I pulled out of Arach's memories and gentled our kiss until I could ease back from it as well. “The fact that magic affected you doesn't make you weak, Arach.”
Arach slowed his rhythm to a gentle grind and stared down at me. “It changed my love for you, not just my body, A Thaisce. Our love should be infallible but twice now, it has been ripped asunder. I cannot fathom it.”
“Our love may have been damaged, but it was strong enough to heal,” I reminded him. “Magic is magic; energy that will sometimes be more powerful than even our most steadfast emotions, but it's what happens after the magic is washed away that truly shows how resilient our love is. That no matter what hurts us or rips us apart, we will always find our way back to each other. Remember? We've made this vow before. If I lose my way, you remind me, and if you get lost, baby, I'm coming for you. Every time. Even if you push me away, I'm going to keep coming back until I bring you home.”
Arach's body shivered as his eyes misted. “I love you so much, A Thaisce. You are more important to me than anything else in all the realms.”
“I love you too.” I held his face in my hands and pulled it back down for another kiss. “To the moon and stars and even beyond that.”
Something shivered inside me strangely, but I pushed it away. This time was for my husband and me alone. I'd worry about nagging fears later.
Arach started a stronger pace, and I soon forgot the strange shiver, replacing it with another, more delicious trembling. I grabbed the perfect globes of Arach's ass and pulled him even deeper as I angled my hips up to meet his thrusts. The slamming of our bodies drove away everything but this. This beautiful union. This arching, straining pleasure. This boiling delight of quivering, sweating flesh. The clawing, clenching hands. The primal rumbles and resonant screams. The wild, blood-soaked love of a pair of mated Dragon-Sidhe. There's nothing like it.
I bucked up and rolled my husband onto his back with a ferocious snarl. His dragon eyes filled with light and claws sprouted from his fingertips. Arach drew them lightly down my arms as I started pounding onto him. Then he was clutching at my hips, the tips of those deadly talons barely breaking my skin so that blood trickled down my flanks and onto him. The scent drove us both wild, and we began savagely slamming together until I roared my release. With the rapture came fire, and I bent my head to breathe my flames into Arach. He sucked them down greedily, merged them with his own, and then gave it all back to me. His fire. His love. His essence.
As flames filled my throat and licked their way down to my belly, I clung to the memory of Arach's love, all mine once more. That feeling was far greater than any other ecstasy he could ever give me.
Chapter Forty-Nine
My dreams that night were misty. At first, I thought I'd wandered out of my dream and into the Dream Realm but this mist glowed silver, not blue, and it felt cold. Frigid. I rubbed my arms as I wandered through the bright fog, searching for whatever it was that I was trying to tell myself. Often, when something was bothering me in the waking world, I'd work it out in my sleep, and I had a feeling this was one of those times.
“Hello?” I called out.
My voice echoed back to me, but it didn't repeat what I'd said. Instead, I heard, “To the moon and stars and even beyond that.”
I frowned. Why would something I'd said to Arach be bothering me? I continued forward into the fog, not in the least worried about what it held. The Fey had built the Dream Realm, and I was powerful here. If I needed to, I could transform my dream with a thought. But I didn't want to change anything yet. First, I needed to figure out what I was doing there and why my words were coming back to haunt me. I squinted through the haze. The light was coming from somewhere above me, not from the mist itself. I waved my hand through the thick air and it swirled into spectral shapes that reminded me of the Jinn.
“Go over this battle in your mind carefully, Vervain. All is not as it seems,” Zimri-dagan's voice came from somewhere beside me.
“Zimri-dagan?” I called out even though I didn't think he was actually there.
Maybe the dream Zimri-dagan would respond. You never know. I waited but nothing else happened.
“Okay,” I muttered. “That whole 'all is not as it seems' bit is a little cliché, but I'll roll with it. I need to replay the battle.” I frowned and went still as I tried to remember it from the beginning. “We arrived, Marduk called me a traitor, and then he started beating me up with my own territory. I cast an illusion around him, got buried alive, dug my way out, and then he nearly killed me. What am I missing?”
“All you had to do was leave me alone,” Marduk's voice echoed eerily through the mist.
“Wait,” I murmured. “There was something strange.”
“Where did your moon go?” Brevyn whispered, and I shivered.
“Where did my moon go?” I repeated it in revelation. “Love went to Ishtar but who did Marduk give the Moon to? Did he keep it for himself?”
I tried to remember what it felt like to reclaim my magic. I had distinctly felt Love get taken away from Ishtar, and I was pretty sure that I felt the Moon get torn away from someone else. It couldn't have been Marduk because he wouldn't have to fight himself like that,
