At Earth's Edge

Chapter One

Lightning illuminated the wall between worlds, a jagged wound separating those who worshipped the concrete and those who scoffed at it. Aderyn no longer knew which side she belonged on.

She hunched inside her wool cloak. Another arc of electricity fractured the evening sky, splintering into a half dozen bolts. One started a fire on the horizon. Or maybe it just brought the blaze to her attention. She hoped for more than a light show tonight. Owen’s garden needed rain and the cistern was nearly dry.

Had she her dam or granddam’s talents, she could have raised her arms, read the runes, and coaxed the rain to fall. Her dam, however, had long since retreated from such responsibilities, leaving her with the Keeper’s logs, an empty Tower, and a gate to guard. The wall itself was more a physical deterrent to those of her husband’s blood than that which dwelled on the other side. The Others were satisfied with offerings, craved them even. Belief filled them, much like bread and cheese eased Owen’s hunger. His kind, well…she did not wish to think ill of them.

The first drop of rain struck her upturned face. She whispered her thanks, just in case anyone was listening.

“There you are.” Owen’s hands stroked her shoulders. “I should have thought to look here first.”

She turned in his grip. “The rain comes, as you prayed for.”

He grinned, the oversized droplets plastering his blond curls to his scalp. Velvety blue eyes the color of her great granddam’s sapphire choker studied her solemn face. Cupping her face in his hands, he kissed the frown lines at the corners of her lips. “You’re far too serious. What is worrying you tonight?”

Without waiting for an answer, he released her and craned his neck. Her hand automatically closed around his forearm, as if that gesture alone could prevent him from plummeting to his death should he lean too far over the Tower’s railing. Her light shone above them, warning travelers and marking the end of Man’s realm. Those who tried to venture beyond it would not find an opening here.

“The beacon blazes bright.”

She kneaded her brows with her fingertips. She loved him dearly, but sometimes his oversimplification of facts made her want to wrap her hands around his throat and see if mild asphyxiation spurred brain cell growth. “The electrical storms are increasing in frequency. This is the third this week.”

He shrugged. “There is nothing you can do about it.”

She gnawed her lower lip. Mankind stalked closer to her Tower each day. When Man first arrived, an upstart youth in an already-burgeoning realm, others like herself welcomed him. Like a weed, though, he encroached upon unspoken boundaries, took what he pleased, and left much in ruin. Had the Others been more like Man, they would have risen up and fought. Instead, they retreated behind walls and set Keepers such as herself to tend the borders. One day she’d wake up to find more of Owen’s kind on her porch. And then what would happen? She didn’t think Owen would leave her, but would he fight against his own? She doubted those who approached would have any respect for her, cloaked as she was in her frail human skin. Even less for a man who dallied with something he didn’t understand.

He folded her in his arms, her back to his chest. His nose nuzzled a tender spot behind her ear. “I met you on a night such as this. Do you remember?”

Some of the tension eased out of her limbs. “How could I forget?” He weakened her, wrapped her in muscle and masculine scent, stole moments she should have spent practicing her craft. Oh, but how could one curse his thievery when the pilfered time was spent in carnal bliss? When the army of Man came knocking at her gate and they were left defenseless, she’d remember how she’d carelessly let her talent trickle through her fingertips.

She turned. She loved to look at him. His unconscious power over her—she a daughter of the Collcrin and he but a man—left her breathless. When he had collapsed on her doorstep six winters ago, she had wondered if she was responsible or if the gods had grown weary of her nightly whining, took pity on her poor conjuring skills, and dumped him there themselves.

He undid her knot of hair, the black silk strands spilling through his fingers. “My lady of shadows.”

Her lips quirked. “My moonlit god.” She kissed his brow, smoothing the slight furrow. She never wanted to see age mar his features. When the reminder of his humanity finally arrived, it would break her. Perhaps it had been the same with her mother and father. “Remind me of our first time.”

He kissed her chastely, making her ache and crave and burn all at once. “Gladly.” Taking her hand in his, he dropped to one knee. “My lady, I know not what you are, but I pledge here and now to take your cares as my own, and with this body of mine to shelter you as you’ve given me shelter, to leave my kisses at your feet in lieu of alms, to—”

Memory and the present blurred. She pressed her hand over his mouth. “Take no oaths where others listen, lest your own words be used against you.”

Wiggling his brows, he licked her palm.

With a startled laugh, she withdrew her hand, fingers trailing over his cheek. His irreverence touched her. Cupping her hands, she filled them with raindrops and brought them to his lips. His hands covered hers and he drank.

He stared at her over her thumb. “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

She was pleased. “That, my dear lord, is because I am not an ordinary woman.”

“Any man in love will tell you his woman is extraordinary, be she human or otherwise.” He stood, his fingers twining through hers. “Come, my lady. You’re soaked to the skin.” He tugged her inside.

She reluctantly followed. On active nights such as this, she liked to linger near her beacon, afraid if she didn’t keep watch, one or the other side might try to sabotage it. It had never happened, or if it had, it hadn’t been noted in the logs the Tower’s guardians kept.

The air was heavy with the fragrance of roses. Flames rippled in the fireplace. Two flutes of pale-colored liquid rested on the nightstand beside the bed. He’d loosened the bed’s netting, though it was too chilly for pesky insects yet. The fabric shimmered around their bed like the morning mist. Her robe was draped over the chair, warming beside the fire.

She simply stared. Though he possessed no magic, he’d succeeded in enchanting her.

“I can draw you a bath if you wish.” He hesitated. “Or there are other ways I can warm you.”

She didn’t know what to say. “I do not remember flowers the first time.”

He laughed then brought a strand of her hair to his lips. “Nor do I recall you looking like a drowned rat.”

She remembered to smile. Even after sharing her life with him for so long, sometimes she forgot the human gestures he craved.

His palm was warm against her rain-chilled flesh. “Let’s get you out of these clothes,” he murmured. He reached for the lacings at her throat. Her cloak fell away.

Her breath caught and she trembled as if it was her first time. It had been, six winters ago. He met her gaze and smiled, as if he knew where her thoughts rambled. His fingers needed no visual guidance. She felt them part the fabric and skim the tops of her breasts. He continued unlacing her dress, his fingertips gliding down her sides. His touch reminded her that she’d taken little care with dressing this morning. Frilly underthings excited him and she was bare beneath her homespun dress. The words she needed hovered on the tip of her tongue.

He pressed a finger to her lips, shooing them away. “Naked, clothed in rags or a queen’s riches, you’ll always be beautiful to me.”

She sighed, lids falling half-mast. “Words come easily to you, Man.”

His eyes gleamed. “I practice daily.” When she arched her brow, he laughed. “Why do you think my roses blush so prettily? Though you put them to shame.”

She was absurdly jealous of his flowers. Her duties kept her from his side more than she wanted. She could picture him bent over his buds, coaxing favors from them. Whatever he touched bloomed, even she herself.

He kissed the valley between her breasts, lingering to inhale her scent. Her belt dropped to the floor. A moment later, her dress followed.

“If you are to warm me, you’ll need to shed a few layers,” she pointed out.

He grinned against her throat, his teeth scraping her skin, and kissed her pulse point. “You have hands as well, my lady.” His clever fingers found her nipples. Rolling the aching flesh, he coaxed them into tight little peaks.

Well, so she did. Though what they had to do with the damnable scratchy cloth separating his skin from hers—she snickered to herself, suddenly comprehending his words. It’s a wonder he didn’t sometimes think her daft.

Her hands seized the hem of his shirt and tugged. Where were the lacings?

His lips closed around her nipple. Whimpering, she arched into him. One hand settled into the small of her back, trapping her to him. The other cupped her breast. She stared down at his curly mop of hair and released his garment. Her fingers slid into the mass, his curls twining around her pale digits as if they had wits of their own. She didn’t doubt it. Everything about him was magical.

Drawing back, he kissed her, his tongue slipping between her parted lips. So sweet, like the sun-ripened red berries he sometimes teased her with. His delighted murmur hummed against her lips.

She grabbed a fistful of his shirt. “This must go.”

Laughing, he pried the fabric out of her hands. “Buttons, dearest. There are buttons.” He undid one, demonstrating. She’d seen it innumerable times and each time, brushed it away. Just as she’d watched him cook and clean, peel and process his precious produce. Why remember the motions when one could simply request a twist of air or an invisible creature to do it for her? Her fingers fought with the slippery nubbins.

She held her tongue between her teeth, warring with the urge to wish it away and be done with it. Patience, she could hear him say. You did not master Keeper’s duties in one night.

He was wrong about that, but she never corrected him.

Taking pity on her, he undid the buttons himself. She blessed his impatience as her hands slid beneath the fabric’s folds and ran over his chore-hardened chest. A light dusting of hair tickled her palms. His shirt joined her dress.

She kissed each of his nipples, watching them shrink into tight little buttons. Her tongue outlined his lean abdominal muscles. Burrowing his hands into her hair, he kneaded her scalp.

Her fingers toyed with his pants’ waistband. Snap, she remembered with a smile. Undoing the clasp on his fly, she amused herself with his zipper, tugging it up and down while his shaft strained against his cotton briefs.

“Have mercy, Addy,” he groaned.

Pleased with her effect on him, she worked his pants down his narrow hips, admiring the march of muscle as it vanished beneath his briefs. Impatient now, she pressed a kiss to his bellybutton and murmured a single word. The white cloth vanished, his shaft impertinently bumping her chin. She bent her head and kissed its tip, sampling his salty liqueur.

He shivered, a ripple of tendons and muscles that ran from his calves to his pectorals. “Let me—I wanted to pleasure you—”

She glanced up through the fringe of her lashes. “This does.” She swallowed his shaft. His hands clenched and unclenched. She drew back a little, her tongue exploring his sensitive head, teasing his ridges, bringing him to the brink again.

He groaned, murmuring. His words floated around her, pleasing in cadence and tone. She ignored them for now. Man had so many pretty but frivolous words. She worked her way down one side of his shaft and up the other, his cock bouncing against the inside of her cheeks and then at the brim of her throat.

