Page 18
Story: The Hazelwood Pact
The air changed as she stepped onto the stone platform.
The warmth wrapped around her like a cloak pulled from sunlit air and there was a deeper resonance that stirred her bones, that whispered down her spine in a tongue older than words. The magic here was listening.
The stone platform pulsed beneath her bare feet, each symbol glowing soft and steady like a heartbeat answering her own.
She could clearly feel it now, the pull of the ley lines, not just beneath but within her.
Veins of light and power running under the earth, through the trees, through him , through her.
Linden stepped up behind her, silent as breath. He didn’t reach for her. Didn’t presume. Just waited. Always choosing her without urgency or demand.
Rowan turned.
He stood still, open, every line of him unwound. His tunic was loose at the throat, hair falling like wind-tossed branches around his face, and in his eyes was that look — that impossible look like she was every star he’d ever wished on, and they were all saying yes.
“You’re sure?” she asked.
She needed to say it, needed to hear it out loud because words could be ritual, too, and she wanted the shape of this moment etched in more than memory. Even as her magic had already begun to wind toward him like a living thing, half-formed and half-desperate, aching to be let in.
Linden smiled. That same smile he always wore when she doubted herself: soft, unshaken. The kind of smile you could lean against in a storm.
“I’ve been sure of you for a very long time,” he said. “Take everything, Ro. I’m already yours.”
She exhaled like it was the first breath she’d allowed herself in years and then she reached for him.
Her hands moved without hesitation, steady as ritual, reverent as worship. She undid him with her fingers like she was uncovering something sacred. Layers peeled away, linen and leather falling in soft murmurs to the moss-softened stone.
He was golden beneath, in a way that had nothing to do with the light.
Skin kissed brown by sun and forest, freckled like fallen leaves across his shoulders, muscle smooth and lean like something carved by wind and time.
Her fingers traced him with unspoken wonder: the rise of his collarbone, the taper of his ribs, the soft arch of his hips.
He didn’t flinch, didn’t try to make himself more or less. Just stood there and let her look.
Let her have him.
Each place she touched, his magic responded.
It breathed under his skin, root-scented and honey-warm, thick as midsummer, slow as thunder rolling in over trees older than kingdoms. It kissed her back with every brush of her hand, not grabbing or demanding, but welcoming.
Her magic stirred in answer, unspooling with something like relief, something like awe.
Rowan let her own robe fall to the stone.
The air greeted her with cool, earthy fingers, and her skin shivered from the exposure. Vulnerability, stark and holy. Her magic surged, rising in a trembling tide, heavy in her blood, bright behind her eyes. It was too much, almost, and yet she didn’t want it to stop.
She stepped forward. Laid her hands on his chest.
Linden gasped.
His breath caught like wind in a harp string, a sound born of pleasure and surprise, maybe even wonder.
Rowan felt it beneath her palms. A soft convulsion of magic, a sudden brightness that bloomed in his chest like light through leaves.
His skin flushed under her hands, warm and pulsing, and the echo of her power rushed into him.
Linden opened his arms, every inch of him an invocation. “Let me feel you.”
And Rowan did. Gods, she did.
She pushed him back with gentle hands, steady as the tide.
Guided him toward the center of the stone platform where the ritual symbols now glowed with breathtaking clarity, each one alive with the language of the land.
They were not just decoration, not merely old carvings etched by long-dead druids.
They pulsed with meaning, with ancient agreement, with promise.
Gold for the sun-bound bond of trust. Green for the heartwood root of loyalty. Crimson, for blood, yes, but also for choice. For will. For wildness.
Rowan pressed him down into that magic and Linden went willingly, beautifully, like a man who had never doubted that she would lead him true. His back met the warm stone, and he looked up at her as though she were made of starlight and soil, moonlit mercy and sacred ruin.
She straddled him slowly, reverently, her thighs shaking with the pressure of magic curling inside her, twin to the ache blooming low in her belly.
Her skin was radiant with it, her breath uneven.
She could feel her own heartbeat echoing in every part of her body, her fingertips, her mouth, her womb.
It was like a spell waiting to be spoken aloud.
Linden’s hands rested at her hips, the barest touch. Anchoring her. Offering himself up for the choosing.
And gods, she chose.
Rowan braced herself on his chest, palms splayed across the strong, golden line of him, and then — slowly, deliberately, utterly without apology — she sank down onto him.
The world shuddered. The air fractured. Time folded. Magic detonated .
It exploded out of her in a wave of incandescent heat, as if every ley line in the valley had been holding its breath for this moment. The chamber bloomed with it. Power unraveling like a scream, like a symphony, like light breaking through cloud.
She gasped. Linden groaned, his voice torn from somewhere raw and real, and still she moved. Rising and falling over him in an ancient rhythm she did not remember learning but somehow knew. Deep in her bones. In her womb. In the tidal pull between their bodies.
And around them, the ley lines came alive They were visible now . Tangible. Ribbons of color unfurled from the stone, from the air, from the sacred dark between roots and stars.
One was molten gold, pure and searing. The color of devotion given freely and without condition. It pulsed like sunlight caught in deep water, lighting their bodies in liquid fire.
Another came green, rich, living, thrumming like forest breath. It smelled of pine needles and spring moss, of earth giving up her secrets. Grounding her. Inviting her to root.
The third thread, crimson threaded with violet, was wilder, darker. It shimmered like bruised moonlight, seductive and untamed. It coiled around her thighs, her wrists, her throat like a promise whispered in wicked delight.
They circled Rowan and Linden in great luminous arcs, wreathing them in a braided crown of elemental magic. The ribbons danced in time with her body, spiraling faster each time her hips rolled forward, each time Linden whispered her name like a prayer.
Rowan couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to breathe.
