A Crown of the Gods, page 19
She let out a sound—something between a cry and a gasp—and it caused a …shift.
He was normally precise—controlled—in the way he made love to her. Firm, yet careful in the way his touch and his movements commanded her until she was spent and shivering against him.
But she could feel him slipping this time, losing himself in the waves of their magic and the rhythm of their bodies falling and rising against one another’s.
There was nothing careful about the way his fingers fisted in her hair and yanked her closer.
Nothing precise about the way his mouth took hers and devoured it.
He grabbed her hips and pulled her completely onto him. Pressed a hand against her lower back. Held her still as he took over the work of keeping their rhythm, driving so deeply into her that the rush of pleasure stole her breath and nearly brought her to that release she craved. She caught herself at the last moment, legs trembling against him. Her head dipped toward her chest. Her eyes closed as she searched for balance.
Elander’s fingers were beneath her chin a moment later, lifting her face back to his. “Look at me,” he commanded.
She did—though her vision had started to blur from ecstasy—and the expression on his face, the dark heat in his gaze, the way he held her gaze as he continued to thrust, as he watched her release building …it was her final undoing.
Her body surrendered first, and her mind followed soon after. He caught her face in his hands and pulled her mouth back to his, so that her finishing cries fell against his lips. He seemed to be tasting them, swallowing them, savoring the sound as it filled him and pushed him to the same place she was currently floating within.
He held her tightly against him as he finished, holding her hips against his until every drop of himself was spent, until his raspy breaths calmed and his muscles finally unclenched.
He relaxed into the chair, and she sank down with him as little waves of pleasure continued to throb through her, making her too dizzy to properly sit up.
At least a full minute passed. She still didn’t want to separate herself from him. Her heart was still pounding. Her skin was still tingling.
“Warm enough yet?” he asked, cupping her face and pulling her into one last, slow kiss.
She smiled a sleepy, content smile as he trailed his hand up and down her back. She curled into him, and he rested his face against the top of her head, breathing her in and occasionally pressing soft kisses against her hair.
It was a long time before they moved from this position. But eventually it had to happen; they peeled apart and cleaned up in the washroom. Cas pulled on a nightgown and then stumbled toward the bed. Elander followed soon after, wearing only a loose pair of breeches—one of many that had been stashed in the dresser beside the door. He had as many clothes in that dresser as she did, by this point; she wasn’t entirely sure why they still bothered with separate rooms. What was hers was his.
But then she remembered …she did have something she was keeping to herself in this room, didn’t she?
She fought the urge to look toward the washroom, toward that cabinet where she’d hidden the Blood crystals. She was going to wait until morning before she dealt with those crystals—isn’t that what she’d told herself?
She crawled under the covers and turned her back to the hiding place.
Soon enough, she managed to fall asleep.
But it was a shallow, fitful slumber; her eyes were constantly fluttering open to make certain Elander was still beside her, her mind jolting awake every time a new, anxious thought fell into it.
He never left the room, but at some point he did move to collect some of those books she’d mentioned earlier. She blinked her eyes open and found him sitting up beside her, studying tattered pages with a distant, somewhat haunted look on his face.
Her hand roamed through the sheets and found its way to his bare chest, coming to rest across his heart. He laced his fingers through hers without taking his eyes away from his book.
She watched him until her eyes grew too heavy to stay open, and she tried not to think about the memories hidden in the room next to them, or about what new disasters tomorrow might bring.
CHAPTER 16
THE NEXT MORNING, CAS JOLTED AWAKE SO VIOLENTLY THAT SHE nearly toppled over the side of the bed.
She caught herself against the bedside table, but her hand continued to shake, rattling the lamp on that table, shifting the stack of notes upon it and sending a few sheets of parchment drifting to the floor.
Elander was already awake, reclining in the chair by the window with one of the books Emrys had sent open in his lap. He closed it immediately as he caught sight of her. “That same dream again?” he guessed, setting the book aside and starting to his feet.
She took a moment to calm her pounding heart before she tried to reply. “Yes. But it …it ended differently this time.”
“How so?”
She concentrated, trying to catch the pieces of it that were fleeing as her brain continued to wake up. “The blood that flooded the streets, the city, all that blood …it disappeared. Everything turned lighter, calmer, and at the end it became almost …pleasant.”
He stretched to his full height and ran a hand through his sleep-mussed hair, considering. “That’s a good sign, isn’t it? If it actually is some sort of prophetic magic manifesting, as in the past, then the less bloody, the better, right?”
“Maybe.”
He gave her a curious look.
Less bloody was better. Of course it was. But the question was why it had turned less bloody.
And the only answer she could come up with in that moment was …disturbing.
She bowed her head and continued to focus, hoping she was misremembering the nightmare. It was strange to want the horrific, original version of it back, but at least that was a monster she was intimately familiar with by this point—so it had gotten easier to handle.
But now, instead of watching the end of this dream unfold through her own eyes, as in the past, she had been watching from the bloody streets alongside her friends, staring up at herself. Herself, who had been standing on the outer wall encircling the palace grounds, as always.
