Queen of Stars and Shadows (Dark Fae Guardian #3)

Sarielle

Chapter Twenty-Four

Sarielle

I spin and flail as I fall through the sky. As I drop, I catch flashes of snow-capped mountains. The air is cold, cutting into me like blades.

At least, if this is my end, I am back home where I belong.

There’s a whoosh and a brush of magic, and Zyren knocks into me, his shadow wings flaring out behind him. We slow slightly, though I can tell his hold on his magic is tenuous. He steers us toward the closest mountain peak, and we land hard in the snow, Zyren crushing me against him to break my fall. We skid across the snowy plateau, finally coming to a stop.

I suck in deep lungfuls of icy air, trying to stop the racing of my heart. The fall hasn’t settled my nightmare in the least. If anything, my brush with death has made her even more rambunctious. Zyren climbs to his feet and stalks away from me. I roll over, pushing up onto my knees and then staggering to my feet. Pain lances through the wounds on my leg and shoulder, but I have too much adrenaline pumping through my veins to care.

“We could have taken them!” I yell. “You let our enemies escape!”

He spins, fury on his face, his eyes black as the sky. “Me? Are you crazy? Don’t you ever do that again, Sarielle.” His voice is a deep growl, and his shadows spin in agitation.

I stalk toward him. “I do not take orders from you, Zyren. I am the Queen of Nightmares . I do not show mercy to my enemies!”

In the light of the moon, he is dark and glorious, his bare chest covered in streaks of black blood, his hair tangled from the wind. He looks absolutely livid, and anyone else would shake in fear at the sight of him.

As I close in on him, he strides toward me, lithe like a jungle cat. “Neither do I,” he snarls.

We meet in a crash of magic and skin and tangled tongues. Zyren picks me up and tosses me backward into the snow, and a moment later he’s on me. I lean forward to meet him, wrapping my legs around his back, and he yanks off my tunic in one swift movement, hurling it off a few feet away. I hiss as the snow bites into my bare skin, a pulse of pleasure and pain racing through me.

He claims my mouth until I can’t breathe, but I don’t need oxygen when I have him this close to me. He is my breath, my blood, my magic. I work at the buckle of his pants and yank them down, releasing the substantial length of him. He kicks out of his pants and buries himself into me with a yell and a surge of shadows that flare out against the crystalline snow.

I suck his lower lip into my mouth as he thrusts in again, teasing gently with my teeth until I taste blood. He shudders and enters me yet again, and bursts of lights begin to form behind my eyelids, pleasure spiking through my body until it feels almost as if I have no body, as if I’m made of the sky and the mountain. Of mist and shadows.

That wild, dark magic within me growls, and my nightmare surges within me. I rake my nails down Zyren’s back, pulling him closer, bucking my hips up to take him deeper, deeper, deeper. He growls in response and thrusts harder, kissing down the side of my neck, biting along the soft flesh and sinking his teeth into my shoulder. I cry out as my bliss begins to unfold.

With a twist, I roll to the side until I’m on top. Zyren sits up, crushing me against his chest as I straddle his lap. I roll my hips viciously, grinding against him. Zyren lets out a moan and buries his face in the side of my neck. I flex my hips again and again, letting out my own cry as the song within me threatens to release. I fling my head back toward the night sky, moving faster and faster.

When Zyren bends his head and flicks his tongue over my nipples, I am gone.

My cry pierces the night, and his joins me as I continue to rock against him, riding the wave of my ecstasy as we dissolve into each other, becoming nothing but heat and magic, the sweet death I’d been craving finally satiated.

We collapse against each other, the night blazing despite the ice and snow. I listen to Zyren’s heart, and the rise and fall of his chest as he draws air. I feel the slickness of our bodies against each other, and the recession of our nightmares as they retreat in a soporific fashion. In that stillness, that fuzzy space I exist in before my senses fully return to me, I have a realization.

“Have we done that before?” Zyren asks, interrupting my thoughts, voice husky, breathless. He kisses the side of my neck, sweetly this time, and leans back and looks at me.

“No,” I say, a small smile tilting my lips. “That was new. We’ve never… let go quite as fully as that. With our nightmares.”

He returns my smile, and kisses my lips once, twice, soft as feathers. “I like making new memories with you.”

“Me, too.” And saying it doesn’t even make me sad this time.

I don’t want to, but I climb to my feet, gathering my tunic from the ground and tugging it on over my head. My feet carry me to the edge of the peak we’re standing on, and I stare out over the vista before me. There’s nothing but mountaintops for miles and miles, as far as I can see.

“It looks like the Forever Mountains,” I say when Zyren steps up next to me.

He nods. “Yes. See that peak over there? That’s Tyrlornian , Sky’s Blade. The highest mountain in Valaron.”

“And where is the Court of Nightmares from here?”

“About two hundred miles north.” He points past Tyrlornian into the distance.

“We need to go there.”

Zyren blinks. “Do you have a plan?”

“Yes, I know what I need to do now.” Zyren watches me patiently as I take in a deep breath. “I may not have my full powers back, but I don’t need them to challenge Avonia. What I need is to command the nightmares.”

“But how can you do that with weakened magic?”

I shake my head. “Partnering with my nightmare for survival made me realize—it was never about the strength of my magic. It’s about my connection with my own nightmare. I should have realized when I read my family’s book. My mother told me not to fear my darkness. Most of the queens who came before me didn’t have nightmare blood, and those who did suppressed it, like I’ve been doing.”

He raises his brows. “So you think you can command them if you let your nightmare out?”

“It’s not about letting her control me, or me controlling her. It’s about balance.” I place my hand on his arm. “The nightmares never bowed to any queen before because they didn’t respect any of them. Even Astherius I barely got within my control, and I could never have enough power to control all of them like that.”

“But most of the nightmares are horrors, murderous and deadly. You really think they’ll obey you?”

I shrug. “I don’t need all of them to obey me. Just enough to stop Avonia and put things back to where they should be.”

Zyren’s storm-colored eyes flicker. “I don’t have faith in the nightmares. But I have faith in you. And I would follow you to the ends of the earth if you asked me.”

I lean in and brush my lips over his. “Thank you.”

“But it’s going to take us weeks to get all the way to the Court of Nightmares from here,” Zyren says with a frown. “By then, Avonia and the demon will have destroyed everything.”

I smile. “We’re not going to be traveling by foot.”