Yet they had repaired the Griffon babes, brought them back from stone, nearly at the expense of their own lives.
That was no dark magick, surely. For the Griffons were known for their purity and innocent magick.
Pain filled his gaze as his features twisted in regret as he watched her.
Aye, he deserved to feel that regret, and so much more. His soul, if he had one, should be writhing in agony at his acts.
“No tears, love,” his voice rasped, rough, weakened. Nearly breaking her with the gentle understanding it held. “Do not hesitate, little Sorceress, our forgiveness will follow you.”
She bent over, her forehead touching her knees as she felt her body shake with the sobs she couldn’t hold back.
Because she couldn’t do it.
She wanted to.
She wanted to strike their wicked heads from their bodies, yet she couldn’t draw her sword from its sheath.
Even as the thoughts passed through her mind, she knew them for the lies they were. Even the Sentinels knew she could never force herself to harm them, no matter the crimes they were accused.
Instead, as her head lifted, shock tore another sob from her as she realized her magick was weaving with those weakened palest-blue threads struggling to lift from his powerful chest.
He watched her solemnly, as though he knew her every thought, knew every fear surging through her. And perhaps he did. Any Wizard strong enough to attempt to murder one of their own and conspire to kill a princess would have great dark magick indeed.
Magick strong enough to steal any Sorceress’ will.
His gaze shifted to the sword once again.
“Why hesitate, beauty?” he rasped, understanding thick in a voice so weakened it barely carried to her.
“Do not speak to me,” she cried out, feeling everything inside her rejecting the thought that she could spill this Wizard’s blood. That she could dare to strike out at him.
At the same time, everything inside her was screaming that she do just that.
She had spent her magick once just to save them and the cubs. She had spent her magick again to hide them, to ensure that the rage Garron had sent out through the land toward them could not touch them.
Here, within the Emerald Valley, her strongest magick shielding the entrance to the deepest cavern within the valley, she had betrayed herself, her queen, her people.
Still, her shields should have never been enough to hold back Garron’s magick and the violence and rage that had fueled it.
“Do not speak to you.” He gave a weary breath as his head turned, his gaze finding the unconscious form of his brother mere inches from him.
His gaze then dropped to the fragile forms of the Griffons sleeping between them.
His lips quirked in a somber line as his hand slid to the baby, his fingers drifting over the white wings and tucking beneath them to the soft white fur that covered the fragile body.
The cub turned on his back, still sleeping, wings unfurling out to his sides as he sprawled out in abandon to allow the Wizard to stroke his undefended belly.
How odd. The babes rarely allowed even the Sorceresses to stroke their most vulnerable area in such a way.
Griffons were born with a knowledge that their bellies were the most undefended parts of their bodies. That it was there that they were most often struck and brought from the skies.
Yet Tambor was allowing the Wizard to stroke him, and even slept through the gentle caress.
“He will need to suck soon,” the Wizard advised her softly. “He is weak, and will need his mother.”
“When he awakens.” She wiped at the tears that still fell. “He has not yet gained the strength to go to her, and I am not yet strong enough to do so either.”
He nodded softly before lifting his gaze to her once again. “You are weary, Astra. Come, lie between us. Let us warm you and rest. Your magick will then return full strength, and perhaps by then, we can repair a bit of the damage in your thoughts of us.”
“How, with a Joining?” Mocking filled the tear-stained laughter that was so pathetic it was humiliating.
Because there was nothing she longed for more than to lie beside them, to have them wrap her in their arms and create the bonding that only came when natural Consorts Joined.
“I fear even we could not establish a Joining this day, love.” He sighed then. “It would take far more than one small nap to establish the strength needed to give you the pleasure we long to give.”
“No lies, Wizards.” She feared she could not bear the pain of them. “Rest. Worry for your own strength, for there will be a reckoning soon. And I fear strength may be all that will aid your escape from this land.”
The thought of them leaving, of no chance to feel their touch or the caress of their magick, was near more than she could bear.
“How long—” Clearing his throat, he stared around the cavern. “How long has it been since we found the cubs?”
She shrugged, uncertain. “I found you and the babes, chilled and weak this noon, though the battle for the valley was fought two eves past. The land showed me the gifts you gave in repairing their bodies before lifting the spell. I brought you here.” She gestured to the cavern. “And wondered at why you did such a thing.”
