Chapter 20 #2
They were shot through with veins of brilliant, shimmering gold. The mark of his fire. The mark of his claim. And — under the gold, threaded through it like a second light — a faint quiet green . The line restored.
She blinked up at him.
"Alsander."
" Mo chroí. " His voice was a wreck. " Mo chroí, mo chuisle, mo bheatha — "
"I'm here. I'm — Alsander, I'm here ."
"You died."
"I —" Her brow furrowed. "I think I did. I think — for a moment — "
"For a moment," he agreed, and he couldn’t say more because he was on her then, he was on her, he couldn’t bear the not-touching for one more second, and his mouth came down on hers in a brutal, possessive kiss that had three hundred years of grief and one minute of having lost her in it.
She kissed him back.
She kissed him back with her whole body, with the small live trembling weight of her arms coming up around his neck, and the warmth of her mouth — warm , warm , warm — and the small wet sound she made into his mouth when he tasted her.
There was no thought.
No gentleness. No control. Only a frantic desperate need to feel her, to be inside her, to assure himself that she was real. That she was alive.
He covered her body with his.
His clothes were gone — he didn’t know when, in the shift he hadn’t paid attention — and her clothes were torn from when he had pulled her up against him in the breaking. He pushed the ruined fabric aside. He spread her thighs with his knee. His hand fisted his cock, guiding it to her entrance.
She was wet.
She was so wet, so ready for him, that he slid in to the hilt on the slick of her own body in one long stroke. She cried out underneath him. He swallowed the sound with his mouth.
He fucked her like a wild man.
Like he had just crawled out of hell and she was his only salvation.
There was no rhythm. No finesse. Only a primal, desperate pounding — his hips driving into hers, her nails digging into his back, her legs locking around his waist and pulling him deeper.
He was devouring her. Claiming her. Erasing the memory of her cold still body with the heat and life of her under him now .
"You are alive." His voice was a snarl in her ear. "You are alive . A chuisle — say it — tell me — "
"I'm alive." She gasped it. "I'm alive, Alsander, I'm here, I'm here — "
" Mine. "
"Yours."
" Say it. "
"I'm yours ."
He hooked his arms under her knees and lifted her, opening her wider, driving deeper.
He was hitting a place inside her that made her sob his name — and the second heartbeat under his fire was steady , was holding, was fine — and he gave her every long deep stroke he had three centuries of holding back in him.
"Look at me."
Her eyes — gold and green and blue — opened and locked on his.
"Look at me when you come for me."
She came for him a heartbeat later. She came for him with her body pulsing around his cock and her breath catching on his name and her gold-green-blue eyes wide on his, and he came inside her with a roar that shook the chamber, his release a violent explosive surge that tore through his entire body.
He poured into her — himself , what was left of him to give, his seed, his magic, the last loose ends of three centuries of saved-up fire — and she took it all.
He collapsed against her.
Body shaking. Face buried in her hair. Heart hammering against the place where his child slept inside her.
For a long moment he didn’t move.
For a long moment she didn’t move.
The chamber around them was quiet. The dance was gone. The shrine was only stone and water and a man and a woman tangled together on a worn floor that had held a dragon's grief for three hundred years and would not have to hold it any longer.
She stirred under him.
"Alsander."
"Mm."
"What happened?"
He lifted his head.
He looked down at her. At the gold and the green threaded through her blue. At the rise and fall of her chest. At the place where her hand had come up to rest, without her knowing, just below her sternum.
He had to tell her.
He didn’t know how to tell her.
He kissed her hand instead. Then her mouth. Then her hair.
"You died," he said softly. "You died, a chuisle . She would not let me follow you. She gave you her piece — Mairin's piece — directly. Her magic is in your blood now."
"Oh," Poppy whispered. Her free hand had risen to her own face. She touched her cheekbone, her eyelash, the corner of her own eye, as if checking. "Oh, my eyes feel — different."
"They are different."
"Alsander."
"Yes."
"There is something else. You — your face — there is something else you have not told me."
He looked at her. He looked at his mate, who had walked into a shrine expecting to die for him and who had come back with a goddess in her blood, and he understood that there was one more thing she didn’t know that he had to give her.
He took her hand.
