Nidantór, Breathea
The music from the dance floor at Piledriver was still pounding in Cuinn’s ears when he woke. Well, all right, maybe not in his ears. But his subconscious, definitely. If Fae even had subconsciouses. Most Fae failed to see any point to suppressing anything, and thus had little use for a subconscious.
Unless, of course, a particular Fae had one mass murder and the potential for a couple more on what passed for his conscience.
Cuinn grimaced. Obviously, a night of power metal and his scair-anam’s uninhibited dance-floor fornication hadn’t been enough to get him the fuck out of his own head for a few hours.
Another exposure to Rian’s sublimely talented hands, mouth and ass might set things right, though. Buoyed on that happy thought, Cuinn rolled over to gather up his Prince.
And gathered up about a quarter-acre of cold bed instead.
Wha’fuck, my liege? Wherefore art thou? The mental speech Cuinn shared with his SoulShare was second nature by now.
It took a few seconds for the Prince Royal to answer, long enough that Cuinn started to wonder if there was something amiss.
I’m up on the roof.
From the tightness of Rian’s inner voice, there might well be something amiss anyway. Fuck. You want company?
Another long silence. ‘Sea, if you’re willing.
If I’m... Cuinn reached out with his inner sense and Faded, not bothering with anything as prosaic as clothes, or even a sheet.
His beloved hadn’t bothered with either, either. Once Cuinn’s eyes had adjusted to the semi-darkness on the brownstone roof, he could make out Rian’s naked form easily enough, leaning against the roof’s access door. Past the door, and the brick-and-wood frame around it, the buildings of lower Manhattan rose up in their gold-limned beauty. The deeper darkness of moon-shadow shrouded Rian, the nearly half-moon close to halfway up the arch of the sky. Plenty of light for a Fae, and more moonlight than Cuinn wanted.
A tiny flame bloomed out of the shadows; Rian watched the Fire dancing on his fingertip with some bemusement, before raising his clear blue gaze to Cuinn’s. “And what’s my consort doing clear over on the other side of the feckin’ roof?”
“Watching you.” Cuinn’s voice stuck in his throat.
Rian smiled, a barely visible curve of lips Cuinn loved to see swollen and tender from kisses or bites or stubble burn or an enthusiastic BJ, or any combination thereof. But not tonight. Something was eating at his bondmate, and it wasn’t him.
Before the Prince Royal could speak again, Cuinn Faded to his side and enfolded him in his arms.
“What’s going on?” Cuinn nipped the curve of Rian’s ear, tongued the industrial bar piercing it. “Thought you were in bed.”
Rian sighed, his breath warm against Cuinn’s shoulder—warm as only the breath of a Fire elemental could be. “I thought I’d come out and try to have me a look at the moon. Wrestle with her a bit, like.”
The longing in Rian’s voice was plain enough, but Cuinn didn’t need to ask how the wrestling had gone. His partner’s stance, hidden away from the moonlight by the stairwell, told him well enough that this time had been like all the others.
Hell, he didn’t even need to ask why Rian had felt the urge to try. Any Fae who had ever come through the Pattern carried with him the sight of the full moon framed in the single window of the Pattern-tower, the trigger to release the magick that brought unimaginable agony. Fae in the human world hated moonlight with a passion, even those like his bond-mate, who wanted to love it.
Of course, moonlight probably hated the Fae right back. Thanks to him.
“Tell me again why you had to go and give me a conscience.” Cuinn reached up and worked his fingers through his Prince’s thick shock of blond hair, tugging lightly on the forelock that generally curled temptingly down over one blue topaz eye.
Rian’s arm slipped around his waist. His lover needed no explanation, he knew what Cuinn meant. “I gave you nothing you didn’t give me first.”
“Fae don’t have consciences. That’s a human thing.” And Rian had acquired his from his human foster parents, in the years when he’d had no clue who and what he truly was.
“Íosa, Máire agus Íosef. You’re fecking impossible.”
And there was another thing. His Royal beloved was the first Fae of faith in the history of their kind, again courtesy of his foster parents by way of Belfast’s Falls Road.
Not quite the first, not exactly. But all Cuinn himself had done in the way of interacting with the divine was murder a goddess’ children and then enslave the goddess.
Which brought them right back to where they’d started. Cuinn could barely see the still-rising moon, if he craned his neck just so. And he did, just for a second.
Do you still hate me, Mother Moon?
“Impossible,” Rian repeated, but there was amusement in his voice, and he kissed Cuinn’s neck as he said it. “But you’re a fine distraction, I’ll grant you.”
“I live to serve.” Cuinn wasn’t kidding, not entirely. His heart beat for his beloved, before it beat for himself or anyone or anything else.
The Cuinn of two millennia ago—the Cuinn of two years ago—wouldn’t have recognized the Cuinn who could think thoughts like that.
The Cuinn of right-this-minute couldn’t possibly give less of a shit what the other Cuinns thought, especially not when Rian was going from kisses to nips and pressing an erection into the hollow of Cuinn’s thigh. Cuinn turned and pushed his bond-mate back against the brick wall, grinding against him, relishing the scents of musk and smoke.
“Make us a light, there’s a sweet Prince.” Cuinn backed off just far enough to be able to reach down and cup Rian’s sac in the palm of his hand, heft the delicious weight of it. “Let me see you.”
He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting—maybe the return of the fingertip-light—but his breath caught hard as the Fire in Rian’s eyes flared to light. It wasn’t exactly easy to forget that he was bonded to a Fire elemental—the charred holes in the bedsheets when Rian forgot himself after sex were a persistent sweet reminder—but living flames gazing into his eyes had a way of driving the point home like little else could.
