Chapter Thirty-Four

Dreams could be so life-like, incredible and amazing.

And sexy. Even though I knew I was dreaming, it didn’t stop me from enjoying what Andilun was doing to me. His mouth was so hot, wet and his tongue was pressing perfectly on the underside of my dick as he fondled my balls and fingered my ass.

I couldn’t stop moaning. Everything he did to me was beyond my ability to describe.

Then a thousand shards of ice tore me out of my dream. I’d never been in so much agony before—and it wasn’t a physical pain.

I knew. I knew and was almost crushed by that knowledge.

“No! No no no noooo!” I couldn’t say anything else, not when my heart was being ripped from my chest and the pain of loss—of another loss—rendered me incapable of remaining upright.

This can’t be happening. It can’t, it can’t— Everyone I had ever loved, gone in an instant, before I even knew it. As I looked through tear-blurred eyes, I didn’t care that I was once again in an unfamiliar place. All that mattered to me was the fact that I was alone, utterly alone. I felt it in my bones, that absolute abandonment. It was what had brought me out of our—my—post-coital nap. Such a deeply entrenched fear of mine had come true.

I’d been warm and happy, satiated and in Andilun’s arms. Now, I was curled up in a ball on some bizarre surface, sobbing because I didn’t even have the jasper stone with me. I was nude and although I was crying so hard, I knew there was nothing around me.

Even so, I rubbed at my eyes and forced myself to sit up. The ground beneath me felt spongy. My vision cleared and I looked down. It wasn’t ‘ground’ as I’d ever known it. It was pinkish in color, but around me, above me, was something like shades of blue-stained glass. There was no place for the jasper stone to be hidden.

It was gone and, along with it, Andilun. Pain burned hot in my chest. My head throbbed and I felt an anger unlike any I’d experienced before. “Argh!” I shouted with all my might. “What gives you the right to fuck with our lives? Any of you? Fuck you! Fuck you! Bring him back to me!”

Because someone had taken him. Andilun wouldn’t have left me without so much as a goodbye, and he wouldn’t have taken the stone. I wish I could have said he was alive, but I had no idea, didn’t know if I’d hurt worse than I already did if he was dead, if there was some mystical bond between us that would let me know such a thing.

As I screamed and raged, kicking and hitting the surfaces around me, the stained glass began to lighten. The more it paled, the better the view I had.

And what I saw sent me into a panicked fit of fear and even more anger.

Outside of my…cage or prison was an enormous volcano. As if I had superhero vision all of a sudden, the lava and rocks disappeared and I could see down to the massive tomb underneath.

A tomb that was, even now, opening, giant chunks of it flying everywhere as the force within it worked free.

Andilun was down there, along with several gods and goddesses.

But Andilun was in front of them all, watching emotionlessly as the Evil One arose—not that he’d ever been properly dead or confined. The deities who’d put him in there had obviously done a shitty job of that.

I pounded until my hands were raw, my knuckles bleeding. Screamed until my throat burned as though I’d swallowed fire. My voice was gone as I stared in horror while the first trails of yellow and white liquid began gushing from the tomb. Not lava, but some kind of substance that was nasty, judging by the reactions it caused.

Andilun and the others recoiled, all of them covering their mouth and nose with one or both of their hands. The liquid shot up and out, hitting several of the people—gods, whatever—down below.

But none of it touched Andilun. While those who’d come in contact with the fluid appeared to be screaming, Andilun remained unharmed.

I couldn’t hear anything. My own hoarse shouts were still ringing in my ears. I’d have given anything to be there with Andilun, to die at his side, if that was the way it would go down.

It shouldn’t be like this. We shouldn’t be separated, not again.

I didn’t even question that last thought as the hole in the tomb burst wide open.