Chapter 18

Rosabel La Rouge

Taland wasn’t surprised.

We were lying down again, the bracelet between us, our hands linked.

“Did you…did you hear me?” I asked, just to make sure I’d actually spoken out loud.

“I did,” Taland said—still not surprised. Which made no sense.

“Even the part when I said, she’s Mud and fourteen and used the bracelet to do colorful magic ? Even that part?” Because I’d been lying here and telling him all about Taylor Maddison for the past ten minutes—the whole story from the beginning. And he seemed to take it very…calmly.

“Yes, even that part,” Taland said, the corner of his lips turning up a bit. “I asked you if you’d heard the term Laetus before.”

I nodded. “What the Mud used to be called, yes.”

“No, no—what they call Mud now. There’s a difference,” he said. “Iridians who had colors of magic— colors, not color.” He looked down at the bracelet. “What you just did— those colors. All the colors.”

White noise in my head. “You lost me.”

Taland came a little closer, looked into my eyes. “The Laetus had command over all colors of magic, sweetness. And I think you’re right—these bracelets could be their anchors.”

Now my ears were ringing as well. “Wait, wait, hold on a minute,” I said. “You just said that the Laetus were today’s Mud.”

“They are.”

I blinked. “That makes no sense.” He knew this just as well as I did. We’d both been taught this ever since we could understand anything about magic. “The Mud have no magic—that’s the point of being Mud. Their color is brown. Their color is?—”

“ All the colors,” he cut me off. “Their magic is brown because it’s a combination of all colors that, when channeled properly, appear as a rainbow, or as whichever color the mage chooses to unleash.”

“But—”

Suddenly, something came before my eyes—the drawings in that book I’d found in Madeline’s office that night. The same drawings that had made me think stealing that bracelet from the Vault was a good idea.

And what had been the name of that book?

The De laetus Army.

“Holy shit, Taland,” I breathed, bringing a hand in front of my open mouth. “The Delaetus Army.” The story I’d read in that book—half of it. The drawings of the hooded figure and the men of his army—he’d called them trata, his belongings. Like they were things, not people.

That’s where I’d heard that name before—that book!

“How do you know that?”

I blinked to find Taland had stopped smiling and was looking at me like I’d just grown an extra head.

“I read it,” I whispered. “I read it in a book.”

“What book?” Goddess, I’d never seen him so confused before. So impatient.

“A book in my grandmother’s private library. Why, Taland?”

He shook his head. “Did you read all of it?”

“No, just about half. There were drawings in there, of a guy with a hood and this army—and they, too, had bracelets that looked like this around their hands. That’s why I went back and stole this—I saw the damn drawings in that book.” The book that hadn’t had an author or illustrator name. Just the title.

“The anchor,” Taland whispered, looking down at the bracelet with a new light now. “You found the actual anchor.”

“No, no—I don’t know if that’s right. It was just a guess, that’s all. Just what if feels like,” I said in a rush, afraid to put ideas I wasn’t sure of in his head.

“It was definitely the right guess if you saw pictures of the Army with these on.” He grabbed the bracelet in his hand, analyzed it again, slowly.

“But the guy also had bones in his hands—he was Whitefire. He had bones in his hands as well.” I remembered those drawings vividly. “ Drawings, Taland. Not pictures. Just drawings. I thought it was a storybook! A-a-a work of fiction!” Because how in the hell could it possibly be real?

“It’s not,” Taland said, dropping the bracelet between us again. “It’s not fiction—it’s real. The War of Mages happened some seven hundred years ago, and it was erased from all history books since.”

Now he sounded like he was talking about a fantasy, too. “The War of Mages ? Are you serious?”

“Very,” said Taland, back to his amused self, grinning widely as his eyes sparkled. Not the best time to notice how the sunlight gave warmth to the color of his hair and life to his eyes, but I did. I always noticed. “Once upon a time, over seven centuries ago, there was a man, a Laetus, and his primary color was White. He was a very powerful man to begin with, and he was good at first, always taking care of the people, the Iridians he shared a city with somewhere in Canada. Nobody knows exactly where he came from.

