by Poppy Flynn
Again.
Yeah, definitely Groundhog Day.
As tempted as he was, Siarl was not that person. Instead, he shook her gently awake.
“Seren? Wake up, cariad.” He didn’t question the welsh endearment that slipped off his tongue. The moment, all of this, was far too intimate to pretend that there was nothing between them.
Seren’s eyes fluttered, and she blinked a couple of times, then frowned.
“I fell asleep?” she queried, looking around.
“We both did,” he assured. “But we need to pick things up again.”
The blush that crept over her face was all kinds of adorable, and although he was far too much of a gentleman to mention it, he was pretty certain Seren was recalling exactly where they had left off.
“Sparkling shitsickles,” she exclaimed, burying her head in his shoulder with the sole intention of obscuring her face. “I can’t believe I did that.”
Siarl decided discretion was the better part of valour and didn’t comment.
A moment later, Seren uncurled herself, sighed heavily and said, “Okay, let’s do this.”
There wasn’t much more to get through, Seren told herself stoically. Shoving her mortification aside, she decided that if Siarl could ignore the fact that she’d just damn well climaxed from a memory, then so could she.
Except… did that constitute a wet dream? No! Don’t go there!
She made a deliberate effort to empty her mind and waited for Siarl to join her. Sod it, she was just going to brazen this out, like she did with so many things in her life.
And then Siarl was there.
Whoops!
She realised he might have picked up on that last thought. Oh well. She was almost too tired to care, thankfully. Reliving these experiences was exhausting, and she felt like she’d been completely wrung out.
She yawned and tried to concentrate, glad that Siarl was there to guide them. She could feel, in some distant way, that he was walking around in her recollections, but it wasn’t like it had been before. It was back to that awkward, uncertain mind-map. Viewing things like it was being projected on a small screen, rather than what they had shared previously. She guessed that’s because their experiences were separated now, rather than together.
She gave a half-hearted poke at a couple of Siarl’s neural pathways. Found him playing with the fluffy little critter she’d gifted him with at Yule - no wrong memory - though it did her heart good to see him relaxed and laughing. That was her exact intention for that gift. To lighten him up a bit. Good to know it had worked… but not what she was looking for.
Another memory - this one very much darker. She could feel the fear and terror rolling off of him and frowned, trying to make sense of his feelings. Such strong, dark emotions. And he was in her turret, too. That made things all the more intriguing.
Of course, it was Yule. The decorations gave it away. He was looking for her, shouting her name, and the familiars were all there with him.
Oh, no! Guilt clawed at her. It was when she’d sneaked away to get the banned ingredients for the enchantment potion. Still, Seren was shocked at the depth of feeling she was picking up. The sheer terror followed by the sharp stab of relief when he found her… and then the anger.
Damn, she felt a little ashamed seeing it from his point of view.
And then he had spanked her…
Shitsickles! She needed to get out of this memory, right now, before she embarrassed herself all over again. She did not need Siarl to know just how much his spankings turned her on.
His voice infiltrated her musings. “I think I’ve found it,” he quietly informed her.
For a moment she wondered what memories he’d found of hers if he was only just getting there, but she pushed the vulnerability aside. He hadn’t had time to delve into too many of her secrets.
Seren joined him, watching her own memory of this morning. Waking in the tell-tale gown that she’d left out for Brigid.
Yeesh! That was slightly embarrassing.
But more to the point, there she was in her own bed, in her own turret, having her own little panic about the events that had unfolded.
There was no incriminating dash from his room back to hers.
There was no sign at all that she’d left her room during the night.
Yes, the gown was an oddity; a mystery. But the overall impression was that the whole thing must indeed have been a dream. There was no start and no end, just an intensely sexual experience, so how could it have been anything else?
The only anomaly seemed to be that they’d both had the same dream.
But this was a magical world. Nothing here was ever outside the realm of possibility. Even the unexpected.
Siarl was unusually quiet when they were done. Seren gave him the side eye from where she still lay cradled within the circle of his arms. She hoped her shields were back in place because she couldn’t help thinking just how much she liked it here. Though undoubtedly it wouldn’t be long before Siarl came back to his senses and realised that this, too, could very well be construed as a compromising situation.
She gave a small internal sigh, wondering if he would ever really lighten up enough to consider a relationship between the two of them. Because the truth was that even when the time came that she was no longer a student, she still didn’t have the kind of reputation that a sorcerer like Siarl, a respected elder mage, needed from a hand fasting ritual. And magical beings were like swans, they coupled for life. There would be no going back.
The fact that Siarl had already lived hundreds of years without choosing a consort proved how careful he was in that department.
Seren’s heart sank. She really was kidding herself. There was no place for her in Siarl’s life, and there never would be.
Even if he somehow did miraculously choose her, she might seriously hurt his high standing within the magic realm. Life partners were chosen for many reasons, and love wasn’t actually all that high on the list.
Compatibility, most especially in the magic department.
Respect, both mutual and social - something she was definitely lacking.
