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It was an offer of unprecedented generosity. Kylen were notoriously tightfisted when it came to their gifts, a power that could be much greater than any single mage possessed. In the case of a kylen who had not transformed in the womb, but had been under the constraint of a restrictive conjure his whole life, power of any kind was questionable. It might mean Thadd possessed a volatile wild magic, unstable, powerful enough to wipe Mineral City off the map. It might mean he possessed nothing. Or any amount in between. But it was more than I'd had available to fight the Dragon a moment ago.

Prompted by the visa, I lowered my head in a bow and said, “This mage is honored at the offer of your might.” I raised my head and searched his eyes, in which amusement still lurked. But now it was the devil-may-care mirth of the soldier who faced insurmountable battle. “So, you'll meet me? Just before sunset?” I asked.

“Why not,” he said, laughing the words. “I gotta die someday. But since I may bleed out all over the streets of this misbegotten town in the next few hours, there's one thing I want.” He tossed the seraph stone to the mattress, stepped to me, and opened my battle cloak. In a single motion, he slid one arm around my waist, gripped my neck in firm fingers, and jerked me close. His mouth found mine. Heat flared between us.

I breathed into his mouth, the taste-smell-feel of him waking my mage-senses. I closed my eyes, knowing this was stupid, but needing him, wanting this so very much.

Behind my lids, I saw his aura flare brighter than any human's, brighter than any mage's, shocking and intense, an image like cinnamon on my tongue, the synesthesia of kylen-mage melding so intense that I couldn't separate sight from taste and smell. With his transformation so nearly complete, the mind-bending merge was concentrated into all the colors of the rainbow, all the scents of a candy store, a bakery, all the textures of heated velvet.

I arched into him, pressing along his length, rising onto my toes as he lifted me closer. I was dimly aware when my cloak fell to the floor with a swish of sound and I relaxed into the mattress beneath me, sheets cool and scented of him. Thadd settled between my legs and pressed against the center of me, needing me as much as I wanted him.

Mage-rut roared, a wild whitewater river of desire, my body preparing for him, belly quivering, breasts so tight they ached to be touched. Pain and pleasure.

A dobok isn't conducive to mating, hard to get into when standing, impossible to get out of while lying on my back, my legs wrapped around Thadd's waist. I pulled at my own clothes, mindless fingers at the fastenings. His hand found its way through an opening and stroked along my side. I hissed and clawed at him, raking his skin until my fingers touched the down at his back, beneath his wing. I pulled in a shuddering breath and stilled. Slowly I eased my hands into the cavities beneath his wings.

Heated, hotter by several degrees than my own body temperature, the nevus, the massed and coiled blood vessels that fed seraph wings in flight, pulsed against my hands. His down, softer than the finest fur, rubbed against my palms, warm and alluring. I heard myself groan as his wings lifted and fell around me, the movement creating a prism of light in the air.

His hand found my breast, stroking it into a tight point. Need raked its claws through me and I pulled at his jeans, whispering, “More. Now. Now!”

Thadd laughed, a low thrum of sound against me, his breath rapid as he worked the hooks, buttons, and Velcro straps of the dobok. I tore at his jeans, the buttonholes, the blasted buttonholes, too tight.

A polite knocking sounded.

Thadd grunted. The knock came again, louder.

“Thadd?” It was Lucas.

“Son of a seraph,” Thadd grated, swearing.

“You are a son of a seraph,” I said, giggling senselessly. “Which means you just swore by yourself.”

Thadd chuckled with me, raising his weight off, to brace on his locked arms, hands to either side of my face. “That's your husband at my door,” he said. “My cousin. And his timing either sucks or is as lucky as the plague survivors. Either way, I hate his guts.”

“Ex-husband,” I said as he shifted to the left, scrabbling in the sheets, spotting the stone above my shoulder, nested in a pool of pillows. I realized what he intended and said, “No!”

“Yes. This may hurt.” Thadd picked up the seraph stone.

It did. Heat whipped from me. I cramped brutally, stomach muscles contracting, ovaries in a spasm as the hormonal impulse to ovulate stopped in an instant. I rolled from beneath him, curling into a ball, holding myself tight. “Tears of Taharial,” I whispered, knowing it was foolish to curse so close to the Trine, but not able to stop myself.

Thadd rotated in the sheets, pulling the top one to the floor as he stood. He bent over and supported himself on his knees, breathing slowly, his thigh muscles rippling beneath the denim fabric, his wings half-spread, plumage quivering.

