4. Ra

Chapter 4

Ra

"You wanted to explore. This will let me find you if you wander off," Mica said. "Come, I have places to be."

Ra planted his feet and stayed put. "You could just ask the stronghold where I was."

"Not if you leave it. This is non-negotiable."

What the fuck? The collar was extreme even given the history between them. It didn't make sense. "What aren't you telling me?" Ra asked, narrowing his eyes.

Mica glared at him. "You caught the stronghold on a good day. It's self is … fractured … in places. The collar will help keep you safe. The stronghold will recognise my power on you if you find yourself in a place that has forgotten who you are."

"What's this made of anyway?" Ra said, reaching up to touch the collar again.

Was that a hint of red flushing Mica's cheeks? "That's not important."

Glancing around them, Ra noticed the veins of glittering minerals running through the tunnel walls and a sneaking suspicion settled in his gut.

"Holy shit. It's made of mica, isn't it? Why don't you just brand me like stray livestock while you're at it?" Ra asked.

"I told you, you're mine while you're here. Now come or I will carry you."

Ra took the threat seriously and forced his feet to move. The last thing he needed was to be scooped up into Mica's arms. "And what is your jealous little Wren going to think when he sees my new accessory?"

"This may be hard for you to comprehend, but not everything is about sex. Wren isn't jealous of you like that. If anything, he'll be grateful you're being monitored. It's not like I marked you like Bastion did," Mica said, tension ratcheting up in his voice on the last sentence.

Fuck, Mica was so clueless sometimes. Mostly when it came to his love life. The fact it took them a decade of flirtation to even meet was proof of that. It would almost be endearing if it wasn't going to put Ra even more at odds with the guy who could make his work here very difficult. Shaking his head, he gave up trying to explain it.

The entrance to Mica's wing of the stronghold was marked by extravagant double doors that spread wider than an elemental wingspan and over twice his height. They were made of the limestone of the caves and intricately carved into a map of the Earth Court territory that stretched across the entire Asian and Oceania continents, excluding the oceans that were the domain of Nerida, Lady of the Water Court, and the islands of Aotearoa New Zealand where the City of Souls and several other free settlements of elementals had found refuge.

The doors swung open as they approached and Ra took in the surprisingly cosy open-plan living area that reminded him of Bast's penthouse back home in Soul Tower. They must have been on the outer edge of the cave system and higher up inside the hills that soared above it because there was a real window across from them complete with a balcony that looked out over lush green jungle. Stacked mineral rock formations made up the breakfast bar and the dining table, and soft furnishings in various shades of burnished copper made the space warm and inviting. A plush low-backed couch that could seat at least three elementals was angled to take advantage of an open fireplace that took the chill off the air of the cave system. The fire was blazing with no sign of any wood or other fuel—the perks of a home made from pure magic.

"Your room is through the wooden door and the guest bathroom is the door right next to it," Mica said, striding away from him toward one of the other doors leading off the space as if he couldn't wait to be free of the annoyance of his presence. "My rooms are through there," he added, gesturing to another impressively detailed carved door made of limestone and minerals across the other side of the room.

Ra paused as he took in the space, turning to Mica in confusion. This is not what he'd envisaged when Mica had said he'd be living in the guest suite of his wing of the stronghold. No wonder Wren had been so surprised.

"Something not to your liking?" Mica asked, warning in his tone.

"I thought you'd have like a dozen guest rooms, eight formal lounges, and a spa or something. This is your private space. Are you sure you want me here? I thought you'd put me as far away as possible," Ra said, his surprise making him more forthcoming than he'd usually be.

"I don't trust you anywhere else," Mica bit out.

"You literally have eyes in the walls and I'm pretty sure you just put the equivalent of a monitoring cuff around my neck, like humans use to track convicted criminals," Ra said.

"Well, I'm sure a human court would have convicted you for what you did to my people," Mica snarled.

Ra resisted the urge to flinch at the pain in those words. He'd done what he needed to do to protect Bast and Hel. He didn't owe Mica an explanation. "I didn't do shit to your people. I threatened you . We reached an understanding before it could affect anyone else."

"You held the food supply for thousands of people to ransom!"