Bloodlines. Ha! Siarl himself was actually her closest living relative; a cousin so many times removed, it was almost impossible to trace it back to its origins.
Pedigree. Yeah, that really wasn’t happening for her.
The entire ethos of a magical pairing was that all those things combined to form a blood-bond which ensured that a couple’s progeny were more than the sum of their parents, guaranteeing that the standards of sorcery were maintained, and the realm didn’t suffer.
No, it didn’t always happen that way - that’s how the bygones came to be. Folk who were unaware of their magical past, who had lost their powers through poor breeding, either accidental or deliberate, and who now lived as mortals. Those whom witches, like her, had a duty to watch over, in case they coupled with another bygone and magical ability returned to their offspring.
But Siarl had not become the powerful wizard he was today by accident. His lineage was premeditated and a sorcerer like him would never chance diluting his lineage. They might be family, but it was far enough removed that it meant nothing more than a nod to history.
Seren scrambled to roll off the bed away from Siarl. She rubbed desperately at her aching chest, drawing a shroud around her to conceal her insecurities and doing her best to shield her forlorn heart.
What the heck was she doing? She needed to put as much space between her and Siarl as possible in order to purge herself of these budding feelings. She needed to scrape away anything that looked remotely like love and incinerate it.
Because loving Siarl was a one-way ticket to heartache.
Chapter Eleven
Siarl whipped his head around in surprise at Seren’s rapid withdrawal. He could feel the chill emanating from her and frowned, wondering at its cause. He hadn’t planned to pry, but they were still bound by the tattoo exchange of their familiars and the shock of feeli
ngs that blindsided him with their strength were blatantly too powerful for Seren to hide from him.
He sucked in a breath as he felt her pain and devastation. Like a stab through his very being it became his own for a few seconds until he felt an irrefutable smothering sensation blanketing the sharpness of the pain and knew Seren was shielding her emotions from him.
He’d still felt them, though, in that split second. And that couldn’t be undone.
There was too much there to dissect in a short space of time, especially since he needed to deal with the current situation. Still, he deliberately saved the slew of emotions to his memory banks to review in private. Just like he had done with so many of the confusing, troublesome memories that he had happened upon while he was inside her head. He didn’t view it as a breach of trust. She had made the invitation knowing the consequences. But Siarl was very much more adept at this game than Seren. He had honed the ability long ago, in a past life, to glimpse something for a mere second and then file it away for future inspection. Although he was prepared to concede that Seren probably wouldn’t thank him for it.
But in his own defence, there were anomalies there, within her memories, some way back to her childhood, which Siarl felt were important. Things that might explain some of the campaign to discredit her and shine a light on where that condemnation had come from.
He couldn’t help feeling that everything which had gone before, maybe right back as far as the loss of her parents, was tied to the enigma and anomalies which had crept in during Samhain.
Siarl was determined to get to the bottom of it all. For Seren’s sake, as much as the rest of the magic realm.
There was something sinister afoot, and Seren Starlight was right at the centre.
She wasn’t the cause of that Siarl was quite certain, no matter what anyone else thought. But she might very well be the solution. And he had a nasty feeling that was why someone or something - some faction - had denigrated her so thoroughly. An offensive against her that had started when she was just ten years old.
Seren Starlight was important. And Siarl was going to find out why.
But that was for later.
“Are we done then?” Seren asked, clearly keen to be rid of him.
Siarl narrowed his eyes. Maybe she was embarrassed. She had definitely closed him out.
“Not quite.” Siarl rolled off the bed himself, trying to inure himself against the overwhelming desire to stay there and pull her back into his arms.
She was right to put things back on a more professional footing. What he wanted didn’t come into this equation, and he tried not to dwell on it, because it was something he couldn’t have. Not yet, anyway. But maybe... later.
“We need to return each other’s familiar and we need to discuss certain aspects of this experience,” he told her as he brushed the edge of his shirt aside so that Cami was revealed.
The dragonfly became eerily three dimensional on his skin before transforming into a physical body. The golden insect fluttered into the room like she was happy to be free for a while.
A scratchy tapping on the floor revealed that Midnight had also detached himself from Seren’s shoulder. But Siarl’s familiar was a little different; a shapeshifter. The beetle transformed into his usual form, which was that of a raven and flew into the living room to perch on the windowsill.
Siarl and Seren followed, and a moment later, Carrot trotted across the room to join them. It seemed like the familiars planned to contribute to this conversation, and really that wasn’t such a bad idea. Since they had taken each other’s place, perhaps they could also shed some light on the mystery.
“Have we actually learned anything from all this?” Seren asked. She seemed calm now, but Siarl noticed the blush that stole across her face and knew it was because she had been ‘otherwise preoccupied’. He did his best to smother a smile, not wanting to embarrass her further.
“There was an anomaly,” he replied instead, ignoring Seren’s sharp look of surprise. It would come to her once they started discussing it.
“Both of our memories showed some kind of visage. I don’t believe it was malevolent, but it was clever. Every time it appeared there was a distraction,” he announced to the room.
