Twin Passions: 3 (9 page)

In a blink, the Veressi were gone. Their magick no longer filling the room, smothering all reason from it as they watched her with chilling disapproval. But she could say she had faced the Veressi with no harm done.

Unlike the stories her mother told her as a child, the Veressi truly were the bogeymen of the dark.

Nay, they were worse, if it were possible to be worse.

Astra turned to Garron then, her arms crossing over her breasts as she stared back at the beast. “So you raised ninnies?” she asked him curiously.

“I would never!” Such an expression of male offense crossed his leathery features and filled his widening, dark eyes.

“Evidently you have.” A shrug and lift of her brows indicated her uncertainty. “At least, according to the ever-arrogant Veressi.”

A dragony snort emitted with a whiff of steam from flared nostrils. “’Twas not ninnies I raised, my dear Sorceress, ’twas inherently stubborn young women given half truths and partial lies in which to build their futures,” he growled. “And I, above all perhaps, wished only to maintain both.” He heaved a sigh that lifted his massive chest as he expelled a breath of regret. “For I wished only to maintain the innocence that ensured their kind and gentle hearts.”

He turned then to the Wizards who had moved ever closer. “Into your hands I give this Sorceress whose purity is one I have always found solace within. Should it ever turn bitter, aged or filled with regret and pain, then it is I who you shall answer to.”

As quickly as the Veressi blinked out of sight, Garron was gone as well, leaving her to face those Wizards, herself and her future, with or without them.

“We have, since your earlier departure, been cursed to have dealt with the arrogance of not just our Keepers but also that infernal dragon. Not just once, but twice. Can you say, Sorceress, that your day could have possibly been worse?” Rhydan questioned grievously. “For I cannot but doubt that it could have been.”

Did he now? She knew far differently.

“Truly?” she whispered, the doubts, fears and abject pain of the day assailing her with heartrending force. “Today, I betrayed all I have held dear for Wizards who have already denied me once since they entered the land of the Sorceresses. I have denied my dearest friend, the Keeper of these lands, the truth she had demanded at a time when it seems our very lives are in danger because of your presence here, within Covenan. Tell me, Wizards, which day would you say has been filled with the greater darkness? Yours, in the weakening of your powers and such meetings with arrogant forms? For I can tell you are far stronger now than even when first I met you. Or myself, who must endure the fear of facing the same fate as Wizards suspected of treason, who may or may not be practicing such dark arts?”

Aye, she knew they were not, but her feminine anger would not allow her to voice that knowledge.

“Astra…” Rhydan sighed wearily.

“I believe it is a question I am fully capable of answering,” she assured them with no small amount of ire. “For it is I whose day has been the most weary, my Wizards. ’Tis I who must now face those choices, and I tell you now, they are not choices I would have wished.”

As far as Astra was concerned, she was finished with this argument, and she was finished with these emotions.

Turning on her heel, slinging off the magick that attempted to slide around her arm, to pull her back to them, she escaped the caverns and the Wizards.

But there was no escaping the hunger, the hurt or the certainty that she would never escape her Wizard Twins.

Chapter Eight

The return to the castle was made mostly in the dark.

By the time Astra had grabbed a drying sheet and made her way to the bathing caverns, her need for the magick-infused waters was so great she was nearly in tears at the thought of sinking into its heated caress.

The twin moons had risen in the sky not long after she had made her way from the Wizards’ cavern. She had watched them rise, full and strong, their once-dimming rings of magick seeming not so hazy as they had in all the years of her life.

It was late enough though. There was every chance the other Sorceresses of the Brigade had already bathed and retired to their suites.

She could not face the small talk that normally filled the evening visits to the bathing caverns. Discussions of the Wizard Twins, who next would become Joined, though all Joining ceremonies of testings of Alignment of Powers had been banned until the Queen Amoria or Princess Serena, preferably both, were returned to their thrones.

Princess Marina had declared the ban in retaliation for the threatened enforced Alignment of Powers by the Veressi with the Ruler in Waiting, Princess Serena, at a time when her mother had been out of contact during her meetings with the Sentinel Priestesses of Covenan.

How things were changing. With the arrival of the Wizard Twins, so much had changed, and Astra was being forced to change with it.

She entered the bathing cavern with trepidation, the uncertainty of facing the other Sorceresses tightening her stomach as the stream and glittering emerald spores of power filled the room.

Steam and the heated waters carried the spores as few other things did, other than the blood of a magickal being.

Bleed, and the bright pinpoints of emerald energy could be seen glistening among the red. The spores infused all that was Sentmar, though it was rumored they had retreated from the human lands long before Wizard Twins had taken their first Sorceress between them.

It was a rumor Astra did not doubt, for it was well known magickal beings could not exist within those lands.

