Chapter 14
Nyssa
Typically, I find Rynna in the pub. The old tavern that has stood the test of time in BlackFen Edge.
The Black Dog smells heavenly of home-cooked food and a log fire. It’s comforting in a way that makes my chest ache. The warmth of the room hits me after the freezing Atlantic that tried to claim me twenty minutes ago.
I scan the room. It doesn’t take long to spot her.
Rynna is holding court at a corner table, a pint in one hand and a packet of cheese and onion crisps in the other.
She’s laughing, head thrown back. The guy she’s talking to is Dave, the butcher’s son, who looks like he’s trying to solve a physics equation just by looking at her cleavage.
I weave through the crowd. The floor sticks to my shoes. Normal. This is normal. I force my shoulders to drop, dragging the mask back into place over the humming, golden fire in my blood. The Crown feels heavy on my head, unseen but persistent, like a migraine with an attitude problem.
“Buy a girl a drink?” I ask, sliding onto the stool opposite her.
“Jesus, Nys! You move like a bloody ghost.” Rynna squints at me, her grin slipping just a fraction. “You okay?”
“Peachy,” I lie, flashing a smile that feels too sharp for my face. “Just the usual impending doom and paperwork. Dave, unless you’re planning to solve the mysteries of the universe or buy the next round, jog on.”
Dave blinks, his brain taking a solid five seconds to process the dismissal. He mutters something about sausage deliveries and scarpers back to the bar.
“You’re mean,” Rynna says. “I was getting a free drink out of him.”
“I’ll buy you a drink. Two pints of Guinness,” I call out to the barman, who nods. I turn back to my sister. She looks vibrant, messy, and blissfully unaware that I’m currently wearing an invisible crown made of death and bad decisions. “So, vampire staking. You handle it okay?”
“We already talked about this. It was fine.” She pauses, her eyes narrowing as she studies me. “You’re glowing.”
My heart stops. “What?”
“Your skin. You look like you’ve had a facial. Or sex. Definitely one of the two.” She smirks. “Those too-hot-to-be-fair boyfriends of yours treating you right?”
“They aren’t my boyfriends,” I say automatically, grabbing the pints as they arrive and sliding one over to her. “They’re… colleagues.”
“Colleagues who look like they model for Sin and Salvation Weekly,” she snorts, taking a long drink, foam clinging to her lip. “Right. Colleagues.”
I grip my glass, the cold condensation grounding me. The snake on my head shifts its weight, reminding me that I don’t belong in this warm, sticky pub anymore. I belong to the tides and the light and the coming war. But for tonight, for one pint, I’m just Nyssa.
“Drink up, Ryn,” I say, clinking my glass against hers. “To sisters.”
“To sisters,” she echoes, unaware she’s toasting a goodbye.
The Guinness tastes like iron and earth, grounding me better than Voren’s frost ever could. I take a long pull, letting the bitter foam settle on my lip, watching Rynna demolish a packet of crisps with the enthusiasm of a starving badger.
“So,” she says, licking her thumb. “Are we going to talk about the fact that you look like you’re carrying the weight of the world, or are we pretending this is just a casual pint?”
“Pretending,” I say immediately. “It’s my favourite coping mechanism.”
“Fair enough.” She points a crisp at me like a weapon. “But if those brooding models hurt you, I will stake them. I don’t care how pretty they are. Or how much they look like they could snap me in half.”
“They aren’t going to hurt me,” I say, forcing my voice to stay steady. “In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m the one giving them grey hairs.”
Rynna laughs, that cackling sound that used to annoy me but now feels like a song I’m about to forget. “Good. Keep ‘em on their toes. You’re a Vale. We don’t do damsel in distress.”
“No,” I whisper, gripping the glass until my knuckles ache. “We definitely don’t.”
This is it. The last quiet moment before the storm breaks and washes everything away.
I drain my glass, the liquid courage doing absolutely nothing against the divine dread settling in my gut.
I need to leave before I crack and tell her everything, before I beg her to run, before I drag her into a war she can’t win.
“I have to go,” I say, suddenly.
Rynna blinks, mid-chew. “Already? You’ve barely been here five minutes.”
“Duty calls,” I say, standing up. My legs feel solid, but the air around me is vibrating. “Stay safe, Ryn. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Well, that’s fucking boring,” she mutters.
I force a smile, turn on my heel, and walk out of the warmth before the tears pricking my eyes can fall. Outside, the darkness waits, and for the first time, I don’t just walk into it. I command it.
I take a breath, letting the cold air scour the taste of Guinness and grief from my tongue.
Dreven materialises from the gloom across the street, his form coalescing from the shadows between streetlamps. He doesn’t ask if I’m okay. He knows better.
“Done?” he asks, his voice a low vibration that rumbles through the soles of my feet.
“Done,” I say. “I didn’t tell her. It felt... cruel.”
Voren steps out from behind a parked van, bringing a sudden drop in temperature that frosts the windscreen. Dastian drops down from a roof gutter, landing with a silent, chaotic grace that belies the sparks jumping off his knuckles.
“Cruelty is a matter of perspective,” Voren says, his gaze drifting to the pub window where warm light spills onto the wet pavement. “Leaving her alive is a kindness.”