With a growl, he pulled free and scooped her into his arms. She squealed, startled. He carried her to their bed and set her carefully down, the pillows plumped beneath her head and neck, the linens smelling of sunshine and herbs. All Owen’s doings. The scent of roses hung heavy here. Straddling her hips, he plucked a rose from the vase on the nightstand. He trailed it over her skin, the velvet petals raising goosebumps on her flesh. It shed water droplets from its stem as it traveled over her stomach to rest at the edge of her dark curls.

The bed’s netting made her think of her homeland, of misty forests shrouded in moss and low-hanging moon-silvered vines. Of waters so silent and deep one could drown just by looking at them. Dangerous enchantments dwelled in her world. His thumb found her throbbing core. She shuddered. Here too.

Two fingers delved into her curls and dipped inside her. She arched her back, trying to swallow all of him.

“More,” she whimpered.

Flower discarded, his other hand settled between her breasts, holding her supine.

Another finger joined the tussle. His thumbnail continued to trace circles over her clitoris, sending heat quivering to the tips of her toes. Her vagina greedily gripped his fingers. She wanted more. Her hands groped blindly for his shaft. He shifted his hips, avoiding her.

“Owen, please. I need more.”

“What do you want, Addy?” His last finger entered her, wiggling inside her while his thumb stroked her to her first orgasm.

“You!” Tremors stole her breath. Her body froze, trapped in wave after wave of delicious shivers.

Rough-skinned hands gripped her hips. His cock slid into her before the tremors ceased, causing her to shudder all over again. So thick. So tight. Her juices coated his shaft. He groaned as he finished burrowing himself into her. She clenched around him, grinding herself against his pubic bone. Her nerves hummed, sending frissons of pleasure through her body.

He cupped her breasts in his hands, rubbing her sensitive nipples against his palms. Rocking his hips, he set an achingly slow pace. She whimpered. She’d kill him if he stopped. Her head tossed back and forth. She bucked against him, wordlessly begging for speed.

“Woman, you test my control,” he growled.

Her vision blurred. “Faster,” she pleaded. Her vagina twitched, her own fluids slicking her silken lips. She bunched the bedsheets in her fists, her back arching. The edge between the world of Man and her own distorted, the walls of the Tower fading.

Far away someone called her name.

Owen.

Her muscles wound tighter, nerves shrilling. Heat poured over her flesh. So warm, so close to peaking. He spilled himself within her the same time she climaxed. Then he covered her with his sweat-slicked skin, his chest hair tickling her aroused nipples.

She blinked, the walls solidifying around her. He nuzzled her neck, nipping the tender flesh, sucking it between his teeth and marking her.

Branded and claimed for all to see. She liked the thought of it, though it’d been months since they’d even seen signs of travelers, let alone the travelers themselves. She brought two fingers to her throat and covered the warm spot.

“Mine,” he murmured, thrusting into her again. He was going soft, but his wrinkly velvet flesh still rubbed against her oversensitive nub, tempting her, teasing her labia, making her clit ache once more.

Again, her body parts demanded. Again and again.

The rose lay crushed between their skin. He gathered the two least bruised petals and laid them over each of her nipples. “I wish I was an artist rather than a farmer.”

She chuckled. “Then you’d starve.”

“Or learn to sip the stars’ nectar as you do.” Her lips twisted, but he kissed them before she could frown. “I’d lick the sweat from your skin to slake my thirst.” He demonstrated by laving her stomach, wringing a giggle out of her despite herself. Pulling back, he kissed her love-drenched curls. “And sup on your juices.”

Ire forgotten, she held out her arms. “Come here my poet farmer.”

“Gladly.” He kissed her and she tasted them both on his lips.

Wrapping her arms around him, she drew him down beside her, then nestled against his body, her cheek pressed over his heart. “My king,” she murmured. He stirred, but she held fast. “I’d give you an empire if I could.”

“I’d settle for your heart,” he whispered into her hair.

“You have it.”

Standing on her tiptoes, Aderyn adjusted her panels to better absorb the sun’s weak rays. Owen used plastic and mirrors to trick the sun into warming his plants. She used a mix of quick-boiling potions and recycled human technology. From this height, she could overlook her entire domain—Owen’s plot with its plants arranged in no particular order, her herbal beds lined up in military precision, but adorned with Owen’s whimsical garden folly, the outer gates and beyond that, shifting sand, broken bits of bedrock and abandoned junk.

A gleam of silver caught her eye. An insalubrious scent joined it. She glanced at Owen, puttering contentedly in his garden. Even when she’d found him at her gate, covered in blood and human bits, his scent had remained unadulterated. As sweet as his treasured flowers, as pure as the rose water he made for her, as ill-suited for his uniform as she was for her Tower.

Yet, this scent lingered, twisting around her like a noxious vine. She paused, leaning against the Tower’s wall for support. The stones hummed, warning her as well. A man approached her gates. Ill-intentioned and filled with poison, accoutered in that curious ripple of silver and black armor the soldiers of Man seemed to like. Six winters ago, Aderyn had burned and buried the remains of a similar uniform in a corner of her courtyard. The stranger walked with a swagger, a long, silver rod sheathed between his shoulder blades. She started down her catwalk, intent on reaching her gate before Owen did.

Owen picked up a basket of produce, greens the color of newborn leaves, reds brighter than a fresh drop of blood on a pin-pricked finger, waxy yellows reflecting the sullen sun’s rays, and pungent white garlic and leeks, reeking of veiled things that slunk beneath the soil. She’d made the basket for him, conjuring the limbs from her homeland last winter, twisting them into a pleasing shape and fastening handles for her lover’s fingers to slide through.

The soldier raised his hand, rapping on the gate.

Hurry, the foundation stones whispered.

Hurry, the nodding roses called, vines shrinking from the man’s scent.

Her heart thudded in her throat. Hurry.

Owen’s stride altered, his head swiveling toward the sound.

Her motions slowed, as if time and a loop of mage-warped air conspired against her. Her hands slid, unhurried, up an unseen boundary. “No!” The word lingered around her, sound’s progress halted as well.

What manner of magic was this?

She watched him approach the gate.

The portal, she pleaded. Do not draw the bolt. Look. Look first, dear heart. Smell his corruption. Do not let him pass within.

Tucking the basket under one arm, he slid open the bolt. She whispered words, fragments of long-forgotten spells, prayers to deities she’d neglected. She begged the hinges to rust, the walls to throw their rocks and seal the opening.

Only Owen stirred.

Poisoned lips moved. Hands unsheathed a murderous weapon.

No! The skin split on her hands. Her blood smeared the walls of her invisible prison. She screamed, bereft of words.

Owen crumpled to the cobblestones, his basket bouncing beside him. The wood shrilled as blood sprayed its limbs.

The man looked up at her and grinned.

A word flickered in the corner of her mind, one that disregarded all boundaries, all manner of magic. She’d never spoken it. She did not know of any Collcrin who had. It teased her, swaying just out of her reach. She reached out, arms no longer human but blood-soaked, twisted limbs. Leaves rustled, urging her forward. Her lips formed the word.

A breath of cold air darted up her backside, making her shiver and blink.

She woke from her vision, sweating and panting. Owen lay beside her, lips parted, breathing heavy. His body was tangled in the bedding, leaving her sky clad and exposed. She touched the back of her hand to his cheek, then his brow. Tugging the quilt from his grip, she laid her hands over his bare chest. His heart beat, slow and steady. She had the urge to seize his shoulders and shake him awake, just to hear him speak, be it sleep-slurred or angry.

He lived. Whatever she’d dreamt had not yet come to pass.

Would not come to pass, she swore.

She slid down to lie beside him, wrapping her arms around him, drawing strength from his mortal heat and the steady pulse of his heart.

The mingling of rust, sand, and dried blood stained her tongue. Man’s hand woke her, drew her back from her dreams and worries, and kept her anchored to her duty. She was both relieved and aggrieved.

Her man, she remembered. Her Owen.

His blond curls tickled her throat. Sometime in the night, while she’d dreamt of war and black-browed men who smelled of death and the end of all she held dear, both of his world and hers, he’d shifted to protect her. At some small noise or signal from her, he’d scooted lower on their bed, still facing her.

“I’ve created a new strain of rose,” he murmured, playing with an exposed nipple. It obediently tightened and blushed for him. “I am thinking of naming it after you.”

How could he and what she’d seen outside her gates be of the same kind? She would not speak of it to him. “Truly?”

His lips curved. “Well, after your breasts anyway. Aderyn’s peaks?” he offered.

She reached for the sheet, color creeping to her cheeks, but he kept the fabric trapped between their bodies. His gaze held hers.

“You mock me.”

“I worship you,” he corrected.

“And when men come beating on our door—”

“What men?” he interrupted. His eyes were suddenly serious.

She had erred. She tried to smile, but forgot how. “It is nothing.”

His hands slid up her arms to grip her shoulders. He shook her lightly. “What men?”

“I dreamt. It disturbed me.” She broke his gaze, unwilling to witness the pain or joy her words might cause him. “If they came to our door, would you leave? Return to your kind?”

“My place is at your side.”

“You were a soldier. A leader. If they returned for you—”

“I am dead to them.”

“But—”

He caught her chin, forcing her to look at him. The edges of his eyes were soft, but not the gleam in their depths. This was a side of him she had not yet seen. For a moment she wavered in her decision to not speak of the onrushing army, of his impending death. He had wrapped himself in blood and murder before. She blinked away tears. No, not here, not this Owen. She would not let Man’s roots draw him back to that place. That was certain death.

What she foresaw might not yet come to pass.

“There is nothing in that godforsaken City I yearn for. My place, my home, my love and my life are here. With you.”

Her lower lip trembled.

“Here,” he repeated, his tone gentling. His lips seized hers, drawing her into a deep kiss, pouring every emotion he felt, every desire he ever craved, into it. She drowned in the sensations. He was just as needy as she was, just as desperate to cling to her as she clung to him.