Thankfully, the bathing caverns were empty.

The heated waters bubbled gently about the large pools. The main cavern held six of the large pools. The heated water bubbled from beneath the stone caverns, filling the pools with its magick solace.

With a wave of her hand the warriors’ leathers disappeared from her body, only to reappear, neatly folded on a dry stone shelf next to her.

Naked, her body still much too sensitized from the touch of the Wizards’ magick earlier in that day, Astra had greatly looked forward to the warmth and solace of the waters. Exhaustion and a saddened realization that she could not stop whatever fate the One had decreed for her, and it seemed that fate was going to be impossible to either avoid or delay for the present, filled her.

Pacing slowly, head down, Astra took the roughly hewn stone steps that led to the magickal caress of the waters. It first lapped her ankles, then her knees. Moving to the smoother, wide ledge beneath the waters, she sank onto the submerged sink with a sigh of relief.

The waters lapped at her shoulders, bubbled around her, caressing her body, stroking against it and reminding her much too much of her Wizards’ magick touch. Leaning her head back against the rim of the pool, Astra allowed her eyes to close and beneath the concealing waters her hands drifted languidly over her swollen breasts.

She was so aroused.

So aroused that even now she cursed herself for having left the Wizards. Had she stayed, then they surely would have taken her to their bed. They would have lain against her, sheltering her between them in warmth and in passion.

That Joining could have destroyed her though.

Not a destruction that could harm the land, for everything inside her assured her that there was no darkness in her Wizards. Nay, the destruction would come from the battle and the resentment that would grow once the Brigade and the Guardian who led it learned of her deceptions.

For, though there was no darkness in her Wizards, still, they had conspired with the Veressi, be it for reasons they believed in or nay, still, they had conspired against the Covenan Throne and those who held it.

A crime punishable by death.

It would be yet another crime to destroy such magnificent Wizards. Men whose bodies radiated strength and power. The magick aside, the pure pleasure of every caress, every kiss, every moment of ecstasy guaranteed to be focused solely upon her every need, was near more than she had been able to drag herself from. The promise of a night of sensations unlike any she had ever dreamed was a vow, unspoken yet assured.

She allowed her hands to drift against the sensitive, swollen globes of her breasts, her fingers whispering over the tips of them, near dragging a moan from her as her eyes closed in near ecstatic pleasure.

The remembered heat of the Wizards’ touch seared her from her nipples to her womb in such a flare of sensation that it seemed magick itself pulsed to the pit of her stomach and beyond, to her womb.

She would wander farther with her own touch were it not for the sound of leather boots entering the caverns and the sense of another nearing.

Easing her arms to rest instead along the narrow rim just below her shoulders, Astra forced her eyes to open and quickly smothered the irritation that another would disturb these moments she needed so.

“Ah Astra, did you find the creature seeking you this morn?” Aerin Longrieve, heir to the power of the Whispering Mountains, gave a quick snap of her fingers that had her warriors’ leathers disappearing from her body.

Rather than reappearing on the clothing shelf just inside the door though, they seemed to disappear entirely. No doubt the maids would find them in the washing room the next morn. The leathers were sweat stained and smeared with grass and mud, just as the knee-high boots had been.

“Sentinels save me from training tomorrow,” Aerin groaned, giving Astra little time to answer her question.

Easing into the waters, the black-haired Sorceress found her seat before leaning her head back and closing her eyes on a sigh of bliss.

“There’s training yet again tomorrow?” Astra asked in surprise.

It was not often Marina put the Sorceresses through the grueling exercises so frequently.

“She senses something,” Aerin sighed, eyes still closed, her voice, though filled with relief, hinting at her confusion. “Shadow Hell, I believe we all sense something that we cannot yet explain.”

Astra lowered her head, her gaze focusing on the spores of power that gleamed within the bubbling waters around her.

“You did not say if you had found the creature in need as of yet?” Aerin’s head lifted, her brilliant-blue eyes filled with question as she now focused on Astra.

“Not as of yet,” Astra sighed.

It was the truth. She had found no creature in true need. The Griffon cubs were already well on their way to finding their strength before she had come upon them and the Twins who had saved them.

“You will return on the morn then?” the other Sorceress asked.

“No doubt they will summon me again,” Astra assured her.

What was she to say to such a question? Her conscience raged. She did not wish to lie to one of her sisters-in-arms, yet neither could she tell her the truth.

“No doubt,” Aerin agreed with a slight grimace. “When the creatures of Emerald Valley demand our care, there is naught we can do but tend them.” A light, fond laugh fell from the Sorceress’ lips. “Perhaps it is training as well, for when we have wee ones of our own to tend.”

“Let us hope they do not wander to the forests until they are of age to lift their voices and assure us once we are near them,” Astra agreed, fostering the belief that the creatures she searched for were being but elusive, rather than the truth as it was.

