“Just one more moment.” Baradaz was still concentrating on the flower, oblivious to the encroaching danger.
“Baradaz!” My voice was sharp as I tried to get her attention.
Too late.
The magic struck with merciless speed. A growling wave of Chaos and Darkness rolled over us with unrelenting force. Acting on pure instinct forged from previous encounters with such storms, I transformed my hands into claws, plunging them deep into the ground to secure my stance. Baradaz barely had time to cry out before the storm picked her up, her red hair and white dress fluttering wildly. In her panic, she shifted back into her spirit form to escape.
It was the worst thing she could have done. Her powers werecaught in the chaotic miasma of the magic tempest, rendering her helpless as she was whisked away at breakneck speed. Toward the looming darkness of the Abyss.
I tore after her without thought, first on all-too-slow mortal legs, then, with a frustrated snarl, in spirit form despite the danger, horror pounding through me.
“Shift!”I sent to her mind repeatedly, receiving no answer but paralyzing fear and terror.“Curse it, you have to shift!”
Somehow, she must have heard me, because she was falling, falling toward the Abyss in a blur of red and white, her scream piercing the storm’s wild cacophony. I crashed back into my physical form, one hand grabbing the jagged black stone at the Abyss’s edge, ignoring how it cut into my flesh. My other hand reached desperately for Baradaz.
By some divine mercy, it was just enough. My fingers closed around hers, bringing her to a jarring halt. I strained against the force of the dark vortex beneath her, which threatened to pull her in. Though I didn’t know what the Abyss truly was, I was certain of one thing: nothing could exist in there. Its power was vast and uncontrollable, capable of dissolving even beings like us into nothingness, returning us to the beginning of creation.
Her hand began to slip from mine. Our eyes met, hers wild and filled with fear.
I realized I only had to do nothing. Do nothing, and she would be gone forever.
I would be free of her.
“Please.”It was a mere whisper, echoing through my mind endlessly, her gaze never leaving mine, a single tear trailing down her cheek.
I couldn’t let go. Why could I not let go?
The Abyss pulled at her again, threatening to wrench her from my grasp. With a thought, my hands elongated into claws again, one burying into the rock overhead, the other sinking into soft flesh. The air was thick with the coppery scent of Baradaz’s blood, her face contorted in agony, but her downward momentum finally halted. Ignoring her pained whimper, I lifted her up to me with one powerful pull. She was safe. The storm raged on as she threw herself into my arms with a strangled sob.
Baradaz might have taught me to hate. But I taught her to fear.
Her silvery eyes were wide, her breath quick and shallow, a delectable tremble wracking her body as she clung to me. Her power bloomed to life, healing her hand. My arms around her were the only solid thing in the maelstrom of darkness, a cruel mockery of comfort.
I had nearly destroyed her, nearly extinguished her light forever. It was what I had wanted, what I had planned—but now, so close to my goal, the thought of her gone from Aron-Lyr filled me with paralyzing terror. I held her tightly, my breathing as affected as hers, as if letting go would mean losing her for all eternity.
I never knew who moved first—if she tilted her face up to find my lips or if I bent my head to claim hers. (It was always me who bent, but I needed at least some illusions to preserve my pride.)
I was drawn to her like some pitiful, lonely creature seeking the fire’s glow on a dark night, uncaring that it would devour me. One breathless moment of anticipation between us. Of swirling shadows, flickering lights, and mounting need.
And then her lips met mine.
I drowned. In the way I conquered her mouth thoroughly, eachmovement precise and passionate, exploring every minuscule part of her. Her taste overwhelmed my senses, sweet and sharp, utterly addictive. Our tongues tangled as she met my fervor with equal fierceness, our teeth scraping against each other.
I forgot it all—my hate for her, my anger at my brother, my plan to dispose of her, the storm that had calmed around us. I existed only in this moment, in her touch.
“Get out of your clothes.”Her fervent order sounded in my head, or perhaps in the heated air between our lips. Baradaz stepped back, her breath unsteady, her body trembling for very different reasons now. Her gaze was calm, though, as she divested me of my clothes, as she shed her own like a last line of defense, leaving her light-filled skin bare and gleaming, as she pulled me down on top of her, my hands reaching for her eagerly.
The ground was covered in a dark, clinging mud this close to the Abyss, empty of everything but the potential to become something. Later, I was slightly disgusted by it all. How we lost control, fornicating in that mud like some base animals, clawing and biting at each other in a mad frenzy, completely consumed by the burning need to feel alive, to merge our very beings until there was no telling where one ended and the other began.
But then it was glorious.
We descended into a storm of sensations, so overwhelming we unconsciously shifted through dozens of forms. A sharp beak nipped at my ear. The flap of mighty wings tangled her long red hair. Curved claws raked over my skin. A furry tail wrapped firmly around her shapely calf. It wasn’t until many years later that I grasped the irony of the form we both returned to, as if by unspoken agreement: soft mortal flesh, so terribly fragile yet so warm, so receptive to every touch.
“Curse it, Baradaz, I need to have you.”
With this form came the instinct of what to do, the urge to spread her legs for me, the urge to claim her in the most primal way possible. I quickly discovered the unimaginable pleasure in this. The incredible sensation of pushing the hard length of me inside her, of conquering that wet, tight heat inch by delicious inch.
“Lyr, yes. Don’t stop.” Baradaz’s eyes met mine, a frenzied expression in them as she canted her hips in a desperate plea for more. Deeper. Harder. I was all too eager to give her what she desired, my hand closing around her thigh, moving it up my hip to thrust inside her as far as I could go. The needy sound it drove from her lips was perfection. I wanted to hear it again. And again. A thousand times. And then a thousand times more.
