Chapter 37
Chapter
When I opened my eyes, the first thing I noticed was the empty space beside me.
The sheet was cold to the touch, Aidenar must have risen long ago.
For a moment I lay still, listening to the peace of the morning castle, the distant steps of servants in the corridors, the faint song of birds from beyond the window.
I stretched slowly beneath the covers, feeling my muscles wake to life. The light that slipped through the window had that soft, peculiar hue that belonged only to early dawn. I was just about to rise from the bed when the door opened quietly and Aidenar came in, carrying a basket of food.
“I thought we might spend the day together,” he said, setting the basket on the small table by the window. His voice was warm. “I don’t want Tristan keeping you company all the time.”
I let out a short laugh before I could stop myself.
“Are you jealous again?”
He set the basket down with care, straightened, and turned toward me, slowly. I knew that look. The silver of his eyes deepened at once, sharp and predatory. My laughter died in my throat as he began to move toward me with that purposeful, unhurried stride of his that always meant trouble.
He reached the bed and, with the small use of his power, he pulled the cover off me. Leaving me in nothing but a thin linen nightdress. Cool air brushed over my bare skin.
He didn’t give me time to react. He climbed onto the bed and slid between my legs, his weight pressing me into the mattress.
I felt the hard line of his body push against my center while his hands closed around my hips, holding me in place.
He bent over me until his face hovered but a breath from mine.
“I am being gentle with you,” he whispered, his breath hot against my skin. “But if I see your desires growing, I will fuck you every day, until your body forgets other men exist.”
His eyes burned silver, and I felt every inch of him pressed along me, the insistent heat of his arousal even through the cloth of his trousers.
“Can we just eat breakfast now?” he added in an almost ordinary tone.
My heart was pounding. I felt my nipples tighten beneath the thin fabric, felt the low thrum of desire rising in me. I smiled at him, wicked and reckless.
“I am not hungry,” I said softly, without looking away from his eyes.
Aidenar’s lashes lowered, and a slow, feral smile curved his lips. His hands slipped higher, beneath my nightdress.
We did not eat breakfast.
When at last we managed to leave the chambers, we made our way toward the stables.
“There is something I would like to show you,” he said, nodding toward two horses that waited for us in the yard.
We rode out through the castle gate and followed steep, stony paths into the heights. Two guards rode behind us at a distance.
The lands around Durminas were wild in their splendor, full of green.
Dense broadleaf woods slowly gave way to dark fir forests the higher we climbed.
The air grew cooler, clean and sharp, scented with resin and moss.
The horse beneath me moved with steady confidence, and I watched the sunlight pierce the canopy, falling in long golden shafts between the branches.
After a time, Aidenar drew his horse to a halt and dismounted.
He stepped to my side and lifted his hands to help me down.
I didn’t need the help, but he used every excuse to be near me, to touch me.
I loved nothing more than his strong arms holding me.
When my feet found the ground, he kept his hands at my waist for a moment longer than was needed, his eyes lingered on mine.
“We must go on foot from here,” he said.
We left the horses and guards on a small glade and took a narrow, overgrown path deeper into the forest.
The air was clear and cold, filling my lungs with each breath. The farther we went, the more clearly I heard something ahead of us, a roar that grew with every step. Louder, heavier, until at last it swallowed all other sound.
“I used to come here as a child,” Aidenar called over the noise. “I thought you might like it.”
When we pushed past the last thicket, I froze.
Before us thundered the greatest waterfall I had ever seen. We had small falls on the islands, playful streams tumbling over rock. But this, this mountain giant was something else entirely.
Water fell from a dizzying height, a white, foaming wall that plunged down hundreds of feet and crashed with a deafening roar into a lake below. Mist rose from the surface, and in the sunlight it broke into faint rainbows. There was something raw in it, and fierce, and utterly untamed.
My whole body began to shake. Not from cold, but from something deeper. I felt the vibrations in my hands, like an echo of the great element that roared before me. My power, the power over water that I held in check, strained against its chains, reaching toward this wonder of the world.
Aidenar came up behind me, wrapped his arms around my waist, and placed a kiss upon my cheek. His lips brushed my temple, then my ear. He began to murmur, and even over the roar of the waterfall I heard every word.
