Текст книги "Alien god"

Автор книги: Ursa Dox

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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

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CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO Torrance

I cracked my eyes open, laying totally still. Silver-bright light flooded the room, and a familiar, soft mattress was beneath my back. What wasn’t familiar was the exhaustion pinning my limbs to the bed, and the straining ache in my chest every time I took a breath.

I’m... I’m in our room.

My head felt like it was full of snow, like my brain had been frozen. I trudged through my own thoughts and memories, trying to remember what had happened. We’d gone to the gathering, and after Sceadulyr’s stunt, we’d left in a hurry...

For Heofonraed.

I gasped, pain shooting through my ribs and lungs. Where was Wylfrael? The last time I’d seen him was when he’d left me in the hall, chasing down some unseen monster. The events came back to me slowly, then in a rush. He’d been gone so long that I’d grown afraid. And not just afraid... That’s right, I’d been sick. Wracked with fever and chills, growing so weak I’d slumped back against one of the red walls and...

And, nothing. I had no recollection of what had happened after that. We’d obviously come home to Sionnach. But how? When?

I tried to turn my head, but couldn’t. Tried to speak, but it took enormous effort just to peel my sticky tongue from the roof of my mouth. Finally, I whispered, “Wylf?”

It was like I’d muttered a powerful incantation. As if I’d conjured him, his face appeared instantly over mine.

“Torrance!”

I’d never seen my husband look quite like this. He looked distraught. His hair was a ragged mess, like he’d been running his hands through it over and over again, and his eyes blazed dully through a haze of pained exhaustion.

“What... What...” I couldn’t manage the whole question of What happened?

“Here, drink this,” Wylfrael urged. He slid a hand beneath my head, helping lift it from the pillows as he placed a cup to my lips. The sweet milk felt so good in my dry mouth, but every swallow made me whimper with pain. He pulled away the cup, his lips pulling downward fiercely.

“Don’t try to talk, beloved,” he said. “Save your strength.”

I tried to nod, but couldn’t even do that.

“Save your strength,” he said again, “and I will explain everything in time. When you are stronger. Just sleep and...” The look of pain intensified on his face. “And I will see you when I return.”

Return?

You’re going away?

I asked the question with my tired eyes, and Wylfrael read it there.

“I know, beloved. Sweetness, I know,” he groaned. He bent, rubbing his forehead against mine. “But it’s been three days, and Sceadulyr is waiting. I couldn’t bear to go before you’d woken and I waited as long as I could, but I’ve run out of time.”

I blinked heavily, trying to stay awake, to understand what he was saying. Why was he going away? Why was he seeing Sceadulyr? Why did my chest feel like I’d been kicked by a horse?

Even just thinking exhausted me. The tender ghost of Wylfrael’s lips grazing my temple, I drifted back into the deep.

When I awoke again, I felt a little more clear-headed. I could actually move my head, too, which I considered to be a vast improvement. What wasn’t an improvement, though, was that Wylfrael wasn’t here this time. Tears gathered in my eyes, and one slipped out. I was afraid of his absence, afraid of my own pain, afraid of what I didn’t remember. And I needed my husband here.

“Oh, oh! Torrance! You’re awake!”

I smiled weakly through the tears. At least I’m not totally alone.

“Torrance! Here! Lord Wylfrael said to make sure you drink something when you next woke up.” Aiko’s surprisingly strong hands hoisted me into a slouchy sitting position against the pillows and headboard. My head swam, and my chest cramped up. I breathed slowly, trying not to faint, as Aiko lifted a cup to my lips. Swallowing the hot liquid hurt, just like it had last time, but I knew if I didn’t get some fluids and calories into me soon I would get even weaker.

“What happened?”

I was actually able to get the words out this time, at least.

Aiko placed the cup down on the crystal table and hurried back to the bed.

“I’m afraid I cannot tell you much,” she said. She looked anxious, her eyes wide with concern as she spoke. “Five days ago, Lord Wylfrael brought you back here. You were unconscious, and he said that you’d been badly injured. Apparently, another stone sky god helped heal you, and now Lord Wylfrael owes him a debt of service. He had to return to that god’s world two days ago.”