Her arms wound around his neck. “Love me, Owen,” she whispered, unable to keep the fear from her voice.

“Always,” he promised.

Neither was in the mood for tender coupling. Her hand gripped the bedding and yanked sheets, coverings, and a stray pillow off the bed. He caught her as she came for him, lifting her off the bed and balancing her body above him. Her hair hung on either side of them, a black curtain smelling of wind and rain and wild things.

So strong, her Owen. Muscles rippled in his arms like the knotted curves of tree limbs, unbending, certain in their strength. He lowered her down for a kiss, just a brush of lips. The taste of her unraveled his control. He seized her lower lip in his mouth and drew both her and it down, down, down into a drugging kiss that had her fighting for air. He spun them so quickly her vision blurred and she saw stars. Trapping her beneath him with hips and hands, he invaded her.

Her body arched, her secret lips eagerly crying out, Yes, this is right. This is all it is meant to be.

He thrust into her again and again, eyes riotous, mouth set in a grim line that didn’t belong to her Owen.

He knows, she thought, panicked. He knows they will come for him.

A swift seizure of muscle swept away all thought. Pinned beneath him, she thrashed. His hands held her wrists. His tongue plundered her mouth, lips pressed to hers, then moved to her cheeks and forehead. A tear tracked down her face. He chased it away with tongue and lips. He buried his face in her hair and cried out words in a language he had not taught her or that she’d failed to learn.

She felt him fill her, felt her vagina funnel his essence into the heart of her, which had never been mortal and never would. She feared for him as much as a tree dreaded an axe blow or as the ancients did the storm’s blast. The trees of her homeland shuddered. Wind howled through their branches. As her dam had, she stood in their midst and waited.

Chapter Two

“There is nothing here for you,” Aderyn said through the portal in her gate. He wore the armor of Man and reeked of promised misery. Here was her dream come to life. Fear such as she’d never felt lodged in her chest, as real to her as the hummingbird beat of her own heart.

For twenty days, she’d lingered near her gates, while Owen fretted about her. Today, at last, he’d left her to her studies. Her book lay discarded at her feet, its tissue-thin pages fluttering in her vibrating wake.

“We wish to pass.”

“The road ends out there.” She pointed to the rise of earth far behind him.

He chuckled. “The blind see that. But I see the true way winds through here.”

“It is not Man’s way.”

His gloved fingers brushed one of the climbing rose’s petals. “And yet Man’s touch rests upon your walls.”

“Take your poison beam and leave. In that, I give you mercy. Leave and return to your polluted City of metal and mortality. Ask for no more. I am not a forgiving mistress.”

His lips curved. What looked out his eyes had dwelled far too long in the human land to ever be allowed to return to hers. Here was death of another sort, not for Owen alone, but all her kind. “No, you are not. You cripple what you love to keep it closer.”

She would not allow it to wound her. “You are mistaken, Man,” she said clearly, reminding it of the guise it wore. “You have wandered far and lost your way.”

“My way is clear.”

“Addy?” Owen called.

“You will go now,” she hissed at him. Despite Owen’s assurances, she did not want her lover to come in contact with another of his kind. Especially one whose stench suggested he’d not only killed, but enjoyed doing so.

The soldier shook his head; the shadow occupying his gaze retreated. “In the name of His Holiness, the Supreme Ruler—”

“Titles have no place here,” she spat, interrupting him. “Go your way before you raise my ire.”

“I will be back,” he promised. “And then your Tower walls will crumble, your wood will burn, and we will march on.”

“Aderyn?” Closer now.

Hearing Owen’s voice, he grinned. “He yours? Pretty, Aderyn,” he mocked. Plucking a rose from the outer wall, he offered it to her through the opening. She drew back. His hand closed around the bloom, crushing it. “He will die after you.” Opening his hand, he let the petals flutter to the ground. Bright red, like the spatter of blood. “Open the gate and I may be merciful.”

She slammed the portal shut and spun, back pressed to the gate. Behind her, the man cursed, at least one finger broken. One word and he’d trouble them no more. She closed her eyes and willed it so. Behind her, he yelped.

“I am coming,” she called to Owen.

She slid the heavy bolt aside and then opened her gate. The man lay at her feet, hand outstretched. Blood and saliva spilled from his mouth. The multi-legged insect she’d summoned scuttled away to return to its den amongst the shifting sands. A single drop stained the man’s flesh, welling up between the lifelines on his palm. The fingers twitched on his unblemished hand, open and close, open and close, but his eyes were blank and staring.

The battle has only begun, Collcrin, and there is but one of you, weak and unprepared. The whisper might have come from the man’s throat, though his tongue bulged black and distended from his lips. She brushed it aside.

Aderyn, the voice insisted. Aderyn, you have lost.

She heard the sound of flapping wings, the slap of heavy bodies settling themselves on her outer wall.

“Take him,” she demanded.

A bareheaded bird hopped down, a black cloak of feathers draped around its body like the Reaper’s mantle. A dragon’s talon served as its beak and a slim line of scale-covered flesh dragged behind it like a kite string. She held the border, but that did not mean she didn’t let creatures pass. The scorpion had been of Man’s realm, the wyron before her of hers. A fitting balance, she thought.

Footsteps rang on the stone path.

“Quickly now and let nothing remain.”

The wyron bobbed, as close as it could come to kneeling. She shut the gate behind her, sealing it with a word. In this, she would not fail. She could keep creatures out, but those inside, her Owen, would be her undoing. There were no words she knew to bind one within her walls, save the oath she’d taken.

“I saw a flock of strange birds circling. I worried.” He touched her cheek and smiled. “Silly, I know. You took care of yourself long before I inconvenienced you.”

“You are no burden,” she retorted. Too sharp. Too quick.

His eyes narrowed.

She kissed him on his cheek and took his hand. “Come, show me what progress you’ve made in your garden.” The book came to her hand, some of its pages torn. She closed it carefully and made a note to repair them later.

He complied with her wish, her ever-sweet Owen. She was no cell master, keeping him against his will. He had arrived at her gates more dead than alive. She had brought him back. She shook her head. Merciless? One without mercy would have left him to die on her doorstep, then called the wyrons to claim his remains.

His fingers twined through hers, rough and soiled from tending the earth. He led her to his plots. Flowers grew in riotous abandon. Some seeds he’d found in the Tower’s long-forgotten stores. Others rode on a wind she’d called up. Vegetables and the like were more difficult to find, but she had worked to satisfy his wants. They even had some fruit trees, though they were just beginning to produce. Whatever he touched thrived.

He paused, released her hand, and bent down. His fingers worked quickly, parting the greenery, plucking the ripe red berries hidden beneath their canopies. Hands filled, he straightened.

She noticed the faint pink stains around his lips and laid a finger upon one. “Been filching all afternoon, have you?”

He grinned, a wide white smile that brightened his blue eyes and reminded her of a mischievous youth. “I couldn’t resist.”

She selected a plump berry from his offerings. Sweetness exploded in her mouth. She closed her eyes, savoring its taste. She had no such need for it, but it pleased him and that was enough for her.

“Good?”

“Delightful.”

He deposited the berries in a bowl beside his garden bed. “I brought a blanket out in case you decided to share the day with me.” No reproach tainted his tone, just a simple statement.

Still, it wounded.

“Owen, do you wonder sometimes what is happening in your world?”

He moved the bowl to the edge of the blanket then seated himself. “This is my world. The rains come as they choose. The flowers bloom. I think Diarmaid may even fruit this year.”

She shook her head. Her hair rustled around her like the whisper of falling leaves. So like Man to give a name to everything. She sat beside him and took his hand. “Not the world you have made for yourself here, my lord.” She studied his palm, tracing the faint lines. And her heart ached, for she saw his lifeline cut prematurely short. She brushed away some of the dirt. A second lifeline? This one ran thin and straight, like a proud young sapling, though its beginning marked it a sucker, sharing the main lifeline’s roots.

“What do you stare at?”

He started to pull his hand free, but she folded it in hers and set both in her lap. And waited.

Sighing, he rubbed his chin with his free hand. The shadow of a beard marred the skin. “What goes on beyond these walls is none of my concern.”

She started to speak, but he put a finger to her lips, not quite touching her. Silly man, probably afraid to soil her skin with his dirt-encrusted hands. How could Man’s foibles amuse her one moment and terrify her the next? She wouldn’t have minded him touching her, but because he did, she let him keep his distance.

“When they decide to bring their war to our walls, it will become my concern.”

Her eyes widened. There was that glint of hardness again. The man who’d been a soldier stared out the eyes of the man she’d come to love.

Brushing his finger aside, she put her lips to his. Her eyes remained open, watching him kiss her, the lines soften around his eyes, the hardness flee from his taste. Her fingers slid into his hair, the curls twining ’round like questing vines. She deepened her kiss, savoring the berried sweetness on his tongue. He fell back against the blanket and she followed.

She remembered the workings of his fastenings—buttons, zippers, snaps, and whatnot. The sun trickled through the clouds, illuminating the white expanse of his skin, the tanned lines where sun-drenched met sun-starved skin. The hair on his chest was blond, a shade darker than on his skull, and just as curly, though crinoline rather than silk. She sat astride him, her skirt hiked to her hips.

His hands bunched the blanket. “Let me up, Addy,” he pleaded. “Let me wash my hands and then I’ll have my way with you.”

“I think not,” she retorted. She ground herself into him, feeling wicked for having once again forgotten the underthings of Man, a good sort of evil, this depravity. She trailed her fingers down his side and he shivered.

She was wet. It was always so when she was with him. His shaft bumped against her entrance. Her secret lips smacked together hungrily, then kissed the length of him, leaving a damp track to follow. She satisfied herself, sliding herself up and down his cock, not quite permitting him entrance. He groaned beneath her and fisted the cloth tighter, twisting it until she feared it might rip.

