Chapter 16
When Raiya awoke very early the next morning, Azreth was not waiting outside the room for her like he usually was. She was relieved. She still wasn’t in the mood to see him.
She ventured into the main hall, where she was alone except for one other solitary figure. She was surprised to see an elf with indigo skin and raven hair kneeling before the altar, bending so low that his forehead touched the floor.
“Madira?” she asked.
He started, jerking his head up, and he scowled when he recognized her. “You again?”
“I didn’t know night elves worshiped Moratha,” Raiya said, coming to lean against a column near the altar.
He looked annoyed. “We do not worship Moratha.”
She glanced over at the altar, and at his position before it. “You’ll forgive me for assuming…”
“We worship the night goddess, Ravi. The spirit of our homeland.” He rolled his eyes, as if she was stupid for not knowing the difference. Or perhaps she wasn’t the first one who’d asked, and he was tired of explaining it. “The Moratha worshipers are one of the few groups who won’t attack my kind on sight. There are no places of worship for our goddess outside of Kuda Varai, so I come here instead. It is not Ravi’s temple, but it is a temple nonetheless, built on a ley line that eventually leads back to the homeland. My prayers will reach the Goddess’s ears, have no doubt.”
He seemed very confident. Or perhaps it was wishful thinking masquerading as confidence. Kuda Varai was a very long way from northern Uulantaava.
“I’m sure you’re right,” Raiya said hopefully.
He nodded approvingly.
“Is there a reason you and Jai don’t return to your homeland?”
He hesitated, a somber look crossing his face. “It’s complicated,” he said. “We can’t go back.”
“I understand the feeling.”
He got to his feet, looking toward the door to the main hall. “Where is your monster? Isn’t he with you?”
“Probably upstairs.”
He smirked unkindly. “Getting weary of him, are you? I can’t say that I’m surprised.”
She didn’t want to talk about it, so she just smiled blandly. “Where is your sister?”
“With the caravan. We arrived in town this morning.”
“Did you come to the temple by yourself? Is it safe for you to be out alone?” Perhaps more importantly, was it safe for the townspeople to be alone while a night elf was around?
He grinned as if he’d read her mind. “I’m not the one you need to worry for.”
Soft footsteps sounded from the doorway. They both turned to see Priestess Gereg entering, her hands folded into her black robe. She appeared to sleep in her makeup, because it was even more smeared and grotesque-looking than before. Perhaps that was the goal.
“I see you’ve met our other new acolyte,” Gereg said to Raiya. “How lovely for Moratha to deliver us even more of her faithful. May her darkness shroud all of us.”
Gereg seemed to think Madira did indeed follow Moratha, and he wasn’t correcting her. In fact, he was glancing nervously at Raiya, his lips pressed together.
Instead of pointing out the misunderstanding, Raiya bowed her head respectfully. “Praise her,” she said. Madira seemed to relax a fraction.
“Indeed,” Gereg said. “You didn’t tell me how long you’d been a follower of the dark goddess, Acolyte Raiya.”
Raiya fiddled with the end of her braid, glancing at Madira. He raised his eyebrows.
“Oh. Well, it was fairly recent,” Raiya said.
“Truly? When was your awakening?”
Raiya wasn’t particularly good at lying. She told as much of the truth as she could. “I had an awakening about a week ago. I suppose I had reached rock bottom. But now I’ve found a way out.”
Gereg nodded sagely. “The dark goddess often seeks us out when we are at our weakest, when we are most open to her wisdom. The assurance of death comforts you, does it not?”
Raiya stared at the old woman, trying to work out whether she expected an answer in the affirmative. Then again, this was the goddess of death they were talking about. “Oh, yes. Definitely.”
Gereg smiled wanly. She took a breath, moving on to a new topic. “I have received another message from the dark goddess.”
“Another dream?” Raiya asked, barely hiding her skepticism.
“Indeed.” Gereg raised her hands as if making a grand pronouncement. “In my dream, the demon announced his purpose on our plane.”
“His purpose?”
