from losing my mind. From giving in to the madness that threatened to consume me worse than the agony of drowning in molten rock.”
With his thumbs on her cheeks, he swept away tears she hadn’t even realized were falling down her face. “You think I’m just going to forget about that and want someone else?”
Well, when he put it like that…
He kissed her lips, just a light brush of his mouth. “You’re it for me. No matter how many lifetimes we spend together, it will always be you. I’d follow you to the ends of the earth, to the depths of the ocean, or straight into the fucking heavens if Nyx tries that shit. Nothing will keep us apart again. I swear it.”
He deepened the kiss and she practically melted against him, reveling in his promise and trying to let it chase away her doubts. More than that, she tried to ignore the uneasy feeling clenching her stomach.
Like the flicker of something sinister and foreboding teasing the hairs on her neck.
“Do you believe me?” he asked, breathing labored from their kiss.
She nodded. “How could I not?”
His brow furrowed. “Promise?”
She ran her fingers through his hair, mussing it, but who cared? He looked gorgeous no matter what. “I promise. It was silly to even bring it up. I just…It’s been a long few months, you know?”
His eyes turned sympathetic. Softening. “I do. You’ve been through a lot in a short amount of time. You’re allowed to feel however you want to feel, Rayna, but promise you’ll talk to me. Okay?” At her nod, he smiled. “I’ve never wanted anyone else. And I never will.”
His eyes glinted with a different sort of heat and made her want to ditch the ball. “But for now,” Asher said. “We have a dance to get to. Then I’ll be more than happy to help you out of this hot dress of yours and demonstrate just how much I love you.”
It was a fairly simple sheath with a lace overlay, nothing like the red smoke ball gown the orb had covered her with. She’d never feel right in something so fancy. But she could clearly picture him peeling it off of her.
Rayna’s cheeks flamed with anticipation. “I’ll meet you out in the hall. Let me just get Tink from my room first.”
Asher laughed, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear where it had come loose from her messy bun. “Hale’s going to blow a fuse when she discovers the Wisp is still hanging around.”
“Good thing she won’t find out then.” She kissed the tip of his nose, letting the last of the tension between them melt away, then headed for her room.
The place was even sparser than before, her hodgepodge décor mostly lost in Nissa’s fire, but it didn’t really matter when she was living with Asher, only returning to shower and change clothes.
She flipped on the light, then rushed around the room, searching for her necklace. Not in the bathroom as she’d expected, where she had to have left it post-shower. Nor on the desk under the window. Weird, since she often kept it there so she wouldn’t lose it.
“Like right now,” she said under her breath.
Another sweep of her room, looking at every surface and even the shower itself in case it came off in there. Eventually she crawled around on the floor—carefully so she didn’t ladder the lace—and searched under the bed.
Nothing.
“Tink?” she called, hoping the Wisp would light up and give her an idea where she was hiding. “Tink, where are you?”
Rattling came from the chest of drawers beside the closet, then a dim glow flowing through the cracks.
How the hell had she ended up in there?
Rayna yanked open the drawer and Tink flew out, buzzing around the room like she was happy to be free.
“Sorry, sweetie.” She slipped the necklace over her head, letting the pendant dangle against the bodice of her dress. “I didn’t even know you were stuck in here.”
The Wisp zipped at her, hovering right in front of her with arms folded and a cute little pout on her flamey face. Rayna reached up and stroked her head, slowly softening Tink until she was practically purring.
“I really am sorry, but we gotta go or we’ll be late. Ash is waiting.”
She was about to slam the drawer shut when something glinted at her from inside. A tiny wooden box with a silver R on the top nestled on a small pillow right there between her PJs—PJs she rarely wore these days. She squinted at it, hoping it wasn’t another star-in-a-box.
How the hell it had gotten there?
And who could’ve left it?
There definitely hadn’t been anything inside the chest of drawers when she’d claimed it from another student.
If this was Evelyn’s idea at another invitation to her little secret SOB club or whatever—
“Rayna?” She almost jumped out of her skin when Asher cracked the door open and stuck his head inside. “You ready?”
“Yeah.” She pushed the drawer closed, the image of the box sealed in her mind.
Even as she slid her hand into Asher’s, the image of the R danced through her thoughts, repeating over and over. Like a song when you can only remember one line, but it still gets stuck in your head, on loop. Seemingly forever.
“You okay?” Asher asked as they passed the giant sphere with the star couple still waltzing inside.
“Of course.”
She hoped her voice didn’t give her away, because she wasn’t fine. Something about that box and the R was causing a weird vibration to resonate through her veins. She wanted to run back upstairs and open it.
But she’d learned her lesson about wooden boxes that called to her.
At least the one from Nyx had stopped whispering her name all the damn time.
Twenty-Four
The academy Grand Hall was alive with activity, students milling around the entrance all dressed in fancy ball gowns and suits. A beautiful amber glow radiated from inside, while a foggy haze spilled out into the gardens, giving the whole thing a magical feel.
Rayna wondered if that was thanks to an enchantment or a regular old smoke machine.
Asher led them inside the huge ballroom, with ceilings reaching so high she could barely see all the way up. She’d heard the astronomy room was right at the very top, so it stood to reason for it to be so tall, closer to the sky above. The stars where Rayna had spent a thousand years.
She shivered and forced her thoughts away from that direction.
The décor was a Winter Wonderland dream, which seemed kind of ridiculous, since the academy always sported perfect weather. Never too hot or too cold, like the seasons didn’t exists within the center of the labyrinth.
Teardrop lights hung all around them, suspended in the air by magic as they circled the chandeliers with tiny dancing stars in the center of each. They reflected cool, blue-toned light across every surface like icicles dripping from high above. Rayna pressed her finger against one and laughed as it gave way like soft, jellified water. Or the inside of a lava lamp.
It wobbled back into shape. She’d half expected WillowWisps to light the ballroom, but they’d never hang out with the students like this. Sometimes she forgot they were technically malevolent creatures. Definitely not the ones you’d hire for recreational lighting.
Music already tinkled through the hall, a sweet, magical tune she didn’t recognize, and students danced away just like the starry couple in the giant orb.
Rayna waved at Kally who stood with another professor she didn’t know and Nick at her elbow. He grinned and sent Rayna a wink, followed by a discreet eye roll with his head tilted towards the other professor.
She laughed. Clearly the guy wasn’t in love with the faculty mingle, but he did it for Kally’s sake. Rayna still hadn’t figured out what exactly Nick was—part god or shifter or something totally new to her—though she guessed he must be part of the Spiritual Realm.
She made a note to ask Kally during their next training session.
When they located their friends, Ethan was skillfully twirling Delilah and Autumn at the same time while both girls laughed and clutched hands. Looked like they’d finally worked things out between their awkward trio and she was glad for it. She’d hated seeing the distance between the Nature Mages.
Xander stood smiling at Liv and Torrey as he poured punch for the two Valkyries. Evelyn hovered nearby with her posse, sending a scowl at Liv before she turned with a flick of her hair and stormed off.
Asher leaned in closer, his lips touching her ear as he spoke. “How about we leave them to it and find our own spot on the dance floor?”