Until she’d disappeared.
And when her dream self had disappeared, so had the blood.
The dream had flickered—a blink—and the wall she’d stood upon had suddenly been empty, the sun had emerged, the birds had started to chirp again, the air had turned crisp and clean …
The blood had disappeared.
But only after she had disappeared.
The vivid image of herself, there one moment and gone the next, made her stomach churn.
“Casia?”
She lifted her head and found Elander watching her closely, one of his hands braced against the chair he’d started to settle back into.
“It’s complicated.” She hugged her arms against herself. “But maybe I’m misremembering, and it’s nothing to worry about. It’s …it’s probably nothing.”
He frowned, but something else distracted him before he could question her further; his head tilted toward the door and his eyes narrowed in concentration.
Cas let her attention shift toward the world outside of that door too, and she felt a hint of what had likely caught his attention. “I sense powerful magic.”
He nodded.
“The goddesses are back?”
“Yes,” he said, though uncertainty clung to the word for some reason.
She pushed her dream a little further from her thoughts. “We shouldn’t keep them waiting,” she said, crawling from the bed and planting her feet firmly on the cold floor.
They agreed to meet downstairs. Elander went to his own room to get ready. Cas changed, cleaned herself up, and then headed out on her own.
She wasn’t walking alone for long, however; Nessa caught sight of her only a moment after she’d stepped into the hallway.
“I want to show you something,” said Nessa, as she hurried to her side and locked arms with her.
Cas started to protest—she truly didn’t want to keep those goddesses waiting, or deal with the tantrum that the Storm Goddess would likely throw if she didn’t hurry, but Nessa was insistent. So she let herself be dragged down to the second floor, and then to the end of a hallway that led out to a grand, curving balcony.
The chill morning air bit at her nose and cheeks. Cas thought about protesting again—or at least going back for a coat—but Nessa put both hands on her shoulders and steered her toward the edge of the balcony.
“Look,” she said, pointing at something below.
Cas looked—it wasn’t as though Nessa was giving her a choice not to—and she saw a crowd of people huddled around the main gate to the palace grounds. Her muscles tensed as worst-case scenarios flashed through her mind. But, upon looking closer, they didn’t appear as if they were here to storm that gate …
“What are they doing?”
Nessa linked their arms once more and gave a little squeeze. “They’re hoping for a glimpse of you. The supplanter Queen who did battle with the gods yesterday. It’s all anyone is talking about this morning—you and Elander, and the show of magic the two of you put on. Laurent finally managed to have that meeting with Syndra earlier, and she said the city is full of people swapping stories about what they supposedly saw or heard. And it’s the same thing here in the palace.” She let out a little sigh as she added, “I haven’t been able to get anyone to fully focus on the tasks I’ve assigned them.”
“It was a lesser-spirit we did battle with, not a god,” Cas pointed out.
“Like that makes that much of a difference to the average person.”
Cas tried for a smile in response to the one Nessa was beaming at her. She mostly managed it.
She quickly returned her attention to the people below, and her heart skipped a beat as one of them caught sight of her and pointed. Several other gazes lifted in her direction, and the rising hum of excited chatter could be heard even from where she stood.
It was a stark contrast to the last time she’d used powerful magic in this city. She’d had less control then, and the destruction she’d accidentally caused had been followed by an angry mob arriving at the palace and demanding that Varen make her answer for her crimes—which had led to a chain of events that had ended with Asra’s death and all the painful, devastating things that had followed it.
Most of the crowd had spotted her. They were pointing up to the balcony, and a few of them appeared to be attempting to convince the guards to let them inside for a more personal visit.
“I feel a bit like a caged animal on display,” Cas mused.
Nessa giggled and leaned her head against Cas’s arm.
The sound of paws scampering across the plush hall carpet reached them. Silverfoot wiggled through the partially open balcony door a moment later, and Rhea’s relieved voice soon followed. “There you are, Casia.”
“Did you see this?” asked Nessa. She held her arms out for Silverfoot, and as soon as he was secured within them, she spun him around and let him get a good look at the crowd by the gate.
Rhea focused only for a moment on the images Silverfoot sent to her, and then she looked to Cas. “Never mind that crowd. There is a far more interesting one awaiting you in my office.”
“Yes, I thought I felt a surge of divine energy. Nephele and Inya are back?”
“Not just them.”
Cas thought about the uncertainty that had been in Elander’s tone earlier, and now a similar feeling flickered through her. Rhea beckoned, and she followed without hesitation. She was eager to escape the crowd that was ogling her anyhow.
“Your latest display of magic has fully caught the attention of not only our city, but also our divine allies, it seems,” Rhea told her as they walked.
They reached her office before she had time to explain further, and so she simply opened the door and urged Cas inside with a nod.
Cas stepped into the room. The sunlight streaming through the window was unnaturally bright—blinding, really—and as she uselessly tried to tilt her face away from the light, a feeling of immense magic flooded over her. The only thing she could compare it to was the moment when Solatis had briefly swept her from this world, when that upper-goddess’s power had wrapped her in an embrace that had been warm and energizing but still borderline overwhelming. Little bumps erupted across her skin. Her heart fluttered rapidly—a startled bird in a cage.