“Yes. He is here for a reason. Haven’t you guessed?”
“I guess not.”
“You will see.” With that cryptic statement, she folded her hands behind her and walked smugly out of the room.
Madira frowned after her, fidgeting with the pommel of his sword. “That woman is creepy as all hells.”
“On that, we can agree.”
He looked her up and down as if reassessing her. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “The cultists are not as harmless as they seem.”
“I appreciate the warning, but I can take care of myself.”
“Whatever you say.” He took a step back, and then his entire body faded until it was almost gone. He was still there in front of her, but he’d turned into a shadow, barely visible. It was the magical camouflaging all night elves were born with. She’d heard of it, but never seen it before now. “Give my regards to your monster.”
“He’s not a monster.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
When Raiya wentto find Azreth later that day, she had a harder time locating him than she expected. None of the cultists seemed to know where he’d gone. It wasn’t until she went to the attic and craned her head out the window that her search came to an end.
Her demon was sitting on the roof in the shadows beneath the chimney, surveying the city. His knees were tucked up against his chest as if to make himself smaller. Somehow, it seemed to have worked. He’d avoided the attention of the townspeople below, and he observed them unnoticed. The sun was bright that day, and it was almost warm. If she’d been in a better mood, she’d have been tempted to join him. But when Azreth’s eyes slid in her direction, she felt a flicker of irritation and apprehension that made her want to turn around and leave.
“I’m ready to try a counter-enchantment,” she said instead. She still intended to free him, after all. Even if he was a bastard, it was the right thing to do. And besides that, she had started to think of it as a puzzle, and she would be annoyed if she left it unsolved.
He raised his head in interest. Then he unfolded his large body and followed her into the attic, squeezing through the broken window frame. Raiya set her satchel on the floor and turned to him. There was no point in delaying the inevitable.
“You’ll have to provide magic for it,” she said. “We should get that out of the way, first.”
She had managed to get one of the mages at the temple to recharge her baton rather than going to Azreth for help. His artificial arm hadn’t returned, presumably because he didn’t have enough magic to summon it. He was going hungry, but he hadn’t spoken to her since their argument.
She waited, hoping he would take the lead. It would be easier if he would just do it quickly without her having to think about it too much. That was her strategy for dealing with Nirlan’s hunger, too. Sometimes, there was some comfort in being able to lie back and just let things take their course. She could close her eyes and pretend she was elsewhere.
“How shall I feed?” he asked.
“However you want to.”
He seemed unenthused by that answer, which surprised her, considering how insistent he’d been that he would use her even if she tried to deny him. But after a long moment, he closed the gap between them. Despite herself, a little flush of attraction went through her.
He crouched so that he was not looming over her, and his hand went to the back of her thigh, pulling her closer. Raiya’s eyes drifted shut as his hand slid further up her thigh and snaked between her legs. Instead of being quick like she’d hoped, his movements were soft and unhurried.
“It is more difficult without magic,” he said, almost apologetically. He shrugged what remained of his scarred shoulder. “Without my hands.”
“It’s all right,” she said compulsively, forgetting her anger for a moment. “It won’t be a problem. We’ve never had a problem before.”
He tugged on the waist of her trousers. She helped him pull them off, stepping out of her underclothes as well. Cold air caressed her bare skin.
“Will you help me?” he asked.
“Of course.”
He took her hand and guided it between her legs. “Touch yourself.”
Raiya felt her face heating.
His eyes stayed on hers as she slowly pressed her fingers into herself in the rhythmic motion she always found most effective.
He tilted his head a little. “You are good at this.”
“At what?”
“Pleasuring yourself.”
She stopped, frowning. “Are you making fun of me?”
“No.”
“Isn’t everyone good at pleasuring themselves? I mean, don’t you ever…?”
His expression tightened a little. “No.”
“You don’t? Or can’t?”
“I don’t like to.”
There was an uncomfortable pause. Azreth gently pressed her fingers against herself again, urging her into motion. She resumed her steady rhythm.
Something about what he’d said troubled her. She wrestled with her thoughts for a few long moments.