Sceadulyr...

It wasn’t much to go on, but it was a start. At least I knew why I was so weak and in pain – something had happened to me. I just didn’t know what yet.

I’d have to wait for Wylfrael to return to explain it all.

My chest seized up when I thought of him. Emotional pain twining with physical. I missed him, and I tried not to get too sensitive about the fact that he was off doing something for Sceadulyr instead of being here with me.

I trust him, I reminded myself. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.

I resolved to wait for him.

But as the days passed, it got hard. Really fucking hard. Every morning I woke up calling his name in my sleep, only for Aiko to tell me that he had not yet come back. Every night I fell into exhausted slumber, hoping to feel him curl around me.

He didn’t.

The only upside to the days blurring into each other without him – ten days, then twelve – was that I continued to get stronger. I wanted to make him proud, wanted to impress him with how well I was doing when he got back, which encouraged me to keep eating, keep drinking, keep trying to take a few shaky steps across the bedroom, holding tightly to Aiko or Shoshen’s hand.

After two miserable weeks, in the middle of the night, he finally came.

It brought back memories. Memories of our early days, when he’d disappeared into the Sionnachan villages every day and had watched over me silently at night. I could feel him there, bending over me just like he’d used to, even without opening my eyes.

“Wylfrael...” I turned over in the bed, reaching blindly for him, my hands tangling in his hair and pulling his face down to mine. He stiffened, as if afraid that even kissing me would hurt me, but then with a groan dragged his mouth over mine.

My heart hammered, slamming my chest with pain while simultaneously flooding the place between my legs with heat. I moaned and spread my legs, my nightgown riding up around my hips, my bare pussy grinding against the fur blankets, searching for him.

But he didn’t give me what I wanted, what I needed. He tore himself away, cursing under his breath, wings slamming open as he paced the room with raging steps.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

Hurt, and not just physical hurt, plagued me.

“Stronger every day,” I said. “You’d know that if you’d have been here.”

It was like my words had stabbed him through the heart. He stopped pacing, agony scorching his features.

“I know!” he snapped. “I know. But Sceadulyr has me by the throat. Every time I tried to break the bargain or get leave to return to you, he dangled your death over my head like a cursed blade about to fall!”

“What are you talking about?” I cried, wriggling into a seated position, something I could do on my own now. “What the hell is going on, Wylfrael?”

He breathed out heavily, his broad, strong shoulders sagging. He returned to the bed, sitting on the edge and twisting his torso to face me.

“I have thought, long and hard, about how I would tell you what has happened,” he said softly. “About how I could explain this all to you.”

He looked so fucking sad that it scared me. I grabbed his hand and squeezed it, chest pounding painfully.

“The first thing that I must say is that I’m sorry, Torrance. I am sorry for so much. I do not ever hope to earn your forgiveness, even though I am weak enough to want it.”

“You’re scaring me,” I whispered.

His eyes were haunted as they trekked over my face.

“What do you remember?” he asked.

“Nothing!” I cried, all my confusion and frustration from the past two weeks flowing out of me like lava. “I remember the gathering. And Heofonraed. You went to go fight, to do the trial. And I was alone for so long. Fucking terrified. And then I got sick. Like I had a fever. I was so sick I’m pretty sure I lost consciousness because that’s where everything ends.”

“Fated bride of Wylfrael, starburning but afraid...”

“What? What does that mean? You’re not making any sense!”

He didn’t try to explain the bizarre thing he’d just said. Instead, he took in a short, sharp breath, and said, “I killed you.”

The world tilted, and I fought to right it.

“OK, now you’re really not making any sense. Pretty sure I’m alive and talking to you right now,” I snapped.

“You are alive now, it is true. Thanks to Sceadulyr,” Wylfrael replied.

I shook my head, over and over again, uncertainty rising in me like nausea.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered.

“You’ve asked me, several times now, why I wouldn’t go search out my fated mate.”

I froze. Was he finally going to explain that to me? And why now?

“What does that have to do with anything?” I asked.

