56. Elorie
Elorie
Stars.
I step through the Gate, and air leaves my lungs. Overhead is nothing but a blanket of stars. So many, the night glows. So bright, my fingers lift to the sky as if I can reach them.
Wilder’s heat presses to my back as the Gate swirls shut, closing out the sounds of the court so that all that can be heard are the waves lapping below.
There’s no chill here like on Alyssium’s shores. The salty sea air is sweet on my tongue. Waves beat against the cliff while we stand on an endless stretch of grass, offering an unobstructed view of the night sky.
“I—” I gasp as I spin in a circle and see we’re surrounded by starlight. “I have no words. What is this?”
“Starlight Reach.” Wilder grins, pulling me down to the ground so I’m sitting between his legs with my back to his chest. “The true crown jewel in the Quietus Court. Although, that was before you set foot here.”
I roll my eyes, glancing back at him. “Nothing compares to this.”
“I beg to differ.” His fingers cup my chin while his magic caresses my jaw. “But I thought you might appreciate it.”
“That’s an understatement.” I relax against him, looking up at the sky. “This is the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.”
So lovely; it saddens my heart for those who will never experience anything greater than Alyssium’s frozen forests.
Like Father, spending his whole life describing the stars that hung just beyond the clouds.
They’d part sometimes, offering brief peeks at what was beyond before the clouds swallowed them again. But nothing like this.
There is so much life here.
So much more here.
“He would have been happy knowing you got the chance to see it.” Wilder brushes the back of his knuckles down my arm.
“He would have.”
I turn in Wilder’s lap, climbing over him and bringing us nose to nose. “Thank you for showing me this place.”
“Anything for you, Starfire.” He tucks my hair behind my ear. “Now that I have my crown, I thought I owed you that date you asked for.”
“Are you saying this is a date, King Riven?”
“It’s a start,” he promises with a smirk. “Until I finally convince you to be my queen.”
His queen.
Part of me expected him to change his mind. To decide I’d be too much trouble when I refuse to back down on certain things. But he hasn’t.
“I won’t.”
“I see that.” I can’t bite back my smile. “How is it we always seem to find ourselves beneath the stars the night before everything changes?”
“Who says anything has to change tomorrow?”
“Malachi. Alasdair. Who knows what else we’re up against in Lyrichia. Something is bound to change with the sunrise.”
“Or maybe we finally put an end to this.” He shrugs, and I drag my thumb over the forked ends of the scar on his cheek.
“So optimistic of you, King Riven.”
He grins. “It’s your fault. I was miserable before you.”
“Well, I appreciate the positivity.” Especially when I don’t feel it myself.
No matter how many stars are in the sky above us right now, even a wish won’t guarantee what will come from tomorrow. Malachi summoned me, which means he has a plan. I can only hope the one we discussed with our courts earlier is smarter than his.
I can only cling to tonight, where I have my mate beneath a blanket of stars, staring into my eyes like I’m the only one worth looking at.
“Want to see something?” I bite my lower lip, and Wilder nods. “I’ve been practicing my magic. Summoning it in bits and pieces, learning to control it.”
I lean to the side and press my fingertip to a point of grass. Starlight spills out, moving like water down the blade, flowing out across the field. Sparkling brighter than a fresh fall of rain glistening on the grass.
“I’ve been sitting with my magic, trying to understand what it can do besides bringing destruction.
It comes from this other place, but I can weave it into the fabric of this one, changing it.
” The grass loses color, becoming translucent and shimmering.
Clear as glass but soft to the touch. “It’s like my magic allows me to see the threads that weave it all together.
Down to the heart of where it began. The stardust we all came from.
If I think about it, I can pull it apart. I can put it back together.”
My fingertips dance over the grass, and they turn to ash at my touch. Becoming nothing. Until I wiggle them again and the blades reform.
“I still don’t understand its limits,” I admit.
Wilder weaves his fingers through mine. “You’re a celestial wielder. Maybe there are none. After all, Voilene’s magic is that of creation.”
Aether threads spill from Wilder’s fingertips, dancing through my magic and webbing across the ground. He casts a warm glow, turning the blades of grass from silver starlight to golden.
Beauty in a dying realm.
Hope where we have every reason to have none.
Wilder lifts my hand, flipping it until we’re palm to palm. Now, instead of flowing out, his magic swims within. It courses through my veins, my belly, my bones. It surges through my chest.
He presses his palm over my hanging heart rune, and I can hardly contain the crest of magic that moves through me.
“Aether is the substance of all things here. I harnessed the entirety of the realm and still felt empty until I found you.” His gaze softens. “Who knew I’d be so lucky.”
Aether hugs the back of my head, pulling me close. Our lips meet, and the night around us brightens. We sit beneath the gods-blessed sky, and I hand my mate my heart, my trust. And he does the same.