The knocking came again, this time banging. Lucas had heard me. “Thorn! Open up!”

“Did you lock the door when you came in?” Thadd asked, his voice rough. He looked at me. “How'd you get in anyway?”

I sat up and rearranged my clothes, pulling the dobok in place. Thadd had moved everything around, finding my breast through a rent in the padded cloth. “I stole a key at the front desk. And no. He can get in any time he—”

The door slammed open, Lucas standing in the opening, his face twisted in righteous anger. He took in the tableau, me on the bed, fully clothed, even my boots still on. Yet, the bed was rumpled, sheets on the floor, and my hair was snarled in what the kind might call disarray, the way hair looked after a riotous romping. Thadd was standing, his shirt open, jeans partially unbuttoned, feet bare, his wings half-spread.
Sweet Hail Mary.
His wings were spread.

Behind Lucas, Eli appeared. His mouth opened in shock and he said, “Holy crap. He's a kylen.”

We looked like something out of a decadent television series, one of the Pre-Ap shows they called soaps. Three men, only one of them fully human, and the woman they all claimed they wanted. Well, sort of.

Had Lucas followed me? How guilty and stupid would I feel if I asked? Better to ignore it. If I hadn't been in so much pain from the interrupted heat, I might have laughed. As it was, I groaned in misery and pushed to my feet. I hadn't felt this bad since the fight on the Trine.

I looked from Lucas and Eli to Thadd, to the stone in his hand, and chose my battles by picking the smallest and easiest—and the one that made me the most angry. The mage stone. “That was just pure mean,” I said.

“It's not like I'm enjoying it either,” Thadd said, his voice tense with pain. “Between the stone and your men friends, I may not survive this.” Still holding himself rigid, he backed up as Lucas and Eli crowded in. “But if I live through it, you can beat me up.”

“Count on it,” I said.

 

I stalked out of the old hotel into the late afternoon light and turned uphill, trudging toward Upper Street, still adjusting the dobok, which had gotten turned on the bias against my skin. My lips were bruised, my cloak was loose over my shoulders and dragging on one side, and my hair was half up in a queue, half straggling down my back. My thoughts and feelings were just as snarled and tangled.

I was unable to separate the individual strands of thwarted desire, irritation with the three men still arguing in Thadd's hotel room, logical interpretation of consulate protocol and diplomatic law, prophecy and predictions, and blasphemy. My life was a shambles. I wanted three men and could have no sort of normal life with any of them. If I chose Thadd, I'd have litter after litter of fourth-generation kylen who would probably be taken from me the day they were born and raised in Realms of Light. I'd stay in heat year-round, which would feel great, but turn me into a sex and baby-making machine.

With Eli, I'd dance a lot and have kinky sex, making half-breed babies, the physically anomalous, sterile, second unforeseen, like Audric. Bred for battle, perpetually unhappy, and probably ticked off at me for birthing them. I'd have a litter every time a seraph came near.

And if I chose Lucas, he'd cheat on me before the year was out, breaking my heart again. A small voice whispered to me that I couldn't get my heart broken if I didn't care for him. I ignored it. What did I know?

I had a sudden vision of Thadd tossing the seraph stone onto the mattress. Within easy reach. Then he tossed me up beside it. “Stones and blood,” I hissed below my breath.
The son of a seraph had experimented on me.
He had set up the heat, tested it with a full-body clinch, and then used the stone to make sure rut could be shut off at almost any stage. It had been a test.
A game
.

I wouldn't just beat him up. I'd kick him so hard he'd be singing soprano for a year.

I stomped onto Upper Street and passed Waldroup's Furniture Store, seeing my ridiculous reflection in the big windows. Smoothing my hair, I slowed, adjusted my cloak, and forced my steps into a normal walking pattern as I reined in the anger. In the window, beyond my image, was a desk and chair carved in rococo, an ornate Pre-Ap style.

Even through my pique, I liked the set. If I survived the next week, I would need to furnish the Battle Station Consulate /Realm of Light. The thought of something so mundane and normal as decorating brought tears to my eyes. I had lost the opportunity for anything in my life to be normal. Of my quiet, introspective life, working stone, making jewelry, having friends who depended on me to get out of bed each day and show up for work in a store, there was little left. Next to nothing, in fact. Nothing except the half-baked plan I had devised to keep us alive.

I stopped and moved closer to the window, splaying my hand open on the glass, not really seeing the rest of the furniture in the showroom. No matter what happened with my plan, it would result in suffering. My breath fogged the window and froze, creating a glazed circle, spreading with each exhale.

