Twin Passions: 3 (11 page)

The cubs had then shown her of that slow return to magickal warmth. Of little lungs filling with their first renewed breaths. Of sensation returning, tingling at their paws, retracting their claws with a rebirth they had rejoiced at.

Weak though they had been, filled with hunger and confusion, still they had sought the warmth of the Wizards, feeling them as they shared the last measure of their magick with the immature Griffons as they all collapsed from exhaustion.

That was not the act of one whose magick was blackened by evil.

The other Sorceresses had been shown only that feeling of warmth and the return to life. Of warmth and exhaustion. They had, even in their immaturity, sought to reinforce the protection Mustafa, Malosa and Mandalee had extended around the Wizards.

Silence had stretched between them for so long that Astra looked over at the Guardian of the Lands curiously. Marina watched her with a heavy gaze filled with concern, and for a moment, Astra wondered what she sensed.

“I must ask you be here when Alisante arrives,” Marina said then, filling Astra with a sense of such shame that it was near unbearable.

To have to face the insanity of her mother’s acts was such a travesty that she barely held back her instinctive rejection.

“Might we request Garron’s presence as well?” Astra asked then, hearing her voice tremble at the knowledge that there was no escaping whatever cruel and merciless plan Alisante had designed.

“She asks that only you, myself and my Wizards be present,” Marina sighed. “But I shall try to ensure Garron is there, if not in all his leathery glory, then perhaps as the invisible shield of protection we have all known when in need.”

“What time should I make myself available for the Keeper of the Mystic Lands?” Astra asked with precise respect considered due a Keeper of the Land within Covenan.

“She says she will arrive just after the evening meal,” Marina advised her. “I ask that you come dressed as the Keeper Heir of the Mystic Mountains. Give her no chance, no opportunity to weaken your position, Astra. As the two of you stand together, the land you will one day command shall no doubt be strained to hold back its loyalty to you, despite the lack of the ritual giving it over to your keeping.”

Astra nodded before rising slowly to her feet. “I believe I will go to the Griffons now then, with your leave, Keeper.”

Rising as well, Marina nodded, her gaze compassionate. “Be prepared, Astra. Deceit is something she has honed and now wields with the same strength you wielded your blade this day.”

“Nay, Guardian,” Astra denied bitterly. “The Keeper of the Mystic Lands wields her deceit and machinations with all the skill and experience of your Wizards should they be forced this moment to defend your life. If only she wielded it to protect the lands, rather than attempting to destroy them.”

Marina watched as the Sorceress slowly moved through the training yard, carrying her sword with such weariness she was rather surprised Astra had not left it with those swords she had won for the day.

As much as that worried her, there were other matters concerning Astra that worried her far more.

“She is their Consortress,” she whispered as her Consorts drew to her, their magick wrapping around her. “They have not Joined, but you are right. Their magick has touched her and now remains a part of her own to protect her.”

“Was the taint of the dark one lingering on her?” Caise kept his voice low, for her and Kai’el’s alone.

“There was no taint,” she answered, confused. “Weariness, agony whispered across her magick. Fear, a guilt that tears at my heart as though a dull blade has struck it, and the purity of their magick reaching for her, even as hers does reach for them.” She frowned at the knowledge of it. “She does not yet realize that to cleave to them, to protect them, is no treachery of her own and her feeling it is tears at her soul. That alone is enough for any Sorceress to bear. But that bitch mother of hers…” Her lips tightened in offended fury. “Were my mother here, she would command I sever the bonds between Alisante and the land and begin the ritual to give it into Astra’s protection immediately.”

Without her mother’s blessing though, the magick of the Mystic Lands would resist, causing a rift between Astra and her lands that would exist until her death.

“What then do you suggest?” Caise questioned her as both he and Kai’el surrounded her, first with their magick, then with their presence as they headed for the entrance of the castle themselves.

