Chapter 20

I sit up, heedless of my surroundings or the still-fading effects of the telelocation glamour. "Why?" I demand. "Why wait?"

"Because without you, the whole thing will fall apart."

I shake my head, groaning—more in denial than disagreement. "How do you know? You've been wandering the Gobi for the last century."

"Because of who you are , Maeve. You are the WorldBreaker. The Once-Mortal Queen."

"I thought you didn't believe in that shit?"

"Not what I said," Aeon says, rising to his feet. "I said you can't rely on prophecies because they're best understood in hindsight. But in this case, I spent time with Galenova discussing this particular prophecy."

I stare at him, stunned. "And you're just now telling me this?" I ask. "What did you talk about?"

He sighs. "Galenova was no more able to translate her prophecies than anyone else. Especially things so far in the future—she received your prophecy eleven thousand years ago—she had no way of understanding the large majority of what she saw. And I certainly had nothing to add. But she…" he trails off, thinking. "She did understand that the term WorldBreaker would be misunderstood. That term is the key, she said. The Once-Mortal Queen business was more of just an additional identifier. WorldBreaker was the key to the whole prophecy."

"Well, please elaborate, Mr. Informational Tightwad."

"Tightwad?"

"It means—"

"I know what it means, Maeve." he sounds annoyed. "Information is power. I haven't survived twelve millennia by playing fast and loose with the things I know. I did not keep it from you for any reason other than holding back things until such a time as it becomes necessary or beneficial to share them is a very, very long-ingrained habit. And my discussion with Galenova isn't going to do much for you."

"Anything will help," I mutter. "I feel like I'm drowning, sometimes."

"To Galenova, the gist of what she saw in the prophecy was that you—and there is no doubt in my mind that the prophecy is about you—would be an impetus for change and the linchpin for progress. But, being an agent of change is not an easy burden to bear. People don't like change. We never have, we never will. The notion that you would break the world comes from the idea that you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. It did not mean that you would be responsible for destruction, only that you, your appearance, and your choices would set things in motion, which it sounds like has already happened. The whole prophecy has been lost, as I'm sure you're aware. And no, I do not have the whole thing anywhere in my memory. If I did, I would share it with you—please believe that. But what I do have is what Galenova told me off the record. Which is that after you've set certain events in motion, you will continue to be vitally important in how the future plays out. Your choices will change the future. It wasn't a prophecy so much as a private feeling she had after ruminating on the prophecy as a whole."

"Great," I mutter. "More pressure."

He moves to stand in front of me and takes my arms in his hands. His eyes revert to merely shocking purple instead of the disconcerting, soul-searing maya-infused blue. "Maeve—you are equal to the task. I have known many, many, many people throughout my life. Few of them have been your equal."

I laugh. "You barely know me. You only know me as a helpless quasi-mortal lost in the desert, without my powers, without my mates, frustrated, angry, scared, and alone. How could you possibly know the first thing about whether I'm up to the task of saving the whole fucking world?"

"Exactly because you think of it as your job to save the whole fucking world. It's not. But you've taken on that burden and you're driving yourself crazy trying to get back to where the work is." He cups my jaw in one long-fingered, slender, powerful hand. "You are not your powers, Maeve. Fae, vampire, immortal, former-mortal… lover, mate, queen—you are many things. And I believe in all of them."

"I just…I need my magic back, Aeon," I whisper, catching his wrist in my hand and holding on, unable to stop myself from nuzzling my cheek into his palm.

"It would be a grave mistake for me to undo the memory-phage before you have your powers back, before you're back where you need to be to do the work in front of you. I cannot explain why because I don't know—it's a feeling, and I have long since learned to trust those feelings."

"Like the feeling of knowing somehow that you wouldn't have to hold the glamour indefinitely?"

He nods. "Sort of. That's a little different."

"How so?"

He shakes his head. "That's a topic for later." He smiles at me, rubbing a thumb over my lips, his eyes following the path of his thumb as if wishing his mouth were there instead. "For now, we have miles to cover." He turns and takes in our surroundings.

I gasp. Put my fingers to my mouth, eyes wide.

