“Not like that,” I say. “Use your tongue.”
Someone gasps, but I don’t take my eyes from his face, enjoying the brief rush of fury that distorts his features before he gets himself under control again. He takes my boot in a firm grip, then leans forward, tongue extended, and licks a speck of dirt from its shining surface.
Heat jolts through my body, tingling from my suddenly erect nipples right down to my core. Who knew that power could feel so good?
“You missed a spot,” I say, arousal filling me as I watch his pink tongue dart out to caress my boot again.
“Better?” he asks, sitting back on his heels. His eyes burn with a savage hatred that only inflames my desires further. Humiliating Evandir would be my new favourite sport if I didn’t have another, even better one.
“Much.” I press the sole of my boot against his chest and shove, sending him sprawling across the floor. I can’t wait a moment longer. I stand abruptly and offer my hand to Ash. “Let’s go.”
He takes it with a grin. He’s learned my appetites already and knows what’s coming. We’ve spent long, languorous days twined together, getting to know every curve and hollow of each other’s bodies. There is magic in the way we fit together, as if we were made for each other.
He is like an open book to me now, this once enigmatic man, and the haunted shadows are gone from his eyes. When they look at me, they shine as if dazzled by the light from the sun.
I owe it all to Ni’ishasana. My fingers curve around the dagger’s warm hilt, caressing the blood-red stone there gratefully as we gain the sanctuary of my chambers. Through the bond the dagger has created, I feel his urgency, his desire rising to meet mine.
“Sage,” he whispers against my throat, and my name is like a prayer on his lips.
I shudder with need as his lips burn a trail down my skin to the hollow at the base of my neck. Urgent hands tear my shirt open, heedless of the buttons, and I cling to his shoulders, so dizzy with lust I can barely stand upright.
There are too many clothes between us. I need to feel his skin hot against mine. I haul his shirt out of his pants and run my hands over his broad back, wriggling to get even closer to him. He groans as my nails skate over his skin and wrenches his shirt off, flinging it to the corner of the room.
“I need you,” he whispers, the words coming out in a throaty growl.
We tear our clothes off, and I fall back on the massive bed that dominates the room, the silken sheets cool against my fevered skin.
“Yes,” I whisper, dragging his face down to mine.
His mouth takes mine, while his hands wander lower, his thumbs brushing against my sensitive nipples. I moan and writhe against him, needing more, needing all of him. He presses against me, but he’s still holding back, prolonging the delicious agony.
“Now.” I wrap my legs around him, urging him on.
“As my mistress commands.”
Slowly, he slides into me, and I can barely breathe as each delicious inch fills me. My hips rise up to meet him, my whole being centred around that exquisite tingling heat where our bodies join.
We move together, and I can barely remember my own name; I’m so lost in him and the incredible sensations he’s arousing. His skin under my hands, the clean ironbark scent of his hair filling my nostrils, the weight of his body on mine—these things fill my world. I teeter on the edge of something monumental, about to explode into shards of ecstasy.
“Wait, wait, wait.” I think I actually said the words aloud. They echoed in my head as I crawled the last few inches out of the dream and broke through the surface of sleep. I opened my eyes and stared up at the ceiling, breathing hard.
What the hell was that?
Oh, the raunchy dream about Ash I could totally understand. The man was hotter than Papa Bear’s porridge, and there was no denying my growing interest in him … but stroking the damn dagger? Making Evandir lick my boots? I shuddered. That was not me. Where had that come from?
“It can all be yours,” a voice said, just a whisper on the edge of sound. “Only join with us.”
I sat bolt upright, heart hammering. Someone was in my room.
The shadow woman was back, her hair writhing around her head in a gale that only she could feel. Behind her, other shapes shifted in and out of being—a proud fae man with a circlet on his head; another who stood with arms crossed, watching me in silence. The woman’s eyes bored into me from the foot of the bed.
“That was you, wasn’t it?” I threw back the sheet and sprang out of bed. She’d sent me that sicko dream. “Get out of my head!”
“Such protests!” she said. “Are you sure you’re not tempted? We offer you power, Sage. More power than even you have ever dreamed of.”
I marched over to the window and hauled the blind up. Bright daylight flooded the room, blasting the shadows away. To my great satisfaction, the woman and her companions dissipated into thin air. The dagger was becoming more insistent, seizing every opportunity to hit me with its propaganda.
The part I couldn’t figure out was, why the hell did it want me so much? What on earth did I have that it needed? Absolutely nothing, as far as I could tell. And yet it persisted in these dreams and visions of me taking Celebrach’s place, seizing his power for myself as if it thought it could tempt me to stage a coup.
I’d be lucky to stage a bake sale at the rate I was going. I was over my head already just trying to stay alive and keep Lord Nox that way, too. Overthrowing the head of the Vipers simply wasn’t on the agenda. I’d need King Rothbold and all his resources to make that happen—and if the dagger thought that I’d happily step in as the head of the Vipers after that, it was crazy. My ultimate goal was to destroy the Vipers, not co-opt them as my own merry band of killers.