Her eyes finally adjusted to the abnormally bright sunlight.
She blinked several more times, just to be certain of what she was seeing.
She had been expecting the two familiar goddesses of her court, but she was rendered speechless by the other two standing beside them. Cas had seen these other two only in books and in works of art, but it was immediately obvious who they were.
The entire Court of the Sun had taken up residence in the office, apparently waiting for her arrival.
There was the Goddess of Stars, Cepheid, with her porcelain skin and a body muscular enough that, for a moment, Cas believed the stories that said she had carried the stars across the night sky and hung them by hand. She was dressed in a flowing shirt and pants made of some sort of silky material, the waves of dark blue fabric a bold contrast to her pale complexion. Her eyes were molten lead. Her hair—a soft, rosy white that made Cas think of delicate pearls—was woven through with thin strands of silver that glistened with every movement of her head.
And behind her, studying a small dragon statue on the shelf behind Rhea’s desk, was the Goddess of Sky, her true identity heralded by the black staff she casually leaned against. In all of her portrayals in books and otherwise, she was rarely seen without this staff. The swirling cloud shape at its end resembled the one at the center of the thin headpiece she wore.
Indre—most humans called her—though Cas was familiar with her true name, Aendryr, as this was how Elander and Nephele referred to her. She and Nephele had been sisters in their mortal lives, yet the two goddesses looked almost nothing alike. She was shorter, almost dainty compared to the towering Storm Goddess, while the straight locks framing her narrow face were much darker, the color of a starless night sky. She glanced briefly at Cas, and her eyes seemed to sparkle and shift between arresting shades of blue and green, like gentle, rippling reflections of sky against a calm sea. Cas had seen eyes this oddly bright in only one other being before—Queen Soryn of Sadira, who carried the Sky Goddess’s mark and magic.
The Goddess of Stars spoke first, her voice deep, almost rough. “Shadowslayer.”
Cas automatically reached for the sword that usually rested against her hip, but realized that she’d left her weapon in her room—and that this weapon was not what Cepheid was focused on.
The goddess was calling her Shadowslayer.
“Godkiller,” that goddess continued. “Sunbringer. There is no shortage of monikers the people of this city have come up with for their new Queen, it seems. I’ve been listening to them. Watching them.”
Something about the way she said watching left Cas feeling strangely cold.
“We’ve all been watching your story unfold with great interest,” the Moon Goddess put in, her kind voice rewarming the space. “You already knew that Nephele and I were watching and working on your behalf, and you called to me yesterday, didn’t you?”
So she hadn’t imagined that moment in the river.
“And you answered me.”
The goddess smiled. “It didn’t require much effort. Your power has grown stronger.”
“Though still not strong enough, most likely,” the Goddess of Sky commented, her voice distant and her eyes back on that dragon statue on the shelf. Wispy clouds stretched into existence around her as she spoke, similar to the lightning that occasionally accompanied her sister whenever Nephele’s moods shifted. The swirls of grey further muted the light in the room.
Nessa moved to the window and pushed the curtains completely open. She moved confidently, though a bit stiffly, as if determined not to let the overwhelming power in the space get to her.
Elander arrived a moment later. He didn’t look entirely surprised to see the host of goddesses that awaited him—he had been the first to sense their arrival, after all—but he did visibly tense as his gaze slid over the Goddess of Stars. They had been close once, Cas recalled. But the goddess had turned his back on him soon after his fall from his fully divine status.
Cas wondered what he was thinking—what it felt like, to be reunited after however many years it had been—but now was not the time to discuss it.
She met the Moon Goddess’s eyes and pointedly stuck to the matter at hand. “To what do we owe this visit?”
“Our dear Nephele was insistent that we could all answer your calls for help more thoroughly,” said Inya.
“Annoyingly insistent,” added the Goddess of Sky, the clouds around her billowing, growing darker and thicker.
The Storm Goddess looked entirely unrepentant.
Cas nearly smiled; if nothing else, she had to give the tempestuous goddess credit for being stubborn enough to get things done.
“Which is why we’ve arrived with a concrete plan to help,” said Nephele, “as we were just discussing with your Master of Correspondence before she went to fetch you.”
Cas gave Rhea a questioning look.
“Weapons, to start with,” Rhea told her. “They’ve come here with a plan to better arm our soldiers.”
The Storm Goddess looked pleased with herself, as she so often did. “As we mentioned the last time we were here, a substantial amount of Solatis’s magic spilled into this world upon her departure from it, threatening to destabilize things.”
“So we have been searching for a way to turn this into our advantage instead,” explained the Moon Goddess. “We’ve gathered up what we could of this wayward magic, and we’ve nearly perfected a method of concentrating it into something useful.” She reached into the inner pocket of her coat and withdrew what appeared to be a long, shimmering thread of silk. Then she took a small dagger from a sheath hidden at her back and held it carefully out in front of her.