“That is how I see you,” he said, his voice low and steady. “When we were in White City, I knew I would bring you here one day. This is you. Unleashed power and beauty. Nothing less.”
Tears stung my eyes. Before him I didn’t have to hide. I didn’t have to be careful, restrained, or harmless. He didn’t fear my power. More than that, it delighted him.
I stretched my hands toward the waterfall and let my power flow free.
At once I felt the bond. I felt every droplet, the full weight of the waters casting themselves from the cliff, shattering at the bottom with the force of an avalanche. I felt the stone tremble beneath the onslaught, the depth of the lake, every current and hidden whirl.
I stopped it all.
I held the whole mass of water in place as it fell from the height.
The silence that followed was unnatural, terrible, as if the world itself had forgotten to breathe. The waterfall hung in the air like a pale curtain, frozen mid-fall, defying nature, defying gravity, defying sense.
Then, with my next breath, I released it.
The water crashed down with doubled force. The wave struck the surface and rose in a towering wall that surged toward us.
With one lazy gesture, Aidenar brushed aside the wave without even blinking.
His power over air stopped the water a few meters in front of us, dispersing it into a mist that fell on us in a gentle rain.
I felt as if his control over the element had grown even stronger.
Previously, such a use of power would have required a lot of effort, but now he did it without a second thought.
As if he trained every day, every night.
I turned to him, drenched in mist, and wrapped my arms around his neck.
He looked at me with those silver eyes, intense, full of tenderness.
Was I really allowed to feel something again?
Could I open my heart once more? I wasn’t afraid of hurting him. And he wasn’t afraid of me.
He kissed me deeply, and our powers twined together in a single knot, water and air, a dance of elements.
I didn’t know whether it was the nearness of the waterfall, or the fact that I had called upon my power after so long, but a wave of energy swept through us both.
Almost like ecstasy. I felt his element all around us, an unseen wind curling close, and he must have felt mine, the living current of water thrumming between us.
When I drew back, his eyes were burning silver, the same fierce light I had seen when he lost control.
Were we still human? Or something more?
We were about to turn back when I felt it. A pull. A thread that tugged at me. I couldn’t name it.
I caught Aidenar by the arm and began to walk toward the cliffs beside the falls.
“Nerissa,” he called, “what is it?” He followed at once, but I could not bring myself to stop.
We pushed through dense bushes and clambered over slick stones. Aidenar helped me climb when the rock grew treacherous.
The path was steep and wet beneath our boots, yet we went on. The pull only grew stronger, like a distant voice calling my name.
Behind a thick screen of shrubs, an opening in the rock appeared.
Hidden and half overgrown, yet unmistakable once one knew it was there.
Aidenar and I exchanged a glance. We had come this far, and there was no point in returning for the guards.
They would have been of no help in such a place anyway.
We stepped inside the hidden cave, it was dark and damp. The air smelled of old stone and something faintly metallic. A single beam of sunlight slipped through some unseen crack in the ceiling and lit a small patch of ground. We had brought no torch, no lamp.
I remembered an old trick I had used. I summoned water from the waterfall.
It slid obediently into the cave in a narrow stream and rose into the air.
I shaped it into a clear sphere and held it beneath the shaft of light.
The water caught the sun and cast it around the chamber, breaking it into a thousand shimmering colors.
Aidenar looked at me with admiration. I shrugged my shoulders like it wasn’t anything special.
We searched the place. This cave must have been an ancient temple of the elements. On the walls were the same paintings we knew.
But this time, something more. Four figures, probably elemental gods, were sinking a sword into the god of darkness. He was kneeling on the ground. The sword in the drawing still held traces of white paint that had begun to flake away.
So, he could be killed. A white blade? Palladium? Then Aidenar touched my arm and pointed to the shadows against the wall.
Vases. Five bowls.
My heart stopped.
They looked ordinary enough. I didn’t know why the Plague had not used them to spread. Perhaps Minerva had been right, and Durminas itself was a kind of shield.
Even so, I knew the one would have to be destroyed.
Only.