Chapter
Six
CRYSTALLO
“ S he is prepared,” Solarion said as I landed on the balcony that led into the royal aerie.
All the rooms that had been crafted into the spaces that the Sunsong Arbor provided had pathways to the outside.
My people preferred to fly, even if we had walkways and passages for the land-bound people who inhabited our cities.
I had done my preening and ceremonial preparations elsewhere, leaving the royal aerie to the woman who had agreed to be my mate for a year.
I stepped toward the archway carved directly into the ancient tree, each concentric ring of bark rising like ripples under my fingertips.
Tangled runes, painted carefully onto the wood, remnants of the patterns the Chaos God had left behind, spiraled upward in a silent promise of protection.
Above me, the trunk widened into a vast column, its pocked surface rough and cool, flecks of amber resin glinting where sap had oozed and dried.
The entrance itself was blocked by a curtain of polished beads, smoky quartz, sun-bleached bone, and jade, strung through tiny brass chimes. They clinked in a lazy rhythm, a hollow, wind-borne tinkle that mingled with the distant whisper of feathered wings.
I looked back over my shoulder.
Sunlight streamed through a lattice of branches, painting the canopy of the city below in shifting patches of green and gold.
Platforms of aged heartwood fanned out from smaller trunks, of the children of the Sunsong Arbor.
Rope-thick bridges connected pathways for those who needed to use their legs to traverse the many levels of the tree-strung city.
I could see winged figures drifting in graceful arcs, their feathers catching the light like stained glass. I turned away from the swooping movement of the city below, back to the curtain, back to where a woman waited for me to do my duty to my people.
My heart was heavy with the thought.
I’d spent so many years avoiding it for the sake of my brother, but now that the final battle was imminent, the thought of creating a child filled me with dread and joy. There was always risk in battle, and I couldn’t stand the thought of creating a new life to leave behind.
I desired her. I craved her. I yearned to sink myself inside of her.
I glanced back as movement caught my eye.
Solarian was right at my shoulder.
“You will not enter,” I ordered.
“Sire, such an important occurrence bears witness,” Solarian said. “It is tradition.”
“It is not her tradition,” I said, pulling from my knowledge of what I'd seen in the Mundane realm. “You will not enter.”
“Understood,” Solarian nodded, acquiescing to my command.
I spilled my magic into one of the runes on the archway to release the warning mechanism, and then pushed apart the curtain and entered the royal aerie.
I walked through the sitting room, my eyes skimming over the furniture grown from the inner walls of the tree from carefully placed grafts, padded with thick linen cushions.
There were several perch seats in the high vaulted room next to huge stained glass windows that threw light across the room, with enough room for five people to lift up into flight at the same time without brushing feathers.
The room smelled like sunshine and life, the scents of home.
I strode across the thick hand-woven rug that dominated the room and to the back of the room.
I pushed past the high vaulted lintel that marked the end of the sitting room and the beginning of the broad hallway that connected the various rooms of the royal chambers.
I found her in the nesting chamber, a room that had been left empty until I chose to start a family.
She was sitting up on top of a mounting table that had been set up in the center of the room, a towel wrapped around her.
Her shoulders glistened with massage oil, and she gave me a tentative smile as I strode into the room.
The sight of her long, strong legs and those muscular arms stoked the burning heat inside me.
I couldn’t do this.
I wanted to do this, and I didn’t want to do this.
I was desperate for her, and I was desperate to not touch her.
“Have you preened to your satisfaction?” I asked her.
“Preened?” she asked. “I mean, the food was delicious and the masseuse was phenomenal. I feel all loose and relaxed. I also did extra... stretches.”
I took a deep breath, examining the knot of reluctance in my heart.
I needed to tell her I didn't want to mate with her.
The problem was, those words weren't true, and she wasn't my enemy.
Lies were a tool used to deceive the enemy, and in the short time I had spent with her, I already knew that she would never be that to me.
The burning desire in my body was for her.
The throb between my legs, thick with anticipation, was for her.
I wanted her more than I'd wanted any woman in a long time.
She shifted back on the table, making a space between her legs, and patted it.
"Let me rub your shoulders," she said, her voice soft with the embers that burned in her hazel eyes.
My words failed me, and I found myself moving forward. I stopped at the edge of the table, facing her, my wings spreading out to either side, curving up to cup around us, my wing tips brushing up against the table as I stopped them. I was displaying for her.
She reached up and put her oiled hands on my shoulders, the heels of her palms resting against the upper part of my pectorals. She pressed forward, hooking her fingers into my trapezius muscles to use them as a brace to press the heels of her hands into my pecs.
"Oh," I gasped out as my wings shuddered from the sudden, delectable touch.
"There has to be a better way to do this," she murmured as she glanced over at my wings. I spread them out even wider, my body reacting to her interest.
I lowered myself to my knees.
I set my hands gently on her thighs, close to her knees, and I felt her legs tense under my touch, a slight tremor running through her skin.
