Page 100 of Sidhe (The Incubus Saga #3)
“Nathan?” a small, prompting voice spoke close beside him, reminding him that Ula was also there. She smiled somberly when Nathan glanced at her. “What about you? You okay? I know that’s a pretty dumb question, considering everything, but…well, are you?”
Ula was too sweet for her own good. And to think that she was a shapeshifter, a dark fae, something Nathan had once thought he would only ever be able to hate.
“Good as I can be,” he said. “What are you doing this work for, Ula? Help wounded if you want, but…it’s not your place to handle the dead. You don’t have to do this.”
“I want to do it. Besides, I figured Sol could use the company,” she said with a soft, understanding glance at him, her manifested face smudged with dirt and blood and who knows what else.
She reached over hesitantly to squeeze Nathan’s arm.
“If you’re heading out into the fields, do you think you could maybe…
look for Danny? Or, I mean…Oberon? I haven’t seen him, and…
I just want to know if he’s okay.” Her eyes darted to the ground, a mild flush filling her cheeks.
To think, Ula had a soft spot for that wily trickster who’d been the king of light fae all along. But then, if Nathan was being honest, he had a soft spot for the guy too.
“You bet,” he told her.
For a good while after leaving the front of the Gatehouse, Nathan didn’t come upon many wounded or others still alive.
Most of the people who had been closer had already made it to the Gatehouse.
It was difficult for Nathan to work his way over the rocky terrain with so many bodies littering the ground, and it made him wonder how they would ever be able to clean up the fields completely.
Coming upon the point where the light fae and sex demon camp had eventually intertwined, Nathan finally spotted some familiar faces heading his way.
The twins, Epica and Attoinette, looked well, cooing over some fae kid that was with them, who had waist-length lavender hair miraculously free of dirt and blood.
Cam, in contrast, looked to be in pretty bad shape; no missing or half torn off wing like Charis, but he was actually being carried , hoisted up into Oberon’s arms, of all people. Nathan tried not to snicker.
“You alright there, Cam!?” Nathan called.
The bronze incubus was close to being passed out, it looked like, but he smiled weakly and managed a nod. The twins started bounding ahead to reach Nathan faster, leaving that fae kid in the dust.
“Nathan!” Attoinette called first. “You did it! You’re alive! You totally kicked ass!”
Epica laughed at her sister’s jubilance, but when they reached Nathan, the force with which they threw themselves at him was equal. “It was touch and go, ya know, the whole damn time,” Epica squeezed Nathan a little tighter than Attoinette, “but we never doubted you for a second.”
“Sasha’s so worried!” Attoinette bounced, not quite letting Nathan go even after Epica had. “But he said he knew you’d want him to keep everything together. He’s not too far ahead.”
“Are…are Charis and Lin okay?” Cam asked in a small, exhausted voice when he and Oberon finally reached them with the lavender-haired fae looking on shyly.
“Looked like,” Nathan said, “though Charis is a bit wrecked. Aloysha must have booked it after the fight to get to them. He’s helping her heal up. You guys get on back too. Get treated.” Nathan smiled, accepting a passing squeeze of Cam’s hand.
“And hey,” Nathan smacked Oberon’s arm as they moved on past him, “you be sure and stop in front of the Gatehouse, Danny . Ula asked after you. Something going on there maybe?”
In true trickster fashion, Oberon, with an expression far more like Puck, didn’t give anything away as he smiled. “More that I hope she doesn’t skewer me alive for lying for so long.”
Nathan laughed, because he knew Oberon would play it up that he was afraid of Ula if she— when she —yelled at him, and that made Nathan all the more hopeful that light and dark fae relations might have some new poster children soon, Dave willing.
Nathan moved on feeling better by the moment, especially once he saw a not-so-distant figure.
Red hair deep and shimmering in the sunlight, bare chest, and a dirt-covered body that once again looked human, Sasha spoke with Gwen at the very edge of the battlefield, where the last of the survivors were moving toward the Gatehouse.
Along the way, and to Nathan’s great relief, he spotted Shiarra.
“Wonders never cease, I suppose.” The succubus smiled at him, shifted back to human in jeans and a tank top, and looking in good shape save a few scrapes. “Cleanup is coming along nicely out here, Nathan, especially with all Sasha has done to lead.”
