Glowing
Chapter fourteen
Iwoke to sunlight streaming through the window at an angle that suggested it was later than dawn. Nine o’clock, possibly. I had no way to confirm this because my Casio and my iPhone had not survived the transition, which remained one of the more practically inconvenient aspects of my situation.
I got out of bed. I looked through the window at the sky that had seemed wrong when I woke in the field. Since then, somehow, it had begun to feel like mine.
At the treeline far below, I noticed the amber of turned leaves. The air through the gap in the stone carried the smell—cold underlining something organic, a crisp edge like a fresh apple cut open over dry leaves, the faint sweetness of things completing.
Autumn. At least that was the same. Although this version probably didn’t feature football, trick-or-treating, or pumpkin-spice lattes.
I looked at my finger.
The ring was still glowing. It wasn’t lighting the room or announcing itself. It was simply present, a quiet, warm gold that existed at the edge of perception, the way a candle exists in a room already lit. Constant. Warm.
I was claimed.
Skip woke and looked at me standing naked by the window. I felt his desire rise with immediate and flattering clarity.
He got out of bed, and the morning light moved over him with unnecessary generosity. I looked down at his cock, and my thoughts drifted to the way he had undone me earlier in the morning.
He held the back of my head as we kissed, his other hand warm at my waist.
“But I must get to work,” he said, pulling back with reluctance. His professional obligations and personal preferences were in direct conflict. “We must prepare. Morvanna will not wait.”
Morvanna.
In the post-claiming warmth, I had almost forgotten that I was living in a military fortress on the front line of a vampire war.
“She sent Mira for you,” Skip said. “Consider what Mira knew through the dark bond. Two years of it. This outpost. Every defense, every weakness, every rotation. What I know of the other outposts on the line. And she knew me personally. My habits. The exact way I can be reached.”
He drew a deep breath.
“If Morvanna had only wanted me—turned, recruited, removed—she had Mira. She could have attempted to recruit me at any point in the last two years.”
I had already run this calculation.
“But she didn’t move,” I said.
“She did not move,” Skip said. “Until after you arrived.”
The strategy was not complicated. Morvanna had held Mira in reserve after turning her.
Mira was a significant asset, deployed once, at the moment an Earth woman appeared at the most exposed outpost on the line.
Skip had never been the objective. He had been, at most, a bonus prize she might collect alongside the actual target.
The actual target was currently standing nude in front of a window.
“Caen told me something,” I said carefully. “About why Morvanna seeks women from my world.”
Skip was quiet for a moment. “I am aware that Caen keeps certain counsel to herself,” he said.
“I have commanded this outpost for six years. She has been here for two. In that time, she has told me a great deal, and I have understood that there is more she has not told me. I do not know the nature of what she guards. I know that she guards something.”
“I don’t know how much I’m supposed to share,” I said.
“You are my claimed,” Skip said. “What you carry is mine to help you carry.”
I looked at the ring. He was right. This bond meant no performance, no pretending the weight of this was not there.
“Morvanna is interested in women from my world because they bring knowledge and abilities Mytharo cannot produce for itself,” I said. “Caen believes that too.”
Skip was very still.
“There is more,” I said. “The Sanctumspire mages have been weakening the barrier between our worlds. Deliberately. Creating conditions where women from my world can cross through.”
Concern tightened the line between Skip’s brows.
“Who else has crossed?” he asked.
“There have been many women from Earth in Mytharo’s history,” I said. “Women from Earth were involved in defeating Zhor. One helped Newardia understand what Morvanna had become. Another helped break the Sovarith Imperium’s rule over the humans of Traxzis.”
I drew a breath. “There are probably others no one knows about. The mages at Sanctumspire want more of this. They believe more women from Earth can help Mytharo.”
“And Morvanna knows they are coming,” Skip said.
“Yes,” I said. “Which means she has known about the barrier work. Which means every woman who crosses is a target before she arrives.”
