The Magic Queen (21 page)

Baba snorted. Tonight was the final night of her mother form. The form, oddly enough, he preferred most.

Her skin wasn’t as tight as that of the maiden. There were a few wrinkles—lines of wisdom he called them—and threads of silver in her chestnut hair. Her breasts weren’t quite as perky, nor her stomach quite as flat. Her thighs carried a little more of a jiggle, but there was something sensual and experienced that came with the maturity.

“Then you’re very lucky.” She sat up, allowing the sheets to puddle around her hips, exposing her delectable shell-pink nipples to his scrutiny. “I’ve always had a thing for young, male flesh.”

He growled, tackling her and pinning her arms above her head as he positioned his body over hers, sliding his cock in deep. They’d already made love three times tonight, but there was a frenzy to his need for her that had very little to do with sex and everything to do with his desperation that this night never end.

“Only my young male flesh, woman. Only me. Only ever me.” He licked at the shell of her ear before planting a kiss on the tiny bone behind it where neck and head met.

She arched her spine up to meet his touch. Even after all these years, his witch was receptive to him.

“Only you, moron,” she hissed when he bit her gently then clutched at his naked arse, digging her long nails into his flesh. “It’s always been you.”

He smirked. The gods of his realm gave him hell for the relationship he kept with his woman, never understanding how he could tolerate to be around someone as sharp-tongued as she. But they did not know his Baba Yaga as he did, did not know the tenderness of her touch, the truth of her love, or the way she made him feel as though he were everything to her and she to him.

Theirs was a romance penned by the hands of a jester. The god and the witch. The crone and the beauty. They should not have worked, the pair of them. They should have been a comedy of errors, not a romance that burned brighter than the suns of Valhalla. But he loved her, every square inch of her. In all the years and her many incarnations, there’d never been—nor ever could be—another for him.

They came as one, as they did everything else. Her kiss pressed upon his lips was tender as she whispered, “I love you, idiot male. Always and forever.”

His heart ached to hear those words, knowing that he would never hear them again. Already, a tinge of mauve filtered beneath the window of their home.

Baba had, through sly maneuverings, gotten the goddesses to grant her access to the place they’d been dumped in for their games what felt like a lifetime ago. Now, it looked nothing like it had then.

When they’d returned Baba, had brought life with her. Seeds for planting. Animals to fill the land. They lived in a veritable oasis of tropical beauty now, and apart from themselves and Phlegm, there were no other humans to set foot on what he considered to be sacred ground.

This was their place away from the politics and chaos of their worlds. But for the first time since they’d laid claim to
Sanctuary
—what they called home—his world had intruded in a big and violent way.

Tomorrow was the start of Ragnorak and the end of him. Being a Viking meant he’d never cared or worried about the prophecy proclaiming his end. To meet death in battle was the ultimate way to go. He’d be a hero, spoken of in tales and legends. He’d lived his life with the knowledge that his end would be a glorious one and had never much cared when it came.

But he cared now because now he had someone who cared for him too. Closing his eyes, he buried his face in her neck and breathed in her rich scent of lilacs and honeysuckle. His woman, his heartbeat, how could he tell her goodbye?

Her fingers gently massaged the back of his head as she whispered, “Tomorrow, I become the crone.”

After all these years, Baba knew him well, understood his moods. She was trying—in her own way—to lighten the sudden tension that filled their bedroom.

Biting down on his front teeth, he screwed on a fake smile and attempted to join in on her teasing. “You know how much I enjoy screwing a mummy.”

But his words lacked laughter, and she knew it. Her gorgeous eyes turned sad.

“Freyr, my love. Do not be so heavy of spirit. I cannot take it.”

He shook his head. “Once the sun rises, I must leave. For twenty years, I’ll be trapped in that war with no way to reach you, to contact you, and at the end...” He growled, looking away, unable to finish the last part.

She turned his face, looking him in the eye. He wanted to flinch, to look away, not to be forced to have to endure the light of that love burning through her eyes for him. His woman was strong, the strongest he knew. But Phlegm was still only a child. Goblins apparently took several centuries to age. In human terms, Phlegm was only close to five or six, a little rapscallion and a massive handful.