Ah, but its mending would remind her of this. And perhaps send her over the edge again.

She let him slide into her. Her lips slicked his path, guiding his way, her vagina gorging on the feast. So thick. So solid. Each time they made love, be it fast or slow, his lead or hers, she felt as if it was her first. Even the sloppy mistakes were to be treasured, for he was but a Man, and Man’s life, unlike hers, was a thing to be measured.

His hips moved beneath hers while her clitoris twitched and pulsed, the heat building. She pulled the dress over her head and tossed it aside. She heard him catch his breath and swear. His body went still, his shaft quivering inside her. So close to coming himself. Her hands roved down her body, teasing her nipples into tight peaks, sending another sort of shiver through her.

He groaned. “Addy.” His hips bucked, wild and without rhythm.

Laughing, she continued to play with her breasts until the ache and his unbridled bucking undid her. Then she collapsed on top of him, his crinkly hairs scraping her tender aureoles. He rolled, tangling them both in the blanket. The sun beat down on them, baleful but lukewarm today, while the sound of contented bees lulled them to sleep.

Outside, the wyrons made short work of the man, though he was not quite dead when they began their feast. A shred of paper floated around him like a gossamer-winged insect. Aderyn, he thought. Names had power, even in his world. His fingernail dipped into the congealing blood at the corner of his lips. He caught at the paper and, with his own blood, etched a single word.

Owen lay dead. Aderyn pressed both hands to her breast, certain they’d hacked out her heart as well. Her keen shook the Tower to its foundation, made the men battering at her inner gate pause.

The smooth-helmeted man, eyes shrouded beneath black brows, stared up at her. His lips moved. He might have said, “Open the gates,” or some such combination of words. She could not hear him over the sound of her own wailing. To read his lips when she could simply pluck the thoughts from his mind seemed a sacrilege to Owen’s memory.

On the cobblestones, a circle of blood haloed her moonlit lord.

She was still a daughter of the Collcrin. And these, these Men—she spat the word as if it burned her throat—would die.

The army of men fanned out as far as she could see, a gleam of solid silver under the sun’s glare. Slow-moving metal creatures crawled in front of and beside the rolling mass. Their noise grew. The dust they stirred choked earth and sky.

Nestled amid the remains of her heart, hatred set roots and grew.

She flung out her arms. The wind leaped to obey. Sheer winds, stout enough to drive a shaft of straw through a board, attacked the horde. It gave them pause, scattering their ranks like a handful of tossed jacks. But the wind could only blow so long as she gave it life.

And what was left of that desire congealed beneath her lover’s corpse.

She glared down at the black-browed murderer. Long-neglected lessons drifted back to her. The right words could kill. In her heart, the poison flowered and burst. She called her armor to her. It settled around her limbs, warm and smelling of oil…and towing another scent, earthy and utterly human. Owen.

She thought about leaping over the Tower’s balcony railing and landing amongst the men, but a well-placed blow would be enough to fell her. Death did not alarm her, but she was bound to this place by her word. If she failed to slow Man’s stampede, there’d be no one left to record her failure. Instead, she descended the winding staircase, gathering her strength as a spinner might capture thread.

The hammering grew louder. She could see the threads of the spell she’d set on the door bulge. Her hands settled on the latch and hesitated. Prayer fled before her rage. One word blazed in her mind brighter than all the others and it, it took no solace in prayer’s forgiving embrace.

She opened the door.

The men saw a slim, raven-haired figure approach their leader. Her gold garment hugged her curves, like she’d been dipped in the precious metal. Black hair spilled over the gold, the wind lifting the strands so it appeared as if a dark nimbus surrounded her. Her eyes were as green as the rose vines clinging to her wall, her lips the same shade as the nodding roses, now denuded of petals. She wore no head covering and carried no weapon.

Those who were not quite human themselves shivered, though they couldn’t explain why.

She spoke quietly. Power hummed around her words, a buzzing that made the men shake their heads. “If you lay down your arms and leave this place, you may live to see tomorrow.”

An uneasy laughter swept the throng.

“And if not?” their leader asked.

“You will die.”

The black-browed man threw back his head and laughed. “Does your Tower conceal an army then?”

He leaned close enough she could taste his soul on her lips. One breath would take it. Even now, if he had dropped to his knees and begged forgiveness, she might have chosen another fate. Owen had softened her that much toward Man.

Instead, he seized her wrist and demanded, “Cede the gate.”

Her lips formed a single word. Her throat gave it a voice. Her rage fed it. And her hands, trembling though they were, released it.

Every man felt it ring through his skull as if she’d spoken directly to him, but not a single one could repeat it.

Their leader’s face contorted. Eyes widened. Color bleached from his face. He stumbled backward, hands thrown up to shield himself. Fear stole his breath. She could hear his heart beat, thudding against its body’s bony prison. Madness infected his mind. Death took his soul.

She walked among the throng of tortured men, untouched. If any screamed, their sounds failed to reach her. She walked through her courtyard and beneath the arch of her outer gates. The scent of roses clung in the air. Petals covered the bare earth. One of Owen’s prized fruits lay just beyond his hand, crushed by a careless boot.

Her brow furrowed as she tried to recall its name. Man’s words had already fled the Tower. Nothing remained to bind them. Pink Ox Heart Tomato. She said it aloud this time, “Pink Ox Heart.”

She dropped stiffly to her knees. Her hand cupped Owen’s cheek. “Speak,” she whispered. “Correct me.”

His skin was cold. She pulled his body into her lap. No. No. No. She was of the Collcrin. There was a price to be paid for dallying among her kind and it had yet to be collected. He could not die. She would not allow it.

The sun slid from the sky and with its retreat came darkness and cold. Crouched behind the clouds, the moon hid its face from the carnage. Its entourage of stars huddled with it. Frost crept through the gates, coating the grass in an icy sheath. Emboldened, it stole through the courtyard and entered the Tower’s inner sanctum. A pillar of crystal and shadow loomed over Man’s sleeping plants, intent on claiming them.

She banished the frost with a thought, shooing it out with invisible hands and barring the gate. The garden was his and though she did not partake often of its fruits, she had shared in Owen’s delight. She would not willingly give up that part of him yet, though eventually she must. What attentions the individual plants craved were as alien to her as Man’s intentions.

She did not know where her strength came from, but it was enough to bear his weight. She returned to the Tower, walked up the stairs, and brought him to the room they shared. There, she laid him on their bed, undressed him, and bathed his wound. She doled out another word. The fire blazed to life in the hearth, warming the room, but the chill inside her remained.

Finally, she sat back and allowed herself a single sigh. Her hands rested in her bloodstained lap. She studied them, so thin and white, flecked with dark spots.

He was still here. Without the rites, without the words, his soul lingered within her Tower walls. Trapped. She banished the word. He would not willingly leave her. So she had to believe. Or go mad wondering whether her denial caused him pain.

She shivered. What walked amongst the children of men had finally set its eyes on her. No, not her. She was still the Tower’s Keeper. It had come for Owen.

“Go away,” she said, not looking up.

The nightmare padded across the floor, nails clicking on stone.

“Have you not eaten your fill?” She pushed her curtain of hair away from her face and raised her head.

What had decimated an army this afternoon rested on its haunches, just beyond the flames’ flickering light, a darker shadow among shadows. “You should know better,” Owen’s voice chastised her.

Her breath quickened and brought fury to her eyes. “Do not waste your wiles on me.”

The voice shifted, melodious, a thousand voices blending into one sweet descant of sound. “What will you do then? Stand guard over his body until he turns to dust and you a wraith?”

“You will not have him.”

“Time passes. There will be others.”

Her jaw clenched. “You will not have him.”

It sighed, the clatter of dead tree limbs jostling one another, locked in winter’s embrace.

“He has not paid the price.” She would comb through the Tower’s tomes until she found her answer. Had not Owen drawn life from the earth? Surely, she could coax a soul back and tether it once again to its body.

“Are you certain all is still barren?”

Her hands instinctively covered her stomach.

It chuckled.

She searched inside herself. New life flickered there. No, it could not be. They had tried again and again until she was convinced the fault lay within her womb. Owen had soothed her with his hands and his now-damnable words, words she craved as much as his touch. When the time is right and the sun smiles down on us…

She was pregnant.

No, no, no. The time was not right. The sun was not smiling. Everything was wrong.

The creature saw understanding dawn in her eyes. “I think I will make you a deal.”

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Her hand groped blindly for Owen’s.

“Find him. Find him tonight. Return him to himself and I will hunt elsewhere.”

“For what price?” she whispered.

Eyes blinked, as bright as a tinder’s spark. “A life for a life.”

She bowed her head. Sacrifice that which would be for that which was? She could not live without him. She would not. “If you return him to me, would he be as he always was?”

“Mortal?”

She ground her teeth. “Owen.”

“How much power do you possess, Lady Aderyn?”

“Enough to drive you to the far corners of the realm.” She dropped Owen’s cold hand and stood. “Enough to hold you while the less savory creatures of the Otherworld have their way with you.”

The shadow hissed, the flames in the fireplace sweeping sideways. “Do not make idle threats.”

Her hands balled into fists. “I do not.”

An hourglass appeared on her bedside table. “’Til dawn.” The sands began to flow.

She didn’t wait to see the night creature gone. The paths it took were its own and she had much to do.

Chapter Three

Others had much to do as well. For all they dwelled among the flesh-skinned warmongers, not all who wished for the Tower to fall were human. Nor did they seek the treasures rumored to be housed there, unless one counted the Collcrin herself. Now there was a price worth any amount of bloodshed.

Man had grown bold, chipping away at the walls built to protect them and the contents on the other side. Toying with the Tower’s Keeper was not the worst of their latest offenses, though it garnered a complete destruction no man or his progeny had ever witnessed.

What type of war machine made a soldier turn his own weapon upon himself, some asked.

Plague, others whispered.

Aliens, said a third.