We're on a mountain—not the peak, but midway down, on the side. I glance up and behind and see the bulk of the mountain looming, a colossus of snow-capped jagged bare rock. All around us are towering pines blanketed in fresh snow. To either side of us, the mountain range reaches and sprawls, peaks scraping the bare blue dome of the sky. Before us, a valley. Studded with trees and rippling with grass and wildflowers, a blacktop road winding and switchbacking its way toward a sprawling city spiked with towers and glinting with sunlight off of glass, suburbs divided by a cross-section of streets.

"Where are we?" I ask.

"Chimgan Mountain," he answers. "That's Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. Settled in the Third Century BCE, it was declared a sovereign nation by the Soviet Union in 1991. The mountains you see around us are the Uzbek Mountains, an arm of the Tien Shan range."

I can't catch my breath, so beautiful is the vista. "Uzbekistan." I glance at Aeon, if only so I can get a breath. "As an American—a well-traveled one, I always thought, if not in an international sense, Uzbekistan was always just a name on a map, a weird, exotic idea of a place. I never even wondered what it would look like. And now, here I am. It's wild, Aeon."

"The world is a wild, wonderful place," he says. "I have seen…perhaps not all of it, but a vast majority. And even after twelve thousand years of wandering, it never ceases to amaze me. The wonders of it still take my breath away."

The descent down the mountain is an incredible hike. Not feeling any fatigue makes it that much better. There's no trail, or at least we're not following it. Unsurprisingly, Aeon's sense of direction is unerring, bringing us down the mountain and into the foothills by sunset. We keep walking through the night and reach Tashkent as the stars shine and the moon—now a waning crescent—sheds liquid silver on the world.

I'm not sure what I was expecting from a city as exotic-sounding as Tashkent, but…it's a fairly modern city. Three- and four-lane roads, much wider than those in most American cities, are mostly empty at this time of night, with a few busses trundling past, groaning and rattling. Squat tenements and shops and restaurants line the roads. The architecture is an eclectic mix of styles—nothing I'm knowledgeable enough to identify. It's distinctly not Western in ways I can't quite pinpoint.

"What's our plan here?" I ask.

He shrugs. "Catch a train west. If you were truly mortal, I'd suggest a hotel, a shower, and some food, but since you're not, we could just keep going. Without a need for rest or sustenance, we are only limited by our motivation to continue."

"You don't require food or rest?" I ask.

"Mmmm, not as such. Not sleep. It's more of a meditative state than anything, and I only truly require it every few days—once a week, perhaps, at most. I do enjoy food, but I do not require it. Or at least not in the way that mortals do."

We are walking down a silent, empty, tree-lined street. A white wrought iron fence separates the sidewalk from an open grassy field on our right. Across the street on our left are older apartments of three and four stories, each window with an air conditioner unit.

"How do you differ from fae in terms of the balance of the Three Sisters and the Fourth God?" I ask.

A man on a ten-speed bicycle zips past us; I catch a glimpse of an Asiatic face, eyes wide with surprise, mouth a shocked O before he's gone.

Aeon considers my questions for a long time. "The balance of the three tribes you say Zirae called the Primi is a recent development—a natural limitation to their overall greater powers. The requirements, physiologically, of fae and shifters in particular are an oddity. The original Children of the Nephilim were unimaginably powerful, truly godlike. Their genetic proximity to the angels gave them nearly unlimited power. The trade-off, however, was stark. They could perform wonders of magic even I can only conceive of—but the toll, physically, was atrocious. The cost of such magic on their non-angelic body was tremendous. The more they used their magic, the shorter their lives—by orders of magnitude. A single major glamour could knock a thousand years off of a life. So, using their magic became a matter of necessity. Their children, the six tribes as they became, were the first to develop what you might understand as genetic limitations as a form of natural balance. Instead of the power to literally pluck a star from the heavens and hold it in one's hand, they wielded less raw magical power but healed faster. Prana, mana, rakta, and maya were not yet understood concepts. There was just magic—Life, Blood, and Death. Subsequent generations, up until the Great Reckoning, saw further genetic adaptations as the tribes began to separate by ability and then began to breed intentionally to hone those powers. Seers began to use more mana, the power of dreaming, the power of sight, and creativity. The greater requirement of mana meant their bodies had to learn to use more and draw more—which downline turned into shifters.