Wilder’s hands roam my back, my hips. He rocks me over him, and I can already feel need building in my core. A flash of desire he stokes with such ease. But I want to draw this out. Exist in this moment a while longer.
I shift off him, slowly inching down in the grass between his legs. Kissing a path along his chest and stripping his shirt off as I do. But that crown, heavy and gleaming atop his head, remains.
“What are you up to, Starfire?”
I crawl farther down his body, tugging free the strings of his pants and releasing his steel length. “Bowing for my king.”
His pupils blow wide as I sink my mouth over him, dragging my tongue up his length and drawing a slow, torturous circle. My eyes don’t leave his as I wrap my lips around him and take him down my throat.
Tears spring in my eyes. The salty taste of his desire coats my tongue. His hips buck in pleasure, driving deep, and I gag, but it doesn’t make me pull back. I relax and hum until his head tilts back, and he’s growling.
My mate. My king.
Yet he’s at my mercy.
Wilder groans as I take him deeper, enjoying every strong thrust of his hips. My hand grips what I can’t take in my mouth, and his hands hug the sides of my head.
“Godsdamn, you feel so good.” He groans. “Come here, so I can taste you.”
My lips slide up his cock, and I smile. “Not yet. I’m enjoying pleasing you.”
His eyes narrow as I sink back down. “You think just because my hands can’t reach you that I can’t please you? Think again.”
Aether crawls from his fingertips down my shoulders, caressing my back. It hugs my ass and slips between my legs, pulsing where I’m aching for him.
I hum, sucking him harder as his magic throbs between my legs.
“You’re so wet already.” He drags aether up my inner thigh. “So pretty with your mouth on my cock.”
His praise and caress ignite the spark building in my core. I lower farther, taking him deeper, desperate to offer him a fraction of what he’s doing for me.
Finally, I can’t take anymore. This time when his magic curls up through me, I tip my head back in a moan, and he flips me onto my back in the grass.
The slit in my dress parts easily for him, my breasts spilling out the top.
With one thrust, he seats himself deep, sending pleasure shooting up through my entire body.
“There you are.” Wilder kisses down my neck to my shoulder.
My skin is flecked with sparkles. Stardust coats my arms and climbs my body as he moves over me, and I combust in a fit of screams that travel the sea.
We’re a beacon on the shore as a burst of light ruptures out. This might be what it’s like for a star to combust. Taking in so much that there is nowhere else for it to go. I’m writhing as Wilder widens my thighs, looking down as he thrusts in again.
With my climax still calming, I feel every shift of his hips. His eyes fix on where we connect. His thick length sinking into me, and he throws one of my legs up over his shoulder to get deeper.
His crown hangs lopsided on his head. His pants are around his ankles. But he doesn’t bother pausing to undress us. Like he can’t wait to be on me—in me. He needs me as much as I need him.
Wilder braces an arm beside my head, slipping his hand down between our bodies to caress me where I’m throbbing with need.
He strums his fingers, and I’m barely holding on when I’ve already reached my precipice.
But the moment I start to pull away, barely able to handle the pleasure, Wilder snags my wrists in aether and pins me to the ground.
“I can’t come again, Wilder. It’s so much. I feel…” My breath catches as he drives in. “I feel everything.”
“Now who is at the mercy of her king?” He grins against my neck, a delicious growl climbing his throat. Of course he heard me think that earlier. “Come on, Starfire. I want you to show the gods how good I make you feel.”
The gods.
He might as well be one as his teeth rake along my neck. Teasing my skin but not offering the relief as he holds me on that ledge.
My wrists tug against the bind of aether, and he grips them tighter, claiming me completely. Until his lips find mine and he releases me. He needs my hands on his body as much as I need to roam his hot skin.
This time, I’m the one flipping us around because I can’t get close enough. My thighs shake at his hips, and my body wants to consume him.
Wilder sits with me in his lap, his arms at my back, and he wraps my hair around his fist, tipping my head and revealing my throat.
My vein throbs with the rake of his teeth.
And when he breaks skin, my climax hits me so hard and thorough that a whoosh of wind stretches the grass, wiping our magic away with it.
He guides my hips over him, chasing his own release as his tongue laps at the blood dripping out. His mouth stays on my throat as he pulls blood from my neck, my chest, my arms, my fingers.
It sings for him.
“More. More. More.”
I need more.
I’ve never felt anything like it. The bind between us is so tight there’s no ignoring its presence.
We both come down, but I’m insatiable. Consumed.
He stands me up and strips me down to nothing, dropping to his knees and sinking his teeth into my thigh next.
One release rolls into another. Until there is no thought.
No existence other than the two of us twirling through the realms, lost in each other.
Tomorrow, all the stars may fall from the sky.
The last sunrise might meet the horizon.
But tonight is me and Wilder. Tonight, there is still a tomorrow to celebrate.