“But then the more power he acquired, the more of his humanity he lost to it, until he mastered a curse so perfectly that with it, he could make any man do anything, and a lot of men do whatever he wanted without hesitation.”

“ Without regard for their own lives ,” I whispered because that’s what the book had said.

Taland nodded, excited. “He traveled the world for years, picked the most powerful Laetus he could find to serve in his army, under the influence of his curse, of course. With them, he set out to conquer the world, to rule it by himself, to be god to both humans and mages, and every other creation that lived on earth.”

“That sounds…made up.” Who could possibly have such ambitions? Even the Council, the most powerful Iridians in the world, created the IDD to serve the people. Even they didn’t dream of conquering the entire world themselves—they created a system that worked.

Or at least I thought it did before my team leader tried to kill me.

“It does,” said Taland with a laugh, then grabbed my face and kissed me—like he was happy about this. So happy he could barely contain his excitement. “I’ve wanted to tell you about this so many times. Every night we spent in my dorm room, baby, I wanted to tell you everything.”

My heart broke a little bit. I touched his cheek with my fingertips. We’d never really been this… raw with one another, Taland and I. This vulnerable. And I didn’t just mean that we were naked and lying on a bed for one and talking about what happened centuries ago. I meant in the way he had no limits to what he could share with me anymore. Both of us were open to one another—completely open for the first time.

“Why didn’t you?” I asked because he had been right before—if he’d have told me, I’d have told him about Hill, too. About me being at that school to spy on him. And maybe we’d have figured all of this out then. Maybe we wouldn’t have had to go through all the shit we went through to get here this morning.

“Because I didn’t want to burden you with it then. I thought you deserved to at least finish school in peace, because this isn’t a small thing. I wasn’t going to make you choose to be with me, knowing where I came from, what I did. Knowing what being part of Selem meant.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “I’m sorry, sweetness. You deserved a better boyfriend than me.”

Boyfriend, he said, and I swear every inch of my skin flushed. I loved that word.

I couldn’t help my smile if I tried. “You deserved a girlfriend who wasn’t sent there to spy on you, too, so I think we’re even.”

“Not even close,” Taland said and kissed me, deeply this time. His tongue was in my mouth, devouring, and his hand reached under the cover to wrap around my waist, to pull me closer to him until we were chest to chest. Until the bracelet slipped halfway under the pillow.

“The story,” I said against his lips because he was hard and I could feel his cock against my stomach. When he was hard, I was wet—it was automatic.

But I still needed to hear that story first.

“Yes, the story,” he said, a lazy smile on that beautiful face, his eyes half closed. He held me close to him still, spoke with my lips touching his, refused to let me move away.

“The story says that when that man who called himself Titus built his army of Laetus soldiers, he set out to claim every country and every piece of land for himself.” His hand traveled down my waist to my ass. “They fought a lot, and so many people died in the brutal battles.” He squeezed my ass tightly and moaned.

“Taland,” I warned because, like I said, now I was hot and bothered, too, and I shouldn’t have been when we were talking about death.

“Yes, yes,” he continued reluctantly. “In the end, all mages regardless of their color had to come together to defeat him. They say they threw a mountain upon the soldiers to stop them and managed to kill Titus after weeks and weeks of constant fighting. Of dying.

“After he was defeated, Iridians decided to remain united, and thus a Council was born to oversee that nothing like it would ever happen again. They created the IDD as their tool, and wrote a constitution to guide them, and to ensure that the power remained balanced between them. They also hunted down and killed the more powerful Laetus who remained and took their anchors—which I had no idea were bracelets until now—and made it illegal for them to even attempt to do magic. Made it illegal for other mages to give magic to them in any way.”

“Not even to heal them,” I whispered because that’s what the books taught us. That’s why they didn’t heal me, either, when Michael shot me that day. Because I’d been Mud.

