A Kiss of Flame (Shadows Eternal #3)

Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

B arith breathed in Levian's soft scent and grumbled in his sleep-heavy state. Memories of their evening together fluttered through his mind in blurred fragments. He smirked, recalling when she'd told him to kneel. Then came the memories of her soft skin, the sounds of her pleasure, their instinctive rhythm—it had been nothing less than magickal.

Delirious, Barith reached for her. His fingers met cool blankets. He reached further but didn't touch skin. The dragon popped open one eye and snarled in protest. The library curtains were open, filling the room with enough sunlight to make him want to roll over and bury his head under a pillow. Once his vision adjusted, he could see Levian wasn't in her little love nest, the chair, or the couch. Beatrice still sat atop the mantle, though. He propped himself up on his elbows and grumbled; the mage wasn't perched behind the vast table at the edge of the library with her usual stack of books either. Half-awake, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and ran his hand over the spot where she had lain beside him. It was very cool to the touch.

Dread filled his stomach, and a vivid memory snapped into his head. It was Beltane all over again—reaching out for Levian among the grass after their night of lovemaking, only to find she’d snuck away while he’d slept.

Barith rose, his heart thrumming faster. He knew he was being paranoid. She was likely in the shower, dressing, or had run out for something. But the sinking feeling settled deeper the more conscious he became; like he could feel her absence deep in his bones.

With a curse, he lumbered into the hall. A clatter echoed up the stairs from the kitchen below. Then another. Relief washed over him. Levian could barely be considered a living creature in the morning before she'd had her coffee. Barith rubbed his hands over his face, chuckled at his panicked response, and made his way quietly down the stairs toward the kitchen.

They needed to talk about many things, but the prospect didn’t loom heavy over him. He hoped they could at least enjoy a quiet morning together first. A bit of breakfast and some coffee sounded wonderful. Maybe a walk in the park if the weather wasn't too foul.

He turned toward the kitchen, hoping to find the mage as naked as himself. If so, perhaps breakfast could wait for a wee bit. Barith took in a breath, prepared to say something cheeky about their nudity, but immediately choked on his words when he came face to face with two of his sisters.

Catrìona, his second eldest sister, was about to open the fridge when she caught sight of Barith in all his naked glory. She immediately flew into a fit of snarled curses, clapping her hands over her eyes and begging the Goddesses to strike her blind. Barith cursed, too, snatching hold of his wing to cover himself, his skin flaming with embarrassment and fury. His youngest sister, Judith, sat at the small nook table holding a plate to shield her face, scolding him for walking around naked.

Suddenly, Barith felt sucked back into his youth when all his sisters would gang up on him, talking over each other until the noise was so deafening his brain rattled. Even just with two of them barking at him, his head began to pound, and he immediately felt like a right arse for walking about naked. At least until he remembered they were in his house, and he could do whatever the bloody Hells he wanted. "What the feck are ye doin' here?" he snarled at them.

Cat, who refused to drop her eyes from the ceiling, grunted, "Mum." It was enough of an explanation.

Barith growled and ran his free hand through his matted hair. “And how did ye bloody get in?" he demanded, still very aware that he needed to find Levian before his sisters did.

Cat snorted, turning her back to him to continue making the coffee she'd been attempting before he'd barged in. "Da gave Ember Hall to you, but I know how to find it and sneak my way in when I need to," she retorted. She poured some milk from the fridge into the collector, shoved in a pod, pushed the button, and the machine sprang to life, filling the room with the rich aroma.

All the McCroy children were between 3 and 50 years apart in age, but with their dragon heritage and Folk immortality, it was hard to tell. Their mother, Queen Eithne, had been blessed with a rare brood of bairns. Typically, dragons had one child, maybe two, if they were lucky. Never five. A blessing or a curse was still up for debate, depending on who was asked.

Jude found an apron left over from last Christmas hanging near the oven and tossed it to Barith. “For sun's sake, cover yourself before Cat scratches out her eyes!"

