Chapter 39
She had spent five weeks in this place, watching the world she loved more than anything else change. It was strange to watch it do so, considering how long she had been planning this. Jessamine had spent so much of her life dreaming up what she wanted her kingdom to be.
Her mother had always said Inverholm was a place for everyone.
It was a space for freedom of expression, artwork, and love.
The queen had always made every choice she could to keep those ideals safe.
There were so many places in this world that did not appreciate the differences in others.
She knew that some would need a safe harbor and a family that they could build without judgment.
Jessamine had only ever wanted to uphold the same things as her mother.
But she hadn’t ever understood why the queen had felt like that until she had seen it for herself.
The help that the people in her kingdom were willing to give each other, even after such a horrible thing, was a blessing to watch.
Because she could see it all. All she had to do was conjure a pool with the desire to look.
She sat by the edge of that pool for hours on end, making sure that she saw every single stage of it.
She watched as people were brought back to life by witches they had spurned for years.
How people who had hated each other put aside their differences just so they could help their neighborhood rebuild after all they had lost. Mothers took in children who weren’t theirs, keeping them safe and well fed until their own families were brought back to life.
She watched her coven make sacrifices that weren’t of blood or pain. They were sacrifices of good wishes. Songs that were meant to heal aching wounds. Whispers of dirty secrets that Jessamine would never have guessed at or known.
Gifts. They were all gifts to a goddess that her coven trusted.
She watched as Elric’s coven split as well. Some of them stayed to worship him, choosing to walk on a darker path that was no less right or wrong than walking with Jessamine. And she felt herself grow more and more restless.
But most of all, she watched him. Elric. Seated in the center of her city, keeping everything together like the glue he always had been. Even in his darkest days, she knew he had done everything he could to make sure that Inverholm was a better place than before.
If she’d thought she had been in love with him before all of this, now she was bursting with it.
Her heart thundered in her chest, literally aching at being so far from him for such a long time.
At least she got to see him. Even if he never moved from where he was.
Never even shifted a single finger from where his arms wrapped around his legs, keeping him in place as he helped her fix her kingdom.
Bit by bit, they pieced her world back together. Jessamine kept her promise from the very first moment that she’d met him. She tore her kingdom apart for him. But now, he was helping her put it back together.
So when she watched the conversation between him and Sybil, she was so ready to see him.
She leapt up from her pool, rushing to the edge of the realm she had built.
Jessamine lingered where sunlight met moonlight, her toes flirting over the edge of darkness as she waited desperately for him to appear.
And then… there he was.
Elric walked out of the shadows like he’d always been there. He wore the same outfit he’d worn when she’d first seen him. All dark fabric, with a bare pale chest that seemed to glow in the moonlight and then come to life as he slowly stepped over to her side.
She backed away from him, step by step. Leading him into the sunlight of her realm before she flashed him a grin and bolted.
He chased her. Because of course he did.
Elric would never let her run from him, no matter how fast or how far she tried to go. But she knew that her giggles were floating back to him through the air, and she wanted him to join her at a specific place. She wanted this reunion to be everything they deserved.
So when they arrived at a massive willow tree that spilled its tendrils down into a river that split through her sunlit realm, she let him catch her. She paused, breathing hard, feeling his arms coming around her waist and tugging her against him. And it was so… right.
Tears burned beneath her eyes as she shut them, leaning her head back against his shoulder and just feeling him surrounding her once again. It had been so long. So long since she had touched him.
Jessamine spread her fingers wide over his forearms, sliding them down to his hands and clasping her fingers with his callused ones. A small sob burst free, but she quickly caught it before her emotions ruined this quiet moment between them.
But he knew. He understood. Because Elric leaned down, pressed his lips to the side of her neck, and she swore she could feel tears on his cheeks as well as he hid his face where her throat met her shoulder.
“Nightmare,” he whispered. “How I have missed you.”
A few tears fell down her cheeks then, and she made a sound that was halfway between a chuckle and a sob. “Oh, Elric. I missed you so much.”
She turned in his arms and kissed him with all the need in her body.
She had missed him every day. Every fiber of her being had constantly been reaching for him, and there wasn’t any way for her to get to him.
They had been forced to stay away from each other because of their duty to her kingdom, but now, there was no duty.
He hesitated for only the briefest moment before he kissed her back like a man possessed.
His hands came down onto her bottom, lifting her up in his arms as he carried her to the base of the tree.
She couldn’t keep her hands off him. She needed to touch every single part of him that she had been missing for weeks on end.
The rounded muscles of his shoulders that flexed and bunched as he lowered her onto the ground.
The fine hollows of his ribs, where the shadows had tempted her to lick at them for ages.
The V over his hips that led down to a straining need he pressed against her belly, rocking against her with a groan that filled her senses.
Yes, that noise. That’s what she had missed most of all. His little groan of need and desire and want that burned through him so much that it was hard for him to breathe when she was around. She wanted to hear that over and over again.
Their clothing melted away. A god and a goddess who banished the merest hint of fabric so they could finally feel each other’s skin against the other. His lips came down on her throat, trailing down her chest, until he coiled his tongue around her nipple and sucked so hard she saw stars.
It wasn’t enough. She wanted him to crawl inside her body. She wanted him to rip her apart and build her anew, just like they had done to her kingdom.
His hands were a bruising punishment, warning her to never be parted from him for this long again.
Strong fingers bit into her thighs as he moved down her body, forcing them wide until his lips were between them.
She arched back, and one of his hands moved up her belly, palmed her ribs, holding her in pace as he feasted between her thighs and made her see stars again.
But then he was crawling up her body, or no, he wasn’t.
