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Kallista sorted out the strand that hummed of Obed, barely tasting his faint exotic scent that faded as she sought it. As if he pulled away even here. Maybe the plan stunk.
They had bigger things to think of than a moody, bad-tempered ilias, but Kallista couldn’t help feeling in the bottom of her gut that—despite the demons—this was important. As sleep came to claim her, she wondered whether it might be important because of the demons.
Kallista woke to the touch of kisses along her collarbone above her chemise, to the caress of silk-soft hair trailing over her breasts. She opened her eyes to the sunlit scarlet of Torchay’s hair as he kissed his way up her throat to her mouth.
“Good morn, sweet ilias.” His lips spoke against hers before opening in a deep, drugging kiss.
She felt half-asleep, lost in a sensual dream as Torchay brought her body awake with the stroking of his rough-callused hands. She’d missed this, missed him these last few months.
“Good morn to you.” She returned the greeting as his mouth left hers to follow the path his hands had taken. “No more dreams?”
He shook his head, not bothering to disturb his focus on lips against skin as he shoved her chemise up out of his way. Kallista’s whole being concentrated on the same path, but even so, she noticed the bed felt empty. “Obed?”
“Awake. Gone.” Torchay licked his tongue down the slope of her breast and across her nipple, bringing her up in an involuntary arc. He smiled against her skin and made her gasp.
“Joh?” She could say that much.
“Asleep.” He made her gasp again as his fingers slid between her legs into the wet, slick heat there.
“You sure?”
Torchay lifted his head, met her gaze. “Do you care?”
His thumb stroked across her sweet spot as his fingers slipped inside her, and Kallista came up off the bed onto head and heels. “No.”
He smiled and moved his body over hers, into the place she made for him in the cradle of her hips. She smiled back. Oh, she had missed this, the heat and silken strength of him pushing deep inside her. Her breath sighed out as she took him in, and they fell into the familiar rhythm old as life itself.
“Call the magic.” He breathed the words so quietly, she wasn’t sure she heard him.
“What? Now?”
“Do it. Call magic.” He drew back, holding his weight on his hands, never ceasing the deep rhythm as the lightning-bright blue of his eyes gazed into hers.
“Are you—” She locked her legs around him, trying to hold him still, but couldn’t stop the motion of her own hips. “Is this no more than an attempt to wake my magic?”
She tried to fight free of him. Torchay collapsed, pinning her with his full weight, pressing her down.
“No,” he growled. “This is me making love to you. Nothing more. And nothing less.”
He pushed deeper inside her, and she gasped. “I love you, Kallista. For ten years, I’ve loved you. Don’t make this harder than it is.”
“Then why—” She fought for breath as he stroked inside her again. “Why magic?”
“After yesterday, you have to ask?” He nuzzled her ear, licked her earlobe, brought himself out and back in. “I listened to the others wonder how much better ordinary sex might be with the magic added. I want to be the first to know. I wasn’t the first one marked. I wasn’t the first one you took to your bed. I want to be first at something.”
“Oh, Torchay.” Kallista’s throat clogged with tears she refused to shed—save for the one, no, two, three—that got away. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him close with arms and legs, urging him on with an undulation of her hips. She turned, hunting through his wild red waves of hair till she found his ear. “I loved you first,” she whispered. “I love you most.”
He rose back onto his elbows, giving her a faintly mocking smile as he picked up his pace. “I bet you say that to all your iliasti.”
She smiled, tried to shake her head, but the pleasure he gave her distracted. So she reached for magic instead, and found it.
Massive and sluggish, slow to rise, the magic allowed her to coax a tiny shred of it to life. Enough to make Torchay gasp as it flowed down the link between them. She played it back and forth, matching the magic to the rhythm of their increasingly frantic passion. He drove into her, harder, faster, until all three of them—Torchay, Kallista and the magic—exploded into climax together.
And Joh screamed.
CHAPTER SIX
Torchay was on his feet, a blade in his hand, before Kallista could fight off her body’s after-sex lassitude and scramble to the edge of the massive bed. Obed burst into the room, sword drawn, and Joh cried out again, thrashing on his narrow cot.
“Joh.” Kallista stumbled across the crowded space to bend over her new ilias. She smoothed his hair back out of his face and caught it between her hands. “Joh, wake up. It’s a dream.”
Behind her, Torchay had the key, was unlocking the chain from the wall. Joh shuddered, moaned, still caught by the dream. Her dream, she knew, one she should be dreaming. She got an arm beneath his shoulders, hauling his limp weight up into her lap where she could cuddle him against her naked body. Torchay had awakened from his dream when she held him close. Maybe it would bring Joh back.
“Wake up, soldier.” She spoke into his ear. “Wake. Leave the dream behind. You’re needed here.”
Body racked with tremors, Joh’s arms closed around her and tightened slowly, as if the dream were reluctant to let him go. Kallista held him tighter, murmuring encouragement as he fought his way to consciousness.
