Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
KIERAN
“That’s a good girl.” I exhaled alongside Arken, my palm still maintaining its gentle, repetitive motion against the soft skin of her back. “Just a few more deep breaths, okay?”
Vaguely, I could recall that Arken had told me about her tendency to lucid dream.
To have such vivid explorations of one’s subconscious mind sounded intriguing at the time; I had almost been jealous of the way she had described them.
I’d never considered what it might mean when her dreams drifted somewhere darker.
Night terrors.
My poor Little Conduit. I should have known the Leshy would come back to haunt her sooner rather than later. The desperate throes of yearning demanding to be sated set aside, I should have found time to help prepare her for this.
While I didn’t know everything about Arken’s past, I had a good enough sense of the hardships she’d endured thus far in her young life.
She had her own scars to bear—it was never easy growing up different in this world, and between her rare power and an even rarer mind, Arken was, indeed, different.
Peer rejection, loneliness and loss, the aching desire to be understood, a bone-deep fear of abandonment—I could relate to those wounds.
But physical trauma—battles with daemons and a dance with death…
Shit like that came with a very different set of scars and ghosts that would haunt her in far less subtle ways.
Once again, we would match, because all of the liquor and Light in the world could not snuff out the dark memory of carrying that girl’s broken body in my arms, fearing for the worst. Arken may have been the one the Leshy struck that night, but I did not come out of those woods unscathed. Not in the slightest.
In all honesty, I was surprised the nightmares had found her first, given the horrors and I were so very well-acquainted. Night terrors were no strange thing for me to witness…I was, unfortunately, intimately familiar with the affliction.
They had started when I was nine years old, dark and fractured memories wreaking havoc upon my young mind.
I’d only started to overcome them around the age of thirteen—and only thanks to the careful guidance of my older brother, his patience, and his steady hand.
He…Gods. I really didn’t like to think about him anymore, having compartmentalized most of those memories now tainted by pain and regret.
But there were certain moments from our youth that remained pure, somehow.
Untouched by the schism that had inevitably broken our bloodsworn bond.
And now my heart was aching again, grieving in more ways than one.
I pushed the thought from my mind to remain focused on Arken and her breathing, guiding by example with cycles of deep breaths in through the mouth, holding it for a few seconds, and then slowly expelling the air through our noses.
The tension locked up in Arken’s body was clearly beginning to ease up, but her eyes were still wide and frantic, her pupils so blown out I could only see the slightest glimmers of gold.
As she released a final deep breath through her nose with me, her nostrils remained flared, and she was worrying at her lower lip with her teeth.
Clearly, she was still on edge. I only wished I’d managed to wake her sooner—it had taken me several minutes to rouse the poor thing after waking up to her thrashing around the bed, crying out in her sleep. We’d both been asleep for hours, and so I had to wonder…
Just how long did you spend with your daemons tonight, Little Conduit?
Arken ran herself through another breathing cycle, this time without needing to follow my lead. With my palm against her back, I felt the deep inhale straightening her spine.
“That’s a good girl,” I murmured quietly, pausing my gentle ministrations.
I reached over and pulled her sweat-dampened hair back from her neck, securing it with the thin leather cord I kept wrapped around my wrist. That shit would’ve driven her crazy in about three and a half more seconds, I just knew it. Arken and humidity did not get along.
“Keep breathing,” I instructed. “And next, I want you to name five things you can see in this room right now. Can you do that for me, sweetheart?
Still biting her lip, Arken nodded. Her voice was hoarse when she spoke, as if she’d been screaming in silence.
Fuck. I remembered that sensation all too well.
“I see…a stack of books,” Arken said shakily, and I nodded along, encouraging her to continue. “I see your black leather boots. I see three teacups, an old armoire, and…is that a necklace? It’s silver. There’s a bird skull on it.”
Ah. I’d nearly forgotten about that pendant. It had been hanging on a hook on the side of the armoire for so long I didn’t even see it when I walked past anymore, forgetting it was there. And that was for the best.
“It is, yes,” I answered, not wanting to be rude. “Now, can you tell me four things you can touch?”
Arken gave me a look that clearly said, I’m not a child, Vistarii, I don’t need to be placated like this.
But she did, actually. Whether she realized it or not, it was working. This exercise was grounding her, just as it had anchored me as a young boy.
Even after all these years, I could still recall my brother’s instructions perfectly.
Night after night, he had walked me through them, always patient.
He never judged me for my quivering cowardice, the way I had hidden in closets and spare rooms, trembling as I struggled to parse what was real and what should have been far too distant to ever hurt me again.
My brother never pressed me, either—never demanded I explain what horrors haunted my dreams. He asked me just once…
and then left well enough alone when I kept those secrets locked away, preferring them dead and buried.
My brother was the one who had taught me there’s strength to be found in gentle kindness, and perhaps that was why it was still his voice I heard in my head whenever I needed to retrieve these memories.
Five things you can see. Four things you can touch. Three things you can hear. Two things you can smell. One element you can summon.
Arken’s hand rose to her chest, rubbing small, self-soothing circles against her breastbone. “I can feel my chest. I can feel myself breathing.”
I nodded along as her hand dropped to the bed.
