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Chapter Fifteen
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2024-10-29 19:42:56Wrapped in the drying cloths, leaving our clothing to be washed, we took the wine and the fruit with us as we crept up to our room. The tavern was busy below, the sound of voices spilling through the floorboards. I wondered if they discussed us, and the impending arrival of the dragon the following day. It made me nervous to think of, and worried for Rivyn - he was so full of Fae confidence, but a dragon was a formidable opponent.
The room was basic, falling below the slope of the roof, with much of the space lost to the diminishing height, but the bedding was clean and the mattress thick. A small table near the bed held a lit chamberstick, the only light in the room. We placed the wine and fruit next to it and our bags at the foot of the bed.
Rivyn sat on the bed sipping wine as I ran the comb through his hair. “So,” he said, his voice somnolent. “We will offer you as tribute.”
“The dragon will know, though, won’t
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The villagers escorted me to an open field beyond the village. They were restless and over-excited with anxiety over the dragon’s imminent arrival, crowding around me and all speaking at once so that the sounds of their voices merged into cacophony, the pitch and their unease causing my heart to pound and my ribs to feel constricting to my lungs. “What happened with previous offerings?” I asked the woman who seemed to be in charge of me. She had arrived an hour or so before with a white dress for me to wear, its hems brightly embroidered, and had braided my hair with ribbons to match. She had scrubbed my face and nails, pinched my cheeks, rubbed berries on my lips and declared me respectable before bringing me out of the inn, into the bright sunlight, where the rest of the village waited to escort me to my potential doom or ravishment – both possibilities equally dire to them, from what I managed to distinguish from their conversations.
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“Well,” I accepted a golden goblet of wine from Rivyn who seemed unbothered entirely about the odd setting and the golden haired, naked man that dominated it. “You took up residence here, I presume, because you like the location. It is a pretty spot. Nice caves,” I looked around myself dubiously. “Pretty prosperous village... You want to settle here, make a home and family?” His eyes narrowed, and he did not reply. “The villagers are frightened of you. They cannot work their mines because they fear your wrath,” I told him. “Much longer and they will begin to starve. The village will not be so pretty when they cannot sustain it, and their corpses begin to outnumber the living. “But this relationship can be mutually advantageous. They are victim to marauders, to war... with a dragon in the mountains, they will be protected from such things. And in return, they can divert dragon hunters away from your cave,” I explain
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We collected firewood and created a nestlike camp site in the corner where two walls still formed shelter, before stripping down to the skin and wading bare into the water like children. I had never swum in salt water, with sand sinking underfoot and the waves rolling in at me. Rivyn laughed and saved me as a wave tried to steal me into the deep. “For a creature of the sea,” he mocked me setting me to my feet on the sand. “You fall victim to its foibles easily.” “I’ve never been to the sea before,” I replied, undaunted. “I guess instinct only serves so well.” We lay upon the sand with the gentle ebb of the shallow water sucking at us and the sun warm on our skin and I traced the salt that clung to his back like tiny diamonds. He rolled to the side and drew me under him so that the sand moulded around my back as he kissed me, his lips soft against mine, lingering on a breath. I reached up and stroked the midnight fa
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The patrons looked at us with open interest. In comparison to most of them, we were finely and overdressed. Rivyn was accustomed to being stared at, he attracted attention with his height and the breadth of his shoulders, and his unusual astonishing beauty, and he walked to the bar indifferent to their speculation. “We’re looking to book a ship.” “A whole ship, or a berth upon one?” the inn keeper looked amused. “It depends on whether the vessel passes the point I want to get off,” Rivyn replied. “I want to dive to the wreck of the Hirewyn DeaLothe.” “Fae ship,” one of the men muttered. “Best left alone.” “Strange things happen in that patch of the ocean,” another man at the bar said into his tankard. “Ships sail around that point.” “It’s impossible to dive to,” a man straightened to standing and turned to rest his hips against the bar. His hair and beard were a reddish
The Mage's Heart Chapter Twenty
We went down a wooden stair, and through a chamber strung with hammocks but otherwise given entirely to the galley kitchen and a table for eating. Crew quarters and living area, I thought. Grim accommodations. I wondered what the guest quarters would be, and what Rivyn would make of them. There was an area to the rear separated by a carved partition screen. It opened directly onto a mattress and the sheets were none too fresh, the smell of man strong. Guest quarters they may be, but I suspected they were also Loisin’s sleeping quarters, or someone else in the crew. The screen let in the light, but also gave a modicum of privacy, and I decided that, even with the stale smell of enclosure, it would be an improvement on sleeping in a hammock, or anywhere in sight of the sailors. Rivyn looked at the mattress, and I could see that he barely suppressed a sneer. “We will be, of course, requiring clean bedding,” he pointed out.
