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Synopsis
On a mysterious snowy island ruled by a trickster king where magic comes at a price, a deadly trial commences. The prize: a chance for vengeance.
After her sacrifice on the Ember Moon, Fia is flush with powerful magic and eager to rush into battle against her murderous sister, Eala. However, Fia’s new husband Irian suggests they bide their time and retreat to the Silver Isle, a snowy island at the edge of the fae world.
Ruled by the cunning smith-king, the Silver Isle proves far from a safe haven. Fia and Irian become embroiled in the Tournament of Kings competing for a magical forging of immense power. Their relationship will be put to the test as they navigate their conflicting motivations, shifting allegiances, and ancient magic.
With the end of the tournament looming and Eala’s threat growing, Fia must decide just how much she’s willing to sacrifice to defeat her sister.
Release date: January 21, 2025
Publisher: Orbit
Print pages: 448
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A Crown So Silver
Lyra Selene
I sensed the stones beneath their boots that clutched fragments of afternoon’s warmth.
The stubborn weeds growing upward through sand and shale, crushed beneath their careless boots.
The rich muck at the edge of the lough… its pondweed and algae and stiff reeds guarding minnows.
The trees at the edge of the wood, reaching leafless branches toward the interlopers.
I leaned forward, nerves and anticipation braiding up my spine like knotty vines. The trees whispered around me. The green-blue stone above my breast throbbed, sending a coil of leafing warmth through my veins. My hands twitched toward my skeans.
“Colleen.” Irian’s whisper was hoarse with unease. “Easy.”
I looked up at him. His silver eyes glittered in the dim, intent on my face. He hadn’t wanted me to attend this negotiation tonight. It had been a week since I’d splashed to life in the middle of the lough, coughing black water as I shed black feathers. Irian had wanted me to rest, to recuperate, to acquaint myself with the riot of new, powerful magic roaring through me—the magic I’d inherited from the Heart of the Forest, the lost Treasure of the Sept of Antlers.
But I felt fine. Better than fine—wonderful. Exquisite. Invincible. I felt like I could do anything. Birth forests on a whim, invent flowers that smelled like rain, bid the earth to open up and swallow whole fianna of Gentry warriors.
In retrospect, that was probably why Irian had wanted me to stay home.
“Easy,” he said again. “These fénnidi are the She-Wolf’s sworn men. I have let them into my domain under the strict geas of parley. Almha never hated me as much as the other bardaí—perhaps she can be reasoned with.”
Almha. I remembered that name from last year, when Chandi took me to the Feis of the Nameless Day. Almha was the so-called Silver She-Wolf, barda of the Elder Gate. But we did not know where her loyalties lay. In the five weeks since my adoptive sister, Eala, had sacrificed the hearts of her swan maidens for control over the Gates, many of the bardaí had fallen under her influence. Some because of the potent geasa Eala had wrought with unthinkable magic. Others had joined her of their own free will, eager to wage war on their Folk rivals… or the human realms. From what Irian had learned, Eala now commanded seven out of the thirteen Gates. Not counting Irian himself, that left five bardaí whose loyalties remained either neutral or opposed to Eala.
Almha was one of those. But I couldn’t help but shiver as I watched her warriors approach. At first glance, they were merely Folk Gentry. But in the waning moonlight slicked over their tall, muscled forms, they appeared more grotesque. The pelts of wolves ruffled over their backs and shoulders, tufts of fur fusing to skin. Their faces seemed unnaturally elongated, scenting snouts smiling with rows of glittering white fangs. The breeze carried the stench of carrion in their wake; strange shadows snapped and scratched at their backs. Wrongness slithered up my throat and filled my mouth with grave dirt.
Almha and her fianna had tampered with wild magic; that much was obvious. And these warriors did not look like Folk who could be reasoned with.
“Wait here.”
Irian’s sharp command grated against my fervor, but he was already stepping out of the shadow of the forest, an arrow nocked on his drawn bow and his hood shadowing his features.
Sudden recollection tangled me up in memory as I watched his towering, menacing figure approach the intruders. This—this was how I’d met Irian, that fateful night over a year ago. He’d been terrifying and so beautiful I could hardly comprehend him. He’d thought me a ghillie, and I? I’d thought him a monster without equal. What had he said to me?
This is no place to be lost. Nor found.
My quiet, private laugh puffed pale vapor past my chilly lips. Would I have run from him, panic snapping at my heels, if I had known those words had not been a threat, but an unintended promise? For, in the end, I had lost myself in this place. And in the losing, found everything I had never known I was looking for.
