Waking was like swimming from deep in a well. She could see the light above her, but it was an effort to push her way through the cold water to breach its surface. She lay for a long moment as consciousness grew, her eyes closed, trying to work out where she was, and fearing to open her eyes and find herself within that grey room again.
She remembered Raiden carrying her out to a car because Elior had lost to Lucian, and Alatar forcing his potion into her mouth, but after that… She must have passed out, as she could remember no other details.
All she knew was that she wasn’t in bed with Raiden, there was no comfort of his scent of smoked lavender and citrus, no security of his skin against her, no beat of his heart, no rhythm of his breath. And not being near Raiden terrified her because she knew, she knew in the deepest core of herself, that he would be in the bed with her unless there was no physical way that he could be. That he was not meant that something had happened to Raiden, to her, or both.
It did not smell like the grey room, she told herself trying to find comfort in reason. There was no stink of blood, antiseptic, and recycled air. No stench of stale body fluids from an over and foully used mattress.
The bedding she lay on smelt, oddly and disconcertingly like Cael – sandalwood and bergamot. She was warm, and comfortable, and the covers around her were lush, like velvet against her skin. She was almost certain that for some reason she was with Cael, and she could not imagine how that had come to be.
“You should never have brought it here,” a woman hissed angrily. “If you were discovered, Cael, they would know that you are interfering in the slaves’ realm.”
“I know, mother,” Cael was irritable. “But I had no choice, she was dying.”
“Then you should have let it die!”
“I am tied to her,” Cael sat on the edge of the bed, and stroked Lia’s hair back from her face. “Twice now, dying, she has called to me. The first time, I was not even in her realm. That means something, mother.”
“It means that old blood ties survive amongst the slaves, and that is all,” she replied. “Past indiscretions of foolish men. Do not join them, Cael. It is healed now, take it back, and return to the slaves’ realm no more!”
There was a pause and then: “No, Cael, don’t even contemplate such foolishness. You know the punishment should you do such a thing.”
“She is mine,” he said it so quietly that even though he sat beside her, Lia almost did not hear it.
“Get rid of it, Cael,” his mother said urgently. “I beg of you. If I return and find it here… I will have no choice.”
“You would not report me, mother,” Cael was confident of that.
“If I don’t the punishment will be visited on our entire family. You know what they will do to us.”
There was a long silence between them, and Cael heaved a sigh heavy with reluctance. “I will take her back.”
“You know I would deny you nothing, my son,” she softened. “But this… This is simply courting disaster.”
“I know. I am sorry, mother.” He waited until she left. “You can stop pretending to sleep now, Cecelia.”
She opened her eyes and found him leaning over her. The light was behind him, lighting his golden hair and he beamed, his beauty radiant, his eyes bright, undaunted by the conversation she had just overheard. Whatever he had said to his mother, Cael did not intend to surrender her so easily, she thought grimly.
They were in a large room, the floor, walls, and ceiling all of highly polished gold veined white stone. There were windows behind him, open to a balcony, with filmy curtains catching a breeze, billowing in and revealing glimpses of the world beyond too brief for her to piece together.
“You have wings,” she reached out automatically and then drew her hand back when he lifted and spread the upper most wing, the almost pure-white feathers fanning out, the bands of brown and gold revealed when he did so giving them depth and texture.
“You can touch,” he offered, amused.
She reached out again, feeling the smooth feathers beneath her fingers, feeling the threads of cuticle separate. The feathers were warm, and that warmth made the touch more intimate. She pulled her hand back again, not wanting that intimacy with him.
Cael moved closer, his body against hers, and he opened the wing like a parasol over her, inviting her touch. There were delicate feathers that fluffed more than others, the downy texture innocent and almost virginal in the implied youth. Whatever he was, Cael was young, she thought, just entering adulthood, like herself. “Don’t be shy.”
She held the sheets to her chest tightly, restraining her hands in the cloth. “Are you an angel?”
“That is one of the names that the slaves give us. We have our own names.”
“Nephilim, I remember. What happened? Why am I here? And where are my clothes?” She added as she realized that she was bare beneath the luxurious sheets. She flushed, realizing that he had stripped her naked and laid her in his bed.
“You were wearing a rag that smelt of dog,” he pulled a face. “I got rid of it. That stink would never leave the linen. As to what happened, your werewolf lost you to a vampire who made you into a blood slave, and you were dying from withdrawal. I saved your life. Again, I might add,” he preened a little, proud of himself.
“Raiden,” she felt her heart clench. Had Cael left Raiden to fight Lucian? “Is he alright?”
Cael shrugged, indifferent. “He might have survived, I couldn’t exactly stick around to see, after all. I had to get you to safety.”
“Thank you for saving me,” she sat up, holding the sheets in place. “But I need to go back.”
“No.” He lay against the pillows, with his eyes at half-mast and a small smile on his perfectly carved lips. “You look surprised. Why would I return you to the dog, Cecelia? You are mine, and I have you. I might not be able to keep you here, but I can keep you.
“We will talk about that later,” he decided and swung himself to standing, his wings flaring behind him, adjusting to the change in balance. He strode across the room to a table and returned with a bundle of cloth. “Get dressed. We cannot stay here.”