Sure, some of those mighty powers the dagger could confer were tempting. Not that I needed anyone to lick my boots, but a little respect was long overdue. It was hard growing up surrounded by magic-users when it almost exhausted your own powers just to summon a faelight. But I’d seen what the search for unbridled power could do to people. My own beloved father had abandoned me, then turned into an unrecognisable monster in his quest for forbidden necromancy.
For the first time, I wondered if he had started out with a craving like mine. Was a lust for power in my blood? Was I doomed to repeat the mistakes of my father? Was that why the dagger had targeted me?
I never did find out if he found what he was looking for, but he certainly lost himself in the process. Ni’ishasana might think it was being so clever, showing me visions of all I could have if I fell in with its schemes, but it didn’t realise that it was also showing me all that I stood to lose.
I was strong enough to resist it. I had to be.
I knew dark magic when I saw it, and stealing people’s souls and turning them into zombie slaves was the very definition of dark magic. The kind of person who thought that was a good thing—the kind of person who actually caressed the damn dagger that did it like some satanic pet—was not the kind of person I was or ever wanted to be, however tempting other aspects of power might be.
I had the feeling it didn’t know Ash as well as it thought it did, either. At least, there was no universe in which I could imagine him gazing at me with that bedazzled expression in his eyes when I held such power over him. He hated his servitude to his father, hated that the dagger forced him to submit. He wasn’t going to feel any happier about it just because the hand holding his reins had changed. If I was his boss, he would never look at me as though I was his sun and moon.
But, of course, I didn’t want him to, did I?
30
Ash had been gone all evening, leaving me with instructions to catch up on my reading. I was too nervous to really take the words in, and spent more time pacing the small lounge room and staring into the fire than actually reading. It was close to midnight when he sauntered in and handed me a small black package.
“What’s this?” I asked, putting down the book with reli
ef. It was another history of the Vipers. They say that history is written by the victors, but this author had really gone to town with the self-congratulations.
“Your outfit for the masquerade,” he said, and my heart began to beat faster.
It was no more than a handful of slinky black satin studded with crystal butterflies, so light and slithery it hardly weighed anything at all. There was a mask, too—jewel-encrusted and beribboned, with black feathers sweeping out from the sides—and a pair of low-heeled shoes.
“Should I get changed?”
When he’d disappeared earlier in the evening, I’d hoped that the plans had changed. Now the moment was here, and I was woefully unprepared. I had only the barest glimmerings of a plan, and there’d been no chance to warn Raven or anyone else about what was coming. All I had on my side was a little insider familiarity with Spring and the hope that, when the time came, I could talk Ash around to my side.
He nodded, so I went to my room and slipped into the dress. It clung to my body like a second skin, though the skirt had a slit up the side that allowed me to move freely. Where was I supposed to hide a weapon?
The answer to that, apparently, was on my thigh. When I came back into the lounge room, Ash produced a small knife in a sheath and knelt to strap it around the top of my leg. His fingers lingered on my skin, and I shivered a little at his touch.
When he stood up, he offered me a tiny glass vial half-full of some colourless liquid.
“There’s a little pocket just inside the neckline,” he said, so I took the vial and hid it away inside its purpose-built pocket in my cleavage. The Vipers thought of everything.
He still wore his regular black clothes, so he probably intended to work a Glamour on himself instead of actually changing. It was only me who couldn’t manage her own transformations and had to traipse around the countryside in evening dress with a mask dangling from her fingers.
I bet the shadow woman with the snaky hair could have glammed me up with a snap of her insubstantial fingers. It was a shame that the monumental power she offered came with such a hefty price tag.
Ash led the way outside, where Evandir and Atinna were waiting. Evandir nodded at Ash, but both he and Atinna ignored me. That suited me just fine. We hadn’t gone far before Ash took us under a stone archway. I’d passed through it many times during my stay with the Vipers, but before, it had always led down a narrow, cobbled passageway between buildings.
Now, however, mist swirled around us as we passed beneath the arch, and trees reared up on either side of us instead of buildings. We had entered the Wilds.
I had only travelled the Greenways of the Wilds a handful of times before, and always with someone else. I probably had enough power to navigate them on my own, but I’d never had any reason to put that theory to the test. They were tricky, requiring a great deal of concentration lest the walker lose focus on their goal and end up halfway across the Realms from where they’d intended to go. Or worse, became lost forever on the shifting paths.
Willow and Allegra had both hammered into me the need to stay on the path—Allegra in particular, given her rather horrifying experience the one time she’d left it. She’d ended up fighting massive, doglike monsters called dharrigals, but that had been nothing compared to what might have happened if Raven hadn’t found her and brought her back to the path.
Thoughts of Raven tightened my throat as I followed Ash’s back along the Greenway. My embryonic plan to save his father had holes in it big enough to drive a truck through. Maybe I should push Atinna and Evandir off the path and let the monsters of the Wilds take care of part of my problem—but they were both behind me, Ash having decided to sandwich the apprentices between the two Adepts. Evandir was bringing up the rear. There was no way I’d be able to do anything to him once he saw me push Atinna into the underbrush.
