Awakening Beauty (19 page)

“My godmothers,” Aurora murmured in awe. “The ones who protected me from Valborga’s curse.”

The tallest of the three caught hold of the raven as it battered itself against the door and clung to the creature while it shimmered in form, turning back into Vee, then a bird, then Vee again. Joel clung to Aurora, the one vital, stable thing in the midst of this nightmare. To learn his trusted friend was a villainous creature was horrifying. And although he couldn’t help but believe in magic now, watching Valborga’s transformations made him nauseated, overwhelmed by surrealism.

At last her figure stopped flickering and remained in human form, panting and pulling against her sister’s hands. Blood still trickled down her face from where Aurora had cut her cheekbone. Her hair straggled down from her customary smooth chignon, and raven feathers clung to the jet-black strands.

“Let go of me,” she snarled.

“You’ve caused enough mischief in this world, Valborga,” the dark-haired fairy said. “We were foolish enough to imagine you could do no more harm here.”

The third sister lifted a hand to touch Valborga’s face. “We’d hoped that by the time a thousand years were past you might have changed, but I can see you have not.”

The woman turned and glided over to where Joel and Aurora remained locked together in an impenetrable embrace. “Princess Aurora, I am sorry we weren’t able to do more to help you. We could not harm our own sister or break her spell any more than she could do to any one of us. Sleeping for a thousand years may have seemed more like a curse to you than dying would have, but Bettina saw the shape of your fate.” She nodded toward the black-haired fairy. “It seemed the wisest course we could follow.”

“The stars are perfectly aligned for ascension to power on this date. Valborga knew this, but didn’t understand the power was never to be hers.” Bettina gazed at Joel with eyes so dark and wise he felt he was looking into the face of an angel. “This one, your beloved, is the person who will lead the world into a new age.”

Her sudden smile dazzled Joel, making it harder to follow her words. “The brightest star of his generation,” she continued warmly, “by his own strength and hard work, but he too has a distinguished lineage. He is descended from the magical union of King Ragnorak of the underworld and Queen Gwyneth of Linderwylde, through their daughter, the great Queen Brea. This line was diluted after many generations, but his poor, confused mother still carried the blood that makes Joel the chosen one.”

There would be time to think about that later, when he wasn’t so stunned. For now, it just seemed enough that a weight was lifted from him in connection with his unhappy mother, as if he’d finally found the reason she’d been the way she was.
Poor, confused mother.
Constantly feeling different, pulled in directions she didn’t understand. With no one to turn to, without even the personal strength that had carried him through similar conflicts, she’d relied on drugs for relief, for escape, for
something
. It was like a confirmation of what he’d always known, that inside she’d been a good and loving person.

Bettina said, “You didn’t know, did you? But my sister did. Your human strength, with Ragnorak’s power, however diluted, was to have bolstered her own.”

Valborga jerked in her sister’s hold, but it seemed to be more in anger than any effort to free herself. Bettina didn’t even glance at her. Lifting her hand as if in a blessing, she said, “Joel and Aurora, in your union the good of our two realms are united at last. The world needs you together as much as you need each other.”

When her eyes released him, Joel closed his mouth. The cynical, skeptical part of him tried to find a way to make fun of her prophecy and couldn’t, because something inside him rose up with strength and excitement to meet the challenge. It was like a confirmation of what he’d already acknowledged was right. Aurora clung to him, pressing her cheek against his chest with obvious happiness. Although she was smiling wildly at the fairies she’d called her godmothers, she seemed incapable of releasing Joel to embrace them.

In any case, they were somewhat occupied. The tallest sister held on to Valborga’s arm with a guard’s grip. “We will take her with us now to the magical realm. Banishing her without her powers clearly has not worked. From now on, she must live and learn with us.”

Valborga hissed, “I will never live with you! There is nothing you can teach me!”

All three sisters gazed at her sadly, but Bettina smiled as she glided back to her. “Valborga, we’ve just shown yet again that we’re stronger than you. Even these mixed-race humans can teach you. Your power is corrupted and weakened by your hatred. You must see now that their love brings them strength. As ours for you can heal and strengthen you.”