Magic. Destiny. Home. Him.
Myself.
The She-Wolf’s fiann caught sight of Irian and halted, fanning out in an attack formation. I tucked my memories away, creeping closer to the edge of the trees. I wanted to be in earshot of this supposed parley. My skin still vibrated with the pressure of the fiann’s boots on the shore, even as my nostrils filled with their tainted scent.
I knew enough of violence to tell when warriors wanted to talk. And when they wanted to fight. But this was still Irian’s domain. So I’d let him figure that out on his own.
“Hello, She-Cub.” Irian’s voice was a knife, keen edged and savage. “You have… changed.”
The woman at the head of the fiann shifted her stance. Turned her head. Spat on the beach. Nearly as tall as Irian, she had long silver hair tied in complicated braids around her head. Her eyes—blackened with kohl—shone yellow in the dim. When she grinned, teeth thronged her mouth, long and white and sharp as a predator’s.
She-Cub. She must be the She-Wolf’s daughter. But in command of her mother’s fiann, she clearly wasn’t much of a cub anymore. If Irian wanted to keep this conversation civil, he had picked a fine point to start with.
Good. Thorns nettled through my veins, sharpening my pulse and bunching my muscles. Let them have their parley.
Then let us have our fight.
“As have you, Shadow Heir.” Her voice was a snarl. “Last time I saw you, you were a dead man walking. But you are quite talkative for a corpse.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” The hardness of his voice belied his easy stance. “As you see, I am restored. As are the boundaries of my realm. You are here at my pleasure, She-Cub. If you have terms to offer me, speak them now.”
“Offer you?” She laughed, and her pack laughed with her—a baying, howling cacophony that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. “Things are changing in Tír na nÓg. You have never been heir to much, tánaiste. But now you are heir to nothing. We offer you survival. And the cost will be high.”
“Then you have thrown in your lot with the mortal princess.” Irian did not so much smile as bare his teeth. An echo of his hostility ripped through me, tinged with a sour flicker of resentment. Another Gate fallen to Eala. Another of the bardaí allied with my adoptive sister. My bright-haired, dark-hearted twin. My nemesis. “I knew you and your mother were willing to forsake much of what made you Gentry in return for power. But I never thought you’d betray your own kind for someone like her.”
Aggression buzzed through the fiann, raising furred hackles and sharpening fangs.
“Someone like who, Irian?” Almha’s daughter vibrated with fury. “Someone who would unite us lower-born Folk in a common cause? Rally us toward a common enemy? Help us take back the human realms, which should always have belonged to us?” Again, she spat. “It was more than the Septs ever did.”
“You are all always so quick to blame me for the sins of my parents.” Irian’s low laugh rang harsh. “This is not a feud we started, She-Cub.”
“And it is not one we must end tonight.” Almha’s daughter spread her arms in false placation. “We truly did not come to quarrel, Shadow Heir. Give us what we want, and we will let you live.”
“What could you possibly demand from me?”
“The changeling girl.” The She-Cub’s yellow eyes glittered. “The swan princess wishes to speak with her sister.”
Irian’s shoulders bulged. A stiff breeze swept suddenly down through the valley, ruffling the inky water of the lough and knitting ice along its shallows. Irian dropped the bow and drew the Sky-Sword in one smooth motion. The blade began to sing—a keening, heartrending complaint. My own Treasure responded, humming in antiphony. Emotion churned through me. Regret for who Eala and I could have been to each other, had we truly been raised as sisters. Resentment for how swiftly she had been able to rally Folk to her cause. Anticipation for the thrill of the fight.
And, perhaps, tonight—the promise of a kill.
“Gods alive,” Irian intoned, “I swear I will hang you upside down from your own intestines before I let you touch her.”
The She-Cub drew her own wicked blade. “Try.”
Parley over.
Oh well.
I stood up and strolled out into the light of the waning moon.
“While I do appreciate your inventive imagery, sweetheart,” I said, pitching my voice toward Irian, “I’m sure that’s not necessary.” The fiann of warriors turned at my voice, their lupine faces hungry. “You’re welcome to take me wherever you please. But you’ll have to come and get me first.”
“Fia.” Irian’s voice was rough, urgent. “Do not.”
But I already had. Tufted helms snapped down over gleaming yellow eyes. Blades rang from scabbards. The fiann started forward. Irian, too, turned. He sprinted back toward me, his dark hood falling away from his face. His opal eyes snagged on mine, jagged with… fear.