"Similarly, hunters and combat tribes prized physical prowess—quicker healing, better eyesight, greater strength, faster reactions. This is in the blood—the muscles, the fibers, the cells themselves. These became vampires."

"And mages and such became the fae," I cut in. "Where do you fall?"

"In between. I do not draw any one form of energy more than the other. I require them all in balance. Except perhaps blood—But then, a modern vampire is far more physically powerful than I am. Magic itself provides a natural increase in physical ability, which is why all immortals are faster, stronger, heal faster, and see better than mortals. My body draws mana and prana from the world around me. That is, I believe, the reason my powers are of such a large scope—I draw more and can store more. But I can only use it in direct proportion—I can't force a waterfall through a drinking straw." He hesitates. "My greatest weakness, if you must know, is claustrophobia. I cannot be indoors for very long, or I weaken swiftly. To be imprisoned for longer than a few years would kill me—years at most. More if I am allowed outside, less if I am in solitary confinement, away from the sky and sun and moon and stars."

"I can't imagine anyone being able to imprison you."

He laughs. "Well, thank you. It hasn't happened often, but it has. If I take enough damage, I am as vulnerable as anyone else. I just heal fairly fast, and as long as I can get outside and see the sun and feel the wind, I will heal and regain my powers and escape."

"I see."

"So now you know my weakness—that's a secret I've long held close, you know."

I look up at him, and I'm somewhat shocked to see something like worry, fear, or nerves on his face. I take his hand. "Your secret is safe with me, Aeon."

"I know it is." His voice is quiet—and when I steal another glance at him, the worry is gone.

"You said something a bit ago, and now I can't stop thinking about it," I tell him.

"And what's that?"

"A shower."

He grins. "Ask and you shall receive."

Thirty minutes later, we're in a hotel room. He paid with an AMEX black card, which he produced from some hidden pocket of his garment.

As we enter the room, I glance at him. "You have a credit card?"

He laughs. "You think I've existed for twelve thousand years without accumulating wealth?"

I frown. "Well, I suppose not." I gesture at him. "It's just…that outfit says 'ascetic monk warrior' more than it does 'wealthy playboy.'"

He laughs again, striding to the single king-size bed, where he divests himself of his belt, which he wraps around the sword, and then the outer robe, revealing a bare torso above black…leggings. Hose? Trousers?

His body is, unsurprisingly, rock hard, shredded, and mouthwatering. He's…well…he's so beautiful it's making my determination to ignore my stupid attraction to him that much harder to stick with.

I turn away.

"Have you ever watched any movies about spycraft?" he asks.

I sit on the edge of the bed, as far from him as I can get, and start taking off my shoes for the first time in…I have no idea. A long time.

"I mean…James Bond?" I answer.

He snorts. "Not what I mean. Regardless, my point is that I've tailored my approach to public identity after spycraft. I have many identities which I use in various parts of the world. Here, my identity is little more than a credit card and a fake passport. An excellent fake, but a fake." He laughs. "Well, all of them are fake, obviously. But I have money stashed all over the world. In banks, post office boxes, investments, and, in some cases, literal buried or hidden treasure. The world runs on money, Maeve. Wealth, no matter the era, is wealth, and wealth speaks. Wealth moves. It is a sad reality, in some ways, because the world would be better if we were all equal, but alas, that is not how the world works. So, I accumulate wealth wherever and however I can. Usually via legal means, although I have moonlighted as a pirate, brigand, and outlaw on occasion."

I toss my shoes and socks aside with a sigh of relief. "That feels amazing." I glance at him. "I bet you have some stories to tell, huh?"

He nods, shrugs. "Well, yes, I suppose I do." He removes his sandals and reclines on the bed. "Take your shower, Maeve."

It's the longest, hottest, most luxurious shower of my life, despite the mediocrity of the accommodations—it's not a particularly upscale hotel, but it's near the train station Aeon intends us to use, and we're not staying long. All that matters to me at the moment is that the water is hot and the stream powerful.

I wash and condition my hair and scrub my body. One thing I don't miss about being mortal is the body hair—no shaving of the legs or armpits. A weird side effect of immortality that no one told me—immortals don't have body hair. I've just been too busy to appreciate it, honestly.

