by Nhys Glover
“If it wasn’t good for you, then we’d find another way. But for me... I’ll take you anyway I can get you. The more out of control the better. And if you’re afraid you’ll hurt me, then you have three other men who will make sure you don’t. Just as you’ll make sure they don’t.”
I met his gaze, convincing him of the truth of every word.
He nodded finally. Landor sat up and placed a hand on his shoulder. Zem looked back at him and nodded his acknowledgement of the wordless gesture.
Or was it wordless? Maybe they had spoken in their minds.
Of all my husbands, these two were closest. Like brothers. Or lovers. They were certainly comfortable with shows of demonstrative affection between them.
I turned to Prior who had withdrawn a little and had his hands planted firmly in the earth, the grass around those hands now burned.
Bringing my lightning up, I wrapped my arms around his neck, letting the current flicker down his back and into the ground. He breathed a sigh of relief and he lowered his shield so I could see the thoughts he’d been fighting to control.
All that had happened, all that Zem had described, was playing in his mind. How out of control he’d been when he took me. The pure unbridled joy of taking me like that. I was like some magical mermaid—every man’s secret fantasy. And he’d possessed me. It had been too good. How could any experience ever compare?
But he’d hurt me, and he felt that as a physical pain. More even than when his fire had burned me. This wasn’t something out of his control. This was him wanting it. Not hurting me, but gripping me so tight I couldn’t possibly escape. While he possessed me.
If I’d been aroused by Zem’s description, I was close to coming being in Prior’s head. Possessed! What an entirely accurate word for what he’d done to me. What it had felt like for me.
I rested my head on his shoulder, trying to keep my lightning flowing over his skin. All the hairs on his black skin were standing on end. I hadn’t noticed that happen before.
Something crashed nearby. I was pulled from my blissful fog to find a branch on a nearby tree on the ground, charred and still smoking. Had my lightning gone that far somehow?
I looked to the others who were staring at Landor with wide eyes. He was staring at his hand as if it didn’t belong to him.
“Gods’ balls! Did I do that?” he croaked. The wild-eyed glance he threw my way held panic and... excitement.
“Did you do that?” I demanded, breaking from Prior to stare at the naked form of my white husband who, in this moment, looked even more like a moving marble statue. Gods, even coated in salt he was beautiful!
“I have your magic. Your lightning, just as I have your mind-reading magic. Do you think...” he paused, trying to take in what was happening. The significance of it. “Do you think this is how our power will grow as we bond? That what one has, the others will also have access to? Might you be able to heal? I think for a while there you had Zem’s warrior magic. The others talk about you being broken by how hard they used you last night. That wasn’t what I saw. Not what I felt. You were every bit as strong and powerful as Zem.”
That had everyone’s attention. I stared at him as if he’d sprouted horns. Or breasts. Or both. How could we share magic? How could I have Zem’s warrior strength and skills?
I thought back to the night before. I didn’t feel particularly strong and I certainly didn’t want to fight anyone. But I had felt... powerful. I had taken it for the level of arousal I had achieved, or the fact that we’d finally bonded and become The Five. Bu what if it was more than that? What if Landor was right and I had Zem’s warrior magic?
I glanced around at the others who all had their shields down and were busy trying to process what Landor had said. Trying to put the pieces together in a way that worked for them. I had noticed how differently they all thought. Of course, everyone thought differently, I’d learned that almost from the start. But my four were even more unique in their thinking than most.
Zem was the most familiar to me. And the most unusual. He thought with rational precision, breaking things into components before putting them back together either as he found them or as he thought they should go. He could store masses of information in specially marked boxes in his mind, all kept just where they should be. And he’d go over and over them, to make sure they all remained where they should be. Nothing was allowed to be out of place. All new information had to find its place even if that meant creating yet another box.
Landor thought with grace, the way he did everything. His mind was never cluttered, or chaotic. Even now, with this new possibility sending shock waves through his mind, his thinking was elegant and almost poetic. Being in his mind was always a relief. It calmed my own chaos.
Prior’s mind was more like mine, filled with chaos that he’d learned to cruelly control so that, at first when I’d been in there, I’d taken him for unfeeling. The absolute opposite was the truth. He felt too much. It blocked his ability to think rationally. He made decisions from somewhere other than his mind. His gut instinct? I wasn’t sure. But I think I made decisions the same way.
If someone asked me why I chose to do something I could probably find a rational explanation, but it wouldn’t be accurate. Because, in truth, I had no idea how I came up with my decisions. My mind was as irrational as Zem’s was rational.
And Prior was like me, but had turned himself into a version of Zem out of fear of where his out-of-control mind might take his fire. He’d stopped being able to fully live because of it. Now... now all that fire and instinct were coming to the surface and I could see the true vitality of life pulsing through him. See the joy that life gave him.
