Gatewright (30 page)

The
flames spent themselves nearly as quickly as they’d begun, leaving Riven
covered in a thick layer of ash with no sign of Kaebris.  I
shuddered.  He lay still, breathing slowly, reminding me of when I’d
pulled him out of Azry just yesterday.

I
moved to go toward him, but Calin pulled me back.  “They need to declare
the victor first.”

Calin’s
voice had broken the stunned silence of the
adail.

“Xantae
Vaal has been shown favored of the Great Mage,” one of them finally said in a
choked voice.

I
ripped my arm out of Calin’s grasp and sprinted to Riven’s side.  He sat
up slowly, trying to wipe the ash from his face, but his sweat only made it
smear.  I shoved my horror down and offered my hand for him to help
himself up.  He quickly glanced at the still-motionless
adail
surrounding
us and rose to his feet without accepting my help.

“Did
you plan that?”  I demanded.  I’d come up with the idea of a new
clan.  Not the part where Riven would be forced to defend it.

“Yes
and no.” His mouth twitched in a poor attempt at a smile.  “Single combat,
yes.  Kaebris – the fire – no.”

One
of the
atsili adail
approached him cautiously.  “We accept your
right as King of Clan Xantae, and beg your forgiveness of our trespass.”

My
eyebrows shot up.  If the
adail
didn’t seem so authentic, I would
have thought he was mocking him.

“The
blood of Kaebris satisfies the crime,” Riven replied grimly.  “Leave and
do not return.”

The
adail
gave him a wide berth, disappearing back into the forest.  We
waited a full minute after the last of them left before we released a
collective sigh of relief.  Honor was a fickle thing.  So long as
they held their honor higher than their regard of Mikiril, the outcasts were
safe.

Calin
laughed, a hint of hysteria in his voice.  “I can’t believe that
worked.  The Great Mage strike me down if I ever doubt her intent again.”

Riven
met my eyes, but no joy lurked there.  I’d just watched him burn a man
alive.  “Let’s get back,” I offered.

We
walked in silence.  A few of the outcast gave us ragged cheers when we
came through the gap in the wall, but they seemed as unsettled as the
adail. 
Jack watched us, face unreadable.  I followed Riven as he crossed the
camp, a destination clearly in mind.  Without breaking stride, he walked
straight into the lake, fully clothed, immersing himself fully in the water.

I
waited patiently on the shore while he bathed, scrubbing his face until it was
raw and red.  He tossed me his shirt at some point, and I focused on
getting the last of the ash out.  I desperately tried not to think of it
as Kaebris’s remains.

When
he finally emerged, he took the sodden shirt and squeezed the rest of the water
out.  I couldn’t help but notice the raw burn where the amber necklace had
laid against his skin.  He tossed the shirt over his head and exhaled
slowly.  I took closer stock of him, and noticed for the first time that
his hands were as blistered as his chest.  Ow.

He
must have felt my concern, and seated himself next to me on the boulder I’d
claimed.  The peace of the forest welcomed us from the chaos of the past
hour.  The water lapped gently at the shore, and distant, giddy laughter
echoed from the camp.  Eventually,
Riven
broke
the quiet.  “I don’t know what happened. 
Atsili
don’t do
that.  Not even
adail.
”  He swallowed.

I
put my arm around him, and he closed his eyes, leaning against me.  “I
know the feeling.”

I
heard footsteps, and I looked up to see Jack’s approach.  He considered us
for a long moment before he spoke.  “The outcast here
have
declared for Clan Xantae.  They will come to your aid to retake Peregare.”

Riven
straightened, and I let my arm fall from his back. He nodded slowly.

“Jan,
we need to return to the human realm,” Jack advised, a hint of apology in his
tone.

I
knew he was right.  To keep up my disguise as a normal human to the rest
of the world, I had to at least be present without disappearing for days at a
time.  My mother would be frantic by now.  The last thing I needed
was for her to call the cops.  I stood.

Riven
rose with me.  “I’m going with you.”

I
took a breath, about to argue.  I thought better of it and listened to our
bond instead.

I
wasn’t going to win that fight.  And frankly, I didn’t want to.

After
saying our goodbyes, we struck out for our portal.  The November light was
fading quickly and I hastened my pace.  I should have made a small gate to
peep through once I was confident we were in the right place, but I was
tired.  I just created a full size gate and stepped right through.

The
child that paused from pedaling on her bicycle stared at us with wide
eyes.  We
were
jumping through in the middle of her driveway. 
It didn’t seem nearly so concealed now that the sun glared harshly at us, even
as low in the sky as it was.

“Shit,
shit, shit.”  I waved my companions through the gate and shut it behind
me, then tried to give the child a winsome smile.  “We’re superheroes,” I
told her in way of explanation, and fled for the car before she could say
anything.  I crossed my fingers her parents would simply think she had an
overactive imagination.