The fact Mica believed him capable of following through on that threat showed just how doomed their ‘relationship' had been. Fuck him.

"You were the deciding vote in supporting Hel's capture, knowing it would lead to her and Bast's deaths if you succeeded!" Ra snapped back.

"I didn't have any choice! The fate of millions was in the balance!" Mica said, looming over him.

"There is always a choice. You chose to betray the people who were there for you when you needed them," Ra said, losing the fight to keep his own pain hidden. "You chose to betray us ," he added in a whisper.

"My court will always come first. If you thought any different, that's on you," Mica said, his voice almost gentle despite the uncompromising position of his words.

"Noted," Ra said, swallowing hard.

He hadn't expected otherwise, but Bast put the welfare of his people above everything as well and he still managed to vehemently protect and adore his mate. Not that he and Mica were mates.

Sighing, Mica reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair from his forehead before running a finger along the warm mica of the collar circling his neck. "We cannot fight like this for three years. Can we call a truce?"

Whatever answer he would've given was cut off by a sharp jolt of trembling earth beneath his feet followed by a piercing alarm coming from Mica's sat-phone.

Steel pushed aside the vulnerability in Mica's expression as he answered the phone. "Report."

Ra couldn't make out the words on the other end of the call, but he could tell it was bad.

"I'm on my way," Mica said, turning toward the balcony.

"Is it a problem with the stronghold? I need to know what we're dealing with. Take me with you," Ra said, following along behind the Earth Lord as he made his way outside.

Mica paused, an uncharacteristic uncertainty showing through. "If I take you, you must swear to tell no one what you see."

"Done," Ra said. Bast had already made him promise not to communicate with the Soul Court and who else was he going to tell?

Warmth flared in the mica around his neck and he yelped in surprise. "What?"

"My magic will constrict your vocal cords if you try and break your oath," Mica said.

"Fuck you! I keep my promises!"

"We don't have time for this. Come," Mica said, holding out his arms.

Oh shit. He hadn't thought this through. Mica was heading outside, not back into the caves. Of course, he would have to carry him wherever they were headed.

Scoffing at his hesitation, Mica scooped him up in his arms and used his power to launch them above the jungle canopy and into the clear blue of the sky. It wasn't the first time Ra had been carried by an elemental in flight. Bast had carried him many times when they needed to get somewhere in a hurry and his friends in the City of Souls had taken him joyriding more than once, diving and barrel-rolling above the city with him in one of the specialised magical slings designed to reduce the drag of his weight and keep him safe.

This was nothing like any of those times because it was Mica . Ra's body was crushed tight against the Earth Lord's muscled chest, which strained with the effort of his impossibly fast wingbeats as they headed west away from both the stronghold and the nearby Tree City. The speed of Mica's magically enhanced flight turned the world into a blur around them and he forgot himself for a moment as exhilaration flowed through him. Throwing his head back, he laughed in delight.

"Aren't you even a little bit scared by this?" Mica asked, amusement in his voice that rumbled against Ra's chest where he'd instinctively turned into the Earth Lord's body.

"This isn't my first rodeo. I've even flown as a passenger in aerial acrobatic displays," Ra said.

Mica growled and clutched him closer. "You will not fly with anyone but me while you're here."

Ra smirked and patted the Earth Lord's chest with a placating hand, ignoring the urge to stroke and play as the elemental's enticing scent filled his every breath and the electric energy that had always strung between them sent tingles through every part of him.

"You're the boss," he said.

"I am. Don't forget it," Mica replied, spiralling into a descent.

Ra had barely noticed their surroundings as they flew, but he could see now they were somewhere just outside Granite Bay, a coastal elemental city that had a significant human population courtesy of the surrounding farmland that was a major source of food supply in the area. It was also the scene of Ra's extortion of Mica but, thankfully, the Earth Lord was too distracted to point that out.

Below them, a deep crevasse had opened in the rolling grassland like an open wound in the landscape. It stretched between two outcrops of rocks, bisecting one of the arterial roads into the city. On either side, elemental scouts stood staring into the deep rift with concern.