“Garron would know of this,” she mused. “Continue the search. We tell no one what we sense and see what dark plot Garron is searching for. Could he do so, he would tell me of what is brewing within this mess my Sorceress finds herself within. Until then, we will proceed as though we know nothing of her inner thoughts of those warriors, or the fact that her Joining will come soon.”

“She has accepted them then?” Caise asked in surprise.

To that, Marina gave a faint smile. “Can a Sorceress resist her Consorts, do you believe?”

Kai’el snorted in mockery. “I believe, my love, you resisted quite well. I could feel your many rejections weakening my will and my mind.”

“Poor warrior.” She twined her fingers with his as she reached for Caise with the fingers of her other hand. “’Twas not my rejections weakening your mind, twas but that male arrogance you feared losing. ’Twas not as painful as you imagined, now admit it.”

To that, each of her warriors chuckled. The sound was filled with longing, lust and such love her heart was filled to bursting with it. It was a longing, a hunger and a love she prayed the Sorceress now so tormented by mother and Consorts that her heart bled would soon know as well.

For only the gods knew how her tender heart had survived such treachery from a mother, and such loneliness as Marina knew Astra had felt for so very long. And may the gods save the Delmari if they were indeed dark Wizards. Should they betray one who had been betrayed more than any could ever deserve, then Marina swore, even the deepest pits of Shadow Hell would be paradise compared to the hellish existence she would ensure they suffered.

For Marina feared, if Astra were forced to bear more betrayal, her Sorceress’ heart might not survive.

Chapter Ten

The feel of her inner conflicts and pain was heartrending.

That evening, Rhydan stood at the mouth of the cave that led to the deeper cavern and watched his Consortress as she ran her hands gently over the soft fur of the baby Griffon that had followed her through the valley to where he and Torran awaited her.

The fact that they waited rather impatiently didn’t seem to have affected her just yet.

The fact that she intended to come to them, to Join with them, did not seem to be an act she was rushing toward. Instead, she lingered outside the caves and gave the Griffon babe the attention he was demanding.

Tambor was the smallest of the males in Emerald Valley.

Like any feline, he stretched into each touch, gloried in each caress. Unlike others, the wings that were easily twice the length of his body unfolded, rippled in ecstasy at her caresses, then flapped before he turned back to her, giving a playful growl and attacking her petting hands.

Astra gave a soft laugh before resuming the gentle caresses. She stopped to play when he batted at her hands, then returned to her petting when he purred in pleasure.

She was slowly bonding with the babes in a way that amazed him. Selectra and her sister Solara were the normal caretakers for the Griffon babes, but it was Astra they came to if they knew she was near. And their ability to sense her was becoming amazingly sharp.

Just as his and Torran’s ability to sense her was becoming much deeper than it should have been.

He could sense her heartache, her conflicting priorities, her pain at what she believed was his and Torran’s deception and rejection of her.

And her guilt.

The guilt that she had not told her Guardian of his and Torran’s location. Her feelings that she had betrayed the one she had sworn her fealty to cut into them like a knife.

The Guardian of the Covenan lands and her cousin, Marina Sellane, Consort Sorceress to the Sashtain Wizards, Rulers in Waiting of the Covenan lands until the return of the Queen Amoria or her heir to the throne, was one of her dearest friends. And holding back such information, as well as dealing with the changes evolving in her life, was destroying Astra.

Wizards were ruling the land of the Sorceresses, Sorceresses were now once again Consortresses to the Wizard Twin Rulers of Cauldaran, and there Rhydan stood, wondering how the hell he was supposed to ease his own Consortress’ pain. Pain he should not yet be sensing.

Such a bond should not have been possible before a Joining. Before he and his Wizard Twin brother, Torran, had fully taken her and marked her magick for all time.

A magickal being, once Joined, took the aura of not just their magick but also the magick of the one, or ones, they were Joined to. By accepting that magick into herself, she also accepted the fact that her Wizards were a part of her.

A Sorceress, or Consortress, would carry not just her own magickal aura, but it would become infused by her Wizards’ aura. The same for the Wizard Consortors. Their aura became infused with the magick of their Consortress, whether she be Sorceress, witch, human, fairy or other magickal being.