It was getting colder. The puffs of white breath were denser. Snow was coming. A lot of it.

I turned to the street, pulling my cloak tight around me, and surveyed the place I had called home for a decade. It bore only marginal resemblance to the Mineral City of my memory, burned, damaged, its populace decreased by war and Darkness. There were few people out and about. Only one snow-el-mobile churning along the street. Two horses and riders moved at a fast clip. Businesses were closed. Blood splashed the dirty snow. The sigil beneath the ice glowed softly in my mage-sight. A cloud of smoke raced between the buildings, carrying the scent of burned wood and the residual, rank smell of cremated spawn. Above the town, heavy clouds gathered on the western mountains, presaging a blizzard.

A cold breeze was coming off the Trine, its three peaks wreathed in mist and cloud, white caps on the summits visible occasionally through thinning gaps. To mage-sight, the left peak appeared yellow, shot through with black, the air itself hazy with Dark energies.

Oh, yeah. All I had left was the plan. The wind caught my loose hair and plucked it from the braid, blowing strands across my face. I twisted them all back into the queue in irritation. What a mess. What a horrid mess. People were going to die. People I loved. And it was going to be my fault.

S
top. Stop right there.”

Lucas. Drat. I heaved a deep breath, trying to cleanse away sudden nervous irritation, and turned to him. I would rather face down a dozen devil spawn than my ex when he was ticked off. Lucas was rounding the corner onto Upper Street, moving in a jerky, hurried motion that signified anger, ruffled feathers—No wait, that would be Thadd. I grinned and relaxed a bit, waiting for him.

“I don't think it's funny,” he said long before he reached me.

The words rang down the street and I raised my brows at his tone. He was jealous. My lips widened as I watched my ex-husband approach. He was beautiful, black-haired, blue-eyed, limber and slender, with the musculature of the tested and well-practiced runner.

My heart turned over in my chest.
Seraph stones.
I still loved the cheat.

“What were you doing in his room?” he demanded.

“I'm pretty sure it was an experiment,” I said.

Confused at what seemed an improbable answer, Lucas stopped, blowing puffy clouds of breath like mine. The clouds met between us and merged. I stepped back, not liking the symbolism. I might love him, but I'd never go back to him.

“What kind of experiment?”

“To see if mage-heat could be stopped by the amulet Zadkiel gave me.”

“So? You had to
kiss
him?”

I let the smile grow. “Yeah. I did. And it worked. Mage-heat died.”

“Meaning that you…” He stopped whatever he was about to say and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. It was the frustrated action of a little boy, and I was certain he had no idea he looked so adorable. The smile left my face at the thought. Lucas Stanhope was not—
not
—adorable. He was a cheat and a heartbreaker.

“Meaning you didn't have sex with him?” he said, half question, half declaration.

“I didn't.”

When I said nothing further, he moved up beside me and we resumed walking toward the store. And the consulate.
Criminy. The consulate. Can I make my life any more complicated?
A silence built between us broken only by the wind whistling through the town and higher in the mountains and by the crunch of our boots.

Lucas started to speak once and bit down on the words. I waited. “Where do I stand?” he asked at last. “With you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You put me in the position of consort in the consulate. That announced to the world that we have a relationship, that we share a child. But afterward you left and went to another man. Where does that leave me? Consort or not?”

I watched my boot toes as they emerged beneath the cloak with each step. Left, right, left. I might die tonight. Or he might. The whole town might. I owed him honesty at the least. Kindness at the best. “I love you, Lucas. I think I've loved you since the first time I saw you.”

When he touched my arm I shook him off, fighting the bitterness that welled up in me, tightening my throat, making words difficult to speak. “But I can't trust you. Because you can't help but look at any and every female you pass. You can't help but come on to them, flirt with them, and make sure they fall in love with you.” I heard the long-repressed hostility in my voice but was incapable of controlling it, and I held up my palm when he tried to interrupt. “It's your nature, Lucas. You'd seduce and sleep with my twin if she were around.”

“You keep bringing up the past,” he said. “I'm different now. I really am.”

I looked at him, sadness welling up like water between the rocks of old anger. “I was pretty busy at the consulate meeting. A little overwhelmed. But I had a moment to notice you noticing Romona Benson.”

Lucas had the grace to flush. But at least he didn't deny it. “Is that why you went and ‘experimented' with my cousin? Who has wings, for crying out loud.
Wings
.” When I didn't answer, Lucas put out a hand again, touching only my cloak, turning me to him. He looked bewildered and, at the sight, I wanted to give in, wanted to bring him back and comfort him. I crossed my arms instead, knowing it was a protective gesture, knowing he would know that.