The cloth unfolded into a dress that caught at the shoulders with golden buckles. She pulled it over her head before releasing the sheets grateful to have something to wear, even if was a shapeless and borrowed dress.
Cael wore a loose-fitting pair of grey trousers and a shirt of material so soft and fine it was almost sheer. The dress was of the same fine material, and she suspected, looking at him, that it did not hide as much as she would have liked.
“What is this fabric?” She fingered it and confirmed it’s almost transparency as she could see the warm tone of her fingertips through two layers of the fabric. Dressed, she thought grimly, but might as well be naked.
“Muslin.”
“No…” She knew muslin and this was not it. She had worn muslin mock-ups of costumes and that fabric was vastly different to this. It did not matter – she brushed the question of the fabric aside. She needed to find Raiden.
“The slaves in your realm have lost the ability to make muslin in the traditional way,” he replied disdainfully. “It is a technique that requires my people’s power to do properly. Come,” he grabbed her hand and lead her across to the windows, through the drifting curtains, onto the balcony.
She gasped. “We are in the clouds.” There was also no balustrade around the balcony, and the plunge off the edge disappeared into the cloud cover below, giving no idea of how far down the ground was.
A city stretched out before her, the shimmering white stone buildings piercing through clouds-tinged pink by the setting sun. The sky was a rich pink, almost red in hue and what she thought at a glance was birds, was actually other winged people flying between the buildings. There was no other discernible method of moving between buildings.
“Not what you think of as clouds,” he replied lightly, pulling her against him. He was hard, and deliberately held her against his hard on so that she could not avoid it. “This is not your world, but one set apart.”
“Set apart?” She squirmed a little seeking to put distance between them. Considering the sheerness of her dress, the way he held her was utterly indecent. Not to mention that she had a mate that she needed to return to.
Oh, Raiden, she thought with despair. It seemed that destiny had brought them together only for the malicious pleasure of pulling them apart.
“If you imagine a rose, with each world a petal upon it, touching and overlapping, connected but separate from each other. Your world is one petal, and this one another. We call them realms. The ability to travel between is called portalling.”
“Well, you need to use that ability to take me home now using one of the portals,” she said firmly. “I am sorry Cael. I am in love with another man. There will be someone out there for you, but that person is not me.”
“I will take you back to your world,” he agreed readily, holding her tightly. “But not to your dog.” And he stepped off the edge of the balcony.
She shrieked, gripping his shoulders as they plunged downwards. His wings opened, catching the air, and she felt a drag as their motion was slowed, heard the whomp of the air catching in the delicate cuticle sails that should not, by any measure, bear their weight aloft and yet, impossibly, did.
He drifted almost lazily downwards, until they passed through the cloud cover. The clouds were cold, and the moisture clung to her skin, dewing in the fabric of her dress, making it, she suspected, even more clinging and sheet, and beaded on the feathers of his wings.
As the cloud smoked away, she saw that the city had been built in the heights of a mountain range, below which lay a lush green and blue land, with primitive villages surrounded by farmland and dirt roads. There was no sign of industrialization, no train tracks, no cars on roads, no planes in the sky.
Cael evened out their flight, and the shadow of them dragged across the fields, causing the wingless people working them to shield their eyes, gazing upwards.
“Humans,” she realized watching them with interest. They were dressed as if they belonged in a renaissance fair, she thought, as if they existed in a world centuries before her own.
“Yes, human slaves. I contemplated hiding you in one of their villages, but a stranger appearing amongst them would cause comment, and eventually one of my people would come to investigate their gossip.
“It is forbidden to bring slaves from other realms here. There are those who would have us cast all the slaves from this realm into yours,” he scoffed at the idea. “And so, for the sake of peace, we have an agreement that we will retain those we have but not bring in more.”
“Why not just free them all?”
Flying was very similar to the motor bike, she thought as Cael shifted against her, in that the movements of the body guided the direction. It took a lot of core strength, however, to hold her body straight without support other than Cael’s arms around her waist and hers around his shoulders.
“We rely upon slave labor,” he replied as if it were obvious.
“You could always do the work yourselves,” she suggested.
“I could always let go,” his grip loosened. “But I prefer to hold on to you.” She gripped his shoulders tighter, and he chuckled. “There have always been my people, and yours, and mine have always been superior in every. It is the natural order for your people to serve us. Why change what works?”
“Because it only works for you.”
“Again,” he angled his wings, bringing them down, and shifted his body so that their feet touched the ground lightly upon landing. His wings folded against his back, but he did not release her. “This is the natural order of things. It is the same in every world. The predator and the prey. The strong and the weak. The food chain. Even within your precious wolf pack, there are alphas and there are omegas. You do not question the fairness of their hierarchy, do you?”
They had landed outside a ring of stones, the surfaces pocked marked with age and green with moss, the stones leaning drunkenly against each other, reminding her revellers who had shared too much wine and propped themselves up at the bus stop waiting the last ride home for the night.