He took the apron with a grunt, turned it sideways, and wrapped it around his middle, tucking in a corner like a towel until his essential bits were covered. His sisters grumbled in overdramatic relief and went about making their coffees.

Catrìona, the third-born of the McCroy brood and the second eldest daughter, was nearly as tall as Barith, with a shaved head and rippled with muscle. She was the strongest of his sisters, tough as nails, and full of more sass than a faerie queen holding court.

Barith cursed again, running his hands over his face. "So ye just decided to break into my house to check on me?" he growled. "Ye could have just called."

He scanned the kitchen for signs of Levian. Her usual half-eaten piece of toast and fancy coffee service were nowhere to be found. Barith fidgeted anxiously. Levian had to know his sisters were here if she was home, and it was only a matter of time before she fluttered in to confront them. The mage had only ever met his sister, Judith, and they were far from friendly.

His sisters weren’t the easiest creatures to get along with, and it didn’t help that dragons tended to be prejudiced and territorial. To his sisters, Levian was a friend who represented the self-indulgent life he’d abandoned his horde for. Barith just prayed the mage had run out to her favorite café a few blocks away to indulge in one of those new-aged coffee drinks she liked because he was not awake enough to deal with the blending of worlds and personalities quite yet.

"Plans have changed," Jude clipped, pushing Cat out of the way to make her own coffee.

The baby of the family, Judith, had inherited all of their mother's slender curves along with far too much of her critical personality. She was the smallest, the cutest, and the most likely to set Hades himself down a peg or two with a single scathing look.

A cup of black coffee appeared under his nose, and Judith glared at him. Her cute, wee face was marred with more than its typical amount of severity. "We need to leave in a quarter-hour. Get dressed,” she ordered.

Barith took the coffee as Cat threw open cabinets and complained about how little there was to eat in the house. He let out a huff of irritation and tried to steady himself. He was under-slept and had woken, hoping to have the day with Levian—maybe to make love some more, eat a proper meal, and then eventually get to the serious topics of what this all meant and when they should plan to visit Merlin. He had not planned on being forced to deal with his two most overbearing sisters before he’d even gotten the chance to have a wee.

"I'm not going home," he declared flatly. Jude’s eyes narrowed angrily.

Cat peeked at him from around a cabinet door. “Ever or just today?” she probed, her tone sharp and biting. It was a subtle but clear jab at how long he’d been away from the horde over the last several centuries.

Barith grumbled again. He was too bloody tired for this. "Mum gave me two weeks, and I still have five days left," he clarified. "Tell the Queen she'll have to manage without me." Whatever this was about, his mother would manage—at the moment, all he was worried about was Levian returning unawares and being forced to deal with his unhinged sisters.

Jude grunted almost precisely as he did and threw her long, silky, auburn hair over her shoulder as she made her coffee. "Ye think mum cares how many days ye have left?" she clipped as if he were daft. "And we did try to call yesterday, but ye didn't answer."

Barith was surprised to hear it but remembered he'd left his phone upstairs in his room. He'd not bothered to take it to Kamár since newer technology rarely worked in enchanted places. If they had called, it couldn't have been more than twelve hours ago, which wasn't nearly long enough for his mother to send his sisters after him. Not that his mother cared about what might or might not be rational.

"Why?" he demanded, crossing his arms over his chest. Based on their demeanor, it was clear no one was dying or dead.

Cat stuck her hand directly into a box of his favorite chocolate cereal. "It's a feckin’ mess," she snapped before shoving several dry puffs into her mouth and talking through her crunching. "Mum's deal is starting to go foul right here at the end, and she wants to remind the Ceanadach horde who has the upper hand. Ye being absent during your courting isn't exactly putting on a good show."

"My courting is nothing but a show," he reminded them bitterly.