Seren sucked in an audible breath. “Yes!” she exclaimed, her eyes lighting up with excitement. “It wasn’t quite an apparition, there wasn’t enough shape or substance to it. More like just a movement and the impression of white.”
“That’s right,” Siarl agreed. “But not in the sense of something as ephemeral as mist. It was more sentient, like it might have been a person, but there was nothing to really see. Just an impression.”
“Like a will-o'-the-wisp,” Seren added with a thoughtful nod. “Suffering spell books, you don’t think it could have been Brigid, do you?”
Siarl frowned and contemplated Seren’s speculation. Could it have been Brigid?
Seren popped out of her seat like a spring. “I forgot to check the ashes!” she exclaimed, rushing over to the fireplace.
Siarl followed her and the pair of them stood in the inglenook silently looking down at the very clear outline of a dainty, feminine footprint.
“The robe…” Seren said quietly. “The Bratach Brid I put outside the door for Brigid to bless. I really don’t know how I came to be wearing it.”
“My door was locked,” Siarl admitted. “Not only that, but after the incidents which happened at Yule, I cast a magical vigilance spell on the lock. Both were still intact this morning.”
“Last night during umm… you know… the, ah, dream…” Seren began falteringly. “I pleaded in the name of Saint Brigid.”
She paused for a long beat, clearly lost in her own pondering. Finally, she gave Siarl the side-eye, still not comfortable looking at him. “Do you think that was significant?”
‘Brigid is the goddess of fertility,’ Carrot interrupted the silence where their individual thoughts resided.
“But that relates to the earth,” Seren said absently, winding one of her wild red curls around her finger as she stared at the physical evidence before her eyes.
‘We are all creatures of the earth,’ the fox replied. ‘And besides, Brigid is the patron saint of midwives in Celtic lore.’
“And yesterday was Saint Brigid’s Eve,” Siarl added.
Seren looked up then. “You can hear what Carrot is saying?” she asked in surprise.
Siarl frowned. “Yes.” He looked at the fox, then over at Cami and Midnight, just to check that they were both still where they should be.
Seren followed his gaze, seeing for herself that Midnight was still perched on the window-ledge and Cami on the mullioned glass as she soaked up the weak rays of the spring sun. “How is that possible?”
‘Some things, once done, cannot be undone,’ Carrot answered cryptically. ‘The pathways of this bond are so intertwined that they are almost unbreakable.’
Chapter Twelve
Long after Siarl had left, called away prematurely for some emergency meeting at the Senedd, the building where the Mage Council was housed, Seren sat thinking about everything which had been revealed.
She would have happily left it at finding out she seemed to be irrevocably tied to Siarl in some weird, telepathic way. That was not what she wanted. She was trying to distance herself from him, for her own emotional well-being, not bind herself to him. And what did that mean, anyway?
But Siarl hadn’t been content with stopping there. Oh no, he’d had to bring Cami and Midnight in on the conversation.
At least the eventual outcome was that she could finally be held blameless of the accusations Siarl had thrown at her. So that was something.
Not that the facts seemed any more plausible or straightforward. Cami and Midnight had both agreed that they had been compelled through some higher force to exchange places, but that no malice had been intended. It was agreed that Seren had never actually left her room, but also accepted that she and Siarl had transcended to a higher p
lane.
One that apparently looked like Siarl’s bedroom.
An astral plane where they had shared a mental merging. To what end, no one really knew, but the consensus was that the entire experience was akin to having a shared dream - in layman’s terms - just as Seren had insisted.
Still, Seren couldn’t shake the feeling that something more fundamental had occurred. Never mind the fact that she felt entirely short-changed.
Not that she had admitted to that little gripe and she hoped to hellfire that Siarl hadn’t picked up on that irrational disappointment, because honestly, that would be beyond mortifying and the whole thing had already been embarrassing enough.
Let’s face it, no one wanted their sex life dissected by two insects, a bird and a fox, never mind the other participants - although it seemed like Cami and Midnight were involved to some extent there too.
No! Just no. She wasn’t going there. That was too much even to think about. She was beginning to feel like she was the unsuspecting star of some kind of ethereal porn movie. And while she had done a lot of risqué things in her short life, that wasn’t something she wanted to be remembered for.
Thank coven Siarl had been called away before she humiliated herself.
Huffing out a breath, Seren grabbed her regulation black witch’s cloak, then changed her mind and swapped it for a bright, cherry red one which lifted her spirits. She was already dressed in green, the colour which symbolised a fresh burst of life after the bareness of winter.
To hellfire with all of this; it was Imbolc, and she was going to continue with the plans she had made to ensure the beginning of spring ensued with no disturbance in her little corner of the realm. The rest of this was just a distraction that she really didn’t need right now.
She chose a fat, white candle and filled her pockets with various other items which had particular symbolism for the holiday and snuck out through the trapdoor which led to the cave system underneath her turret.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t leave the academy by the usual routes, she just wasn’t in the mood for the high jinks and merrymaking that would fill the academy as the younger witches carried their own Brideog’s through the citadel to be welcomed and honoured in the Brideog Procession.