Suileach had laughed at the last. Aliens, indeed. Man would be hard-pressed to find a purebred strain of their own, untainted by the creatures who walked among them. Man had eyes, but he did not see. Like a dreamer or a blindered horse, Man drifted through his own version of reality. Suileach had lived among them his entire life. What their narrow minds could not comprehend, they discarded. Self-censoring, he called it, and fashioned it to his use.

In the end, fearing an epidemic, the humans had left the Tower’s victims to the scavengers.

But Suileach had brothers and cousins serving in the City’s ranks. They deserved a proper burial. So he combed through the remains of Man’s army, searching for his kin. What he found made his heart, or a facsimile of it, ache.

The Collcrin had conjured a sort of madness.

Recognizing a dark shock of hair, he dropped to one knee.

A scrap of paper danced over the toe of his boot. He caught the wisp by reflex alone, crumpling it in his fist. It warmed in his grip. Uncurling his fingers, he stared at the single word burning its way through the paper.

His lips curled, baring teeth. “Aderyn.”

Where would a son of Man hide? Aderyn searched the deepest bowels of the Tower, where its foundation stones had set their own kind of roots. The Tower might someday be leveled on the surface by one of Man’s creations, but it would never been truly gone. Its pride ran deep into the bedrock. Until the earth heaved and gave birth to new rock, it’d remain.

She found a neatly arranged store of preserved produce, Owen’s supply for the upcoming winter months. Her fingers trailed over the gleaming bottles, a kaleidoscope of colors and mixes. He’d always planned to stay. She was the foolish one.

How did one mend a crack in heartwood?

She returned to their bedchamber. Memories hovered around his corpse on gossamer wings and mirrored bodies. She saw her own face reflected back at her dozens of times. They turned sightless eyes on her and keened, their numbers finite now that he was gone. Anger set a wedge in the crack. Where was his battle sense when he chose to open the gate? She couldn’t bear to see the taunting happier times. She batted the useless creatures away, calling softly for her lord.

No one answered her.

What if he’d truly left? For all his pretty words and whispered promises, he was still a man.

Abandoning the Tower, she entered his garden, certain he’d be found walking amongst his plants, tending them still. The lilies’ blooms were closed, as if they too grieved. The moonflowers, though open, shed brown petals. Frost had touched their velvet skin and the frail things had wilted and died.

She now knew why she’d never surrounded herself with flowers before he came.

Where she found him was where she should have looked first. Pulled by his own blood, he stood within the outer gate and stared over the battlefield. Creatures of both worlds had been drawn by the scent. Growls and yips split the silence, sometimes the clank of metal sounded, sometimes the wet tear of a limb being removed, the crunch of snapped bones. Death was a soundless creature. These rumblings were merely the echoes of scavengers.

Clouds doused both moon and starlight. He had no need of either, though perhaps such would have given what remained human in him a small measure of comfort. He cast his own light, a gray glimmer where there should have been only shadows.

He knew she was there, but he did not turn to look at her. “You should have told me of your vision.”

“I know that now.”

“Did you think me too weak to bear it?”

“I was afraid you’d leave me.” Powerful enough to level an army, but frightened of a single man’s actions. Worse than the simpering maids she’d read of in Man’s books.

His fist slapped into his palm. “You let me walk into a trap.”

She roused at that, misery and failure clinging to her like cockleburs. “Where was your soldier’s sight? To answer a gate unarmed is a foolish thing.”

He faded a little at that. She cried out and reached for him. Her hand passed through his shoulder. He turned, his figure solidifying. “I was a poor soldier, Aderyn.”

She shook her head. “You forget. I mended the wounds, staunched the hemorrhaging inside you…”

“Wounds do not make heroes.” His hand cupped her cheek. She felt only the brush of air. He looked over the battlefield. “What happened here?”

“They died.”

“So many,” he murmured and then he was finally at a loss for words. Ignoring her murmured protest, he stepped through the gates and walked among the dead.

They stretched as far as the eye could see. She hovered at his side, afraid to lose sight of him, all too aware of the pale, flat line of light adorning the eastern horizon. “Come away with me,” she pleaded.

He looked weary, her man. “To what end, Aderyn? To haunt your Tower?” His lips twisted. “That would be a cruel fate and I have always been kind to you.”

“Kind?” She choked on the word.

“You did this, didn’t you?” he continued in that practical tone of his.

“They murdered you. They deserved to die.”

He shook his head. “So many, for just one.”

“They would have breached the gates.”

“You could have turned them back without causing them harm.”

She had no response for that.

“Have I given you such a poor example that you could feel no pity? One man committed murder, Addy, just one. And yet…” He waved his hand. Bits of him broke off and drifted away like ash from a water-doused fire. “You chose to exterminate them all.”

She glanced at the brightening sky. “Don’t leave me, Owen. Come back to the Tower. I—I can bring you back.”

“Aderyn—”

She hated herself for the words that came next, the manipulation of his emotions. He should want to come back to her for her alone. That he did not nearly undid her. “I’m pregnant.”

The shedding of ash ceased. He simply stared, eyes gone as gray as the paths etched into the land by Man’s machines.

She bowed her head and wept, her thick, clear tears leaving sticky tracks on her cheeks. “Forgive me.” For everything. For bathing your world in blood. For letting you die. For this. “I learned of it only tonight.”

His touch whispered across her skin, stirring her hair. “Aderyn.”

She held out her hand.

Aderyn, a voice whispered. It did not hold the love and sorrow and warmth Owen’s did when he spoke her name. Her feet shuffled toward the sound, heedless of her mind’s protest.

Someone had found her out.

Words failed her, ineffective against that which she couldn’t name or see.

“What’s happening to you, Addy?” Owen’s concern brought her back to herself. “You’re fading. Where are you going?”

Aderyn, the voice called again. Her heart lurched in her chest. She clawed at her throat, fighting for air. Come or die. Her ears were filled with the sound of wind soughing through tree branches.

She turned her face toward the rising sun, drawn away from the Tower against her will. Owen was at her side, anxious. “Addy?” He reached for her, his hand closing around nothing. She was as translucent as he was. “Talk to me,” he begged.

“I’m being called,” she whispered.

“Who? Where?”

Another sound stirred on the dead plain, a soft click of nails striking armor. She turned sad eyes toward him. “Run, Owen. He’s come to claim you.”

“I won’t go until I see you safe.”

“Too late.” Her lips formed the words, but she’d lost the strength to voice them.

“Your lady looks ill, Man. You should take better care of her.” Sunlight trickled across the sands, but pockets of shadows still lingered. One such shadow blinked, a pair of eyes the color of embers. Drawing a dagger, Owen put himself between her and the shadow.

She gasped. She hadn’t known he carried a blade.

The shadow growled. Teeth flashed in the half-light of dawn.

A pain grew in her chest, expanded like a seed cracking its hull and setting roots. She screamed. Neither man nor shadow paid her heed.

The shadow circled, feinted, and retraced its track. The dagger flashed and came away flecked with black. A little more of the creature appeared; a rippling mane of darkness surrounded a scaled muzzle. “Your lady dies, I think.”

“Aderyn, stay with me.” Owen’s voice rang with command.

She hovered between the sands and dappled greenery, unable to trust what she saw. One moment, her hands were burrowed in loam, moss creeping up her fingers. The next, the sand and the undying wind threatened to scour skin from the same fingers.

Take us to the heart of the trees, he who held her ordered.

Tree branches swayed over her head, a canopy of familiar arms.

“Stay!” Owen reached for her again. She thought for an instant that his will had won out. Her fingers twined through his, though neither could feel the other’s touch.

She could not serve two masters. She faded, retreating to her homeland.

The loam was cool beneath her cheek. She didn’t remember it ever being so. She propped herself on one elbow. Trees stood guard, gnarled silver limbs blocking out the moonlight, but casting their own faint glow. Her homespun clothing had vanished. She wore a dress of overlapping gold leaves. She touched her brow and felt a circlet of wood there.

What surrounded her made her blood congeal.

“Borers,” she spat. In the heart of her woods.

Double sets of pinchers served as mouths, adapted for pruning and gnawing limbs. Wings lay quiet along their backs, pale arcs of frosted glass. Gleaming onyx plates covered their vulnerable interiors, distant cousins perhaps to Man’s beetles, though these stood taller than the tallest Man she’d ever seen.

The eyes and face of their leader were human, the features alien and yet familiar. What human female would couple with a Borer? She shivered. Perhaps force or torture had a hand in the equation. The creature executed a half bow. “You slew my brother, Queen Aderyn.”

“He sought to breach my gate.” She stood, trying not to sway. The soil beckoned, the temptation to put down roots and heal nearly unbearable. She’d been gone for too long.

There was a buzz of sound around her, a collective chuckle.

“If we are to bandy about names, then at least give me yours.”

He shrugged, a human gesture at odds with his shifting shoulder plates and three-jointed limbs. “You cannot sway me. Not while I possess your name. It is Suileach, Aderyn.”

She winced at the internal blow he dealt when he spoke her name.

He cautiously approached her, the other Borers still ringing her. “How deep does the hurt go, Aderyn?”

Her hands covered her stomach. She swallowed a whimper.

Put down roots, the soil screamed. Bid the forest to fight.

If she did, she and Owen’s child would be lost. A hybrid child would not survive the change.

Suileach took another step toward her. His breath smelled like wood chips. Deities preserve her, whom had he eaten?

“I doubt the hurt is anywhere near what you exacted on my brother, Aderyn.”

A small cry tore from her lips. Her spine bowed, toes curling into the soothing soil. She’d failed to save Owen’s life. She would not surrender his child as well. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Leave my wife be.”

Owen! Her head shot up; Suileach’s swiveled.

They were still alone in the clearing, Borers and a damaged Collcrin queen.

Suileach freed his weapon from its sheath on his back and flicked it on. The weapon hummed. Similar metal rods appeared in the hands of the other Borers.

“Show yourself,” Suileach growled.

“Suileach, Suileach, Suileach.” It was Owen’s voice, but still she saw no sign of him.