“I can feel the linen, perfectly worn…soft,” she murmured, stroking the sheets contentedly before peering back up at me through her lashes. Her pupils had shrunk, exposing the glowing amber gaze I knew and loved.
Next, she raised her hand to my cheek. “And I can feel…you.”
That’s my girl.
I shifted myself closer to her before drawing her over to my lap, guiding her movements so her back was flush against my chest, her ass planted between my thighs, my arms encircling hers.
Arken sighed softly, leaning into me with ease as if she’d finally found safe harbor.
“I had nightmares all too often when I was young,” I confessed, resting my chin on the top of her head, rocking us both ever-so-slightly back and forth. Even before falling into bed with her, I had observed that Arken often found her peace in repetitive motion.
“Did you?” she asked gently. “What about?”
“Mmm, that’s a story for another day, Little Conduit,” I murmured. “Can you tell me three things you can hear?”
“I’m…I’m doing okay, Kier,” she said, though I could feel her tense slightly in my arms. “Really, it’s fine.”
Was she embarrassed?
“Humor me,” I requested, holding her just a little tighter.
Arken sighed. “I can hear the nightingales. I can hear…your fireplace, crackling in the other room.” She turned to rest her cheek against my chest. “And I can hear your heartbeat,” she whispered.
Can you hear that it only beats for you?
I blinked, surprised by the unerring softness of that intrusive thought. I was grateful to have not inadvertently spoken the words out loud—the last thing I needed was to give this girl another panic attack.
“Good girl,” I said, still rocking us gently with my body, stroking her hair, and holding her against my chest.
The urge to protect Arken from this world, from myself, even from the darkest corners of her own mind, was so intense that I could think of little else.
Even the pleasure of her body against mine—the ample flesh of her ass right up against my groin—was muted by the stronger instinct to be her shield, her shelter from the storm.
“What next?” she asked, disrupting that intensifying introspection.
“Two things you can smell.”
She didn’t even hesitate. “Citrus,” she said with a small smile. “Orange zest, to be precise. And cloves. Always the damn cloves.”
I held my tongue, resisting the urge to ask her what she meant by that, or why she spoke of those scents—my scent—with such affection. Now was hardly the time to stroke my own ego.
“And for the last step in the exercise,” I began, leaning my back against the pillows behind us, bringing her with me so my torso acted as a pillow of her own.
We were staring up at the ceiling together now, watching the candlelight dance across the shadows of the night.
“Summon the one element you control,” I continued softly as I summoned a miniature raven of glimmering smoke and Shadow, sending the construct overhead on flapping wings.
For just a fraction of a second before the little raven took flight, Arken had stiffened beneath my words, and I worried that her panic might’ve returned.
That happened to me, sometimes, too. Or at least, it had in the past. Even with my brother’s guidance and his best intentions, sometimes all of the fear just came flooding right back.
Thankfully, as the smaller version of Hekate swooped around, chasing Shadows across the room overhead, Arken softened again.
She followed suit by swirling her own fingertips around in the air to summon a tiny fox—a touch bigger than my raven, but much smaller than Bluebell, still small enough that I could probably stuff the little thing in my pocket, were it not currently giving chase to my Shadow puppet.
“Cute,” I chuckled.
“You started it,” she murmured.
Lazily twisting my fingers, I sent my puppet to nip at her fox’s tail, and I felt an oddly pleasurable frisson of warmth traverse my spine. Something strange skittered across my skin, making my core clench the moment our aether made contact.
I had felt that comfortably discomforting sensation before.
Once, in the alleyway when Arken had drawn from my Shadows to form her own aetherblade.
Gods, what a sight that had been to behold.
Even if I had chastised her for it afterward, the truth was, the memory of that woman holding her glowing dagger of Light to the throat of that pathetic, leering Lord-to-be… Yeah. Yeah.
It got me fucking hard, every damn time.
Is that why such a casual brush against Arken’s sparkling arcana felt so…sensual to me, somehow? Maybe, but that hadn’t been the last time I’d felt it.
I had felt it again just the other day, when she and I first crashed into this bed together.
With my hands roaming over her body, I’d felt as though an invisible extension of myself poured forth, the very essence of my aether seeping out of me, slinking around whatever bare skin my hands had left unoccupied.
It wasn’t something I could even understand, let alone control—and I’d had no idea if it was normal.
I hadn’t heard of such a thing, and I most certainly hadn’t experienced it before…
but then again, my sexual education had been largely self-guided.
So who knows? Maybe it was a thing, when the sex was good enough, or you found a particularly compatible partner. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact she was a Light Conduit, and I commanded Shadows. There were certain parallel relationships between the elements, after all.
And as for never having heard of it before…Well. It was an exceptionally intimate experience, one that even I would struggle to put into words. And I had no interest in sharing with the class, so maybe this was simply an if you know, you know type of situation.
I ran my tongue over my lower lip as we continued to play with our arcane puppets like errant children, giggling and staying up past our bedtime. The casual innocence of the activity was a strange juxtaposition with the rather adult feelings it stirred within, but the effect was soothing, somehow.
All of my stress from Arken’s nightmare began to fade away. I mean, how could it not? Her nose wrinkled so adorably every time her fox leaped through the air, and she burst into such sweet laughter, and…
Fates damn it all to Hel.
I’d do anything for that fucking smile.