Chapter 38
Cyra
Bressen and I returned from the pleasure house just before sunrise. We’d spent the whole night with Helaina experimenting and exploring my desires – as Bressen had once called it - and we were both exhausted but satiated.
Bressen had continued to refuse to take Helaina, but he was more than happy to watch her fuck me.
The courtesan left the room at one point and returned with a box filled with tools of pleasure, ‘toys’ she called them, and she’d pulled out a large flexible cock that could be strapped to her hips.
The cock was made from the resin of a tree that only grew in a specific valley in the country of Vidall, and it was fashioned into something that looked and felt like a real cock.
Bressen’s delight had been nearly palpable as Helaina strapped the cock to her hips, put me on my knees in front of her, and fucked me with the thing until I’d moaned my pleasure into the bedding.
Then Bressen had made me straddle Helaina while she lay on the bed with the toy inside me, and he’d taken me in my other entrance the way we’d once done with Samhail so many months ago.
I hadn’t thought myself capable of coming again by that time, but as it turned out, I liked being filled in both places, and I’d climaxed so intensely my legs shook by the end.
I’d barely had enough energy to open a portal back to our rooms at the Citadel, and then Bressen and I had fallen into bed to sleep just as the first rays of dawn lit the sky.
We were woken by a pounding at our door close to ten o’clock, and Bressen dragged himself out of bed to answer it. It was Samhail, who confessed he’d done something ‘inadvisable’ last night, and he needed us to get up.
It turned out Talyn had told Samhail she was leaving, and in an impulsive attempt to keep her from going, he’d claimed the Right of Primacy over her.
Bressen looked blankly at Samhail at this news, but I let out a surprised, “Oh!” as I remembered what Samhail had told me about this gargoyle custom at the reception for my own wedding.
Bressen’s eyes gradually went wider and wider as Samhail explained that the Right of Primacy was the gargoyle equivalent of a proposal and marriage ceremony in one, but that Talyn wanted to reject his claim and had chosen the right to fight it through combat.
“Just so I’m clear,” Bressen said to Samhail, “You claimed the most dangerous assassin on the continent as your wife against her will, and now you need to defeat her in combat in order to validate the claim. Does that about sum it up?”
“You forgot the part where she doesn’t actually have to kill me to win, but she probably will anyway,” Samhail added.
“That was a given,” Bressen shot back dryly.
“Honestly,” I added, “from what I know of Talyn, you’re better off if she tries to kill you outright rather than more painful alternatives.”
Samhail cocked his head to concede the point, then left so Bressen and I could get dressed.
The fight took place after lunch with Surgeon and Serise acting as judges to the legitimacy of the outcome.
And what a fight it had been.
I’d never seen Samhail fight as hard as he did then, and I was shocked to learn Talyn was good enough to match him fairly well. I was barely able to keep up with the action as my eyes tried to follow the blur of movement in the training yard as the two elite warriors fought.
I screamed when Samhail and Talyn stabbed each other at the same time and fell to the ground, and I rushed to Samhail, every fiber of my being roaring at me to help him, but he’d refused to let me work on him.
He made me heal Talyn first, and I’d worked on the assassin as quickly as I could before one of my best friends bled out on the ground.
I healed her just enough to get her out of danger before going back to Samhail.
Still Samhail had resisted my attempts to heal him. He made Talyn accept her victory before he allowed me to work on him, and the assassin accepted it just in time, as I’d felt Samhail fading fast.
Then, in a move that surprised everyone but me, Talyn turned around and claimed Samhail by Right of Primacy instead.
A full human had never claimed a gargoyle before, but Surgeon and Serise weren’t aware of any prohibition against it.
Thus, after a very brief gargoyle-style divorce, Talyn and Samhail were remarried as I worked furiously to keep him from dying.
To say I was exhausted by the end was an understatement, and Bressen carried me back up to our room to put me to bed for a nap. I wanted him to lie down with me, but there was again a knock at our door. This time it was Talyn, who asked to speak to Bressen, and the two headed off to his study.
I was asleep for maybe an hour when Bressen’s voice in my head coaxed me awake.
Sorry to wake you so soon, my love, he said into my mind as my eyes fluttered open, but Phaedrus is here with news about that piece of text he was translating for you.
My eyes popped open. It had been a while since I’d heard from Phaedrus, longer than anticipated, and I was eager to see what he’d found.
