Chapter 28
Sacrilege
Damien
At moonrise, I wake to a knock on the wagon door. I open my eyes to find myself nose to nose with my mate, our bodies tangled in a ridiculous pretzel of interlocking limbs and mingled breath.
What a life I’ve given Eloise. Far from royal accommodations, this bed is a joke.
It’s a torture chamber. By some miracle, though, her face is serene.
My queen seems perfectly happy and perfectly unconscious, a glittering thread of saliva running from the corner of her mouth to the mattress, the tips of her fangs poking white from beneath her full upper lip.
Another knock and I shift into shadow, dress quickly, and open the door.
Jaqual waits on the other side, frowning in obvious disappointment when he sees me.
“Don’t look so disappointed, Jaqual. I understand that Eloise is the more appealing of the two of us, but it is both of us who are pursuing this arrangement with you. ”
He snorts. “Actually, that wince you saw was because I’ll have to smudge the wagon with burning sage after you’re gone.
This is a maiden’s wagon, Damien. In our culture, masculine energy isn’t allowed inside.
Had I known you were coming, I would have put you both in a family wagon.
” He runs a hand through his long, loose curls.
“Oh. Sorry.” I step outside, looking back at the violet door with some amount of guilt. Maggie said something about the prohibition of men and women sleeping under the same roof, but I assumed it was because the characters we were playing weren’t married. I didn’t know the wagons had rules.
Eloise appears in the door, dressed and somehow looking as put together as if she’d had a lady’s maid helping her. “I heard through the wall that we committed a faux pas,” she says. “Allow me to add my apology to Damien’s.”
Jaqual sighs. “I’m sure, to you, the restriction seems arbitrary or even legalistic. But to us, the practice is spiritual. Wagons, in my culture, signify freedom and purity of spirit. We build each wagon by hand, infusing it with masculine, feminine, or duovine energy.”
“Duovine?” Eloise asks.
Color stains Jaqual’s cheeks. “Something else…like me.” He places a hand on his chest. “Parents build wagons for their children during their teen years, and that wagon is as sacred as their soul. They’re taught to keep it well tended, and we only consecrate a wagon for a family after marriage, at which point, the couple chooses one wagon to expand to a suitable larger size. ”
Eloise raises an eyebrow. “Your people don’t, um, get together before marriage?” She hooks her fingers together.
I had the same question, but I’m glad she asked it, because I’m sure I’ve embarrassed myself enough in front of Jaqual today.
But the Rivertoad king only laughs. “Oh no. Rivertoads celebrate pleasure in all its forms. They simply do it outside their wagons.” He gestures toward the woods. “A maiden only invites a man inside her wagon if they are betrothed.”
“But we are married and Eloise invited me inside, so we’ve not offended the wagon,” I proclaim.
Jaqual closes his eyes and releases a pained breath.
“You are not Rivertoads. This wagon belonged to the daughter of one of our families, a young girl named Elsabar. Elsabar died at the age of fourteen, making this forever a maiden’s wagon.
No one lives in it because we keep it as a remembrance in her honor.
That is why it was available for Eloise. ”
I glance up at my mate, who now has a hand clasped over her mouth, no doubt remembering how we defiled the maiden’s bed last night.
“I’ll smudge the wagon myself,” Eloise says. “I swear I will remove every trace of masculine energy, Jaqual, if I have to magic this sucker apart and put it back together myself. I’m so sorry.”
Jaqual bows. “A simple smudge will do the trick. And perhaps, if anyone asks you at breakfast, do not mention your time of arrival, Damien.”
In other words, don’t let Elsabar’s parents hear that I besmirched their daughter’s bed and memory. I nod quickly, feeling like a rutting animal, and desperately change the subject. “I assume you’ve come this morning with an answer.”
“The answer is yes.” His shoulders sag, at odds with a stubbornly defiant tip of his chin. “You should know that the decision was not unanimous, but the majority ruled in favor of our bargain, and when it comes to Rivertoads and war, we act together or not at all.”
“That’s good,” Eloise says, turning as serious as I’ve ever seen her. “This spell demands compliance, Jaqual, from all three of us. If your people don’t participate, the spell will make them participate or die. Do you understand?”
“And the same goes for both of you?” The eye hanging around his neck winks.
I stare at Eloise. I hadn’t realized the severity of the spell, but as I don’t plan to break this agreement, I’m not concerned when she responds in the affirmative, and I know she’s telling the truth.