Those were his shadows. They burrowed their way into her mouth, between her legs, assisting him as she sucked on them hard and felt an answering groan come from between her legs.
Could he feel that? Did his shadows allow some sensation like she was…
She didn’t care. There were shadows roving all of her, some of them looking like his hands as they molded her breasts and palmed her ass. Those shadow hands propped her up for his feast, even as fingers seemed to delve deep into her body as he used his tongue to bring her to the highest peak.
It was overwhelming. It was too much. It wasn’t anywhere near enough as she desperately tried to hold herself together while doing whatever she could to bring him pleasure as well.
And as she shattered, she was overwhelmed once again by the sound of his frustrated growl. Elric had become a beast she could not control as he rolled her over and sank himself between her legs.
The deep, guttural sound he made came from deep within his chest. He wrapped her hair around his hand, using it to pull her back against him.
She was moving for them now, slamming her hips back against his as she was filled to the brim.
And then his shadows came again, prodding just above where he was already plundering her.
It was a question. She knew it was. And the answer was always yes.
“I want you full of me,” he groaned in her ear, arching her back even more as she slowly took the shadow he was using to give her pleasure. “Every bit of you.”
Again, those shadows appeared before her lips, stretching out from his body in tendrils, and she wanted them just as she wanted him. She opened her mouth, allowing him into every single part of her body that she could take him in.
Then Elric began to move. She groaned around the shadow tendril in her mouth as every single one of them, the two tendrils and Elric, started at a different pace.
It was like being fucked by three men with the knowledge that she only had to give her trust to one of them.
Overwhelming. Exhilarating. Her body didn’t know what to do with all the sensations, and soon enough, she was coiled so tightly she couldn’t even think.
“Come for me, nightmare,” he snarled.
She couldn’t deny him. In moments, she came, and she could feel him do the same. Every muscle against her spine locked up as he moaned in her ear, and it was the hottest thing she’d ever heard in her life, if she had been able to focus on it a bit more.
She came so hard it almost hurt. But then once she wound down, she was just in his arms. Like she always should have been.
They stayed like that for a while, just wrapped up in each other’s arms and taking it in.
He never stopped touching her, and she never stopped touching him.
From his fingers tracing circles on her hips, to her hand rubbing up and down his back, they reacquainted themselves with bodies they knew so well.
The only sounds around them were the tiny birds singing in the trees above them, the quiet burble of the river as it flowed over rocks, and the hush of the wind in the willow branches.
“Where did you get all this from?” he asked.
“Every sacrifice was a gift. Elissa gave me some birds to keep me company, and that made me sad to see them die.” She waved a hand up to them. “So I gave them new life here. There are no predators, so they will live safely and forever in this realm.”
“And the river?”
“Agnes told me a story about a river she swam in as a child. Every little detail, she whispered for me to hear, and so I got a river.”
“The tree?” He shifted so he was leaning against the sturdy trunk.
“Oh, that was Alexander, actually. Apparently, while he was growing up in Orenda, he used to hide from Leon underneath these branches. I’m quite partial to it.
I’ve spent a lot of time underneath these branches, pondering the meaning of life while saving so many.
” She smiled up at him. “It’s a nice refuge, I think. ”
He frowned down at her. “Why are we talking about Leon at a time like this?”
“A time like this?”
Elric reached down her body and palmed her sex. She was so sensitive, she bucked against his grip, even while he grinned down at her wide-eyed expression. “This, Jessamine.”
She steadied herself and nodded. “Right, you don’t want to know what I did with your gift. That’s fine.”
She knew him so well. Jessamine watched his brows draw down and his expression change to one of deep disapproval. “You know I want to know what you did with him.”
“You said not at a time like this.”
“Jessamine.”
“Beg me for it.” She rolled on top of him, straddling his bare hips with her palms on his chest. “You like to do that, don’t you?”
“You play with fire, woman.”
“No, I play with a god. I want to tell you, but I also don’t want you to be quite so sassy about it.”
He glared up at her, but she knew without a doubt he was so pleased to see her like this again. He’d missed this just as much as she had.
“Fine,” Elric relented. “What did you do with my gift?”
She turned his head, pointing out into a field beyond where she had started a massive garden that overlooked much of her sun-drenched realm. “Do you see my garden, Deathless One?”
“I do.”
Turning his head just a little more, she made it quite easy for him to see the scarecrow hanging out over the crops.
“Even here, there are birds. The crows were the very first thing the women who stayed in your coven gave me. Crows are smart, you see. They can be trained and taught all manner of tricks. Like to feast upon a scarecrow who was a very, very bad man in his life.”
She watched the knowledge dawn on him, and then he looked at her. “You turned your ex-husband into a scarecrow?”
“He was hardly my husband.”
“The vows were said.”
“And then he murdered me. I think I get to do whatever I want to him while I’m in this realm. Not to mention he was an awful person and brought about the end of the world. Releasing Ajax was a poor plan, and I think he needs a few centuries to understand that.”
Elric sighed. “You really can’t just kill someone, can you?”
“That’s your job, my love.”
“You could have let him die and go into the afterlife.”
“That’s not a punishment. It’s a gift. I have no interest in giving him any gifts while I’m still a goddess.” She kissed Elric hard enough that their teeth clacked together. “Now, you are here to bring me home, I suppose?”
“I am.” But then his hands came down on her thighs, and his hips flexed up into hers. There was a hardness there that she wouldn’t mind exploring again. And it seemed that might be entirely his intent. “Unless you want to stay here for a few more hours.”
Elric leaned up and kissed her jaw. “Or days.”
Then he kissed lower, his lips trailing over the cushion of her breast. “Perhaps… weeks.”
“Maybe not that long,” she murmured as she sank into him. “But they can wait a little while longer.”