I
narrowly avoided crashing twice on the drive back to Charlottesville.  My
head swam with exhaustion. 
Gatewright survives attack, dies in car
crash.

“Clan
Xantae?”  Riven asked me, amused, on the doorstep to my home.  “So
that’s where you got the idea.”

I
nodded.  “Yeah, Emma and Rose came up with it.”  I held the door open
for him, expecting him to follow, but he didn’t.

His
eyes sparkled.  “I think I prefer Xantae Riven over Xantae Vaal. 
Jack, does this mean you’re done with Becot now, considering your holdings are
at Clan Xantae?  It is Xantae Jack now?”

Jack
twitched for a moment, then a slow, cold smile spread across his face. 
“Well, if I am, I hold seniority over you,
Riven.
”

“Where
the fuck
have
you been?”  Rose yelled at us,
sprinting down the stairs.  “Your mother has been frantic.  I lied
and told her you were sleeping off a stomach bug, but I think she finally won’t
listen to me and is on her way here
. 
Jack, why haven’t you picked
up your phone? Seriously!”

“Sleeping
actually sounds like an amazing idea.  I think I’ll go do that.” I left
the fey at the door, leaving Jack to introduce Riven.  As I closed the
door to my bedroom behind me, I could hear Rose exclaiming over Riven’s haircut
(“what demented stylist thought that haircut was a good idea?  Get in the
bathroom and let me fix it.”).

When
was the last time I’d slept in my own bed?  Last night I’d been driving
around North and South Carolina.  I stumbled toward my pillows and
collapsed into the welcome softness of my mattress.  The night before had
been… the day before Thanksgiving.  I’d slept in a hotel in Charleston. 
The night before that?  Yeah.  That was the night of the fight at the
gas station.  Had it really all happened so fast?

My
mother showed up five minutes later, and I kindly obliged Rose by pretending to
be asleep.  I let her fuss over me to her heart’s content, making me a
broth and toast for my “upset stomach”.  The smell got my stomach
rumbling, and I remembered I’d had nothing except the plate of food Riven had
given me and a few bites of soup since Thanksgiving dinner.  I begged for
more, and convinced her I was well enough to eat the plentiful Thanksgiving
leftovers Rose had brought back with her.  If nothing else, my sudden,
ravenous appetite convinced her I was on the mend.

My
mother gone, the food coma overtook me and I slept soundly.  Until the
nightmares returned.  The first time, I was able to shake my head, take a
breath, and fall back sleep.  Perhaps it was my own fault for
oversleeping, but when I woke with a muffled cry in the pitch blackness of my
strange bedroom, the panic had my heart hammering like I was going to die.

I
heard a thump from the living room, and my panic rose like a fever, distorting
thought.  Was there an intruder?  I started to scramble out of the
covers.  I had to be able to make a gate and escape.

The
door opened, and I took a reflexive step back.  If I hadn’t been
lianyos
,
and known it was Riven, I might not have recognized him.  His hair was
short, in a human style.  He’d lost his fey clothes again, and only wore a
pair of sweatpants likely borrowed from Jack, based on how loosely they fell on
his hips.  His hands were wrapped in cloth
bandages,
a visual reminder of the destruction he’d wrought just this evening.

He
closed the door, moving carefully as if not to alarm me.  Like I was some
kind of wild animal.

“I
didn’t mean to wake you,” I protested.  “It was just a bad dream.”

“I
know,” he assured me.  “You have them almost every night.”

Shit,
did he feel all of them?  Even when he was in Peregare and I was
here?  “Riven, I’m sorry.”

“I
think it’s rather fair,” he contradicted me, moving closer.  His bone
structure had an odd beauty, not fey, but not human.  “I force a
lianyos
bond on you; you wake me up in a panic numerous times.  Both
accidents?  The Great Mage is fair.”  He smiled at me, and my heart,
which had been doing a good job of slowing down, skipped a few beats.  His
eyes flickered down my body, and I realized I was only wearing an oversized
tshirt.  Want – no, need- flowed through me, but it wasn’t mine.  It
was his.  My breath caught.

We
paused, a stalemate of emotions.  My own needs, alerted to the situation,
sent a tingle through my body.  He saw it.  Perhaps felt it.  I
felt his own.

“I
know what you feel,” Riven breathed, “but not what you
think
.”

“I
don’t understand.”

“I
will leave if you think I should.”  I knew that was the last thing on
Earth he wanted to do right now.  It probably took all his self-control to
keep himself there, seven feet from where I stood.  I knew it took mine.
“I just came to help against the nightmares.  I didn’t mean to… confuse
things.”