“Not even to heal them,” Taland confirmed. “Laetus need more energy, more power than all other Iridians to be able to master all the colors that exist inside them. And because the original Council, the people who defeated Titus, was afraid of that power, they basically made the Laetus illegal. Took away their name, too—called them Mud. They were cast out of society, made to live on scraps, just to make sure that none of them could ever accumulate as much power as one needed to be able to use all their colors together—or even just one.”

I looked at his lips moving, mesmerized. Even though those words sounded like a fiction novel, I still believed it because I believed in him.

“Then why is it called draining?” I wondered. “Why would they deliberately make criminals Mud if they could become so powerful?”

“Because that word reinforces the belief that Mud have no magic. There’s power in names; there is power in calling someone Mud. You give them a status, a whole fucking destiny. You make sure they’re cast out of society when you call them that,” he said. “It keeps people under control, that word, that fear—like Dostoyevsky said, the best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.”

I laughed and it came straight from the heart. It was so bitter, that sound. “Yes, I can testify to that.” That’s exactly what happened to me. My own grandmother would have killed me if she hadn’t thought to put me in the Iris Roe first.

“Exactly,” said Taland, his smile soft and sad. “ Exactly . And criminals are turned Mud because without an anchor, which nobody knows exists or how to make”—he looked down between us, where the bracelet remained half hidden under the pillow— “and without an incredible amount of power to sort of activate them, they can’t even access their magic at all. Made Mud are far, far less powerful than those who are born with all colors.”

“Well, fuck,” I whispered. “So, the drainage doesn’t actually drain you—it gives you magic instead?” Because that was fucked up—beyond fucked up.

“In a way,” Taland said, taking a moment to think about how to explain it to me better. “Whitefire magic has a way of basically turning energy into its original state—that’s the theory behind it, at least. It is thought that originally, all mages were Laetus, but with time and with practicing only one color of magic, people forced it to evolve in that way. Like I said—it takes a lot to use all colors that become available in a mage during that process they call drainage, and without a massive amount of power to activate it, they simply can’t access any of the colors. That’s why they turn criminals Mud—it’s perfectly safe in this day and age. A guaranteed way to keep people magic-less.”

For a moment, I kept my eyes closed and thought about everything he just said.

“ An incredible amount of power— like the Rainbow,” I finally whispered.

Taland nodded. “Like the Rainbow. Which is why Mud are not allowed in the Iris Roe. Which is, I think, why the Council wanted to see you in person and required you to do magic in front of them. Honestly, it’s a miracle that you didn’t accidentally use all your colors in front of them.”

I let go of his hand, brought mine to my face and inspected it, like I was seeing it for the first time. “I don’t know how I did that, though. It wasn’t intentional. I just connected with my anchor, and…” I shrugged because I didn’t know how to make sense of it.

“All Laetus used to have a primary color, some stronger than others,” Taland said, bringing his fingertip to trail mine as the sunlight fell on them and made our skin glow.

“But why didn’t they bring me a bracelet to test me?”

Taland shook his head. “I’m not sure they even knew. Nobody knows—not even my brothers. Nobody in Selem. We’ve never heard of a Laetus anchor before. We honestly didn’t think they even used one.”

“But this was in the Vault,” I whispered. “It was in a drawer in the Vault.”

“What did its file say?”

I smiled bitterly. “That’s just it—there was no file. And the radars couldn’t read its signature, when they’re made to pick up even the smallest energies.”

“Because an anchor on its own doesn’t release energy—yes,” Taland whispered, eyes on our hands but he was lost in his head. “That makes sense, actually. They’re just doors. Gateways.”

“It’s…I don’t know, Taland. That book in my grandmother’s office—it had a drawing of these things. She would have known.”

“Maybe she did,” said Taland. “Maybe she would have known if she saw this.”

“But not the Council?” That seemed highly unlikely. “I mean, they are the IDD. The IDD is them.”