Surprise jolted me back a step. In all the time I’d known Irian, I’d never known him to be afraid. Not even the night of the Ember Moon—when I’d held the blade of his own Treasure against his neck and prepared to end his life—had he been afraid. Sorrowful, perhaps. Regretful, almost certainly. But never fearful.
But I didn’t have time to wonder what had frightened him—the She-Cub’s fiann was almost upon us. I sidestepped Irian as he reached for me. Whipped my twin skeans from my belt, swirled them around my fingers. Slid into a wide fighting stance. And stomped my foot.
My boot heel met the dirt with a sound like thunder. The ground—half-frozen in early winter’s grasp—convulsed. Mounds of loam and shale heaved upward like the death throes of a great dark beast. The warriors lifted with it, howling as they were thrown backward onto the rocky beach. Groaning, some of them managed to climb back to their feet on the shuddering ground. Others were not so lucky—the pondweed at the edge of the lough turned predatory, curling around ankles and wrists. Dragging unsuspecting warriors down into the shallows.
I didn’t bother to count how many. It wasn’t enough—the She-Cub was back on her feet, staring murder from twenty paces away. With her were enough of her fiann to merrily drag me back to Eala.
But I had no intention of letting that happen. I took a few steps back, until the shadows of the forest caressed my back. I flicked one of my skeans at the She-Cub, beckoning. I smiled.
She growled. Then charged, what remained of her fiann falling into formation behind her. Beside me, Irian cursed, ripped off his mantle, and raised his singing sword.
We met the fiann with a clash. The She-Cub’s steel screamed against mine, the impact jarring me to the elbow. I cried out. But the powerful magic of the Heart of the Forest was already cooling the hot stab of pain that laddered my arms. Cushioning my bones. Filling my veins with the calm peace of summer forests.
But I didn’t need peace. I parried the woman’s strike, shoving her blade to the side. I kicked one of her knees, hard. It wasn’t elegant, but it worked—she stumbled off-balance, catching herself with the wicked tip of her claíomh in the dirt. Thorny vines sprang from the earth, swiftly twining around the blade. The She-Cub cursed and tugged at the hilt, but the briars made no distinction between steel and flesh. They whipped around her hands, her wrists, biting and piercing skin where they found it behind her armor. She yelled and jerked her arms away. Blood dripped scarlet down her forearms, staining the white fur lining the backs of her hands.
“I do not need a sword to best you, little changeling.” Her yellow gaze was violent. “And I’m afraid your sister never mentioned in what condition she wished you brought before her.”
She lifted her hands. Where before there had been fingers, there were now claws—brutally long and wickedly sharp. She slashed out at me. I dodged, whipped my blades up to guard my face. But she was fast and furious and unnaturally strong. She attacked me with the single-mindedness of a predator, her reflexes as swift and canny as a true wolf’s. It was all I could do to stay on my feet, let alone defend myself against the barrage of razored blows she rained down on me. I retreated. My heel caught a tree root. I went down, falling gracelessly onto my arse. I fumbled for my fallen blade, but she was too fast. One of her ruthless paws gripped the back of my neck, her claws scoring my skin. The other found the waist of my breeches.
She lifted me bodily above her head and flung me. For a moment, I hung weightless in the night. Then my back collided with a tree, knocking the breath from my lungs and sending blackness to tug at my vision. I slid, rough bark scraping lines of agony down my spine. I fell on my hands and knees in a cradle of roots. Broken bark and spiny needles and splinters of wood rained down around me.
“Finish him!” The She-Cub’s voice filtered through my ringing ears. “Then we take the girl and go.”
Shite. I forced myself to look up through the haze of pain. A few paces away, Irian toiled against three huge assailants. His sword was a halo of wailing blackness as he whirled and feinted and ducked and parried. My throat tightened at the sheer beauty of his skill—the finesse of his fighting never failed to impress me. But creeping worry mingled with my awe. Even he was beginning to flag, and for every warrior he cut down, there was another waiting to take their place.
I’d gotten us into this fracas. I would be the one to get us out.
My fingers convulsed in the litter of wooden splinters beneath me.
An idea green as leaf-glass coiled through my veins. I looked back at the tree Almha’s daughter had thrown me into—a juvenile larch, its soft lower branches now crooked and damaged from where I’d struck it. It might survive the insult; it might not. Regret slowed my decision, but I heard the She-Cub’s footsteps prowling toward me. She did not hurry—she thought me beaten. Which meant I had only a few moments to best her.
