The Staff and the Blade: Irin Chronicles Book Four (14 page)

“So many years,” he murmured. “I dreamed, but I never truly hoped… How could I have imagined this love I feel for you now? Love did not exist for me until I saw your face.”

“Damien.” She wanted him so badly it was an ache in her belly. She had only her last song to give him after he wrote his vow on her. The vow that would glow each time they made love. “Hurry.”

He dipped his brush and started, whispering as he wrote:

“Mine is the fire. Mine is the blood.

Mine, her soft touch and her sharp tongue.

She that wields a strong hand

And a gentle embrace

Is my lover.

My own.

Mine is the need and the desire.

My witness, her song.

Daughter of heaven,

Beloved of my heart.

My Sari.

My own.”

She felt his power and heard his voice, sharp and martial, rise in her breast and flood her mind. Felt his ravenous need and heady possession. Threaded through the wash of sensation and magic was an aching tenderness, a gentleness and surrender that she did not expect. She opened her eyes and met his, unashamed of her joyful tears.

“Hear my own vow, Damien of Bohemia:

I choose you.

Through ages you have come to me,

And I choose you.

Because you wandered many roads alone

And this body has bled and shed blood in honor,

I choose you.

The one who sees me and challenges me,

My warrior, my lover. Friend, protector, helpmeet, mate.

As iron sharpens iron, I will ever be your own.

I choose you, my love.
”

Sari leaned forward and pressed her forehead against Damien’s, their hands linked together as her song died to a whisper. “I choose you.”

They stayed like that, hands locked together as the ink dried on her skin and the fire crackled in the hearth. The next day, Damien would tattoo her vow on his skin and ink her magic permanently onto his body. Until then, Sari would sate months of hunger and longing. Nights of aching for his body and missing his touch. She opened her mind to his voice and heard the longing and desire mirrored in his soul. The night birds sang, but the air was laden in magic, like the moment after a lightning strike.

Their skin glowed in the low light, Damien’s talesm a deep burnished silver. Sari’s new marks were a bright gold that lit her pale skin as if she’d been painted by the midsummer sun.

“Reshon.” Damien’s mouth found hers, and his lips were trembling. His hands shook as they locked around her wrists. “Sari?”

“M-my ink is dry,” she stuttered, barely in command of her body.

“Good.” He took her down to the bed in a controlled rush, shoving her hands over her head and his tongue in her mouth. Damien groaned and thrust his body between her thighs. “I have waited so long. So long for you, my singer.”

“Don’t wait anymore.” She arched against him, but his muscled weight pinned her down.

Bracing himself over her, Damien kept control of her hands and arms, pressing them over her head as his mouth descended and tasted her neck. He spread her legs apart and settled his body in the space between her thighs, resting his heavy length against her as months of desire spiraled into a barely controlled tangle of need. She
ached
for him.

“Please, please, please,” she sobbed. “Damien.” Wresting her hands away from his own, she gripped his hair in one hand and reached for him with the other, guiding him into her body and arching up as he slid tight and deep.

He thrust into her with a groan, and Sari cried out as her body and magic recognized him.
This
was true union. No other physical pleasure could compare.

She clutched Damien tighter as he began to move. She kept trying to get closer, and the dried ink cracked against her skin. She reveled in the friction of their bodies together. Pressing and giving and taking. Push and pull. They rolled on her narrow bed and didn’t stop, even when they crashed to the floor. They landed on their side in the pile of linen robes smeared red with sweat and ink.

His magic heightened her senses. She smelled the ash from the fire and the sweat on his body, the sweet almond oil she’d used against his skin. His talesm shone brighter than the firelight.

Damien was no quiet lover. He growled and twisted her hair in his hand, wrapping the golden blond in his fist as he whispered in her ear. “Love you. Need you,
milá
.”

Come for me.

I want to feel your flesh tight around me.

More, Sari.

Bite harder.

I love you.

His words and touch intoxicated her. He reached down and played with her body, eliciting the most delicious thrill. His strong hands gentled her and drew out her pleasure as she locked her legs around his hips.

“Take me,” he whispered against her mouth. “All of me.”

“Yes,” she panted. “Always.”

The hand in her hair twisted painfully as his movements turned rougher, balancing on the edge of control. Sari’s mind and body were a whirl of magic and pleasure. She came under him, surrounded by him, over him. Damien’s hands were fierce and gentle, commanding as he coaxed her to release over and over again with his hands and his voice. He drew teasing spells across her thighs and bit her knees, tasting her in ways Sari had only heard of in rumors. He was wild for her, demanding in his appetites and greedy for her satisfaction.

Her head was spinning and her body was flush with heat and magic by the time Damien found his own release. He shouted her name as he arched up, and Sari rocked over him, her hair curtained around them, red-gold in the light of the fire and their mating marks. He pulled her mouth down to meet his lips, kissing her deeply as his body shuddered in climax. He rolled them to the side and pressed her face to his chest.

“Every night, Sari. I will have you like this every night.”

She shivered against his chest, her skin a living thing under his command. “We’ll never get any sleep.”

“I can survive on very little sleep. I was bred for war.”

Her laugh was sharp but her eyes were heavy. She wanted to burrow into him and sleep for days. Wake up, make love for a few more hours, then fall back to sleep.