I
took a breath and
tried
to think.  Was I doing this because of the
bond and his intense feelings, or because of Riven himself?  What a dumb
question.  This had always been about Riven, from the beginning.  I’d
challenged him to make his oath, chosen to ride in his carriage; I’d kissed
him, then chased him down to demand we break up instead of just minding my own
business; and in my heart, I’d accepted him as
lianyos.

“I
think you should stay with me,” I answered, and we both knew I wasn’t just
talking about the here and now.

Like
he had in the forest after I’d made my first gate, he crossed the space between
us in just a few strides.  This time, instead planting me against a tree,
he gently held my face in his bandaged hands, as if reassuring himself one last
time this is what I wanted.  I didn’t wait for him to decide, but pulled
his head down and kissed him.  My heart sang through the bond, and his
echoed mine.  His kisses were gentle at first but quickly became hard and
urgent as he drew me tighter to himself, one hand knotting itself in my hair,
the other wrapped tightly around my waist. I was extremely conscious of his
bare chest as I caressed his soft skin.  My hands trailed down from his
chest, to gently brush the skin above his waistband, and he paused, eyes
closed, holding himself back from something.  A breath, and his eyes
opened, and his hands started moving, exploring my curves with delicate
fingertips as he gently kissed me.  I nibbled at his lip, and with a
growl, he pulled my shirt over my head.  Riven paused to appreciate before
resuming his advance, forcing me back until I sat on the bed, then pushed me
down.  He fell forward onto his hands to kiss me, and I arched my back,
trying to press myself against him.  Excitement rushed through me wherever
our bare skin touched.

His
kisses began to trail from my lips, to my neck, to my chest.  He ran his
tongue over my nipple, biting it gently, and I moaned quietly, and he was
forced to pause, gripping my sheets for dear life.

The
lianyos
bond
did
have some definite advantages, and we enjoyed
every consequence of that.  A lifetime of preferences and secrets,
revealed with a kiss or a touch.  And there was something beyond the bond,
too.  Knowing how someone feels was different than
caring
how they
feel.  Any inhibitions we’d had were washed away by the happiness we felt
at the other’s pleasure.

Despite
his injured hands, it was the
best
sex I’d ever had.

The
light coming in through the windows told me it was well past sunrise when I
heard the knock on my door.

“Jan,
is Riven in there with you?” Rose sounded halfway amused and halfway alarmed.

“Why?”

“He’s
not out here.  Wanted to make sure I don’t need to chase him down and
-“

I
heard Jack’s muffled voice from the other side of the door.

“Um. 
Never mind,” Rose called, but she sounded on the point of laughter.

I
rolled over and tried to hide under my pillow.  Whose idea had it been to
have Rose as a roommate?  Not mine.  Nope.  Riven chuckled and
pulled the pillow off me.

“Smell
that?” he asked, eyes bright.

Sex? 
Yes.  And also bacon.  I grinned in response.

“Want
me to bring you some?” he asked, hauling himself out of bed.  I admired
the view.  How had I possibly attracted the attention of this gorgeous
specimen?  As he headed for the door, I realized he’d forgotten some key
aspects of human culture.  “Don’t go out naked!” I squeaked.

He
paused, nodded to me, and went to find his sweatpants.  How did they end
up
under
the bed?  Oh, right.

Something
else I had meant to ask, too.  “Riven, wait.”

Waistband
tied, he lifted himself up back onto the bed to lay beside me.  I fumbled
for the right words.  If I’d found his indigo eyes distracting before, it
didn’t hold a candle to how my brain got derailed now.  “Last night, um…”
a flash of concern from him.  “No, I mean… why didn’t you share your magic?”

He
scanned my face.  “Because you don’t have that power.  I’m happy to
use it, but especially for the first time… I wanted to make sure you felt you
were my equal.  You make me happy just as you are.”

I
hadn’t known I was still capable of blushing.  “Ulg, that’s so romantic!”
I hit him with the pillow.

“I’m
going to need to take away your pillows from now on.  They tend to make
you violent.”

I
laughed and playfully kicked at him from under the covers.  He avoided my
strikes with fey-like agility and left to fetch breakfast.

I
hugged my weaponized pillow, caught between happiness and disbelief any of this
was happening.

I
finally emerged some time later, after a thorough shower (that was rudely but
gladly interrupted by a certain
atsili
).

Rose
tried – and failed – to hide her glee.  “Do you like his haircut?” she
asked with a wink.

“Yes,
Rose, you are just
that
good.”  I rolled my eyes at her and she
cackled.

Emma
took it all in with patient amusement.  Jack was hard to read, a flat expression
and tight lips.  Not angry.  Sad?  I was clueless.  I
caught Riven’s eye, and indicated Jack with a slight tip of my head.  His
slight expression told me he suspected what it was but wasn’t alarmed.

