Chapter Forty-One
Hyacinth
Hyacinth lay in her bed and didn’t fear dreaming for once.
Instead, she welcomed it. Clean of all the soil, hair freshly washed, wings dried, and a kiss to her forehead from Austin.
She sank into the bed happily. Cuddled up against her hunk with a snoozing rabbit at her feet, she should be able to sleep.
However, she lay there, wide awake and staring across the room at the mirror.
She dared it to change. Dared Sabine to show her face and prove Hyacinth’s intuition wrong.
Yet, it never shifted. No shadows darted across it.
Ghosts did wander in and out of their room, but she met their eyes and they lingered as curious things.
More akin to cats, slithering up to her side to inspect her with their hollowed expressions and gnarled fingers.
When she smiled and touched one of her fingertips to one of theirs, they grinned with a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth and skittered away.
A soft hiss filling the air, an excited ghost off to tell the others in the house it touched her.
No Sabine.
Was that it? Was the tree all I had to do?
She squeezed her arm around Austin. Nuzzling her face against his chest. Come on, sleep.
Let me sleep this time. She craved sleep for once to be the escape everyone said it was.
Only, she continued to count sheep. Then her breathing.
Then Austin’s. She even shifted so she could watch Snuffles as he chased something in his sleep.
No Sabine.
Maybe I just don’t know how to be without this other presence in my mind.
She’d lived for so long with Sabine taking up room in her body, in her mind, that she almost felt lonely.
She didn’t know how to get comfortable in her own bed, with only her thoughts to keep her company.
No more dreams of murdering people in a city she’d only been to in her sleep.
No more waking up in places she hadn’t fallen asleep in. And no more Sabine.
She repeated that over and over and over until she finally yawned. Sleep took her, begrudgingly. Hyacinth yawned one last time before she dropped into a dark abyss.
When she opened her eyes, she stared at the streets of King’s Fall.
Dim streetlights hummed over her head as she walked down a sidewalk.
It felt eerie, like her first nightmare.
And when she glanced down, she realized she was drenched in blood again.
Sinew was woven through her fingers. Panic spiked in her veins as she pulled it off her.
With each tug, she quickened her pace till she was running.
Her wings flailed helplessly behind her as she raced to the edge of town.
The sky went red and she heard the alarms. Boots hit the ground and tears welled in her eyes.
She was inches from the tree line when she heard them call her name.
“Sabine! Freeze! Stop right there!”
A spell hit her back, throwing her into the forrest. Branch after branch pulled her through the woods, hot potato, being passed around until she was thrown outside the protective shield of King’s Fall.
She dropped into the dirt. Blood caked to every inch of her, even with hot tears rolling down her cheek, she needed to get clean.
They’ll find me like this.
Hyacinth gasped, sitting up from the bed, heart racing.
Not again. She glanced around, checking the mirror, and finding it empty.
The windows were pitch black, night having settled in.
They’d gone to bed almost immediately after their bath.
She wasn’t surprised to see a starry night through the crystal panes.
She was, however, happy to find not a cloud in sight.
A hand to her chest, she gulped down air.
“Bad dream?” Austin murmured, rubbing his face.
“Very,” she muttered, unable to even detangle her thoughts.
Ruffling her hair, she broke her wild mane free from the tangled knot it was in.
Austin rubbed her back, easing her tight muscles till she relaxed into his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed like a well needed vice grip.
She was forced to melt by the pressure of his muscles.
It pushed a meager giggle from her. Then he kissed her forehead again.
Which earned him a hum of happiness. His lips traveled down the bridge of her nose till she kissed him firmly.
At first, it was sweet. A gentle press of their lips together, their hands tangled in each other.
The lovely scent of clean linen mixed with soap on their skin filled her nose.
She had to push the werewolf teddy bear aside in order to get up next to him.
Only Austin twisted her and she suddenly straddled his chest. Their kiss stopped being sweet and gentle when she raked her fingernails across his skin.
“Hyacinth,” he groaned into their kiss. She didn’t need him to tell her with words that he wanted to be claimed. Much like her grove, Austin needed to be communed with, claimed, and his roots pushed up inside her. Starting with that tongue.
She grinned as she gave both his tusks a gentle kiss. “Austin, I want you to taste me.”
“Gladly,” he rumbled, starting to roll as if to plant her against the bed. Only he stopped when two vines crept down from the canopy of the bed and pinned his wrists out to his side. His eyes widened at first, then darkened with hunger as she pulled her nightgown up and over her head.