He laid it flat on her own belly. Below her sternum. Below the place where the pendant had lived for ten generations.
He kept his hand on hers.
"Listen," he said quietly.
"Listen for what?"
"With the new senses you have now. Listen. "
She was very still under his hand.
Her brow furrowed. Her gold-green-blue eyes went distant. He watched her listen with a sense she hadn’t known she had, a sense her line had carried for ten generations and had never been allowed to use until now, and he watched her find what was inside her own body.
Her face changed.
He watched her go from bewilderment to understanding in the space of one slow inhalation, and her hand under his trembled, and her free hand flew up to cover her mouth, and the gold-and-green-and-blue of her eyes filled with tears.
" Alsander. "
"Yes."
"There is — Alsander, there is — "
"Yes, mo chroí . There is."
" A baby. " She was laughing through the tears. Her whole body was shaking. "There is a baby. There is — there is a baby , Alsander, I — when did — how — "
"The night in the moss, I think."
"The first — the first — Alsander, I was — I was on the contraceptive , my grandmother's tincture, I have been taking it since I was — "
"The bond overrode it. The fire-binding last night took deeper than it should have because there were two of you, a chuisle . I didn’t know. I didn’t understand until the goddess passed her gift through both of you. Two heartbeats. Both yours. Both mine ."
She was crying.
She was crying the same wet helpless laughter she had laughed in the car at the postman, in the cottage at the cookies, in the bedroom at the way her aunt held her hand.
She buried her face in his chest. She pressed her hand harder to her belly under his hand, and he felt — through the bond now alive in both of them — the small new fire of his child curl under her palm and settle , sensing her, sensing him.
"Alsander."
"I know."
"I was going to lose this."
"I know, mo chroí . I know. "
"I would never have known. I would have died and never — "
"Hush." He pulled her up against his chest. He pressed his face into her hair.
"Hush. You didn’t die. You are here. We are here .
The goddess saw what was in you and she stopped me from losing all three of us and she put the line's magic back into you and here we are .
Three of us. Three of us, a chuisle . Three. "
She wept into his throat.
He held her.
He held her until her breathing slowed and the shaking eased and the chamber around them was quiet again, and when at last she lifted her head she was smiling — wet, ruined, radiant — and her gold-green-blue eyes were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his three centuries of life.
"We need to go outside," she whispered.
"Yes."
"I want to see the wood."
"Yes."
He lifted her to her feet. With a soft word and a flick of his wrist, his magic conjured simple clean clothing for them both — the magic effortless now, the curse gone, the long slow drain on his power over .
He dressed her himself. He took his time.
His hands lingered on her skin, on her belly through the soft fabric of the dress he had made for her.
Then he took her hand. He laced his fingers with hers.
He led her toward the curtain of falling water.
The world that greeted them was transformed .
The oppressive sickly air was gone, replaced by the clean vibrant scent of rain and new life.
The forest floor — once brittle and brown — was now a carpet of impossible green, dotted with flowers that glowed with a soft internal light.
Beneath it all, the small, good work of mushrooms and worms breaking down the dead things. Restoring order. Balance.
The curse was broken.
The forest was healed .
But they were not alone.
Standing just beyond the falls, as if they had been waiting, was a small group of beings so tall and graceful they seemed to be part of the wood itself. Sharp elegant features. Eyes the color of ancient silver. They radiated an aura of immense, quiet power.
Aos Sí.
The elves.
At their head — leaning on her stick, soft gray cardigan luminous in the new sun — Niamh.
"Auntie."
Niamh smiled. The expression was gentle and knowing and very tired and very pleased . "Oh, child. You did it."
"I did it."
"And you came back ."
"I came back."
Niamh's sharp blue eyes had gone soft at the corners. They flicked once to Poppy's eyes — to the gold and green threaded through the blue — and then to the place where Poppy's hand was resting, without thinking about it, just below her sternum.
Niamh said nothing about that part.
Niamh's mouth twitched.
Niamh was going to be insufferable about it later. Poppy could already tell.
One of the elves stepped forward.
His silver eyes fixed on Poppy. He didn’t look at her face. He looked at her eyes — at the gold and the green pulsing under her skin — and at the small new heat below her sternum that he could clearly sense.