“I remember how you looked in his bedroom, in his bed. You looked all tousled and beautiful, the way you looked with me, when we were married. And I could have killed him.” He held out his hands, flexing them into fists, and a fearful wonder touched his voice. “I wanted to kill him. My own cousin. With freaking wings.”

My resentment eased, leaving my heart just a bit lighter in spite of all the danger and uncertainty in my life. “Yeah, well. That's what the experiment was for, I guess, to see if kylen and mages can be in the same place without causing mage-heat. It worked.”

We stopped at the entrance to Thorn's Gems and I looked sidelong at him. In mage-sight, Lucas glowed with a nonhuman energy pattern, a bright blue aura. Beneath his skin, blood coursed in veins and arteries, blood that throbbed and flowed in a rich, royal blue configuration. Totally not human. I said, “He's going to be my champard. Thadd is.”

Lucas' mouth turned down hard. “I've been reading about the duties of champards. They include sex.”

“Sometimes,” I agreed gently, “for some mages.”

“And you're going to make
him
your champard?”

“At dusk. In the sigil in the street. But I'm not making him mine for mating. I'm making him a champard so he can be part of the plan I worked out. So I can protect him.”

“And me? Us?”

I opened the door to the shop and stepped inside. The heat within blasted my face after the cold of the street, and I stopped in the doorway, my back to him. “You divorced me, Lucas. There is no us.” I closed the door, closing him out of my life, closing him into the cold.

 

Standing in my tattered dobok, I stood with my back against the kitchen counter and ate a huge bowl of oatmeal, needing the carbs and the sugar. I usually hoarded the sugar, doling it out in drips and drabs, but this time I had put as much as I wanted on the hot cereal. If I died tonight, why leave a perfectly good sweet uneaten?

Spooning in the oatmeal, I stared at my loft, the one place in the world that was mine. I had bought and paid for the building. I had decorated the apartment to my tastes and mine only, surrounding myself with the greens and taupes and teals I liked best. I loved this place. I never wanted to leave it. But for weeks, it had seemed as if I might have to leave it at any moment. I was always saying goodbye to my life.

Full, I set the dishes in the sink, unwashed. Stripping, leaving my clothes in a pile on the loft floor, I filled the silver bowl with charged stones and dumped them onto the bed, dropped down, curled around them, and pulled the comforter over me. I fell into a dreamless sleep. When I woke, it was after four, a dull afternoon light glowing softly through the windows, predicting the storm brewing. I was refreshed in a way I hadn't been in a long time.

I rose and took a hot shower to loosen muscles that had stiffened in sleep, and added several drops of eucalyptus oil to a rag I draped over the rail. The medicinal scent in the warm wet atmosphere cleared my head, and I inspected my body in the writhing steam. The soles of my feet were paler and thicker now, not the bright shade of thin, healing skin. My calves and shins were healed over, my knuckles and the backs of my hands were the bright white of scar tissue. My throat was one solid scar. Other scars crisscrossed my body. Ugly. My side, however, was worse—a black ring with a hot, red, central depression. It looked infected, though it didn't hurt. In mage-sight it was even darker, swirling a sickly mustard yellow.

I stretched in the steam, eyes closed, head down, water pouring over me. The shower door opened. I whipped into battle mode and struck out fast, flowing into the claw—fingers curled and stiff. I aborted the savage-chi move, just as Audric caught my wrist in his big paw. “Audric?”

I tried to cover myself, grabbing the towel from the door and holding it over me. “Get out!” I said, my voice sharp in the confined space.

“No. Turn around.”

“You're not welcome in my bathroom, champard,” I said, retreating into formality.

“You are my mistrend. You face battle tonight. You are not up to your usual strength or speed. You need a massage to loosen your muscles. Turn around.”

I stared at him, feeling the towel molding itself to my body as the shower wet it through. I backed into the stall corner, tile icy on my spine as he entered and closed the door, trapping me.

Audric was a big man, nearly seven feet tall, with skin the brown of his African ancestors, a bald head, and steady eyes. In one hand he held a bottle of oil, in the other was a loofah and a cloth. Clothed, the half-breed was intimidating. With a towel wrapped and tied around his waist, the fabric just as wet as mine, his hairless, naked chest streaming and his feet bare, he was even more daunting.