The mere mention of Sasha’s name made Nathan’s heart trip-hammer in his chest and he glanced around her to find the redhead again.
“He’s been a bit too much like a robot, in my opinion,” Shiarra said, knowing of course where Nathan’s gaze had settled on.
“Dived right in and got the whole rescue operation started, just him, ordering everybody around like he’d been leading from the start.
I think he was worried that if he let himself go straight back to the Gatehouse to look for you like he wanted…
it would have killed him to find you gone.
Go set him straight, won’t you, dear?” She nudged Nathan in Sasha’s direction.
A smile wormed onto Nathan’s face where longing had settled.
Sasha’s back was to him, as he calmly spoke with Gwen.
About what, Nathan couldn’t be sure, but they seemed to be surveying that distant horizon where the dark fae had come from, the tear into the Veil that seemed to be gone now, maybe discussing how things would go back to normal when everything was cleared away, or if the Veil was destined to fall regardless.
Nathan needed to know all of that too, but right now all he cared about was seeing Sasha’s face.
Gwen noticed him first, a smirk stretching up one side of her mouth as she inclined her head, saying something that had the incubus immediately spinning on his heels.
Nathan’s eyes landed on Sasha’s face, on those bright blue eyes, the way Sasha’s mussed red hair fell across his forehead, sweat making it cling to his neck in the heat of the newly reborn sun.
Sasha’s pale skin was streaked with blood and dirt, a few cuts that were slowly healing.
In that moment, Sasha was the most beautiful thing Nathan had ever seen.
Running full speed to meet him, Sasha grabbed Nathan by the waist and lifted, spinning by sheer momentum as he claimed Nathan’s mouth, and lips, and tongue with such possession that the weight of all the ‘bad’ over the last few hours, days, months just washed away.
There was a slow savoring in the kiss that reminded Nathan of the first time they had touched lips and intertwined tongues, back in that alley in Minnesota.
He had felt a shiver all the way down to the base of his spine that day, knowing in that moment that he was utterly screwed , because no one had ever kissed him like that.
They remained lost in each other for what must have been minutes.
Now that the threat was gone, Nathan returned Sasha’s kisses and touches like he was starved, like he was the incubus and needed ‘touch’ and ‘kiss’ and ‘love’ to survive.
Winning hadn’t been enough for Nathan to feel like he had won. Not until now.
“Well…I think I’m probably needed back up front,” came Gwen’s amused voice.
Nathan managed to pry his lips from Sasha’s, sliding down the front of Sasha’s bare chest as the incubus lowered him. “Uhhh…thanks. For everything,” Nathan said, a little too breathless to be totally eloquent. “You’re not gonna go poof before we get to say goodbye or anything, right?”
“I’ll see you back at the Gatehouse,” she nodded at them.
Nathan squeezed Sasha’s hand as he said to her, “Kinda crazy to think…how similar me and Malak really are, huh?”
“I’m glad, Nathan, that you made the better decision,” Gwen said, with several millennia worth of regret in her tone.
“I’m sorry he didn’t,” Nathan said.
“So am I.”
She walked on by, heading for the Gatehouse. Nathan thought he understood exactly how she felt, but was thankful that Jim and Sasha would never have to be like her and Oberon.
The warm hand in Nathan’s laced their fingers together tighter.
Nathan turned, finding those blue eyes that were so brilliant, so expressive and full of bare emotion.
Sometimes Nathan still doubted he deserved that kind of love, but not today.
Right now he believed he deserved everything Sasha had to offer, and damn it, he was going to take it.
They headed back, silence reigning for a while, until Sasha asked, “So…what exactly happened with you and Malak after he took you? You weren’t even out here fighting anymore but you’re still the reason we won. What did you do?”
“I’ll tell you all about it,” Nathan said, smirking to himself as an idea struck him, “on one condition.”
“What?” Sasha asked with a touch of amusement.
“At the end of the day, when we’re settled and this is all sorted out,” Nathan paused in their walking, hand still gripping Sasha’s tightly, and looked into his lover’s eyes, “there is so going to be victory sex.”