The half Borer’s eyes widened. “Double damnations.” He grabbed her arm, jerking her after him as he paced inside his protective circle.

Despite her fear, she grinned, a tight-lipped smile that hinted more at vengeance than amusement. Her Owen was a quick study.

“Show yourself or I shall kill her.” Suileach released his grip on her so abruptly, she stumbled to her knees. The human weapon turned on her.

“Stay your hand, Suileach.” Shadows shifted, rearranging themselves. Something glinted beneath the boughs of a great silver tree, the flash of teeth or maybe a dagger. Twin red embers glowed.

Her heart sank. Not her Owen then, just a taunting reminder from a soulless hunter. The night creature paced at the edge of Borers. One fired a shot, singeing the silver tree’s branches. She shuddered, feeling it at her core.

“You cannot kill what does not live,” she murmured, not bothering to stand. Pressing her palms into the soil, she pulled its strength into herself. With Suileach’s attention diverted, she was no longer entirely powerless. Above them, the trees stirred in a breeze she called forth. It wailed as it passed through the branches, like the lead animal encouraging an excited pack of scavengers.

The Borers chittered amongst themselves. Fear could be just as powerful a weapon as a sword or a flesh-searing laser.

Come, she whispered. Vines unlooped themselves from branches and slithered snake-like across the ground. Their movements made rustling noises, a subtle threat, but the most she could muster with the bindings Suileach had placed on her. Fight or flee, she thought. At the heart of the woods, the Borers’ wings would do little more than tangle among the branches. So fight they must. In this, she would aid the Nightwalker.

Suileach gripped her shoulder tight enough to bruise. “What is its name? You called it.”

“I did not.” She didn’t know why it had followed her. It had Owen. She owed it nothing more.

He squeezed her shoulder tighter.

“Suileach,” the wind called, but it was Owen’s voice.

He flinched as if he’d been shot. “Stop it!”

Something else traveled beneath the canopy of trees, diaphanous and human-shaped. Her poor heart could not tolerate another shock. Its hair glowed like the gold leaves making up her dress. Its face wavered in and out of the shadows, first recognizable, then little more than a puff of frosty air.

Her breath caught in her throat. She dared not move.

“I promised the Nightwalker a life for a life. Yours, in particular, Suileach” All weapons turned toward the sound of Owen’s voice and fired. He didn’t acknowledge the blasts, only continued to move forward. “Step out of the ring.”

Dragging her to her feet, Suileach stepped toward the edge of the circle, Aderyn in tow. Two of the Borers seized his arms and held him back. Aderyn was tossed back in the ring, forgotten.

“Suileach,” Owen murmured.

The half Borer’s face contorted. He strained to break his comrades’ grips. Bones and joints cracked, curious noises amid the banshee wail of the wind. The night-walking creature pounced on one of the distracted Borers. Green fluid spewed from a rent in its chest plate. Aderyn’s vines shuffled into the melee, wrapping themselves around limbs and weapons.

She half stumbled, half crawled out of the circle, climbing over the ruined remains of the Borer’s chest, while shadowy creatures clawed at his face.

Suileach frothed at the mouth. “Don’t let her escape!”

No one moved to intercept her. She grabbed the nearest tree’s trunk, leaning into it. The sap churned within its secret corridors, then burst out of its hull, a scant distance from her lips. She turned her head, bark abrading her cheek, and pressed her lips to the offering. Warm liquid energy funneled down her throat and spread into her extremities.

“Are you all right?”

Owen. She turned, sap from the donor tree staining her lips white. He really stood in front of her, wraith-like but oddly imperial. The king she’d chosen. She did not know what to say to make things right between them.

He touched his fingertip to a forgotten tear and brought it to his lips. “My love, are you well?” Then he blinked and drew back, as if he’d been burned. He flickered in the forest light, not quite an apparition, not quite Man.

Her throat caught on a sob. She gave up the tree trunk, snuggling into his outstretched arms. She could feel his faint embrace, no longer just a whisper of air, but lacking the full force of his muscles. She did not wish him such a half life, but she ached for his touch. “Now that you are here, I am.”

Pulling back, he cupped her face in his hands. “Addy, it’s your tears, I think. What are they?”

“Life,” she whispered. “Mine and my people’s life.”

He kissed them off her cheeks.

“Lives, Man. More lives wait,” the Nightwalker reminded him. It shook its mane. Greenish fluids and chunks of carapace spattered them.

“What have you bargained for?” she asked.

The light left his eyes. “Their deaths. All of them.”

“But you said—”

He shook his head, wordlessly interrupting her. “Stay here and keep safe.” He drew his dagger and entered the fray.

He was daft if he expected her to sit like some witless maid and wait for him to save her. She did not know if the half Borer’s blows caused Owen pain. He moved as if they did not, despite the gash to his side and the wicked tear in his forearm. In the end, Suileach died with Owen’s dagger buried between two armored plates.

The bindings the half Borer had placed on her faded. Power flooded her senses, offerings from soil, wind, and plants to their queen. This was her domain and the Borers no longer held her caged.

She ignored the creeping vines. They stopped writhing the moment she gave them no more thought. Instead, the tree branches dipped down, whacking the Borers with their limbs, gouging eyes where they could. Roots burst through the soil, tangling their feet and, worse, dragging them into the soil. Owen sliced the head off one such unfortunate creature. He now held a dagger in one hand, a sword in the other. His hands were coated in blood, so it looked like he wore elbow-length olive gloves.

The last Borer fell, Owen’s dagger in its eye. Shadows pounced on its twitching body, snarling and fighting for the chance to sup warm blood.

They stared at each other, lovers who’d finally shown each other their true selves. Both could be ruthless. Both could murder. But both had also loved and still did.

“Best we leave before the Nightwalker changes its mind.” She reached for his hand, but came away with only stickiness. He was fading again.

“His power is over the living. I am neither alive nor dead.”

She turned toward the heart of the wood and offered him her arm. The faint breeze indicated he took it. “Will you go now?” she asked. Above her, the tree limbs stilled, waiting for his answer.

“My place is by your side, as I have always told you.”

“Can you—did you make a deal with the Nightwalker—” She bowed her head as they walked. “I do not think you can return to your body.”

“That’s true.”

Her heart shattered into a thousand pieces, but she forced herself to free him. “I do not wish for you to be bound to me against your will. This is no longer your world—”

“But it is yours and our child’s,” he pointed out. “Just where are we? Are you safe?” He still carried the sword in his other hand.

She stopped. They had reached the heart of her people and she was it. “This is my home. This is truly what I am and yes, we are safe.”

He looked around, clearly puzzled. “I see no people. No houses, crops, or livestock.” The sword slipped from his hand. When it struck the ground, it was sucked beneath the loam.

“We have no need of such.” She stepped away from him. “I am as you see me, but I am also this.” She laid a pale hand on the tree, the bark warm beneath her touch. Sap pulsed through it much as blood flowed through her veins. Cut, the sap would ooze out, but that slash would go to the heart of her, no matter what form she wore.

She’d been gone for so long, she’d nearly forgotten herself. The tree’s slim trunk gleamed black, its wood stronger than Man’s metals. Gently curving arms supported a mass of golden leaves. White lily-shaped flowers peeked between the clumps of leaves, its prolific bloom heralding her pregnancy. The air was heavy with a fragrance sweeter than anything Man had ever crafted, vanilla and cream notes, wrapped with the light, floral scent of lilac.

Owen was silent. Afraid to look and more afraid she’d be rejected, she tried again. “Here is my true self, Owen.”

“And our child?”

“She will carry my genes, but your heart.” As much as she held her sire’s.

“You shouldn’t have offered our child as collateral,” he said finally.

It wasn’t what she expected him to say. Man continually surprised her. “No,” she said, miserable. She raised her head. “But I could not fathom life without you.”

He immediately came to her side, his translucent hand brushing her cheek. His brows furrowed, frustrated. “Does the shadow creature still walk in your woods?”

Surprised again, she searched for signs of the Nightwalker and his scavengers. The woods were silent. “No. Why?”

“Then he has kept his word and left me.” His grin was rueful. “Such as I am.”

“There is little for him to give chase in my woods.”

He held his hand in front of his face, staring at it as he turned it back and forth. “Your tears gave me a temporary reprieve from this existence. What if I were to drink again, not your tears this time, but directly?”

Her jaw dropped, eyes widening.

“Has it been tried before?”

She didn’t know. He laid his hands on her trunk. She shivered. “Owen—”

“This is my decision.” She heard a hard note in his voice. “Where should I make a cut?”

“What if it does you harm? Let me do research.”

He shook his head. “This is a wearying existence, Aderyn. I am not sure how much longer I can bear to stay. A trip back to the Tower will kill me.”

“Stay here then. I will hurry.”

“Addy.” He faded a little.

She picked a spot just above his head. “Here.” She hesitated. “Be quick, my love.” Before she lost her nerve. Before she dropped to her knees and begged him to stay his hand. Before her subjects stirred and tried to do him harm.

His knife gouged her bark. She bit back a scream and staggered, hands covering her breast. Even shadow metal burned like poison. Sap leaked out of the gash. Standing on his tiptoes, he pressed his lips to her shaggy skin.

“Owen—”

She felt a pulling sensation, much the same, she suspected, as a mother felt with a child at her breast.

His arms wrapped around her trunk. Her life spilled into him, replacing blood with sap, bone with ebony wood. His blond curls glowed, as gold as her leaves, then deepened to a shade of copper. His toes lengthened and took root in the loamy soil around them. And still he drank.

She caught his ankle, her hand closing around smooth, creamy skin. Legs fused and became a single trunk of tan wood. She pulled herself up his body. She could stop this. She had only to utter a single word. His arms twisted, now branches. The face and lips she so loved vanished beneath a layer of epidermis.

The sap slowed, congealing and sealing the wound he’d made. “What have you done?” she whispered.

