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Nemesia

The witch’s great power was consuming her, becoming too much for her to bear. Those closest to her from the coven searched high and low for a solution to stop the madness they were glimpsing. No solution presented itself.

Unknown Story, Unknown Origin

“Follow me,” Genevieve says, taking my hand in hers. I follow her through the bustling crowd of the Floating Market. I’d mentioned to her my love of the district at night, and she’d insisted on bringing me to her favorite places in the humid and damp bazaar.

We weave in and out of stalls where merchants sell silk scarves, roasted nuts, magical objects, and everything else imaginable. Despite the Market’s position atop the salty water of an inlet on the coast of Arnia, the wooden walkway is sturdy beneath our feet. The sun has just started its descent in the sky, deep orange in the haze of the briny air.

“Where are we going?” I ask. Genevieve only turns her face back to me, joy written so clearly across her open expression, and smiles.

“We’re almost there,” is all she says before tugging harder and increasing our pace.

We near the end of the pier-like structure that halts abruptly at a cliff that soars a hundred feet above the water. The crowd has thinned significantly this far away from the hub of the market, and less than a handful of patrons stroll the walkway. When we reach the mass of rock, Genevieve jumps, grabbing a rope ladder expertly hidden in the crevices of the cliff. Her eyes are bright, and without speaking, she climbs.

“What are you doing?” I hiss, my heart rate skyrocketing.

“I’m going to our final destination. We need to hurry. Start climbing.” Eyeing the flimsy ladder skeptically, I pause before sighing and beginning my ascent, limbs shaking involuntarily. Genevieve climbs quickly, her short frame scaling the cliff fully before I’m even a quarter of the way up. Black curls peep over the edge at the top as she peers down at me. “Come on!” she yells. “You’re going to miss it!”

“Miss what?” I yell up at her.

“The view!” she cheers before disappearing from my line of sight. I move my legs and arms quicker, focused on not looking down. I’ve never been particularly fond of heights. Especially not while attached to a fraying piece of fabric turned into a makeshift support system. When I finally reach the top, I roll my body away from the edge, remaining prone on the ground as I wait for my racing heart to still. Genevieve nudges me gently with her shoe. “Just a few more minutes of walking and we’re there.”

Standing to follow her on shaky legs, the adrenaline still coursing through me, we walk a few more minutes along the edge of the cliff. I keep several feet of distance from the sheer drop on the other side. Noticing my breath quickening, I realize we’ve climbed even higher and now stand on the highest point of the shoreline for miles around. A few other couples sit spread out along the smooth rock. Genevieve finds us a private location before flopping down and patting next to her.

When we’re both seated, I survey the view. Cobalt sea wraps around most of the view, the ocean turning more green-gray with each minute of twilight that passes. The sun almost reaches the horizon, and a vibrant explosion of tangerine, peach, and blush ripples across the sky. The fluffy clouds that perpetually surround Velmara light from within with the color of apricots. The smallest sliver of moon appears in the sky directly above us, and Genevieve sighs next to me. Her sweet scent wraps around us, and I can’t help but let out my own contented sigh. Genevieve speaks softly, explaining the significance of the location.

“When my father still lived in Arnia, before he remarried, I had a nursemaid turned governess who was common born. She used to bring me up here in the evenings to watch the sunset and to distract me from the fact that my father wasn’t around, even at night after his responsibilities had ended. I always felt like I was in the middle of the sky. We’d lay here until the sun had fully set, then she’d aerstep us home so we didn’t have to make the long trek down the ladder in the dark. But we always climbed up. She said that I needed to learn that not everything required magic.” The setting sun paints her face in a golden glow as she tells me the story. “I haven’t come back up here in years. It’s just as breathtaking as I remember it.”

“What happened to her? Your governess?”

Genevieve swallows, turning eyes filled with grief upon me. “When my father remarried and gave me over to my Uncle Silas, she tried to sneak us both away. Silas was unkind to both of us. She feared for me and hatched a plan to take us deep into the Nivan Desert. Silas caught us and killed her on the spot.”

“How old were you?” I ask, afraid of the answer.