“Let’s hope she stays that way,” I mutter. The invisible snake shifts on my head, tightening its coil. It’s impatient. So am I. But for something else. “I need you.”
Voren grabs my hand and uses his power to take us to Marrow House. The glamour has well and truly gone now, but I don’t care. I just want to be fucked into oblivion before I take on the Devourer.
I don’t wait for him to make the first move.
I spin and use my strength to shove him up against the rotting wall.
My hands rip at his shirt, exposing his rock-hard abs.
I moan and lick him, sliding my tongue over the grooves before my lips close over his nipple.
I flick it, making him groan. His hand goes to my hair, fisting it as Dreven and Dastian arrive.
They waste no time stripping me off as I press my hand to Voren’s cock.
He’s hard already, thick under my palm. I squeeze, slow and cruel, and his breath hisses out between his teeth. Dreven’s shadows strip me in a sinfully efficient sweep while Dastian drops his mouth to my bare spine, licking and sucking until I’m soaking wet.
I flick Voren’s zip open and take him in my hand. Cold, heavy, perfect. He tilts my chin up with icy fingers, eyes intent. “Say please.”
“Please,” I grit, shameless.
Voren’s thumb presses into the hollow behind my jaw, commanding my mouth open. He kisses me deeply, thoroughly, tasting me as I jerk him off. His hands drop to my waist, and he lifts me up, ignoring Dastian’s murmur of protest. I wrap my legs around Voren and sink onto his waiting cock.
He is gorgeously enormous, and my mouth goes slack as he pumps me up and down slowly, using me as much as I’m using him.
Dreven slides in behind me, as Dastian moves to the side, gripping my hair and forcing my mouth to his.
Dreven’s cock nudges my pussy, and I whimper as he guides it inside alongside Voren’s.
I gasp, half-pain, half-greed, as Dreven pushes in deeper. The stretch is glorious.
“Breathe,” Voren orders, dragging my hips down, forcing me to take the impossibility. Ice and shadow split me open in the best way.
“Greedy,” Dreven murmurs against my shoulder, voice sharpened steel. “Our girl wants all of it.”
Dastian kisses me, swallowing the noise I make as they ride my pussy in ways that make my skin tingle.
I roll my hips, and everything inside me detonates. “Fuck—”
My curse is swallowed by Dastian as my body convulses wildly between the three gods. But I have never felt more alive, standing here in the middle of a decrepit mansion, impaled on two cocks with a third desperate to be inside me. I take Dastian’s cock in my hand when he moves my hand over him.
I stroke him hard while they drive into me, a filthy rhythm that strips me down to the bare, ugly truth of what I am: theirs.
Dastian bites a curse against my mouth and spills hot over my fingers.
I drag that slick to my clit and circle, frantic, greedy, needing to feel him coating my pussy.
Voren’s grip brands my hips. Dreven’s shadow cuffs bite my wrists with promise.
My orgasm detonates. I come shaking, gutted, wrung out while they grind deeper until everything collapses into bright static.
The crown tightens.
A thin, metallic hiss cuts the air. Not loud. Loaded. The house answers with a low moan, old wood shifting like it heard a vow it doesn’t like.
Voren slams into me and then grunts, unloading with Dreven following shortly, pumping their cum into me as I tremble in their arms. Dastian takes me from them before I’ve even finished shaking.
He slams into me, pressing me against the wall as he drives in deep, harder than I’ve ever felt him, even after unloading only moments ago.
“Yes!” I scream as he makes my toes tingle, and the current runs up my entire body. It snaps me in half, thrusts turning brutal, bright, necessary. I claw at his shoulders, at the peeling wallpaper, at anything, and the crown tightens again like a halo with opinions.
“Dastian—” I beg, and he gives me everything, groaning a filthy oath as he drives deep and spills hot, the aftershock sparking up my spine until I’m wrung dry and shaking.
A hiss breaks through the ragged panting, and Dastian’s eyes narrow as he stares at me.
It was me. I hissed at him.
My hand flies up to the crown, and it’s placid, normal metal, not the snake that it was before I drowned.
“Did you just hiss?” Dreven asks, moving closer.
“Yes,” I murmur, still shaking from my orgasms. “The snake… when I was underwater it… entered me. I forgot until now.”
“Entered you how?” Voren asks.
“It bit me, and then it slid into my body.” I climb off Dastian’s cock and bend to retrieve my clothes. Voren goes still, the kind of still that means his brain has sprinted a mile ahead. “Show me.”
“Can’t,” I snap, yanking my tee over my head and shoving my legs into my leggings. My hands shake. “It bit me at the base of my skull and slid under my skin. It felt like barbed wire and ice.”
Dreven steps in front of me, palms hovering either side of my neck without touching. The air tightens. “It’s not in the flesh. It’s riding the seam between you and… you.”
“Between,” I echo. The word tastes like seawater and stubbornness.
He presses two fingers against my sternum. Cold threads in, fine as spider silk. The light under my skin flares and snaps at him. He doesn’t flinch. “It’s braided through your soul,” he says quietly. “Symbiosis. Not possession.”
“Comforting,” I mutter.
Dreven’s gaze flicks to my mouth, then back up to my eyes, before he slides his gaze over to Voren, whose face has gone deadly still.