“I'm not really comfortable with this,” I said stiffly, knowing that, if I had stayed in Enclave, such massages, and even casual nudity, would have been part of my daily life. My champards would have lived with me, sharing every detail of my day. But I had grown up in Mineral City, with its stern kirk and unyielding elders, its repressed sexuality and its unremitting cold. Naked skin was seen only on hands and faces and, very rarely, on arms and shins. Never in my shower except for Lucas. My face burned from more than the hot water.

Audric, standing patiently, being blasted by water, raised his brows in amusement. I was a spot of comic relief to everyone today, it seemed, and it stiffened my spine against the cold tile. “I am your champard. A
mule
,” he said, enunciating the insulting term. “While I could break every bone in your body, I can't rape you. It's not physically possible.”

I couldn't stop the glance at his midsection. “You could try,” I said. And blushed a deeper shade when Audric's laugh rumbled through the hissing shower. “Meaning the broken bone part,” I clarified, mortified.

“Turn around.” So far as I knew, Audric hadn't seen the wound on my side. And he'd never seen me naked. Well, except for the times he and Rupert had cared for me after my injuries. Which had taken days. Weeks. Okay. I was being stupid. And I hated that.

Audric held out the cloth in his hand. It was a pair of my undies. “You may put these on if it makes you feel better.”

You could have told me that first,
I thought. I took the soaked panties and made a little “turn around” motion with my finger. Audric laughed harder and turned around. I pulled them on and held the towel to my front again, as I faced the shower stall wall and leaned into it. “Okay,” I said. And when I heard the grudging tone, I added, more politely, “I'm ready. Thank you.”

Audric said nothing, but his big hands descended onto my shoulders, fingers and heels of his hands pressing into the tight flesh. My blush melted away like soft wax. I groaned, sounds of physical bliss that resembled sexual pleasure. Sounds that would have had Lucas charging in with battle-lust in his eyes. After a moment, I mumbled, “You can shower with me anytime.”

“Move your hair,” Audric said, still with the timbre of laughter in his words, and I gathered the long mass to one side, giving in to the relief of the massage. So much for the stern kirk elders. Pleasure—one point; rules and regs—zilch.

When the hot water part was over, Audric dried me off as if I were a child and carried me to the bed, where he finished my rubdown, his hands efficiently working my muscles, stretching my joints and tendons, and prying up under my shoulder blades. As he worked, he talked and I mumbled responses and the rare question. I learned a lot of things, some important, some not, but one that had been troubling me was resolved. Audric had never heard of a mage who could blend a skim and mage-sight into one scan. Until me. Lucky me.

When he was done, it was five, and night was falling fast. Feeling really good, better than I could remember, maybe ever, I plaited my hair into a battle braid and let Audric help dress me, strapping and binding me into the new dobok and fastening the teal belt across my chest. I hadn't noticed it earlier, but the belt was tooled and dyed with tiny scarlet leaves the color of my hair. The color of Raziel's wings.

“I've filled all the vials on the bottom of the belt with holy water,” Audric said, tapping the four at my hip, “and all the ones on the top with salt. The throwing knives in the middle are positioned to be drawn with either hand, hilts turned for easy withdrawal. Drinking water is in your cloak, lower down, near the hem.”

He spun me as he talked, rechecking the position of each blade, some of them my old ones, some the new ones gifted me by Cheran. “But it won't be like drawing weapons from your old dobok. The straps are new and stiff. I would prefer you had a few weeks to get used to fighting in it, but your old one is ruined. It needed to be replaced the first time you went below ground. Same with the new blades, but they're sharper and keener and better balanced than the old ones. I think you'll find them more than acceptable after a few passes.

“That's the good news. The bad news is that the military is delayed. They're putting down an incursion on the outskirts of Atlanta. A couple million spawn massed at sundown yesterday and attacked. They got through the mage-shield that protected the town.”

If I had been building any confidence at all, those words knocked it out of me. My plan had depended on the army and the EIH showing up to kill spawn by the thousands. Audric patted my shoulder awkwardly. With the exception of the massage, he was better at killing things than offering comfort.

“Where's Cheran?” I asked, as Audric knelt and held out socks for my feet. I let him slide them on and then inserted my feet into the boots he steadied, stepping forward to force them on as we talked.

“He's in the city jail, his visa, amulets, and papers piled up on the desk nearby but out of reach. He's tied up with antimage shackles left by Durbarge and the Administration of the ArchSeraph Investigators. The witch-catcher effectively stopped him from using his conjures, and the manacles are holding him tight.”