Lastly, there was Laric. His mind was the hardest for me to get, as he’d given me few opportunities to be in his head. But what I had discovered was that he was a perfect blend of rational and instinctual thought. A keen but mercurial mind that could take a problem apart and see how it worked, but also make unconventional jumps in logic that took him places an ordinary mind wouldn’t go. Zem could do that too. Although, in his case, he’d make a point of clarifying the steps he took to get to that place, where Laric wouldn’t. He just made the jump and accepted it for what is was.
I liked that about his mind. I liked how easily he accepted things that were unexpected and seemingly inexplicable; things that could spin all his beliefs around. Like this one. Like the possibility he could have magic other than his nightmares.
And with that jump, he held up his hand and focused on a nearby rock. In the next moment, fire exploded against that rock, leaving a big burned patch when he was through.
“So... good!” he crowed, eyes alight. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to be able to do that. Ever since I saw you practising in the Ab’s arena, Prior. I’ve always wanted to blow things up!”
His childlike glee had the rest of us falling over laughing. I laughed so hard the tears poured down my face.
The best part for me was that someone else was the target of the laughter. Yet there was nothing mean-spirited in it, as I’d always felt there was when my men laughed at me. It was just good-natured fun. I could see that when it wasn’t directed my way. I needed to remember that for the next time I was the butt of the joke.
For a while we all sat silently after the laughter faded away. Zem then put into words what we’d all been thinking.
“This is an amazing possibility that will likely be very useful... but what if there’s more?”
He paused so long I had to ask, “What are you getting at?”
“You were chosen for a reason, Flame. You’re the only mage in existence who can read minds as effectively as you do. And somehow we’ve all been developing that skill as we grew closer to you and to each other. But I know I can’t read anyone but us. Can anyone else?”
He looked around and the others shook their heads silently.
“So we aren’t exactly like Flame. But what if we amplify her? What if by amplifying her, she could re
ach into the mind of The Jayger. Or Airsha, from here? Or the Goddess Herself? We have to be able to read this thing. How else are we going know where it is and draw it into the elemental circle Sky conjures up?
“The myths all say the Goddess taunted him to come to the spot where her trap was laid. He won’t be as easily tricked this time, but we’ll still have to do something like it. And we can only do that if we can get inside his mind. I was going to say head, but he doesn’t have one. Or it doesn’t. As the Goddess said, the part that was a gender identifiable entity is gone, all that is left is primordial rage. An It.”
I shook my head, not agreeing. “No, it’s more than that. It’s manipulative. It got into the hag’s head and convinced her she was going to be its consort. Who knows how many other members of that fanatical cult have had The Jayger whispering in their ears, making promises he... it was never going to keep. There’s definitely a mind in there.”
“But if that’s true, why not give the Devourers back all that was taken from them by the first Godling? Why have they had to struggle so hard to decipher the old language? If he gave them the way to open the gates to the underworld back in the beginning, why not do it again now, or any time in the last few millennia?” Landor asked.
“Because he’s like a mad man. He still has all his emotions, but his mind is scattered and forgetful. And has been growing more so with every millennia of his imprisonment. It’s like he’s slowly forgotten how to think, his irrational emotions have been in control for so long. Back at the beginning, he could formulate ways to gain his freedom and pass that on to his followers. But over time he’s forgotten. All he’s left with is a shell of his former self that he uses to manipulate humans who follow him,” Laric said, making a jump that was classically his own.
“So the longer he’s stayed a raging energy, the less of his old, rational thinking mind he has been able to access?” Zem followed his jump with interest. “I know what rage does to the mind. You can’t think, not the way you can when you’re coldly dispassionate. It makes sense that if you were caught permanently in that rage state it would eat away at all other cognitive processes.” Zem was already embracing Laric’s hypothesis.
“So how do we use this to our advantage? If his mind is a jumble, how would having Flame access it, be useful?” Prior asked.
A sudden, blinding thought burst fully formed in my head! Gods’ balls! This was big!
No wonder I was chosen. Was it possible that my early years were engineered for just this purpose? I had begun to despise my conster training and how I’d used it, because of what I’d done to Airsha and the Airluds, but also how it now tainted my perception of every interaction. I couldn’t even accept Sky was legitimately who he’d told Shardra he was, or that he loved her. I’d been so sure that, because she was so innocent and gullible, he had to be playing her. And I’d been wrong.
But, what if the very skills I had come to loathe were exactly what we’d need to succeed? Because I couldn’t just read minds, I could manipulate them by telling someone exactly what they wanted to hear.
My skin prickled. This was what it must be like to have one of Airsha’s Knowings. It was like everything else just fell away and the truth stared me in the face so clearly I found it hard to believe I hadn’t seen it before. Hadn’t got it before.
I must have been broadcasting my thoughts, or enough of them, to have the others turning their focus on me.
Prior was frowning fiercely. “I don’t understand. What do you mean you’re a conster?”
I blinked. Didn’t he know that part of my story? I thought everyone knew my dirty little secret. Was this how I had been excluded from the news about them being able to read each other’s thoughts? A little more of my hurt faded away at that realisation.
