19. Malachi
I’d never heard Ciara sing in all our years together, she’d never even hummed a tune. Now Sir Axis said that, why hadn’t she sung like her mother? She clasped her hand with mine as I walked her back to the table. There were now other people sitting at the table we hadn’t met, but Sir Axis extracted Ciara from my hold and led her up onto the stage. With nothing else to do but sit, I did so. Nerita leaned onto my side and rubbed her hand up and down my arm. I politely placed my hand over hers and stopped her caress before putting her hand on the table and smothering it with my firm palm so she couldn’t budge it. She huffed but then Sir Axis took the stage.
“Everyone we have a special performance tonight.” He spread his arms wide. “Most of you will remember the songstress Niamh from many years ago and how she used to perform for us. Well, now we have the great honor of her daughter Ciara to sing for us tonight.”
A round of applause broke out and whispers and murmurs rippled around the room. Ciara was gorgeous. A spotlight shone on her from a bright golden beam of light glistening from the middle of the luminous blue lights. The fabric of her dress shimmered as she walked to the center of the stage. Her silvery blonde hair darkened to a golden blonde reminding me of gold. The flowers of her crown appeared even brighter than normal. She whispered something to Sir Axis, and he smiled while Ciara didn’t appear happy. So much for the happy potion.
She clasped her hands in front of her while Sir Axis left the stage and reclaimed his seat at the table with me and the others. With a click of his fingers, the musicians began playing again. Ciara opened her mouth and then closed it again.
I smiled at Ciara encouragingly and her gaze found mine through the crowd. Every time she gazed at me like that the rest of the world fell away. There were only the two of us.
This time she opened her mouth and let the words out.
“In the days of old,
The kingdoms shared,
The beauty and wisdom of the many.
In the days of old,
We frolicked in the fields,
Shared our love with all.
Until the day arose,
An enemy of Fae,
An enemy of us all.
Until the day arose,
We fled the realms,
Evil squashed our love.
The king decreed,
To seal us in,
To keep us safe.
The king decreed,
To protect us,
To love us with his grace.
We were happy,
In our kingdom,
Content in our love.
We were happy,
With our knowledge,
Protected and safe.
Then one day,
The Spring changed,
The magic less.
Then one day,
Our powers.
Not the same.
Our love,
Our hope,
Our existence,
Our choices,
Left us dying.
Choices made in love.
Our love for all,
Around us,
Our love for,
Family.
Friends.
Our fated mates.”
Her voice was the sweetest sound I’d ever listened to in my life. My heart swelled inside my chest. She’d not only sung beautifully, but she’d sung a song with meaning. The song told a tale. Our tale. I was so proud of her. My applause was the loudest in the room. I stood and clapped even louder if that was possible. If only I could tell her how much she meant to me.
Ciara seemed to float down the stairs in her radiant gown, and I stepped toward her before she sat at the table, there was no way I wanted to share her with Sir Axis again.
“You were magnificent,” I said.
She ducked her head, but I placed a finger under her chin and tilted her face upward again. Ciara deserved the attention, but I was selfish and wanted it to be from me.
“Dance with me?”
Her lips tilted up in a small smile. I slid my hand away from her face before I held onto it and plundered her lips with the raging desire running through me. Threading my fingers with hers, I led Ciara on to the dance floor. Around us, the Water Sprites danced to the music still filling the room from the musicians. Their tune had changed from one of melancholy to a softer, sweeter cadence. Once I paused, Ciara stepped closer to me and placed her other hand on my waist. I copied her pose, lifted our joined hands, and stepped into a waltz even though the music didn’t suit the human steps.
Soon our steps changed with the music, became more fluid, more in sync with the tune as though the beats sunk into our very skin and danced our limbs. Our bodies drifted closer and closer until each step brought an agonizing torturous brush of her body against mine. I willed my cock to not react, but it stirred in my pants growing harder with each barely there touch. I curled my fingers tighter into her waist hoping she’d complain and make us stop, but she lifted her chin and gazed into my eyes with a question deep inside their blue depths.
The words of love hovered on my tongue, but I couldn’t tell her. She deserved her fated mate. No matter how much I attempted to think of her as only a friend, my body had other ideas. The music changed and turned sultrier. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the Water Sprites writhing against each other on the dance floor, but the sight of the overtly sexual display didn’t stop me from dancing with Ciara. She was the only one I cared about. I’d dance with her all night. All day. Every day.
