Chapter 1

June2003

This was a fantasy.

Standing on the cottage stoop, I gazed up at the snowcapped mountains in the distance. Orange sky surrounded them, dragons circling their peaks. The scale of it was mind-boggling. At a glance, the dragons looked like tiny birds—like my flock of ravens flying just overhead. But one dragon took up nearly a quarter of the mountain's peak.

"You're gonna freeze out here." Graham adjusted the duffel bags on either of his shoulders and struggled past me. "Go put some clothes on."

With furrowed brows, I glanced over myself. Jeans, T-shirt, and baggy hoodie. It was chilly, but I was comfortable. "In what world is this naked?"

"This one." He tossed the duffel bags onto the floor just inside the curved wooden door. Turning back around, he gestured toward the mountain range. "Storm's coming in. You need your boots. And your coat."

"We're not meeting up with everybody for a little while." Naomi struggled around Warren and Ezra's suitcases at the foot of the stairs. Specifically, all their clothes that had spilled from their suitcases in the portal. Adjusting her backpack, she walked past me, saying, "You don't need to change yet. But yeah. That's practically naked here."

I grunted my annoyance, then gestured to Warren and Ezra. "Well, if I have to change, so do they."

After all, Warren was wearing jeans and a hoodie as well, and Ezra was in slacks. Why slacks and a button up when he knew we were coming to a war-ridden world to defeat Angels and soul eaters? Because anything Ezra did, he had to do in style. And there were no stylish snowsuits.

"We're Vampires." Warren waved a dismissive hand at me, collecting his clothes into the suitcase. "We can handle the cold better than you."

"In that case, you can handle your mess better than me, too." Propping my hands on my hips, I gave him a narrow-eyed smile. "I was gonna offer to help, but it's all on you now."

"We can handle some spilled luggage." Meeting my gaze, Ezra glanced at Graham. You worry about him.

Graham was… not his best. He tried to hide it, of course. The only part of him that gave it away were the dark circles beneath his eyes. If I hadn't slept beside him last night, feeling him toss and turn, hearing him grumble indiscernibly when he did finally fall asleep, I wouldn't know how difficult this was for him.

But I did know, and I knew I had to be there for him.

So, like a little duckling, I followed Graham into the cottage. The interior was just as idyllic as the exterior.

The walls were some kind of rock material, almost like concrete, but softer to the touch. I had to imagine it was a type of mud mixture that had been dried in the sun. Four windows allowed in light, a layer of two inch thick glass on each. Small wooden shutters—open, despite the forty-degree weather—framed every one.

In the far-right corner, there was a little space that I best equated to a kitchen. There was no faucet for the sink, but an Elvan ore basin. On either side, more Elvan ore sat atop wooden cabinets as countertops. To the left, there was a staircase, and behind it were two doors. All of the floors were wooden, but bare wood, not finished with polyurethane or stained any particular color.

I made a mental note to not walk around barefoot.

Graham stood at the fireplace in the center of the room with Jake, my brother. Kneeling, he shoved something inside that did not look like wood. It was black and cylindrical, roughly the size of my palm.

"That's not coal, is it?" I asked. "I thought coal was shaped more like a rock."

Chuckling, Graham gave me a smile over his shoulder. "No, mo stoirín. It's not coal."

"Ah, shit." I wrinkled my nose. "Do I want to know?"

Another laugh. "You just answered your own question."

I cocked my head to the side. "What?"

"It's shit," Naomi said, walking past me. "Trees don't grow here. The ones that do, it would be a waste to cut down."

"Aye, so we take manure and compress it into patties," Graham said. "That's what we burn to keep our houses warm. Dung patties."

"Yummy," I said under my breath. "Is there a bathroom here?"

"You think we're animals?" Connor asked, coming in behind me. "Of course we have bathrooms."

Shit, did I offend him? "I-I just wasn't sure if there was an outhouse situation or something."

Naomi dropped her bag on the linen lined, Elvan ore sofa. "He's fucking with you."

Sure enough, when I glanced at Connor, he gave a devious smirk. "It's an alternate dimension. I'm expecting you to have lots of questions."

Connor and I had met a handful of times, but I didn't know him well yet. Apparently, his sense of humor was less obvious than my obnoxious sarcasm.

Relieved, I glanced around. "Any idea where it is?"

"Usually on the first floor," Graham said. With a flame from his finger, he ignited the fire and stood. Walking behind the stairs, he opened the first door. "Bedroom, it looks like." He glanced inside the second room and nodded. "Here we are."

I followed him to greet another culture shock.