As they landed, a rumbling shriek echoed into the air and a huge wyrm reared up out of the riven ground. The earth dragon was a juvenile, its long eel-like body only as wide as half of Mica's wingspan. Its smooth scales were a deep mirrored silver that flashed gold and blue as they reflected the dry grass and sky. Fangs the length of his forearm stretched in its gaping maw as it swung its head toward them, blindly searching for prey. Ra frowned as he took in the copper sheen that clouded its eyes. They may be subterranean, but wyrms still usually had vision. Something had taken the poor creature's sight.

"Easy, girl," Mica crooned, gently depositing Ra back on his feet so he could approach the snapping earth dragon.

Power flashed in Mica's wings as he neared her and the wyrm settled, dropping its head to Mica's eye level. Ra held his breath as the Earth Lord reached out and placed a calming hand on the bridge of her snout, even his looming presence dwarfed by the huge dragon. A rumble below his feet had Ra stumbling back as four more wyrms breached the earth around them. Long necks writhed together as they twined around where Mica stood, like a tangled living knot, blocking him from Ra's view.

His fists clenched at his sides as he stood poised and helpless. Vehicles were backing up on the road behind them, barred from reaching the city by the deep crevasse and the dangerous predators. Knowing his worry for the powerful Earth Lord was misplaced, Ra considered what was within his control. It was second nature to help manage a crisis like this after decades on the ruling partnership back home and Mica's scouts would likely be too focused on the magical threat of the wyrms to get things moving before it became a major logistical disruption for the city.

A cursory scan of the building traffic jam revealed what he needed—a truck carrying building materials. Within moments of knocking on the window, he had the human driver smiling and proud to lend his expertise to the cause. Ignoring the thrum of power still building behind him, Ra directed the heavy truck off the road to flatten a curving path through the grassland that would let the trail of vehicles circle around the obstruction and carry on their way.

It wasn't long before Mica's scouts joined his efforts, those with magic smoothing the new makeshift road into something less likely to puncture a tyre. Without really thinking about what he was doing, Ra asked them to install a solid barrier and a series of lighted road markers so no one would come to harm in the crevasse once darkness fell. The young mage he worked with on spacing the crystal light sources was a delight, his fascination with learning to mimic human traffic signage clear in the barrage of questions he threw at Ra.

He could tell the mages were stressed by whatever it was that had happened to cause the rift but he did his best to keep things light as they worked, joking about taking their newfound roading expertise and using it to construct an aerial racetrack. Other than the curious looks they kept sending the collar around his neck, Mica's people were just as fun and respectful as his team back home. Even the looks weren't disrespectful. If anything they were pleasantly surprised.

"Thank you," Mica murmured, approaching him as the young mage waved goodbye. "The regional lead was tied up with another breach elsewhere and the scouts don't always appreciate the urgency of damage to human infrastructure. It would've been hours before we sorted this if you hadn't stepped in."

Ra glanced over at the Earth Lord, surprised to see such visible fatigue in him. "I didn't do much. They would've figured it out eventually," he said shrugging.

Mica shook his head, his eyes running down Ra's body as if he'd never seen him before. "No. You took control and delivered, and you de-escalated their stress while you did it."

"Am I allowed to ask what the fuck happened?" Ra said.

"Not here. On the flight home," Mica said, gesturing for Ra to step closer.

This time, Mica turned him away from him and wrapped his arms around his waist, resting his chin on Ra's shoulder as he used magic to take his weight and get them airborne. He wasn't sure if this was better or worse than earlier because now they were touching across the full length of their bodies, Mica's hips nestled snug against his ass.

Okay. Definitely worse. Exquisitely worse.

"Stop squirming. I'm not going to drop you, no matter how tempting it may be," Mica teased.

Ra swallowed hard and forced himself to focus on the landscape speeding past below them instead of the rhythmic surging of Mica's wingbeats. He had a new respect for his best friend. How the fuck had Bast carried Hel around like this for so long without going crazy? The man was a saint.

"So, what on the Earths happened back there?" he asked.

"You understand that the strongholds form at a complex nexus of ley lines that makes magic coalesce and infuse into a location until it becomes a kind of sentience? A bit like magical synapses forming until they become a brain," Mica said.

"Sure."

