Chapter 9: A Morning Awakening
I woke to the soft, persistent ache.
It wasn’t in my muscles, though they were tender. It was lower, deeper. A hollow, twisting need that lived in the cradle of my bones. The bond. It hummed, a low-frequency demand that vibrated through my blood.
The chamber was still bathed in the moss’s cool glow. Kaelen slept beside me, turned on his side. The furs were at his waist, the hard line of his back a landscape of old scars and corded muscle in the half-light. One arm was flung over my stomach, heavy and possessive even in sleep. His face was turned toward me, slack, his sharp features softened. His lips were slightly parted.
I watched the steady rise and fall of his chest. The wicked impulse was a quiet, sly thing, slithering up from that hungry hollow inside me.
Slowly, careful not to disturb his arm, I slid down beneath the weight of the furs. The scent of him, of us—sex, sweat, skin—enveloped me. My mouth watered. His cock lay against his thigh, soft and thick in its nest of dark hair. Even flaccid, it was impressive. Mine.
I wrapped my fingers around the base. He stirred with a low, sleep-thickened sound, his hips shifting minutely. He began to stiffen at my touch, filling out in my hand, thickening and lengthening until he was a heavy, hot weight against my palm. A pearl of moisture beaded at the slit. I swiped my thumb over it, spreading the slickness.
Then I bent my head and took him into my mouth.
The taste was salty, musky, intimately familiar. I swirled my tongue around the broad head, savoring the smooth skin, the prominent vein underneath. A deep groan rumbled from his chest. His fingers fumbled, then tangled in my hair, not guiding, just holding.
“Valea,” he breathed, half-asleep, half-lost.
I didn’t answer with words. I sank down, taking him deeper, relaxing my throat. He was fully hard now, pulsing against my tongue. I worked him with lips and suction, hollowing my cheeks, my head moving in a slow, deliberate rhythm. His grip in my hair tightened, a sharp, delicious pain. His hips lifted off the furs, pushing up gently, seeking more.
I gave him more. I took him to the back of my throat and swallowed, the convulsive muscles making him curse, a raw, shattered sound. I came up for air, slick and messy, and went down again, faster now. The sounds were obscenely loud in the quiet chamber: wet, rhythmic sucks, his ragged breathing, the soft, creaking protest of the bed frame as his control frayed.
“Enough,” he finally grunted, his voice shredded. He pulled at my hair, not yanking, but insisting. “Come up here.”
I released him with a soft pop, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand as I slid up his body. His eyes were black in the dim light, pure hunger. He rolled me onto my back and came over me, bracing himself on his elbows. He didn’t kiss me. He just looked, his gaze searing over my face, my throat, my breasts.
“The bond,” I whispered, my own voice unrecognizable. “It’s like a hole. The more we fill it, the deeper it gets.”
“I know,” he said. He lowered his head, his mouth finding my nipple, sucking hard until I arched off the bed. His hand slid between my thighs. I was already soaked. He pushed two fingers inside me, a rough, claiming thrust. “It’s not a hole. It’s a forge. And we’re the fire.” He curled his fingers, finding a spot that made me see white. “And the metal.”
He entered me in one smooth, deep stroke. We both cried out. It was different now. Still desperate, but there was a layer of knowing beneath it. A frightening efficiency. Our bodies knew the map of each other. The angle, the depth, the rhythm that made us both shudder. He fucked me with a driving intensity that felt less like passion and more like a fundamental necessity, like breathing.
My magic rose to meet it. Not the wild, explosive burst of before, but a controlled, silvered heat that licked along my skin where we were joined. It didn’t erupt. It circulated. It flowed from me into him with each inward thrust, and I felt a crackling echo of his storm-energy seeping back into me on the retreat. A closed circuit. A perfect, terrifying loop.
I came silently, my body seizing around him in a series of deep, internal clutches. He followed moments later, his release a hot flood that seemed to feed the circuit, the magic between us glowing brighter for a second before settling, satiated.
He collapsed beside me, breathless. We lay in silence for a long time, staring at the dome.
“We can’t stay here forever,” I said, finally. The words felt like a betrayal of the warm, safe cocoon of furs and spent desire.
“We can stay until the moon is dark,” he said, his voice pragmatic. “The veil is strongest then. Three days. After that, the geometry shifts. The Spire… breathes differently. The mist thins.”
Three days. A lifetime. A heartbeat.
“What do we do then?”
“We decide,” he said. He turned his head to look at me. “You decide. Whether you go back to a coronation that’s a pretty cage, or whether you forge something new with the power we just channeled. Whether you be their queen, or something they have no name for.”
The weight of it pressed down, heavier than his body had been. “I don’t know how to be anything else.”
“You knew how to suck my cock like a born worshipper,” he said, a dark thread of humor in his tone. “You’re learning.”
A laugh startled out of me, sharp and unexpected. I shoved his shoulder. He caught my hand, brought my knuckles to his lips. The gesture was so tender it stole my breath.
“Come on,” he said, sitting up. “You smell like a battlefield. There’s a pool.” He nodded toward the spring in the corner.