“Because I knew that this would happen, in a way.” Wylf’s voice grated, and he sounded just as exhausted as I was. “I knew that this would happen to her. I just didn’t know that she was you. When I went to see Rúnwebbe, she did not just give me webbing, but also a prophecy. She told me I would kill my fated mate with my own blade. So, I vowed never to find her. Little did I know, she’d already found me. She was in my Dawn Tower the entire time... A partner and a pawn. Trapped under the arching sky of dawn.”

“That’s why you never wanted to find your bride. You didn’t want to hurt her,” I replied, slowly sifting through what he’d just said.

“Yes,” he murmured gruffly. “But I was a fool. Every step I took away from her, to keep her safe, was one step closer to you and to your death.” His fingers brushed my jaw, and I whimpered, leaning into the touch I’d craved for so long. “The one I was trying to stay away from was you all along, Torrance. You are my fated bride. My eternal mate. That fever you felt in Heofonraed wasn’t illness. It was the starburn.”

“But... How... Why? Why did you...”

“Kill you?” His voice turned raw. “I go over and over that moment in my mind. Trying to find out if there was another way. If I could have sensed it, stopped it.” He pulled his fingers from my face, fisting them in his lap. “The monster I was fighting was an illusion. One of the members of the council must have some kind of shadow power similar to Sceadulyr’s. It wasn’t real, but as I fought, I thought it was. And when I slayed it with my blade, I-” His words shattered, breaking off.

“You hit me instead,” I finished quietly for him.

“Yes.”

He didn’t look at me now. My huge, strong husband was hunched over, pain radiating off of him in waves so thick I could practically see them, catch them in my hands.

“So, you couldn’t see me, and didn’t know it was me,” I said, making sure I fully understood.

“No, I did not see you,” he confirmed. He gave a bitter snort. “I thought I was protecting you. I was terrified because I knew you were near. I could smell you, and it made me strike even harder. Almost immediately, the illusion faded, and I saw what I had done.”

Oh, my God.

Even though I was the one who’d gotten hurt, who’d apparently even died, pain for my husband exceeded my own. I couldn’t even imagine what that must have been like – knowing he’d hurt me. Killed me. Knowing that the brutal prophecy he’d tried so hard to avoid had come true anyway, despite all his efforts, or maybe even because of them.

I reached up, touching the large, shiny pink scar between my breasts through my nightgown.

“Then what happened?” I asked. The things he was telling me were like a story that had happened to someone else. A movie I’d watched once, or a dream. It didn’t feel real.

“I knew the council would not help me. They’d expected me to die in that instant, no doubt. I took you to Sceadulyr. He revived you, and in return, I must open sky doors for him, for as long as it takes until he finds his mate. Or, until I die, I suppose.”

Until he dies...

“So, you’ve... you’ve starburned, then?”

“Yes,” Wylf said. “It started the moment my sword sank into you. Rather cruel timing.”

“So right now, you have the... the...”

“A knot? Yes.”

Heat flared in my belly as I wondered what it looked like. But I doubted he was in the mood to show me. He seemed cagey and uncomfortable. Like he didn’t even know me, or maybe didn’t know himself.

“Wylf,” I whispered, tears squeezing the word, “would you look at me? Hold me?”

His wings shuddered, and his jaw worked.

“I do not feel that I deserve to touch you, beloved. Not now.”

“But what about what I need, what I want?” I sobbed, tears streaming. “Don’t I deserve to be touched by the one I love?”

“You love me,” he said slowly, like he didn’t believe it, “even after all of this. All I’ve told you, all I’ve done...”

“Yes,” I said adamantly. “And even more than that, I forgive you.”

Wylf tensed, his spine going straight.

“No,” he said roughly, “no, beloved. Please don’t forgive me. I have not earned it yet.”

“You can start earning it by coming here and holding me, then! You ridiculous, stubborn man!” I cried, anger fusing with my sadness. “I’ve been here without you for days. Days and nights of pain and loneliness and wanting you. And now, you’re finally here, and you’re more interested in self-flagellation than giving me what I need! And in case it wasn’t clear, what I need is you!”