We will win this war, and Stygarde will have its first election, and if it doesn’t go my way, I will have Eloise.
A vision of us living in a tiny cabin we build ourselves fills my mind.
That end would be no consolation prize. My mother and Karyl will be disappointed, but this is the only way we stand to win. And we must win. That is paramount.
“The same goes for both of us,” Eloise says.
“Then make it so.”
Eloise nods. “Wait here.” She disappears into the wagon and returns with her satchel, then draws a canteen from its depths. “Follow me.”
The canteen is thrust into my hands. “Drink,” she orders.
I obey, and a hair-raising concoction of slime and fire fills my mouth. I cough repeatedly but can’t clear the taste. I thrust the canteen at Jaqual, and he has a similar reaction.
“What the hell is that?” he asks as Eloise drinks without incident.
“You don’t want to know.” She casts the empty canteen aside and leads us to the edge of the woods, where Phantom appears in all their white-scaled glory.
I swear to the goddess, I will never get used to the thing’s presence.
I can feel the death coming off them, smell the flames brewing in their lungs.
Phantom smells like the Darklands, like old souls and the forged metal of the gods.
I keep my eyes fixed on Eloise as a deep rumble vibrates in their throat, and they lower their head over hers.
The way they hover behind her, it’s easy to see the dragon as an extension of her magic, of herself.
She may be my mate, but she is also the power of generations before her, the vessel of her family’s witchcraft, the magic of ten thousand souls. It was much easier to underestimate her when the embodiment of that magic was a slight fox. Now, it is all I can do to keep my knees from quaking.
“Clasp hands,” Eloise commands.
Jaqual’s eyes swivel to lock on the dragon’s enormous teeth, and I almost laugh at the drain of color from his face and the way his throat bobs with a nervous swallow.
Even the eye of his amulet seems to widen.
But Jaqual does as Eloise instructs. His hand in mine is cold and clammy.
Eloise’s is firm, competent. She slides her grip up both our arms so that we are holding each other’s forearms rather than palm and fingers.
Only now do I feel how intimate this magical triangle is.
My mind wanders to Morpheus, to the power triune he used to bolster his power.
This is not the same, but maybe not so different either.
A tingle travels the length of my spine as purple ribbons of pure power wind around our arms and constrict like hungry snakes.
Eloise is chanting now. Some old Earthly language—Latin or Greek—the words fly too fast for me to register their meaning. Over us, the moonlit sky lightens, but not with a coming dawn. We are glowing. Our connection radiates like a small sun.
“Ah!” My inner forearms burn. Jaqual cries out too. The scent of burning flesh rises between us.
Eloise doesn’t seem to notice. Her eyes have gone entirely white, as white as the scales of the dragon behind her. The purple ribbons constrict until I think the magic might break my bones. The light we’re putting off turns red as blood.
“Elllloooiiiissseee!” I howl.
She can’t hear me. A storm is brewing around her, her hair floating in a sourceless wind, an icy coil of magic that cuts through the pain. She rises off the ground, floating like a mermaid in a sea of dark power. We are the only things tethering her to the earth.
The eye on Jaqual’s necklace is gone, the stone simply white glass now. He’s screaming into the wind, but I can’t hear his voice over the roar.
My bones are breaking. I cannot shift. I cannot escape.
And then the ribbons cut through my skin, sink into my flesh, and disappear.
The tightness, the pain, fades. Eloise lowers, feet touching the grass, eyes fluttering as her blank expression becomes hers again, her green irises returning, bright as ever.
She releases her grasp on both of us, and her face eases into a smile.
“It’s done,” she says, as if she’s just finished the dishes. She hasn’t even broken a sweat.
I, on the other hand, am trembling, as is Jaqual. I hold out my arms, palms facing upward, opening and closing my hands as the burning abates, and what I see etched into my skin makes my breath catch.
On the arm that clasped Eloise’s, her key sigil, the one from her back that resembles a dragon, is etched into my flesh, the swirls and archaic symbols that make up its form seeming to pulse and spin as I study it.
On my other arm, three lines signifying waves lap across my skin.
The Rivertoad symbol. His sigil and hers.
Jaqual holds out trembling arms and stares at the dragon sigil on his arm. His other one is bare, likely because he already sports the river sigil somewhere else on his body. Eloise only has the river sigil, confirming my theory.
On his chest, I see the eye return, blinking sleepily.
“The war room is waiting, gentlemen,” Eloise says. “We have a battle to wage.”