“I once knew a Pixie who Joined with Wizard Twins in the Claemai Province,” he said softly. “This Pixie had harassed the high-ranking Wizards for years. Their lark cows refused to give milk. Their lands held the last remaining rabbits, which the Twins kept confined and bred exclusively. Those rabbits disappeared over several moon risings, never to be seen again. Fish in their streams began hiding as though too frightened to come out when Wizard magick was near. Even the Snow Owls the Twins rode became skittish. They learned the Pixie, a Sorceress-Pixie Halfling, had come to their land to collect atonement.”

“Personal payment,” Astra murmured. “Such justice does not exist in Covenan.”

But she had heard of it. The practice of exacting payment for crimes that the ruling sect refused to demand justice for. Most often, a crime against a magickal being by a magickal being.

“No, such justice does not exist in Covenan,” he agreed, his lips quirking at the thought. “Because feminine justice looks at the law, the breaker of the law, and all the variances that led to that law being broken. They look at the criminal, as well as the victim, and they see beyond simple innocence or guilt.”

She turned slowly and stared up at him, the gentle green of her eyes surrounded by the reddened inflammation of her tears and an expression of such conflicting emotions that it only strengthened the powerful response he and Torran were having to her pain.

“What has this to do with what we now face?” she asked, her voice roughened by those tears.

“Much.” Moving closer, he eased himself to the ground to sit at her feet, wishing he too could feel her gentle touch, as the cub Tambor had felt.

“Do you intend to explain or must I wait until we are all languishing in the cells beneath Sellane castle?” she asked, confusion and irritation still heavy in her tone.

His fingers moved to the inquisitive cub still begging for affection.

“The Twins went in search of the one causing such havoc. They knew they searched either for a Pixie, or perhaps even one of the fae. They went alone, without Sentinel Warriors to back them, and found the troublemaker at the banks of the stream, masses of fish playing about her petting hands. As she petted, she pleaded prettily that they avoid the hooks, that they make the Twins who owned those lands pay for the sins of a thousand years before.

“The separation of Sorceresses and Wizards had weakened not just Sentmar itself, but the magickal barriers that once prevented humans from abducting the weaker of the magickal beings and forcing them from their lands. That weakening of the magick that had allowed her beloved brother to be captured by humans who degraded him in such ways that when he was found, he refused even to escape. He killed himself rather than be returned to his home where all would know that he was forced to service the humans in their beds.”

Few knew the intense pride that the Pixie and fae folk harbored in their much more delicate bodies. A Wizard Twin’s pride had nothing on a Pixie’s or Fairy’s.

“So they found the Pixie and forced a Joining?” she asked.

“Oh nay.” He shook his head, the story he’d heard from the Wizards still having the power to affect him. “They knew her the moment they heard her voice, so gentle and filled with pain, with all the dreams she’d known and lost with the loss of her beloved brother. They heard all this in her tears and in her pleas to those creatures given to the land to feed its people, both magickal and not. She convinced these creatures to hide when the magick of a male neared. To only come to feminine magick, to only heed the hooks infused with feminine strength or hunger. The Wizards knew she was their natural Consortress because her pain became their own, her heartache became their heartache. And they knew to take her and force a Joining with such a delicate creature, one of such pride and bearing, would destroy her as well as themselves.”

“What did they do?”

Rhydan looked up at her tear-streaked face and sighed heavily. “They did not force a Joining. Instead, they captured the delicate Pixie, brought her to their fortress, and there, allowed her to run and to rule their lives until she realized she was exactly where she wanted to be. A part of their lands and their hearts.

“But still, her pride held her. The Wizards despaired of ever claiming their Consortress. A Consortress they must have though. The age of reconciliation was arriving.”

That time when the rulers and land owners of each province must have taken a Consort to ensure chances of conception of an heir before the age of forty cycles. If they didn’t, then their lands, their holdings, all but a small recompense was taken from them and given to the heir the Ruler Wizards chose.