“Killing you was never the objective,” Skip said. The tactical clarity arrived in his voice as he worked through it. “If she wanted you dead, Mira could have killed you in that corridor. She did not try to kill you. She tried to recruit you.”
“Into the dark bond,” I said.
Skip nodded.
“A woman from your world, inside the dark bond, connected to Morvanna directly. Mytharo’s advantage becomes Morvanna’s advantage.
Every Earth woman who crosses and joins the dark bond is not just neutralized as a threat.
She becomes an asset. Her knowledge, her capabilities, whatever made her cross-worthy in the first place—all of it feeding directly to Morvanna. ”
I sat with this.
“So, the recruitment speech wasn’t desperation,” I said. “It was strategy.”
“It has always been strategy,” Skip said. “Morvanna does not act from desperation.”
Skip looked at me.
“You understand quickly,” he said.
“I study military strategy for a living,” I said. “Or I did. The principle is the same. You don’t always destroy the enemy’s asset. You capture it if it has useful knowledge.”
“Yes,” Skip said. “Which is why what happened in the corridor cannot happen again.”
I felt the weight of what he meant. The grief underneath it.
“The crypt will be sealed differently,” he said.
The High Commander’s voice was fully present now.
“The perimeter rotation will change before nightfall. Caen will need to review the theological defenses. What Morvanna sent through that crypt was not a standard incursion. It was targeted. Which means she knows this outpost in a way that she should not.”
He did not say Mira’s name. He did not need to.
“The dark bond,” I said quietly.
“Yes.” A pause. “Two years of knowledge. The layout. The rotations. My habits. She knew where your rooms were.”
The cold clarity of that landed. Mira had come directly to the corridor outside Skip’s quarters.
“As long as you remain within this fortress, you are under my protection. I will not…”
He stopped. He said the next part with the directness he reserved for true things.
“I will not allow another breach. Not while you are here.”
“She will try again,” I said.
“Yes,” Skip said. “She will try again.”
“With something else.”
He did not disagree.
“Then we should probably figure out what that something else might be,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “We probably should.”
Skip could sense the shift in my mood. The movement from post-claiming warmth into something more tactical, more alert.
It was a strange experience, being felt that clearly.
I was used to people not even registering what was happening with my emotions, let alone having a direct line into them at all times. The adjustment was going to take time.
“You are my claimed now,” Skip said with a warmth that was entirely separate from the tactical conversation we had just been having. “There will be plenty of time. Rest first. I must attend to my duties.”
He moved across the room toward his clothes.
I enjoyed watching him cross the room, the muscles moving beneath his skin. Then he turned, and the morning sun illuminated the rest of him.
“I said there will be time for that later,” Skip said, without turning around.
The bond. Right.
He could feel my lust rising with the same clarity I could feel his. I had no emotional privacy from this man whatsoever. I was choosing to consider this a feature rather than a problem.
He turned. He was smiling.
I was interested in the mechanics of this. The bond was not telepathic. I could not hear his thoughts. What I had was his emotional state, transmitted directly, at all times. This much I had already cataloged.
What I had not fully cataloged was what had happened during the claiming itself, which had been something different. Not just his emotional content. His experience of me, transmitted directly, while he felt my experience of him.
The empathic connection was the baseline.
During intimacy, the bond opened further.
I felt his physical experience of me while he felt mine of him.
Emotion was permanent. The recursive exchange of sensation was something else entirely.
Each response passed between us and returned amplified, until there had been no clear beginning or end.
The magical mechanics behind this were fascinating.
Magical. I had an internal resistance to this word that would require active management. I was an empiricist who had landed in a world where magic was apparently load-bearing infrastructure.
Skip dressed in full leather with his sword at his side. The High Commander reconstituted from the man who had been beside me in the dark.
Skip crossed to me and kissed my forehead gently.
“Rest, my beloved.”
Through the bond, I felt what he meant by this. He could feel I was still somewhat fatigued.
I returned to the bed, still feeling the steady warmth of him, and closed my eyes.