While all the other floors were wooden, these were Elvan ore. Shiny obsidian rock with a hint of purple in the light of the sun. No sink here either. Only a massive bowl—still Elvan ore—that dipped into the ground, another fireplace in the corner, and two streams of water.

The water entered from a small hole where the floor met the wall. A small dip was molded into the ore, like a river running across the ground. It split at a Y and trailed all the way out of the wall on the right. The exit almost resembled a pipe, but it wasn't a perfect circle. Also didn't connect to anything. Quite literally, there were two streams of water that came in from a hole in the wall and left from a hole in the other.

"Is there…" Cheeks flushed, I looked up at Graham. "You know. A toilet?"

He laughed. "You're looking at it."

I blinked hard, then turned back to him. "That big bowl thing?"

"That would be the bathtub." Walking inside, he walked over one stream and gestured to the stream closest to me. "This is the freshwater stream. You can drink it, wash your hands in it, bathe in it." He squatted, pointing out a piece of metal on the ground that I hadn't noticed before. When he flicked it, the water streaming toward the wall rerouted into the tub. "See? You want to take a bath, you flick this here, and it'll fill the bowl, as you called it."

"Huh." I glanced up and down the room again. "Fascinating. So you guys don't have pipes that bring in water?"

"It's almost like an aqueduct system," Naomi called behind me.

"Interesting. Isn't the water cold, though?"

"That's what this is for." Graham nodded to the fireplace. "But you know how to conjure fire. You can heat the water by just putting your hand inside."

Shit, hadn't thought of that. "Surely I'm not supposed to piss in it. You don't piss in the water you drink."

"No, that would be this stream." Graham pointed to the other stream, the one he had needed to step over. "This is the blackwater stream."

"I have a good guess as to why you call it blackwater."

A smile. "Yep."

"So I just… squat?"

"Usually, aye."

"Whew, I'm gonna have thighs of steel by the time we leave this place." Brushing past him, I pecked his cheek. "Maybe I'll complain less about getting on top."

He laughed. "I don't mind you on bottom one bit."

"Good, because until those muscles are ready, I'll keep my happy ass on the bottom." I craned up for one more kiss. "After I'm done in here, want to pick a room before Ezra and Warren?"

"I'll meet you upstairs."

There wasn'tmuch to choose from. The bedrooms were simple. Ramona took the one downstairs––the biggest one––because, in her words, it was only fair. "Your four are in relationships, meaning you'll be fucking at some point or another. And frankly, I don't think I should have to hear that. I think I should be on a separate floor."

Well, fair enough. But that only left four options upstairs.

One had a view of Iliantha's castle. Which was beautiful, don't get me wrong. Just not my personal preference, and not Graham's either. The second had a view of the mountain ridge I had been looking at outside. Also nice, but the third bedroom was the winner.

Nothing special, as far as decor went. A bed roughly the size of a queen in my world. There were a couple of dressers and a pretty painting of a forest on the wall. But the view? My gods, the view.

The window faced out of the queendom into the forest. Though sparse, the conifer trees were beautiful, the snow resting on top of them like something from a Christmas movie. Then paired with that orange sky. I wasn't sure if I would ever get over that orange sky. It was like a summer sunset, but even more vivid. Almost like a painting strewn across the atmosphere.

What won me over, though, was the waterfall in the distance. I had to squint to see it with any clarity, but even from here, I could hear the gentle trickle of liquid. Dripping over each icicle that framed the pond below, it twinkled like diamonds in the light of the sun. All that water crashing at the bottom into white foam reminded me of Niagara Falls. I'd only seen it in photos, but I'd always wanted to.

Leaning against the window, appreciating that view, I sighed deeply. "Everything's just so pretty here."

"The fact that you think so is what's gonna get us all killed, mo stoirín," Graham said.

I frowned at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It wasn't supposed to hurt your feelings." He patted the bed beside him. "Just that this isn't a vacation."

"I know that." I joined him on the bed, taking his hand in mine. "I'm just trying to make the best out of a bad situation."

"That's the thing, Rain." Reclining against the pillows, he took a piece of my hair and twirled it around his finger. "Pretty soon, there won't be any good."

My frown deepened. "As long as we've all got each other, there's gonna be something good."

He smiled, but it was dim.

It reminded me of the way Mom used to smile at me when I'd visit her in the hospital. When I'd climb up into the bed beside her, and say, "This time, the medicine will work. You'll get better."

She'd smile at me, just the way Graham was smiling at me now, and she'd say, "Maybe, sweetheart. Maybe."

"I just want you to be prepared," he murmured, tucking some hair behind my ear. "Once we're out there, once we're out of the walls of the city… It won't be the same. Nothing will be. You won't be."