At that, Taland smiled and turned his head to me again. “No, sweetness. That’s not it at all. Believe it or not, the IDD directors and the Council members are rarely on peaceful terms. They’re always enemies posing as friends. David Hill works for Selem—is at the head of it himself, and also at the head of the IDD, and I assure you, he does not play by the rules of the Council. On the contrary—that’s why Selem even exists.”

So many things to think about, and I wanted to ask him more questions. I wanted to ask him all the questions and figure out all the answers right now, but my head was going to explode soon, and I doubted I could handle even one tiny bit of new information right now.

“Sweetness?” Talan whispered when I closed my eyes.

“Can we sleep?” I thought I muttered because my mind was begging me for time off.

He chuckled. “We can do anything you want, any time you want it.”

He grabbed me and spun me around and wrapped me up in his arms while I kept my eyes closed, and then I heard his whisper and the room became dark, the sunlight hidden behind the drapes.

“Sweet dreams, baby. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

I slept better than I had in years.

He was there when I woke up, just like he said. Being wrapped up in Taland might be the best gift the goddess had ever sent in this world for me, and that’s why I was smiling even before I woke up all the way.

“I’ve been waiting years for you to wake up,” he whispered when I reached behind and wrapped my hand around his neck.

He brought his lips to my ear and kissed my lobe slowly.

Goose bumps erupted everywhere on me at once. “I slept years?” I muttered, my attention on his hands now, on one that was on my breast and he was starting to squeeze it lightly, the other over my stomach, gently rubbing circles on my skin.

“It was at least a decade for me,” he said, and I laughed a little.

“You should have woken me by year five,” I whispered, then a moan ripped out of me when he stuck his tongue in my ear.

Fuck, the way he felt. The way he fired me up so quickly.

“But I love to watch you sleep, too. Tricky situation,” he said, and if I wasn’t busy moaning, I’d have laughed again. Except his left hand had moved lower, to my pelvis, his fingertips almost to my clit, and his right hand was now squeezing my breast harder and pinching my nipples, and his tongue licked the side of my neck until I lost sight of the room we were in completely.

Such a small bed, made for one adult to sleep in, not two. And I was so thankful for it, thankful that we couldn’t leave an inch between our bodies if we tried.

“Mhmm, so tricky,” I mumbled as he continued to play with me, and when his fingers pressed onto my throbbing clit, I pushed my ass back until I felt his hard cock clearly against my buttocks.

Fuck, he was so delicious, I couldn’t wait to have him inside me again. The more he gave me, the more I had him, the more I wanted. So much more.

“ This is worth the wait,” he said cupping my pussy, shaking me. “A thousand fucking years would be worth it.”

He moved us, grabbed me and put me on my back, and pushed the cover off when he rose on his knees on the bed. Naked. So blissfully naked.

A bit of sunlight streamed in through the cracks between the drapes he’d pulled in front of the window that morning, which meant I hadn’t even slept the whole day. But I was rested. And turned on. And so ready for him I was shaking.

“You’re perfect,” I muttered, drinking in the sight of him in the dark, the tallarose that marked his skin right over his heart, the curves of his muscles and his messy hair. The tip of his cock, the length and thickness of it that I couldn’t see very well but salivated over anyway.

“I am?” he said, but he wasn’t really paying attention to my words. His eyes were on my body when he grabbed my ankles and pulled them up, put my heels over his shoulders just like he liked. Then he proceeded to caress my legs, my thighs, brought his thumb to my clit.

Goddess, my eyes turned in their sockets right away. The way he knew how to touch me was a sin.

“Yes, Taland,” I breathed. “Perfect, perfect…” My hips moved up. “Don’t stop.”

“But I have to,” he said, and he did. My eyes opened and I almost screamed at him, but he was already lowering on the bed, my legs still over his shoulders. He held my eyes when he turned his head and kissed my thigh, then turned to the other and bit hard. I cried out, my center burning, just the thought of his mouth on my pussy making me weak.

“Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve had a taste of this pussy?” Again, he never took his eyes off me when he stuck his tongue out and licked me, right on my clit. Slowly. And it was like he’d put a magic spell on me because I couldn’t even lower my head on the pillow, couldn’t take my eyes off him, either. I just gripped the sheets and held my breath and watched him licking his lips and closing his eyes and moaning.

“Fuck, the way you taste,” he said. “What the hell are you made of, woman?” But he wasn’t looking at me anymore—his eyes were on my pussy. I wanted to be embarrassed, to at least try to close my legs or call his name to distract him, except I wanted his mouth more. I wanted his mouth everywhere. And to see the obsession in his dark eyes as he took in every little inch of me was worth all the embarrassment in the world.

Then he dove in.

Gently at first, playing with me with his tongue, pressing it to my clit, moaning together with me. Then he stuck that tongue inside me, as far as it could go, and I swear I saw the sky exactly as it was outside.

His hand gripped my hip tightly and he dug his fingers in.

“Sweetness?” I raised my head and looked down at him, barely breathing. “Don’t come until I say so.”

He didn’t even let me complain. He dove in again like he meant it this time, and it was violent. It was fast. He pulled my clit between his teeth then flicked his tongue over it until I screamed. It hurt so beautifully when he sucked hard, and then he brought his fingers to my entrance while he still held my hips down with his other hand. I couldn’t move, not even close to as fast as I wanted, so I let go of the sheets and I grabbed his hair in my hands, and I moved his head up and down, just like I needed.

The problem was that he knew how to get me to the edge fast, and I lost control of my body and my mind, and I couldn’t even tell you my own name in those moments, let alone maintain control over my body or emotions.

All I had and all I clung to was Taland.

“Don’t. Come. ”

I’d been about to, just a second away when he let go of my pussy and the wet sounds that had been in my ears from his lips and tongue disappeared. His fingers weren’t pumping in and out of me either.

It was like he took the whole world from under my feet. I cried out, unable to make words, but he didn’t care. He lowered to my pussy again, and he went slowly, tasting and trying and biting and sucking, while his curved fingers slipped inside me again.

I cried out his name, tried to tell him that I couldn’t hold back when he was doing this to me, but he just kept going. I didn’t dare disobey him for fear he’d stop. With my teeth gritted and my eyes squeezed shut, I kept my back on the bed and I didn’t move while he had his way with me until—what felt like years later to me—he finally gave me the fucking permission: “Let go, sweetness.”

I came seconds later, which was embarrassing all on its own.

Taland stayed between my legs for a little while longer, licked every little bit of my juices, kissing and biting me while his hands traveled up to my breasts to play with my nipples.

And when he was done, I could see with semi clarity again, could make out the shape of him, could hear it when he jumped off the bed and to his feet.

“Get up,” he ordered, and my body moved like I wasn’t in charge of it at all. I swear his words hadn’t even registered before I was on my feet in front of him, breathing heavily, eyes wide open and my pussy on fire.

He grabbed me by the neck and pushed me until my back hit the wall, and I thought he was going to turn me around so he could fuck me quickly like we did when we first came into this house, but Taland had other plans.

“Lean your shoulders against the wall and raise your leg,” he said, touching my left thigh, and I did. He grabbed it, pulled it up all the way over his hips, and moved back a step, his eyes between our bodies. My shoulders still touched the wall, but I could see plenty when he took another half step back, his hand under my thigh as he held my leg up, his other on his cock as he slowly guided his tip up and down my folds. He hissed and whispered praise as he teased me, pressing his tip onto my clit and circling it slowly until I was moaning again, so ready for him my pussy throbbed.

Then he brought his tip to my entrance, and I couldn’t help myself—I pushed my hips up and took him in, just a little.

A string of curse words left his lips, and when he slapped my ass, the sound of it would have been my undoing if he’d been deeper inside me.

