Chapter Forty Five
Inferno Of Desire
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Gallena’s Temple, Nythanor.
Kyra.
‘If you keep doing that, we won’t be going to dinner.’
Mouth against Kawai’s back, Kyra smiled to herself. She sat straddled behind him as he attempted to pull his clothes back on, her fingers tracing the insides of his thighs.
And occasionally, accidentally brushing his manhood.
‘I don’t want dinner,’ she breathed into his ear, then groaned, ‘Oh, you bore,’ as he stood, laced his trousers and tucked himself away.
He laughed, leaning over her so she was forced to lie back. ‘Are you not satisfied yet, my wicked earthling?’
Hands roaming over his bare back, she said, ‘Does the fact I want more answer your question?’
He planted a light kiss on her lips. ‘Let’s go to dinner, eat really fast, and then I want you back here, exactly as you are right now.’
‘Why go all the way there when you can just eat here,’ Kyra suggested, wrapping her bare legs around his torso.
‘Don’t tempt me, Kyra,’ Kawai murmured, and she knew without looking that he was getting aroused again. He kissed her fully, tongue dancing with hers, but then he pulled away and stood with his hand outstretched, eyebrows raised, and humour sparkling in his eyes.
She sighed. ‘Fine.’
It wasn’t fine. She didn’t want to leave this room, didn’t want to socialise with anyone else but him. The sex had left her yearning for more, and whether Kawai knew it was a method of avoidance of everything else, he never said.
Aside from fighting with Mankar, it was the only time her mind was not running rampant, clouded instead by pleasure.
But then it was over. And those intrusive thoughts came blazing back as though they’d never left.
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Gedeon.
If there were a tipping scale to measure pain, Gedeon was sure he was firmly on the heavier side.
‘Goddess, you look like death,’ was Maida’s greeting as he stepped into the healer’s chambers the next afternoon. ‘You ought to see some sunlight.’
To even walk without wincing was a struggle, but he managed it, holding back his sigh of relief as he settled on the healer’s table. ‘Naal doesn’t want me outside. She doesn’t want the people of Phaenon to see me.’
Whether Maida agreed with the pramah’s precautions or not, Gedeon couldn’t tell. ‘You’re running a fever,’ she murmured, the backs of her fingers cool against his forehead. ‘Did you sleep at all last night?’
‘I tried.’
‘Did the tonic help?’
‘Somewhat.’ He refrained from telling her that the itching had disturbed him as perpetually as the pain, keeping him awake deep into the early hours of the morning.
‘Lie on your front,’ Maida instructed. He did so, trying not to grimace with the movement. He was unsure if he was successful or not, but the healer’s static silence said enough. She then handed him something she hadn’t before: a leather bit.
Gedeon placed it between his teeth without a word.
His heart was racing before her hands were even in place, but then white light surged through his tightly shut eyelids as her magic attacked the parasite in his spine.
The vertebrae splintered.
Eyes streaming, voice growling, Gedeon lost himself in the agony.
Surely he would never walk again after this.
Wood crushed beneath his fingers as a scream rose in his throat-
‘Breathe, Gedeon!’ came Maida’s cry. ‘Breathe, boy! I can feel it, I think I can almost… oh!’
Fire erupted at Gedeon’s hands.
Maida’s magic withdrew instantly, the flames guttering with it.
The pain remained. ‘My back…’ Gedeon gasped, vision blurring. ‘My back.’
‘Drink,’ Maida said before forcing a cold liquid down his throat. He almost gagged at the foul, familiar taste, but then he was swallowing something else that masked it, a strong woody liquor that burned as it went down.
He lay there for a few moments, his breath flowing heavily as the tonic took hold, phasing the pain into that itch.
When the agony had significantly subsided, he gently pushed himself to sit on the edge of the bench, grateful, at least, that his spine was still intact.
Maida’s firm, guiding hand stayed on his shoulder.
‘Your table,’ he said hoarsely, staring at the scorched, splintered wood. ‘I’m sorry.’
She waved him off. ‘I can get a new one. How do you feel?’
‘Like my magic is not mine,’ Gedeon muttered. ‘It feels foreign. Like it needs to get out.’
Maida’s expression was disturbed. ‘I thought I almost had it. It didn’t fight me this time, but rather indulged in my presence. As though it might use my own magic as a conduit for release.’
Gedeon resisted the urge to swallow. ‘Do you have something to nullify it? I cannot let that happen again. I might have hurt you.’
‘I am not worried about myself, Gedeon.’ Her eyes were haunted. Was that… was that concern he could see, staring back at him?