“I don’t wish to do this,” I told her as I looked up at her, hating the words as they came out of my mouth. Hating how little those words conveyed, and how much I needed to say to explain the tangled mess that lived in the conflict between my mind, body, and heart.
“Oh,” she said, her skin flushing as she looked down at her hands, which rested on my chest and shoulders, the soft strands of her hair brushing her shoulders. She hesitated a moment, biting her lower lip. “Is it because you don’t want to have children?”
She was so sharp, so intelligent.
I didn't even have to say why I was hesitating, and she had already put the pieces together based on what she overheard.
Her intelligence just made her even more attractive to me than the thick, muscular bulk of her body.
“The thought of having a child now is terrifying to me,” I told her. “This world is about to become even more dangerous before it is healed. Chaos must break and rebuild.”
“Will your people toss me out if I don’t, you know, conceive?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I said. “Please know that it isn’t because I don’t find you attractive.
I am utterly devastated by you. The strength of your body, the sharpness of your mind - you are a phenomenal woman, and if I knew that it would not bring a child into a devastating world, I would be blessed to bring you to the peak of your pleasure. ”
The nervous smile on her face shifted into something warmer, something deeper.
“I also find you attractive,” she said in such a simple and direct manner. "I would also like that."
“Do you now?” I smiled at her even as my heart twinged with the torture of it. We both desired one another, but we couldn’t be together, not in the way that my obligations demanded. Still, there were other options. I ran my thumbs along the inside of her thighs, slowly circling upwards.
“I could pleasure you without a full mating,” I said, licking my lips as I anticipated the taste of her there. I could slide my hands up so easily from this position, drag her hips forward to the edge of the table, and find the feast that waited for me. “If that is something you desire.”
She sucked in a sharp breath, and the flush on her skin deepened.
“I have something to tell you,” she said.
I waited, letting my hands fall still on her thighs.
“I got my tubes tied a while ago,” she said, the words coming out in a rush. “It was pretty hard to get a doctor to do as young as I was, but I was determined and every morning at that school, I woke up grateful that I did.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. “What is tube tying?”
“I can’t have children,” she said. “I had a part inside of me severed so I wouldn’t be able to conceive.”
“A healing spell would repair that,” I said, pointing out the obvious issue.
“I’ve only had localized healing, and not to that area,” she said. “I’ve been careful to keep my protection intact.”
I thought about that, taking in her words.
She took a deep breath.
“I mean, that’s the problem, though,” she said. “I appreciate your offer of pleasuring me, but I don’t know if we should do that to ourselves. Holding back would be torture.”
“Then let's not hold back,” I purred. “Let me pleasure you and mount you and bring you to the fullest satisfaction you have ever felt with a mate.”
She hesitated, and fear flashed across her face.
"No," she said, the word coming out suddenly and abruptly. She lifted her hand up to her mouth, as if she hadn't meant to say it.
Disappointment flooded me, but I let it pass through me and let it go.
It didn’t matter. I didn’t have the right to her body any more than she had the right to mine.
She could say no or yes at any time, and I would abide by her choices while honoring my own.
She could ask questions, tease me, offer the idea of mating, and yank it away, and it didn't change her right to her own body.
I lifted my hands away from her thighs and set them on the table on either side of her.
Every ounce of my desire screamed that she was mine, but I was not a beast ruled by my body.
I was the ruler of myself.
"Of course," I said, doing my best to make sure my disappointment didn't convey in my voice or body language. I had no right to her body. Her asking for a boon and my rescuing her from that school didn't give me the right to her body, even if other people might see it that way.
"You're okay with that?" she asked, her voice tentative. I studied her, seeing the markers of vulnerability. That nervous smile, the way her upper body leaned ever so slightly away from me, her elbows held in tightly at her side. "I've been teasing you, and I know I owe you for rescuing me..."
"You don't owe me anything," I interrupted her. "You have no obligation."
"Are you sure?" she asked. "I promised you my body."
"Bodies aren't something that can be traded, not in any sense of goodness.
You are thinking like a follower of Order.
Order is the way of control, enslavement, and commodification.
I am a follower of Chaos," I told her. I understood why she thought the way she did.
She had entered this world into the cradle of Order and had been immediately inundated in the religious trappings of control.
At that school, the only knowledge of Chaos was whispers brought in by those who held the way in their hearts.
My brother was a source of those whispers.
"Chaos is self- actualization, self-sovereignty," I continued.
"My choice was to bring you with me and not cause you harm. "
“I was prepared to have to heal myself afterwards,” she said, relief washing over her face.
“Why would you need healing?” I said, moments later, realizing what she meant.
She had heard the rumors.
“Your dick is dangerous,” she said, her eyes cutting into mine.
"It is not," I laughed.
She narrowed her eyes at me. "Prove it."
I grinned and rose to my feet. I stepped back and shrugged out of my robe, letting it fall to the ground as I spread my wings as wide as they could go to frame my presentation.
She gasped, her eyes growing wide as she took in the part of me that she was afraid of.
“It’s so small!” she gasped out.