Did her hatred, her disgust at herself as well as them, reflect within her voice?
The emotions tearing through her were chaotic and left her filled with dread.
“They are innocent,” he said softly, his gaze on the Griffon babes rather than her. “Such innocence did not deserve such a fate.”
Should she excuse him for not seeing the shaft of agony he drove into her heart? Did this mean, in his reasoning, that she and the Sorceresses of Covenan were somehow guilty of some crime and undeserving of life?
Could she forgive such a thought in exchange for the actions of saving the cubs?
Nay, she would forgive him nothing.
“What of my princess and my queen?” she demanded wearily then, coming to her feet to pace slowly toward him, to stare down at him, wishing she had the strength to expend her fury. “Were they not innocent enough, Talagarian Wizard? Did they deserve whatever fate you sent them to?”
His head turned slowly. The look on his face—was it guilt or was it horrified confusion? At that moment, how she wished she had the gift of the Justices to divine the truth.
“What say you, Sorceress?” His voice rasped, as if a great illness tore at his throat. “What is this you accuse us of?”
Her chin lifted, but still her tears fell as she stared down at him. Her anger, her certainty that he must lie, that he must know how he had destroyed not just her queen but also her cousin and her friend, drove spikes of agony through her chest.
“Queen Amoria and Princess Serena did naught to you,” she stated, painfully aware that she could not strike him down, that she could do nothing but leave and pray to the gods she had the strength to never return.
“Why?” She could not stop the plea from passing her lips. “Why, Torran, would you take them from us? Did you hate the princess so much for denying your request to question men you had given orders to? Was it the fact that she denied you? Did you know how she stood before the Justices, before you petitioned to speak to the accused and raged at them for their refusal?
“That she begged and all but went to her knees before them to allow you the questioning you sought. For what?” she cried out desperately. “So you could destroy her and her mother? Take from us all we hold dear?” She battled back her tears once again. “Ah Torran, fine warrior of Talgaria, how I wish I could drive my sword through your heart for such an evil act.” Sobs tore from her. “How weak am I?” She wanted to fall to her knees in shame and pain. “How weak am I to allow you to live when you have taken them from us?”
Her hand refused to pull her sword free. Her arm refused to make the killing blow. All that seemed willing to obey her commands now were her legs. And she used them to turn and run as fast and hard as her weakened body would allow from the warrior who brought her magick alive in a way she had prayed she would never know.
In a way that proclaimed her the natural Consort of a traitor.
As she turned to run, Torran sent his magick, weak at it was, to cover her. To protect her should she actually leave them alone, without her warmth and her tender care.
To protect her.
He could not risk harm to her. He could not allow her to travel alone, with naught to defend her but her own sword.
Nay, not his Consort. His Consortress. The Sorceress destined to be Consort to both himself as well as his younger brother, Rhydan.
The woman created by magick to match him perfectly, to ease the heart and complete the soul of himself and his brother.
As the magick left his body and cleaved to her, he fell back to the furs, his hands clenching in them as he stared at her, ached for her.
Long before, he had known of love, its mysteries and its charms. And much longer before he had known the agony of her belief that he and Rhydan had betrayed all she held dear, he had ached for her.
He had watched her weep as a young child, had watched her plead with a cold and unforgiving mother. Each time, he and Rhydan had sought to comfort her, their spirits holding fast to her, their warmth wrapping around her.
He’d only wanted to hold her. To ease her tears, to ease the pain that raged at her. How it had torn at him and Rhydan to see her pain and to be unable to comfort her with nothing more than the ghostly warmth they had provided.
Then, to feel her pain these past weeks, to feel her magick reaching out to them, filled with such confusion and betrayal, had burned through their souls like a white-hot blade.
Her magick had not been the only one reaching out though. Their power had reached out for her as well. She had the ability to put a stop to the game the Veressi had all but forced them into. Her magick and her place as their Consortress afforded her the power to reveal her place as their chosen one, and as the woman they could not turn from.
Yet she had not used the power to do so.
She had ached. She had raged. She had watched them in anger and in hope and her magick had reached out to them, stroking them, torturing them with need. But she had not revealed herself to them, nor forced them to do so.
And now, she ran from them.
