The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Ascension (16 page)

He’d sensed the magic from the gold bands; most immediate being the residual aura of her own magic on the items and right beneath it being generations and layers of residual magical energy from her ancestors who no doubt passed the item down from generations of sorcerers and sorceress and probably even family members who had no clue of the significance, but kept the tradition of passing it down anyway. To willing give a possession like this, from another magic user to another was a way of wordlessly vowing your loyalty to them, binding that person to the receiver in a way that transcended blood relations and even the marriage tie. Since it was so binding and permanent, the only way of dissolving the bind being that the receiver had to give back the token to whom it had been received from, the practice was almost extinct with marriage ties being much easier to dissolve. More than that. A marriage tie was easier to force. The only way a magic family heirloom could be used to give loyalty to another was if the giver willing gave it away.

Devdan looked back up at Adina and their lips collided again and only came apart so they could get to their feet. Her hands found the sides of his head, pressing his lips firmer on hers. He untied the long, wide scarf she had draped around herself and let it fall to the floor. One of his hands found her breasts and kneaded them through her tunic while the other found the back of her head, running his hand through her long coarse locks. She fell against him, hips aligning with his, her heat touching his erection through his pants.

He stopped kissing her and muttered against her lips, “Fuck,” the contact of her hips making him painfully aware of how hard he was for her already. It hadn’t been that long since he’d fucked a girl before, but it had been a while since he’d had an emotional connection like this with one before, even if it was technically an artificial one since their auras didn’t naturally align and they weren’t familiar enough with each other for it to have happened on its own. Either way though, whether natural already formed, artificial, or grown these kinds of sexual encounters were the ones that made a man lose all sense and control.

Adina moved her lips from his to his ear, nibbled his earlobe and as though reading his mind whispered, “What happened to that self-control?”

The feel of her hot breath went straight to his dick, and he removed his hands from her breasts and hair to the button and zipper of his pants. He undid them, lowering his pants and briefs at the same time, his dick springing free as he whispered back to her, “I used it all trying not to fuck you for the past two weeks.”

He pushed his pants and briefs all the way down and stepped out of them, before taking off his shirt. Together, both of them took off her tunic. Devdan paused to admire her naked torso, taking in the sight of her breasts, her dark nipples erect. As he did so, he undid the string on her skirt and pushed both her skirt and panties down her legs. Both now naked, he hoisted her up on his waist and climbed onto the bed on his knees. He left one hand to support her lower back and used the other to grab her hair and crane her head back to expose her neck to him and allow him to leave a trail of kisses down her neck, around her collarbone, and finally to her breasts.

He fit her entire breast in his mouth, flitting his tongue around her nipple until Adina suddenly pulled herself away from him, reaching between them to grab his erection and stroke him. He knew what she wanted without her saying and lifted her up as she aligned him with her entrance. Then he sat her back down atop him.

“Fuck,” he said. “Fuck, you’re so fucking tight.”

Hands still gripping her hips, he pulled out of her and thrust back into her, repeating the motion over and over again, her arms resting on his shoulder to support her as she matched his rhythm. As they rocked against each other, Devdan’s lips found every piece of her that he could touch, her lips, her neck, and finally he put his mouth around her opposite breast from earlier, causing her to cry out his name.

“Devdan,” she gasped, her legs beginning to tremble around his waist. “Devdan, I… Fuck, Devdan… I can’t…”

Adina stopped talking after that, losing all ability to speak once Devdan put his hand between them, rubbing her swollen clit as he continued to thrust inside her. He watched her face, scrunched in pleasure as her body stiffened in his arms, walls tightening around him, the line between pain and pleasure blurring as his dick pulsed in her and got harder causing him to thrust into her faster. He kissed her again, though she was able to do little more with her lips than moan, hum, and try to say his name. Their aura’s still somewhat aligned from earlier, Devdan knew exactly when she was about to come, and let himself come just as her walls clamped onto him, both his and Adina’s sweaty bodies stiffening, thighs trembling against each other’s. She continued to tremble against him, long after he had come down from his high though he still continued to thrust gently into her.