She sighed and dropped her head to my chest laying it over the rapid beating of my heart. Could she hear how it beat for her? Could she sense I wanted her to be mine? Her hand slid from mine, and she wrapped both arms around me. We were so close now not even a piece of her beloved paper would fit between us. I gave into my desire and wrapped my other arm around her, giving into the dream they fated us as mates. As I swayed in time with her, I closed my eyes as the song ended and another started.
How many songs we danced through, I couldn’t say, but without warning Ciara jerked out of my arms and placed one hand over her stomach, the other over her mouth.
“What’s wrong?”
“Shite not now,” she mumbled. “I need to get out of here.”
Her scent which had engulfed me while dancing grew even more enticing. Even more alluring. My mouth watered for a taste of her.
“You’re in heat,” I said, knowing full well what that meant.
“Aye.” She chewed on her bottom lip.
“Let’s get you somewhere else. Somewhere safe.” I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and walked her through the throng of Water Sprites who’d progressed from dancing to outright fornication on the dance floor. How had I not noticed? Because I’d been too wrapped up in dancing with Ciara for song after song unwilling to let her go. There was only ever her and to have her in my arms in any way was the most mind-blowing experience.
I led us to Sir Axis’s table and found him lounging back in his seat with an amused smirk on his face. I wasn’t a confrontational person, but my fingers curled of their own accord to punch him and wipe the smirk from his face.
“Well, if it isn’t the ‘friends’,” Sir Axis drawled.
Ciara frowned. “I’m sorry to leave the festivities.” She swept an arm around the room which had turned into an orgy while we’d been dancing for what could have been hours in our blissful state.
Not only was the dance floor full of semi-naked Water Sprite’s fornicating, but so were the tables. On the table beside ours, they’d spread a woman across the tabletop while two men suckled on her nipples and a third pounded into her. The moans coming from the woman grew louder and louder until they grated on my nerves.
“You could always stay and join in.” He cocked an eyebrow.
“The princess wishes to leave, so she will,” I said.
“Ah, he has a backbone. I like it.” Sir Axis stood. “Come with me.”
“If you so much as put a hand on her,” I threatened.
“That’s for the princess to decide, is it not?” He stepped closer to us. “If I’m not mistaken, you sweet Ciara, are in heat and in desperate need of service.”
“Don’t talk to her like that,” I said.
“It’s the truth.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Have no fear, you can give in to your body’s demands tonight without the consequences that would without doubt occur if you were back home.”
“What does that mean?” Ciara asked.
“The potion you drank earlier is also a contraception. Otherwise, we’d have too many of us running around here.” He chuckled. “Besides it’d become incestuous after a time.”
Ciara wrinkled her nose.
I agreed with her. While group sex wasn’t anything I’d even contemplated, after seeing it in the flesh, I saw its appeal. But there would only ever be one woman for me, and she wasn’t even the one destined for me.
“I can think of nothing worse.” Ciara lifted her chin and met him head-on for attitude.
Dia, I loved her even more.
“Very well. Let me show you to a house where you’ll be safe to weather your desires if that’s what you wish.”
“Aye.”
His smirk dropped, but he led us out of the ballroom and into the much fresher air outside. Each inhale was easier, but I still smelled Ciara’s heat. It didn’t help that with every step she brushed against me and all I could think about was having her naked against my body.
Sir Axis rambled as we walked, but I couldn’t concentrate on a word he said. He might have told us how to cure the spring for all I knew. I hoped Ciara was paying attention because I sure wasn’t.
Each step across the boards took us deeper into the village. More and more houses appeared as the fog no longer surrounded them. Across the horizon of the water, the first sparkling rays of the sun rose into the radiant black sky. The twinkling stars diminished with every minute the sun rose higher and there were less and less to look at.
“Here we are,” Sir Axis said stopping in front of a quaint timber board house. “You can wait out your heat inside this house. No one will bother you here.”
“And we’re to take your word for it?” I asked.
Perhaps we should leave and go back through the waterfall, but then what if her fated mate was a wolf shifter in the village below like her other two sisters? Was it wrong to want another day with her to myself even though I wouldn’t be with her?
“My word is law here,” Sir Axis said with so much authority I didn’t even think to question him again.
“We’ll be good here,” Ciara said.
I whipped my head toward her. What did she mean by us? Didn’t she appreciate how hard it was for me to be around her while she was in heat? It was why I’d left her alone in the Summer Court palace the other time she’d rode it out in solitude because she hadn’t wanted to risk falling pregnant to another Fae. If she was worried about being in the house alone, then I’d be there for her, but my cock was already hard with wanting her before she was in heat and now…
No matter how much I already loved her and wanted her. Desired her to be mine in every way possible, then I’d shove those thoughts aside as best I could.