From them, from her fears, her desires and the crimes she had feared they had committed.
Chapter Three
Astra wanted only to run.
She wanted only to escape the pain and the knowledge of her actions, the knowledge of the emotions she couldn’t contain and feared would destroy her. Destroy her as they had all but destroyed her ancestors.
Run for the curve in the cavern that would lead to the tunnel and then to—freedom?
Nay, there was no freedom.
She was brought up short by the feeling of magick. A sensual, heated caress filled with gentleness and rich with male regret as it stroked along her arm, twining about it. There was no sense of restraint; there was only the sense of regret, hunger and a need to ease her pain.
A need to ease her pain? Their magick wrapped around her, warmed her and, surprisingly, strengthened what little magick she had left inside her.
Swinging around, facing them, her breathing harsh, tears clogging her throat as she stared back at them with a desperation born of the heartache tearing her asunder.
Why could it not be rage? She could have dealt with the rage, she had known its like before, and she had survived it.
The touch of their magick, both their magick, the palest of blue and the darkest of blue, ignited a sizzling reaction within her. As though the spores of magick that filled her being were suddenly coming alive in ways she had never known they could.
Her thighs clenched as pleasure began to slide over sensitive, reactive nerve endings.
Wizard magick, aligned with Sorceress magick, the fusion of the complementing powers suddenly sent pure sensation to wrap about her nipples, to heat her clitoris and awaken the female needs that had lain dormant in her woman’s core.
Even more shocking, more frightening in many ways was the prick of sensation at the tightly clenched entrance of her rear. The entrance that Sorceresses had once given willingly and with great pleasure to their Wizards.
She was such a traitor.
A sob hitched from her chest, and she could naught but close her eyes as she fought to convince herself to run. To leave this place and these Wizards.
Rather than running, she stood there, still, silent, feeling her feminine juices slickening her flesh, running from her vagina to lubricate the swollen flesh of her female folds, then to ease from there along the cleft to the entrance she had never imagined she would feel such pleasure at.
Rather than sending out an alarm, she was trying to catch her breath, feeling her magick rising inside her. The aligning she had felt so rejected by, fought so hard to contain, was rising inside her, slipping past all thought of control.
Lifting her lashes, she stared across the great stone room at the Wizards reclining on the thick pallet of furs she had created for them.
The babes had been gently moved, eased to a fur to the side of them, away from the pallet where the sexually charged magick whipped about them.
Torran and Rhydan reclined in the same position she had placed them in earlier, their bodies uncovered, their cocks rising hard and fierce from the openings of their breeches.
Thick, engorged crests throbbed, darkened by their lust. Heavy veins pounded in the wide shafts as her magick—merciful Sentinels—wrapped around the heavy columns, both of them, like a lover’s mouth.
Soft green magick weaved from her, flowed over them, cupped their balls and milked their dicks.
Their magick drew her closer, easing her to them as it stroked over her. Dark-blue strands of the sensual, heated power eased beneath the soft silk of her blouse, capped over a nipple and suckled with a damp heat.
As though Rhydan’s mouth covered it, his magick licked and stroked, sucked and nipped at the tender tip until she was shaking with the sensations raging through her flesh.
“Why?” she whispered, unable to stop her own hands from sliding to her breasts, her fingers touching the hardened, tight nipples as she felt the magickal caress lick over them as well.
Her breath caught with her pleasure, her knees weakening. For this moment in time, for just this touch she allowed herself to belong to them.
She would be the traitor again when she could think, when she could make sense of so many emotions and sensations at once. Until then, Sentinels help her, she just wanted to luxuriate in it.
“We’re too weak to take you,” Torran whispered as she was drawn closer, her legs growing weaker. “But we can give you our magick instead, Consortress. Our touch. This pleasure that only our Consortress could know from our magick.”
A Consortress could only find the true heights of pleasure in the arms of her Wizard Twins. For a millennium Sorceresses had been denied the chance to know this pleasure. To experience this touch.
A millennium without the worry that the day would come that they would be abducted for it. Forced to have their magick align with Wizard Twins who refused to court them, refused to give them choice.
Torran bit back a groan, the feel of her magick, like a lover’s heated mouth sucked at his dick, drew at the sensitive head as a ghostly tongue licked over it, tasted it. He had to bite back a groan of pure rapture at her caress. The thought that for now she was theirs, if only by magick, was nearly more than he could bear.