He sat still and straight, and I thought with a lurch he’d turn me down. But then, like crystal dropped on the floor, shattering, the pieces exploding outward with violent motion, he burst into movement. With a rasping growl, he turned and wrapped his arms around my waist, drawing me into his lap. My legs spread across his thighs, straddling him, and I moaned at the hardness pressing against me. It felt different, thicker in the middle than before. The knot.

Wylfrael ran shaky hands under my nightgown, his breathing ragged, his mouth everywhere. Between sucking kisses along my throat, words rushed out of him.

“I’m so sorry, Torrance. I’m sorry. I love you so, so much. I love you while I entirely hate myself. I want to punish myself, to keep away, to never let myself near you because I could never hope to deserve you again. But I am weak, beloved. So weak that my need for you outweighs any questions of deserving or punishment or pain.”

“No more punishment. No more pain,” I breathed, rubbing myself tenderly against him, feeling him throb and groan. “We’ve had enough of that for a hundred lifetimes.” I placed my hands on either side of his jaw, kissing him softly before locking gazes fiercely with him. I wanted to banish that haunted look from his eyes. “I forgive you, Wylf. You may not accept that yet, but I do. You can hate yourself if you want to, but I never will. Not anymore. You’re my husband. My mate. For as long as we both shall live, remember? ’Til death do us part. Well, death already came, and even that couldn’t part us. Because I’m still fucking here and I still fucking love you.”

I kissed him again, then reached to undo the laces of his trousers. He caught my wrists in his hands, as if to stop me.

“It’s OK, Wylf,” I murmured against his lips. “You don’t need to worry about protecting me. The prophecy is fulfilled. It’s done. You’re free now.”

Wylf shuddered and released my wrists.

I undid his trousers, pulling out his cock. It was thick and heavy and so fucking hard, glistening at the tip. The shape had changed, and I stared in fascination at the way it bulged in the middle, a hot, round swell so engorged it almost looked painful.

I reached a tentative hand forward, brushing the swell with my fingers. Wylf hissed in response, and I started to stroke, using both hands, wrapping them around the thick bulge and kneading it experimentally.

As I touched him, a prickling fever spread through my spine. My blood heated, and goosebumps pebbled down my arms. I shivered, weakness gripping me, weakness I thought I’d largely overcome in my recovery.

“Wylf,” I moaned, afraid of the sudden change in my body.

“Torrance, beloved, you’re starburning.”

Wylfrael eased me onto my back in the bed while my limbs convulsed, frosted fire licking through my veins. I was burning, boiling and freezing, every nerve inflamed to the point of ecstatic agony. My nipples hardened, and I arched on the bed, shivering uncontrollably. Something in me was changing. I was changing. Slick fluid soaked the place between my legs, and my insides clenched and stretched, feeling hot and cold and so fucking empty.

“I need you,” I groaned, the words distorted by my chattering teeth. Wylf ran soothing hands down my body, massaging trembling tightness from my quivering thighs.

“You need my knot,” he corrected me gruffly.

“No,” I whimpered. “Need you.”

“Torrance, curse me, Torrance. I’ll give you everything. Everything I have, everything I am.” He eased my thighs apart with a choked groan. “Stone of the sky, you’re already so ready for me.”

“Hurry,” I cried. I needed, needed, needed, right there, right between my legs. Deep inside, I needed fullness and firmness and pressure. I knew instinctively that it was the only thing that would help me, the only thing that would save me now.

Wylfrael pressed his slick tip to my wetness, and I trembled, breath burning in my throat. I fisted the furs, my spine arching right off the mattress. The pain in my chest was a distant echo to the agony between my legs, a need only Wylfrael could fill.

He pressed inside, sinking all the way up to his knot in one brutal movement. Before now, it had taken foreplay and adjusting to even get this much of him inside me. But now? It was nowhere near enough.

Wylfrael rocked into me, his knot grazing my folds with every thrust, a teasing kiss of sensation that made my fever spike higher. I was a desperate thing, wild and writhing, trying to drag him harder into me.

“I give you everything, Torrance,” Wylf rasped, punctuating each word with a hard thrust. “My knot. My life. My death.”

