Chapter 18 Mirror
MIRROR
My drakes and I lay in a tangled knot as I wake from dreams. As I heave hard breaths, surfacing from nightmares, I take a moment to recover.
Because my dark dreams were just as tangled as the pile we’re all sleeping in, intense and strange.
Nothing I would expect right now, as I rest in our cozy cuddle.
After our incredible first group lovemaking.
I review those dreams now, as I lay in the crook of Bjorn’s arm, Strom wrapped around my knees. Mikkel has his face pressed to my breast, with Baldur returned to human now upon Bjorn’s other side.
My odd nightmares are nothing I can make sense of, however, as my drakes continue to snore. As they rest, I feel how they’re full of energy now, thanks to us clearing Baldur’s curses.
My energy is recovered, too, though confused memories of my family assault me now, making my senses feel jumbled and strained. Memories of my father, my mother, and my sister, they’re all long gone, though they feel so near now from my dreams.
I hold my living family close now as my dead one assails me; as I breathe in the quiet room, I see their faces, vivid. It’s almost as if they came to me from the Void of Ancestors as I slept, to tell me something. Nothing sticks with me now, however, except a sudden memory of my sister’s dragon.
I see her now, assaulting the Grand Palace in Stockholm the day Bjorn and I fought her and she died. Crimson with gold markings like me, my sister Lithava was my elder, fiercer in her power though my same size.
As I watch our battle anew, recollections racing through my head, I suddenly see something I’d forgotten about in that event, renewed because of my dream. As the memory crashes through me, reawakened after all these years, I note a black ring upon my sister’s dragon-finger as we fought that day.
It was still there when Bjorn blasted her down out of the skies. I can’t see any detail on that ring in my memories; I catch my breath now, though, as I wonder whether my sister’s black ring might have been connected to the Usurper and the Black Dragon Five, like Emil’s.
It makes me stew now, a vicious darkness taking me, as I wonder whether my sister might have been part of all this long ago. On the heels of that terrible thought comes another one; of whether Maryse knew.
Because Maryse passed my sister over for a position studying at her side. It was something my sister was furious about, ever after—that she had a similar Bloodwalker talent as me, but that Maryse never trusted her to study it.
Those worries came true, when Lithava blamed our uncle for our parents’ deaths at Riksfold and went after his throne, trying to take him down. She died for her vendetta against him.
Blasted out of the skies by my very own First Bloodmate.
I glance at Bjorn now, snoring to beat the band in his heavy sleep, though nobody wakes from it. Sadness about that event fills me; also gratefulness that he was there to back me up when I was injured and couldn’t finish that life-or-death battle against my very own sister.
I lift, kissing his soft lips, though he only gives a low rumbling purr in his sleep and doesn’t wake.
But something calls me now in this strange fey midnight. I can’t seem to shake my terrible dream of Lithava; even as I feel again how unending all my drakes’ and my power was when we formed our truly balanced Ouroboros for the first time, blazing like a firestorm through the ancient skies.
As I snuggle close to Bjorn with Baldur on the other side of him, our hands touch on Bjorn’s chest. As Mikkel’s lips press into my breast, Strom breathing gently, draped between my thighs, I feel that immense joining of our powers still thrum through all of us.
It lights me up from the inside now—as some incredible amalgamation of all our magic moves through us. I feel it still sending searing waves of bright and dark fire-magic blistering through me, even though nothing manifests now in the air.
As I shiver in Bjorn’s arms, however, feeling that massive power still rushing through us all, Mikkel feels it. With a sexy growl in his sleep, he kisses my breast, lipping my nipple into his mouth and sucking it.
Mikkel pushes me against Bjorn with his face now as he sucks and licks, and rolls my nipple around in his mouth like I’m the perfect candy. I’m moving more, trying not to cry out from all that power and energy roiling around inside me as he does it.
Pushing me to go wild yet again—and just fuck and fuck with my drakes.
I need to catch my breath, however, after all that power and passion stormed through us—not to mention processing my dreams. As my hands finally push Mikkel away, he goes, still asleep, but with the sexiest dark and stormy growl ever.
As my inner drake and drakaina roil inside me now, hot but also in a strangely dark place, I lift up, then gently untangle myself from Bjorn and the rest of my drakes.