I hadn’t undressed for my nap, so I just threw myself out of bed and hurried through our suite to Bressen’s study. Phaedrus was already seated at the large table with the tome opened to the page we’d found earlier.
“I expected to hear from you sooner than this, Phaedrus,” I said as I went to the table to sit down. I stopped short as I got a good look at the priest, though, and I frowned.
The same symbol with interlocking triangles and radiant lines I’d seen on the foreheads of Bressen and the gargoyles flashed on Phaedrus’s head, but that wasn’t all.
“My lady? Is something wrong?” Phaedrus asked.
“You’re…glowing,” I said.
Phaedrus looked at me in shock. “What?”
“I noticed something like it when I first saw you in the Priory,” I said. “I thought it was a trick of the light, but this can’t be a trick.”
Indeed, Phaedrus’s entire body seemed to emit a faint white light.
It wasn’t the same type of glow I saw when someone lied.
That was more just a rosy hue on their skin, much like a sunburn.
This was an actual light that cast an aura all around the priest, as if he might light the room if we turned off the lamps.
“Cyra, what are you talking about?” Bressen asked, his brows furrowed in concern.
“You don’t see it?” I asked.
“See what?” he asked as he looked Phaedrus over.
I looked back to Phaedrus, but he still wore a mask of confusion.
“You’re surprised I can see the glow,” I said to him. “Why?”
“It…It’s not possible,” Phaedrus said. “No one should be able to see what you’re seeing.”
“And what is she seeing?” Bressen asked. His voice had taken on a hard edge, and I saw the brief flash of red in his eyes. He moved quickly to put himself between me and Phaedrus, but the priest threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender as he stood.
“I mean her no harm, my lord,” he hurried to assure Bressen.
“Then answer my question,” Bressen said coldly.
“Bressen.” I put a hand on his arm. “You can’t think-”
“I think he’s obviously been hiding something from me,” Bressen said as he tried to push me behind him again, “and he better tell me very quickly what that is.”
Phaedrus’s gaze darted uncertainly between me and Bressen before he nodded. “My lord, I’m an awen,” he said finally.
I frowned, but when I looked over Bressen’s shoulder, his face bore a look of understanding.
“How did I not know this about you?” Bressen asked.
Phaedrus shrugged. “It’s not something I think about much. It’s something I just am, just as you’re a man or an angelus.”
“What’s an awen?” I asked.
“Awen were made by the Creator,” Phaedrus explained. “We’re beings of inspiration and creative motivation. We’re mentioned in the same part of the sacred texts as angelus and gargoyles.”
“So you serve the Creator?” I asked. “The way gargoyles serve the Protector?”
“In a way,” Phaedrus said, “According to several of the sacred texts of the Trinity, when the Creator made the universe, it granted its fellow gods each a gift. It allowed them to choose a type of being that would represent them, something that would help carry out their work in the world. The Protector chose gargoyles, huge, nearly invincible beasts with skin like stone who could protect all those who served the Trinity. So the Creator created gargoyles to guard the temples and the priests and priestesses who inhabited them.”
“And the Hands of the Gods,” I added.
Phaedrus considered this, then nodded. “Yes, that would make sense. I assume this is something you learned recently?”
“Let’s just say it explained some things for me and Samhail,” I said.
“Ah, I see,” Phaedrus said.
“Go on,” I urged him.
“As you may have guessed, the Nemesis chose angelus as its gift from the Creator,” Phaedrus went on.
“Angelus were made to help the Nemesis keep balance in the world, to ensure an equilibrium between light and dark and to mete out reward and punishment when warranted. They were given wings so they could see the world from above and remain ever watchful. With so few angelus left nowadays, these roles have largely fallen by the wayside, but you yourself still fulfill some of these duties in your overseeing of Revenmyer, Lord Bressen.”
Bressen had relaxed now, enough for me to move out from behind him so I could see Phaedrus better.
Phaedrus nodded. “For its own purposes, the Creator made awen, beings that could spread creativity, inspiration, and motivation among humanity so they might thrive. We’re supposed to operate largely unseen, but like gargoyles and angelus, we have another form, and that form is like light made flesh.
Few people have ever seen awen in their true forms because we’d be nearly blinding to them.
Of the three beings, though – angelus, gargoyles, and awen – only awen still exist to any great degree, and we’re generally close by wherever there is lots of creativity.
Music, dance, theater, writing, poetry, even the recording of history, which is my specialty. ”