A Baron of Bonds (Conduit of Light #2)

33. Rev

Chapter 33

Rev

Moonlight streamed across the wooden floor of the room, spilling from the balcony window in a silvery haze.

I sat on the edge of the bed, running my fingers through my hair and gasping for breath. My dreams were not always as pleasant as my waking moments.

Karus said I was still healing, and she couldn’t be more correct. When she had been gone for sixteen days, I could barely sleep. I had kept myself so busy in the search for her that I would pass out in a dreamless doze for only a few hours each day.

Now that I had her back, the nightmares would commence again. They had plagued me for seven years, each one filled with either the terror of losing what was right in front of me, or the torture of having back what I needed most in this world and could lose again.

I rose from the bed, carefully slipping into my pants, not bothering with a shirt. Karus slumbered deeply, her arms still spread in the shape of my body. She had clung tightly to me since passing out after my trek across every one of her curves.

I hadn’t slept long according to the clock on the mantle, the fire below it mere cinders now.

“ Incendo ,” I murmured, quietly slipping another log into the flames.

I walked to the balcony doors, careful not to wake her, though I knew she slept deeply after the two night we’d just had.

I stepped out into the cool night air. The sweat from my nightmare chilled my skin instantly, and I regretted not grabbing a shirt after all.

But the slight breeze was a welcome jolt back to a place where I could focus my thoughts.

I didn’t know what the Queen would say.

I didn’t know what decisions we’d be left with.

I didn’t know the Blightress’s intentions with Felgren or the world, let alone the woman I was bound to.

All I really knew was what I had and what I was going to keep.

I wanted to move on, move forward, and no longer dwell on what we’d been through. I wanted to train my channelers and seek solutions to the hard lives people lived in the Hallow Marshes. I wanted to conduct the conduit trials in one more year and have four new conduits. I wanted to do my duties as Baron of Felgren with Karus by my side as my equal. I wanted babies, and laughter, and joy. I wanted to train multiple groups of channelers at a time.

With Karus’s help as a Baron, we could do it. She wanted to take the conduit trials even though they’d be trivial for her. She only needed to pass one to become a conduit, and I suspected she’d pass all four. But the most important trial would be the Baron Trial. If she could get through that, she’d have the choice to accept the Baronship with me.

I couldn’t move back time. I couldn’t move it forward either, but I once again found myself wishing I had that power.

I bent forward, gripping the metal rail of the balcony, watching the street below. The orange glow of the tented lights along the street looked warm and welcoming as my mind raced through what I would have done differently—what my life and Karus’s would be like now if her mind had never fogged, and if her memories had stayed.

It would have been seven years of love, and fights, and bliss. What kind of conduit would she have become? What kind of Baron would I have been?

Impossible to say, but I knew that what we’d been through had at least provided us with strength. And perhaps, in some small comfort, that would be enough for us to get through whatever our future together held.

“You’re spiraling.”

By the heart of Felgren , her voice was beautiful.

No, that wasn’t the right curse to replace by the Blightress , but I’d keep trying.

I turned my head, still leaning against the rails, not ready to go back inside and try to sleep again. “Sorry I woke you.”

She gave me the slightest shake of her head, her skin pale in the soft half-moon light. Her nightgown hugged her chest and hips in such a way that I didn’t mind the nightmares if it meant she came to comfort me looking like this.

“I didn’t hear you. I felt you.” Her eyes flickered over my bare chest and she turned, running back inside. She returned moments later with a cornflower blue quilt bundled in her arms.

“Not a shirt?” I asked.

She silently shook it out, grabbing the corners of each end and letting the cotton fly in the breeze. She draped the quilt over my shoulders and pulled each end down, slipping her body inside our cozy bundle.

“I can’t get this close to you with a shirt.” She took a deep breath at my neck, her lips gently brushing against the stubble left at my chin before she settled herself there, humming our song, The Sun and the Moon .

I didn’t want to say anything.

I didn’t want to listen to anything but the gentle hum of her voice and feel the warmth of her breath at my neck.

We swayed as the moon lowered in the sky, my arms wrapped around her, pulled to my chest on a balcony in the place she was born, but not the place she belonged.

“There you go again,” she scolded, lifting her head and wrapping her free hand at the base of my cheek. “Will you tell me what you’re thinking?”