Bear it he did though, as her magick surrounded the heavy, throbbing crest.
Pleasure was a swirl of pure power tearing through him, the spores of magick that infused every fiber of his being crackled with nearing rapture. A rapture he knew Rhydan was feeling as well.
Her magick was as soft and silken as the purest power. It suckled his cock, washed over his chest and caressed his thighs with shy, tentative strokes.
It nearly destroyed his control. A control both he and Rhydan knew they could not lose.
Rhydan above all felt that weakness. His magick was weakest, the power expended to save the Griffons had taken a toll neither of them had expected.
Her magick sucked at their shafts, the sensation of a wicked, hot little mouth enclosing the thickened head of his cock was by far the exacting pleasure Rhydan could imagine. No other lover had used her magick in this way, nor had any other lover sent their power racing through them. Especially at a time when there had been so little power left within them.
The weakness in their bodies was dissipating beneath the infusion of strength from her magick touch. It was clenching, tightening with the need to move, to bring her to them, to cushion her between their bodies as they took her in truth rather than with magick.
But magick was all they could give.
Magick was all she would accept.
At least for this moment.
As Torran’s magick centered on her lush, wet pussy, Rhydan sent his magick to capture the second tight, hard bud of her nipple and eased along the narrow cleft of her rear.
There, his magick touched the wet heat easing from her pussy. The slick juices had the feel of a softness finer than silk, a heat more searing than the strongest magick.
Easing those juices lower with the magick touch he bestowed upon her, Rhydan felt his hips lifting, pushing against the threads of her magick as though fucking deeper into the liquid heat of her mouth.
Torran could feel the wetness of her juices against his fingertips as he watched her nearing the pallet, drawn to them as pleasure began to crackle along the magick threads binding them.
She came to her knees between them, her thighs spread as though for the touch of their hands rather than their magick, the long, soft curls of her hair flowed around her as her head tipped forward in sensual pleasure. Spearing his fingers into those curls, he drew her head lower, her lips to his as she whimpered her pleasure.
As her lips touched his he allowed his magick to thicken at her entrance, to work against it as though it were his cock taking the hot, rich depths. In turn, his magick conveyed the sensations, each snug clench of her cunt against the head of his shaft, the spill of her juices along the thick column.
His magick slipped inside her, working slow and easy, stretching the taut little hole as he eased his power into her as he would have eased his cock inside her.
The added pleasure of Rhydan’s touch at the tightened entrance of her rear had her clenching on the invasion. Torran had to fight the need to pull her to him, to draw her body over his and take her in truth.
They could take her only with their magick though. And as his magick fucked slowly into the tight depths of her pussy, he could feel the snug sheath clenching further, the heat intensifying as Rhydan’s magick invaded the tight, sensitive flesh of her anus.
She was crying between them, her head pulling away, breaking their kiss. She tipped her head back, those curls slipped over her shoulder, teasing him, teasing his touch and his hunger.
Torran felt her pussy tightening further, heard her cries as he drew her to his chest, pulling her over his body to give her a fuller sense of their possession.
Her fingers curled against his chest, little nails raking the flesh sensually. In the thrust of her hips against the magick invading her he could feel her hunger, her need for her orgasm.
And her pleasure.
The pleasure was whipping about the three of them with a fierce, sensual heat, searing in its intensity.
Astra cried out against Torran’s chest as she reached with one hand to Rhydan as well. Gripping his forearm, her body so tense, clenched so tight against the magick invading her, she became lost to the implications of it.
Magick slipped deeper inside her, stretching her pussy, her rear, thrusting into her, building her pleasure higher.
Hot. Pulsing. As though their cocks were actually plowing inside her, stretching her, burning her with their possession.
A firestorm of erotic sensations ignited inside her at every point of sensitivity. Like pinpricks of ecstasy. They were blending, each tiny flame of sensuality merging together until it erupted.
Her pussy and her rear clenched on the strokes of magick driving into them. Swollen, hot, the magick cocks worked inside her, worked her.
They fucked her into oblivion.
Into a release that had her arching, crying out to them and begging—
Begging when she had no idea what the pleas were for.
Begging when she knew, ultimately, that they would be the destruction of her.