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It was my turn to raise my eyebrows. When had he found time to do that? “This place hasn’t felt like home in a long time,”I said with a sigh, instead of asking where he’d found the energy to redecorate.
“It will,” Rush assured me, reaching for my hands. “Now. Will you give in to your prophet’s advice, love?”
Relenting, I let him pull me into the hall. Kas trailed close behind as Rush wove a path through back hallways and concealed staircases, proving he really had explored well. Then again, he’d spent years here as Saint Laurent, able to glamor himself invisible.
My heart beat faster when we arrived at the bottom of a staircase in a far corner of the palace. “I know where this leads,” I whispered. Nicolas, Cade, Luca, and I had once used this empty tower for our mischief - and it held a few more recent memories as well. Of all the places in the palace Rush could have chosen, this tower really was the most mine.
I turned to smile up at him, and he gave a small bow as Kas unlocked the carved wooden door.
Rush pulled me up the ancient stairs, and as we rose, I began to smell impossible spring flowers and hear the trickling of water that had no business being on top of a tower.
“Oh my Goddess,” I breathed, as my fae opened the door to the tower balcony, revealing a true fairy bower under the stars.
He’d somehow rearranged the world to look like we were in a small clearing in an enchanted forest, with lush, glossy blossoms open to the night air and springy moss beneath my feet. Vines crawled up the tower walls and dripped overhead, twining around the railing to enclose us even more. A tiny brook sprang from nowhere in the side of the wall, shining and bubbling as it wound through the moss, cascading over the edge of the balcony into the air.
“All for my Lady of the Night,” Rush said, giving me a lopsided grin.
“This is beautiful,” I said, letting him pull me down onto the moss. He knelt to remove my boots, motioning for Kas to sit behind me. They were working so well together that it was obvious they’d made a plan before finding me, and I was here for it.
Rush slid my loose tunic over my head, baring my breasts to the moons above. “Relax, love. Let your body be still while I clear and balance your energy.”
I eyed the fae as Kas pulled me down onto my back with my head in his lap. I debated whether to ask if that was a new way of saying orgasm, but a different sort of moan left my lips when Rush began to massage the soles of my bare feet. Relaxing took zero effort as Kas and Rush slowly finished undressing me, massaging each muscle as it was revealed to the sweetly-scented night air.
“Pleasure - a kind of love - is always more powerful than fear,” Rush counseled in a soft, soothing voice as he produced a bottle of warming oil. He poured a generous amount into my thief’s hands, then more into his own. “But there is more to pleasure than sex. Do you remember your first assignment from me? To find desire in small doses. Tonight, let pleasure flow through you like the river, fortifying and quenching, rather than the crashing, sucking waters of orgasm.”
Kas smoothed the oil over my shoulders and down my arms, the silky warmth enveloping me like a blanket of finest satin. After a speech like that, I was open to anything my men were ready to give me.
Rush began to do the same motion with his palms on my legs, their hands reaching toward each other in the middle as though they were brushing all the energy toward my heart. Rush began to speak softly, guiding me deeper under his special kind of spell.
“Close your eyes and breathe deeply, imagining your breath comes from the ground, through the soles of your feet. Up yourbody, through each magical center, and flows out through the top of your head. The magic of Haret’s land, flowing through your body.”
Kas began to massage the oil into my temples, then my scalp as I breathed in and out, visualizing what Rush asked.
“Now, reverse the magic. Breathe from the top of your head, bringing in the magic of the triple moons and letting it flow down through your limbs and out of your feet.Youconnect the land to the sky.Youare the conduit of power. Root, sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye, crown.” Rush touched each of my energy centers as he named them from bottom to top, pressing his palms into my skin.
I gasped, feeling the energy surging beneath his touch, responding to his fae magic and my own focusing. He drew the power up from the mossy ground, into the soles of my feet and up through each swirling part of my body, then out of the crown of my head and back again in reverse.
“I feel it,” I whispered, my body feeling lighter and stronger than I’d felt in a long time. Resilient. Supported. Iwasthe magic of Haret’s quiet land and night sky. It was lush, dark, and sparkling with hidden possibility, just like the forest at midnight under full moon energy.
In my mind’s eye, the darkness of my vampire ice magic glittered with crystals of power, and I began to see how Khione fit so perfectly within my power. She enhanced it, shaped it, and pushed it higher the way the winter wind tore through the mountain peas.
She’d chosen to incarnate in me, and I’d agreed to host her, but so far, I hadn’t really invited her to show me what she could do. We’d taken turns, but we hadn’t really worked together yet.
“Release,” Rush said, his hands sliding up and down my body, linking the energy together in a column of power withinme. I felt both hollow and filled with magic at the same time - I was the conduit.
“Your skin...” Kas murmured, his voice laced with a hint of wonder and an undertone of fear. I wanted to look, to see what he saw, but my eyes felt pinned shut, all my focus on the energy rocking back and forth in my body. My skin felt cooler than even a vampire’s skin should, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.
“The Goddess rises in you. Welcome, Khione,” Rush said softly. “Release her, Kana. Feel her power unleash. She was bound to you for a reason - let the magic follow your intentions.”
I let go even more of my instinctive tight control, feeling the dizzying, biting cold of Khione’s power welling up inside me. My intentions were to heal the slaves. To survive, and help my people flourish.
But that wasn’t what burst from my body when Khione finally stepped forward.
A cry bled from my mouth as my muscles clenched in freezing pain, trying to pull back her influence. My eyes flew open in time to see the gorgeous flowers Rush had created wither and die under an icy wind that seemed to blow from somewhere deep within me.
“I’m so sorry, Rush!” I cried, trying to sit up, but he pressed harder against my chest, right over my heart.
“Trust her,” he begged, and his eyes rolled back enough that I feared he was seeing another prophecy. I stopped struggling against him, my hands grasping his and my eyes finding Kas above me. He looked like he was on the edge of panic, barely stopping himself from reacting.