She looked up once, saw Obed watching with his flat, black stare, his face devoid of all expression. Save for the tension she could see in his jaw, the flaring of his nostrils. He was not happy.
Deliberately, she turned from him, pressed a kiss to Joh’s forehead and rested her cheek against his hair.
“Oh God.” Joh was fully present now, his voice a frog’s croak.
He held Kallista tight enough almost to hurt. She couldn’t tell whether the damp against her breasts where his head was cradled was sweat or tears. It didn’t matter. She stroked a hand down the long, straight sweep of his hair, past his shoulders to his waist. “Tell us your dream.”
Joh let her go, sitting up, drawing himself straight as he wiped his face with both hands. “Not here. Sergeant Om—Torchay is right. This should not be spoken of in this room. It already invades our sleep. We do not need more.”
Kallista pulled on the tunic Torchay handed her, but didn’t take time for trousers. Obed went with her into the parlor, but waited for the others in silence, across the room from her.
“Is this how you keep your vows as ilias? Your promise to be one of us?” Kallista’s question brought Obed’s head around, and he stared at her.
“I ask only to serve you,” he said after a moment, “and through you, the One above us all. But how can I, if I am not given the opportunity. Even the newest among us has been given—”
“Beware what you ask for, Obed.” Torchay came into the room, Joh jingling behind him, both of them fully dressed. “Believe me when I tell you, you do not want these dreams. You don’t.” Torchay settled onto the sofa beside Kallista, touched her shoulder.
Joh sat on her other side, a careful distance away—enough room for Obed between. Kallista beckoned him closer without even glancing at her dark ilias. His choice, his problem. Joh obeyed, submitting to her arm around his shoulders with only a faint twitch.
“Before, when—” Joh hesitated, choosing words. “When Torchay told his dream, I heard him say ‘demons,’ but I still thought ‘dreams.’ I thought ‘A dream is not so bad. A dream isn’t real.’ Demons are disturbing, perhaps even distressing, but in a dream, they aren’t real. I thought Torchay…exaggerated.”
He took a deep breath, hands closing blindly into fists. Kallista covered one with her hand, turning it, clasping it. After a time, he gripped her tight.
“I was wrong,” he said. “It was not as real as you, here, holding my hand.” He curled his other hand around hers. “But it was no dream.”
“Yes,” Torchay said. “What did you dream?”
Joh hesitated, eyes seeming to turn inward. Kallista used her free hand to tuck a stray strand of hair behind his ear, wondering whether she should encourage him or simply wait.
“I dreamed demons.” He turned his eyes on Kallista, capturing her gaze, and held it while he spoke. As if she could keep the horror at bay. “Seven of them,” he said. “The number of misfortune.”
Seven. Kallista didn’t speak aloud, not at this point. She wanted him to tell it at his own pace, without interruption, but her heart sank. Seven demons? Goddess help them all.
“Six were small, as if the largest, the oldest—” a sudden shudder caught him, but his eyes never left hers “—the most evil of them had pinched off bits of itself and sent them out to cause independent mischief. No—not mischief. Wickedness. Destruction. Death out of time.”
“Why do you say that?” Kallista asked. “Death out of time?”
He blinked, slowly, the blue of his eyes shuttered, then shining again. “While I was away—in prison—I came to understand that death in itself is part of life. A blessing. It is death that comes out of its proper time that is an evil thing.”
She tucked his words away to consider later. “Did you see all seven of the demons?”
“I could not see forms. Only darkness. Seven…darknesses. Scattered across Adara.”
“Could you see where?”
“Here. At least one of them is here. Maybe two. If not here in Arikon, the second is close, I think. The others—” He grimaced. “I don’t know. Not close, but how far away, I can’t say.”
Kallista struggled to wake the magic, to send it questing forth, seeking evil, but it merely turned round on its rug and lay down again. She swore. Torchay soothed her temper with a hand on her shoulder.
“Why did you shout?” he asked.
“Shout?” Joh chuckled, wry and self-mocking. “Speak truth. I screamed, friend.”
“Ilias,” Torchay corrected.
Joh’s lips pressed tight. He didn’t seem quite ready to accept the name or the role. But he clung to Kallista’s hand. “It attacked me—I assume the same way it did you.” He shuddered and Kallista put her arm around him again, hoping it would help. “That foulness…touched me. It was like—like the filth in the prison, but all that evil concentrated together into one touch that went through me.”
He hunted words, chose them with desperate care. “It touched not just my skin, my outside, but me. It wiped that rotting filth on—on my soul. I can’t—God.” He shuddered. “I may never feel clean again.”
“Now? You feel it now?” The idea worried Kallista. Could a man wear two marks?
She reached through her skin-to-skin link with Joh and kicked the magic awake. It had to be pushed and prodded every inch of the way, leaving Joh gasping with every shove as she hunted any sign of a lingering taint.
“You’re clean.” Relief had her leaning her forehead against his. “The demon left nothing behind.”
“Saints and sinners.” Joh shifted, turning his face away from the intimacy. “Is it like that every time?” He looked at Torchay, who shrugged.
