Jamison was focused on pulling the oldest of magic out of the endless vault of his mind when he felt a surge of power fill the mansion. His stare flicked to Saige, and they both shared a classic, well used, ‘you gotta be fucking kidding me expression.’
No one had time for Reveca’s tantrums on a good day, much less on a day where the tables had turned, and it was the coven trying to save what she had defended for eons, her precious witch-made immortals.
“I’ll handle it,” Jamison said moving to the door knowing Saige was barely standing. He was three paces down the hall, pulling all his power into one ‘do not fuck with me’ shield when he saw King in the shadows.
All of Jamison’s defense fell when he saw the limp body King was holding, Dagen’s. In a breath, he was there staring at the mind-bending scene. Dagen had arrived in Jamison’s life the same time Rydell King had, as warriors hunting his youngest daughter.
By the time Jamison had understood this, Raven had already swayed King with her blameless heart that she wasn’t a threat to him. King took a blow and protected Raven, his actions landed him with Crass, and set the course for the epic reunion of him and Reveca.
Dagen was a constant through it all. He stayed behind to help the coven ensure the safety of Jamison’s daughters— all three of them. He wrapped his sorrow around River, one of Jamison’s twin girls.
Jamison did everything he could to stop the love affair between the pair. They didn’t care that they were not meant to be, or cut from one soul. They were aching, and the other was the medicine they needed. Fate had its say and today River and Dagen were nothing more than friends.
Nevertheless, Jamison felt in debt to Dagen. He respected him. He knew that King was still letting Dagen run the show when it came to the Helco Faction. King was still letting the masses believe he was gone. In a very real sense, a king of angels was now dying under Saige’s roof.
Sickness never came to dark angels. Wounds were healed before they were ever truly felt, death came from a single thought sent down from their Creator. What Jamison was seeing right now, Dagen damp with sweat, his body shivering and lax defied all logic.
Then it didn’t.
“How long have you known,” Jamison asked King.
“With certainty, a matter of seconds,” King said as he vanished only to appear inside the suite he was standing in before. He laid Dagen down like he was a child, and in some real way, to King he was. Any fool would know as much by the never seen before frantic stare King had now.
“First thing Revelin has us do is forget our arrival,” King said. “We all try...we try to hold on to what was. That part of you that recognizes evil for what it is tells you to hold on. It’s just too hard.”
A witch himself, King began pulling tools from his pockets, manifesting others needed, glancing at the power he felt brimming in the mansion, the likely reason he had shown here. He didn’t need help, not really, he only needed a power source that was already engaged on the same enemy.
“Dagen never talked about his past, just said that he died in battle but not a man’s battle, a battle of gods.” King paused while he focused on the work he was doing. “We all died that way, or it seemed like it, Revelin ripping us from the lives we knew. I didn’t think anything about it.”
“Did Scorpio say something to you?”
King swayed his head. “No, but I noticed the attention Dagen gave them, how he looked at them like a forgotten memory.”
“Them?”
“More so Scorpio than Dust, but they favor each other.”
Jamison lifted a brow to agree.
“Then Dagen started pulling more vim than usual. At first, I didn’t notice. When I did, it took me a second to figure out he needed it about the same time Talon would start slipping.”
“Does Reveca know this?”
King’s hardening expression was the only warning Jamison needed to drop the subject.
“I found him in Ambrosia’s realm. I’m sure he went there to shut her down, charm his way into getting her to take her claws out of Talon.” King glared into the thin air. “He’s always told me there was something off about her. That she was more than a hard-up female.”
King looked up at Jamison. “I felt him start to drain and went after him. Ambrosia wasn’t even aware he was there. She was focused on pulling Talon to her.”
“But Dagen was there. I felt it firsthand,” Jamison concluded. To some degree, aware and connected or not, members of a Throng will feel the pain of one another, especially if life is in jeopardy. If they were close to each other, it was given that the pain would be felt equally. It was a flaw that made them easy targets when they began to turn on each other.
One strike and the others would fall. The one delivering the pain simply had to ride it out as one by one they devoured the power of the others. It was not a task for the weak of heart. Knowing so had seriously upped Ambrosia’s threat level. If Jamison had a regret then, it was not noticing what she truly was sooner.
King nodded once. “Then I knew.” His icy stare roved over Dagen. “No matter what or who he was before, he was taken by Revelin, he’s now mine. My First,” he moved his stare to Jamison. “I’ll feel his death as my own. I can’t say what will happen when that occurs.”
It was King’s one and only warning that if this all went down the wrong way, there would be no time to mourn anyone. The war of all times could arrive. As distant or divided as King may be from Revelin, no matter what spells the Quarter had around it, there was no way Revelin would not feel the pain of death that was barreling toward King’s line now.
“King, this is insanity, if Revelin had Dagen in his line before, who is to say he doesn’t have more members of a Throng, that all dark gods don’t? Who is to say coming after Dagen is not more important than him hunting you and Reveca down?” Jamison swayed his head. “For all we know they created this join or die game plan so that no matter what, they’d have the last laugh. Their addiction and greed would live on in the reign of the next sovereigns without this governing body.”
