Chapter 20
Twenty
Elaine
Timur was leaving for Teneris in less than a day. We’d decided he’d go alone first. He knew a merchant who might be helpful with finding a place for us while keeping Timur’s identity secret. Once that was settled, Timur would come back to get me.
I just had to survive a few days on my own while he was gone.
The evening before Timur’s departure, I woke up while he was still asleep.
I reached for my glasses on the crate by the bed, then put them on.
A flock of golden sparks ran along the hexagonal frames, bringing the glasses’ magic to life.
The darkness around me took shape as every object in our cave came into focus.
My new vision would never cease to amaze me.
The faint glow of the golden veins in the rock walls gave barely enough light for me not to trip and fall with every step before.
With my new glasses, I saw everything from every detail of the baskets stacked by the far wall to every dent and groove in the cave’s ceiling high above me.
My gaze drifted to the most wondrous sight of all—to the man stretched on the bed next to me.
Timur slept on his stomach with his face half buried into the long yellow pillow that he hugged with one arm.
His right eye was closed only by a clear membrane, so even when Timur was asleep, it cast a red glow onto the yellow pillowcase.
The top sheet we used for a cover got trapped around his right leg and slid down, leaving most of his body exposed.
Bone had taken over his right shoulder blade completely, reaching almost halfway down his back.
Only a few vertebrae high on his neck were still covered by skin, including the spot over one of his three remaining tendrils.
The rest of his spine had grown outward with sharp white bones protruding between two vertical ribbons of scales.
The scales ran all the way down to the hard curve of his backside where the exposed spine merged with his tail.
The length of his tail draped loosely over the bedding, its tip hanging from the bed. Even completely motionless, the long spike at the end didn’t look harmless. I’d seen Timur kill and maim with his tail. I knew how deadly it could be.
His left leg lay atop the sheets, slightly bent at the knee.
His skin shimmered slightly, coal-black against the pale-yellow bedding.
Save for the skeletal clawed foot, this leg looked very human, with thick corded muscles in the thigh and calf.
I couldn’t see the right leg, the one under the sheet, but I knew it looked very different.
The outside of Timur’s right thigh was solidly covered with white scales.
His right leg below the knee was only two bones that held no sinew and no skin, just like his right arm.
He couldn’t use his right leg past his knee, couldn’t stand or walk on it. So far, his right arm had retained its full mobility, however. But how long would it be until that too would be lost? I braced against the inevitable stab of pain that came with the thought, then tried to breathe through it.
Timur groaned in his sleep, rolling over onto his back. I stiffened, afraid his nightmares might’ve returned. But he just stretched with a soft moan, his cock jutting up from his groin. If my beloved business partner was dreaming, those clearly weren’t the scary kind of dreams.
I slid my gaze along the hard length of his cock. The circular bones inside its velvety soft skin remained permanently hard. When he was aroused, which happened almost always when he was around me, the tissue between these rings grew hard as well, raising his erection like it did now, straight up.
His soft groan ended with a sweet moan, and I glanced up at his face. His red eye burned considerably brighter now. And his blue one was open and fixed on me too.
“Did I wake you up?” I whispered.
“Why are you whispering?” he wondered.
“Because you’re…sleeping?” I hiked up one of my shoulders with a sheepish smile because he was clearly awake now. “Did you have a nice dream?”
“Mm-hmm,” he confirmed with a hum. “We argued about who could make each other come faster with their mouth.” He squinted at me with a sleepy smile. “You won.”
I laughed. “Sounds like a great dream.”
He rose on his arm and brought his mouth over mine.
“Very great indeed,” he murmured against my lips. “You made me come in no time, my sweet girl. I came so hard, it woke me up. But reality is even better than any dream could ever be.”
He kissed me so tenderly, I nearly melted in his arms. My body turned languid and soft, willing and needy at once.
“Let’s see how long you’ll last in real life,” I giggled softly, running my fingers over the hard ridges of his straining cock.
He growled and cursed under his breath. “Not long at all, sweetheart. Not long at all.”
I circled his hard length with my fingers. Shifting down his body, I ran my tongue over the bony ridges of his unusual cock. He bucked his hips, fisting the sheets. I licked the crown of his shaft, gathering a single drop of his pre-seed on my tongue.
