80. Clash of Stone and Steel #2
“Back to it!” Talyn yelled, and the men hurried to resume training.
She stood over Samhail then and angled her head in question. “Are you planning to lay on the ground all day?” she asked.
“Am I allowed to get up?” he countered.
“If you promise to never, ever do that again.”
He got to his feet. “I apologize,” he said. “You had it handled yesterday. I shouldn’t have stepped in.”
She only looked at him, seeming to expect more. “And?”
He frowned. Then it came to him. “And you don’t belong to me.”
“No, I don’t,” she said and walked away.
Yet, he added in his mind as he watched her go. But you will.
He’d given up any gentlemanly thoughts about Talyn, about how she didn’t belong to him and other such chivalrous bullshit.
She was his, and one of these days she’d realize it, because he didn’t plan on letting her go or letting anyone else have her.
He’d allowed his inner beast to take over where she was concerned, and the beast had staked his claim.
That incident had been two days ago, and it was the one time she’d actually denied him sex later that night.
His balls had been as blue as sapphires by the next morning when she’d finally had mercy on him.
He’d plunged into her in one deep thrust when she’d finally given him permission to touch her, and the rest was a blur of ecstasy.
Samhail groaned now as he remembered the relief of being inside her, and he tried to decide whether to spread her thighs or let her sleep.
The decision was taken out of his hands when a loud knock sounded at his door, and Talyn jolted awake.
“What was that?” she asked. She started to sit up quickly, but Samhail eased her back down.
“It’s just someone at the door. Likely Axenus,” he said. “I’ll get rid of him, and then I’m coming back to climb between your legs.”
She turned over and pulled the covers up. “It’s a wonder I can still walk with how often you end up there,” she grumbled.
Samhail chuckled and swung his legs out of bed. She might complain now, but in a few minutes, she’d have her legs wrapped around him, refusing to let him withdraw.
The knock sounded again, louder this time.
“I’m coming, Axe,” Samhail yelled across the room. “Give a man a minute to find his pants.”
He found the loose pair of sleeping pants he used to wear to bed before Talyn had become a fixture there and pulled them on, then strode across the room to yank the door open.
“I thought you knew better by now than to-” he started to say, but the words cut off in his throat as he saw who stood in the doorway.
“You thought I knew better than to what?” the Lord of Hiraeth asked silkily as he stood there with a brow raised.
“Bressen,” Samhail said in surprise. “When did you get back?”
Bressen stepped forward, and Samhail instinctively moved out of the way to let him pass.
“We returned last night, but we went straight to bed,” he said. His eyes lit on Talyn. “Ah, and there’s my missing prisoner. I suspected I might find her here.”
Talyn bolted up to a sitting position and pulled the covers over her naked body. Bressen’s gaze seemed to fix on her bare wrists, and he raised a brow at Samhail.
“I was afraid we’d lost her again,” Bressen said, “but I suppose you felt the best way to avoid that was to keep her close.” His turquoise eyes flashed as he smiled at Samhail. “Your dedication is truly appreciated.”
Samhail rolled his eyes at the sarcasm. “I didn’t plan to take her out of the dungeon, but your mind control over Morland lapsed when you got too far away, and he spent the day telling her the details of how he tortured her sister.”
Bressen’s face went stormy, and Samhail saw the brief flash of red in the lord’s eyes that marked his anger.
“The bastard left that part out when I checked on him this morning,” Bressen growled. Then his face eased. “I don’t blame you for taking her out then. And naturally, the safest place to keep her was in your bed.”
Samhail knew his friend wasn’t actually angry about finding Talyn here, but Bressen also wasn’t going to let the chance to tease him slip past.
“Axe offered to keep her in his room,” Samhail said, crossing his arms, “but she said it was drier in here. So did you find what you were looking for, or did you just come in here to hold my balls over the fire?”
Bressen’s face went serious. “We did find what we were looking for,” he said, “and we have a possible plan to extract Morland from Aidan’s body. We have no idea if it will work, but we at least have an option.”
“How?” Talyn asked from across the room.
She leaned forward eagerly at Bressen’s words, and Samhail gave her a look that warned her to stay put.
As expected, she ignored him and tugged the sheet loose so she could wrap it around herself and come over.
He was actually surprised she bothered to do that much.
He wouldn’t have put it past her to walk across the room naked.
Samhail glowered at Bressen as the lord’s eyes followed Talyn all the way across the room while she dragged the giant sheet behind her like the train of a fancy gown.
She stopped next to Samhail, apparently unconcerned by her state of undress.
One hand held the sheet against her chest while her other held it closed at her side.
“How?” Talyn repeated when she was in front of them.
Bressen cocked his head, amused by her demand for answers. She remembered who she was talking to a moment later and tacked a “my lord” onto the end of her question.
Samhail took a small step closer to her and let his hand rest at the small of her back. The gesture didn’t go unnoticed by Bressen, who gave him a pointed look. He glared back, silently conveying that he’d protect Talyn if it came down to it.
Not that he’d actually be able to do anything. If Bressen attacked, it would be with his mind, and there was little, short of knocking Bressen out, that he could do to stop him.
Samhail didn’t want to think about whether he was prepared to go that far to keep Talyn safe. The choice should’ve been obvious, given that it was between his oldest friend and a woman he’d met weeks ago. A woman who’d tried to kill him more than once.
Yet somehow the choice wasn’t obvious at all, and he prayed Bressen wouldn’t do anything to hurt Talyn.
“We found a way to resurrect Morland’s body,” Bressen said finally as he looked between the two of them. “Or so we think.”
“Resurrect him?” Samhail asked. “How do you plan to do that?”
“It’s complicated and a bit of a long story that I’m not at liberty to tell right now,” Bressen said, “but the crux of it is that we recovered one of Morland’s bones from the battlefield where he died…
uh, where his body died, and we have a way to – hopefully – restore his body using that bone.
From there, Cyra will transfer his consciousness out of Aidan and back into his original body using the rings. Then…”
Bressen trailed off as his eyes landed on Talyn.
“Then I kill him,” she said.
Bressen nodded once.
“So we’re resurrecting him just to kill him?” Samhail asked. “That seems a bit…backwards, doesn’t it? There’s no way to just extract him from Aidan and send him straight to the three hells?”
“Not that we’re aware of,” Bressen said.
“And trust me when I tell you we’ve considered every other possible option here.
Morland’s mind needs to die, but in order for his mind to die, it needs to be connected to a body that dies.
He was able to survive the last two times because his mind somehow clung onto a living body.
We can’t put him into a body that’s already occupied, and he can’t be put into a dead body, so our only option is to re-create an unoccupied living body to put him in. ”
“And Cyra can do that?” Samhail asked.
Bressen hesitated. “Creating the body is the tricky part,” he said finally, and Samhail had a feeling there was something he was leaving out.
“As for transferring Morland’s mind,” Bressen went on with a shrug, “Cyra did it once by accident. Now we’ll just have to see if she can do it again on purpose.”