“No one is saying anything. But I know if Revelin had any idea what Dagen was, he would have never let me leave with him. He would have shown the first instant Dagen wavered.” King sighed. “I think you will have some time to move your people, prepare for a fight. But not much.”
Jamison was not taking this news lying down. There wasn’t a wait and see bone in his body when it came to protecting his coven, much less his daughters. “Does Dagen have any clue about Throngs?”
“I don’t know,” King admitted regretfully. “Their existence was never spoken of, to do so was the same as welcoming a curse on your line, if not treason.” King paused as Dagen’s body tensed, and his eyes raced behind closed lids. “Aware or not he’s in the thick of it now.”
“You have to speak to him King, you have to tell him what to expect. Feed him your vim, all you have.”
King’s stare moved to Jamison in question.
“You know as well as I do losing Talon or Dagen alone would rip the fortress we have built to shreds. Losing them both is not a risk we can take. You have no choice but to prepare your warrior for what he is facing, send him to the forefront with all you have.”
King slightly lifted his chin as his emotions settled to the point where no one would have a clue how distressed he was seconds before. “You think I don’t know that one way or another Scorpio is going to be at this battle? Do you take me as a desperate fool who does not realize you are asking me to align with him?”
Jamison never wavered under King’s powerful stare. “If you were a fool, you would’ve forgotten the majesty of a Throng. You realize that all rising sovereigns face tests that are designed to destroy them and prepare them for their divine fate. This is one of yours, King. Do you stand with Reveca and welcome the destruction of Throngs as you clench moral reasons and vendettas? Or do you stand for more than yourself? Will you protect one of your own and save a man who watched over Reveca in your absence?” J
amison stepped forward. “You think of my daughters. You think of every rising sovereign, those kids who have been through hell in lifetime after lifetime to get to where they are now. You think of the dimension where we live in peril. The agony that only grows stronger each day in every mortal soul. You ask yourself if you are willing to let evil win this night and roll the dice on where that leads our tomorrows.”
Jamison paused letting his speech settle on the great leader he knew King to be. Then went on. “Reveca is sick right now. It’s an illness we have all lived through with her over and over. Each time it saddles her with more dark karma that she will have no choice but to face one day.” His tone became softer, almost mournful. “Don’t let the karma of slaughtering divinity rest on her shoulders...I don’t think her will can bear it. I know I can not bear to watch her try.”
King’s stare hardened. He was sure Jamison was right, but he also knew where this battle would lead, win or lose, neither of the outcomes was going to be a walk in the park. They’d both rip him apart. Give him little reason to fight on.
Chapter Four
Lazily Scorpio’s eyes drifted open. There was no way to scale time in the cavern, at best he could judge the calm fire, assume the hours that has passed, but considering Toril was next to it, fanning the flames he had reason to debate time. She still seemed weak, but her eyes were clear, more here with him than they had been since he awoke her.
Scorpio gritted his teeth as a jolt of agony rippled through him. On instinct, he reached out for Toril, but she barely moved when the pain struck. Scorpio’s eyes searched the dark, high cavern above him. Something was different.
For as long as he could remember, at least since Reveca cursed him, he’d only felt and sensed Toril and Talon clearly. She had blocked him from the others. He could only vaguely hear their voices, only occasionally he’d wake with a pain that was not his and wonder if someone connected to him was slipping away. Right then, he felt more. More than just the pain he knew Talon was in. It was the pain of all of them. There were at least five others, as unbelievable as it was that there were that many still existing, there was something else twisting Scorpio.
Two of the beings felt more than immortal, more than supernatural. One male, one female. As he zoned in as tightly as he could on this connection, his body jarred back in shock and disbelief. King’s First, Dagen, was staring back at Scorpio in his mind.
Wide-eyed Scorpio looked at Toril, her smile was shy, girlish. “You found him, the one that was taken before Talon.” Scorpio barely remembered the battle at all, just that because of Reveca and her distractions, they lost and in a tragic way. Because they lost Dagen, they were desperate to hold onto Talon once they found him again, even after they realized both he and Scorpio were cursed.
“He’s fought his way free from the dark god.”
“Well aware,” Scorpio rasped. He wasn’t so sure Toril wanted to know the rest, that the male was connected to Reveca’s current lover.
“The witches curse is not on him, but her essence flows through.”
Well, so much for secrecy.
“His nature will bring him home to us,” Toril said quietly as her gaze grew distant, as if she were watching it all.
“The others,” Scorpio said bracing through another wave of pain. “Why do some feel vacant?”
“Phantom.”
Scorpio jarred up no longer trusting the flow of connection he felt pulling him closer.
“Not of death, but of magic. They are pure, she had protected you as she promised.”
Scorpio hadn’t the slightest clue who this ‘she’ was, only that something was boldly familiar about her. Someone in the Throng had been playing protector in Toril’s absence. She was using Toril’s same blocking game to do so. “Are there more?” Scorpio asked across a tight breath. He’d worry about who was who later, if there was a later.