Jude turned to look at him, and he couldn't help but tense under her scrutiny. "What if it is?" she challenged, her blunt words striking him deeply. "The point is, mum—all of us—need you back home. The horde needs you back home. Ye've spent centuries faffing about, doing whatever suited you, and mum left ye alone, but this is your duty, Barith. Yer a dragon and a McCroy—even if it doesn’t seem like ye wanna be either anymore.”

The shots landed square in his chest like a perfectly shot arrows. Cat stopped mid-chew, raising her brows in surprise, waiting to see how he would respond. Barith's blood began to boil as he glared down at his little sister, who merely glanced up at him as if he were nothing more than a pants-less worm.

Barith had long accepted that he wasn't exactly like other dragons. He didn't eat, sleep, breathe, and bleed solely for his horde and its legacy. Most dragons didn't care to leave the comfort of their hordes or venture out into the world unless they had to. He doubted all four of his sisters had spent more than a year outside his homeland over their lives. Being accused of hating who he was always stung, but he was beyond being goaded into retaliation anymore. He knew who he was, even if his family didn't.

"If the agreement has gone foul," he told Jude, trying to be reasonable, "there's nothing I can do to fix it. Callum Ceanadach knows what he's signing up for, and if he and his horde have changed their minds, that's on them. I think the deal is all shite anyway.”

Cat choked on her cereal, and Jude's face lit with restrained shock. "I knew ye haven't— cough —said that to Mum's face," Cat managed to get out between wheezes. Of course, Barith hadn't. He wasn't an idiot.

"It doesn't matter what ye think," Jude declared, little sparks flaring from her mouth. "Ye need to come home. Your Queen demands it." A cold chill ran up Barith’s spine.

There had been a day a long time ago when their mother had said the same thing to him: Your Queen demands it. It was also the day he'd left the horde, unsure if he'd ever return. His mother, Queen Eithne, had been angry, and she’d hurled her status at him like a weapon to force him to do something she knew would cause him pain. He hadn't been her son in that moment—just a subject. And as a good member of the horde, he'd done what she’d asked; then he'd left. She hadn't tried to stop him. They'd barely spoken for centuries after, and even now, their relationship was strained.

Barith took one hulking step forward and glowered down at Jude. "The Ceanadachs aren't fools," he told her, still trying to make her understand. "They want to join our horde as equals, and the queen will never let them as the agreement stands now. Callum wants assurances, and he's willing to make her squirm to get them. She wants this too bad, and he knows it."

His mother had the higher ground regarding sheer numbers and wealth, but dragons were dragons—stubborn traditionalists with a propensity to be greedy. Callum, the leader of the Ceanadach horde, knew his mother wanted the deal done, and he was going to squeeze her for whatever he could get at the last minute, just because he could.

"It would be for the good of both our hordes," Jude snarled, sounding far too much like their mother. "If the Ceanadach can't see that, they are fools!"

Jude was brilliant and far more involved than any of his other sisters, save Flòraidh, in the politics of their horde. But she suffered the same flaw as the others: they were too deep to see the whole picture. Blending their hordes would mean they would have one of the largest hordes out of all the dragons, but for what purpose?

Barith had questioned the deal and its value in passing to Flòra and several of his mother's advisors—none had paid him any attention. He'd spent too long away from the horde to have a voice. All he was suitable for was to fulfill his duty and mate like a good little dragon lad, just as his Queen and mother demanded and tradition dictated.

He breathed long through his nose to steady his rising pulse. "The blending of hordes is pointless," he said outright. "None of the Folk give two shites about our traditions, infighting, and archaic politics. We might as well be dinosaurs. The only way the Fae, the mages, or any of the others will take us seriously is if we finally put all our petty shite aside and form a proper alliance. Not just between hordes, but between dragons like we had in Sylth?a."

Sylth?a, or the Other Lands, was inaccessible to humans. It was a place that existed like a parallel world to the mortal realm. At one point, the dragon hordes had been parts of a larger tribe that had shared those lands with the fae, but over time and war, petty squabbles, and land trading, the dragons had all but lost any claim to their native lands in Sylth?a. The tribe had ceased to exist, and the hordes had all fractured across the mortal world. Sylth?a was now entirely in control of the fae as it had been for long centuries.

