Kindred and Wings (16 page)

A rumble of her stomach reminded her. When Pelanor looked up at him, it felt as though the pain was spreading to her bones. “I . . .” she began, but ground to a halt. What was there to say? The strength of her people was also their real weakness. Her
gewalt
was so far away now it was impossible to feel him.

“You need to drink,” Byre said, stepping nearer to her. His burnished brown skin looked like salvation, and this close she could almost feel his pulse in her head.

Pelanor swallowed hard, not sure if she wanted to reveal how close to the edge she was—or how she was terrified that she might drink him dry, should she step over.

Silently, she shook her head, backing away a step. It was all she could manage.

Relentlessly, Byre moved forward, closer than she had moved away. Now his warm, throbbing blood was only an inch away from her skin. His voice seemed to come from very far away. “Take my blood, Pelanor. Drink, and the Salt will accept you as Vaerli, at least for a while.”

It made perfect sense, but she was terrified. When Talyn had given her blood willingly it had been heady and powerful—but it had also come with a price. The Blood Witch held herself ramrod straight, and kept her mouth tightly shut. She did not need another
gewalt
.

“I give it freely,” Byre said, and touched her. He raised her fingers to his neck, placing them right where the pulse raced. Though she closed her eyes, she could not pull away.

“I trust you,” he whispered, and every part of her body reacted.

“I don’t trust myself,” she muttered, keeping her eyes closed firm. “I could drink you down to nothing and then where would I be? Trapped in the past, lost forever to my
gewalt
. I would die.”

“Then take what you need, and leave the rest.” Byre wrapped his arm around her waist, but no longer in a concerned way. He pulled her tight against him, and Pelanor discovered that she was not the only one fighting her desires.

Her nature could only be denied for so long, and she was not a Kindred to feel nothing. Pelanor wanted the Vaerli badly, in every way possible for human or immortal. She wanted his flesh in her and under her tongue.

When Byre tilted his head down and kissed her, she tasted his desire as well. She had kissed her
gewalt
, and when she’d been mortal, plenty of men too—but this was Vaerli . . . a Vaerli on the edge of recovering his gifts.

It was as if hot flame plunged into her. Every nerve and sinew was directed toward one aim: having as much of him as she could. Even the power of the goddess was not this.

Behind her eyes Pelanor saw and felt the power of Conhaero; the roiling mass of chaos, time and power. Byre was a conduit to all that, and she wanted to bathe in it. His hands on her were only taking what she wanted him to have. Clothes were ripped and torn apart as they ended up on the hard packed earth.

Pelanor’s teeth found his neck, and she opened her throat and drank.

The Vaerli’s cry as she did so thrilled her darkest desires. His blood burned through her, even as he entered her, making a perfect circle of lust and completion. All the discomforts of the hard ground were washed away in sensation. He was all Vaerli and she all the goddess made.

Pelanor drank him down, as his body drove into her.

Orgasm was not the word for what it was. It was pain, loss, anger, and beauty all rolled into one.

When Pelanor came back to consciousness, it was to find Byre’s body lying across hers. On her lips was the taste of his blood, still rich and good but cooling. She realized that in the moment, she’d had no thought of control, and was suddenly terrified.

“Byre?” She touched his shoulder with genuine trepidation. He felt cool, but then just as her fear choked her, he murmured something and levered himself from her.

His eyes widened as he looked down at her, and Pelanor knew she looked a sight. Her fangs, lips and chest were covered with his blood—and she was as naked as the goddess had made her.

“I’m all right,” he assured her, his hand touching the line of her face. “But I . . .” He broke off, and licked his own lips. “I wasn’t expecting . . .”

“That?” she offered. Usually when sharing her body with someone not of her kind, she left quickly. Pleasure was a passing thing for a Blood Witch, but a strange sensation was washing over her.

He looked almost embarrassed, but helped her up. Both of them struggled to pull their clothing back together, but did not meet each other’s eyes. Finally, there was nothing for it. She had to know.

“Is it always like that for your people?” Pelanor demanded.

Byre blushed, and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “I . . . I really don’t know. I was so young when the Scourging happened that I never got to touch another of my kind.”

She’d been an idiot. “Yes, I suppose burning and dying when you touch another Vaerli would make that difficult. How about with mortals?” Pelanor had to know. It wasn’t about stroking his ego. Something had happened, something more than sex.

When Byre shook his head, she felt an odd little surge of happiness. “No, never.” Then he took her hand gently in his own and squeezed lightly. “You have to understand that Vaerli seldom lie with other races—especially before the Harrowing.” Then, perhaps to ease her mind, he kissed her again.

It was there, underneath the passion: a hint of fire.

Pelanor knew that her blood lust was sated; she felt light and powerful once more. She still would have gladly pulled him down onto the hard earth again—would do so in this instant. It was not just his blood.

When she had passed through the last mouth of the goddess she had felt more sure of herself than she ever had before. She had known her place in the scheme of things. She had become part of something much larger and better than she was. Now, standing on the edge of the white Salt Plain, all of that was blown away. For if she was a Blood Witch, then why had lying down with a Vaerli pleased her so deeply?

Love was something reserved for the
gewalt
. It was he, and he alone that should make her complete—not some Vaerli.

When she kissed him back something was shifting within her. Could there be a reason she was here with him, feeling these things? Her kind did not believe in fate or predestination. They believed in blood and kin. Yet Byreniko loomed large in her vision now, and Pelanor didn’t quite know what to do with that. It was terrifying and exhilarating.

She tried to keep her voice light when she replied, “Perhaps there is a reason for that.”