“Twelve.” Indignation fills my chest on her behalf. How dare her uncle murder the only parent she ever had right in front of her? If I ever meet the male, I may not have the willpower to bite my tongue. Or quell my magic. My shoulders tense with rage, but Genevieve strokes my shoulder and turns a small smile my way. “Don’t be sad, Nemesia. She would have been so happy I found someone to share this secret place with. And she wouldn’t have cared that you were Thayarian.” She smirks, and I can’t help returning the smile. “Is there somewhere like this in Thayaria? A secret place you’d show me if we were there instead of here?” I consider the question for a moment, knowing any answer I could give would inevitably be tainted by some trauma I’ve experienced.

“My favorite place in the palace is the archives, but they would underwhelm you after a lifetime spent in Velmara’s archives.” She starts to protest, but I laugh and cut her off. “They would. Velmara’s archives are a hundred times what Thayaria has. Maybe more.” I look down at my hands, deciding to open up and tell her about my real favorite place. “My family kept a cabin deep in the mountains to the east of the capital. Even after my parents died, I would go there every few months just to sit with the quiet. It’s very different from here. You can barely see for all the trees that cover the landscape. It’s eerie to some, but I love the feeling of being surrounded by the wild. Where you feel like you’re in the middle of the sky here, I feel like I’m just another tree there, part of a larger ecosystem that’s bigger than any of my problems. Part of a forest that will remain long after I’m gone.”

She studies my face quietly, eyes searching. For what, I’m not sure. “You must have had the weight of many problems on your shoulders there,” she finally says. Her honesty cuts like a knife. She’s so quick to spot the truth of my feelings. But somehow, her calling them out so openly and directly makes them easier to talk about.

“Not so much in recent years. But after the war with Velmara… I disappeared into that cabin for far too long. Left my friend to deal with the aftermath on her own. I couldn’t bear the weight of my guilt. My mother had always taught me that the most important battle strategy is knowing which you can win and which you can’t. Laurel—the Queen—and I, we forgot that lesson after our parents died. And it cost us everything .” My eyes drop to the ground as I think about what that everything entailed. Our childhood and young adulthood, the safety of the kingdom, thousands of Thayarian lives, our sense of hope for anything good in the world. Our ability to form meaningful relationships with anyone but each other.

Genevieve’s soft hand wraps around mine and squeezes.

“You were so young,” she soothes, but I scoff.

“Laurel was younger. And hadn’t received nearly the education I had. I’ve always wondered… if I hadn’t gone to that cabin—if I hadn’t left her—would she have retreated so far into herself. When I finally came back, she wasn’t the same female I knew. She was cold, calculating. Strategic to a fault at times. And instead of trying to help her find her way back to herself, I mimicked her stoicism, though I couldn’t pull it off like she did. We became an impenetrable force, open only with one another. Neither of us able to move on from what happened. And now, three hundred years later, I’ve left her with no other confidants.” A sob chokes in my throat, and Genevieve rubs soothing circles on my back. Even now, with a female who has experienced more trauma than anyone should have to, I suffocate others with my grief. Shame courses through my body, making the sobs worse. “I’m sorry,” I murmur, and Genevieve lifts my chin, so similar to the way I had in my rooms when she’d told me of the Reshnar scholar.

“You have nothing to apologize for. I think you’ve been carrying this for a very long time. It’s good to let it out.” She smiles, and my heart squeezes in awe of this brave and open female. I wrap my arm around her and pull her in close to me, despite the risk of being so openly affectionate in public. She leans in, and the scent of parchment and vanilla wafts over me. It feels so much like home that my body aches to wrap myself around her and never let go. We finish watching the sunset, then lay on our backs to wait for the sky to fill with stars. When there’s no light but that from the moon, she shimmies away from me and stands. “Time for the main event,” she says with an excited mischief lacing her voice. I stand beside her and panic floods my system thinking about climbing back down the rope ladder in the dark.

“What do you mean? How are we getting down from here?” I ask, the fear in my voice obvious. She laughs.

“Not a fan of the climb?” I shake my head. “Lucky for you, we aren’t going back the way we came. Unlucky for you, the only way back inevitably involves heights.” With that, she turns and begins walking away, and I have to walk fast to catch her.

We stumble through the darkness for twenty minutes, rapidly dropping our elevation. Orbs of light twinkle in the distance, and the faint sounds of water splashing and people yelling tickle my ears.