I looked down at my wrists, as I had so many times in the past week—at the tangle of unfamiliar brambles and slender feathers coiling toward my shoulders. It wasn’t hard to understand what the tattoos symbolized. Although the black ribbon and green vine Irian had used to handfast us were both long gone—lost beneath the Heartwood on that terrible, fateful night—they lived on in the markings we wore. In the last moments before I’d planned to take Irian’s life—and his magic with it—he and I had been wed. Our lives had been bound together, in black feathers and green thorns and spilled blood.
Neither of us could have guessed what would happen when I sacrificed myself, instead of him, to the Heartwood. I had died. I had been reborn. And now—now I was bound to the Sept of Feathers, by the promise of my human heart. Bound to the Sept of Antlers, by the promise of the Heart of the Forest. And bound to Irian in ways I was only beginning to understand.
I slid a finger over my wrist, gliding it along the edge of a sharp black feather.
“Irian,” I cried out.
His head whipped up. His raven hair—long enough now to kiss the nape of his neck—whirled around his ears as he looked for me. Across the melee his gaze fastened on mine, pale as the moon and sharp as a sword.
“Wind,” I screamed, and prayed he understood. “Give me wind!”
The breeze at my back gathered speed. I bent, laid my hands against the roots jutting from the ground.
“Sorry, friend,” I whispered to the tree in the moment before I shattered it.
The air exploded with shards of wood, splinters of branches, sharp corners of pinecones. The wind turned vicious, a sudden gale-force tempest lacerating the glen. Trees bent so far forward their branches touched the ground. White-foam horses raced across the lough. And a thousand blade-sharp splinters of larch whistled deadly toward the She-Cub’s fiann.
Not all found their mark. Some landed harmless on the beach or knifed into the calming lough. But when I dared look up, nearly all the warriors lay injured or dying on the beach. Many were blinded—they howled at a moon they could no longer see. Ragged punctures wept blood over pelts of white fur; uneven slashes mutilated faces. And Almha’s daughter—standing a few paces from me when the splinters flew—was dead, her throat ripped out by my vengeful magic.
“Colleen.” Irian fell to his knees beside me in the litter of needles and pinecones and splinters. He gathered me against him. I tilted my face up to his, letting him rain kisses on my cheeks. My forehead. My lips. I shuddered with adrenaline and relief and the comfort of his closeness. “You mad, wild, reckless thing. She could have killed you. And if not her, Eala.”
I wasn’t sure that was true. Nearly a year ago, Irian had said about his Treasure, It won’t let me die. In the same way, I didn’t think the Treasure now tethered to my heart, my soul—my very being—would let me simply die. And although I wasn’t sure what my adoptive sister wanted from me, I had to believe murdering me wasn’t top of her list.
“You can yell at me later.” I drew away from him, turned my attention toward the fiann of warped Gentry warriors writhing and dying on the beach. I didn’t regret what I’d done to protect myself, but this was… messy. Shards of wood had shredded skin, pierced bone, mangled muscle. Those who survived would be maimed or crippled for life. Those who didn’t would die long, agonizing deaths. Ravens would peck out their eyes; bone-foxes would feast on their flesh. “They don’t deserve to die like this.”
Irian stared at the destruction I’d wrought, his pale eyes opaque as the moon sliding behind the trees. Then he stood, hefting the midnight length of the Sky-Sword. Its carven metal was already stained with half-dried blood. “A swift death is the best mercy.”
“There’s no need.” I also stood, laying a forestalling hand on Irian’s arm. I glanced at the ragged stump of the larch I’d shattered, then back at the mangled fiann. “I started this. Let me be the one to finish it. Let the forest have them. At least then they might still live. In a way.”
I had barely thought it before it became so. The blue-green stone above my breast throbbed hard above my heart. Veins of green and brown blurred out from the edge of the forest toward the fallen warriors. The shards of larch wood embedded in their flesh—the needles and pinecones and splinters—burst to life. Rough brown bark crusted over their skin. Their bodies went rigid as wood. Their limbs split and fractured, fractal fingers becoming a thousand reaching twigs. The blood speckling the beach erupted into undergrowth—ferns and mushrooms and flowering vines.
Within moments, there were no remnants of the Silver She-Wolf’s fiann. Only the ravenous forest marching a little closer to the lough.
I turned toward Irian, sudden exhaustion tugging at my limbs. He folded me against him, sweeping the length of his discarded mantle around my shoulders. The edge of his jaw slid over my wind-tangled hair; his lips brushed the seashell of my ear.