He’d grown to love the little weasel over time, a fact he’d thought would be impossible until he realized how much his woman truly cared for the boy. Phlegm had become one of Freyr’s best friends. He took the boy fishing, hiking, and generally taught him how to be a man as best he knew how. He was as attached to that boy as though he was truly of his own blood.

“My, dear sweet Fellatio,” she crooned, and he snorted.

After all this time, she never let up. “I fear I’ll be stuck with that moniker ’til the end of my days, which won’t be much long—”

She sighed. “Love, in the beginning of our tumultuous courtship, there was one question you would constantly ask me. Do you remember it?”

He frowned, sifting through the memories that were as clear today as if it’d only happened yesterday. Only problem was, he’d asked her many things.

“Baba...” He traced the bottom swell of her breast, loving how soft and pliant she still was for him. “I asked you too many questions. Which one do you mean?”

A graceful, gentle smile tipped the corners of her luscious lips. “You would always ask me, ‘have you forgotten who I am’?”

His movements paused, and a frown touched his brows. “I don’t under—”

Rolling them over so that he now lay beneath her and she was straddling him, she looked down upon him, and his heart swelled in his chest.

This fiery, powerful, and amazing woman was all his. Sometimes, it was hard to believe it was so, even after all this time. Freyr had simply been looking for a way to pass the time, to seek an escape from the boredom of his life. Never could he have imagined how much she would bring into his world simply by being.

“I too have my names and one I use rarely but that exists all the same. I’ve thought this matter through, Freyr. Ragnorak and what it means for us. That I will lose you. But witch that I am, I refuse to accept prophecy as fate. I too deal in fate and prophetic wisdom, and I know, better than anyone, that fate is simply what you make it. If you believe it to be so, then it is, but if you look...you can find.”

Her cryptic words had his heart beating a melody in his chest. He was terrified to hope, to believe that there could be an alternative to this.

“I must face my fate as a man and a warrior, Baba.”

On that he could not budge. The mettle of a man wasn’t made by running away from pain but from accepting it, embracing it, and understanding that it was only through pain that growth could flourish.

“I will not run from this fight and leave the others—”

She placed a finger upon his lips, stilling his words and shaking her head. Her long, loose hair moved like a wave upon her breasts, creating a pretty picture he would think on often during the thick of the battle.

Moss-green eyes so full of wisdom stared down on him. “And I would never ask that of you. I could never respect a man, let alone my man, were he to run away like a coward. No, Freyr, you will face your fate, and you will meet your death as is destined.”

He heard the unspoken words and waited for her to say more, but she seemed to be waiting on him.

Narrowing his eyes, he shook his head. “Then I don’t—”

“I am the goddess of wisdom. And of death, Freyr. It means I can slip beyond the veil. I can bring you back home. Once it is done, I will find you, and we’ll never have to be separated again.”

His fingers dug into her waist, and he yanked her down. She gave a tiny squeal of surprise. Her breasts smashed into his chest, and her arms were trapped between them, but he didn’t care how uncomfortable it felt. He needed her close, needed to feel her touch all over him.

“Are you sure? Can you really do this, Baba?”

“For you, I can do anything, Freyr,” she whispered, then wiggled just slightly so that her face was no longer partly smushed against his neck. She kissed him, and in their closeness, he felt the beating of her heart pound against his own.

“Phlegm will miss you,” she whispered, and a choked sort of laugh spilled off his tongue.

The sound was high and deep and rang out with both confusion and elation. Unshed tears gathered in the corners of his eyes, and heat clogged his throat. He didn’t want to say goodbye, not yet. Not ever. A lifetime wasn’t long enough with this woman.

“Isn’t it time we maybe consider calling the boy something else?”

She snorted.

And his laughter grew. “Though I suppose the mere fact that you continue to call me Fellatio means our poor boy is stuck with it, no?”

She patted his chest. “My lover knows me well.”

Trembling with both relief and anxiety, he held on until the sun came up. And when it was time to go, neither of them spoke a word. They simply let their kiss say what they could not.