The Mage's Heart Chapter Twenty One
I was awoken by the call of voices above us, and the movement of the ship. “They’re casting off,” Rivyn murmured, his fingers stroking my hair out across my back. “Wind must be good.” I felt the moment the sails caught it, and the motion of the ship as it picked up speed. His stroking was no longer innocent, and I pressed my lips to his chest.“They’ll all be on deck,” he drew my knee up to his hip and rolled onto his side. “And the ship’s movements will disguise your voice,” his lips found mine, his kiss heated as he drew my hips to his and rocked into me. “Ah, Siorin,” he breathed my name like a prayer, his hands stoking down my back, pressing me closer to him. I wrapped my arms around him, holding him tightly to me.I gasped out a moan against his throat and felt his groaned response. He pushed me onto my back, and I wrapped my legs around his hips. “Rivyn
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The sailor’s calls interrupted our sleep, I could not hear what they said, but there was a call and answer to their tone, a sense of rhythm. “They’re dropping the sails so they can anchor,” Rivyn observed. I could feel and hear the change in the ship, the sense of movement slowly easing. “We must have arrived.” Daylight spilled down the stairs into the galley - it was morning and we had slept late into it. We dressed and ate what was left from the sailor’s breakfast, before joining them on deck. Valhared hailed Rivyn immediately, and I watched them peer over the balustrade and into the water below. Rivyn returned to me and framed my face in his hands. “Stay on the top deck, my wife,” he said, brushing his lips over mine. “And out of the ocean. This will not take long.” I watched him scatter spell components into the water before stripping down to his trousers and diving neatly into the waves. I leaned against the b
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As the ship approached the white curve of beach and the jutting pier of Ilith Cape, Rivyn’s eyes watched the wheeling birds. The sailor’s voices rose as they lowered the sails and prepared to drop anchor. I saw a flash of light as one of the birds vanished in the air. The village on the shore looked like a child’s drawing, the details stolen by distance, but eventually I could see the smaller fishing boats bobbing in the water, and figures along the sand, watching our approach. “What is next for you?” Valhared joined us at the balustrade, leaning his elbows on it. We watched as the sailors lowered the rowboat over the side of the ship, preparing for our departure. “Another book, another adventure,” Rivyn replied lightly. “Three more, and then home. And you, my friend? Will you retire now?” Valhared laughed. “No, not I,” he shook his head. “I’ll take the treasure to my safe haven, divide a goo
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I stared at her in the reflection, my face showing my bafflement. The queen and the Fae woman both chuckled, but there was no malice to their laughter. “I’m not sure I understand,” I said carefully.“Marriage amongst the Fae and magical brethren is much simpler than amongst mankind,” she said gently and with patience, resting her hand upon my shoulder. The Fae woman resumed styling my hair, setting the circlet into the locks. “It’s an invocation of the rule of threes. Three openings to refuse, three declarations of intent, and, of course, three consummations...” she arched her eyebrows, prompting me. “Did Rivyn never mention the rule of three, to you?”My chest tightened as my heart picked up speed. Remember, anything important involves threes, Siorin, Rivyn had said to me. The conversation had struck me then, as out of place. He had been, I thought, trying to tell me that he had ta
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We stepped out of the portal, and Rivyn drew in a deep breath. I looked up at him. The expression on his handsome face held confliction - joy and trepidation. He was glad to be home, but the culmination of the past three weeks risk and strain lay ahead of him, and, even after two peaceful days in Benal reading Isyl’s book, he was weary from our adventures. “Rivyn,” I wrapped my arms around his waist, trying to offer him reassurance, where my own heart raced in fear for him. “You have faced dwarves, ogres, mages, Dark Elves, pirates, mermaids, a dragon, and you have torn a city apart in your anger. You can do this.” He pressed a kiss to the crown of my head. “Thank you, my wife,” he murmured. “I appreciate the encouragement.” We stood before an arched fortified gate build of the white stone that seemed to be used throughout the city and castle beyond, the portcullis raised, points frighteningly lethal overhead, and
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We stepped out of the portal into Benal, and I felt as if I had come a full circle in my adventures. I was where I had intended to be when I set out the night that I had encountered Rivyn in the forest.Isyl’s pretty little cottage was set on the edge of the forest where it opened into Benal.Immediately upon her arrival, there was a flurry of activity as the fairy folk came to greet Isyl in her flower-strewn garden.“Yes, yes,” she said. “He is. They’re very flustered by the arrival of royalty,” she told me taking my hand and drawing me up her path as the fairy folk gathered around Rivyn, the rise and fall of their voices indicating that he was being bombarded with questions.“Oh, I guess,” he cast a look towards us, almost pleading for rescue.“Come inside and have a cup of tea,” Isyl denied it, leading me within
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I woke alone to a bright morning with no sign of dragons in the sky. The city was eerily quiet, the residents still hesitant to venture out of their houses for fear of the Dark Elves that had terrorised the castle overnight. I wondered what remained of the castle and the mages’ college. Hopefully, very little. My mouth felt much better. There were no sharp spots of pain, no feeling of swelling as result of injury, but it felt delicate and fragile, as if the wounds were closed, but only just so. I touched my face trying to determine how badly the tears on my lips had scarred, frightened to find out. There was no surface within the room that would show me my reflection. “She can smell magic, and she walked through a mage spell as if it were a stroll around the garden,” Rivyn had left the bedroom door open when he had left, and his voice drifted up the stairs to me clearly. “I know very little about sirens, even less about half-sirens...”