“That, my Sari, sounds like a most excellent plan.”

“Did I say that aloud?”

“I have no idea.” Damien rolled to his knees, picked Sari up and lifted her into bed, covering her with a light blanket before he crawled beside her. “Sleep, mate. I have plans for you when we can both walk again.”

She closed her eyes and felt his arms come around her. “I never want to be parted from you, Damien.”

“Then we won’t,” he whispered, playing absently with her hair, spreading it over his chest as she lay boneless across him.

“Never, Damien.”

“Sleep,
milá
. I will see you in your dreams.”

EPILOGUE

N
ORDFJORD
REGION
, 1596

“H
IT
me again,” she said. “Harder this time. You’re going too easy on me.”

“Sari…” He let his head fall back and looked at the clear blue sky cut with streaks of white clouds. “I’m pushing you harder than I would a scribe newly out of the academy.”

“Then push me harder! How am I supposed to learn if you won’t teach me?”

Sari was proficient with a short staff, but Damien was better. Though it was considered an Irina weapon, his mother had trained him on it even before he picked up a sword. Sari wanted to be able to best him, so instead of making love out of doors—which was how Damien would much rather be spending a summer afternoon—he was beating up his mate with a short staff and barking orders at her.

As expected, the council had called him back into service after his hunt of the angel in Scotland. It had been a test, just as Henry suspected. Damien had received the letter from Vienna only weeks after he’d returned to Orkney and Sari’s arms. When he had written back and requested a year of bonding time with his new mate, the response from the elders had been more than enthusiastic. After all, mated scribes of Mikael’s line were even more desirable than unmated ones. The fact that he’d mated with the granddaughter of Orsala of Vestfold had even placated his parents. Not much, but some. Sari was a powerful singer, but one of Ariel’s line. His mother worried for their offspring.

Sari’s family, on the other hand, was happy if she was happy. And Damien did everything in his power to make her happy. His young mate was eager for travel, so Damien’s upcoming posting to the scribe house in London was welcome, though Damien knew she would have preferred to go farther south.

Her sister, Tala, was still in Spain. London would put him and Sari closer to Salamanca than they had been in Orkney, and it was possible that Tala would even be granted time for a visit once they were there. If not, they would travel to Spain.

Sari needed to see her twin, and Damien gave Sari what she needed.

Which at that moment was a sharp strike to the back of her knee.

“Too slow!” he shouted. “We’re the same size. I should have no advantage over you with the staff. You need to be faster. Tomorrow we start running more.”

Her angry red face preluded a flurry of blows.

She was getting better.

Not long after they mated, Sari announced her determination to become a warrior. Though she had made up a very logical list of reasons why it was prudent for her to have martial training, along with relevant arguments and counterarguments, none of those had been necessary.

Damien wanted her with him. She needed to be able to defend herself. And Damien gave his mate what she needed.

So they would spend their bonding year running and training in the wilderness where her family had often taken refuge, with Damien drilling Sari on Irin military history and battle tactics along with knives, staffs, swords, and archery.

He parried her, spinning around and flipping the staff from her grip. As she lunged toward it, he tackled her to the dirt and ground his hips against her.

“Enough,” he panted. “I have other plans for you, earth singer.”

“Oh?” Her blue eyes narrowed. “You did promise to introduce me to swordplay this week, but I wasn’t expecting the
long
sword.”

“Bedding humor, Sari?” His mouth curled into a smile. “I thought only unsophisticated warriors played at that.”

She arched up and kissed him. “As I will be a warrior, I guessed that I should practice it also.”

“You already are a warrior,” he said. “
My
warrior.”

She was. Sari battled back the darkness that threatened to envelop Damien some nights, chasing it with her laughter and her wit and her sharp tongue. He grew less and less somber. More and more optimistic. He imagined a future, not only of duty but of happiness. Children and grandchildren. Long centuries of life with his mate at his side.

…may you be blessed to find a mate as warlike as yourself.

She was. Thank heaven above, she was.

Damien had found his mate. As unlikely as it had once seemed, he’d found his equal and his other half.

And he was never letting her go.

End of Book One

G
HOSTS

※

A
NEW
posting in Paris during Napoleon's reign leads Sari and Damien back to familiar faces and the council politics Damien has tried so hard to avoid. But the Irin world has changed in the two hundred years since their mating. The singers have become more isolated. The scribes are more martial. And the Grigori flood growing cities and lay in wait. When Sari's sister envisions the future, she sees emptiness, chaos, and a darkness that threatens to overtake their world.

※

O
H
MY
CHILD
, how I grieve for you!

My empty arms ache with longing.

I cry, “Come back to me,” but you cannot hear.

The light of my heart is extinguished.

Take me, O heaven, and silence my voice

For my soul is black with pain.

I wander among the rocks and trees

And hide from my beloved.

I am barren in the wilderness.

The child of my heart is no more.

—From
Adelina’s Lament

P
ROLOGUE

P
ARIS
, 1807

T
ALA
knew she was in a vision when she opened her eyes. The air was cold and a bite of cedar flavored the air. She walked out of the forest of her youth and toward the simple farmhouse where she and her sister had been born.

Her visions often started like this, walking out of the woods and into her childhood home. When she opened the door, it could open to her mother or grandfather baking. Or it could open into a ship on the ocean or a woman giving birth.