CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CAMBION
The Veil
“Cambion? I was worried about you. Are you okay?”
She appears like a siren in the mist, sauntering toward me with a hypnotic sway to her hips. The air is tinged with her fragrance, her delicious musk that causes me to swell in my trousers. My palms itch to touch her. My tongue desires a taste of her sweet flesh. I want to sink my teeth into her and mark her so that no one else can.
“Yes,” I manage. She nods and we both stand there for a second or so and then I decide the force is too strong, my need too great. I close the distance between us and grab her around the waist, pulling her into me. She appears shocked at first but then lust clouds her blue eyes. I don’t stop her as she runs her fingers down the length of my tunic, just barely missing my wound.
The heat of her hand penetrates me, banishing the chill from my bones. I lean into her, pressing her against my chest as I lick a stripe along her neck. She trembles. It’s sweet, but not as sweet as the taste on my tongue. Eilish laughs breathlessly, gripping my shoulders and biting her lip. They are mine to bite. My tongue swipes along the seam of her mouth and she opens for me. Why do I fight this? Why do I struggle against the current when it feels so right to ride the waves?
Her hands are moving, snaking their way between our bodies. Her fingers curl around the bulge of my erection, stroking and groping me through the fabric. My hips buck and I force her against the tree. It’s just like my vision. Only seconds before I heard her footsteps, I was buried deep inside the spasming channel of her glory. But only in a dream... this... this is real. Eilish is real.
She’s never been more beautiful. That unearthly passion fills me. I know it’s her power, her hunger that drives my hips into her, but I’m helpless to resist it. For a second, I can allow myself to forget who she is and what she is. She’s mine, if only in this moment. I tilt my head and deepen the kiss, allowing her flavor to replace the kiss of every other woman I’ve known before her.
They are all gone. Even Aima is no more. They can’t shake me to the center of my being with just one kiss. Only Eilish can do this to me. Only she can make me hate myself and give me the strength that a throne never could all at once. Nothing can compare to her... and yet I pull away with a pitiful groan. She slides down the tree, peering at me beneath her long lashes.
“Wait for Dragan to slake your lusts, demon.” I wince at the sound of my own cruelty and not able to handle the pain and rejection in her eyes, I storm off toward the cottage.
With any luck, she will take a minute to recover from our kiss and give me enough time to return to Pyre’s home without her. I need to speak to the necromancer, anyway. I must see Theren, and I can’t do that without his help.
But Eilish stops me from walking with a biting grip on my arm. I turn around and stare in shock as I notice one of her eyes is completely black while the other is vibrant blue. I’ve never seen this happen to her before and my concern quickly outweighs my anger. “Eilish...” I start.
“No.”
“No?”
“No, you aren’t doing this to me again,” she says.
“One of your eyes has gone black,” I say.
“What?” she responds and her eyes go wide as fear sets in.
I summon a reflection on my palm and allow her to see herself. She gasps and gently touches beneath her eye. My first instinct is to berate her for being so ignorant of her kind, but then I remember she has no memories. “Nothing like this has ever happened to you before? Not even when you fed from Baron?”
“No. Never. Wait... at Variant’s palace, Flumph said my eyes went black when I had to seduce the guards.” She tugs her hair from the disheveled braid down her back and it cascades around her shoulders, strands of black hair framing her face. “My hair changes when I feed,” she says and points out the strands in question. Then she looks up at me. “Morrigan said I need both light and dark or else I disrupt the balance inside me.”
“Thus you need to take me as a lover? Or Variant?” I add with a chuckle. “We’re the only beings of light strong enough to feed you without dying, ourselves.” I turn back around, but Eilish stops me again. She looks up at me with a clear blue gaze and I see sadness there.
“You only ever see one side of me, Cambion. But you always fail to see the real me. Maybe… maybe this will help.” Eilish places her hand directly over my wound. Her brow pinches in concentration and a white light glows from beneath her fingers. I feel the muscle and flesh pulling itself back together and closing. Her magic doesn’t feel tainted or evil in any way. She feels like an angel.
“Thank you,” I mutter begrudgingly.
She follows me back to the cottage and I make a pot of tea while she tells me what happened on her journey. Harpies and restless spirits sound about right. When I’m not losing myself to my thoughts in the forest, I’ve been spending my time reading the books on Pyre’s shelves.
“Cambion?”
“What?”
“I need to ask you something… strange.”
“What?”
She takes a deep breath. “I need to know… were we lovers before?”
My stomach drops as my heart speeds up. It feels like an eternity that I battle with myself over whether or not I should admit it to her. Part of me wants to drop this charade and tell her the truth but the other part of me… is afraid.
I realize then that I’m not ready. I don’t have the heart to tell her.
We weren’t lovers. Not even close. While I hate her and the others for keeping her nature from me, I hate myself even more for keeping the truth hidden for so long.
