Page 2 of Antiletum (The Nocturne #1)

Prologue

S lips of silver fell through new green leaves, the light of a full moon shining in the Strigi Forest where a bride and groom prepared to wed.

The scent of damp soil wafted with each bare step the bride took down a sacred path, an arrow shooting straight into the center of where life and death converged: a Heartstone.

One of three created at the beginning of time when the Nocturne came into being.

They once thumped with life, the three siblings connecting magic and shifter gifts from different corners of the world.

Upon the decayed Heartstone, a groom stood clothed in white, his strong neck wreathed with scarlet dried dahlias: flowers he had tended himself for this precise moment, offering his own blood to the soil.

All unbeknownst to his bride. He wore a white cloak to represent the purity of his devotion, the red, dead flowers of his collar for the cycle of life and death that comes for all who dare to breathe.

Magic thick in the air, it mingled with the tinkling bells on the bride’s naked ankles, the subtle scrape of silk brushing against her legs, black to represent the depth of what their union would mean. Moonlight bounced off of his pure white garb and absorbed and spread in the darkness of hers.

Balance.

She thought he looked regal—resplendent in his ceremonial robe and wreath. All for her.

He thought she was nothing short of ethereal, transcendent. The meaning of life wrapped into a luscious body, all for him to worship and hold. To revere and celebrate.

She wore a headdress of bones and feathers atop her golden brown hair, honoring their faction’s owl deo within the Nocturne.

The groom trimmed the headdress with dried dahlias, matching his.

He added them all to his bride’s adornment with his own hand, whispering thanks to the revered barn owl, prayers of duty and promise.

It didn’t so much as sway or bob with her slow, seductive steps into the wedding ring.

As the bride came nearer, the groom held his hand aloft. Both a beckoning and a desperate need to touch, to have.

As drawn to him as he to her, a hand slid into his.

His fingertips were warm, palms calloused—scars of hard work and devotion to his tasks.

At their first touch, a sigh of relief blew through the winds across the world.

Magic pulsed in the particles of dust scattered across the atmosphere, pouring fuel into a dying world.

Their power lorded over death.

The ancient, brittle hands of an Ellden clock standing erect at the head of the Heartstone rolled clockwise, vinculum needles clicking into place to align at the thirteenth hour.

He pulled his bride close, bringing their bodies nearly flush.

Her head tilted back to meet his midnight eyes.

When their gazes collided, the groom discovered the meaning of the color spectrum when he lost himself in the hazel of his soon-to-be wife, drops of teal sea scattered throughout soil brown.

She was still the loveliest creature he had ever beheld.

His being filled with yearning so fierce, he wanted to fall to his knees.

Beg her to always be his, allow him to be hers.

His hand palmed her cheek, longing owning his actions; her eyes fluttered shut to bashfully hide her own ruefulness, but not too soon before a single tear fell: a droplet to make waves in his life.

Their pairing would be a dot of rain lost to a mirrored pool, making its ripple before smoothing anew.

He bent forth to lick the salty track off her skin. That tiny part of her that now belonged to him mixed with her subtle sweat, the combination fresh in his throat like an impending summer storm.

A surge of life and power and connection roiled through the groom’s body when her tear touched his tongue, bringing forth one of his own.

Far more aggressively than the tender touch he offered, his bride snagged his face with both hands, fingernails digging into his cheeks.

She pulled his head down to meet her mouth.

Hungry. He ached to kiss her, to have her lips against his.

For a breath, he thought she might. That she might need him so desperately that she would go against the grain of a wedding’s progression.

But she turned his head just before their lips could meet. Her soft, hot tongue traced up his cheek, savoring his tear just as he did hers, sweat tangled with it. The groom felt the drag of his bride’s lip lacquer smudging against his face, marking him with her stain.

He belonged to her. And she would make it known.

Priestesses crawled from the shadows, the guttural tongue they chanted echoing in the night. The group of five bathed in the moonlight, man and woman now connected by salt .

A priestess held forth a tray dutifully. The groom took the needle upon it, turning to his bride. “Accept my gift,” he begged.

“I accept.”

He tenderly pulled her earlobe taut before pushing the needle through. A diamond stud landed in his hand, and he threaded it through her bleeding flesh. He did this thrice, and when finished, a triangle of white diamonds decorated her ear.

“Accept my gift,” she pleaded.

“I accept.”

And the bride mirrored her groom’s actions, leaving a mark of black diamonds upon his own ear.