His words cut through the manic heat in my brain.

“Wait!” I gasped. “If you do this, you’ll be mortal. You’re asking me to cause your death! You’re basically asking me to kill you someday!”

“Good,” he growled fiercely. “So, kill me, then.” He grabbed my hands, holding them high over my head, twining his fingers between mine as he pumped into me. “This is what I want, Torrance. I want to be mortal with you. I won’t survive the loss of you – not again.” The motions of his hips grew more chaotic, less controlled. Every thrust drove his knot a little harder against me. Not all the way inside, but almost, a maddening press that made my eyes roll back in my head.

“This is what I want,” he said again, directly against my ear. “I’d rather live for half a heartbeat and make it count than live ten thousand empty lives without you.”

I wept, overwhelmed by his words and the starburn and him. I nodded over and over again, my hair tangling under my head.

“Yes, Wylf, yes. We’ll make it count. I swear, we’ll make it count.”

Wylf buried his face in my neck. His thrusts quickened, as did his breathing, until I was a sopping wet and sobbing mess, desperate and whining when I’d never whined during sex in my entire mortal life. His knot pressed close, so fucking close, teasing me, torturing me, until, with a sudden forceful movement and a guttural cry, he plunged all the way inside.

I gripped Wylfrael, my eyes so wide but seeing nothing, hearing nothing, sensing nothing except him, above me and inside me, his knot hitting some desperate place, stretching it, soothing it, until I was coming like I’d never come before. I quivered and clenched, milking him, my passage fluttering around his knot as he drove it slightly deeper and then froze.

“Torrance, beloved, I give this to you now. Yours and only yours,” he moaned against my ear. I nodded jerkily, tipping my head to the side, searching for his mouth. He started to kiss me, then stopped, his entire body arching as he came, his knot twitching and vibrating inside me with the force of his pleasure and what it meant, what we’d done.

I sobbed again, the beauty and the heaviness of the moment pressing down on me. Wylfrael was mine. And now, he was mortal. Bound to me, his life forever fused to mine. He’d live by my side and die by my side. And we could have a child.

I wept and held him and trembled with the poignant, ephemeral beauty of the future that awaited us. Short, perhaps, by his standards. But absolutely perfect by mine.

Wylfrael remained inside me for a long time, his knot locking us together until it slowly began to return to a more normal size. I fell asleep with him like that, exhausted and filled and never having felt more safe in my entire life. At some point in sleep, I was aware of him easing out of me with a grunt, and when I moaned, half-asleep, he made soothing sounds, kissed my hair, and drew my back close against his chest.

When dawn’s light filtered into the room, the starburn returned in full force, a chilled heat, a primal need that made my already weak limbs into weights I could barely lift or move until I was shivering in Wylf’s arms, whimpering and whining.

“Will I always feel like this?” I moaned as Wylf pressed into me from behind, his shaft hard, the centre swollen and ready.

“No,” he groaned, sinking in up to his bulge, wetting the thick swell with my fluids before pressing it fully inside with a hiss. “The starburn is temporary. I don’t know if yours is lasting so long because you’re human, and you’re sensitive, or because the first time it started, it was interrupted.”

Interrupted when I died.

I didn’t want him to talk about that anymore. Didn’t want to think about death or grief right now. I just wanted my husband to take care of me.

And he did.

He stroked over my breasts, belly, and clit, making me come mere seconds after he’d filled me. He tumbled into bliss soon after, exploding into my shuddering core.

I wanted to stay like that all day. Lying there, with him inside. I would have stayed like that forever if he’d let me.

But as soon as he could, he pulled out. With a flat voice that belied the hate and sorrow beneath, he said, “I must return to Sceadulyr today.”

“No,” I whispered, rolling towards him. “Why?”

He caressed my face tenderly, his expression grim.

“It was the deal I made to save your life. I cannot go back on it now.”

“Don’t go,” I begged, my eyes filling with tears yet again. The starburn had completely fucked my hormones, and I couldn’t control my extreme swings of emotion.