“Am I allowed to start yelling at you yet?”
“You could.” My arms looped around his tapered waist. I slid one finger, then two, then my whole palm beneath the fabric of his shirt. He jerked at the touch, the ridges of his stomach flexing hot and hard beneath my palm. I smiled up at him. “If that’s what you want to do.”
He tilted his face down toward mine, closing what little gap remained between us. The waning moon had set, rendering the predawn darker than the night, and Irian’s features abstract. A dark, arching eyebrow. A sculpted cheekbone. His plush lips, lifting sideways over a polished canine.
“Not anymore, colleen.”
I looped my arms around his neck and drew him down for a searing, simmering kiss. He tasted like ice water and the hour before dawn. “Then hurry up and take me home, Sky-Sword.”
The night sky bent, churned, turned itself inside out around us. A momentary wave of dizziness. A brief, blistering urge to vomit.
Irian’s favorite mode of travel was my least favorite.
But as Irian had once promised, I was getting used to it. Or perhaps I was more focused on his fingers tangling in my hair and cupping the nape of my neck. His mouth dragging fire up the column of my throat. His hard body fitting against mine in a way that still felt deliciously new and irresistibly alluring.
His tower room was unlit save for the gray line of false dawn ringing his windows. We fumbled in the dark, tripping over discarded blankets and careless pillows. Three months ago, I had nearly Greenmarked his chambers to oblivion. Dried goldenrod and drooping asters brushed us as we stumbled toward the half-rotted mattress.
“Have you ever considered,” I asked, my voice a breathless whisper in the dim, “buying candles?”
“Have you ever considered, colleen,” he breathed back, “that I possess the enviable talent of being able to see in the dark?”
Proving his point, Irian bypassed the mattress completely, lifting me deftly over a row of cantankerous gorse bushes intent on ripping my trousers. My spine collided with the wall. Remembering how Almha’s daughter had thrown me into the larch, I hissed against anticipated pain. But none came.
“My back,” I gasped out. Irian froze, concern icing over his desire. I laughed, squeezing his bicep in reassurance. “No, I mean—it feels fine. Good as new. Yet another benefit of becoming a Treasure, I assume?”
“Accelerated healing is part of the package, yes.” He dropped his head beside mine, whispered his next words onto my throat. “But do not think yourself invincible, colleen. Burns or lacerations may knit up in hours. But deeper wounds can be unpredictable. Internal injuries may take far longer to heal, leaving you vulnerable.”
“So you’re saying I should avoid getting stabbed?”
His laugh ruffled my hair. “Please.”
Irian’s hands slid down from my waist to cup my rear. I hooked my legs around his waist. Wordlessly, he slid one hand down the length of my leg. Untied my boots. Nudged them off. Tossed them to clatter in the corner.
His hand on my chin was a question. I answered, tilting my face toward his and sliding my tongue over his bottom lip. He caught my mouth and kissed me deeply. Leisurely. As if now that he had me in his arms, he was in no hurry to do anything but enjoy me.
After a moment, he drew back. In the dim, his expression was a puzzle.
“Colleen,” he murmured. “I have something I wish to ask you.”
A giddy flush of nerves burned heat onto my cheeks. “Then ask.”
“Tonight, down on the beach.” He paused, as if searching for the right words. “Did you call me sweetheart for all the She-Wolf’s fiann to hear?”
Surprise made me still. Then I burst out laughing, laying my forehead against his shoulder and cackling into his chest.
“Did you not like it?” I finally managed.
“I liked it about as much as Beefswaddle,” he growled. “If you are to call me by a pet name, colleen, then I insist you choose something better.”
“Why?” I lifted my head, searching for his silver eyes in the dark. My hands found the sharp curve of his jaw. Traced the hollows of his cheekbones; the elegant angle of his eyebrows. “Do you object to being called my heart?”
“Never.” His fingers brushed over the Treasure at my chest, glowing faintly in the dim, then trailed lower. “I object to being called sweet.”
He unlaced my shirt deftly, each motion of his hands keeping time to the throb of my heart. The garment fell open, and he palmed my breast, brushing a sword-calloused thumb over one peaked nipple. I gasped, and he caught the sound with his lips, dragging his mouth over mine. His hand roamed lower, gliding over the plane of my stomach until it found the waistband of my trousers. He unlaced them with the same easy speed as my shirt. His hand glided hot between my legs, against my ready slickness.