“Do you like it… with me?” she finally asked. It wasn’t that she wanted to soothe her ego. It was that she hated the idea of him being forced to perform against his will. What if he didn’t even like sex? What if he only did all this out of necessity? The possibility of being party to forced intimacy, no matter the context, made bile rise in her throat.
Raiya’s brow furrowed as the silence dragged on.
Finally, he looked up at her. “Yes. With you.”
His hand caressed the soft curve of her buttock and pulled her closer so that he could drag his lips along her inner thigh. She felt his sharp teeth grazing her, and she tensed.
His mouth opened, and he licked along the angle between her thigh and her sex. She had never noticed how bizarrely long his tongue was. It was pointed at the end, and the color was a blue so dark it was almost black. Was that what his insides looked like? Was that what his cock looked like?
When he dragged his tongue along her slit, she gasped. She had already grown wet from the work of her own fingers, and his tongue on her bare, slick skin was heavenly.
He spread her legs further, burying his tongue deep within her. She groped for his hair, but her hands met his horns instead, and her fingers curled around them instinctively. To her surprise, the touch made Azreth give a satisfied sigh. His arm looped under her knee and lifted her leg over his shoulder, forcing her legs open. She gasped.
He licked her to climax expertly. Muttering an oath, she tightened her grip on his horns, pulling him tighter against her. His tongue obligingly undulated over her as she rode out the toe-curling waves of her orgasm.
“Gods damn you,” she murmured breathlessly, shuddering.
His eyes flickered like newborn flames as he looked up at her, arching an eyebrow. He licked his lips.
Her gaze went to his horns again. More tentative now, she ran her hand over one of them. It was hard and keratinous, like a goat’s. How did it feel to him when she touched them? Would it hurt him if she was too rough with them? She’d been fairly rough with them just now, but it seemed like he’d enjoyed it.
“I think that’s enough,” he said.
She paused, thinking he meant that she was touching him too much, but then she realized he was talking about his magic.
Right. The magic. That was the whole point of this.
She wiped the sheen of sweat from her brow and quickly dressed. She dug in her bag for the things she’d need for the enchantment: ink, a paintbrush, and her notebook.
“Take off your cloak,” she said. He did so without comment, letting it drop to the floor. He settled onto his knees again, which put his face just below hers.
She held her notebook open in one arm, studying her runes and annotations. They were an ugly mixture of a few languages and odd combinations of spells. A few of the combinations were ones she’d used before and knew worked, while others were brand new, built from the components of other runes she knew and ones she’d found in the library’s books.
A real enchanter would probably have fainted at the sight of her work. She was certain this wasn’t the ideal method for removing the binding, but she hoped that it would still work, even if it was a little rough.
She’d never built an enchantment into a person, either. Normally, they were put into inanimate objects. That added another unwanted layer of complexity.
“What are you going to do?” Azreth said. She heard a hint of apprehension tightening his voice.
She dipped the brush into the ink pot, dabbing off the excess on the rim before raising the point of the brush to Azreth’s stony chest. “May I?” she asked. He nodded. “Eunaios painted the runes onto your skin. I’ve never done this before, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t use the same method.” Azreth’s chest rose and fell slowly as she slid the brush over his skin. “When I’ve placed all the runes, you’ll activate them with your magic.”
“That’s all?”
“I hope so.”
She painted a line of runes down his chest, branching over his heart, and then another down his arm and onto his palm, over the runes Eunaios had spelled onto his flesh. When she’d finished, she looked them over again several times, making sure not a single stroke was out of place. A mistake could be deadly.
It occurred to her that Azreth was putting a lot of trust in her. He did not read runes, and for all he knew, she could be enchanting him with something worse than what Eunaios had done. His eyes had followed her while she worked, but he seemed more curious than suspicious.
She set down her brush and plugged the ink bottle. She swallowed hard, mentally preparing herself for whatever would come next.
“It will work,” she said.
Azreth just nodded.
“Go on,” she said. “Charge the enchantment.”