Finally, they were both still; Adina’s forehead resting against his shoulder; his hands running up and down her back.

“God,” Adina breathed after a while.

Devdan chuckled and kissed her shoulder before untucking her legs from around him. He lay her on the bed before lying himself next to her so they were face to face. He closed his eyes, though he wasn’t quite ready to give in to sleep, the energy he got from the night countering the lethargies that were supposed to overcome him after sex.

“What are your plans?” Adina asked.

“My plans?”

Adina propped her arm up on her elbow and leaned her head on her hand before saying with a smile, “I’m sure whatever your plans are, it isn’t to help the Magic Council. You aren’t a supporter of them.”

Devdan glanced at his wrist where she had clasped the gold band, the ancient magic coursing through it from her and her ancestors a reminder that she had no intention to betray him, couldn’t now if she wanted to.

“It’s not,” he admitted.

“Then what is your plan?”

“It’s obvious isn’t it? To destroy them with the help of the people they look down on. That’s if I can get the other African families to help me.”

Adina stared at him for a moment and though the empathy he had gained from their auras being so aligned had lasted through their joining, it was long gone so he had no idea what she was feeling or thinking.

“That’s ambitious of you,” Adina finally said lying back down. “Don’t worry. I will help you gain their favor.”

16

Bastet wasn’t keen on the fact that Devdan put his trust in Adina. Or more bluntly, as Bastet said to him, she wasn’t keen on him recruiting the help of a woman he was fucking because when sex was involved the only head most men could think with was the one that didn’t have a brain in it. It was Adina who defended him and said to Bastet, who had been on speaker phone at the time, that Devdan had proven himself not to be most men and if he were like most men, she wouldn’t have offered her help either politically or sexually and that she was very sure that Bastet wouldn’t be trying to make him a king either.

Bastet grudgingly agreed with her.

Adina’s insight proved useful. While Bastet could only give him information about the African families based on what she’d deduced from the Magic Council, their contact with the western families, and Tilila who didn’t know much about the other families beyond the Moroccan one, Adina knew based on personal interactions.

“You want to get three families on your side,” Adina said to him one evening after Mekonnen had confirmed that the leaders would meet with him and Anya. “The Algerian Family, the Sudanese Tribe, the Malian Family. If you can get them on your side, most of the other families will follow.”

Keyword: most. And that was if he managed to say the right words. They of course expected families who would be too afraid to make a stand against the Magic Council but they were harmless. The dangerous ones would be those who were in league with the Magic Council like one of the two South African families coming. And then there was the Egyptian family, who Devdan had argued with Anya already cooperated with them as it was so there was no point in inviting them. However, she insisted that the Egyptian family may be able to assist in making the others cooperate.

While the African families may not have been as rich and influential as the European families, they had the same affinity for grandeur that all powerful sorcerers and sorceresses seemed to have. Mekonnen managed to convince the head of the current matriarch of the Algerian family, Farah—as in “far” Adina was sure to emphasize to Devdan—to use the grand luxury hotel she owned for the meeting. Devdan, Anya, and the Ethiopian family had arrived early the week of the conference and the rest trickled in over the last few days. Still, except for Farah, he didn’t meet the other family leaders, patriarchs, matriarchs, and heads until their first meeting.

The first meeting and even the second and third meeting was a farce, but it gave Devdan the opportunity to observe the other families, learn their names, what made the leaders tick, and what was important to them. The initial meetings also gave Devdan the opportunity to assert himself as an authority among them which was why Bastet sent Devdan as a representative of the Magic Council and suggested that Anya go with him to begin with. Sure his and Bastet’s names were as famous (or infamous depending on who was asked) as MaLeila’s, but even that didn’t give them any authority in the magical world. As much as the African families despised the Magic Council, they did recognize them as the power of the current magical world.

