Goddess's Gift (Get Your Rocks Off Book 4), page 30
Tears formed in my eyes as I watched the silvery power Luc wielded grow brighter, slowly eating away his form and turning him into something else.
I’ll never stop loving you. Never. You’ll be queen in my heart for as long as I live. Always. Now see to your consorts. They’re hurting, Aen most of all.
It was good advice, sensible even, but I couldn’t look away, not as the blinding bolt of light shot down from the sky, not as he stared up into it, becoming one with it until there was a flash, a rumble of thunder, and then he was gone.
I moved woodenly, a broken doll as I joined the others, brushing past my consorts who all fucking needed me, who I wanted to bundle up tight in the room and never let outside again. Aragide would be our cocoon, our cell. I found her shivering, dull eyed, and in Marlow’s arms, which should have been warning enough. No one touched her in this form but me. So I enfolded her in my arms, her tremors, her sobs only growing louder when they did, until finally, she shoved her face in my hair and cried. Marlow looked broken, smashed through, and his hand raised up, a glowing ball of light in it, but I shook my head. We didn’t know what had happened to Aen, but touching her, even with healing power, before she was ready was not OK. I stroked her red hair in one hand and then traced out the sigil Nan had shown me so many years ago, just down the hill, opening the way to Aragide.
What happened?
Rutherglen took the guys back to his Estate in Gisbourne and tortured them in the basement he tortured Marlow. They tried to fight back as best as they could, but weren’t really getting very far, but did manage to redirect the violence away from Kira. Aen was sexually assaulted off screen. It took for Luc to take the power of being the sky father’s avatar to break Rutherglen’s hold and anyone who had the red stones found they instantly dissolved. The only person in the world with Sky Daddy’s power is Luc. He and Johnno caused the whole estate to collapse in on itself, just leaving bare earth. Now freely in touch with the sky father’s father, Luc lets Kira know he has to go, that staying with her in Aragide, taking the throne there is what the god wants. To do his best to save her, he has to leave. He then disappears in a flash of light, leaving Kira to look behind her at an outcropping that looks exactly like the one Luc had created inside Aragide when he took her on a date.
Chapter 31
“What the fuck just happened?” Liam snapped as we filed into the room. This was ours now, any of us could come and go from it if we wanted, but right now, I laid my girlfriend down and sent a thought out to Vervain. Not now, not yet, but I’d jokingly said I needed girlfriend help. Well, I needed to know if she knew anyone who’d helped their girlfriend through a sexual assault before. I tucked her body up against mine. Somehow, she seemed smaller, frailer. Then I remembered her constant refrain. She looked at me blearily as I began to tug my dress off, but her eyes closed when I settled her against my bare skin.
I told the guys what Lucas had said, and that was met with stony silence. It was hostility directed at me, I could feel them out much more now. Mark was fractious, sitting incredibly still while wanting to move, do something, anything. No, he wanted to contact his sentinel cronies and find out what the fuck had just happened to Luc.
Johnno was longing to get closer but feeling ashamed of wanting that as I was holding a hurt Aen. I smiled slightly at that. He’d welcomed Rutherglen smashing his face in because every hit was one he didn’t give me. Not such a bad man after all. I looked across Aen’s head, kissing her crown as I sent him a wave of love. His eyes went wide, then looked at me in wonder. Love was fucking awesome, and I wasn’t sure why I’d been so scared of it. It washed over him like a warm bath, soothing all the hurts, shoring up our bonds until it was stronger than ever.
Billy wanted Lilith, a drink, a guitar, anything. He hadn’t felt this full for so long, the customary ache he’d learned to love having been so thoroughly eradicated, it was like it didn’t exist. He felt my stroke down the bond, and his eyes fell closed. I couldn’t, wouldn’t take it from him, but I could hold him through it, allow him to let those high walls down, inch by inch, because we were rushing into each other, no matter what.
Marlow wanted to fix it all, Aen, me, the guys. He felt the ache way too keenly, so I stepped in and stopped that. He was enough, just here, just being. He was mine, and I loved him exactly as he was.
Jake just wanted. He was a chaotic mix of fear, elation, and desire, but I had a feeling that was him normally. He didn’t get the long faces and sad air. Luc would come back, he was sure of that. We were together, finally, something that had been broken in Jake, perhaps since birth, healing. He could feel every single one of our beats inside him, including Luc’s. We would make beautiful music together, always. I smiled at that, getting something sweet from him when everyone else felt pain, so I just improvised a little with the tune that beat he carried, adding some little flourishes, and a great wave of love hit me in response.
And Liam. Always the hardest to unpack, he was a swirl of emotion—fear, anger, relief, need. I got the feeling this was a constant for him that was only amplified by what had happened. It played over in his mind, every blow struck, the only reprieve for him when Rutherglen had him on the floor, a foot on the chair pushing into his neck. Only then did blessed self-preservation trump the lot of it, the geas relenting because if he didn’t survive, then we wouldn’t.
I wanted to pull away from his mind, the brutalisation of our group on rotation making my gut twist. This was just re-traumatisation. So I reached out, speaking to the geas directly. I showed it that being together, recovering, moving past this in our time was the answer it sought.