“Fuck me hard, consort mine.” Rian punctuated his whisper with a hard nip at Cuinn’s lower lip.
Cuinn’s mouth felt suddenly dry. “You... need it to hurt?”
“Only enough to remind me I’m yours.” The fiery gaze turned skyward, for a fraction of a second. “Yours and not hers.”
Rian, just short of two weeks old when Cuinn had kidnapped him, hadn’t been old enough to remember coming through the Pattern. He couldn’t possibly remember his last sight of the moon.
But Rian remembered, of course. No Fae ever forgot.
“Turn around, then.” Not waiting for Rian to follow orders—even an immortal Fae could grow old waiting for a Fire elemental to do that—Cuinn took hold of Rian’s arm and turned him roughly into the bricks. “Hands on the wall.”
Rian complied, his fingers splayed out over the grimy bricks. He wasn’t smiling, but the utter satisfaction so plain on his face send most of Cuinn’s blood supply straight to his cock. He reached around and gripped Rian’s erection, groaning softly at the touch of flame trickling over his fingers.
A high-pitched keening escaped Rian as Cuinn forced his way between iron-muscled ass cheeks and drove his length deep. Or maybe the cry was Cuinn’s. Didn’t fucking matter, it was beautiful. So sweet, to have to fight for every inch, and to know the fight delighted them both. Cuinn’s hips jerked—again, again, winning a few inches each time, jarring the breath from his beloved and sending waves of pleasure along every nerve in his once-jaded body.
“Fuck...” Rian bent over, bracing himself against the bricks, shuddering in time with Cuinn’s thrusts. Rian’s knees trembled, and so did Cuinn’s.
Cuinn leaned forward, too, his hands covering Rian’s. “That’s the plan, my liege.” Bending his knees, he paused, long enough to brace himself—and long enough for Rian to relax a little.
“Shite!” Rian’s shout echoed around the rooftop as Cuinn caught him off guard and drilled into him, hard enough to sheath his whole length and drive the younger Fae up onto the balls of his feet and face first into the bricks before he could catch himself. “Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh sweet bleeding fuck...” Recited with all the urgency and power of a prayer, in a voice gone suddenly hoarse.
Cuinn would likely have been praying himself, had he been able to find the breath or the inclination for it. But what he was doing, surrendering to the giving and the receiving of pleasure, was probably as close to prayer as any Fae ever came. Any Fae other than his mad consort.
Rian’s pleas gave over to a low, keening moan; he clutched at the bricks, his nails bending back and scraping down the wall. “Jesus... take me, damn you, take me...”
“I don’t have to, you’re mine already—”
He’d meant it as a growl, but he choked back a cry instead, at the sight of a single flame, a Fire elemental’s tear, trickling down Rian’s cheek. He could feel his bond-mate’s joy, his love, as if they were his own.
Because they were.
They came together, gouts of flame painting Cuinn’s hand—and, yes, the bricks—as his vision dissolved in golden dazzle and then went momentarily and blissfully black. When he came back to himself, slumped over his Prince and leaning precariously against the wall, he devoted a few seconds to remembering how to breathe... and to making a promise.
When we’ve done what we have to do... when the Marfach’s dead and the way to the Realm is open... I’m going to free the moon.
He could think of no other way to give his love the moonlight.
* * *
Pampas de Jumana, Peru
The male felt more than a little bilious as he, and the other selves sharing his senses, looked from the huge figures etched into the plain below to the glowing ley line bisecting the broad valley floor, running past their feet and disappearing into the scrub-covered hills behind them.
This kept us alive. From the time of our exile until our escape. The female sounded as if she were trying not to gag.
“Remember when we let Meat in on the memory of it?” Even shuddering, the male couldn’t help smiling, recalling the zombie bouncer’s reaction. “He puked. And said it was like... what did he call it?”
BEING FORCE-FED SAWDUST THROUGH A TUBE DOWN HIS THROAT.
The male fought the urge to crouch, to hide. Their monstrous component was getting more vicious every time they Faded, or so it seemed.
Still, they were likely to need that rage where they were going. “That was it. Meat occasionally had a real way with words.”
Do you miss him?
The male snorted. “Almost as much as I miss head lice and crabs.” The tiny creatures of the human world hadn’t liked Fading any more than Meat had.
FEED.
For once, the monster’s command wasn’t quite enough to make the male move.
The Fae had intended the Marfach’s imprisonment to be the worst torment imaginable. Or they hadn’t, and it had been a complete fucking coincidence that that was exactly what it had been. Either way, going back to that half-life, even to feed, was more than the male could do.
Until the abomination forced him to his knees and shoved his face into the dirt.
FEED.
“Easy for you to say, you don’t have to taste it.” But he was as hungry as the rest of them. His hands splayed out over the shifting earth, he steeled himself, closed his eyes, and drew in the ley energy.
Choking, spluttering, gagging, he fell back after only a few seconds. Sawdust wasn’t even close.
One vile draw hadn’t been enough, of course. The male knew to be more cautious the next time—though a long trickle of the nearly inedible energy wasn’t any more palatable than a short flood of it.
By the next attempt, once the edge was off their hunger, the female was in a slightly better mood. Or maybe she was just trying to distract the male and the monster. Either way, the male was cool with it.
Soon we will gorge ourselves on living magick. And death. And pain. This will be nothing but a loathsome memory.
“Doesn’t their precious Prince get off on pain?”
The male could feel the female smiling. He thought he could feel the abomination doing the same thing, or whatever it did when it wanted to give the impression it was smiling.
This time, thoughts of the monster didn’t make the male gag. It was so fucking good at inflicting pain, while refusing to let the object of its attentions die.
They would all feast on Rian for a long, long time.