“They forced her then?” She couldn’t stop the need to feel the cool silk of his jet-black hair as he rested against the boulder she sat on.

His head leaned against her outer thigh as she slid her fingers into the cool strands.

“Nay, they did not force her, even then. They instead gave up. They gave her rule of the fortress and the people who cared for it, and they began their search for a Consortress whose magick could, at the very least, align with theirs. When it seemed they had found such a woman, they then gave their natural Consortress her freedom. The night they freed her, their Pixie came to them. She gave of herself and her magick, and for the first time in a thousand years a natural Joining had been created.”

“There’s a point to this story, correct?” she asked, the interest in her tone vying with the confusion and uncertainty.

“Patience, my love.” He leaned into the deepening caress of her hand in his hair. “There is a point, and I shall give you this point now. That night of an unsanctioned natural Joining, something that had been outlawed in all the land for so long that only our historians remembered the reasoning on it, Wizards all across Cauldaran began to dream of Covenani Sorceresses, natural Joinings, and the darkness beginning to press against the borders of Covenan. And on that night, Torran and I were captured within the same dreamscape the Veressi were bound within.”

Rhydan lifted his head, loath to lose her touch, but needing to see her eyes, to allow her to see the truth in his words.

“That night, my Consortress, I, along with my brother and the two most powerful Wizards known to our race, stood before the One. And he showed us the dark stain beginning to press against the borders of the magickal lands. And he showed us our fate, and the path we must take. He told us we were to tell no Wizard nor man our plans. The Veressi decreed no Wizard, no Sorceress, no being of any plane, magick or otherwise, should know. But you are our Consortress. The other half of us. And you, my heart, should have known long before now.”

He reached up to her then, touching his fingertips to her temple, and gave her that dream—the wash of a brilliant light, a warmth filled with pure magick and love, and a voice of gentleness yet booming like the thunder at dawn.

And the darkness, edging across a land He had filled with his magick. A darkness that only the children of magick could defeat.

He gave her this, because she was his Consortress. Not because she had not already accepted them, because they both knew she had.

Nay, he gave it to her to show his trust in her, his link to her, and his knowledge that all along he had known she was his, and all along he had known he and his Wizard Twin would claim her.

“We have always known what you were to us, beloved,” he whispered as he allowed his fingers to caress her cheek for a moment.

To feel the sweet, soft warmth of her flesh and to know that finally he and Torran had found that part of themselves they had always sensed was missing infused his magick with a strength even the Veressi could not comprehend.

Sliding his fingers into her hair to cup the back of her head and draw her to him, Rhydan felt the heat and promise of her Sorceress heart reach out to him. To draw her to a kiss, which both Rhydan and Torran knew would seal both their fates to their Consortress, was a need, a hunger he could not deny.

It was a kiss Astra knew she had lived her life awaiting.

Her lips parted for the Wizard who had already claimed her heart, along with his Twin. She knew, as he kissed her, his Twin would feel each touch, each pleasure they shared. He would experience each caress she gave Rhydan and each caress his Twin gave her.

Marina had told her Sorceresses what to expect should they Join with Wizards. The pleasure and magick combined to create such explosive ecstasy, as well as a sense of fulfillment unlike any that could be attained otherwise.

She had also warned them, while their Wizards were present nonetheless, of the reasons the Sorceresses had left their Wizards a millennium before, and of the dangers of the unnatural and forced alignments.

This was no forced alignment though.

This was a true and natural progression of passion and magick of three hearts, three souls coming together in a pleasure Astra knew she could not reject. As Rhydan’s lips moved over hers, the heat and velvet roughness of them stroking against nerve endings she hadn’t known her lips possessed, Astra reached up, her arms twining around his neck as he lifted himself from the ground.

With his lips moving over hers with hungry force, Rhydan rose above her, bent to her as her head tilted back for him and he gave her a pleasure she couldn’t have anticipated.

A pleasure she was unable to combat.