“I did as you said,” she panted, the feeling harrowing as it rebuilt between her legs.
“I am well aware.” Her wrists were released, and Amma was rolled onto her back. Damien pressed up to loom over her, dark hair spilled into his face, violet eyes boring into hers under the moonlight with a primal need. She’d not been able to look on him as he brought her to Empyrea, and only then did she realize the intensity and admiration she had missed. “But my good girl is going to come undone for me again.”
Arcana wrapped itself around each of Amma’s limbs, pressing her arms back on either side of her head, spreading her legs, exposing her to him completely. As her chest arched upward, Damien slid his free arm beneath her, his mouth fell to her breasts, and he compelled her on with fingers that knew exactly what her core needed.
A second wave drove up through Amma’s body as she screamed with the pleasure of his touch until her cry was cut off by Damien’s mouth as it crushed down onto hers. To speak of being consumed, she was devoured in that instant, her lips, her breath, her very being, and if she could speak, she would have told him to do what he wished with her now and forever.
The arcana on her wrists and ankles relented, and Amma pulled her limbs in, wrapping them around him as he crushed her to his chest and fell at her side. She shook, the world spun, and she could only hold onto him, moored, safe.
When her breathing came a bit more naturally, she clumsily slid a hand down his front to find him still engorged between them, the skin so soft, yet the length so hard.
“No, no,” he said into her ear, all of the commanding bite wrung out of his voice, replaced with a tenderness mirrored in the way he took her gently by the wrist and removed her hand to squeeze it in his own. Fingers threaded into her hair and danced against her scalp as lips pressed to her forehead. “You’ve done so much already for me.”
“But you…” Her tongue would not work properly which, she realized even in her dizzy state, could be a problem considering what she’d like to do.
“You,” he said, clear and kind and full of adoration. “You are going to sleep now.”
She nuzzled into his chest, and as if arcana had taken her again, her body could only obey.
Amma sat beside Damien the next morning in Erick Solonedy’s parlor. She had her hands on her knees, sitting up stiffly, waiting for their host to return. “Do you think he heard us?”
“Surely, you mean, do I think he heardyou?” Damien was lounging with his arms spread over the back of the sofa, an ankle thrown up over his knee, exuding more confidence than she hadperhaps ever seen which was really saying something for a blood mage. “The Solonedy boy is far too polite to say, but I certainly hope he did.”
She flashed her eyes at him, he grinned back, and the flutters in her stomach forced out a giggle. His hand squeezed her side, making her jump, and then footsteps were entering the parlor.
Damien and Amma both stood as Erick entered, an elderly woman at his side. He had advised them the evening before that there was a mage from the astronomer’s tower at the keep that was trustworthy, someone who cared solely for magic with no interest in politics or the crown. The woman was tall even with her hunch and still muscled with the broad shoulders of a Throkull beneath withered skin. Dressed in furs, her gauzy eyes darted between Damien and Amma before turning back to Erick. “Where is it?”
“You see?” Erick grinned from half of his mouth. “Straight to business.”
Amma handed over the star chart, bouncing on her toes, no idea how Damien stayed calm beside her, arms folded, head bent. She had been a wreck since reluctantly detangling herself from him that morning but bundled it inside. She didn’t want him to know how she feared the date and the pit and the inevitability the oracle had handed down to them no matter how much she didn’t believe Damien was this doomed hallowed son, but she checked her pouch every time he wasn’t looking to be sure she still had the pendant.
“An eclipse,” said the woman, finger tracing over the chart. “We have been expecting Ero to cross Lo, but this…”
Damien’s shoulders went back, hands falling to his sides, and Amma could feel a new tension leeching off of him.
“This will be an eclipse of the sun, the day turned to night.” The woman snorted. “Do you know when last our realm saw the sun blotted out by not just one but both moons?”
Breaths were drawn in and glances traded, but no one spoke.
“The Expulsion.”
When the tale was told of all one hundred and forty-two gods last visiting the plane en masse, coming to their worst disagreement, and casting the dark gods into the Abyss, no one spoke of how the sky looked. But then, there was a lot of other stuff going on.
“Darkness will eclipse the plane,” the woman breathed, head tipping side to side as she continued to study the chart. “The One True Darkness.”
Amma stiffened, hand floundering until it found Damien’s arm and squeezing to reassure herself.
“How do you know this?” Damien asked, voice sharp.
“The truth has been written in the stars.” She handed the chart back, and Amma was hesitant to take it. “But there is nothing that speaks of the gods returning to save us once again, and nothing on that page to suggest they will either.”
CHAPTER 19
A NOT-SO-RARE HUMAN AFTER ALL
As he approached the site of The Temple of the Void, Damien assumed one of two things would happen: he would live, or he would die. He was right, of course, as those are just about the only two things that can ever happen to any being, but he was rather more dramatic about the details.
Damien equated dying with a sort of unkind kindness, an ending that would be too soon but perhaps spare a whole lot of innocent, well-meaning folks including a particularly well-meaning one who was only slightly less innocent since he’d gotten his hands on her the night before. But the worst of it was that dying meant leaving her.
