Chapter XXXI #3
“Not here,” she managed to get out. “Let me show you.”
Rising, Fia took the Priest by the hand and led him to the altar of Tyrus, god of war. She pushed aside the basin ready for offertory fire and the sacrificial knife with an impatient sweep of her arm, and they let out a metallic clang as they fell to the stone below.
“Here,” Fia said adamantly, and the Priest did not hesitate.
As she lifted herself up onto the altar, he knelt before her, on the rust-red, spreading stain where a Matria and countless others had died.
The Priest lifted the hem of Fia’s shift, his hands running from her knees up the soft and welcoming stretch of her flanks.
She moved a little, spreading her legs further to welcome him, and then his clever Inver mouth was on her.
Every fraught word, every secret that had been shared and plot that had been devised between them, had been a promise leading to this moment.
It was too much to hold, it was unbearable, it would tear her apart, and—
“Stop,” Fia gasped, as she felt her body tensing in preparation for the moment of release. “Silas, stop.”
He pulled back at once, wiping his mouth on one sleeve and turning his face up to Fia as a question.
“I want to wait for you,” Fia said, stepping down from the altar.
The Priest was on his feet at once. With a low, appreciative sound, he spun Fia so her back was to him, and she bent, bracing herself with both hands splayed out against the altar of the god of war.
There was a moment of anticipation where Fia could feel and hear nothing but the vast silence of the cavern sanctuary, and then the Priest thrust into her, drawing a cry from Fia as she felt herself fill with him.
She hadn’t owned, even to herself, how badly she wanted this—the Priest inside her, enveloped in her, the two of them born for antagonism but moving in perfect accord.
One of his hands fell to her hip, and the other snaked around her, back to the place that Fia knew now would always, always be waiting for his touch.
Gradually, the rhythm between them built, growing quicker, deeper, more desperate.
Fia was on the brink of distraction, driven wild by what was rising within her.
She couldn’t bear up under it, she would fall apart in a fit of temper or anguish or the storm of weeping she’d been staving off, she would—
The Priest shuddered and groaned, and the sound raised Fia’s inner fire into an inferno.
She drove herself against him and the light in her was a torrent, was a blaze, was a solar flare as the ecstasy of Raea’s Gift shot through her, a molten fount of pleasure surging through her limbs as she shook and came and the Priest came with her.
Briefly, they stayed as they were, Fia supported by the war god’s altar, the Priest standing on the spot where Silith’s last Matria had died.
When they drew apart, Fia set to tidying herself with a clean altar rag the Priest handed to her wordlessly, before going to retrieve his shirt.
It didn’t seem that there was need for speech between them—Nikolau had always wanted to talk afterward, but Fia preferred silence.
Returning to her, the Priest pulled Fia into the protective circle of his arms, and they stood so for a long while.
“I left you something, in your cell,” Fia murmured at last. “A gift, to mark the beginning of Justus’s reign and your regency. Make sure you get it soon. It won’t keep.”
The Priest nodded, and reluctantly Fia stepped away.
“I’m going back up to the king,” she said. “I’ll see you tonight at the coronation, if not before.”
“Fia,” the Priest said, stopping her when she was halfway across the altar rise.
She paused, turning to look back at him. “Yes?”
A brief silence fell, during which she felt the weight of things unspoken between them, as vast and troubling as the Invers’ mountain itself.
“Nothing,” the Priest said eventually. “Never mind.”
Fia was already out into the darkness, her feet following the grooved path that led to the stairs and the upper tunnel, when the Priest caught up, taking hold of her and spinning her back into his arms. He held her once more, burying his face in her hair and speaking with barely restrained passion.
“I want you to know something,” he said roughly.
“You may not trust me fully, and I do not ask that of you, but if I live, and if I hold the throne, someday you’ll look at Honoria and see what I’ve made of it.
And you will realize that every move toward the better world you spoke of was for and because of you.
Not for the gods. Not for the goddesses.
Not for a cloister or a clan or any other power.
For you, Fiametta Raeana, as you stand before me here and now. ”
For a moment, Fia clung to him, everything in her singing at the force and goodness of his offering. She did not deserve it, but oh, it worked like balm on her wounded soul.
Without a word, she pulled herself away and melted into the dark.