“But I want you to do it from there.”
“I make a pretty good seat,” he blurted out, earning him a cackle from her.
She wiggled out of the underwear she’d pulled on after their bath and left both fabrics on the pillow by his head.
He nuzzled them at first, smiling, proud of himself.
She crept up to his face, knees by his temples, ankles hooked under his arms, and her palms flat against the headboard.
Austin immediately leaned toward her, tugging at his restraints. He swiped a tongue across her slit.
Hyacinth shivered. “Impatient and hungry.”
“And yours,” Austin confessed, stealing what little air she had in her lungs. Hyacinth stared at him, her thighs trembling outside his ears while his gaze focused on her cunt.
“And mine.” She felt a burning sensation in her cheeks and throat even though it didn’t reach her skin.
It seared her insides as she sank herself onto his mouth.
Austin spread her open with the flat of his tongue.
Her world was burning hot and spinning as he hungrily lapped at her.
Once he’d encouraged her clit out to play, she was practically a puddle against the headboard, barely kept up.
His tusks pressed into her skin but weren’t uncomfortable.
Especially as they held her up. Austin might have been sarcastic when he said it, or just silly… but he did make a pretty good seat.
Her hips rocked for him. Austin switched from sucking on her clit to fucking her on his tongue. His body undulated behind her, and she thought about twisting on him. Right then and there, turning like a top and sucking his cock down into her mouth.
“Austin?” she panted.
“Mmgffhfpm,” he hummed against her buzzing cunt.
“What cock do you have attached? No, wait, don’t stop—ah…yes, right there. I’ll find out.”
Austin obeyed. In fact, he obeyed so well, he sucked on her harder.
Fucked his tongue into her faster. She was nearly too dizzy to look back.
Then she flicked a hand over her shoulder and twisted at the waist to see.
His two cocks, thick and stiff, stood at attention.
They are not going to fit in my mouth. Instead, she twirled her fingers, letting the vines dipping out of the canopy envelope him.
They gave him something to thrust into and she could feel how good that was for him.
He moaned into her curls and the vibrations made stars explode behind her eyelids.
Hyacinth cried out, bucking harder. He drove himself into her one more time before focusing on her clit.
As he fucked her vines, she rode his face.
Driving his tongue harder and harder against her till her trembling legs snapped closed around his ears.
She felt cum splash against her back. His hips bucked up and off the bed, his release coating his belly and her wings till they were both boneless and sated.
Hyacinth barely had the control to release him before she toppled to the side.
Austin, laughing with her, fell out of bed with a heavy thud.
She slapped around for the matches and candelabra on the bedside table.
The telltale thump of a displeased Snuffles on the bed only made them cackle louder.
Just two giggling fools all the way to the bathroom where she only managed one candle.
Sneaking a peek of herself in the mirror, she saw the mess she left on his face and the mess he left on her back.
“Let me clean that up.” He sobered up his laughs long enough to say words. Then he was dabbing up her back with a warm towel. She made one for his face, then his chest. When she went to reach back and assess the damage of her hair, Austin apologized profusely.
“I’m going to have to wash it again, aren’t I?” she sighed.
“If I go and whip us up a late-night snack and hot cocoa, will you forgive me?” He wiggled his brows suggestively at her.
“Why would I have to forgive you?” She snorted before strutting to the tub. “But snacks and cocoa sound great.”
“I’m on it!” He jabbed a finger in the air.
“Austin! Don’t forget to pull your pants back on!
” she yelled after him, receiving a ‘Oh! Yeah!’ in return from the room.
She shook her head. Shoulders still trembling, her stomach tight from the laughter, she cranked on the tub.
The water rushed out hot and fast, filling up the basin quickly.
Copper pipes rattled against the walls and steam filled the air.
She stepped into the bath for the second time that day and let herself sink into it.
This was for her, to ease the ache in her bones and to clean the cum out of her hair.
As she pulled her hair out of the rib level water, she could barely see through the steam.
With the one candle flame dancing on the bathroom counter, it was a dark, smog rolling through the room.
She was leaving the faucet on to fill it all the way up, so that Austin could join her with their snacks and cocoa.
Hyacinth sat back against the edge of the tub. Not a thought. Not a sound. Not a feeling. Just a warm buzzing in her core and love in her chest.
Then fingers slithered out from within her hair, wrapped around her face and dragged her back underneath the water. Sabine’s fingers.