The result was quite dramatic, the calming of his mind letting mine do the same, which was perhaps why this slipped out.
“You knew this would happen.”
I felt the spike of fear as I said the words, when every eye turned his way, the brief flare of anger and then the heavy greyness of resignation. He straightened, his jaw tipping up in what I had come to feel was a typical Liam ‘fuck you’ look.
“Not all of it. I sure as fuck wouldn’t have boned you in the club bathroom if I had any idea Jimmy was gonna pull that shit. I just knew the sky father had plans. The first time he spoke to me through Luc was when he was dreaming. I was sitting down, going through the set list for Donington, and he said my name. Wasn’t Luc. They have completely different voices and speech patterns. He told me about Kira, about how it’d all go down.”
“And how will it go down?” I asked, snapping out the words.
“You know, Kira. She’s already told you, when we opened this place. The trials will happen, you’ll ascend, and then you’ll fight him.”
“Luc?” My voice faltered on that, Aen’s hand wrapping tighter around my arm at the sound of it.
He nodded, and then I saw it. The single fucking tear forming in one steel blue eye, blinked away before it could fall.
“I can’t…just sit around waiting for fate’s axe to fall. What rides me, it pushes me with every breath to make sure we’re all OK and together. When I’ve got a fucking god telling me about his plans for us, I listened, if only for the fucking hubris of trying to work out a way to circumvent them.” His eyes flicked around the room, shuttering down as if the sight of us hurt him. “It’s not gonna help things at all, but I did it for you, for all of you.”
“The sentinels need to be involved,” Mark said. “If you want advice on how to take down an avatar, they’re the ones to talk to.”
“Not an avatar,” I said, stroking a hand through Aen’s hair. “Lucas.”
Chapter 32
I lay in the quiet of our room in Aragide with my consorts for some time. Food and drinks were delivered, blood washed away, and even Marlow didn’t complain when I shrouded myself in sweats. Aen and I showered together, the boys in the other, and when I washed her, she cried in my arms. I held her, just bore witness to what was happening with no fucking clue as to how to help, until it finally stopped. She washed away the evidence under the shower head.
“They died, when Johnno crushed the estate,” was all she would say, her voice harsh as the crack of a whip.
“Good.”
“Good.” She nodded and pulled on sweats too.
We collapsed onto the bed, wrapped up tight in each other, but no one but me touched Aen. Sleep took a ridiculously long time to come, but it did. I waited until everyone’s breathing had evened out for some time before I slipped out from under them and left the room.
The murals and artwork of Aragide had been replaced by a long span of mirrors on both sides of the corridors, ones that reflected a drab and washed out Kira, then something much darker.
Show me you, as you looked when you walked the earth, I said.
My hair went to black, falling now in tight waves, a great mane of it, some plaited together into neat cornrows that ended in beads of copper and amber. They clacked when we walked. My face and skin changed, deepening to ebony, my lips full, mobile, my teeth so white against it when I smiled. And my eyes were a pupil-less sea of black. I stopped, taking in the filmy, dark purple, toga like garment that draped across a form taller and stronger than mine.
So this is you.
This is me.
Not a crow’s wing or a clacking pile of bones, just a girl.
Just a girl in love, just like you.
Aramka.
Aramka, she repeated with a nod.
He was in the training room when we opened the door, because of course he was. We didn’t let the door fall completely closed, not wanting to interrupt the balletic display. Duke moved through the room in a series of strikes and kicks that looked as much about dancing as fighting. His body was still a picture of feline strength, every muscle picked out in the low light as he went, clad only in a loose pair of cotton pants. Sweat gleamed on his skin. Kick, wheel, strike, block, slide. Across the room he went, a whirlwind of power.
“So you’ve finally decided to come?”
Rey appeared at my shoulder.
“Everything happens when it’s supposed to. You know that,” we said.
“Mother keep me, I’ll never understand what you two do. I just get to bear witness to the chaos that you create together.”
He nodded to me, then left, so that there was only him and me.
We crossed to the floor on silent feet, yet when we came close enough to hear the tiny grunts he made with each swipe, he spun around.
“You,” he said.
There was so much in that word—longing, desire, fear, hatred, resignation. We stared finally into implacable eyes that just saw, no longer reacting.
“Me. Always me, aramka?”
“Always you.”
The words were torn from him, his calm broken as he stormed towards us, ready to tug us into his arms, against his body. I knew what his mouth would taste like, I could feel it on my tongue, even though we’d never kissed.
I backed away, but she dropped into a fighting stance, Duke shaking his head and doing the same. Then we moved.
I’d felt sparring with Aen was as much about flirting, and this seemed the same. Sparring it was, but in a way that meant our blows only just missed, slicing through the space closest to each other’s bodies, making the other person feel our passing. We’d done this before, I realised, the memories coming much more clearly now.
We were moving across the sandy flagstones of a palace or a temple, the moon shining through the domed glass roof our only source of light. He was not this Duke, my Duke, the pants replaced by a similar purple tunic, the edges embroidered with gold, his hair close cropped still, but… There was an expressiveness in his eyes that he’d lost somehow over the millennia, keeping everything locked down, being whatever was needed, until now. When he caught us around the waist, when we moved a fraction of a second too late, when he tugged us to his body, his grin was as wild as his eyes.