While he observed them all, mentally noting those who would likely assist him, Devdan mulled over how to get them together without rising Anya’s suspicion. The families presented the solution to him when he observed that sometimes they would meander in the conference room for hours to talk and catch up as if they were long lost friends though Devdan knew for certain that many of them spoke and visited each other all the time. In that sense, they were very different from the Western families, who were always competing with each other, always cold and distant. It was as though the whole of the African magical families considered themselves to be one, which made his task easier and harder at the same time. If the right families agreed to stand with him, he could get them all. But if the wrong families said no, none of them would side with him and it would be off to South America for him, magic families known for being much less hospital toward the Magic Council than even the African families were.

“Do not fret,” Adina said to him as she undressed him the evening before Devdan would have his first clandestine gathering. “They will all follow you.”

“Without your compulsion,” Devdan said dryly, grabbing gently onto Adina’s wrist stopping the hand that was just caressing the top of his chest while giving her a pointed look.

“You won’t need my compulsion,” she assured. “You will find the right words to compel them yourself.”

Though Devdan had warned Adina not to use her compulsion to make the families listen to him, she did ask her to compel the families he wished to stay into certainly lingering, while compelling the ones who were sure to be supporters of the Magic Council to leave. As soon as only the little over a dozen of the families were left that Bastet had informed him he needed to talk to did Devdan turn on his ethereal sight and manipulate the magic in the air to create a magical loop in the hall just outside the room so that anyone looking for it would certainly get lost. It took a while to manipulate the threads since warping space and time wasn’t something he’d ever been very talented at, unlike MaLeila who was so skilled at warping time and space that she didn’t need to use her ethereal sight to create loops.

He made sure to be obvious about what he was doing, purposely drawing the attentions from the other families that stopped to look at him when they sensed what he was doing. Once he was done, he retreated from his ethereal vision and resisted the urge to cower at all the families’ gazes on him. It wasn’t the first time he’d had the gazes of powerful people on him, but it had almost always been by proxy to MaLeila, who had no qualms about storming into a room like she owned it and making her intentions known. She always made it look so easy to stand up to people who thought they were more powerful than she was.

While he had certainly thought about the girl in the last two  or three months since she had left him, as it seemed easier to ponder her while she was at a distance, this was the first time he wished she were here with him. Then again if she hadn’t left in the first place, he wouldn’t be here at all.

“Finally,” Farah, the average heighted beige skinned and dark haired matriarch of the Algerian Family, said. “I was wondering when you would finally decide to tell us why you really called us here. Certainly, it wasn’t to plead with us to come to the aid of the Magic Council in exchange for membership and representation on the council as if they don’t already owe us.”

She sat back down in her seat at the round conference table waiting expectantly for everyone else to do the same.

Devdan wasn’t surprised by her boldness. Farah gained her position of matriarch because of her curiosity and shrewd intuition. The first to sit down with her was the Moroccan leader, Amine. Devdan had observed the two interacting over the course of the last few days, like a pair of old friends who inevitably brought mischief when they were together. They were a strange pair though. Farah was all spitfire and Amine went along to get along with the council. Devdan never thought they would be friends. Mekonnen sat next and afterwards so did the rest of the remaining families before finally, Devdan sat at the table as well.

Farah’s assumption, he decided, was as good a place to start.

“Farah’s right,” Devdan said. “Calling you here on behalf of the Magic Council to help them fight their war was just a ploy to get you in the same place and weed out the ones who were already allied with the Magic Council.”

“Well then don’t keep us waiting,” Farah said. “Go ahead. Woo us.”

“The Magic Council thinks I’m here to get you to help them fight their war in exchange for representation and inclusion into the International Magic Charter,” Devdan said. “Truth is that doing so would be a waste of time since you’re already part of it.”

“By whose permission? We certainly didn’t give it. And we certainly were not informed,” the Sudanese leader said.

Which was the point. Exclusive as the International Charter of Magic was and as exclusive as the Magic Council was when it came to the magic families they were willing to deal with, the charter included all officially recognized magic families in its charter. A loophole Bastet exposed to him from back when the Magic Council thought that the African families would have no choice but to obey the charter and bow to their whims, before they knew the African families would refuse to cooperate. Still out of their misplaced pride, they didn’t change the wording and over the years had tried to exercise their right to the families’ cooperation to little or no avail for the most part. As it was though, Bastet explained to him before he left in her cram session of Magic Council and African politics, they could use the wording of the charter against the Magic Council to overthrow them.