A breeze swirled through the center of the glen, the first stir of her branches she remembered. The copper leaves tinkled like wind chimes. She felt his roots twine through hers, his branches expand and tangle in her treetop.

“Owen?”

No reply.

She laid the palm of her hand on his bark and reached deep, to the core of what was Owen. It was as empty as her own shell. Where had he gone?

Chapter Four

The Tower gate remained shut, its beacon warning all who dared approach the border. Her magic held, despite her absence. The forest had grown bolder overnight, though, branches jostling one another and leaning over the wall. A few seedlings had also set roots in the shifting sand. They curled silver leaves skyward, beseeching nameless deities for life and warmth.

Their boldness frightened her.

She laid her hand on the timeworn stones. “Owen?” she called. A single rose bloomed on the outer wall, its wind-desiccated vine shriveled like mummified skin. Her fingers hovered over its velvet petals, the only splash of color as far as the eye could see. What had she allowed him to do?

Her breast ached and not just from the wound he’d made.

Raising her hand, she murmured a word. The gates opened inward. The grass no longer lay dead from frost, but thrived, not the thick tufts of the wind-hardy species he’d cultivated before, but a lush emerald lawn. She stepped off the cobblestones, curling her toes into it. It embraced her back.

Her Owen was here.

She ignored the Tower’s call and entered his garden. The orchard blossomed, the sweet scents of oranges, cherries, and apples mingling in the air. Owen lay beneath their canopy of branches, cushioned on a bed of grass, naked.

Her gaze roved over his body, settling on his cock. One eyebrow rose as she studied his engorged shaft. Hadn’t she always said he was a quick learner? His body was his to sculpt as much as the trees were his to prune and he’d taken the matter to heart. That was a cock to be proud of.

He broke the silence first. “Not even a hello? I’m disappointed.”

She closed her gaping mouth and finally looked at his face.

His lips quirked, blue eyes twinkling. Still her Owen.

“Are you well?” she managed.

“I was too easily tempted to stay in the woods, though I knew your place was here. So I made haste.” He sighed, his brow momentarily furrowed. “But all that knowledge, Addy. How can you ignore it? The trees whisper of things Man has never seen.”

“Nor should He ever.” Her words came out far too harsh. She sucked in a breath. She should be more worried about her cousins offering themselves to him than of him returning to Man’s City to share Collcrin secrets. Speaking of the former…which one snagged his ear and provided instructions on altering his body? It didn’t matter. He was here. With her. She laid her hand on her stomach. With them.

“I agree.” He patted the ground beside him. “Lucky for you, I’m a quick study.” He glanced around. “You neglected my gardens.”

“You died.”

“I did.”

“How is it—how can it be—” Dropping to her knees, her hand hovered over his thigh, not quite touching, afraid and awed. His thumb and forefinger closed around her wrist, drawing her hand down.

“It’s real, Aderyn.” He paused. “As real as you are, at least. The gods have given us a second chance. Let’s not squander the gift.”

His skin was warm beneath her palm. She looked over her shoulder, at the Tower.

He read her thoughts. “I buried the body.”

She shuddered. Not his body, but the body. Had there ever been a King of the Collcrin? Not in all the records she’d uncovered. What had they wrought there, back in her grove, with only Borer corpses and her silent subjects as witnesses?

“You’re scared,” he said quietly. “So am I.”

She blinked. “Can you read my thoughts then?” She broke his gaze, fingers trailing over his thigh and calf. The half-healed wound on her breast burned. He did not answer her.

She still wore the dress of overlapping gold leaves. Drawing away, she stood. Garments of the Collcrin did not possess the fittings Man’s did. One moment she was clothed, the next, the leaves scattered at her feet.

His eyes remained fixed on her, his brows furrowed like a man’s, though he could no longer claim such heritage. She sat back down. Her fingers brushed across his forehead, smoothing the lines. He caught her hand and kissed each fingertip, then pulled her down to lie beside him.

He traced the scar at her breast and the frown returned. She folded his hand in hers. “It was worth it.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yes.”

The frown deepened.

“Make it go away,” she whispered. “Make me think of fonder things.”

He kissed her, pressing her backward. She sank into the enchanted grass, the blades cushioning her descent. His tongue teased the roof of her mouth, then elongated and tickled the back of her throat. Pulling free, he left a trail of kisses, in the hollow of her throat, between her breasts, at mid-stomach, atop her crinkly mound, and lower, at the entrance of her secret lips.

His fingers parted her slick lips, his tongue dipping inside her. Sighing, she wriggled her hips against his face. She felt his tongue thicken, become a branch in its own right. An offshoot tickled her clit, while his fingers crept to the edge of her anus and teased the tight ring of muscle.

“Oh, oh, Ailm,” she murmured. “Iphin.” She arched her back, whispering names of the Collcrins’ gods she’d long neglected.

He lifted his head, her moisture clinging to his lips. “What words are these? Should I be jealous?”

She did not have enough breath to laugh. Grabbing a fistful of his curls, she pressed his face between her legs.

He obliged, bringing her to the brink of oblivion, until she felt like a white-hot pulsing beacon of light.

His cock replaced his tongue and she cried out at the sudden force of the invasion. Her back bent as a sapling’s did in a windstorm, until she feared she might snap. His hand nestled in the small of her back, supporting her.

It felt as if he’d prise her apart. His shaft expanded, filling every nook, tickling the soft loam tucked deep inside her. She shattered, the orgasm shaking her to her core. She heard the sough of wind through her branches and the tinkling of his copper leaves.

He covered her body with his. His lips found her breast and then her nipple. Seizing the taut bud between his teeth, he gently shook it. She cried out. His lips spread to include her aureole and half her breast.

It reminded her of him beside her trunk, latched onto the gash in her bark, sucking the sap from her core. The ache in it. The hope that they might never be parted. The fear.

And still his hips ground against hers. The heat built inside her, twisting muscle, turning tendon into heartwood. She exploded again.

Fruit blossoms rained down on them. Petals tangled in his curls. She felt him tense, branches twining through branches, trunks leaning against one another, a refuge from Man’s ceaseless electrical storms. She plucked a petal from his hair as he orgasmed, a ripple of muscle and tendon, and in a far away place, the shuddering creak of limbs.

They rolled to their sides, his hands settling over her womb, where their daughter stirred, cocooned in love. “Our children will take back the world,” he murmured.

She stared into his bright blue eyes. Yes, she thought. They might. “I will teach them to fight. And you, you will teach them how it is to love.”

He kissed the corners of her lips. “We shall both teach them how to fight and then we shall show them how to love.” His lips closed over hers. “Every day,” he breathed into her.

“Every day until eternity,” she promised.

Iron born and iron bred. Trust not iron, it will see you dead.

Soul Fire

Rowan Blake could really use a magic wand to keep her struggling art gallery afloat. But the faerie key she stumbles across is far from a lucky charm. It’s a magnet for danger, and by touching it she’s unwittingly put herself in the middle of a war between the forces of light and dark. And in the arms of its rightful owner, Prince Daire.

While searching for his brother, Daire finds himself trapped in the Iron World with a mere mortal woman who ignites his passion like no other. Each stolen kiss deepens their attraction and sends him spiraling closer and closer to the edge of his inherent dark desires. Desires that act as a homing beacon for the Dark Sidhe, who are intent on forcing him to fight on their side.

The longer he lingers in her arms—and in her bed—the closer his enemies get to her door. And the greater the risk that the gateway to the Faerie Realm will shift, destroying not only his power to protect her, but his very life

Warning Contains enchantments, danger, some very scary monsters, a trip to the dark side and hot, soul-transforming sex with an immortal prince.

Enjoy the following excerpt for Soul Fire:

Daire lifted her again and carried her through to the living room, to the same sofa on which he had lain. Rowan tried to fight the exhaustion eating away at her consciousness. With precise clarity of distraction, she watched him turn the catches on the window with the blade of his knife, securing her home, protecting her.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“The original builders of your home knew enough to place iron locks on doors and windows and to bury iron beneath the thresholds. I can feel its sting. As your guest I can bypass them, and any Sidhe or fae with enough strength could break through eventually. Not without pain, or sacrifice, but even iron cannot hold in perpetuity.”

He took the plant stalks from her unresisting hands, wincing as it touched his bare skin.

“What’s wrong? What is it?”

Daire didn’t reply at first. He snapped the long stems and threw them into the fireplace, shaking his hands as if to clear a sting.

“It’s broom.” He knelt before her. Red welts, raised and obviously painful, covered his palms and fingers. “It likes not my kin and me. If they come, light your fire. Your windows and doors are bound with iron already. The smoke will prevent them using the chimney.”

“How?”

He shook his head briefly, a rapid gesture, almost too quick for her tired eyes. “Not now. They’ve gone for now. You need no nightmares.”

She lay back, closing her eyes in relief. All she wanted now was sleep, to relieve herself of the terrible burden of exhaustion. Deep inside her lay a quiet, dark place where she longed to curl up and hide. She found her consciousness burrowing towards it.

“No.” He pulled her up from the sofa. “Rowan, you can’t sleep. Not now. Talk to me.”

Part of her wanted to. The rest wanted to push him away. The logical part of her said stay awake and find out as much as you can, find out what is wrong with you, what makes you want to sleep like the dead. The rest of her told the logical part precisely what it could do with itself. She wanted sleep, needed sleep, as she had never needed it. And nothing on the entire planet could induce her to—

Daire kissed her. His lips claimed hers, burned against the sensitive skin. His mouth parted slightly, requiring a response. It was both invitation and a plea. His breath caressed her flesh, driving her senses beyond what they could stand.

His hands cupped her shoulders, holding her swaying body in place as his kiss filled her. She wasn’t sure how to respond, even if she had the strength, so she let him hold her to him and drank in kiss after delirious kiss.