“Aramke…” he said, running a finger down one plait, then giving it a little tug. “These pretty beads give you away. I don’t need to watch for you, I just listen.”
“Maybe I wanted to be caught, have you thought about that?”
“This? Your body against mine?” His eyes grew heated as he looked down where our bodies touched. “I have thought of that every night before I sleep, every morning when I wake aching for you. When I see you across the Mother’s table, when I train you for those damn trials. There is no part of you that is far from my mind, aramke, love.”
I was an awkward hanger-on as his lips came down on hers, feeling the warm press, the heated parting, the slip of tongue against tongue until the temple faded away and I was dumped unceremoniously back into the training room, just me and Duke.
He jerked away from me when he realised, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. As if that would remove the feel of his mouth against mine. My lips tingled, marking where he’d been.
“You have questions,” he said, his old, calm voice returning. He was packing away whoever aramka was and putting Duke back on.
“Yes, I have fucking questions. For both of you. You set me up.”
“No, not that. I knew what was coming with Lucas, but not how. Fuck, girl, I’d never have taken you to that damn place if I knew what… I wanted you to stay here, remember?”
“But it wouldn’t have worked if I did. Luc wouldn’t have been fucking forced to take Sky Daddy’s power.”
“Nope, and millions of women and children would have suffered as a result. We would have found a way. I was trying damn hard to find a way… This has always been how it goes, that I can tell you. It doesn’t make it ache any less.”
“Why?!” I snapped, jerking away from him as my question reverberated throughout the room. “Why does it have to be like this? Why can’t you tell me about you and Lilith? Why do I have to be led around by the nose from one thing to the next? To one fucking awful pain to the next? Do you know what happened to Aen?”
“Do you?” he shot back.
“No, not yet.” I shook my head, feeling the tears come. “But I will, won’t I? I’ll feel it, every fucking thing they did to her.”
“When she’s ready, yes. We don’t tell you anything because we can’t. We don’t intervene in the important things because we can’t. Free will exists, Kira. Without it, this fucking aberration of a process wouldn’t be bearable, but those of us that witnessed the last time the choice was made, all the times the choice was made, we have to stay silent. You have to be free to make your own decisions. That’s the only fucking rule. You don’t have many choices, but those you do, we have to respect.”
“So how do I do this? You made me connect to them, well now I am. I feel them in my fucking heart.” My fist slammed down on my chest. “I felt their pain when the Rutherglen was trying to break them into nothing and they felt mine. They’re in me, he’s in me, Luc…”
“They’re your aramka, your loves. It’s what always happens, Kira, and I’m so sorry for that but I can’t regret it. Without love, this is nothing. Just a scramble for power, to get to the top of the tree before the other does, and we all know how that works—absolute power but no love in your heart to soften that.”
“Sky Daddy…” The words slipped from my lips unbidden.
“The sky father.” He nodded.
“So what am I supposed to do?” I shook my head, my hands rising and then falling limply. “All I can feel is them—their pain, their needs, their feelings, their love. How the hell do I go out into the world and do whatever mysterious bullshit you need me to do carrying that?”
“It’s not a burden, Kira. It’s a gift. You carry them in your heart, despite the pain it causes, because that’s what love is. Because they’ll do the same for you.”
I walked back into the room on kitten feet, thinking I wouldn’t wake anyone, but his head popped up. Liam. He’d always sense a disturbance in the relationship Force, I realised now, with that geas pressing down on him. His gaze was wary, even I could see that in the gloom, but there was more there. No longer slathered over with a thick coating of arrogance, there it was, exactly as Duke and I had talked about—that pleasure-pain of love.
I shook my head, pulling off the sweats and coming to the bed naked, because I’d always feel that way, I realised. I had no skin with them. They made me feel so fucking raw. But the look on his face when I crawled over beside him, that nuclear flare of joy and pleasure and desire and exultation when I lay down in his arms was why I did it.
Stay with me, Kira.
I heard it clear as a bell, those same damn words he’d said to me in that dream, but so very different now. He expected me to rage, kick him to the curb, decimate him, and maybe that’s what he deserved, I was still to make that decision. I covered his hand with mine, snuggled in as close as I could, and exhaled. For now, there was only this, the connection, because goddess knew when that was going to be ripped away from me.
Chapter 33
“I don’t want to go.”
We were dressed, about to walk into a meeting with the Sisterhood delegates and from there into one with the sentinels, but Aen lay on the bed in her sweats, her hair somehow duller and stringy for the first time since I’d met her.
“Baby, you don’t have to.”
I could feel the guys shifting uncomfortably behind me. They felt the pull to help Aen, but knew they couldn’t, not yet. I stroked her face and her arm until she softened.
“But you need me.”
“I always need you, Aen, you know that. Always destined to love you.” Her head jerked up when she heard the tears in my voice, her hand raising to touch one. It balanced on the end of her finger, glistening in the diffused light that filled the room.