I dry off, wrap a towel around myself, and exit the bathroom in a belch of steam.

"Feel better?" Aeon asks from the bed—his eyes are closed, hands folded on his diaphragm, feet crossed at the ankle.

He's never seemed so human.

My eyes rake over the sharp, inhumanly beautiful planes of his face, the high cheekbones and plump lips, the hard jaw, the broad shoulders…the anvil of his chest, and the carved blocks of his abs.

When my eyes go back up to his, he's looking at me. And the look in his eyes is…

Hungry.

There's no other word for it.

"Don't look at me like that, Aeon," I whisper.

"Then stop being so fucking breathtaking."

"I have mates."

"I know."

"No matter how I might feel, I can't go there with you."

"No?"

"No."

"Why not?"

I shake my head, swallowing hard—my damp hair flings side to side and sticks to my shoulders. His eyes roam my face, then drop to my thighs—the towel is small and ends at mid-thigh. I have to clutch it closed because it's not big enough to fully wrap around me and stay closed.

It gaps open at my side, showing him a whole hell of a lot of thighs and the side of my ass.

"I can't. I mated with Caleb, and it damn near killed Caspian. And the others. I can't take a new mate every time I vanish."

"Who said anything about a mate?"

I frown at him. "I'm not a casual kind of girl, Aeon. If you think I am, then you've taken the measure of me most incorrectly."

"Apologies. I did not mean it in that sense."

I snort and shake my head. "How else could you have meant it?"

He rises from the bed and stalks around the foot of it. Prowls toward me.

I back away from him and catch up against the wall. He stops in front of me, blocking out the room and everything else with himself. His eyes blaze purple—flare blue.

"Don't," I whisper.

"Don't what?"

"Seduce me."

"I'm not."

"Then what is this?" I breathe. "What are you doing?"

"There are things I haven't told you." He inches closer until his chest presses against my breasts, and I smell his sweet breath and the scent of sand and wind and pine trees and starlight. "Things about… you. And me."

"I have a feeling there's a lot you haven't told me."

"This is somewhat relevant to this current issue, however."

"What is it?" I ask.

He swallows, draws in a deep breath. Searches me with his eyes, which flare blue, subside to purple, flare blue. "I shouldn't tell you. Not until you have your magic back."

"Why?"

"It wouldn't be fair to you."

"Nothing about my life since Mom died has been fair. It's all been a constant stream of chaos and intensity and changes and surprises. So just tell me."

He doesn't answer immediately. Instead, he pinches a lock of my hair between his forefinger and thumb; his eyes flare a soft shade of blue, and he drags his fingers down the lock of hair from my scalp; where his fingers touch, the hair dries. A small, private smile ghosts across his lips as he touches my hair. His eyes scan and search my face, and all I see in his eyes is hunger. But even that is mostly hidden, as if he's doing his best to bury it but his hunger is so potent it cannot be contained.

He gathers my hair in his hand, and his eyes flare azure, and he passes my hair through his fist, and when it flutters back around my shoulders, it's perfectly dry.

And glowing white with power.

"What?" I breathe. "How?"

"Your power responds to mine."

I feel it—almost. A tingle in my belly, static electric shocks buzzing my fingertips.

"That's a thing?"

"With me, it is."

"Aren't you just full of surprises?" My voice is breathy, and dammit, all I feel is the boiling of need, of attraction.

I can't blame this on a mating bond. There's nothing magical about this. It's just plain old-fashioned lust.

He gathers my hair in his hand again, and its golden-white glow flares like a lightbulb being turned on. The sizzle in my belly becomes heat, impossible and wild. With his other hand, he cups my jaw. Unblinking, he stares into my eyes, and I cannot look away. The blue of his magic is fucking hypnotic, a blue so deep and complex it defies description, luminous and burning—almost…angelic.

Where he touches, my skin burns, tingles, and aches. The ache drives down into my belly, turns my nipples to diamond points, and makes my core pulse with desire.

I swallow hard. "Aeon…what aren't you telling me?"

"I don't want to. Not yet."

I catch his wrists—both of them, and I swear I can feel the magic pulsing in his veins louder and harder than his heartbeat.