A slight smile lifted Byre’s mouth, but he put his hand over hers and squeezed. “I don’t know what it means, Pelanor. Your kind and mine—we never had much contact. Perhaps it is the blood.”

She closed her eyes and felt it pulse in her. Every time she drank from a person not her
gewalt
she’d been disappointed . . . until she drank from Talyn. That had been heady, but drinking from her brother was different again.

“Perhaps,” she said, buttoning the last of her shirt, and dusting off her skirt. It was hard to believe it, but these were the same clothes she’d worn went she left the coven, the same clothes she had fought his sister in.

As she looked out over the white plain, she thought of what had brought her here, and wondered with a little trepidation what lay ahead. “What is out there?” she asked him, turning and looking over her shoulder at him.

Byre sighed, and taking her hand, kissed the palm of it. “Let me show you.”

He led her out on the surface of the lake, the place where the white salt cracked under her heel and the Vaerli territory began. It was a strange, barren place, but it was not that which chilled her.

“It feels like I am on ice,” she whispered to him. “Like I might slip and fall.”

The Vaerli tightened his grip on her, and she felt a little more sure of herself. “I won’t let you,” he replied softly, and together they walked out a little further. Suddenly the blood in her veins that had made her feel so powerful did not feel so much so.

As they walked, Byre talked to her; at first merely comments on the color of the sky, or the bleakness of the place. After they had gone far enough into the Salt that the edge was no longer visible, he began to open up to her.

“This is the last place I remember seeing my mother.” His voice was carefully neutral, but she could tell that those words cost him. “She was injured in the Scourging, badly. She, my sister and I were separated from my father.”

The Harrowing of the Vaerli was a part of legend. In her coven there were Blood Witches who had been alive then; ancient, gnarled old women who claimed to have been terrified to drink the blood of the cursed Vaerli—even as they had watched them flee.

His words made Pelanor start. She managed not to blurt out what she was thinking, but she knew it had to have been running through Byre’s head from the moment Ellyria had the command to come back here. He might see them again. Not only his recently dead father, but also his long lost mother and sister.

She couldn’t imagine how that would be. Pelanor cleared her throat. The salt was shifting under their feet again, but in a very different manner. Every step they took felt like the ground was spinning beneath them. The distance they walked in one stride was impossibly long. The earth couldn’t move that fast, even in Conhaero . . . could it?

Glancing up at Byre, she knew not to ask him. Too many things were plaguing his thoughts, and she suspected the nature of this place was meant to unsettle. Still she couldn’t just leave him to remain silent.

“Do you remember what happened at the Harrowing?” she ventured, leaning in close against him. “None speak of it—certainly not the Caisah, from what I have heard . . .”

Byre’s eyebrows drew together until he resembled nothing so much as a stern mask. “What do people think happened?”

She shrugged. “Some say he called down lightning. Others say it was like a great whirling cloud of pestilence.”

“It was none of those things.” His eyes closed briefly, as if summoning the memory from deep down and far away. “I was a child, so I was not at the meeting. I don’t know what happened, but I saw the aftermath.”

“What was that like, then?”

His words made her wince just a little. “You will see, Pelanor. It is coming soon enough, and you will be witness to it.”

The white was endless and mind-numbing. Pelanor felt like it was inside her head, wiping out everything that was in there. She could not imagine how it might be without a Vaerli at her side and his blood in her veins.

“It seems easy to walk,” she commented, more to try and get him to talk than anything.

“That is because we are Vaerli,” he murmured. “The Salt has its protectors. It is more a living thing than a place, but just be grateful that you do not see it.”

He never let go of her hand, and despite being a Blood Witch and her own private universe, Pelanor was grateful.

Then a thought struck her. “But what of the Caisah then? How did he get across the Salt Plain?”

“You mean, how will he get across the Plain?” She glanced up at Byre, and saw a flicker of pain cross his face. This was a bitter homecoming for him. “I do not know, but I suspect we will see it all.”

They walked on, their feet seeming to skim across the dire salt, and yet it felt as though they were not getting anywhere at all. Time had little meaning here, but it seemed to drag on Pelanor.

Then, just as she felt as though she was reaching the end of her sanity, something gray appeared on the horizon. She blinked rapidly, wondering if her eyes had finally decided to give up on her. However, as they moved closer and closer to it, the shape resolved itself into a long line of caravans, wagons and horses.

She squinted. Or
were
they horses?

It was quite the gathering. She had thought the gathering she’d witnessed in the sand with Finn the Fox was impressive. This made that look like a tiny family get together.

“So many,” she said, her eyes flickering over the transport, the fires, and the emerging hubbub of the crowd. “So many Vaerli . . . I never imagined there were so many of you.”

“Once we were numerous . . . at least, my father told me that. It was said the Vaerli rode the land in a multitude.”

It was a strange thing to think of them that way. In her time and place they were so scattered and so few. Pelanor began to have more of an appreciation of what they had suffered. It also brought her some measure of relief: they would not stand out so much in this crowd.

“This is a sacred place, Pelanor.” Byre pulled them to a stop, and looked down at her with a sad and serious expression. “And we cannot change what will happen here today—not even if we yearn to.”

She knew immediately that he was talking to himself most of all and not to her. The things that lay ahead would be a dreadful temptation: a chance to see his father, mother and sister again, as well as soak in the community that he had lost at such a young age.

The blood they shared warmed Pelanor, and she blamed it for the empathy she was feeling for the Vaerli. She rubbed his back a little. “Then let’s go on. We have much to learn and not long to learn it.”