She only wanted this.
The pulse of magic pouring through her. The way her body knew his. The sacred fit of them, not just skin to skin but soul to soul .
Linden reached up, palms framing her hips but not controlling, just anchoring. She looked down at him and saw the awe there, the worship, the utter devotion.
She rolled her hips and his breath caught. Magic spiked between them, a flare of light that sent their shadows dancing along the chamber walls like spirits in ecstasy.
Rowan cried out, not in pain, not even in pleasure exactly, but in power. The sensation of everything she’d held inside finally finding the space to sing.
And Linden, beneath her, whispered, “More.”
Not as a command. As a prayer.
She gave it to him.
Rowan moved over him like she was casting a spell with her body, and perhaps she was.
Every shift of her hips was a call. Every gasp, an invocation.
Her thighs burned. Her magic howled. And Linden…
Linden met her with a stillness that was anything but passive.
He offered up his body as altar, his breath as prayer.
He met her without demanding. Matched her not in force, but in faith.
The ley lines pulsed faster now, as if stirred by her pleasure. They wound around one another, tighter with every movement, until she couldn’t tell where she ended and he began.
Their bond was no longer something imagined or metaphorical. It was visible.
It ran from the crown of her head to the base of her spine, tethering her to him with cords of glowing power. Each pulse drew her deeper. Each breath cracked her wider open. Her body hummed with it, so full of sensation she thought she might unravel.
And still Linden’s gaze never left her.
“You’re glowing,” he whispered, voice reverent and wrecked. “Rowan… gods , look at you.”
She couldn’t reply. Her tongue was thick with need, her lungs too full of him, of this. But she looked down at herself and saw what he meant.
Her skin shimmered, lit from within as if her veins were filled not with blood, but starfire.
Her breasts were flushed, her thighs slick and shaking, her magic pouring from every pore.
She felt huge in her body, like she could take up all the space in the world and still not be enough to hold what she felt.
Linden’s hands slid up her sides, gentle even now, even like this, when the world was coming undone.
“Take it, Ro,” he breathed. “I’m yours. Everything. ”
And gods help her, she did .
She reached for the bond. Felt its core, a thread like spun lightning, and pulled with full trust, full surrender.
Linden cried out . His back arched beneath her. Their magics surged together and broke .
The ley lines howled.
Light spilled across the chamber in great sweeping ribbons: gold, green, crimson, violet, all converging above the stone platform in a corona of elemental fire. The roots overhead quivered, the stones beneath them vibrated, and Rowan’s body, her whole self , shook with the force of it.
It wasn’t just pleasure now.
It was transcendence.
She felt Linden inside her, not just in the visceral way, but in the eternal one. Felt the moment he opened completely, utterly, to her. No walls. No protections. He gave her the raw heart of him, bare and burning.
She took it like breath. Like truth.
Her body began to crest, pleasure unfurling in hot, aching waves. Her magic coiled tighter, threw her head back, her body taut, every nerve alight.
The climax rushed toward them like a wave, like a storm, like a holy thing finally given form.
The light hovered, suspended in the air around them like the breath of the land itself had been caught mid-sigh.
Rowan basked in it, drenched in sweat, magic, and something more elusive.
Peace , maybe. Home. Her limbs trembled where they sprawled over Linden’s chest, boneless with release, her breath coming in soft, stunned gasps.
And beneath her, he was still. Warm. Alive. Radiating magic like the sun after stormlight. His fingers moved slowly through her hair, reverent and dazed.
It was over. No. Not over. Changed.
The bond between them had settled now, a slow, molten pulse that lived beneath her skin. It moved with her breath. Matched the beat of her heart. And when she focused, she could feel his heart too. Its rhythm syncing with hers like the soft call and response of summer crickets in the hedgerow.
Rowan lifted her head and looked at him.
His hair was a mess. His lips parted. His eyes were so full. Her throat ached with something too big to name.
“I feel like I’ve been taken apart.”
“You have,” he whispered, stroking her jaw with the backs of his fingers. “So have I. And look…” He brushed his thumb along her collarbone, where a vine-shaped mark shimmered just beneath her skin, gold and green and crimson. “We’ve been put back together again.”
Rowan’s eyes stung. “It’s done.”
“It’s begun,” Linden corrected gently. “This was the joining. But what we build from it, that’s the rest of our lives.”
The words sank into her slowly, like roots into earth. And still, she didn’t move. Didn’t want to.
But the grove around them was no longer still.
The ley lines had quieted, but the land was waking.
All around the chamber, new shoots pushed through stone and moss.
Flowers that had not bloomed in generations opened in colors she had no name for: deep twilight blue, blushing dusk, veined silver.
The vines above them shimmered and grew, reaching for the center where Rowan lay curled against the body of the man she had claimed.
The man who had claimed her in return.
And then… A pulse. Soft. Gentle. Like the heartbeat of the land.
Rowan gasped as she felt it inside her, not just around, but through. The magic of the Heartroot accepted them. Claimed their bond as sacred. Sealed it. Somewhere in the distance, she thought she heard bells.
Linden’s arms came around her, pulling her close as he rolled them gently onto their sides. His breath was a slow exhale against her temple. His voice, when it came, was a rasp against her skin.
“Does it hurt?”
“No,” she whispered. “No, it’s… gods, Linden, it’s good. It’s so good I don’t know what to do with it.”
He chuckled softly, burying his face in her hair. “You don’t have to do anything. Just be here. Just be. ”
Rowan closed her eyes. Let herself feel it: the hum of magic through her bones, the imprint of his body against hers, the slow, certain unfurling of something new. Something rooted.
They were bound now. By more than magic. By choice. By love. By trust.
And though the world would come for them again, because it always did, right now, in this moment, she was safe. And she was no longer alone.