If I even could. I glanced over my shoulder and met her steely glare. No, there’d be no catching her by surprise. Over her shoulder, I caught sight of the trees closing in behind Evandir as he passed, the path disappearing as if it had never been. I turned back to face front, my shoulders tense. Maybe Atinna would be the one doing the pushing.
A branch snapped somewhere off to our right, and something big rustled the bushes as it moved through the undergrowth. None of the others seemed concerned, so I swallowed my unease and kept walking.
I liked forests, and had spent a lot of time roaming the woods of Spring as a child, but they’d been a damn sight more welcoming than the tangled trees of the Wilds. Here, they crowded together, leaning over the path as if they were intent on blocking every last scrap of light. This was the forest from every fairy tale where witches and monsters lurked, ready to spring on the unwary.
So it was a relief when a simple wooden arch appeared across the pathway, twined with flowers and vines—even though it meant we had arrived at our destination and I had to put my holey plan into action. Mist drifted around us as we stepped through the arch, and the familiar floral scent of Spring hit me. There was always something blooming here. Wild roses, if my nose was any judge.
A wave of homesickness caught me by surprise as I breathed in their scent. This was the first time I’d been back to Spring since Willow’s parents had thrown me out. It seemed a long time ago, though it was only a little over five years. So much had happened since then.
What a homecoming. I’d certainly never pictured my return to Spring like this—skulking in, a knife strapped to my thigh and poison in my cleavage. And at least two companions who wanted to kill me. Talk about an interesting evening. If Lord Nox and I were both still alive at the end of it, I’d count it as a win.
We moved quietly through the woods, Ash still in the lead. We’d arrived outside the estate proper, of course, since Lord Thistle would hardly make it easy for enemies to open gates straight into his domain. A soft trickle of water nearby put us somewhere near the creek that ran just beyond Lord Thistle’s borders. I’d spent hours here in my youth, catching tadpoles and splashing about pretending to be a water nymph with Willow.
The noise of water over rocks grew louder, and a different scent began to crowd out the roses’ perfume. Relief washed over me—that was the scent I’d been searching for. Ash led us to a section of the creek that was narrow enough to jump across without getting our boots wet. He leapt across, but I paused for a moment, scanning the darkness under the trees for the source of that scent. There!
I followed him, but my foot “slipped” on the damp ground, and I dropped to one knee, putting out a hand to stop my fall. In the darkness, no one noticed me snatch a handful of starbright. It grew like a weed along the water’s edge, here, and I hadn’t forgotten my studies. All my hopes were pinned on this tiny flower.
Ash frowned at me as I got up but said nothing.
Evandir wasn’t so restrained. “I hope your apprentice isn’t going to embarrass us tonight,” he said, giving me a wintry glare. “Is she always this clumsy?”
“Anyone can slip,” I said, hiding the flowers in my closed fist.
“Vipers don’t.”
While no one was looking, I stuffed the starbright into my bra.
“How are we getting in?” Atinna asked as Ash started moving again. He wasn’t going in the direction of the road that led to Spring’s main gates, which had me intrigued. He obviously had something else in mind.
“Through the fence.”
“What about wards?” Atinna asked.
Ash glanced at me. “Wards won’t stop a member of the family and her companions.”
“If you mean me, I’m not a member of the Spring family. I bet Lord Thistle wasted no time in changing the wards after he threw me out, to make sure I couldn’t return.”
“If he did, he’s changed his mind since,” Ash said.
“How do you know?”
He smiled, but it was his feral assassin’s smile. I hadn’t seen it for a while, and it still gave me shivers. “I don’t, for sure, but that’s my assessment. You are in the king
’s favour, now, and Lord Thistle is the kind of man who will use that to his advantage. I’m surprised he hasn’t already made overtures of reconciliation to you.”
In fact, it was his wife who’d made the first moves towards a reconciliation. For the first time, I wondered if her stiff-necked husband had put her up to it, unwilling to unbend quite so far himself.
“Lord Thistle isn’t the forgiving type,” I said. “I think you’re making a mistake.”
“Well, we’ll find out if I’m right in a moment.”
“And if you’re wrong, the whole of Spring will know that the Vipers have invaded.”
Ash was surprisingly perceptive, so perhaps he was right, but this was still more reckless than I had expected from him. He’d always struck me as the controlled type—someone who would never make a move without a plan A, B, and C, without knowing every detail and accounting for it. If he’d been human, he would have been the spreadsheet guy who entered every moment of his day into his project management software.
Could I get them to abort this mission? What if there was no Plan B?
Evandir huffed a sigh of annoyance. “What other options do you think we have? Security will be tight with a visiting Lord. There will be magic defences and guards checking everyone who comes in the front gate.”
I glanced at him in frustration. “But I thought we were going to dress up in masks and mingle with the guests?”
Atinna laughed scornfully. “When we get inside, yes. But masks won’t get us in.”
We’d still been walking as we argued, and now, we had arrived at a very familiar border. A wild green hedge confronted us, not particularly high—the topmost branches waved just above my head. Not particularly thick, either. This hedge marked the boundaries of Lord Thistle’s estate, and I had crawled under it and through it countless times over the years. There were even a couple of gates in it, though my childhood self had always spurned those. They would surely be guarded today.
They all stopped in front of the hedge, waiting.
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