Chapter 88
Chapter Eighty-Eight
Lorkan
Lorkan trailed his fingers down Blair’s arm, marveling at her beauty. Her curls, wild and lose, spilled against the cushions they’d pulled from the sofa to create a makeshift bed on his study’s floor.
She sighed in her sleep, perfectly curled into his side. Ahead, the fireplace danced with warmth and cast flickers of light across the bite mark at her neck. Lorkan waited for shame or disgust to creep up his spine.
But nothing of the sort trickled through his lithe being.
Instead, he buzzed head to foot with their mating bond. Lorkan tried to wrap his mind around the immense wonder of it all. He still tasted her blood and emotions on his tongue. Sweetness tangled with love, and he swallowed, tamping down a new wave of desire awakening his wolf.
Like she’d felt it, too, Blair stirred, arching against him—
He cursed as she pressed her backside into his groin, and Blair bit her lip as she fought a smile, still feigning slumber.
“Is there something you want?” He brushed his lips against her earlobe, and she shivered under his touch.
Stars above, she was so responsive.
“This a matter of need, Lorkan,“ she breathed. “Not want.”
He opened his mouth to argue, to perhaps suggest she needed rest, knowing he’d left three bite marks across her body, but stopped. He understood. Felt it, too. The insatiable hunger to have her, not in the drinking sense, but in body and soul.
Besides, Lorkan and Blair had denied themselves for so long, he refused to for a minute longer. Even if they lost themselves to one another in his study for days and never emerged.
He slipped his arm underneath the blanket, following the slope of her body with his fingers. Blair’s midnight eyes glazed over, and she hissed as he dipped his fingers between her legs. Her wetness and remnants of him still coated her, and a deep growl rumbled through his chest.
Territorial, beastly. His mind kept chanting mine, mine, mine.
“Lorkan . . .”
He answered her wish, running his thumb up and down her clit. Blair arched further into him, giving him more access to thrum her pleasure. Lorkan’s beast howled. He adored the sounds that came out of her and loved discovering how to draw them out of her, one precious pant at a time.
Soon, she grew breathless and wide-eyed as her heart raced. Lorkan’s manhood ached, and he pulled away his touch.
“Lift your leg for me,” he whispered.
Blair obeyed, widening herself so Lorkan could align himself at her entrance. He pushed in, and she relaxed as they came together, like she too was filled with pure bliss.
Lorkan grasped under her knee, keeping her leg up and high so he could find that angle to rock into Blair. She tipped her head back, whispering his name like she prayed to a god.
It only increased his own pleasure and pace.
“Touch yourself.”
Again, Blair obeyed, and Lorkan moved in her, spying where they joined. Her muscles constricted around him, and his chest brimmed with so much emotion and feeling, he could burst.
Feed—
Lorkan silenced his hunger by meeting Blair in a fierce kiss. He tasted her lips, not her blood this time. He craved them and only them. No feeding. No blood.
Release brimmed at the end of their bond. Blair writhed under him, twisting and pressing her face into the pillow. With his free hand, Lorkan grasped the back of her neck, keeping her in place and making her look at him.
“Eyes on me,” he said. “I want to watch as you come.”
“Fuck,” she hissed, the first sign of resistance to his command.
Lorkan found he enjoyed her sass, too. He rolled his hips against hers and increased his pace. Fiercer, deliberate. Blair’s entire body tensed, her moans growing louder and louder. She mewled nonsense, her sentences a cross between prayers and curses until—
She stilled the fingers touching her sex.
“Oh.”
Every beautiful, glorious inch of her stiffened, even the muscles around Lorkan’s length.
She unraveled beneath him. It was almost too much.
Witnessing her release, feeling it down their bond.
Ecstasy burst through Lorkan next. He spilled into her, whispering Blair’s name like it might save him from the suspended fall as his body and mind unraveled, too.
They untangled from one another with tenderness, kissing, nipping and sighing. Drunk off each other and their climaxes, they stared at the other until the fire dwindled to embers.
“We can’t say here forever,” she whispered.
