Chapter 9
Nine
The silver pool was turning milky white.
“There is nothing I can do,” Vale told it, scratching uselessly at the pale cracks spreading through the ground that surrounded the pool. “Why did you call me here if I could do nothing? Why strike my mortal down with a pollen-frenzy and then pull me away? What are you doing?”
There was no answer. Vale roared, furious and more worried than he had been in millennia.
“I should be hunting down those mortals!” he snarled, straightening and shaking dirt off his claws.
“Or—or a spell! Anything to cure you! Yet, you insist I spend my days with the usual errands. If I do not find a way to cure you, you will die. We will both die! Is this panic, this shaking— Is this you only realizing this now, after it bleeds into your precious pool? Just tell me where to go, and I will go!”
He closed his eyes, listening hard.
Weak wind through the trees. Distant root-deer hooves. Ivy’s whimpers, full of pain and need.
Finally, the void gave him the smallest whisper: go to her.
Vale laughed, sharp and rumbling. “And then what? How is she helping? She has only made things worse!”
The void trickled a thin river of disappointment through him. Vale did not have to ask why.
Go to her, it whispered again, so quiet that Vale could hardly hear it over the wind.
Vale ignored it. He took a step toward the pool, intent on finding Ivy’s mortals and demanding answers. They had to be the cause of this. They had to.
But another one of Ivy’s desperate moans drifted through the trees. The branches even parted to show him the way, shuddering with effort.
Vale glared at the tiny cracks surrounding the pool.
At the white spots bleeding into it, threatening to spread its rot into every crevice of the void.
He needed to fix this. But if he lost his only assistant— If he lost Ivy, his only visitor in centuries, who smiled at nightbeasts and giggled at the vines that stroked her cheek and worked almost as hard as he did—
Vale growled and turned, stomping down the path the void had made for him. He would take care of his assistant. Then he would abandon his needless bone thicket clearing and teeth-lily weeding and find a way to fix his damn void.
Ivy was slumped against the ground when he returned. She had tried crawling after him, he realized. She truly did want to help, even if she was stricken by an illness the void had forced upon her.
Ivy stared up at him, her eyes wet. Her hips worked against the ground, but she ignored them.
“The… void,” she said, her voice thick. “I felt it. It's in pain.”
“It is no more hurt than usual,” Vale lied. He bent down, letting her hot, sweet scent wash over him. “But you are in incredible pain.”
Ivy pushed herself up on trembling elbows. “I can… If you need to go, I can…”
Vale could hear the need in her voice. If he left, she would only worsen.
And if he was honest with himself—which he had been, lately, to a worrying degree—Vale did not want to leave.
He was too busy to consider what he wanted these days.
But thanks to her infuriating presence, he knew enough of himself to realize that he wanted his assistant almost as much as she wanted him.
Vale picked her up and straightened, shoving her against the same tree he had pinned her against before, watching her gasp and writhe as her legs dangled high off the ground. Then he ran a claw down her gauzy dress, ripping it down the middle until it fell off her in halves.
Ivy moaned, grinding against him even as her face contorted in worry. “My dress!”
“The void will fix it,” Vale growled. “The void poured all of itself into you, even though it sickens every day. You strange, frustrating little gift.”
He hoisted her up the tree and wound his long tongue around her breasts, laving them until they were dripping.
“So confoundingly soft,” Vale continued. “Every time, I have to hold myself back from sinking my teeth in.”
He pressed his fangs around her left nipple. Then he let the pressure build until a bead of blood welled on the underside.
Ivy’s chest heaved under his touch, gorgeous moans dripping out of her as heavily as the slick between her legs.
Vale licked up the small drop of blood, imagining he could taste the pollen. He felt crazed with her scent, even before he had tasted her. Her sweet, delicious heat and the small, sour fear buried underneath.
Despite the fear, Ivy canted her hips against him. “More! Please, more.”
“It will hurt,” Vale warned.
“The pollen is already hurting me,” Ivy gasped. “At least give me the hurt I want.”
Vale rubbed his lips against her neck, feeling the blood pulse underneath her overheated skin.
He could use his tongue. But he did not know if he had the willpower to deny her like he had that first time.
Even smelling the pain drifting between her legs, her tiny hole aching after days of satisfying her pollen-lust, was not enough to deter him.
