Page 48 of A Siren of Beasts

I hadn’t told her but when I wore my raven mask I felt every sensation as if it were my skin. Each caress, kiss, and nuzzle she gave me rushed through my body like a drug. The moment I put her in my nest when we got back from our ent encounter and I could remove the mask in her presence, I knew without a doubt she was my soul mate. While having to keep it on with others around meant I couldn’t give her the same affection in return, I made up for it when we were alone.

“Yes, but I’m your scoundrel, not many can boast about that. You should feel honored and reward me in some way,” I said with a grin, teasing a talon along the side of her neck, instantly filling the air with her lust. Yeah, that was never going to get old.

“You’re making this much harder than it needs to be,” she breathed, her voice light and airy as if she was having trouble catching her breath. Her body shivered and then her hand snatched mine up and interlaced our fingers together. “Be good and let me say my peace.”

“That’s not fun at all,” I whined, but I nuzzled against her and took a deep breath. “I will do my best, but no promises.”

“I suppose that’s the best I’m going to get out of you, isn’t it?” She laughed but I didn’t really feel the need to answer her so I just let out a little acknowledging trill, keeping my face buried in her hair. “Since I’m pretty sure you weren’t listening to anything Milin said a minute ago I’ll give you the short version of it.”

Huh, she’s right. I totally didn’t know the sap had been talking. He was boring and long winded so I tended to tune him out when he went on one of his monologues. The asshole version of him wasn’t much better and I almost ripped out his soul when he grabbed Shiny like that. I held back when I saw the storm in her silver eyes telling me she wasn’t pleased with his actions either. If this twisted twin ent wanted to make a real move on my Shiny I wasn’t sure how well I would take that. Mostly because Shiny didn’t interact with him the same way she did with us. It was almost as if being around her was as natural as breathing. She felt like she belonged with me, and let’s be honest. She followed me through the woods for miles trusting I would take her somewhere safe. Who does that?

A loud clap of hands had me reeling and halfway out of the chair before I realized it was Shiny who’d done it. “What the hell, Shiny? I could have hurt you doing something so foolish. Death ravens don’t startle. They attack without thinking and soul mate or not, my instincts act faster than my brain.”

“That I believe,” Rhun muttered. “Stop drifting off when she’s trying to talk to you and then she won’t need to do something so drastic to pull you back into the conversation.”

I hissed at the butt sniffer for calling me out like that in front of Shiny. “Mind your own business, ball licker.”

“At least I have mine, not so sure about you with them small enough to be hidden by those feathers,” Rhun shot back.

“Oh, you really want to die tonight, don’t you?” I said between clenched teeth as I tried to move Shiny to the side.

A shrill whistle cut through the air making me and the hell-wolf cover our ears and shrink back. “We are not doing this right now. I have way too much to deal with and keeping the two of you from killing each other isn’t one of them. Now everyone up on your feet, we’re heading to the library.”

It was a miracle I could still hear after the sound of that whistle. I thought for sure my ears would be bleeding but they weren’t, which was a relief. Not even waiting for us, Shiny marched out of the room and I just stood there a moment admiring her ass in those black leather pants I’d picked for her. Damn, that was a sight to see and made me want to peel her out of them.

“I suggest you figure out how to get your mind on the matter at hand or I have a feeling she’ll be in my bed tonight,” Hisceas murmured as he gave me a disapproving look.

“Like fuck I’m going to let that happen,” I snapped and raced out of the room, shifting into my raven form to land on my Shiny’s shoulder. Being in this form helped to keep fucking off my mind since it wasn’t as high of a priority to the animal brain.

Everyone entered the massive library that held about half the books I’d collected over my lifetime. Launching off her shoulder, I moved to the section on the second level about spells and shifted back to my main body. Quickly, I grabbed four books that might have a spell I could alter to help us narrow down what we needed to read. If we only had a week to prepare we’d have to find a way to simplify this. While I wasn’t looking forward to spending my time looking through millions of dusty books, if Shiny was going to be here, so would I.

“The first spell I want to do is going to give you all the ability to read these books no matter what language they’re written in,” I informed them as I joined them where the hell-wolf was getting the fire started in the hearth. “This will work with languages spoken as well, so no matter where you go or who you talk to you’ll all understand each other. I find it’s come in quite handy.”

Setting the books down I called on my magic, which I’d noticed had grown even stronger since I’d become mated. I could see hints of her silver magic mixed in with my own, which I supposed made sense. If our souls were connected, why wouldn’t our magic? The spell was easy to cast as I wove my intention into the pattern I was building. Each species of monster performed spells differently but this was the way it’d always worked best for me. No need for words or drawing it out on the ground, everything I did was structured in my mind before I released it. The spell was cast over all of them and I watched it settle into their skin, letting me know it had taken.

“Now you can pick any book you like while I search through these spell books,” I informed them, and took a seat in one of the chairs near the fire.

Flipping through the pages, I drowned out everything around me, letting my magic sink into the pages helping me absorb the information faster. This had been one of my favorite pastimes before the madness stole it from me. Learning new magic and spells was almost as much fun as stealing shiny things. Most might see me as simple minded or fixated on the wrong things. I just let them believe that because as far as I knew, no other monster but myself researched spells. Monsters either had an innate sense of their powers or were taught by elders of their species.

Setting aside the first two books, I didn’t find anything that would help right now, but I saw a few I should show Shiny. One was about manipulation of people’s emotions with sound. It was clear from what she’d told us that she had a natural disposition to do that but like all of us, practice was needed. The third book held something promising, but I worried it would be stretching the limits of the spell so I kept looking. Finally, the fourth book had the building blocks I needed as I cobbled two spells together. One was for finding something specific while the other was for finding the location of something.

Standing, I turned to find the others scattered all over the library reading over titles and flipping through pages. Gods, doing it that way would take years not days. Placing the book on the reading stand so I could glance between the two spells, I formulated a way to weave them together with my intention of getting the result I wanted. Closing my eyes, I reached out to the magic that created this castle and learned our whims to create a perfect space for us all. I had to get the castle to accept this new spell and attach it in a way that I could remove it just as easily once we were done. This was turning out to be trickier than I expected but the challenge thrilled me.

“Hold on everyone, the library might shift,” I called out as I finished the last bit of the spell.

The room started to shudder and my eyes snapped open to see books flying about the room. I ducked to avoid a thick tomb that zoomed past my head and up into the funnel cloud of books that were being whisked out. I probably should have given a warning before I finished the spell so everyone had time to get out of the way. Milin got slapped in the back of the head with a book that nearly sent him crashing off the ladder. Hisceas batted some away from where Shiny was hiding behind his hulking body—then there was Rhun. The damn dog was acting like these books were trying to attack him as he clawed and bit at them. When I saw smoke pouring off him I shot him with a blast of wind, knocking him off the second floor and crashing to the first. I snickered at the sight of him leaping to his feet as he looked around for the enemy that had just attacked him.

Just as quick as the tornado of books started, it ended.

All the books that had been left behind filled the first floor of bookshelves, making things far more manageable. “Tada!” I announced, spreading open my arms. “Only books that have the words wizard and Speaker of the Gods in them.”

“You fucking maniac,” Rhun snarled. “How could you not give us a better warning? Zia could have been hurt.”

“She was with the guardian,” I pointed to them. “If he’s around then Shiny is in no danger.”

“Raven,” the jolly old sea monster barked at me.

Clearly, he didn’t agree with my assessment, but he should be happy that I’d just admitted I trust him to keep our mate safe. So ungrateful, all of them.