"Why?"

"It'll change things."

"So?"

"You're not ready for what it will become."

"How do you know?"

"You told me."

"That I'm not ready?"

His index finger traces my lips. I taste the salt of his skin and the tingle of his magic. It's intoxicating.

"For another mate."

"You said I'm not your mate."

"You're not." A heavy pause. His finger dips into the groove of my philtrum, down my lips to my chin, down my throat…breastbone…to the edge of the towel. "Yet."

"Yet?" I breathe, gulping.

He doesn't respond. His hands press against the wall beside my face, and his forehead touches mine, resting, leaning. His breathing is labored.

"Aeon?"

"At the end of the day, Maeve, I'm just a man. A strange one. A unique one." Thick, sharp pause. "A frequently lonely one. I've been alone, without a friend, without a companion…without a lover…for a very, very long time. And you…Maeve. You tempt me, tease me, torture me."

"I…I'm not doing anything." My hands lift, and my fingertips find firm flesh, hard muscle.

"You don't have to." He circles my wrists with his hands, lifts them over my head, and pins them to the wall. "It's just you. The color and the scent of your hair. The soft cream of your skin. Your mind. Your magic. Your courage."

"Aeon…"I breathe, struggling weakly against his hold on my wrists.

"Don't speak," he murmurs. "Unless it's to tell me to go."

I can't. Damn me, I should. But I can't. My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. My lips are parted, my breath short and quick. My skin tingles and my nipples are hard and achy.

"Your body, Maeve. Fully clothed you're a temptress. Like this, naught covering you but a flimsy bit of cloth?"

I try to speak, to think, to demur, to deny, but I can't. His luminous blue eyes blaze with wild potent magic, and I know the volcanic need taking over me like wildfire is all me—no magic needed to seduce me.

I'm doing fine all on my own, letting him seduce me, falling under the spell of his magic—but this magic is far more prosaic than any glamour. It's just him. His easy confidence. His swaggering power. He's masculine but gentle. He is confident in himself without being arrogant, even though he has every right to be.

"I've awaited you for ten thousand years, Maeve. Can you comprehend that? I was truly never mated to the Fates because I have always been promised to another." His eyes fix on mine, searing into my soul with truth so bright and bold and piercing that I cannot look away, can only lock my knees to stay upright under the assault of his eyes, the ravaging brutal beauty of his body, the hunger—the desperation—for me, written in every line of his face and every mote of light in his eyes. "That conversation with Galenova? She saw many things in that vision. She saw the prophecy of you—the WorldBreaker, the Once-Mortal-Queen. She saw your coming, your ascent to power, your struggles, your mates—the wolf and the vampire. But there was more. It wasn't in the prophecy as written. She never understood why, but she knew she couldn't write the other part down. She saw me, Maeve. She saw me walking in the desert. She saw me find you. She told me of this in whispers over a campfire of mage-flame on an island in the Aegean, in a time when mortals were still figuring out fire. She told me of you. Not the being who was prophesied, but the woman. My mate, she said." He goes silent, and his lips touch my temple, and sparks fly, threatening to set me alight, to ignite the dry tinder of my desire into a conflagration.

"Would you like to know what she said?" He asks.

"Yes." I breathe it, a bare whisper.

His eyes turn the blue of mage flame, of the steady burn of a gas range. The blue of stars. "'She will be your mate.'" His voice is not his—it is the soft, dry, raspy, papery voice of an old woman, singsong, musical, delicate, strong. "'You will wait for her, Aeon. An age, you will wait. Through storms and wars you will wait. Civilizations will rise and fall, and you will yearn for her. She will come to you in the desert. You will know her, and you will feel her. But even when you find her, Aeon, she will not be yours. You cannot take her as your mate until the binding is broken. She will not know you until the binding is broken. When the mate-bond is fulfilled, her stars will be complete, and the seven will be aligned.'"

The searing blaze of his eyes dims to merely blinding, and the hot wash of magic subsides.

"We are meant to be mated?" I ask.

A single nod.

"And you've known it all this time?"

Another nod.

"And you're just now telling me?"

Nod.

"Why?"