“We have stone circles where I am from,” she said pulling back against his grasp. “On a different country, but still…”
“Yes, they are common to all realities and worlds,” he replied, his tone patronizing, and his lips curled as he deliberately resisted her attempts to free herself, enjoying her efforts and the demonstration of his strength that resulted. “They mark where they overlap, and my people may transfer easily. It is possible to cross over elsewhere, but harder and requires skill.”
“Alright, then, let’s go. I want to go home.” She wanted to find Raiden and ensure that he was safe.
“Stop fighting me, Cecelia,” he said. “Kiss me, and I will open the door.”
“Cael,” she wedged her hands between his chest and her. “Thank you for saving my life. But that does not mean… I am in love with Raiden.”
“You could love me. You are meant to love me. We are tied.”
“I don’t understand what you mean by that.”
“The first time, you were a child, trapped in a burning car. I felt a… a pull. Something unlike anything I had ever felt before. I have only felt it once more since. It opened a doorway between your realm and mine and tugged me through as if I were thistledown on the wind,” he looked down at her, his blue eyes holding hers.
“It was my first time in your realm, and I did not know a car when I saw one. We have nothing like it on our world. But you were there, your light growing dimmer as you choked on the poisons. I reached through the flames and tore you free of the contraption that held you, and I healed you. I would have taken you then, but another vehicle was coming, and I did not know what I would do with you. You were just a child, after all. I did not know your world, and I could not bring you back here…
“I stayed in your realm, and tried to find you again, but that tie between us had vanished. I have returned to your realm frequently since, searching for you, but it was as if you were hidden from me…” He stroked her hair back from her face. “Until, one day you weren’t.”
“The day in the academy.”
“Yes. I had hoped you would remember me and come to me willingly. When you did not recognize me, I adjusted my plans. And then I found that you were f-king that dog,” his expression shifted into a scowl. “You have no appreciation of what I have been through in order to find you, or the risk that I am taking for you.”
“No, I don’t,” she felt her heart pick up under the ferocity of his scowl. “I don’t know anything. I remember you from the accident, but it is a child’s memory. A scared, traumatized memory of a face surrounded by flames. It wasn’t until I saw you again, that eventually I even remembered that much. I don’t remember the accident at all, or what happened around it, except for that one moment.”
“Well, you know now,” his expression softened, and his hold on her lost its ferocity, became the coaxing of a lover. “You know now, and when you were dying again, you pulled me to you, so I know that I was right, about us being tied. You belong to me. You know it, or you would not call to me when you most need me.”
“It is not something I do by choice,” she protested. “I wouldn’t even know I had done it if you didn’t tell me. I don’t feel a tie, Cael. Not to you. I am sorry. I can understand how that would be… Confusing and hurtful. To be pulled to me like that, and not have me even know. But I cannot help it. Please, please, Cael. Take me home. I don’t belong here, and if I understand rightly, it’s dangerous for you. I don’t want to hurt you further by placing you in danger.”
“I will take you back to your world,” he repeated. “For a kiss.”
She sighed heavily. It was a small price to pay to return to Raiden. “One kiss?”
“One kiss,” he smiled.
She lifted her face and closed her eyes, feeling the touch of his breath on her lips a moment before his lips caressed hers. His kiss was gentle, the barest touch, almost sweetly innocent, before his tongue stroked over the seam of her lips, and his mouth against hers became more determined.
She was not sure how it happened, but his tongue found entry, tangling with hers, the kiss changing tone and becoming heated, as he pulled her against him, his body leaving no doubt that he desired her, his hand stroking along the line of her leg, lifting it over his hip. He stepped in close, gathering the material between them as if he intended to f-k her standing, the press of him intimate, separated only by the finest barriers of cloth.
She felt magic and recognized that he was using his power against her, and she pushed it away as she sought to free herself from his grasp and place distance between their bodies, but he held on, and pushed harder with his magic, until she felt her defences crumble.
She had made a mistake, she realized. She had given him an opening to use his magic against her through consenting to the kiss. His magic seemed to pull her thoughts from her, fogging her mind as densely as the cloud cover that they had passed through in their descent, as effectively as the blood bond that Lucian had used to control her. The two men were so similar in their selfish pursuits, she thought with desperation, using, and using up, those that stood between them and their desires.
She tried to cling as fiercely as she had before to the memory of Raiden, hoping that her bond with her werewolf would save her again. Raiden, she held the image of him in her mind’s eye. She held him with the purity of her love, tight to her heart, even as she felt Cael’s magic pull at her edges, wanting to drag him away from her, even as she felt that clarity sift away beneath her grip, like sand pulled away by the tide.
Cael kissed her until she ceased to fight and then eased away.
“There we are,” he murmured, stroking his fingers down her cheek. She stared at him baffled, her thoughts scattering. “It is time to go home, Cecelia. Are you ready?”
“Home?” She repeated, looking around them in confusion. “Yes, Cael, I am ready to go home. Where are we?”
“Nowhere important,” he took her by the hand, leading her easily between the stones and reached out to touch one, activating the magic so that it traced through the mineral lines, and ran from stone to stone, creating a circle of light.
He put his arms around her, and she leaned into the embrace. “Let’s go home. My Cecelia.”