The water was warmer than I expected, heated from deep within the stone. It was clear and perfectly still. I slid in first, the water washing over the aches, the dried sweat, the evidence of him. It felt like a baptism. He followed, sinking down opposite me. We didn’t speak. We washed each other with a simplicity that felt more intimate than anything we’d done. His hands, scrubbing my back. Mine, smoothing over the scarred plane of his chest.
I was rinsing my hair when I felt it. A twinge. Not the bond. Something… external. A discordant note in the silent hum of the Spire. A shiver that wasn’t my own.
Kaelen went utterly still. His head cocked, listening to something I couldn’t hear.
“What is it?”
“The perimeter,” he said, his voice low and flat. All softness was gone. “Something touched the western veil. Lightly. Like a probing finger.”
Ice flooded my veins, chasing away the water’s warmth. “My mother’s scouts?”
“Maybe. Or something else. The forest has its own hunters.” He stood, water sluicing off him. He was already moving, all lethal grace, toward where his clothes lay discarded. “Get dressed.”
I climbed out, the air suddenly chill. The comfortable, sated lethargy was gone, burned away by a spike of cold adrenaline. As I pulled on the simple, spare clothes he’d provided—soft trousers and a tunic—I felt the bond react to my fear. It didn’t hum with hunger. It sharpened, like a blade being drawn. A focus.
He was at the chamber’s entrance, a long, wicked knife in his hand that he’d produced from somewhere. He didn’t look back at me.
“Stay here. Bolt the inner door after I’m out.”
“Like hells I will,” I said, my voice steady. The fear was still there, but beneath it, a new certainty. Hiding in a bedroom was what the old Valea would do. The one who was groomed, protected. “That power we forged? It’s in me, too. I’m not a damn jewel to be locked in a box.”
He turned, his grey eyes sweeping over me. I saw the conflict—the captain’s instinct to secure his charge warring with the dragon’s recognition of the power in his mate. The bond thrummed between us, insisting on unity.
“If it’s a fight,” he said slowly, “you do exactly as I say. No heroics. The bond might make us strong, but it won’t stop a dagger in your heart.”
“And if it’s not a fight? If it’s a whisper? A message?” The thought had just occurred to me. My mother’s power was subtle. She dealt in whispers and poisons and unseen pressure.
He considered that, his jaw tight. Then he gave a single, curt nod. “Together, then. But behind me.”
He led me not back the way we’d come, but through a different, narrower passage that slanted upward. The moss-light faded, replaced by a faint, greyish glow from ahead. Dawn. The air grew cooler, damper. The whisper of the mist reached our ears.
The passage opened onto a hidden ledge, cleverly screened by a thick fall of moss and twisted rock. It overlooked a sheer drop into a fog-shrouded chasm. The world below was a sea of swirling white. But here, the veil was a tangible thing. I could feel it—a fine, vibrating web of ancient magic, a barrier of silence and suggestion.
Kaelen stood motionless, his eyes closed, one hand resting on the stone beside him. He was listening to the Spire.
Then I felt it too. A ripple. A delicate, foreign pressure against the magical web, about a hundred yards to the west. It wasn’t a push. It was a… query. A single, intelligent tap against the defenses.
“One,” Kaelen murmured, eyes still closed. “Alone. Not trying to break in. Just… knocking.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. “Who?”
His eyes snapped open. They held a grim light. “Only one way to find out.”
He moved along the ledge, silent as a shadow. I followed, my own senses stretching out, trying to parse the layers of magic. The veil, old and deep and singing a low note of protection. The intrusive touch, light but persistent. And within me, the new, fused power, swirling in response, eager and sharp.
We rounded a curve in the rock. Below us, on a narrow, treacherous path that seemed to lead to nowhere, a figure stood.
It was a woman.
She was wrapped in a grey traveler’s cloak, the hood thrown back. Her hair was the color of polished steel, swept into a severe knot. She stood with a posture I recognized instantly—regal, unnaturally still, one hand extended, palm out, hovering just an inch from the empty air where the veil hung.
She wasn’t one of my mother’s guards. Their sigils were bold, their armor gleaming. This woman’s power didn’t shout. It whispered. It calculated.
She turned her head, slowly, as if she’d heard us approach on the silent ledge above. Her eyes found Kaelen first, then slid to me. They were a pale, lucid blue, like winter ice.
A small, knowing smile touched her lips.
“Ah,” she said. Her voice carried perfectly through the mist, clear and calm. “The forge is lit. I was beginning to wonder if the old stories were merely poetry.”
Kaelen’s knife was ready. His body was a tense line beside me. “Identify yourself.”
The woman inclined her head, a gesture of respect that didn’t reach her cold eyes. “Elara,” she said. “Of the Silent Sisters. I have come a long way to speak with the new fire. And with the girl who was meant to be a queen.” Her gaze locked on mine, and the smile faded, replaced by something terrifyingly sincere. “We need to discuss what happens when the moon goes dark, child. Your mother’s plans are not the only ones written in the stars.”