Their energy feels far better, but I know they still need to sleep; we’re still in a recovery space, and need to generate it a little longer for us all to truly power back up and face whatever we’ll do next.
Hope fills me now, however, for the first time in weeks, as I pause beside the bed, watching my drakes. Because I feel how they’ve come to accord now; at last, they all know they don’t have to fight over me, and that no matter which way we do it, we’ll always end up here.
Creating this towering firestorm of magic between us—incredible.
Every sensation, every touch our bond offers is shared now, thanks to what we’ve accomplished. It’s a potent combination; even more so, because we’ve banished the Black Dragon’s curses from Baldur as we filled up our magics.
I move to his side of the bed now, inspecting him. There are no more curses upon Baldur’s skin as he sleeps, or anywhere in his flesh. Sparkling and clean, his veins pump a beautiful dark blue blood as he rests, restored, his ornate silver, white, and blue runic tattooing shining upon his chest.
As he smiles in peace, Baldur pulls back a little from Bjorn to reach down and rub one wrist in his sleep. He doesn’t wake, though, or leave their cozy cuddle.
Something I feel called to step away from now, as my dreams pull at me.
As I take in the quiet reaches of our room, I see how it’s been wrecked by our firestorm of lovemaking, which razed its vaults. For the first time since our group sex, I see how nearly everything not made of silberskrae or stone lays in smoking ruins around us now, decimated.
The massive canopy of the bed is shattered from Baldur’s shift, thrust aside into a pile of beams beside the bed.
Very little survived our lovemaking when our amalgamated auric fire razed the hall at the height of its combustion; the silberskrae furniture is intact, as are the trees, because silberskrae is hardy stuff.
Every chair and chaise is missing its padding under the now-empty vaults, however, the drapes that once hung from the canopy gone.
I see that our incredible firestorm left no scorch-marks or even ash anywhere, however. Pristine, the room is clean now, with not a trace of mildew or moss, all the vines and mushrooms gone.
The room seems to almost sparkle, as if the alabaster stones and the bright sky-blue blocks have been polished clean by our intense razing of magic.
As I note it, I suddenly lift my eyebrows to see that glimmers of gold and silver fire seem to run through all the detailed runes inset into the stone walls between the carvings.
An ancient story upon these walls coming alive around us—everywhere.
As all that beautiful script whispers around me in the fire-cleansed room, stunning, I wonder what it means. Neither Mikkel, Strom, nor Baldur has been able to make heads or tails of this dialect of our language, however, written on these walls.
Something even more ancient than the Blood and Bone War five thousand years ago, this place is a relic of our kind, lost to time.
As I take in that beautiful, flowing magic upon one of the nearest columns, alive now as the fire-runes seem to shift and flow upon it, I marvel at the majesty of what our most ancient Ancestors wrought.
Some deep instinct fills me then, that this underground city beneath the ruined city above was not meant to be discovered by just anyone. Like a time capsule, it was buried and intended to be forgotten until later generations who were strong enough found it and could make use of it again.
As Aesa’s Truthstone flickers to life upon my chest, I suddenly know that the entire history of a people we no longer understand is written in this place.
I wonder then if it has anything to do with our current predicament; as that fey movement of the runes pulls at me, my dreams call me, dark and insistent.
I have the thought then that this place might have answers for us about the Black Dragon. After all, it was last used by Aesa and her True Knights as they opposed her own sister Hedda, who was trying to bring Bloodwalkers into ascension over all else.
Aesa agrees with me, as the silver stone in my chest seethes like wildfire now, roiling with gold, white, and bright crimson runes. But Aesa’s protection inside me is almost gone; I can’t hear her speak to me anymore as her Truthstone flares. I only get the sense that I need to go exploring.
And see what secrets this underground city holds.
I wrap up in a new robe of floor-length crimson silk now, embroidered with gold, from the storage areas behind their magically protected vaults, then head out.
I don’t need a torch tonight; as I move from my room to the hall, the whispering silver-gold fire follows me, illuminating runes next to me and just ahead.
As those subtly flaring runes lead me on now, somewhere I don’t know but feel is right, I pad over the luminescent mosses of the floor barefoot, my footsteps silent in the ancient darkness.