50. The Consort and Her Witness #2
“Do you know what you’ve done, starlight?” he breathed against her silk. “You’ve declared war. On the Council. On Doctrine. On my Voids-damned brother…”
Auryn cupped his face, stroking her fingers through the wild onyx strands of his hair. “My Resh’Agar. I’ve told you before. I would go to war beside you in a heartbeat.”
He surged to his feet, lifting her easily, her body pressed against the aethersteel of his chest plate. His lips brushed her forehead.
“No,” he whispered fiercely. “I would shield you from it.”
“Kail—”
“Wait.” His breath shuddered, his pupils wide, his cheeks flushed with something more than battle fervor. “Before anything else can stop me, I must speak.”
She framed his face with her palms, thumbs smoothing across the sharp line of his cheekbones. “Tell me.”
He looked at her as if the moment itself were a battlefield. His eyes blazed with focus, his entire being gathered like a bow drawn taut.
“Forgive me.”
Her breath broke.
No hesitation. No distance. Just the truth.
“For what?” she breathed.
He lifted her higher, pulled aside the edge of her collar and shifted it down her shoulder, baring the swell of her breast.
“Kail?”
His hot breath ghosted over her chest as he pressed his lips against her skin, right over her heart.
“Forgive me.”
She tried to shift, tried to move his face so she could see his eyes, but he held firm—his arms around her so tight it bordered on the edge of pain.
“Kail, please…you can’t just say something like that and—”
“Fifty three years, little one…for fifty three years I left you alone. I brought you here, and then I left you. I took the Rite of Scars. I thought I was protecting you. I thought I was keeping you away from what the Resh’Agar must be. A weapon. A tool. A Void that swallows all light.”
Auryn’s hands tightened in his hair.
He means it. But do good intentions justify how he forgot you?
She shoved Vargrún’s voice away. Slammed down walls she hadn’t been willing to put in place before. She shut off the Bond. Just for now. Just long enough to hear Kailorien’s truth. Not her Silari. Not her Bonded. Just him.
“He’s speaking again,” Kailorien said.
“Your voice is louder,” she insisted. “And the only one that matters. Please. Don’t stop, my love. Tell me all of it.”
His big body shuddered, and he exhaled, his breath moist and hot and wonderful against her shoulder. Auryn stroked his hair. Let him gather the courage he so needed. Her fearless Resh’Agar—commander of legions, shaper of the world, master of Rune and mana and war—only hesitant when it came to her.
His voice faltered, fracturing with a guilt he’d never shown her before. “This…all of this…is my doing. This city is a poison. Mine to carry. Mine to rot beneath. But I couldn’t bear to let you go where I could not follow. So I dragged you into my curse. Because I am a coward.”
A breath against her skin.
“I could have arranged a life for you. Should have tried harder. But when I saw the way the world would covet you, would see only the silver in your veins and not you…I couldn’t leave you.
I couldn’t. I thought this would be better.
This cage. This prison. At least here you would be safe beneath my gaze…
I hurt you…I turned away…but now look at you…
shining so bright even the blind cannot help but see your truth. ”
Another breath.
“So, please…my love…forgive me. I should never have left you. I should never have let you wonder if I held you in my heart.”
He stopped. Went quiet. But the tension in him didn’t ease. Auryn’s throat ached. She caressed his face, sliding her hands to his jaw, coaxing him to meet her eyes.
“I came with you, Kailorien. I knew the cost, even if not every piece of it. I chose you.” She kissed him on his brow, her lips lingering on Kenaz. “You do not need my forgiveness.”
“I would beg for it regardless.”
“I gave it,” she smiled. “Long, long ago.”
His eyes flickered with doubt, with disbelief. “And if fate could be rewritten—would you choose this again?”
This time, her answer flew like an arrow loosed. True. Unwavering.
“Unequivocally.”
His breath caught.
“I would choose you again. And again.”
They stood suspended, eyes locked, the silence ringing louder than any horn. In that gaze, they saw each other’s ruin and their salvation.
“I love you,” he vowed, voice breaking on the words. He lifted her hand and pressed it to his chest, over the furious beat of his heart. “Feel me through the Bond. Any time you doubt. Always.”
Auryn closed her eyes and released the walls she’d put in place. The Bond quaked between them—too full, too raw, too vast to be contained. Her heart swelled until she thought it might burst.
But even as joy flooded her, a shiver curled at the edges.
Shu’Khan’s smile rose in her memory—too measured, too sharp.
Zeera’s mocking voice whispered again, 'May the Destroyer guide your steps.'