Valborga curled her lip, giving another futile jerk of her arm. “Don’t make me laugh. You never had any love for me, just for each other! I was the one left alone, constantly punished and banished and excluded! My power denied me…”

“Oh ,Valborga,” the taller sister protested.

But Bettina said ruefully, “Maybe she has a point. Although the love was there, maybe we were harsh with her when we should have been understanding. She was a naughty child when perhaps we were too young to be wise enough to teach her. Valborga, we always loved you, even if you couldn’t see it. But we will talk, and maybe this time it will be different.”

“Ha! Already, you confine me!”

“Damn right,” said Bettina with a beatific smile.

She glanced back at Joel and Aurora, whose arms by now had loosened but not released each other. “We’ll wake these good people before we go, and cast the spell wide to quiet memories of this night’s events among those who’ve already left.”

Aurora said anxiously, “But you’ll leave our memories? I want to remember it all. I want Joel to remember!”

“Of course. You and Joel will remember.”

Joel frowned, gazing at the people flopped and recumbent around the floor. His people, if they eventually accepted his leadership. And it was his job to speak for them as well as to look out for them.

“It’s not right,” he said abruptly, and Aurora as well as all three fairies glanced at him in surprise. “They’re sentient beings, not puppets. You can’t treat them the way Valborga treated them, treated Aurora’s family. You can’t just wipe out their memories. It’s what makes them who they are.”

It appeared to be a novel idea to the fairies, who immediately went into a huddle. But Joel already felt his reward in Aurora’s beaming smile.

At last Bettina said, “To remember might harm them. Some of them at least. We can make it seem like a dream. Those who are strong enough will recognize it as reality, the others never will. And that will be our last act of interference.” She smiled. “Unless you ask for our help. Our portal is open once more, to those able to use it. Goodbye, my child, you’ve become a wonderful woman and made the best choice of your life in your husband.”

And she waved her arm around the room and moved back. Her leg and part of her lower body disappeared. Valborga made a lunge to escape, but it seemed her sisters were prepared for that, for they held on grimly and all three stepped together into nothingness.

Chapter Fourteen

Aurora looked up from her textbook in which the words were all starting to blur together into meaningless nonsense. It was definitely time for a study break and, gazing at Joel across the room, she knew just how she wanted to take that break. She shut the book and set it on the table beside the couch where she lay, then rose and stalked across the room toward her victim. She draped her arms over the back of his chair and rested her chin on his shoulder, feeling the crisp edge of his collar against her cheek and inhaling the warm, spicy scent of his cologne.

“Busy?” she asked.

“Always,” he answered, but put the file he was reading on his lap. He reached up to cup her cheek and turned his face to kiss her over his shoulder. “But never too busy for you.”

Aurora rounded the edge of the chair and perched on one broad arm, but Joel quickly snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her onto his lap. He tugged the crumpled document out from under her and tossed it onto the floor.

“How’s your studying going?”

“It’s difficult. There’s so much to learn, historical facts most people would’ve grown up with but which are brand new to me.” She thought about how much she’d missed and felt a familiar pang of homesickness for the world she’d been born into. “But it’s interesting too, seeing history unfold as one long story, learning how one event led to the next and how people repeated the same mistakes generation after generation.”

“There are some great documentaries and historical based movies that should make it easier for you to learn and remember all those facts and people.” Joel rubbed her back and she wanted to arch and purr beneath his hand. “The television can be used for more than cheesy romances and reality shows.”

“Cheesy?” His vernacular was still sometimes unfamiliar, but she could tell the term was derogatory from the way he said it. “I
like
romances and people making over their homes and gardens and clothes and lives.”

Joel leaned in and kissed the corner of her mouth. “You’ve done an amazing job of that yourself. You’ve adjusted to losing your family and the life you knew. You’ve got us living in a real home instead of a generic apartment. You’ve tackled school and volunteering at the hospital. And you’ve completely made me over too.”

