“I love you too,” she murmurs. “All of you. But you’re all too far away.”
With those words, the other three are falling on her again. Kissing, caressing, stroking, and petting her as I bring her crashing to another earth-shattering orgasm.
If I think she’ll want to catch her breath, take a moment to breathe after I’ve fucked her to within an inch of her life, well, I should know better by now. Briony is not like that. She’s demanding more as soon as I’m sliding my soft cock from her pussy. And Dray’s right there to meet that demand with a demand of his own, insisting he share her with his other bond brother, Beaufort.
I take my place next to Thorne on the bed, frankly exhausted.
“It’s lucky this girl does have four mates,” I mumble to him. “It’s going to take all four of us to keep her satisfied.”
“Yes, it is,” she chimes with a wicked smile as Dray lies down on his back and she climbs on top of him, lowering herself onto his cock and then allowing Beaufort to slide into her backside.
Thorne’s eyes widen with wonderment and he gasps at the spectacle.
“Looks good,” he says.
“Trust me. It’s even better doing it.”
He just shakes his head, not even able to find the words.
We watch as the three of them, a sandwich of bodies, a tangle of limbs, find a rhythm. It’s not clear where one begins or the next ends. They move in sync as if they’ve known these parts all their lives. As if they were truly made to fit together.
And perhaps we were. Perhaps fate designed each of us with our strengths, our weaknesses, our beauties, and our flaws. Each one complementing the other. Each one masking another.
We are stronger together, more powerful. But it’s more than that. We’re better people too, the five of us, when we’re together. Happier people too. Much happier.
I couldn’t be parted from any of them. Not for all the world. And now, with everything changed, with this new beginning dawning, I think there’s a chance that I never will be.
Chapter Fifty-One
Briony
One month later
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Beaufort says, as he holds the lapel of my jacket and fastens the remaining button beneath my chin.
“You know that’s not true,” I tell him, tilting my head to one side.
“It is,” he insists, not letting go of my coat. “There are other lumomancers now, Briony. Strong ones. And together with the shadow weavers, they can do this job. There’s no need for you to go out there again.”
I cover his hands with my own and smile up at him.
“Everything’s still so unstable and uncertain, Beaufort.”
“We’re getting there,” he says.
“We are,” I agree, nodding.
For once, Henrietta, it seems, was correct. The people of this realm have accepted Beaufort as their new emperor with little fuss and little protest. It helps, of course, that there’s been nocampaigns of retribution. No calls for revenge. No crusades for punishment.
The dead have been buried and honored – including Clare, laid to rest by her family, surrounded by the friends who loved her, back in Granite Quarter. Pain has been acknowledged and apologies accepted. We all understand that there can be no shadow without light and no light without shadow. Shadow weavers and light wielders must live together side by side in peace. Fate demands this balance and without it only darkness can prevail.
It also helps that Beaufort has made promises to change things, promises to bring democracy to this realm, to end the Firestone Trials and dismantle the different Quarters. It also helps that together we’ve already begun to make progress on those promises. We’ve visited all four of the Quarters, listening to the people of this realm, understanding what they want from the future, sharing our vision for a better, fairer world.
The Emperor’s Council is no longer made up of a crowd of sycophantic selfish yes-men, or power-hungry leeches. Now it contains representatives from every realm, young and old, people who’ve been chosen because they want to build a different world.
But everything is still so new. And the people need belief in their new Emperor. And in me.
“Words are all well and good, Beaufort. But actions are more important. You must know that by now.”