Daire broke away from her and when he spoke, his voice sounded ragged. “Rowan, I’m not sure how much of this you’ll understand, but try to follow me. Magic needs energy. I am a creature of magic. And you…”

As if unable to help himself, he leaned in and kissed her again, like someone faced with a long-denied addiction. Hunger, need, and desire, beyond reason. She sensed his failing reluctance and yet couldn’t help luxuriating in the sensations, the touch of his lips, his tongue filling and enticing her. Her heart thundered against her ribs as he pulled back.

“Somehow, you are a source of enormous magical energy. It is a mortal’s gift from the Creator, the ability in turn to create. That is true magic. Do you understand me?”

She nodded, but with the movement the exhaustion flooded back again, a dark wave of oblivion which crested far above her. Her head lolled back as she surrendered to it.

Daire kissed her again, buoying her back to the light of his embrace, to the sound of his voice. His lips trailed across her cheek, up her jaw line, to her ear.

“I asked you to give me some energy, without thinking you would give me so much. You are a giving person. It isn’t in you to hold back. I should have thought—for that I am sorry. I should have guessed you would not understand the implications. I need to give some back to you, Rowan. Or you will be ill. Dangerously ill. Your tine anama is unbalanced, your soul flickering. I must restore what is yours.”

“How?” He sounded so serious. And the way her consciousness lurched sickeningly between the dark and Daire’s light, it felt serious, or would if she could bring herself to care for more than a moment. Every time she could grasp the importance, it slid away, straight into shadows on an oil-skimmed track.

Daire cradled her against his body again, rested his face against her hair. His words drew her back, though she felt certain he thought she slept.

“Would that I could make love to you, Rowan. I can imagine no greater honour, nor admit no more earnest desire. And that would restore any amount of your power, for it is a shaping of all things. But I dare not. I cannot. I wish I could, but I am not the man to love you. There is no heart left within me for love.”

She stirred, disturbed by the tack this was taking. Opening her eyes, she looked into his smile and knew no matter what he thought, he felt nothing of the sort. Daire had a heart. She could feel it hammering against his chest, echoing through her body. She could see its glow in the depths of his wondrous eyes.

“But there are other ways, Rowan, if you will but give me your permission.”

“Permission?”

“To touch you. To fulfil you. To bring your strength back.”

“But the other night—”

“That is part of the problem. Two nights in a row, two nights I have—” He cursed, though the words were ancient and unknown to her. “I’m like nothing more than a Leanán Sidhe, feeding off mortals for my own purposes and enrichment. Please, Rowan, let me return what I have pilfered. It burns within me, tortures me with the knowledge of the forbidden.”

His lips brushed her neck, a little trail of fiery kisses down the edge of her erratically pulsing jugular. Her blood beneath surged in response and her breath caught in her throat.

“But you said you…you can’t make love…”

“Other ways, sweet Rowan,” he murmured into her skin. “I will never harm you. May I?”

Rowan bit her lip, intrigued. He couldn’t make love to her, by his own admission, couldn’t or wouldn’t love her. Other ways? Excitement mingled with fear and yet the dark silence still called. Rest, oblivion, peace…and if their enemies came she would be completely helpless.

“All right,” she said, unable to hide the wariness in her voice.

“I will stop if you command it,” he promised solemnly, and she believed him.

Rowan released all control to the Sidhe prince and allowed him to draw her back from the shadows calling her. Daire made her comfortable on the sofa, removed her shoes and her coat, all with the neat precision of a ritual. He loosened her hair, running his fingers through its length as if he was experiencing the finest silk. Just when Rowan was sure he had changed his mind, that he had decided to grant her the peace she craved and feared, his mouth closed on hers.

Daire’s kiss was determined, no chaste brush of the lips this time, no mistaking his intent. She opened beneath him like a flower to the sun. He smiled as he kissed her. She could feel it in their lips and somehow that made her too scared to open her eyes. Daire of the sombre expression, Daire who was constructed from hard lines of determination, Daire was smiling.

He trailed his way down her neck while his hand slid beneath her body, cradling her, massaging the taut muscles where her neck met her shoulders. For a moment she lost all sense of self, her body relaxing into his touch. She lay so still that one might think her deeply asleep, and yet inside herself, she struggled desperately for equilibrium.

Rowan had no idea when he opened her blouse or removed her bra, but she gasped as his mouth closed over her nipple, drawing it into his mouth, warm, wet and welcoming. His tongue swirled around the areola. His other hand brushed the soft skin of her thighs, parting them effortlessly. Fae enchantments? She squeezed her eyelids tighter, and arched her back, her breath coming harder as he switched breasts, as his hand cupped the mound and pressed with just the right amount of pressure.

That was one of the old stories, wasn’t it? The fae lover who could make a woman wild with desire, fulfil her so that she would never want another, would waste away with the need for his touch. Hadn’t she suspected his glamour of acting on her before? Hadn’t she thought of her reaction to him, her need for him, and wondered if it was deliberate? She had been a fool. That was a vague shadow to the things she felt now. That was just a dream, a myth, a fleeting shadow. Now she lay in the heart of the sun.

“Daire,” she forced the words out. “Daire, please!

Easy part of his day? Resurrecting the dead. Hard part? Keeping them alive.

Weaving Words

Kaede is a witch whose family has been bound to a powerful House for over a thousand years. And he hates it. Despite the fact that his lord, Tarou, murdered his mother, Kaede is sworn never to harm the man who could kill him with just seven words. Now he’s been commanded to use his unique powers to resurrect Tarou’s wife from the dead, and he has no choice but to comply. Things go horribly wrong when he accidentally pulls the wrong soul back. Now it’s not just his own life he must try to save.

Vara’s day couldn’t get much more bizarre. One moment she’s a captain in the Temple Guard. The next, she finds herself transported into a world of magic and witches—and stuffed into the body of a lord’s wife. Unwillingly plunged into middle of a deadly power struggle, the only one Vara can turn to is Kaede, the witch responsible for dragging her into this alien world. A witch she finds far too attractive…

Warning: This book contains the following; magic, witches and more body-swapping than is safely sane.

Enjoy the following excerpt for Weaving Words:

Vara closed the door to the bedroom. Nerves had her leaning back against the cool wood. It was odd when she had propositioned him…twice. She shouldn’t be nervous; she felt deep down in her gut that she didn’t get nervous. It was just sex. Old knowledge burst over her…and as a captain, she took a potion that guarded her against disease and pregnancy.

She stared down at the scarlet robe, its silk shimmering in the light from the narrow window. However, she was not in her body. Was that why she was anxious?

Kaede stood beside the bed, his hands knotted and white. He looked more nervous than she did.

Vara ran the back of her hand over her mouth and wiped off the foul grease the maid painted there. They didn’t have time for this. “Kaede, can you get me out of these clothes?”

His smile was brief and he waved for her to turn around. “I can try.”

With a few deft pulls, the belt loosened and Vara let out her first full breath in hours. The belt dropped to the floor. She had to resist the temptation to stomp on it. “So much better.”

He laughed and slid warm hands over her hips and waist. “Yes.” He unfastened the thin belts under her breasts and pulled apart the robe, sliding it from her shoulders to drop to a puddle of cloth at her feet. “Turn around, Vara.”

The curls of gold in her hair clinked as she turned to face him. His fingers worked at the last knot of her tunic and she smiled at the look of concentration on his face. “I used to be easier to undress.”

Kaede’s mouth twitched, shifting into a grin when the knot slid free. He tugged the hem upward and Vara obediently lifted her arms. She shook her hair free. “I’d say this is fairly easy.” Her trews dropped to the floor. “Yes, very easy.” His hand framed her jaw, his thumb tracing over her lip. “Do you feel undressed enough now?”

She licked his thumb and grinned. “Perhaps.” She pushed Kaede towards the high bed; his legs hit the edge of the mattress and he sank down. Stepping close, she ran her fingers through his hair. He watched her, his dark eyes intense, and Vara had the uneasy feeling he was trying to burn the memory of her into his thoughts. “We have now, Kaede. I know the weaving may not work…and even if it does, I can’t imagine you here with Tarou.”

“No.” A brief smile pulled at his mouth. “His rooms are in the western wing.”

Vara growled at him.

Kaede laughed and slid warm hands around her waist, pulling her to him. He rested his head against her breasts and his slow sigh stirred her skin. “I can’t promise anything, Vara.”

The rhythm of his slow strokes over the hollow of her spine slid an easy heat through her flesh. She closed her eyes. “I know.”

His hands stilled. “He killed my mother.”

Vara’s heart squeezed. “I’m sorry, Kaede.”

He let out a hot breath and it prickled her skin. Kaede looked up and, for a long moment, Vara let herself sink into the liquid black of his gaze. The tug was there between them, an instant lust, perhaps in time something more and there too, the knowledge of the life they should’ve had.

Yet as she’d said, they had now. And now would have to do.

Vara twitched a smile as his fingers curved around her buttocks. With a wink, his tongue curled against her nipple. She gasped, arching into his mouth. “Shouldn’t you lose some clothes?” Kaede didn’t seem to be listening as his fingers slid between her thighs and rubbed in exactly the right way. Vara groaned, pressing his head against her breast. “Clothes, Kaede.”

He pulled his mouth away from her breast with a deliberate pop, yanked his linen tunic over his head, and dropped it to the floor. His undershirt followed. Vara ran a hesitant finger over his collarbone, tracing over the curves of a spiralling tattoo. Kaede’s skin was warm and smooth, but the ink drawn against his flesh pulsed beneath her touch. More tattoos swept over his torso. “They’re beautiful,” she murmured.

“My mark as a witch.” He unstrapped and tugged off his boots and shrugged out of his breeches. Kaede undid the ribbons holding up her long silk socks. “I was tempted to keep these.”

Vara ran her hand over his muscled leg, her thumb pressing his inner thigh. “They look better on me.”

“You’re funny, Vara.”

She smirked at him. “I try.”

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

It’s all about the story…

Action/Adventure

Fantasy

Historical

Horror

Mainstream

Mystery/Suspense

Non-Fiction

Paranormal

Red Hots!

Romance

Science Fiction

Western

Young Adult

www.samhainpublishing.com