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As if Rivyn had cast a spell of invisibility around us, he strode through the castle grounds unnoticed and unbothered. Around us, the castle servants and courtiers ran in screaming chaos, pursued by the Dark Elves, and harried by Aurien’s swoops and flames. Rivyn’s stride was unhurried, and his path unwavering.“I can walk,” I told him, “you are injured.”He shifted his grip on me, cradling me against his shoulder. “I am fine,” he said firmly. “Where is this good-witch?” He asked the half-Ogre as we passed out of the castle grounds. The street beyond the castle wall was quiet. In the distance I saw a woman run across the street into a building, slamming the door shut behind her.“This way,” the half-Ogre led us between two buildings.“You saved me,” I murmured.“Don’t speak until we ca
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I closed my eyes. I could understand why that secret would be closely kept by the sirens. If the brethren knew that half-sirens could sing brethren to death, sirens would be hunted by both mankind and brethren alike. It would be motivation enough for a woman to kill her child, or herself. In mankind’s hands, a half-siren could sing mermaids to land, Fae ships to wreckage, dragons into man-form... In mankind’s hands, a half-siren was a weapon.“We want you to sing,” the Queen said softly. “We want you to make this ogre take his own life.”I looked at the man. “I am more than happy to sing a wind for you, my Queen, because that is within my powers, but I will not even attempt that.”“Sing them to death,” the half-ogre growled at me. “Sing them into jumping through the windows to their own doom.” One of his armoured guards backhanded him, and the young
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Saphaqiel reunited us with Coryfe and Florien, at the waterfall. “No more foolishness, now,” she said sternly to Rivyn. “Finish this and take your wife home. She needs time to recover from the venom.” He smiled at her. “Thank you, Saphaqiel,” he said with warmth. “Thank you for your kindness and care.” There was a moment between them where they held each other’s eyes, and then she inclined her head with a smile, and winged away, leaving me wondering what it was that had gone unspoken. Florien fussed around us, chattering. “He is less than pleased at being left to look after Coryfe,” Rivyn told me. “He wanted to be in the Earies rather than below.” He replied to the fairy with a tone of sufferance, at length, until the fairy man seemed contented, and landed on Coryfe’s head. The way through the forest was easier due to our labour on the way in, and we reached the shoreline swiftly. Rivyn dismo
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I felt someone lift me to sitting, and a warm, salty liquid dribbled into my mouth. I swallowed.“Good girl,” a woman spoke. “Strong girl.” She continued to feed me small amounts of the broth, its ingredients unfamiliar to me. “Your man will be back soon, don’t you worry.” She lowered me back against something soft.I heard movement, felt the brush of feathers against my arm, and water being poured. “We’ll give you a nice wash whilst we wait,” she returned to my side and used a cloth to wash my hands and arms, neck and face, lifting the cloth that lay over my eyes before lowering it quickly.I realised that I was naked as she washed down my chest, and then my feet and legs. She covered me with a blanket. I felt her fingers in my hair, shaking something in and rubbing it through the strands before brushing it out. “There you are, beautiful again,” she
The Mage's Heart Chapter Twenty Three
As the ship approached the white curve of beach and the jutting pier of Ilith Cape, Rivyn’s eyes watched the wheeling birds. The sailor’s voices rose as they lowered the sails and prepared to drop anchor. I saw a flash of light as one of the birds vanished in the air. The village on the shore looked like a child’s drawing, the details stolen by distance, but eventually I could see the smaller fishing boats bobbing in the water, and figures along the sand, watching our approach. “What is next for you?” Valhared joined us at the balustrade, leaning his elbows on it. We watched as the sailors lowered the rowboat over the side of the ship, preparing for our departure. “Another book, another adventure,” Rivyn replied lightly. “Three more, and then home. And you, my friend? Will you retire now?” Valhared laughed. “No, not I,” he shook his head. “I’ll take the treasure to my safe haven, divide a goo