“So
what
happened?
” Rose finally burst out.  “You were eating dinner,
perfectly fine, then suddenly dash out, Jack hot on your heels, claiming to be
sick, and then when I get home you’re nowhere to be found.  You’re both
gone for over a day and then you show up with the fey that was originally Jan’s
tour guide, except someone attempted a disastrous haircut on him and his hands
have second degree burns.  What gives?”

Jack
and Riven both turned to me, clearly indicating that the ball was in my
court. 
Thanks, guys. 
I hadn’t wanted to have this conversation
quite yet, but I supposed it was inevitable.  I still hesitated. 
“It’s complicated.”

“I’ve
got time.”  She crossed her arms and waited.

“Um. 
Riven and I…” Why was it hard to tell her we were
lianyos? 
I
realized then I hadn’t told anyone voluntarily yet.  Jack and his family
knew because of how I’d survived rescuing Calin.  Other than that, it was
a secret.  I’d had the chance to tell Rose over and over again, but I
wasn’t sure how I felt about it yet, much less how she would react.  Other
options weren’t appealing, either.  I didn’t want to say ‘lover’, that was
way too personal.  And explicit.  ‘Boyfriend’ just sounded
weird.  “He’s my
lianyos,
” I conceded.

Rose
paused, looking between us both.  “Wait, isn’t
lianyos
a lifelong
thing?”  Her head swiveled to Jack.  “
That’s
why you told me
she would know if he’d left!”  A beat.  “Oh, that’s why you left
Thanksgiving dinner, too.  Riven was in trouble.”  Then she refocused
on me.  “So you both are, like, fey married, and you didn’t tell
me?”  Her green eyes grew dangerously sharp.

“Not
married, no!”  I waved my hands to placate her.  “It was the magical
equivalent of accidentally getting me pregnant.”

“So
you didn’t choose it?”  Her wrath refocused on Riven, who was gaping at
me, shock and guilt over the bond.

Oh,
get over it
, I thought.  We were fine. 
Right?  “It’s ok, we worked it out.” I reassured her.

“
Obviously
,”
she told me with more than a hint of snark.

“What
do you mean, get
accidentally
pregnant?”  Riven’s voice rose.

Jack
sighed, and heaved himself into a sitting position.  “Human women don’t
control their ovulation.”

“Fey
women
do?”
  No wonder fey were able to pass their holdings along
directly.  No accident bastards coming along to muck things up.

Riven
and I shared a long, meaningful look.  I
had
been on birth control
pills, but they’d gone up in flame during the initial attack.  Oops. 
I’d last had my period when I was at Peregare the first time, as the pills had
worn off.  I needed to see a calendar, ASAP.

“Just
to clarify, and I hope you’re not offended, but are you moving in, Riven?” Emma
asked politely.

He
started to shake his head, then frowned. “I don’t mean to.  However, I
don’t know how long it will take for me to get home.”

“Get
home?”  Jack inquired.  “If you establish yourself where the outcasts
are hiding, I think you’ll be in for an unpleasant surprise from Becot.”

Riven
grinned, and I caught the sense of something bloody and dangerous hiding under
the surface. “Peregare is
mine. 
It might have a temporary
unwelcome guest or two, but it’s
mine.
”

Jack
sucked in his breath.  “Becot, Toran, and Kusay have avoided war for
hundreds of years by respecting the claim of land.  There is no way you
can claim Clan Kusay, the line of descent is
clear.
  It’s not you.”

“I
don’t think you get it.”  Riven approached him.  “It’s
mine
. 
I’m taking it back.”

Jack’s
gaze was clear and steady.  “That is not
fey. 
That is human.”

Riven
nodded ever so slowly, in complete agreement, and my eyes rounded.  Maybe
he wasn’t taking his hair getting chopped off as well as I believed.

Jack
let that sink in before he answered.  “You don’t have an army.”

“Can
you think of anyone who might appreciate an opportunity to have lands in
Anowir?”  Riven’s eyes danced.  He’d already thought this
through.  I felt his glee and anger, retribution in sight.

“You
want to enlist the outcasts and Exiles in kicking Mikiril out and setting up
your own rule?  What’s to stop her from coming back?”

“I
don’t plan on her ever leaving the grounds,” Riven replied coldly.

I
felt his resolve, and his hatred of her.  I shared it
wholeheartedly.  I’d killed one fey, but if any of them actually deserved
it, it was her.  She’d attempted to kill my
lianyos. 
End of
story.

“You
are talking about murdering my Queen
–“

“Who
you never swore an oath to because she came into power after you left
-“

“And
taking control of lands that could throw the clans into chaos
-“