"I felt your birth nearly a century before it happened. Why, I don't know. Perhaps one of my ancestors was a seer, and I have a touch of the sight. I don't know. All I know is I knew your birth was imminent. I was drawn to you. If I had allowed it, I would have found your mother and watched and waited. I would have watched your birth. Your life. I would have stopped the experiment. I would have done many things which I knew I could not, should not do. So, I fled. I hid in the desert as far from you as I could get, and I stayed there. Where I knew you would come one day. I was wandering that desert for a hundred years, waiting for you , Maeve."

"Aeon," I gasp. "I…"

"I can't have you." He's tortured—I hear it in his voice. See it on his face. "Not yet."

"I don't understand."

He shakes his head. Keeping my hands pinned overhead, he nuzzles his nose against my ear, behind my ear, the line of my jaw. Inhales my scent.

He transfers both of my hands to one of his—and even with my powers, I couldn't break his hold. Yet, his touch is gentle. A word, a thought, and he'd release me.

One finger traces a line down my temple, past my ear, down my jaw, over my chest and to the edge of the towel once more.

"I've dreamed of you," he whispers. "Vivid dreams. I've seen your face in a thousand fantasies. I know you. I've tasted you, loved you, devoured you until you forget your name—a thousand, thousand times. I know your scent, Maeve. I know every curve of your body."

I gulp. Gasp. Shake. My knees are weak, and a hurricane of butterflies rages in my belly.

That touch, that finger, it carves over the towel, down my front, to my hip, where the towel gaps open. How it hasn't fallen, I don't know.

The blue glow of his eyes dims until his eyes are purple once more, and the towel drops to the floor.

He was keeping it in place with magic.

I'm naked.

Bare for him.

Bared to him.

He draws away, and his eyes devour my nude form—my breasts, my belly, my thighs, my sex. "My goddess. My mate."

"Aeon, fuck." I struggle against his hold, but it's futile. "Why? Why can't we…why can't you—what do the cuffs have to do with our mate-bond?"

"We can't be mated until you have your magic back."

"And you can't undo the cuffs."

"If I could, I would have already." Anger burns in his voice. "He designed the glamour with me in mind, I'm sure. He knew the blind spot in my magic—I can manage minor glamours or massive ones. There's nothing in between, and this glamour is exactly in the middle. Easy for any fae of middling power. Impossible for me. I've tried. Every moment since I saw you lying on the ground and knew you as the one I've so long awaited, I've racked my brain and searched my magic for a way to break the glamour." He shakes his head, a growl escaping. "I could terraform the whole planet with a snap of my fingers. Reduce the Himalayas to a bit of rock. Turn the Pacific into a puddle. Put a second moon in the sky. I could make every man, woman, and child, mortal or immortal, dance until they die. I've made every single mortal for two hundred and forty years forget an entire race of humans ever existed. But I can't break this stupid, ridiculous, absurd, gods-and-blood-be-damned glamour!"

"Aeon," I whisper again. "You're torturing yourself. And me."

"Fuck—I know!" he snarls, head hanging.

His eyes meet mine again, and the ravaged, wild, desperate need for me is all-consuming, a kind of madness in him. "Ten thousand years I've waited for my mate. And now I have you, here, in front of me, naked, wanting me—and I can't fucking have you."

"What would happen if—"

"Something bad. I don't know. Or perhaps nothing. Perhaps I simply can't—something would prevent us from mating. I don't know."

His hands rest on my naked hips, and where he touches me, I burn. I feel his breath on my skin, his eyes on my breasts.

He sinks to his knees. He grips my hips in both arms, and his forehead rests on my navel. His hands slide around to my buttocks, and my breath stutters at his touch there.

"Aeon, please. Don't torture us this way."

His head rolls against my belly—a shake of his head. "One kiss. One taste."

"Aeon…"

He looks up at me with pained purple eyes, his face savaged with need so fierce it frightens me. His chest rises and falls with heavy breaths as if the effort to restrain himself is physically draining. His hands slide to my hips once more, to my belly. My breath catches in my lungs. I watch his hands inch upward, higher and higher. A gasp slips past my lips as his hands cup my breasts and lift, fingers caressing the soft skin, thumbs brushing over my erect nipples.

Without taking his eyes from mine, he brings his lips to my navel. Kisses.