He jerked his thumb at the file on the floor. “See, I can put work aside and it doesn’t bother me in the least.” With that he slipped his hand around her nape and drew her in for something more than a peck on the lips.

Although Aurora cooperated with enthusiasm, winding her tongue around his and pressing close to him, she couldn’t resist teasing. Drawing her mouth free after a few moments, she said, “Ah but this is different. This is work for the people, not just making money. I don’t want you to stop doing that.”

“Slave driver,” he said, sweeping his hand up under her skirt. “Everyone’s entitled to an hour off.”

“Joel,” she gasped, undulating as his hand slid over her thighs and bottom. “I do
like
being with you.”

“Good,” he said, rather indistinctly since his mouth was buried in her neck, nipping and licking.

“But do you think we’re doing the right thing?”

He lifted his head, a faint frown between his warm, clouded eyes. “Making love?”

She smiled, kissing his mouth. “Oh no, I know that’s the right thing. I mean you taking the slow, democratic route into politics, and me studying arts before I go into medicine. I worry sometimes that it’s all taking too long.”

“You’re desperate to live,” he said, stroking her hair. “I like that in you. But I think if we’re to save the world, we have to learn enough to make the right decisions.
And
have fun.”

“I hoped you’d say that.” She shifted in his arms to straddle him, then wriggled back so that she could unfasten his trousers more easily. “It seems more worthwhile, more
necessary
somehow, if the decisions are ours, rather than some preordained events that we have no control over. It’s the same with us,” she added as he impatiently brushed her hands aside to free his already fully erect cock from his unfastened jeans and underpants. “I had this feeling that we should be together, from the beginning, when you first wakened me.”

“I wish I’d kissed you,” he said ruefully, gently massaging her hips before pulling aside her panties. “Instead of shaking you as if you were some homeless person inconveniently asleep on my doorstep.”

“You kissed me later,” she remembered. “That’s when I really knew.” She raised herself up, looking deep into his eyes as he held his cock steady for her, and lowered herself onto him with a long, slow sigh. “You feel so good inside me, Joel… I wanted us to be together. I wanted us to be
meant
… And now all I can remember is my fairy godmother telling me I’d made the best decision of my life in choosing you.”

She began to move on him, in slow, sensual circles. “And if I hadn’t, if I’d been too stuck-up to recognize love for someone so different from the men I’d known before…oh Joel, what if we’d never come together?”

He thrust up inside her, making her gasp as the pleasure soared. He reached under her top, finding and caressing her breasts. “You got under my skin. I’d have found you again. But it doesn’t matter, does it? We
are
together, and nothing, either human or magical, can break us apart.”

She put her arms around his neck and bent her head to kiss him. They moved slowly, sweetly, without urgency now that their bodies knew each other so well. And yet to Aurora it always felt new, always different. This time was like an affirmation, about the sheer emotion of loving him rather than the physical ecstasy they could achieve. Not that she rejected the pleasure. Indeed, she accepted it, helped drive it onward, writhing, rising and falling on his cock, and lapping up his groans of delight. Sensing her mood, he kept it slow, even at the end when she knew his urge was to pound into her. Instead, he stroked her clitoris with his clever, sensitive fingers, while pushing rhythmically inside her. He watched with hot, triumphant eyes as she fell over the edge into bliss. And even then, trembling with his own need, he kept the slow pace, holding her there until he came too with a long, deep groan that seemed to fill her soul.

As her heart slowly quieted, and she lay on his chest, listening to the strong, still wild beats of his, she knew that this was the time.

“Joel?”

“Mmm.” She could tell, just from his tone that his eyes were closed, that he was half-falling into post-coital slumber.

“We never used protection. Ever.”

“I know.” The smile was in his voice again, making her smile back as she lifted one lethargic hand to stroke his chest, rubbing her finger over his nipple. He was always amused when she picked up modern phrases or concepts. “It doesn’t matter now we’re together, but at the beginning, it used to eat me up with guilt. I’m a controlled man—at least I used to be—but I could never wait to screw you. Part of me even liked the risk.”