Hands clasped in front of them, he promised, “For all my days, I will cherish you.” Breath reverent in her presence, he had waited for this moment far longer than she knew.

“For all my days, I will allow you to pray at my altar,” she vowed.

Magic licked at her mouth, urging it open to tease at her taste buds with static and dirt, increasing her want. She breathed it in, unable to fight the pull. Not that she wanted to.

The bride’s pupils flared black, as onyx as the gown she wore, promising to swallow him whole. Her groom’s lips hovered over hers, not touching, tormenting him further, lost to the same divine energy as she.

He slipped a ring of silver over her finger; she repeated the motion on him, the vinculum bands now binding their magic, their souls, and never to be removed.

Even in death, when their bodies would return to the ground, the metal would shrink with their flesh and forge to their wasted bones, belonging to only each other for all remaining days.

A priestess came to flank their sides. With a moonwater soaked blade, the priestess pulled a single, vertical wound across the center of the bride’s and groom’s lips, right between the two hoops puncturing his flesh.

Red beads welled and ran, dripping into their waiting mouths, down both of their chins.

His broad chest heaved. Ready. The rise and fall of her full breasts matched his, the two acting as one. For all that bloomed in the forest around them, being brought to life in their union, they could not look away from the other.

The priestesses continued their chants, retreating to the edge of the dais, magic hanging over every living thing. It saturated the Strigi Forest, the stone at their feet giving a heavy, strained thump.

“Join,” a voice commanded from the clouds and the trees and the roots in the ground.

Their lips finally met, blood mixing into a heady concoction of passion.

Her mouth opened, drawing in more of that magic as she allowed him entry. He eagerly returned her affection, his tongue rolling against hers in a bloody, messy kiss, rusting their faces in a veil of matching crimson.

Panting, they broke away. He silently led her to a raised platform in the center of the Heartstone, sitting in a clearing of moonlight, no leaves to shade the divine light.

Atop the pillows and flowers, he laid her on her back, lifting her skirts to sink his face between her thighs, praying at her altar.

Her spine arched, urging him further as he coaxed her to pleasure, holding her thighs as if she tethered him to the world. Her legs shook as she crashed against his tongue and he drank her down, the taste of her driving him mad.

Still clothed, he scaled her body, a monumental blessing and privilege.

She lifted her skirts higher, eyes wide and seeing crystalline prisms of light, lost to magic and their moment, just the same as him .

Her hands went to his waist, and he paused, afraid that she wanted to stop him, to end the ceremony. But she only gathered up the drop of his cloak, exposing his desire, hard and hot to match how she was wet and aching. Ready.

The three priestesses stood at their markings, edging the Heartstone.

They cut their own wrists, synchronized and rhythmic; their moonlight blades pushed into their veins as easily as dragging a finger through water.

Blood spilled, splattering against the ancient deo’ s dead heart at their feet.

The cracks across it melded and mended, the earth beginning to beat with the offering of life.

The groom’s hand came to his bride’s head, swiping across the elaborate headdress of feathers and flowers crowning her hair—the blooms bursting back to life. His other arm braced himself to keep from laying flat atop her, so he could look into her eyes. Those enchanting, seductress eyes.

He slid into her, soft and slow, afraid to hurt her. She bunched the white fabric of his ceremonial cloak, using it to pull him in deeper. He drove into her harder, making her cry out. The moonlight and forest absorbed the sound, churning its energy.

The wreath he wore around his neck lost its brittleness. Hydration pulled back into the petals, turning them silken and bright once again.

The first priestess fell, her chant croaking to an end as her consciousness flowed from her wrists in rivers of red. A ground shaking pulse came from the earth.

And the groom fucked his new wife faster.

The second priestess fell, quickly followed by the third.

In their sacrifice came another burst of life, the Heartstone pristine and void of cracks.

Chunks eaten by years and despair repaired as if the hands of time spun back the Ellden clocks, before such measurement of magic existed, to the day the Heartstones were born .

The heavy thump of the Heartstone gained in strength, in cadence, becoming a regular, healthy beat, the heart of a deo raised from the dead.

With matching moans, man and wife found their pleasure together, mouths connected. Magic cocooned them in a chrysalis of change and beginnings. The bride absorbed the groom into herself, the way he had her with his tongue between her legs.

Whole and brand new, they stroked each other’s skin with smiles in the moonlight, surrounded by life, born from death.