"Sylth?a?" Cat snorted. "You’ve been spending too much time out in the world, brother, if ye think we're ever going to have a dragon utopia.” It grated how quickly his sister pushed the idea aside like it were some childish pipe dream. “Just come home,” Cat continued, “and get mum off our backs, mate with the Ceanadach woman, and we can all go on with our lives, hm?"

"You marry her," Barith snarled back before thinking.

Cat narrowed her gaze at him and slammed her cereal box on the counter. "Is that what this is about?" she snarked. "Why yer running off again? Ye don't like the lass?"

Barith's blood began to pound in his skull. It was like he was talking to a bloody wall. "That's not the damned point," he hissed.

"It is the bloody point," Jude declared, glaring daggers at him. “We all know how much ye hate the idea of tradition, but you and Sera Ceanadach will be the first to be mated under our blended banners. At least yer mating will mean something to the horde.”

Cat grunted in agreement. "Aye, the rest of us will probably be mated off to other Ceanadachs just to sweeten the pot. Mum's already in talks for Flòra and me."

His stomach turned. He hadn't thought his mother would make such quick work of mating off his sisters. He'd hoped she'd be satisfied with him for at least a little while. But this was the way of things, and the flippant nature in which Cat talked about being mated spoke as much. It was tradition, expected, and they all knew it—so what was the point of hoping for anything more?

"This isn't just about you," Jude reminded him sternly. "It's about all of us. It's time to be done with this, once and for all. It's time for ye to come home."

“Yer just mating the lass,” Cat added as if it would ease him. “It’s not a death sentence.”

Barith swallowed his rebuttals like glass. His mother had always accused him of being a hopeless romantic, too much like his father. It was why he’d always hoped to find his true mate. He’d seen how his father and mother had held love for each other but had never truly been in love. It was the way of things for dragons. And maybe he was a selfish bastard, but he wanted more than a comfortable arrangement, even if his sisters didn’t. He wanted to give his mate more than a lifetime of passive love while he distracted himself with lovers on the side, as was customary on both sides. He wanted real love. True love.

"Skaal'Syr en'Rhaelor," Cat said in draconic— Blood of the Sun and Sky. The mantra of their horde was meant to soothe, but all it did was make his heart ache and his blood surge with anger. Jude said the mantra, and Barith felt forced to follow suit, as was the custom.

Barith looked at his sisters and felt he was being torn in two. There was the world he’d been born into and the world he’d found all on his own. He loved his family more than anything, and he loved being a dragon, but he wasn't sure if he was ready to give up himself simply because tradition and his Queen demanded it.

Over the last few weeks, Barith had begun to understand the fears that had loomed heavily over him back home. It wasn’t simply that he was stressed and felt nothing for Sera Ceanadach; it was what she represented. Mating with her would be the end of the life he’d created for himself, and he was afraid if he gave in, he’d spend the rest of his days regretting it. Barith felt the shame of his selfishness, and it was that shame that had kept him silent. Maybe before last night, he might have returned home, swallowed it all, and given in, but now—he couldn’t.

Barith did not intend to do as he was told, but he knew his sisters wouldn’t leave, and he needed to talk to Levian. He needed to understand what last night had meant to both of them. “Give me twenty minutes," he grumbled before he dipped out of the room, happy to get a breath free of the oppressive judgment of his sisters.

Bits of clothes, makeup, and other sundries were spread about Levian’s large room downstairs, but she was nowhere to be found. Barith shot upstairs to his room, slamming the door behind him, and immediately snatched his phone from his bedside table. There were missed calls, messages from his sister Flòra, and one from Gwen—nothing from Levian. He was about to call her when he noticed a paper neatly folded atop his bed covers.