Lorkan sighed. Again, he searched for the fear he’d harbored for years, and though apprehension lingered, he could envision a conversation with his brothers about what he was. Yet, he couldn’t figure out how to be useful in the days to come. Would their research on the curse be enough to break it?
“No, I don’t suppose we can,” he finally said.
Eventually, Blair’s breathing evened out as sleep took her again.
As much as Lorkan wished to hold her, restlessness festered in his chest. He peeled away from Blair with care.
He pulled on a spare pair of trousers and fed the fire to keep his study warm.
Behind him, the stack of books they’d collected during their research called to him, and Lorkan sank into a chair, becoming lost to the pages detailing the Gods War.
Hours passed. Blair slept. Lorkan read. He slipped out to find food for breakfast, thoughts reeling, and once he returned, he found Blair wearing his tunic, flipping through the text he’d left splayed open. She smiled at his return, and like some lovesick fool, he greeted her with a kiss.
“Eat.” He pushed a plate of cheese, fruit and honeyed biscuits towards her.
“Blasted books.“ She plopped a berry into her mouth. “You’re rather bossy.”
Lorkan smiled so wide, his cheeks ached. “I don’t recall you minding earlier.”
She narrowed her gaze and humphed. “Why are translating these again? We’ve read them front to back, Lorkan.”
He swallowed, pinning his gaze to the one text they’d retrieved from Blair’s peer in Nūa. The depiction of the bloodstone stared back at him. Above it, he had his own notes parallel to the ever tree.
“What if breaking the curse is not enough?” he whispered. “I have this dreaded feeling there’s something else we’re missing.”
Blair nibbled her lip. “There is perhaps something we can do.”
Lorkan assessed her. Apprehension and excitement traveled down their bond. “What did you have in mind?”
Her shoulders slacked. “When the Goddess visited me—“
“The Blood Goddess?”
Blair shook her head. “I mean, it was the same goddess we witnessed leaving Hel, but she claimed that is not her name.”
Lorkan’s brows pinched. “Is that so? Did she give you another title to use?”
“No.” Blair shrugged. “She was more concerned with encouraging me to witness the truth.”
“How?”
Blair brushed a finger over the red gem dangling from Lorkan’s neck. “By cracking open a bloodstone to witness a memory.”
He shook his head, stomach twisting into knots. “Is that possible? You researched how to get Evelyn’s magic out of a bloodstone but came across nothing that helped destroy it.”
“True, but I wondered . . .” Blair trailed off, shaking her head. She plopped another berry into her mouth, as if to put an end to the conversation.
Lorkan grabbed her chin, stilling Blair mid-bite. He rose a brow. “Don’t you dare hold back on me now.”
Her midnight eyes churned as she swallowed. “Again, bossy.”
“Blair.”
She cursed. “Look, I share the same magic as her, and I think there’s a reason she visited me. What if it’s because my shadows have the power to crack a bloodstone open?”
Lorkan’s feet melded to the carpet. It wasn’t Blair’s revelation that rooted him in place, but the thought of losing his bloodstone.
“What exactly would that accomplish? Opening the bloodstone?” he asked, throat turning dry.
“My research revealed that only the blood of a god slain by a fellow god creates bloodstones, and it can hold memories, or warning of sorts.”
Stars above. That meant insight into the gods, and perhaps vital information considering the one they’d banished to Hel had been released.
Lorkan would be a lying bastard if he didn’t admit he enjoyed walking in sunlight or hiding his vampyrism.
Yet, the word hiding chilled him to the bone.
Years of outrunning what he was nipped at his heels, but Lorkan’s legs didn’t buzz with the familiar sensation to bolt.
In fact, he fiddled with the bloodstone like what it represented itched his skin.
Now, he regarded it as an opportunity—not only would he let go of an old habit, but perhaps they’d learn more about the gods.
“Then we should test your theory.” Lorkan pulled at his necklace, and the twine snapped. He placed the bloodstone onto the table and slide it towards Blair.
She shook her head, frowning. “We don’t need to use yours. I’m certain Tovi has another—“
“There’s no sense in wasting time,” Lorkan said.