He tasted like flower honey, sweet and fragrant with a tiny hint of spice that made my tongue tingle and made his orgasms especially satisfying because they prolonged mine when he came inside me.
The sweet taste was typical for shadow fae.
The spice came from the dragon. And my man was a mind-blowing blend of both.
“Don’t fight me, sweetie. Relax and let it go,” I cooed, before teasing the tip of his cock with my tongue.
Taking it between my lips, I glanced up at Timur’s face.
His futures contorted into a grimace of need.
He bit his lips with a moan of intense arousal.
But I saw no signs of pain on his face. His tendrils remained hidden for now.
He wasn’t connected to me. What he was feeling at this moment was entirely his own.
He had no distraction of my emotions to help him with pain, yet he wasn’t hurting, and that made my heart lighter.
I set off his orgasm, and his mouth slackened, his breathing spasmed in rhythm with the golden spurts of his release. I licked them all up quickly, enjoying the pleasant taste.
When I looked up again, he smiled at me. A languid, happy smile that looked genuine even as he wasn’t connected to me, not through his tendrils anyway.
“How are you feeling, Timur?” I asked, mesmerized by that smile of his.
Grabbing me under my arms, he pulled me up his body for a kiss.
“Now, I feel like I’m still in a dream,” he whispered between kisses. “And I don’t ever want to wake up.”
The following night, he was gone. I missed him the moment I locked the doors behind him and hung one of his bracers on the metal hook in the wood.
The other bracer he took with him. The magical connection between the two stretched like an invisible string, and I loved the thought that Timur was just at the other end of that string, which made the distance between us appear smaller somehow.
I was left alone in the cave, but it didn’t feel particularly lonely.
In addition to the trickling of the water from our bathing area, many outside sounds reached me.
Swishing of footfalls never ceased behind the doors that led into the corridors of the Wall.
Voices and conversations floated by the patio outside as shadow fae passed by.
An occasional rustling of clothes or scraping of weapons when the person happened to walk too close to the doors didn’t scare me. I kept quiet, and they moved on.
To kill time until Timur’s return, I cleaned the cave, washed all our clothes, and made food from the ingredients that Timur had left for me.
There wasn’t much I could make without a stove and fire, but I had bread, dried meat, fresh and dried fruit?, and puffed rice to experiment with by arranging them into various combinations and keeping from getting bored.
Once Timur and I had settled in Teneris, I imagined I’d find something better to do.
I had hobbies back home that I had so little time for.
Maybe I could start knitting again. There was little use for sweaters in Alveari, but I could make blankets or throw cushions.
Maybe we could even sell them, to have some extra money? Or to trade them for food?
A scraping noise out on the patio broke into my daydreaming. It wasn’t just the sound of someone passing by. The scraping was persistent, rhythmical, incessant, obviously trying to get my attention.
Quietly, I placed the skirt I’d just folded while organizing my clothes and stilled.
The scraping noise came again, as if someone ran a fingernail against the solid wood of the door. Then came the whisper.
“Elaine…”
My name drifted softly like a breeze through the hair’s width crack under the door. A fae in their shadow form could’ve possibly slipped through, too, had Timur not warded all the doors to our cave with his bracer.
I held my breath, not moving a muscle.
“Are you there, Elaine?” the same whisper asked.
Who was it? Who knew my name in Ashgate?
“Everyone knows your name, Sweet One…” the memory of Suhai’s words echoed through my mind.
If that was true, the fame I’d never sought in Ashgate had caught up with me.
“We don’t have much time, Elaine,” the voice coaxed. “If you want to save the general, we need to make a deal now.”
My heart thudded in my chest so loudly, I was sure he could hear it on the other side of the door too.
“Suhai?”
“There you are,” the mage murmured with satisfaction. “I knew you were there. I told you I’d see you again, remember?”
“Don’t talk to him,” rushed through my head.
“Leave,” I whispered.
“Oh but if I do, what will happen to your beloved general? Will you let the dragon consume him? It’s happening faster than you may think.”
I swallowed through the tightness in my throat. Subconsciously, I kept hoping we still had time. Lots of time. But deep inside, I knew it might not be the case.
“How fast?”