“Speaking of,” Aerin sighed, her gaze turning pensive. “Did you know the Keeper of the Mystic Forests arrived here this day?”

Astra felt her stomach drop.

Fear began to edge through her mind, tightening her body to the point that she felt as though she were facing a coming battle rather than a mother.

“Which suite was she given?” No doubt Astra would be called to explain herself anon. The Keeper could even know, despite the fact that no Joining had occurred, that her daughter’s powers had aligned with the Wizards all of Covenan now searched for.

“Think you she stayed?” Aerin’s eyes widened in mocking disbelief. “Now, cousin, surely you know my dear aunt and your mother far better than to believe such a thing.”

It was often that Astra forgot her mother and Aerin’s mother were sisters, so much were they unalike.

Astra shook her head tiredly. “Of course, there is no fortress as fine as that of the Mystic Forests.”

Sarcasm shadowed her tone, for they both knew the condescension that filled Alisante Al’madere at the thought of the hospitality of the other Keepers, even that of the Sellane Castle. She felt no other province could match that of her own for power, strength or luxury.

The insult she paid to the queen each time she visited was tolerated only to a point before the queen would immediately send the Keeper back to her own land.

It wasn’t Shadow Walking exactly, for the planes used to travel from one province’s fortress to the others wasn’t exactly a part of the Shadow Planes, but rather a bridge of sorts between each center of power that Covenan possessed.

“Why does she seek you, Astra?” Aerin asked, a bit concerned. “It is not yet time for your year in waiting, and she has made it well known that when your time comes she will attempt to force the land to accept your sister.”

Astra’s lips twisted mockingly.

Of course she would, and as Aerin stated, her mother made no secret of the fact that it was her intent.

“The land will accept no other,” Astra stated confidently, leaning back once again, though rather than closing her eyes, she stared instead at the crystalline spores of magick strapped like emeralds among the stone crevices in the ceiling above.

“True, it will not,” Aerin agreed. “But ’tis a betrayal of you, Astra. One you do not have to accept so bravely.”

No, she did not, and the other Sorceress’ sympathy was near more than she could bear. After all, of all the Sorceress Brigade, Astra was the only Sorceress whose mother wished to break the bond she had with the land. An act that threatened to handicap Astra in the worst of ways, if not destroy her magic entirely.

“The Veressi of centuries before broke a Keeper’s bond with her lands and she destroyed herself. You are much stronger than that, cousin,” Aerin assured her.

Astra lifted her head and stared back at her cousin with mocking amusement. “They broke her from her lands first. Think you I would allow any to take me from Covenan to begin with? Or allow Alisante to break my bonds with my lands?” With a sharp breath she showed her contempt of such an action should her mother take it. “Nay, Aerin, I will not allow such. As much as I love my dear sister, she will never know the bond with the lands that I know while I live.”

Aerin bit at her lower lip, tugging it a second before responding. “What, though, if such an attempt were made upon your life, Astra? Any who would consider tearing asunder the bonds you have with that power would not care to strike out at you with such murderous intent.”

Astra narrowed her eyes as the other Sorceress held her gaze. “Think you Alisante would dare such a thing?” she asked. “The land itself would quake with fury, demanding atonement. There is no way to hide such a thing from the Guardian, and Marina would see her life ended for such an act, and all in her line forever barred from holding the power of the Mystic lands.”

“True.” Aerin lowered her gaze before closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the rim of the natural tub. “She would surely know it was not an act she could hide.”

Just as the suggestion was not one that Astra could forget.

It was a question that often plagued her as well.

Alisante was growing more determined with each year to see that her younger daughter, Anja, attain the power to break the bond Astra had with the lands. What they could not seem to grasp was the fact that the hold the land had on Astra was so strong that each year away from it was becoming harder to bear.

“What makes a child unlovable, Aerin?” The words slipped past Astra’s lips before she could call them back, just as the tear that slipped past her closed lashes would not be contained.

The hellish years after her father’s death, placed in the Village Common of the Mystic Fortress with naught but a nanny who, though fond of the young Keeper heir, still was not her mother, had been brutal. For the other children sensed the banishment, no matter the lies told to excuse the act.

Other parents gazed upon her and wondered what act she had committed that could have been so profane as to cause her mother to cast her away.

And all Astra had known of love had been her tall, strong papa. His laughter and his smiles, the warmth of his arms around her, the strength of his protection had been gone so suddenly—

“’Tis not the child who is unlovable, Astra dear,” Aerin whispered, moving until they now sat side by side, her small hand laying against Astra’s shoulder in sympathy. “’Tis not the child, ’tis the black heart of the mother and the jealousies of a stepfather. Surely you cannot believe such could ever be a child’s fault?”