“Where are we going?” I ask. She just wraps her hand in mine and keeps walking. The movement feels right, like we should never walk unless it’s hand in hand.

The light grows brighter, and a cliff about thirty feet above the water appears. A stranger stands at its edge, soaking wet from head to foot in a short linen swim dress. The brightness allows me to see Genevieve’s face, and her eyes study me for a reaction. I scan the cliff again, just as the female from before leaps off the cliff into the dark water below. I abruptly stop.

“No,” I say involuntarily and pull my hand from Genevieve’s.

“Yes,” she says with a smirk, grabbing my hand and tugging me forward. I follow, despite my blood beating a fast rhythm in my veins. We reach the cliffside, where a dozen fae swim in the water below. Another rope ladder hangs from the cliff, and several people climb it, presumably to jump again.

“No, I can’t—I don’t like—we have to jump?” I ask, body deflating.

“It’s either this or climb back down the rope from earlier. It’s really fun, I promise. You’ll be safe.” I swallow, then search the ground for grass, a shrub, a small flower—anything I can grow to ease me down the cliffside. But Velmara isn’t known for its smooth, rocky cliffs without reason.

Genevieve pulls her dress over her head, and my mouth goes dry at the nearly sheer shift she wears underneath, her small frame on full display. Then she turns back to me with a question in her eyes before pulling my tunic over my head. Lust heats her gaze when she exposes the bandeau I wear underneath. I’ve never been shy about my body or my sexuality, but now I shiver under her heated gaze.

“Do you want to stay in your leggings? Or take them off?” she asks quietly with a deep swallow. Her delicate throat moves with the motion, drawing my attention down to it and then farther down to the small, pert nipples that peek under her chemise.

“I’ll take them off,” I say with a husky voice, not recognizing myself. She nods, then helps me pull the fighting leathers off my body, fingers lingering over my skin as she pulls them down. I stand there in only my undergarments, unaware of our surroundings, attention focused solely on Genevieve. She scans my body, and I grin, confident in the line of my feminine figure toned with muscle. “Like what you see?” The words come out of me unbidden, and I tense. We’ve definitely flirted, but never this openly, especially not in public. I scan our surroundings. Thankfully, we’re still alone up here. I’m about to apologize, or murmur some excuse, when her lips part and she exhales with a breathy sigh that almost sounds like a moan.

“I do.” Her eyes meet mine, gaze unflinching. She’s confident, no seed of doubt in her words or posture. I swallow, and that makes her break out in a cocky grin of her own. “Ready to jump?” I freeze. I’d somewhat forgotten about the reason we were undressing in my lust-addled distraction. While I fight the urge to run back away from the cliff edge, she picks up our clothes and places them in a basket that she lowers down toward the water. “No turning back now,” she says with a glint in her eye. “Our clothes are at the bottom. Unless you want to stay standing up here half-naked, we have to jump in the water.”

“I wouldn’t mind staying half-naked,” I involuntarily murmur, and her cheeks turn pink. But she takes my hand and leads me to the very edge of the rock. I look down and pale, trying to take a step back, but she holds me firmly in place, deceptively strong for her small stature. My palm sweats in hers, but she strokes my thumb.

“I’ve got you,” she soothes. “On the count of three. One. Two.”

Pulse racing, I close my eyes.

“Three!”

My thighs coil, and I lift myself up and out over the edge of the bluff. We both free fall, but Genevieve’s hand never leaves mine. Air whooshes around me, and the white-blonde tendrils of my hair slap my face. An involuntary shriek leaves my lips, and Genevieve giggles in the air beside me. For a moment that could be seconds or hours, we fly through the air, adrenaline pumping through my veins as I face this fear with a female I’ve come to care deeply for at my side.

We slam into the water, the brisk, salty waves washing over us as we sink below the surface. Bubbles float around us as Genevieve hauls me upward, cresting the surface before me.

“You did it,” she cheers and wraps her arms around me. As I tread water, I pull her into an embrace, and her arms circle my neck. We stare at one another for a beat. Her tongue brushes over her lower lip, and I track the movement. She wraps her legs around me, then leans in—

Someone yells at us to swim away from the landing spot so another can jump. Smiling, we both swim toward the sandy beach that was hidden behind the cliff face.