I explained. “My mother learned to be a conster from my father. He’s Calun father too. My parents were both discarded nobles. When he went his way—or she did because she fell for Dah—she had me and lived a ‘normal’ life.” I made a point of stressing normal to indicate it was significant. “When Dah didn’t come home from the sea when I was ten, she went back to her old ways and began teaching them to me. I was a fast learner. When she died, I used the skills I’d learned to make my way in the world. Until Airshin raped me. After that, I became Flea and my cons became more... conservative, and I took to mostly thieving instead. Then, when I found out that Airshin was going to find his sister, I was determined to meet up with him there and exact my vengeance.
“I conned my way into the lives of very good people, making Airsha’s life far harder than it already was. I will never forgive myself for that. I’m only grateful she was able to forgive me. So, aye, I have the ability to manipulate and con with the best of them.”
Prior leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “You become more interesting the more I get to know you. That’s rare.”
He seemed pleased, and so I laughed and accepted what he had meant as a compliment. I suppose it was. I also liked people who had lots of layers. Not cheating, lying layers, though.
“I think we have some practising to do. Or exploring,” Zem said thoughtfully.
Laric wriggled his brows at me and I laughed.
“Not that kind of exploring. Leave that for the nights,” Zem snapped impatiently.
There were groans all round, only partially joking.
“Zem?” I interrupted cautiously.
He stared at me distractedly. His mind was elsewhere. But I had to know. I’d be eaten up with worry if I didn’t. He’d closed the part of himself with issues off from me while he chewed on his new information, so I couldn’t get my answer by reading him.
“Hmm?” he muttered, not even looking at me.
“Will you be joining us again or do you want to make other arrangements?” I said as subtly as I could.
He frowned at me, as if not understanding. When he did get it, his cheeks flamed. Which was a really odd thing to do when he was sitting with a group of naked people who had all shared pleasure together. I would have thought nothing would embarrass him after that.
“If you have my warrior magic then I’ll happily join the pack mentality. My only concern is for you. And though I accept that the others would stop me hurting you if I became carried away, the fact that I could hurt you disturbs me more than I can say. But if you are less able to be hurt now...”
“But you enjoy it?” I pressed, trying to make sure that was what he meant.
He nodded, staring down at the ground, looking for all the world like a naughty, little childling admitting to doing something wrong.
I laughed and clapped my hands. “Good to know, my darling man. Very good to know!”
Chapter Five
SHARDRA
It was very clear what Flame and her men were going to be doing when we all went our separate ways after the meeting. And the fact Sky and I had been assigned space away from everyone else, as they had, made it seem we would need the privacy also. That embarrassed me.
I was not like Flame, who seemed so comfortable in her skin and so accepting of the sexual aspect of her new life. The idea of sharing myself with a man—and I did think of Sky as a man, even if he was not a human man—was one thing, but getting intimate like that with more... and at the same time? No, it would never be for me.
I was not even sure I could make love to Sky. Even in his dream realm we had not gone that far. Our inexperience and insecurities made it easier to avoid that last step, although I wanted him with every fibre of my being.
As we walked up the beach with rugs in our arms, Sky kept shooting me glances out of the corner of his eye.
“Would you prefer to sleep beside Redin tonight? Everyone took it for granted you would be with me, but I know how he feels about you, and how you feel about him. If that is what you–”
“I do not feel that way about Redin. I care a great deal for him because he is like me. And because I have never connected to someone the way we did on the Nether Plane. He also freed me from
the hag, sacrificing himself to do so. So yes, I have great affection for him and gratitude. But it is different to how I feel about you. I have slept at your side so often in your realm, I could not think of doing otherwise now I have found you on the physical.” I said all this with my head down, studying each step I took with the focus I would normally bring to serious problems. My face burned.
I felt a wing wrap around me, the feathers stroking my skin. “I am very glad to hear that. I thought that as a human you might prefer... I am not even sure my finger could fit inside your fist.”
He’d explain the sex act to me this way before. It had helped.
“It is worth trying, at least. But I would like to discuss it with Flame first, if I may. She might have some advice. We are both so... lacking knowledge in that area.”
Sky gave a deep laugh. “I lack knowledge in many areas. But I do not think I will ask any of the males here for advice. They would likely be horrified that I was contemplating doing such a thing with you. I am not human, after all.”
I shook my head. “Mayhap if you could see what a human man’s finger is like. It might help us?”
Again he laughed. “You would like me to make a study of erect male cocks to see how I compare?”
I blushed.
“How would I go about making such a comparison? Males are not usually erect around their own gender.”
He was thinking seriously on it. I blushed even hotter. Change the subject. We needed to change the subject.
“I will ask Flame tomorrow. She will have some experience with male fingers. She has four of them, after all. She can tell me how big would be too big.”
We walked along in silence a little more, and I relaxed enough to enjoy the last of the moon’s glow over the sea, and the cool breeze on my skin. At the other end of the beach I could see splashing and the soft sound of laughter carried on the breeze. They were playing. Flame and her men were playing. I envied them that.