Another kiss, an inch lower.

"Aeon?" It's a fraught, breathless whisper.

"One taste, my mate, my moon and stars."

"We can't. You said—"

"I know. But how can I not? I'll die without you now that I've found you. One taste of your beauty, it's all I ask."

Thoughtless within the spell of his words, his presence, his need, I've kept my hands overhead as if still pinned there. Now I remember them and bury them in his hair.

It's all the permission he needs.

His mouth goes to my sex and I feel his hot breath and the wet search of his tongue along my folds. He flicks his tongue against my clit, and I scream, head flinging back, eyes closing. I arch, and press myself against his mouth.

Scream.

Blue glow floods the room, and heat blisters through me. Sensations, already heightened, become well-nigh unbearable. Every flick of his tongue sends rockets of orgasmic bliss through my body. Each cup and caress of my breasts makes the hot line between my nipples and clit sing and sear. The rub of his face against the tender silk of my inner thighs is madness. The hot huff of his breath is wild intoxication.

"Aeon," I breathe.

He only growls against my sex in response. A pinch of my nipples makes my knees quaver and give out, and I feel magic hold me up. His mouth works faster and faster, with ever more ravaging desperation, until I'm dipping at the knees and screaming through gasps and knotting my fingers in his hair and feeling an orgasm welling up inside me like magma inside a volcano.

Wind swirls around us, my hair fluttering—I can see its glow merging and clashing with the blue of Aeon's magic. The walls around us fade and there's only darkness and nothingness and us, his mouth, his hands, and my body. I feel stars crash past me, hear the god-scaled roar of their flames, and something titanic coils around us and I feel its hunger and sense its fear, and it flees. Planets and galaxies rage around us, flung past and soaring above, and his tongue drives me to madness, and my orgasm goes nova within me, and I lose myself in the screaming heat and the smashing ecstasy.

For a split second, I feel them—my mates. Alistair, Caspian, Fin, Caleb, and Stirling. I feel their minds and their souls, and their bodies, and I know they feel me, feel this, and I feel their relief and confusion and worry and joy and need and anger and love, above all love, love so potent and fierce and wild it dissolves all else until there's only love, the touch of mind to mind the sweetest caress.

The universe twists in on itself and the walls revolve around us and my butt and shoulders settle on the bed and Aeon is above me and his skin and muscles are hot and hard under my hands and I grasp his manhood over his clothes and I find his mouth—I kiss him. He tastes like me, like my sex, and like the stars themselves—life and fire and wonder and time.

I find flesh and the waist of his pants and dig under and grip his naked erection and it's hot and thick and huge and mine—

He rips himself away with a savage snarl. "FUCK!"

Gasping, panting, dizzy and trembling and still shaking from the orgasm, I pry my eyes open to see Aeon across the room, raggedly gasping, hunched over, hands on his knees, shoulders slumped.

"Aeon?"

He shakes his head. Holds his hand out, palm to me. A shred of blue smears across his eyes, and his robe, belt, and sword blur, suddenly in two places at once, and then he's shrugging into his robe, winding the belt around his waist.

"Aeon?"

His eyes flick to me, and he takes a step toward me, reaching. Stops, shaking from head to toe. "Ten thousand years," he breathes. "And I must wait yet more." His eyes close softly, slowly. "I need a moment, my goddess."

Before I can say a word, he draws his sword and slices horizontally through the air—blue magic flares and I see The Dreaming. He lets the cut turn him in a pirouette, and he dances through the gap, somehow gripping the edge of reality and yanking it shut behind him like a door—the slice, spin, step through, and closure are all a single, fluid motion.

I gape and then lurch to my feet, staggering across the room to the window. I'm just in time to see him emerge on the sidewalk below, naked blade resting on his shoulder. He rakes a hand through his hair. Looks up and sees me.

My goddess. I almost hear the words in my head—perhaps I do.

I stare down at him. Trembling, knees quaking, I hold his eyes as the blue fades to purple.

I look down at the star tattooed on my chest, from whence the lines of my mate bond radiate.

The center, bare of ink before, glows with faint, dim white light.

And I know what will happen when Aeon and I mate.

The bond will be complete.

The seven will be aligned.