“We could have walked down to this beach all along!” I chide, but she only grins with an roguish glint in her eyes.

“We could have, but that wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun.”

Once we reach the beach, we quickly pull our clothes over our wet bodies and walk back to the castle, our hands brushing every few minutes. When we reach the wing where the archives and my room are located, I don’t hesitate, pulling Genevieve toward my room. She doesn’t protest, only gives me a suggestive look that has my body tingling. We missed the dinner hour, so a food tray filled with enough for two waits for us when we arrive. Someone has noticed our frequent shared dinners. I vow to consider the implications tomorrow, not wanting to ruin this perfect evening with my paranoia.

The room is dark when we enter, and I quickly light the sconces and candles, then throw her one of my tunics and a pair of leggings to change into. They swallow her, and the sight sends my blood racing. As soon as she’s clothed in the dry tunic, Genevieve sits at the table and starts eating directly from the serving dishes, not wasting time making a plate. I chuckle.

“I’m starving,” she explains with a grin. I only pick up a spoon and dip it directly into the bowl of spiced rice, then groan when it reaches my mouth.

“I’m starving too,” I say with my own grin.

We finish dinner that way, eating with no propriety. Genevieve seems to enjoy the spectacle greatly, and I realize it must be because, to her, this is a great rebellion for a female raised by the Velmaran nobility. To egg her on, I dip a finger into the pudding and lick it off, and she squeals in delight before dipping her own finger in the bowl. We scrape it clean.

“Thank you for tonight,” I say softly. “It’s nice to take a break from all the books. Even if I had to literally jump off a cliff to get away from them.” I give her a smile that she returns with her own sly grin.

“It was my pleasure.” She bites her lip, tantalizing me. I swear she was leaning in to kiss me in the water, but I don’t know for sure. And this is dangerous here. We stare at one another, the tension in the room coiling around us, thick as mist. “Kiss me,” she finally says, breathless, eyes wide, and the small amount of control I had disappears.

I walk slowly to her side of the table, then angle my body behind her and gently sweep her black curly hair off her shoulder. Leaning down, I place the gentlest kiss to her neck, just below her ear, and she shudders. I kiss my way across her collarbone and up her jaw, delighting in the way she reacts to every one. When I reach her lips, I don’t kiss them. Instead, I take her hand and tug her from the chair, then sit down and guide her to straddle my lap.

“Is this what you want?” I ask, my voice low. “Are you sure?” I have to give her another chance to say no, to walk away from something that might get her fired from the archives, or worse. But there’s no hesitation in her expression, only heat and need gathered in those amber eyes.

“Yes,” she whispers out, eyes darkening with desire.

I lean in and kiss her soft lips gently, and she moans. When I cup her breast through the tunic, she lets out a breathy sigh, and that seems to unlock something in her. She takes control, grinding her hips into me, kissing me with a demanding intensity that I match. My own hips arch up to meet hers, and I bring my hands down to cup her backside.

She removes my tunic, lifting it quickly above my head and throwing it across the room. With feral delight in her eyes, she undoes the clasp holding up the bandeau covering my breasts, then stares down at my chest as she continues to grind on my hips. There’s a hunger in her eyes, like she’s been waiting for this her whole life. I let out a moan, removing her own tunic and bandeau so that we’re both topless. She leans in for another kiss, and the soft brush of our naked breasts has me clenching my thighs in desire. I need more of her.

I lift Genevieve from the chair and carry her to the bed, slowly removing her leggings so I can take in the sight of her. She blushes under my gaze, her confidence from earlier gone now that she’s so exposed. But something tells me she doesn’t want me to coddle her, doesn’t want me to proceed carefully and gently.

“Touch yourself,” I command, and her heated expression tells me my hunch was right. She does as she’s told, bringing her fingers to the apex of her thighs, wet with desire. As she circles her center, she keeps her gaze locked on me, my boldness unlocking her own.

“Take your leggings off,” she orders, and I’m happy to comply. Even as she touches herself, her eyes stay focused on me. When she lets out a delicate whimper, I can keep my hands off her no longer. Lowering my body to cage hers, we lose ourselves in the passion of kissing and limbs and darkness.