“Tyriel wasn’t broken,” Jaren said, tired down to his very bones. He knew his people, knew all the flaws. Aryn said nothing but the truth. “There is nothing the Kin like more than to feel needed. But I am not taking her there for them to fix. I am taking her there for my lord and lady. If my sister cannot heal her body, and Averne cannot heal her soul, nothing can.”
Aryn lowered his head to study Tyriel’s face. “No, Tyriel is definitely not broken—”
But he was talking to himself.
The room was empty.
* * * * *
After making sure everybody was comfortable in the traveling wagon he’d procured for the trip, Jaren went to his rooms and paid the innkeeper for watching over the young woman who lay in his bed, drugged into sleep because otherwise, she screamed or tried to hurt herself.
Fury burned in his veins as he carefully lifted her, avoiding the numerous injuries on her slim form.
Your days are numbered, blood mage. Know that…and think of me while you sleep.
He sent the thought out on the night winds, pushing them on with magic and his thoughts focused on the sorcerer with blood-red hair and a demon’s taint under his skin.
The words would find their mark. Eventually.
With his precious in his arms, Jaren made his way outside to where the groomsman waited with the wagon. Hopefully within a few days, he’d cross paths with some of Tyriel’s Wildling kin and they could take charge of the wagon and those who traveled with them, so he could take the fae-blooded woman onto Averne.
“Here,” Lesele said, a pretty girl with warm brown skin and black hair shot through with gold, patting the nest of blankets they’d helped build for her. “We’ll watch over her.”
He gave her a gentle smile as he put the unconscious woman down. Despite the potion he’d dosed her with, she moaned weakly. Touching his hand to her brow, he whispered, “It is well. You are safe.”
He would remember whimper, every soft cry.
For the time would come…
Chapter 13
Five years later
Irian was pulling at him.
Tyriel could see the strain in his eyes, almost hear the internal fight.
Their voices were also a soft murmur in the back of her mind, so it wasn’t a surprise when Irian’s presence welled up, pressing against the barrier she’d erected between them.
She blew out a tired sigh. “What do you want now, blasted enchanter?”
“You.” He flooded her mind with images of them, nude on brightly colored silk sheets, in the tents favored by her Wildling blood.
She blushed to the roots of her hair and turned her head away so that Aryn didn’t catch sight of her reddened face and wonder why.
Irian would have shielded his thoughts from his bearer, the way he always did when thinking of Tyriel in an earthier sense.
“The man is a bloody fool, he is,” Irian murmured into her mind. An unseen hand seemed to stroke down the back of her head, along her thick braid and down her back to rest above the curve of her ass.
“I thought when you took up arms together as partners he would take your bed as well, but ‘tis pure madness. And he torments me w’ his talk of not bedding a swordmate. Bah! Five long years has he resisted…how much longer must we wait?”
She suppressed a shiver as those final words seemed to be whispered right into her ear. “Would you leave me be?”
“But you are so much easier t’ torment,” Irian purred. “Warm, female, sweet. I’d rather be sinking into your sweet cunt, but your mind is almost as sweet.”
“And is this why you torment your bearer? You insist on fucking me?”
“No.” Irian’s voice grew strained. “You know me better, wild elf, pretty Jiupsu. I cannot stand the thought of goin’ to Ifteril. Something is there. Something evil, something dark, something that threatens us. But Aryn says we winter there. Contracts. Fucking contracts.”
“We’ve signed no contracts to fuck,” Tyriel answered absently. She didn’t like it. Never had the enchanter balked at the thought of going anywhere.
Something evil…something dark. A shiver took her body and she absently touched her fingers to the chains that hung between her breasts.
“I fear for you, elf.” Irian’s voice came to her on a gruff whisper and his presence folded around her like a cloak, safe, protective.
And Aryn rode on, oblivious.
The blasted enchanter was talking to Tyriel again. Irian had been railing at him, then abruptly broke off, but Aryn couldn’t pretend it was because Irian had given up.
He’d just shifted his focus to Tyriel.
Aryn could hear the throaty rumble in the back of his mind but the words were unclear.
Whatever Irian had said unsettled Tyriel. And it disturbed her clear into the night.
Her smooth dusky skin had gone pale, and her face was tight with strain. Her naturally fluid grace was gone, leaving her to move about the camp in erratic stops and starts as they prepared for the coming night.
She’d washed up and changed into a fresh shirt, loosened the tight braid that had bound her hair after they ate.
It wasn’t yet late enough to sleep and he wondered if she’d talk to him as she lowered herself to sit by the fire, her dark eyes haunted and sightless.
Her glossy black hair fell in chaotic ringlets, veiling her features as he settled beside her.
She’d said nothing to him and he knew if he didn’t push, she would continue to be silence.
“What bothers you?” he asked quietly.
She tucked her hair back behind her ears, the elongated point holding the wild curls away when a human’s ears would have done nothing. The left one had a golden ring pierced through, halfway through the top, and a cuff that hugged her lobe, the gold reflecting the firelight as she sat staring somberly into space.
She lifted her gaze to his, but for several long seconds, said nothing.
Finally, with a heavy sigh, she said, “Irian doesn’t want to go into to Ifteril.” She hesitated, licking her lips.
It distracted him, seeing her pretty mouth gleaming, and he had to bite back a groan as he resisted the urge to taste her. It was second nature by now, but that didn’t mean it was easy.
Fuck, we’ve got to get to Ifteril, into a city, before I lose it. For five years, he had managed to keep a hold on his craving for her, but long treks like this, between cities, when there were no women around to ride and pretend it was her underneath him—it drove him mad.
“We signed a contract, Tyriel.” His words were strained but she seemed not to notice.
“I know that. But...I don’t want to go, either. The enchanter’s words bothered me. Greatly. Something dark…something evil,” she whispered, her lashes lifting slowly. When she looked at it, it was with glowing amber eyes, jewel-like in their luminosity. Her power welled up inside her and she held his gaze. “Contract be damned, something deadly waits for us in Ifteril.”
She was hiding something. It was there in her eyes.
“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked quietly.
Her lashes lowered. “Nothing. I just do not wish to go. We can winter elsewhere. Anywhere. With the caravans again, or even in Averne. I dare say my cousins could drum up a dozen good substitutes for us, and a dozen good reasons why we cannot go.”