Auryn tightened her grip on Kailorien’s hand. Emerald light surrounded them, the corridor cocooning them in its marble cloak. The Polis pulsed with their heated breaths, each sound a touch that excited the mana within, spurring it to warmth, to flow, to life.
Stars, but he was a sight in his full armor. Towering, broad, and terrible as a coming hurricane. The air bent to his will. His hands could crush metal and break bone. The magic within him was a calamity waiting to be unleashed.
A being forged to orchestrate the world’s ruin.
A man wrapped in the mantle of a monster.
Her madness. Her cataclysm.
In the wake of his words, he’d left her buoyant. Floating. Hopeful that this was the last unspoken thing between them.
Forgiveness asked.
Absolution granted.
Not just for him, but for her, too. For loving him more than anyone had right to, and for pulling him into her orbit when she was a comet doomed for starfall.
“My Bonded,” she whispered. “I love you. All of you. Even the war in your blood. Even the madness.”
He lowered her to the ground, pressing his lips to her heart, whispering her true name in a rough timbre that echoed deep between her thighs. She bit her lip as his mouth slipped lower.
A pause as his vast blue eyes met hers again.
He asked without asking.
Always.
“Kneel, Resh’Agar,” she rasped.
“As you command, my Sovereign Star.”
He obeyed.
It was like watching the sun kneel before the moon.
As he touched the floor, his armored boots shook the marble. His thick black cloak floated and settled around him. Dark hair spilled down his shoulders as he hooked a hand behind her knee and brought her thigh to his lips. The kiss was chaste. Worshipful. Something Doctrine had never dreamed of.
Yet Auryn had.
Many times, she’d dreamed of him kneeling just like this.
But seeing it now, unfolding before her very eyes, did not do it justice.
“How shall I serve you?” he asked.
But Auryn’s courage had flown away with all her sense when she witnessed the molten need in his eyes.
When his touch moved farther inward. When his gloved hands slipped aside the folds of her kasara and he pressed his lips to her center.
Her head tipped back, hitting the wall with a soft thud. But she didn’t feel it.
Only the cold press of the marble at her back.
The hot grip of his hands against her body.
The sharp snap of silk as he ripped away her underthings.
And then—Stars—and then his tongue.
Pressing, licking, loving until it pushed away everything but sensation. The ever-present hum of the Shields dissolved into the steady lilt of her moans echoing on stone. Her hands fisted into his hair, and he rewarded her with a groan that shook her spine.
The Bond burst open like a window on a storm.
He breathed her name—“Auryn’reh”—and her voice crested with her pleasure.
She surrendered to his mouth, snapped the leash she always kept tightly cinched around her self-control.
Her cries rose in volume, bouncing off the walls, flying down the corridor.
And she did not care who heard it.
Let the Attendants listen and the Companions flinch in envy.
Let them bear witness to how the Resh’Agar and his Sokar adored one another.
And in turn, let them learn that love did exist.
Not just Vessar. Not just Estar and Threads and Ketraan and all the names for partnerships that had no soul.
Love.
True.
Messy.
Disgraceful.
Flawed.
And theirs.
As pressure built inside of her, she braced one hand to the wall and the other to his shoulder. When the rush took her, it took all of her—mana bursting through a thousand stars, a desperate cry breaking on his name.
He rose on a breath, caught her before her knees could give out, and urged her legs to wrap around him. Tight. Pressing. He touched his forehead to hers, laughing once under his breath, already half wrecked, already melting with her.
“Starlight,” he sighed. “Not here. I won’t have you in the hallway like an animal.”
“You will,” she insisted, pulling his mouth to hers, exploring him, tasting her ecstasy on his tongue. “And I’ll love every moment of it.”
He took her up against that very wall. No careful restraint.
Only transformation into flame that had finally found its kindling.
She met him with all the wild she’d buried for weeks—her hands splayed at his shoulders, her mouth open to his, her voice unashamed as it spilled into the spaces between his breaths.
“Look at me,” he commanded, and she readily obeyed. He kissed her—hard, hungry, needful—and then he breathed—a tide drawn from the oceans of Ennea, flowing from the Nine Rivers through her mouth into her lungs.
Bliss.
Wonder.
Filling her until the ache behind her ribs loosened and turned to soaring skies. Strength flooded where exhaustion had once lived. Her fingers—weak from want—slid to his neck, to the pulse under his jaw, to the line of runes she’d studied nightly for years like the scripture to her own soul.
Silver flooded from her fingertips.
She Wove him as he Breathed.
Her peace traded for his power.