“But you’ll lose the ability to walk in sunlight,” Blair whispered. “Others will sense you’re a vampyr.”
Lorkan smiled, tucking a curl behind her ear. “Many already know what I am, and I also no longer wish to hide this side of me. Besides, I’ll freely walk in the sunlight once the curse is broken.”
Blair’s being softened as her midnight stare turned molten. She trailed a finger down his jaw, and pride rippled across her beautiful face.
“Alright.” She eyed the bloodstone. “Are you sure we shouldn’t consider the risks?”
Hmmm, fair, Lorkan thought. It could be a trap after all. But time wasn’t on their side.
“Perhaps its best we don’t.”
Blair cursed under her breath. She flexed her fingers at her sides, drawing up her shadows. Anxiety prickled down their bond.
You can do this, Lorkan whispered into her mind.
Blair snapped her attention to him, shadows pulsing as if exited at the sound of his voice. This . . . this is new.
He smiled and nodded towards the bloodstone. Crack it open.
Lorkan’s wolf sensed Blair’s magic in the air, crackling like the static rising before a thunderstorm. Lorkan swore he heard the howling winds past the thick, rocky walls of Vísdómr, too.
Inky mists kissed Blair’s fingertips, and her shadows climbed up and over the table, slithering to the bloodstone.
Blair winced, and through their bond, Lorkan experienced the same burning sensation as her bronntanas touched the bloodstone.
He placed a hand at the small of her back, grounding her.
Her breaths came out ragged as she pushed past the slick sensation of wrongness and wrapped her shadows around the bloodstone.
The light in Lorkan’s study dimmed. The fire whooshed out, and a dangerous chill crept through the space. Their breaths plumed as they waited, and with one last mighty inhale, Blair snapped her fingers.
Her shadow sliced through the bloodstone like a blade cutting through flesh. Red boomed in a wide circle, and crimson tendrils of magic—dark nor light in nature—snaked upward until the gem lost all its color, glistening clear on the table.
Lorkan dragged Blair behind him, his wolf baring its teeth at the sheer ancientness weaving in front of them.
A scene—no, a memory—painted red sharpened to depict two figures.
The first had beautiful hair the color of spun gold.
She stalked towards the other, dagger dripping with blood, in one hand.
The latter stumbled back, color draining from his face from the dozens of wounds dotting his body.
Death seeped from the magic of the bloodstone.
Dread prickled across Lorkan’s skin, and he held Blair tighter.
“Tell me where my sister hides, and I’ll spare your life,” the goddess hissed.
The other god laughed, blood spluttering out of his mouth. “You’ll never outrun your true nature, Macha. The others will soon learn the truth. Badb will make sure of it.”
The goddess named Macha released an ear-splitting scream and launched.
“No!” another goddess appeared from a plume of wispy shadows, dark-blue eyes wide with horror. The sword strapped to her back gave away her identity before her face emerged from the shadows.
The Mother of Darkness.
But she was too late.
Macha swiped her blade across the god’s throat, and blood sprayed across her rage-filled face. The Mother of Darkness sprang forward, catching the god as he collapsed. He landed in her arms and stared up at her with reverence.
“I-I-I’m s-s-sorry I failed you,” he whispered.
Tears filled the Mother of Darkness’s eyes as she rocked him back and forth. “You were brave. You were just. Rest, my cara, and find peace.”
The god slackened in her arms, and his blood seeped into the forest ground. As the life dwindled from the god’s eyes, the red tendrils of ancient magic faded, swallowing the conversation between goddesses whole.
“Blasted books, what did we just witness?“ Blair whispered, gripping Lorkan until her knuckles bled white.
Sweat prickled at Lorkan’s brow as realization rocked his center of gravity. This memory challenged everything he knew of light and darkness. Lorkan swallowed.
Moons, think.
“Perhaps we were wrong about who the Mother of Darkness truly is.” He released his hold on Blair, allowing his sense of urgency to rush down their bond. “We have to tell the others. Immediately.”