I was the one who took Eilish’s memories. I never wanted it to last this long or to lock everything away. My only intention was to make her forget that she’d come to me in a time of need, asking that I save her mother and sister from someone.
She paid with her body, and I was just twisted enough to let her. Though I’m a being of light, that doesn’t mean I’m in any way… good. Variant is proof enough of that. But the fact is... I failed. Her mother and sister died, and I wanted her to forget it was me who killed them. I wasn’t the one who wielded the blade, true, but I failed to protect them, all the same. I failed in my promise to keep them safe. And for that, I can never forgive myself—and she can never know the truth.
***
BARON
While we were busy arguing with Aima, more soldiers emerged from the collapsed tunnels. They come running at us a few at a time, but it’s manageable. Dragan’s bitching and complaining, however, is wearing on my patience. I shove him from time to time, trying to get the point across that he needs to shut his fucking mouth so we can find the portal again. The one Noni brought us through is gone. It closed up after we failed to cross over to The Veil in time. So, here we are, up to our asses in Unseelie soldiers.
An arrow pierces my shoulder and I look up. A guard in the tower fires his bow from an unspeakable distance, but his accuracy is uncanny. He can’t match Pyre’s skill, but he’s damn impressive nevertheless. Aima fights beside us, arguing with Dragan for the hundredth time. “I love him!” she screams.
“How can you say that? You loved Cambion once, that didn’t stop you from leaving him for Theren!”
“I never loved Cambion like I did Theren.”
“It doesn’t fucking matter,” Dragan yells at her. “You’re more valuable to us than you are to him.” The damn gargoyle doesn’t know when to shut his mouth.
“Theren will turn his back on you like he’s done to everyone else. How long will it be before the Unseelie end up like everyone else in the realms?” I shout above the fight.
“ He wouldn’t do that.” She slashes her sword with graceful fluidity, cutting down the palace guards but not killing them. Dragan, however, has severed nearly twenty heads since the soldiers began fighting their way toward us.
“Theren’s working with Variant and whoever else is pulling the strings around here,” I argue. “Whether you believe me or not, you can’t stay here. If Theren isn’t the one trying to execute you, then someone else is—and that means you aren’t safe.”
Noni gasps and I rush to her side. She fires bolts at the soldiers, pausing only to point over my shoulder. I turn around and see Pyre stepping out of a portal. He looks better and much stronger than before. The guards drop to the ground with a snap of his fingers. Aima gapes at him in awe and hurries over to help Dragan lift Kolvar. I turn to face him. “You look well, my friend.”
“Wish I could say the same about you,” he quips. “Flumph told me what happened. We need to return to the cottage.”
“Damn, am I glad to see you!” Dragan claps Pyre on the back with his big burly hand and hurries through the portal with Kolvar. Noni follows, but Aima hesitates again.
I walk over to the stupid woman and force her to meet my gaze. “If you love Theren, you’ll help us stop him and Variant. You said yourself there’s more going on than we’re aware of. If they’re being controlled by someone, they’ll need you. Do it for the man you love, and for your people.”
She nods firmly and launches herself through portal. Pyre assists me and we make it to the other side without having to fight any more soldiers. He closes the rift and points the others in the direction of the cottage. I hang back to catch my breath. “Where the fuck were you while I was out fighting my ass off? Lazy bastard.”
“I was traveling across The Veil to restore my power. And from what I just saw, Aima was doing most the fighting. I was not aware you needed a woman to fight your battles.”
“And Eilish didn’t just have to carry your fat ass up a mountain?”
“She didn’t technically carry me,” he chuckles. Then the laugh falls off his face. “Eilish is ready to take responsibility for her survival. She’s ready to start training.”
I start walking beside Pyre. We take our time, letting the others pull ahead so we can talk. “That’s good?”I ask, not really sure why he’s telling me this.
“And I want you to start training, as well.”
“Training me for what?”
“Do you know how many necromancers there are?”
“No.”
“One.”
“You?”
“Me,” he says with a quick nod. “I was once human.”
My eyes go wide. “How?”
“Listen and I will tell you,” he chides. Then he takes a deep breath. “I was in love with a woman who had the ability to see the future. She was the last seer of the mortal realm, and I sold my soul to save her from the Singularity. What I didn’t know was that I’d be forced to watch her grow old and die while I looked after the spirit world. She died not knowing how much I loved her.”
“I’m sure she knew.”
“My point is, I’m the last necromancer. That doesn’t mean I have to be the last Guardian of The Veil. I need to begin training a successor. And I’ve chosen you.”
“Me?”
“You are my friend, Baron. I trust you,” he replies.
“You called me Baron.”
“I did.”
“My name,” I start.
“Is Baron,” he interrupts. “And that’s the first step of your training—becoming the man you know you are deep down. The man you’ve always been.”