"The Earth Stronghold has a much closer resonance with the planet because of the nature of Earth magic and the fact the caves nestle so deep beneath its surface. We think even though there was no overt damage to the stronghold when the second Melding merged the vampyr reality with this one, the trauma to the planet itself damaged the stronghold's sentience. It was already vulnerable from that when the reality contagion formed in its core and what resulted was a bit like a partial lobotomy. Vital connections were destroyed and the power reserves were destabilised. We haven't been able to figure out how to untangle and reshape the ley lines to heal it without doing even more harm to the sentience."

Ra winced as he processed just how much worse the situation was than he'd thought. What Mica was saying made a lot of sense given what he knew from talking to Hel. Bast's mate had communicated directly with the planet courtesy of her unique magic while they were eliminating the contagion. She'd described the deep fractures to its essence that resulted from the forced melding of realities.

"That sucks, but what does it have to do with what happened today and why did you put a literal gag order on me about it?" Ra asked.

"The only reason I'm telling you this is so you understand what your work needs to solve. It would cause panic if it got out," Mica warned.

"I get it. I'm not going to do anything to make things worse. What are we dealing with?"

Mica dropped down to the top of a hillside that looked out over the valley where the entrance to the Earth Stronghold lay and stepped away from Ra to take in the view in the late afternoon light. It was a strangely familiar sight and after a moment Ra realised this was the view Mica had texted to him months earlier before everything had gone wrong between them. Hel had thought they were sexting, but Mica had just been sharing a photo of a stunning sunset and saying it made him think of Ra and the City of Souls.

Gesturing toward the wide vista, Mica spoke in a voice almost too soft to hear, as if afraid the distant caves might be listening. "Ley lines cross the Earths between points of magical significance like rivers of power. When a nexus like this grows unstable, blockages and dams of raw power form where they should not. Usually, the stronghold would automatically rebalance them, which is probably why the sentiences evolved in the first place, but the damage to the Earth Stronghold has broken its ability to do so."

"What happens when it can't rebalance the power?" Ra asked, but he could guess the answer.

"It has to release somewhere. Today was just a small example of that. It's like an earth tremor releasing a fraction of the energy building between tectonic plates, except the seismic wave is a magical one and the fault lines are the hundreds of ley lines the stronghold is connected to that stretch around the Earths."

"What happens when the big one hits? A proper earthquake?"

"We cannot allow that to happen. The blast would travel the length of the ley lines and cause the same or worse damage as we're dealing with to the other three strongholds. From there it would become a cascading implosion of raw power that would be catastrophic for the function of magic on the Earths. The physical damage to the planet alone would cause the kind of loss of life we saw from the meldings."

"Fuck," Ra said, startling a bitter laugh from Mica. The meldings had killed millions.

"Yeah. Fuck."

"Why hasn't this come up at the council sessions?"

"Because I can't risk anyone finding out. The sentience is aware of every thought and feeling passing through my people's heads. It's like a symbiote dependent on each elemental that lives within its bounds and the magic they contain. I'm powerful and disciplined enough to keep my thoughts shielded, but most are not. If the reality of the situation it is causing got out, imagine what effect that would have on an already traumatised being? Imagine if part of you existed in hundreds of people, if your essence depended on the feedback loop between you and them, and every single one of them was terrified of you. If every single one of them was convinced you would destroy the world. It would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. There would be no faster way to bring on exactly the kind of devastation I am working to prevent."

He could see now why Mica hadn't wanted to get into this while they were in the caves where the sentience could overhear them. "Aren't you worried it will read this from me?" Ra asked.

"No. It can't communicate with your human mind so it can't read it either. As long as you keep your mouth shut, it won't get anything from you. And my collar around your neck will make sure nothing accidentally slips from your lips," Mica said, his eyes dropping to said lips as he spoke.

Ra let his tongue flick out to wet them just to fuck with him, smirking as Mica drew in a sharp breath. "Yeah, about the collar. Why was everyone giving it such weird looks?"

"We need to get back for Kaia's dinner," Mica said, sweeping him back into his arms and speeding back to the balcony of his chambers without another word.

Yeah, that wasn't suspicious at all. What the fuck had he got himself into?