His mouth dropped to my neck. He slid a finger inside me. Two. I closed my eyes and rocked against him, his touch burning heat through my veins. I moaned at the slippery ache coiling tight in my belly, and he made a sound deep in his throat. His fingers never stopped. I hooked my heel deeper into his back and let him drive me toward the edge—until I was gasping in his ear and digging my fingernails into his shoulders. Only then did I stop him with a hand on his wrist; a palm in the center of his chest. He stilled but didn’t take his hand from my trousers.
“Tell me, colleen.” His words rasped with desire. From the window, a marigold flush of dawn kissed his hard jaw. “Tell me where you want me.”
“You know.”
“Tell me anyway.” His plush mouth curved. “I want to hear you say it.”
A glittering thrill sped my heartbeat and bathed my spine in warmth. My gaze collided with Irian’s—in the rising light, motes of gold touched the silver of his irises.
“I want you inside me, Sky-Sword.” I reveled in the way my words transformed him. His pupils blowing dark in his metal eyes… his whole body going rigid… his mouth softening. “But slowly. I want you to fuck me until the morning comes.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. He tore his shirt over his head, slipped off our trousers, then lifted me back to the wall. My spine pressed against cold stone as my front molded to his marvelous muscular heat. His fingertips burned divots into my hip bones as he hooked my knee over his elbow… then pushed inside me, inch by glorious inch. Slowly—achingly slow. The sensation broke my control. I writhed against him, crying out as pleasure tangled sharp thorns in my core. Burned summertime heat up my back. Burst leafing green behind my eyelids. The wall at my back exploded with growth—an emerald corona of pillowy moss and creeping phlox and flowering vines. The masonry protested, stones groaning.
Irian smiled and slowed his movements further. Red winter sunlight slit through black branches and clawed for the windowsill. My breathing came rough and ragged. I arched my back, dug my fingertips into the spray of soft black hairs at the nape of his neck, wrapped my thighs tighter around his waist. I slid my tongue along his ear, nipping gently at the lobe.
“Irian,” I whispered. “The sun is almost up.”
He made that low sound in the back of his throat and drove so deep inside me stars shattered behind my eyes. He pushed me faster, although his movements never lost their precision. He fucked like he fought—methodically, gracefully, enthusiastically. His fingers brushed the side of my breast, his thumb drawing circles around my nipple. Renewed pleasure bloomed inside me.
Sunlight burst over the sill, crowning Irian in gold. His hand slid up the column of my throat, applying gentle pressure to my chin, until there was nowhere to look but at him. His eyes bored into me, losing their moonlit glow as they transformed with the morning. Blue as an azure sky ringed with gold, with a shadow of night lingering in their depths. I gasped, the intensity of our physical connection mingling with the overwhelming intimacy of his direct gaze. My breath rushed hot in my lungs. My back went rigid, and the wall behind us complained again.
Never breaking eye contact, Irian slid his hand down my stomach. His fingers again found the peak of my pleasure, slippery and hot. The barest touch pushed me over the edge. He held me as I shattered against him, whimpering and shuddering. Greenery whispered and convulsed on the wall behind me, raining fragments of stone and mortar onto our heads. Only then did Irian finally take his own pleasure, his movements turning relentless until he finished with one last heaving thrust.
The wall at my back shivered, splintered, then caved in. Crumbled stone and mortar and a thousand tiny white flowers showered down around us. Irian cursed as he cupped the back of my head and twisted me around, shielding me from the detritus with his body. I yelped, flailed. We both lost our balance. We collapsed onto the edge of the flowering mattress, which in turn disintegrated in a puff of pollen and dried flowers. We fell with a thump onto the floor.
“Colleen!” Irian’s voice was rough with concern. “Are you all right?”
I brushed dried petals out of my eyes and looked up at him. Motes of golden dust danced around his face, contorted with worry. I looked beyond him, at the crumbled wall and the rising dawn and the botanical mayhem. Then I was laughing, choking on pollen. I buried my face in his shoulder, giggling with absurdity and joy and the afterglow of pleasure.
“You are mad, colleen.” Irian dragged his mantle from our tangle of clothes. He curled it around my shoulders as he tucked me close into his chest.
“Wonderfully mad.” Exhaustion pulled at my eyelids. “Right?”
“Yes.” His smile dazzled like sunlight. He brushed a calloused thumb over my bottom lip, then kissed me. “Magnificently mad.”
But in the moment before he closed his eyes, a flicker of darkness crossed his expression. A
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