His determination to find her was washed away in an instant—the strange sense of foreboding he'd had when he’d woken up and found her missing returned tenfold. His heart began to race as he hesitantly picked up the note; the sapphire necklace she'd wagered him lay beneath. Barith's stomach filled with dread as he reluctantly opened the note. Levian's neat, swirling handwriting glared up at him, but all he saw were blurs of ink. Unsteady, Barith sat at the foot of his bed and took a deep breath before focusing on it again.

Dearest Barith,

Your friendship has meant so much to me, and I’ll forever be grateful for our time together, but I can’t let you put yourself at risk despite what we agreed with the Eldreth. I know you’ll be angry, but let us part with one last beautiful evening of memories. It’s time for you to return home, where you’re needed.

You’ve held Beatrice this long, so I know you’ll take great care of her. Maybe someday I’ll get the chance to win her back again. Until then, I wish you well, Barith, and pray that the Goddesses will bless you and your mate with all the love you desire.

Your friend always,

Levian

Barith crunched the paper in his hand and threw it, as his heart seared like it was being singed with hot pokers. He buckled over, laying his arms on his knees, and glared at the sapphire necklace laid delicately over his dark bed covers. Raw anger and devastation fought within him like raging titans.

After their night together on Beltane, he'd struggled to pretend like what they'd shared had been nothing but a fling fueled by the celebration. But he'd swallowed his disappointment. Levian was dear to him, and he hadn't wanted a single night of passion to muck up their friendship if she wasn't interested in anything more. Plus, he’d known how she was.

Levian had lovers, but the mage had never been one to fall in love. Barith wasn't sure he'd ever seen Levian in love. She loved her friends and cared for people deeply, but romantic love wasn't something she'd ever seemed interested in, which was why he'd tamped down his desires long ago and let it go. He knew it would be a fool's errand to try and capture her heart, so he hadn't tried.

Last night had been different. It had been more than a passionate embrace fueled by exhaustion, nostalgia, and lust. It had been honest and raw. He’d felt her magick, the way she’d trembled, the tenderness of her touch.

Barith stood, pacing along the foot of his bed. He’d always known he held love for the mage as his friend, but last night, it had become clear how deeply he truly loved her. He’d felt the walls she kept so tightly built around herself come down, and he’d let his down too. It was confusing, and he had no idea what in the Hells it meant, but he loved her. And she’d left—vanished—with only a few scribbled notes on a sheet of paper, as if it would even begin to be enough.

A flicker of memory came to him, of their night together. Their bodies tangled, and how the words of love he’d been so desperate to say had been on his lips but hadn’t formed. How their magicks had intertwined, and in one brief moment, Barith had felt not just himself but as a part of her.

He growled, unable to do much more as he hauled deep, steadying breaths into his lungs. One of his sisters yelled up the stairs at him, but he barely comprehended.

Desperate and angry, he threw on clothes—mindlessly knocking over bits and bobs as he did—shoved on a pair of boots, grabbed what little currency he could scrounge from drawers, and snatched the sapphire necklace. After he’d tucked his phone into his back pocket, Barith stalked over to the glass doors that led to the shallow balcony off his room and threw them open. The cold, damp air rushed around him but did nothing to lighten the fire raging within him.

It’s time for you to return home, where you’re needed.

Maybe he should go back to the horde as she’d told him and as his mother and honor demanded, but as he peered out the window, Barith knew one thing for certain—the island and his horde were not his home.

“Dammit, Vi,” he grumbled, his heart pounding violently.

His sisters would be furious, and sneaking out was probably cowardly, but he didn’t rightly care. Levian had chosen to leave, but he’d be damned before he’d tuck his tail and let her slip away. Not before she got a chance to hear him out. Not before he could look into her eyes one last time and make sure he hadn’t imagined everything between them. Not if there was even the slightest chance she could truly love him.

“Ye cannot outrun this,” he whispered into the wind to Levian, wherever she was. She couldn’t outrun him, he thought before he took to the sky.