Chapter Forty The Edges of This World #3
“I’m not telling you not to go,” he clarified, trying to keep his tone level.
“Just let one of us go with you.” Judging by everyone’s faces, they all agreed she needed to dispatch this threat.
Still, the desperation in Caelan’s features made her want to take it all back and tell him she would stay right here where she belonged. With him.
“I have to go alone,” she said. “Without me here, you three are the only ones strong enough to hold off a Rhiterran force. And these people need a leader, Caelan. They need you.”
“Reya,” Thance said gingerly. “I hate to say it, but even that might not be enough. We’ve been surveying the group here, and no one is exactly in fighting shape. Many are injured and starved. I doubt they have ever seen any real combat. If the Rhiterrans were to surround us…” He trailed off.
“We are dangerously short on firepower,” Omira summarized sharply.
“All the more reason for you three to stay here,” Reya said, smothering her worry that even that wouldn’t be sufficient, though it would have to be. “Who knows, maybe someone here will surprise you.”
Accepting her decision as final, Thance pushed to his feet. “I’ll go speak with a few groups about setting up some kind of perimeter. Omira?”
Omira followed, leaving them in weighted silence.
“Come here,” Caelan said finally, laying her down on the flowers and tucking her back against his chest, sliding one arm under her head as a pillow. She nestled into the warmth of him.
He didn’t try to argue or persuade her, or tell her she was being foolish. He just held her. Reya’s eyes burned, and his arms tightened around her.
She must have dozed off. In her blissfully dreamless sleep, she’d curled into Caelan and his heat.
When she woke, they were facing each other, her leg practically climbing his waist. Caelan’s eyes were open, and he brushed a lock of hair behind her ear.
She wanted to talk about what had happened, but she wasn’t ready to confront it again or to look that close.
One day they would share all that had happened inside that prison.
One day she would tell him what the Siren had whispered to her.
But not tonight. Suddenly, all she wanted to do was wipe away the stain of what she had seen and done in recent days with burning touches and the slide of his tongue.
The fire in his eyes told her he needed the same.
They came together like they were starving, his mouth crashing into hers with a pressure that was almost brutal, her nails digging into his skin.
Then she was beneath him, one of his hands on the back of her neck, the other trailing reverently down her body even as he ravaged her mouth.
He broke away so they both could breathe, slowing as he pressed kisses down her jaw, lower.
When he entered her, it was slow, languid, torturous.
She lifted her hips, but he pinned them with his own, refusing to pick up speed so she was forced to feel every inch of him sliding inside her, hitting that spot.
“I think it’s going to take us longer than we thought to find our ‘after,’” she said, gasping as he moved. She wished they could just leave, wished the weight of fate and responsibility had not fallen so heavily on them both.
“I never had an after to look forward to before you,” he said, slowing his pace to the edge of agony and leaning down to nudge her nose with his. He took her scent deep into his lungs. “If it takes us a thousand years, it will be worth it.”
Tears slid down her cheeks. At the adoration in his eyes. At his worship of her body. He watched her face as he drew out her pleasure, long and slow, hitching one of her legs up to his hip.
In the morning, they would each don the mantles of their promises.
His to his friends, the Order, his people, and hers to her father, her brothers, herself.
But tonight, on a blanket of wildflowers beneath the stars, they could steal a few moments to be who they were to each other instead of who they were to the rest of the world.
There would be no tearful goodbye from Caelan. That wasn’t who he was. Nor did he have it in him to just let her walk away. Not without making his mark. She knew that’s what this was. A claiming. A promise of after. She could see the vow in his eyes.
He wiped her cheeks with his thumbs as she hooked her legs around him, drawing him closer. “I see you, Reyanwyn.”
Whatever came for them, wherever they both went, she would not be alone.
Not alone.
That night, she clung to those words as she drifted off into a peaceful oblivion in the safety of Caelan’s arms.
“Reya,” Caelan murmured gently. “Wake up.”
She jerked upright. “What is it?”
“Someone tripped the perimeter. Thance and Omira are already there.”
“One of ours?” she asked.
“No. All of our people are accounted for.”
“The Rhiterrans?”
He shook his head. “It’s just one person. A Sage. A storm elemental.”
Reya froze. Storm elemental? A crack of thunder reverberated across the predawn sky, and they both looked up at the lightning that flashed between the dark pines silhouetted against the blue. She couldn’t fight her grin. Already moving, she strapped on her stolen sword.
“Is it someone you know?” Reya asked, but had a feeling she already knew the answer.
“Someone you know,” Caelan corrected. “She says her name is Stellene. And she’s come to fight for the Guardian.”