Freyr looked at her as she stood in the doorway, bathed in the glow of sunlight, hair tousled and body enticingly nude. He prayed to the stars with all his heart and soul that somehow, someway his crafty woman could indeed defy fate and bring him back home.

He turned and left.

~*~

Baba Yaga

Baba wet her lips as she looked to both Phlegm and Balthazar for support. Today was the day. She’d felt Freyr’s death like a blade to the chest and had dropped to her knees, howling in pain as the tears took her.

Phlegm had wrapped his small arms around her neck and squeezed. “It’s okay, Mama. Papa’s goin’ come back home.”

Balthazar had wrapped the length of his cool body around waist and squeezed tight, giving her a hug in the only way he could. She’d clung to them both, frantic and dizzy. For the past twenty years, she’d prepared her mind, body, and soul to pierce the veil.

Her words had been big the night she’d promised Freyr that she could. True, she was the goddess of wisdom and death. The ability was there. But parting the veil between life and death was not easy. In fact, if she did it wrong, she could be trapped forever, alone, lost, never able to return, leaving Balthazar and Phlegm on their own.

Glancing at the two of them, she shook her head. “What if mummy can’t do this?” She whispered her fears for the first time.

But little Phlegm, who was so different from the man he’d once been in another life, shook his head. “My mummy can do anything. Bring my daddy home.”

Balthazar’s tongue flicked in and out as though he too agreed with Phlegm’s statement. And though it filled her with pride that her child loved her as he did, Baba did not feel at all that confident.

For the past fortnight, she’d attempted to part the veil, reaching only a hand through it, and though she had moved in and out with ease, the pain of simply passing one part of her body through had kept her awake for the past three nights, wracked with radiating bursts of agony through each fingertip.

Torn between desire and duty, she memorized the handsome contours of her son’s face. Phlegm, would grow up to be a fine man. He’d been taught by both she and Freyr. She’d even taught him a few spells. Her child would be powerful. What path he took in life would ultimately be his choice.

She’d once walked the darkness, and though she did not walk in the light now, she had found her way in the between, a place where she felt free and content, a place where she felt love.

Grabbing Phlegm’s chubby cheeks between her hands, she stooped. Now in crone form, moving wasn’t painless. No doubt, a great source of the pain she experienced from mucking around in the veil was because everything ached while in crone form. Today was her day to change back to maiden, but her spells and incantations were ten times more powerful as the crone. So she remained as she was for now.

“I love you, Phlegm, never forget that.”

He nodded resolutely.

Her smile wavered as a single tear dripped off her lashes. Ever the witch, she snatched up one of the empty vials she always kept on hand and held it up to her cheek to capture that stray tear. The tear of a witch was powerful magick. Capping it, she tossed the vial deep into Freyr’s pouch of goodies he’d left behind when he’d gone, and nodded at her familiar and child.

“Your Papa wanted me to give you a name, boy, a true, and proper name. One that meant something.”

Phlegm trembled, staring up at her with his starlit black eyes, and her heart melted in her chest. Even when Freyr wasn’t around, his impact could be felt everywhere. She’d never stopped to consider that maybe Phlegm hadn’t come to love his name as she had when she’d first laughingly named him. But it seemed even Baba Yaga was still capable of learning a thing or two.

“You’ll now be called Jerrick, which in Papa’s tongue means king forever.”

Jerrick’s smile was like the slow unfurling of a flower to the morning sun. His entire face transformed as he tasted the word over and over before nodding staunchly. “It is a good name, Mummy. I like it.”

“Good. That’s good.” Patting him lightly on the back, she nodded. “Wish me luck, then.”

Hugging him tight around her middle, so tight she almost couldn’t breathe, Baba endured the pain of bone rubbing against bone. If this was to be their last time together, she wanted there to be no regrets. When he stepped away, tears streamed down his face. But she knew he wouldn’t have appreciated her pointing it out. In temperament, he was just like his father.

Whoever his real father was, was of no consideration to Baba because Freyr was the one who’d raised him since infancy, and it was Freyr who the boy took most after. Jerrik laughed easily, teased often, and had the temper of the devil himself. He was also proud. A man didn’t cry—at least in his five-year-old estimation—so she pretend he wasn’t doing just that.