I sighed, kissing her forehead and mumbling into her hair, “It’s everything. Everything we’ve gone through, everything I want for our future. It feels like we’re at a pinnacle, Karus. It feels like…” I trailed off, not wanting to say it aloud. “It feels like the only thing left is to lose what I’ve gained.”

I wrapped my arms tighter around her, pulling her body so that all of her bare skin, all of her silk nightgown, brushed against me. “If I can stand here with all I’ve ever wanted, all I’ve ever needed, doesn’t that mean that the only thing I have left is to lose it?”

“And what would Baron Revich of seven years ago say to that?”

“Baron Revich of seven years ago had not yet lost.”

“But look at what he gained.” She pulled her head out from under my chin and traced a finger along my brow. “You said I couldn’t go back. You said I need to move forward, and the same goes for you. We don’t dwell. We don’t do anything but learn from our mistakes and move forward. I am happy. I am loved, and I love you, Rev, with more power and strength than I was capable of before. No more spiraling. No more nightmares. You wake from them, you wake me. Your thoughts run down a path that leads to the darkest of nights, you take me with you. That is how you heal.”

She jabbed a finger at my chest.

“Ouch,” I chuckled.

“You breathe, I breathe. You live, I live, and you don’t get to have it just one way, oh, beautiful Baron of Felgren.” She shook her head in a defiance of any thoughts I may have had at keeping my pain to myself. “You heal, I heal. We do all of this together. Your decisions are my decisions, too. You cannot explain all of this to me and then go off on your own to dwell on what could have been or what pain you still could face.”

Ah, she was turning my words back on me now. Clever, clever woman.

Correct woman, perfect woman, talented woman…my thoughts trailed as I wrapped my hands, now warm, across her neck, cupping her jaw and lifting her head to meet my lips with hers.

I kissed her in reverence and desire. Her lips parted and her tongue brushed mine as time slowed. My thoughts found a path and headed straight for it. This was perhaps the only time I could control time.

Right here, with her mouth pressed to mine, the world slowed to a standstill until we were done. Until we had exhausted our physical bodies, our souls never quite satisfied to an end.

“Karus?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you warm enough?”

“Not nearly enough. Got any ideas?”

“More than a few.”

“Revich, I swear, if you go slow this time, I’ll unravel into insanity.”

I laughed and brought a cup between us from inside, wisps of my magic holding it in the air.

“We were so clever to make this tea in a batch ahead of time.” She gulped half the cup, her eyes daring me to do everything she knew I wanted to.

I finished the rest and sent it back to the table through the open doors, lifting her nightgown and pulling on her legs to wrap around me.

“ Caloren .” Warmth bloomed around us on the balcony as I carried her to the wall of the inn. The quilt fell from my shoulders, and I adjusted it to cover her back.

I held her there against the stone, taking my time to rearrange the quilt so that she would not be scratched.

She quirked a brow.

“What kind of a companion would I be if I let your skin break against a stone wall while loving you?”

“I’d almost think you’d planned this.”

“What can I say? I am a careful man, Karus.” I pulled the quilt higher up her back and around her shoulders. What I had planned to do to her that autumn night in the top room balcony of the tallest inn, I planned to do without needing to stop for comfort adjustments.

The heat from my magic enhancement only added to the flush I felt as the azure trails of warmth spread between us in a luxurious haze.

I held her against the wall and began.

Her legs wrapped around me, and I pressed my hips into her, hard, helping keep her off the gray stone floor. I smoothed the hair off her shoulders with one hand, the other tucked underneath her. My fingers traced the skin of her neck, following her collarbone until I hooked a finger under one of the delicate straps of her nightgown.

She watched my face with building hunger as she followed to the other side and we both lowered one strap down, down, until the top of her gown gathered at her waist. She brought her arms up around my neck, and I took a moment to just look at her.

How many times had we done this since we’d bonded?

I’d heard of the companions’ leave of course. It was well-known that after a bonding, the couple often went away for a few days to settle in. I had not quite realized that this was what the settling was really about.

“At least six.” She rasped and then cleared her throat, reading my face. “This will be our seventh.”

“And for you? How many times have you come over or under me?”

She bit her lower lip and tilted her head upward. I swallowed and waited.

Cocking her head to the side she said, “I’d guess maybe eleven? Twelve?”

“Aren’t you exhausted?”

“No.” She shook her head and slid her hands back down my chest, slipping a finger into the waist of my pants. “No, I’m not.”

“Alright. Let’s see if we can get to fourteen.”