Toril crawled to his side never taking her ravenous stare from his. “We do not carry one primordial seed. The last Throng is the First, and the first is the Throng of lovers, the Throng that will create more, and then more. In time, it will be as it was, souls living their lives, able to pull from the wisdom, calm, and strength of many.
Scorpio furrowed his brow in both question and doubt.
“Each of us in the Throng have a chosen lover, a being so precious that even the slightest touch of flesh to flesh rattles the heavens. Our seed has been planted; our battle is on the brink. For most, their battle is just beginning.”
Wildly Scorpio searched her visage. “This is too twisted, even for us.”
Her smirk eased some of his tension, and only because she was relaxed, unbothered by what she had seen in their future.
His essence reached to cradle her face and when she closed her eyes allowing this innocent touch he felt like he had conquered the world. “We are more than a job, a click in evolution. Next to you, Dust is the greatest gift I’ve ever gotten. But I refuse to let it end here. We win this battle, then we win your life back.”
Her eyes drifted open, the disbelief there almost hurt his heart. “I’ve known the day of Reveca’s death was coming,” Scorpio said. “Nothing about this will be easy, but the only impossibility is me going on without you. I doubt any of us could. You are the future, the one the Creator trusted to bring our kind back to the forefront of life.”
He eased his body closer. “Trust me again, let me make you stronger so we can stop this pain and move forward to the battle that is long overdue between you and the witch.”
When Toril lay down at his side and her eyes drifted to the ceiling of the cavern, he knew he had lost her once more, pushed too hard too fast. But what choice did he have? She could barely sit up, how in the hell was he suppose to get her out of there, much less to another realm. There was the hope of magic, it was more than likely the only hope they had, but in all truth, it would be easier to crawl to the realm Ambrosia was in, at the very least it would take less energy.
Each second that ticked by caused the razor sharp state of fury, doused in panic, to swell inside of Scorpio. An agony that would not ease until he knew Toril was free from the spell he’d used to place her in a deep sleep. There was no choice, she had to have her vengeance. If they only had one shot, should they not use it to go after Reveca, not Ambrosia?
He was gathering his argument to sway Toril to his state of thinking when he heard, “Is it you playing hard to get now?”
Serenely as ever, her stare never moved from the ceiling. As odd as her tone was, Scorpio was in his rights to question if she was speaking to him at all. He easily followed her stare. In the gleam of water that was glistening on the rocks, he could see reflections. They were murky at best, but he had little doubt he was seeing through Toril’s eyes, seeing the souls of their Throng.
“Come into me, empower me...empower them.”
With his mouth agape, Scorpio moved his jade stare to hers, by no means had he ever been a man that had the power to turn this female down, but right about now seemed like the worst possible time there ever was.
From what he was told, from what his own instincts told him as well, Throngs were only this blatantly clear of each when the end of one was apparent. It was a fail-safe, the one way they could find each other no matter what.
None of this was awesome news to hear. For hours, he had planned on attacking Ambrosia without warning, to have control over the situation. Whatever plans he had were going up in smoke right then. The pain he had been feeling was not more of the same slashes Ambrosia had taken from afar, she was on the offense.
It was her, wasn’t it? Scorpio pushed his mind to see as clearly and sharply as he could. There was a very real possibility that Reveca had flipped her crazy switch a few more notches and put two and two together, finally figuring out why Scorpio was so intent on protecting Talon for all these eras. Reveca destroying Talon, or any member of their Throng would be a surefire way to take Toril and him down. The question was, did Reveca realize that?
Once
Scorpio was focused, tensed for battle he was sure this was all Ambrosia, he smelled the fire of her realm burning through his senses.
“November...” Toril whispered, pulling Scorpio’s thoughts from his battle plans.
The tone of her voice alone had his cock as hard as steel, zero to sixty in under a second. It had been too fucking long.
His jade stare slid to her. She was lying flat on her back, her eyes were closed and her hand was slowly caressing the V shape in his Kut. “Do you only want to watch?”
The hell he did! War? What war? He moved forward but her soul, what strength it had, blocked his touch from ever reaching her. A growl he couldn’t have stopped if he wanted to rumbled through his chest.
“Inside,” she whispered.
Scorpio swallowed tensely as his mouth watered. Stiff, in all ways, he laid down at her side. There were a million nights he would’ve not only begged for this but considered himself blessed for the chance. Now that he’d had her flesh, felt her surround him, he wasn’t so sure this act would suffice. At least it wouldn’t kill his desire. It would empower her, jump-start the essence in her soul...
Knowing this forced him to tell himself to get the fuck over it, do this, win his war and then spend all of eternity ravishing this female. Every second taken from them would be restored, tenfold, he’d make damn sure of it.
A breath later all his essence was dangling over her body, sensing him there she sighed as her body waved, her arousal spiked the air, once it had, nothing could stop his soul from slipping in. His dive in was slow, precise and designed to steal her breath.
Possessing her, no matter how many times he had, would never get old. Sometimes he sat back and told her where to touch herself, and how. Other times, he moved her body, as his lusty thoughts would tingle through her mind. Some of the most magical times between the pair of them were when they said nothing, when they moved the way nature intended them to, as one being.