“Damn it, sweetness. You know I can’t resist you,” he said, angry and desperate at the same time, and he wanted to pull himself out of me, wanted to continue to play with me for a little longer, but he couldn’t. Not anymore. Not now when he was halfway inside me already.

“ Oops, ” I whispered with barely any voice, and Taland grinned. He slapped my ass again, harder than the first time, and the stinging just intensified my pleasure.

“Naughty little Rose,” he whispered, slowly coming in closer, filling me up all the way.

Goddess, he felt better each time, and I wasn’t even exaggerating.

“Tell me, baby, how far can you raise your leg for me? I’ve been dying to see how much you can stretch,” he whispered, coming closer until he was inside me to the base, and he grabbed my leg that was around his hip, and raised it up slowly.

It hurt to be stretched so tightly, but I didn’t mind. His cock was inside me and I didn’t want to be in any other position right now.

Taland raised my leg all the way until my ankle rested on his shoulder, his eyes never leaving mine, that wicked grin on his lips.

“My, my, sweetness,” he whispered, caressing my leg, bringing his hips closer slowly. “This is impressive.” Then he pushed himself into me all the way.

I cried out both from pain and from pleasure. I hadn’t been stretched like this since the training academy, and my ligaments needed a moment to adjust, but when they did, all I felt was his cock, so deep inside me, so perfectly curved that I was sure I could touch it if I pressed on my pelvis.

“This okay?” Taland asked, rising up on his toes to get even deeper, and my response was another moan, this one out of pure pleasure.

“I am not gonna last a minute,” he said, more to himself than to me, but he continued to move, pressing his body to mine, making me one with the wall. His speed increased by the second, and my leg was completely numb, and my pussy was on fire, my appetite for him as high as that leg.

He had his hand around my neck, and I held onto his arm with both of mine as he pounded into me, his eyes down on where we connected, watching his cock come in and out of me. I couldn’t see much because of the darkness and my position, but he must have been seeing plenty because he refused to even blink his eyes.

Goddess, he looked possessed, and I wanted to put that look on his face every day for the rest of my life.

Then he moved back abruptly and squeezed my neck. “Get on your knees.”

Numb or not, my leg bent, and I was kneeling the next second, his cock deep in my throat before I could think to make myself comfortable. But he was close, and he wanted to come in my mouth, and I knew he wouldn’t last. So, I sucked and licked and grazed him with my teeth exactly like he’d taught me, and the taste of him was heaven. When I moaned with his cock in my mouth, he did, too, and then I couldn’t breathe. His hands were in my hair and he pulled me to him while he thrust his hips in, and his cum spilled down my throat, warm and creamy and salty. Who even needed air?

I swallowed every last drop.

He then pulled me up, sat on the bed and put me on his lap, and kissed me furiously, with the same urgency he’d fucked my mouth with just now.

“Tired yet?” he asked when we stopped to breathe for a second, and I almost panicked.

“ No,” I said too fast, and he chuckled. “Why—are you?”

He shook his head. “The taste of you gives me energy, baby. I’ll be less tired the more I fuck you.”

Shivers up and down my back that he felt and rubbed away. “Then by all means, fuck me all day and all night, Mr. Tivoux.”

He growled—actually growled like an animal, and he kissed me again, with just as much passion as before. I fucking loved the way we kissed, like we were constantly starving.

“But first, I need to go get us food.”

He said this a second before my stomach growled, and his followed, as if on cue.

“I’m coming with.”

But Taland shook his head. “You’ll stay here and rest for me, baby. I’ll be back in no time. Don’t you worry your pretty head about a thing.”

I did worry, though, but I didn’t say it. I just sat in the empty kitchen of the ground floor and waited for him for almost forty minutes, until he came back.

Maybe it was just my imagination, and he refused to admit it, but there was a darkness in his eyes when he came through the door—maybe concern, maybe regret. I noticed it, just like I noticed every other detail about him, always, and that’s why I asked him a couple of times, but he reassured me that he was perfectly fine.