Concern for him?
She turned her back on him and began pulling glass jars filled with Goddess knew what, and vials of differing liquids from their haphazard order on the shelves. ‘I can make something, though I cannot be sure of its efficiency. It has never been used for Warden magic before.’
‘Anything is better than nothing.’
‘You should keep going with the tonic I gave you too,’ she said, then frowned. ‘And perhaps you should start taking two drops instead of one.’
Gedeon stayed and watched quietly whilst she went about making his magic-dulling potion. A strange sensation rose within him.
He had never been cared for in this way. His mother did not have a maternal nor compassionate bone in her body, and the healers in the Black Castle were paid for their work, very handsomely too.
But Maida…
As far as he was aware, the healer gained nothing from helping him. He was not even sure if her doing so was by order of Naal, or of her own volition. She had never said.
‘I’m not sure if my being there tonight is such a good idea after today,’ he mused aloud some ten minutes later as she handed him another vial, this time its contents a sluggish brown.
‘Tonight?’
‘I was going to attend dinner. Sunsi thought it to be a good idea. But now-’
‘It is a good idea,’ Maida said. ‘It is high time everyone knew who Gedeon Dewmaul is. Not the Fire Warden, nor prince, nor damned Destroyer as Nysari likes to refer to you.’ She shook her head at that.
‘But just Gedeon. I find, against my better judgement perhaps, that I have come to rather like him.’
A true smile pulled on Gedeon’s mouth. ‘Did we just become friends, Maida?’
Leaning against her desk, she crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Friends might be pushing it.’ There it was. An undeniable fondness shining on her features that sent warmth spreading through Gedeon’s heart. ‘But if I were to vote now, I would not lay a black crystal.’
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Kyra.
‘I think that’s enough?’ Kyra said, amusedly eyeing the third helping of potatoes Mankar spooned onto her silver plate. There was barely space for anything else.
Mankar gave her a knowing grin. ‘I figured you might need refuelling.’
His glance toward Kawai was telling enough. She smirked. ‘Is it that obvious?’
‘When you show up late together it is. Poor Kano was like a lost wolf-pup before his brother came to save him.’ Kyra peered across the table to where Kawai was talking Kano’s ear off, the latter listening but his expression far away.
He was thinner now than when she’d met him.
Perhaps he wasn’t adjusting to life outside of Nevatis as well as she’d thought. Guilt trickled through her.
She’d make more of an effort from now on to make him feel more at ease.
‘Oh, and your hair is wild and his scent is all over you,’ Mankar casually added.
Damn fae noses. Living in Avaldale for so long, she’d forgotten how acute the fae senses (or akee, she supposed) were compared to humans.
Kyra merely knocked her shoulder with his and shook her head, running a hand over her hair for good measure.
Down the other side of the table, tensions ran a little higher.
Naal seemed adamant in using the dinner hall as a place to talk strategy, rather than using the Council Room for which it was fucking made.
She wished the Air Warden wouldn’t talk about the war here in what should have been a relaxed environment.
She didn’t want every mouthful to be tainted by ominous questions.
What does Empress Azar have in store?
What should their next move be to counteract it?
Naal had no spies in Zarynth now. Not since the death of Mankar and Nysari’s father, and her insight on any movement in the south was regrettably thin.
Not that Naal had told her that, of course. They’d barely spoken at all.
She’d picked up that information from her sessions with Mankar. For an action-focused male, he was surprisingly interested in politics, and often relayed to her that which she might have missed in her avoidance of everyone else.
Naal, specifically.
Up this end of the table, however, the depth of conversation was significantly less. Kyra was in the midst of teasing Ruven, (the male in Naal’s inner circle she’d finally learned the name of) about the integrity of the scripture tattoo that ran down the side of his neck.
‘What do you mean?’ Ruven said sharply. He was quite the serious male.
‘I’m just saying, if the ancient akee language is lost, how do you know it says what you think it does?’ Kyra said. It was an enormous effort to keep her face straight with Mankar grinning into his goblet at her side. ‘It could say I’m an idiot and you’d never know.’
Ruven’s handsome, tattooed face contorted with a frown. ‘It does not say that.’
‘Do you speak the language, then?’
‘No, but-’
With a shrug, Kyra said simply, ‘Well, then, you’d never know.’ She could have sworn there was tinkling laughter from the faeries above her.
Ruven’s expression turned borderline furious, but his pending argument was interrupted by a latecomer to the dinner-hall.
Gedeon.