“I must, beloved,” he groaned. “He has made it enormously clear that what he has done for you he will undo if I do not hold up my end of things.”

“But he doesn’t have a star map! He can’t reach us here!”

“He will find a way,” Wylfrael said venomously. “His cleverness is only outweighed by his vengefulness. I have no doubt he’d make both of us pay dearly for abandoning him in the Shadowlands.” His fingers on my jaw hardened. “I absolutely refuse to do anything that puts your life in danger, Torrance.”

I didn’t say anything, just looked at him, my beautiful, agonized husband, my mortal husband. I placed a clammy hand over top of his, nudging my face harder into his touch.

“Alright,” I murmured thickly. It wasn’t just my life in danger, now. If I died, he’d die too. I doubted he was even thinking or caring about his own fate, solely focused on me, but I cared.

“I will return as soon and as often as I can,” he promised, regret clear in his voice. “Aiko and the others will take care of you in my absence.”

But they won’t love me. Not like you.

I kept the words inside, not wanting to add to his pain as he washed and dressed and prepared to leave again.

And when he actually did leave, I knew the stabbing in my chest had nothing to do with my scars.

ONE MONTH BECAME TWO, then three, then four. Eventually, my starburn faded, replaced with a connection to Wylfrael stronger than anything I’d ever felt before. Wylf spent most of his time with Sceadulyr, but as promised, he returned whenever he was able. He brought gifts from other worlds he’d escorted the Shadowlands god to – clothing and gems and spices. He brought me gorgeously scented oils that he massaged into my legs and feet before tenderly sliding his knot into the place I needed it most. He gave me exotic food, too, and when he insisted on feeding it to me, despite my growing strength, he’d inevitably murmur something about husbands and bonbons while dropping sweets between my lips.

During my recovery, I spent a lot of time learning about the Sionnachan writing system and knew enough to make some of the simpler stitches, but when I mentioned in passing to Wylf that I’d like more human-style writing and drawing tools, he brought that back next. They weren’t pens, but paintbrushes, the handles jet black, the bristles red. “From Maerwynne’s world,” he’d told me, handing them to me and then bringing me Sionnachan ink and small squares of silk stretched over frames to draw and write on.

I wasn’t much of an artist. Never had been. But I couldn’t read Sionnachan well enough to spend much time reading, and the effort of reading the alien language made my head hurt after a while. My recovery was going well, all things considered, but my energy was still depleted easily, and I had to rest a lot more than I would have liked. So, I used the paintbrushes. I wrote journal entries in a messy, ink-smeared script, and doodled, drawing flowers and planets and stars. I painted things from my past, too. Blue skies and white clouds. Leafy trees. Maps of Earth. My father’s house.

Winter turned to spring, and by that time I was strong enough to venture downstairs and outside with Aiko or Shoshen’s help. Sionnach was beautiful in winter, and it was glorious in spring. There was no grass, but instead thick spongey plant life that reminded me of clover, the leaves and stems violet, the flowers pink and white. Larger plants grew – bushes with crystal leaves and flowers with crystal petals. I asked Aiko where she got the herbs and fruits for cooking, and she’d shown me that the odd, shining plants had seeds inside gem-like pods with crystal walls so thick they shattered when they hit the ground, dispersing the seeds and stems that were also used for cooking. Small fruits also grew that way, like peas in a pod, and larger fruits as big as melons swelled in hard shells.

Near the castle was a small lake I hadn’t even known was there before. It was so strange seeing water that wasn’t blue but instead a deep, clear pink. I often spent time there during the day, breathing in the cool, clean air while Brekken ran laps around me, wondering if the water would be warm enough for swimming in the summer. I thought, by then, I’d be strong enough for that kind of physical activity. Especially if Wylfrael helped. I sat on the shore, chin on my knees, picturing the two of us in the water, him holding me, helping me drift through the gently lapping waves. Both of us happy. Both of us free.

I wondered if we’d ever get there. If we’d ever just be able to live a somewhat normal life, a life that wasn’t burdened by bargains and duty and distance.

I didn’t know the answer.

But I watched the waves, and painted, and healed.

And I hoped.

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