“She lost her magic the day I was marked,” he said. “After she destroyed the demon. I wouldn’t know. Before yesterday, I’ve only been part of the magic that once.”
Both men turned to look at Obed. Kallista looked, too. He wore his tattoos like a mask. “Yes,” he said, voice empty. “The magic always feels good. Sometimes it feels better than other times, but always, it is good.”
“You are sure the demon…left nothing?” Joh squeezed Kallista’s hand, brought her attention back to him. “Why do I still feel it?”
“Memories linger.” She leaned toward him, not particularly thinking of a kiss, but when he turned his face away to avoid one, she felt the loss.
Sick to death of men pulling away from her, Kallista stood and headed for the bedroom. “We need to see what this magic will do. As soon as we eat.”
Through the half-closed door as she hunted clean trousers, she heard the hoarse tenor of Torchay’s voice quietly pitching into Joh. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t you ever again turn away. If she wants a kiss, you give it. Whatever she wants, you give it.”
Joh’s deeper voice rumbled something and Torchay came right back. “Damn right you don’t deserve it. But you don’t get to decide what you deserve. She does. She’s the naitan and the captain. You’re di pentivas. It’s bad enough dealing with that one. She doesn’t need two of you turning away.”
Kallista sighed. She didn’t need to force anyone either. That was as hard on her pride and her heart as having them back away.
“Torchay.” She called his name through the door and the diatribe stopped. Or became quieter than she could hear.
After food and clothing, Kallista collected her gloves and her men and headed out into the huge palace complex, looking for enough privacy to practice her errant magic. She didn’t know whether any magic would come when called, but she didn’t want to take the chance that it would and then escape her control. Finding what they needed, however, seemed to be a more difficult problem than she’d anticipated.
The palace teemed with people. Kallista and her ilian already had neighbors in the suite below them and likely on the floor above, given the thumping coming through the ceiling. Likely had them on the floors above that as well. When they crossed over into Winterhold, it showed no signs of being emptied out for summer. In fact, it seemed more crowded than Summerglen.
Kallista spotted a familiar face in courier’s gray and reached out to snag Viyelle before she vanished in the crowd. “Are you on assignment?”
“No, Captain.” Viyelle saluted with perfect form. “What are your orders?”
“No orders. Just didn’t want to delay you if you already had them.” Kallista stepped into an alcove out of the jostling streams of people, drawing the younger woman with her. All three men took up posts at its entrance, playing bodyguard. Time to give the courier an opportunity to prove herself. The One was a God of second chances. Kallista could do no less. “Has every minor prinsep in Adara decided to take up residence in the palace?”
Viyelle’s grin looked harassed. “It must be so. If I hadn’t already taken oath as a courier, I would now, just to get a little space to breathe. As it is, I still have to share with my mother, because Courier’s Quarters are filled up with displaced colonels and majors. I’m going to beg for an assignment. Any assignment. Anywhere. It’s that or be taken up for matricide.”
Kallista chuckled, amused by the prinsipella’s irreverence. “If it gets too bad, you can come share our suite. We’re only using one sleeping room. There are plenty more.”
“I may. Since it didn’t happen on our trip south, I know you won’t kill me by accident while you sleep.” She winked at Kallista.
“Brat.” Kallista cuffed the back of her head, laughing. “If the rumors give us some privacy, I don’t mind them. But listen, do you know of any place where we can practice our magic? Where no one will get cut if I happen to break a few windows?”
Viyelle made a face. “I’m not sure. Truly? I don’t think so. The palace is overflowing. I have never in my life seen so many people crammed inside, and I’ve been coming here since before I can remember.”
“What of the yard she used last year?” Joh turned slightly, spoke over his shoulder. “It was badly damaged in the explosion. Has it been repaired?”
Viyelle stared at him, and a slow flush rose on Joh’s cheeks. “Isn’t he the one—” she began.
“Yes,” Kallista said. “But that’s over. He’s ilias now. Joh Suteny, Viyelle Torvyll.”
“Ilias?” Viyelle’s shocked expression smoothed into perfect courtier’s courtesy when she glanced at Kallista. “Of course, Naitan. I am honored.”
She put her right leg forward and swept into a graceful bow, flourishes and all. Joh blushed a deeper red and nodded.
“The courtyard?” Kallista prompted.
“Oh.” Viyelle blinked back to awareness, out of her shock. “As he said, it was badly damaged. It may be available. Do you want me to investigate?”
“No need. We can check ourselves.”
“Please, Naitan, let me see. Give me an assignment. Anything. Please. Do not send me back into that den of prinsipi that is my mother’s chambers.”
Viyelle’s dramatically rolling eyes made Kallista laugh. “Go first and find out whether there might be real work for you. If there are more couriers than assignments, then come back and find me. We can discuss matters then. Oh, and Courier?”
“Yes, Captain?” She snapped to attention again.
Kallista blew out a breath. “I wish I knew whether it would be better to quash rumors or spread them.”
“Which rumors, Naitan?” Viyelle asked carefully.