“If it was that easy,” Farah asked after he explained the plan, “why hasn’t one of the other powerful western families taken advantage of the law to overthrow the Magic Council?”

“Because none of the western families get along. At best they’re amiable to each other and can only stand together long enough to come against a greater threat. But they would never vote one from among them as an absolute ruler to overthrow the council,” Devdan replied. He hadn’t needed Bastet to tell him that. Even in their own countries, where unlike the African Countries there were multiple families in each one, the western families couldn’t get along.

“And who would we vote to be the one to absorb their powers and duties?”

Devdan figured he may as well avoid beating around the bush about it.

“It would be me.”

Until then the group of matriarchs and patriarchs had been cautiously receptive of him, but after that declaration their cautious reception turned into cautious mistrust and many of them began speaking up at once in opposition to the idea. Two or three of them—who he noticed were close friends—leaned towards each other to whisper. But it was Farah who sat up straighter and looked at him with expectant curiosity and it was at this point that Devdan was sure that if he could get Farah to side with him, he could get all the others.

“And what gives you the right to lead us. You’re as bad as Anya as far as I’m concerned. Raised in the western world, imbued with their ideas and the same disregard, misconceptions, and misnomers about our culture with only the thought to destroy our traditions and force your way onto us. We’ve resisted those like you before who came to us with pretty lies, made them cower against our strength until they turned back with their tails between their legs, and we certainly won’t hesitate to do it again,” Farah declared.

“That’s not my intention. If it were, I would have told you my pretty lies with Anya sitting next to me and the rest of the leaders on your continent,” Devdan said.

“Of course the exact same tactics wouldn’t work. We’d see right through it,” Farah replied. “So go ahead. Convince us. Convince us that we should even trust you. Let alone follow you.”

This was the part that Bastet said he was going to have to figure out. They didn’t have the luxury of taking months or even years to earn their trust or if not their trust, at least their respect. He only had this moment, the last few days, and the last few weeks of Mekonnen’s own observations that the ancient man had no doubt told them of. Everything so far had already left an impression on them and he only had one shot at this to get it right.

“Fine. You don’t want pretty lies,” Devdan said deciding that he had nothing to lose as it was. This entire thing had been a longshot as it was. “I’ll give you ugly truths. The Magic Council hasn’t cowered from you. They cower from no one and won’t until they’ve exhausted all their means and have been soundly defeated. They leave you alone because you’re more trouble than they think you’re worth. If you were a real threat to their power, you’d never get them to leave you alone, but they know you have no ambition for anything beyond what they’ve allowed you to have.”

“You do well not to insult us,” Amine said.

“It’s about time someone did. Besides, Farah’s the one who didn’t want to be pacified,” Devdan shot back. “Look at you all. We’re supposedly the descendants of gods. We supposedly fought off the gods, were the mediators between them and the non-magic people we cohabited with. We guided the same people we cohabited with into civilization. Without us, they’re lost and your continent shows it. Look at Sudan. You, Kamal, lost half your country because of a civil war you could have stopped if you weren’t so afraid to come out your palace in the countryside for fear that the Magic Council would try to get involved with your affairs and now the half that broke away from you is embroiled in yet another war.

“Mekonnen, you sit in your palace surrounded by the magic of an ancient magic city, religious city, whatever you want to call it while you isolate yourself from the politics of your own country, not getting involved in their affairs. And Farah,” Devdan said, eyes locking with the woman who was still sitting up straight. “You think you’re really doing something owning one of the most prestigious hotels in the world. You think it makes you like the Thornes or better. But people like the Thornes own hotels and the media and at the snap of a finger make what they want to happen reality. They rule from an invisible throne while making people think they’re making their own choices. Compared to them, you’re just playing pretend in the safety of the pretty hallways of your grand hotel. And you three are the magic families with countries that are considered well off. We don’t even need to talk about the disaster that’s been going on in the Congo since the Belgium family managed to wipe out the Congolese family.”