Not when she whined for it like that.
“There is a spell,” he told her again. “I can go to the mortal realm. I have a brother in Anderfel—”
“No!” Ivy grabbed his antlers, her eyes puffy with needy tears. “Vale, don’t go. Take me right here. Please, I need it.”
Vale stared at her, bowled over with the force of his desire that washed over him as he said his given name instead of that confounding title that she had given him.
He had spent so long convinced that he no longer wanted anything, surviving on so little food and sleep and company that if the light-motes were around, they would have worried for him.
But here was the evidence pumping through him, as undeniable as his own heartbeat: he wanted.
He wanted Ivy so badly, his mouth watered with it.
“Say it again,” he demanded.
Ivy spoke instantly. “Please.”
He shook his head, feeling her small hands flex around his antlers. “No. My name. Say it.”
“Vale,” she gasped.
He growled helplessly and took his cock out of his robes, letting a thick river of spit drip from his tongue to his cock before lining himself up to Ivy’s entrance and pressing inside.
Ivy wailed. She was crying; he could smell the salt even if he wasn’t staring at her red, puffy face. But he could also smell her desire, hot and dripping as he fucked her as shallowly as he could manage.
He pinned her against the tree, mating her with no more than his cockhead.
The stretch was still immense; he could feel her strain to her limits every time he pressed in.
But he didn’t push further, no matter how much he wanted to.
He had seen her wince through her pleasure every time he hit the end of her hole.
And even when he filled her fit to bursting, he could never get as deep as they both wanted.
Vale would go to the mortal realm to find his brother as soon as the pollen subsided.
It was not so much a decision as much as it was a calling, cursing himself for waiting this long.
He had gotten so distracted with his duties.
She was his duty now, as much as the rib-thickets and the teeth-lilies.
His sweet, determined little gift, who needed his cock so badly that she would die without it.
“More,” Ivy moaned, tears slipping down her plump cheeks. “Vale, please, more.”
Vale licked her tears. He ran his clawed hands over her breasts, the soft folds of her stomach, her plump thighs. Would she beg for him like this after the pollen finally ran its course? Would they even have time to find out, with the void decaying around them and Vale getting weaker along with it?
His legs shook. Ivy was not heavy, despite her insistence that she was heavier than many humans. But the weariness kept creeping into him, even with him sleeping more often than ever before.
“Please,” Ivy whimpered. “Please, please.”
Vale could take it no longer. He shoved inside as deep as he could and came with a roar. Ivy cried out, first in shock and then in ecstasy as her own release washed over her. Her hole squeezed deliciously around his pulsing cock, her fluids joining his as they dripped down her legs.
They stayed there like that, breathing in tandem. Ivy touched the moss on his skull mask, and Vale pulled back to see her expression.
There was no disgust in it. There never was. Just curiosity and that odd wonder he had never seen on a mortal before her.
Vale pulled out with a slick noise as his come emptied out of her. Ivy flushed, as she always did when the pollen subsided.
“I’m alright,” she insisted as Vale knelt to check her hole. She kept gripping his antlers, as if he would ever let her fall.
Vale growled weakly, ignoring her protests. She smelled of pain, the sour scent growing larger underneath the fading pleasure.
“I am,” Ivy said. “I’m—oh!”
Vale ran his tongue up her legs, cleaning up their combined mess. Ivy spread her legs obligingly, and Vale relished the tremble in them as he licked his spend from her hole.
There was no blood mixed in. This was good. Vale gave her one last thorough lick and then stood, lapping up the small drop of blood he had bit into her breast. The urge to bite down intensified, but he ignored it. He had no blood-frenzy. This was one want he would happily ignore.
He stooped to pick up Ivy’s dress. It was whole, as he had predicted. He lifted Ivy into his arms and dropped the dress on top of her, watching her slide her hands over it in surprise.
“I told you,” he said. “My void likes you.”
It did not make him feel as bitter as it often did. He could not fault his void for liking Ivy. He liked her, too. More than he was comfortable with.
Vale started through the forest, where a path was being cleared for them.
“Where are we going now?” Ivy whispered, holding her dress over her front.
“You are going to my nest,” he replied. “I must go to visit my brother in Anderfel.”
Ivy’s eyes widened. “For the spell that will… make me have no pain?”
“You need not worry,” he assured her.