While I saw the point he was making, that war did horrible things to the mind, I knew we'd make it through this. I'd already lived through some awful shit. I could live through worse.

"Oh, you'll live." His eyes brightened to a warm, emerald glow. "I'll make sure of that. But I don't want you to be disillusioned. You're gonna see some fucked up shit. We're gonna do some fucked up shit. And it's gonna haunt us."

Considered griping about him dipping into my thoughts, but decided it wasn't worth the subject change. "Only if we let it."

Graham snorted. "Oh, is that right? We can just choose to not let it affect us?"

Squeezing his hand, I shook my head. "That's not what I meant."

"And what did you mean?"

"We did something awful once." I traced my thumb along the back of his. "We got through it because we talked about it. Because we had each other. And now we have each other, and Ezra, and Warren, and Jake." I smiled wide. "Oh, and your gods. In the flesh. That might help."

Realizing what I meant now, his face softened. I couldn't call it a smile, but he didn't look so offended now. "You know what might really help me?"

"What's that?"

"If I can convince Laila to wipe whatever horrible things happen from my mind after this. You think she would?"

"If it comes to that, and you can't live with the things we see and do, I'll do it for you."

This time, the smile was real. "That's what I love about you, mo stoirín."

"That's all you love about me?" Leaning in, I pressed my lips to his. "Nothing else?"

"Oh, everything else," he said, kissing me again. "There's not a thing about you I'd change."

With a grin, I climbed onto his lap, kissing him once more, slower, gentler. "I bet you'll love me even more as these thighs get stronger."

He opened his mouth to speak, but the squeal of hinges sounded. In the doorway, Warren stood.

Smirking, he made a tsk, tsk, tsk sound. "Trying to squeeze a quick fuck in before we go off on our journey, huh?"

"It wasn't the goal," Graham said, "but I wasn't gonna turn it down."

Mockingly, Warren pressed a hand to his chest. "And you weren't gonna invite me?"

"I don't think this bed'll fit all of us," I said.

"I can squeeze in anywhere if there's an orgasm involved, Rainbow," Warren quipped, walking toward the window. "Aw, you guys took the good view."

"We sure as hell did," Graham said. "And I won't apologize for it, mate. This is supposed to be a punishment for you, in case you forgot."

For a few heartbeats, he only stared out the window. "Don't see myself forgetting that anytime soon."

These men were gonna be the death of me with all their moping.

I got it. The whole situation sucked. None of us wanted to be here. No one wanted to fight in this war. It was gonna be horrible, and bloody, and miserable.

But gods damn it, it wasn't yet. Right now, everything was fine. Right now, we were all okay. We were safe and warm, and we had each other. And we needed to relish in that for as long as we possibly could.

But telling Warren anything he didn't want to hear was like bashing your head off the wall. The easiest way to divert him from his brooding was distraction.

"Where's Ezra?" I asked.

"Talking to Jeremy outside." Joining us on the bed, Warren kicked his feet up. "Had a medical question of some kind. I don't know the details, but they want us to meet them at the castle in half an hour."

"Of course they do," I murmured. "How long a walk do you guys think that is?"

"Ten minutes?" Graham asked.

I sighed. "Not enough time for a quickie then, huh?"

Smirking, Warren looked me up and down. "Like I said. I can squeeze in just about anything if there's an orgasm involved."

"She doesn't wanna fuck." Graham poked me in the nose. "She doesn't want us to sulk, so she's trying to make us smile."

"We're not sulking," Warren said.

They very much were.

"Hey, I'm definitely down for a quickie if it'll make you smile," I said.

"Gross." Jake appeared in the doorway, a harbinger of celibacy.

Warren jolted away. Clearing his throat, he adjusted his pants.

Graham laughed.

And I hated this. While I could remain positive in most areas of my life, I was quickly tiring of my brother. I was a grown ass woman. Warren was a century old Vampire. We were in an adult, consenting relationship, and what we did in bed, when we got in bed, how many of us there were in the bed, was our business and ours alone.

And yet the moment my brother showed, Warren squirmed away from me like a teenager caught by a cop in the backseat of a car. No one was entirely mature about it. Graham laughed each time it happened, and Ezra blushed and stuttered a bit, but at least they went on like nothing was wrong.

Because nothing was wrong. We were adults in consensual, safe relationships.

That didn't change the tension between them, though—so thick, we'd need a sword to cut through it.

"What's up?" I asked him, sitting up straighter in the bed.

"Naomi said you need to go." Jake's tone was flat, face no different. Only the slightest curl of his lip showed his disgust. "They want you all in the dining hall."

No time for a quickie then.