me. I’m a meathead, but I’m not a moron. Yeah... I’d like to meet with her.”
John leaned in and pressed his lips to hers; then he stretched out beside her. His body was exhausted, but his heart was alive with a joy so pure it was like the sunlight he didn’t get to see anymore: He was a mute-ass motherfucker with a nasty past and a night job that involved fighting evil and slaughtering the undead. And in spite of all that... he’d gotten the girl.
He’d gotten his girl, his true love, his pyrocant.
Of course, he wasn’t fooling himself. Life with Xhex wasn’t going to be normal on so many levels—good thing he was down with the wild side.
“John?”
He whistled an ascending note.
“I want to get mated to you. Properly mated. Like in front of the king and everyone. I want this to be official.”
Well... didn’t that just make his heart stop.
As he sat up and looked at her, she smiled. “Jesus, the expression on your face. What? You didn’t think I’d want to be your shellan?”
Not in a million years.
She recoiled a little in surprise. “And you were okay with that?”
It was hard to explain. But what was between them went further than a mating ceremony or a back carving or a witnessed exchange of commitment. He couldn’t put his finger on the why of it... but she was his missing puzzle piece, the twelfth in his dozen, the first and the last pages of his book. And at some level that was all he needed.
All I want is you. However that comes.
She nodded. “Well, I want the whole deal.”
He kissed her again, softly, because he didn’t want to hurt her. Then he pulled back and mouthed, I love you. And I’d love to be your hellren.
She blushed. She actually blushed. And didn’t that make him feel like he was the size of a mountain.
“Good, then it’s settled.” She put her hand to his face. “We’re going to be mated now.”
Now? As in... now? Xhex... you’re having trouble standing.
She looked him straight in the eye, and when she spoke, her voice ached—God... how it ached. “Then you would hold me up, wouldn’t you.”
He traced over her features with his fingertips. And as he did, for some strange reason, he felt the arms of infinity wrapping around them both, holding them close... linking them forever.
Yes, he mouthed. I would hold you up. I will ever hold you up and hold you dear, lover mine.
As he fused their mouths, he thought that was his vow to her. Mating ceremony or not... that was his vow to his female.
Tragedy struck during a brutal winter storm, and verily, it was not at all like the long labor of the female on her birthing bed. The ruination took naught but the blink of an eye... and yet the ramifications changed the course of lives.
“No!”
The sound of Tohrment’s shout snapped Darius’s head up from the steaming, slippery newborn in his bare hands. At first, there was no telling what had occurred to cause such alarm. Indeed, there had been much blood during the birthing, but the female had survived the delivery of her offspring unto this world. In fact, Darius was just cutting the cord and going to wrap the young for presentation—
“No! Oh, no!” Tohrment’s face was ashen as he reached out. “Oh, dearest Virgin Scribe! No!”
“Whyever are you—”
At first, Darius could make no sense of what he saw. It appeared... that the hilt of Tohrment’s dagger protruded from the sheets covering the female’s still-rounded belly.
And her pale, now bloodied hands were slowly slipping down from the weapon to land at her sides.
“She took it!” Tohrment gasped. “From my belt—I... It was so fast... I bent down to cover her and... she unsheathed the—”
Darius’s eyes shot to the female’s. Her stare was locked on the fire in the hearth, a single tear easing down her cheek as the life light began to drift out of her.
Darius knocked over the tub of water by the bed in his scramble to get to her... to take out the dagger... to save her... to...
The wound she had imparted to herself was a mortal one, in light of all she had been through during the birthing... and yet Darius could not help himself from fighting to save her.
“Leave not your daughter!” he said, leaning down with the squirming young. “You have brought forth a healthy babe! Lift thine eyes, lift thine eyes!”
As the sound of water dripping from the upended bowl seemed loud as a gunshot, no answer came forth from the female.
Darius felt his mouth moving and had the sense that he was talking—but for some reason, all he could hear was the soft rain of that spilled water while he begged for the female to stay with them... for her daughter’s sake, for the hope of the future, for the ties that he and Tohrment were prepared to forge with her so that she was never alone as she sought to raise what she had birthed.
As he felt something upon his britches, he frowned and glanced down.
’Twas not water that fell to the floor. ’Twas blood. Hers.
“Oh, dearest Virgin Scribe...” he whispered.
Verily, the female had chosen her course and sealed her fate.
Her last breath was naught but a shudder and then her head listed to the side, her eyes seemingly still locked upon the flames licking at the logs... when in fact, she saw nothing and would be sightless e’ermore.
The wail of the newborn and that forsaken dripping were the only sounds in Darius’s thatched cottage that he could hear. And indeed, it was the young’s plaintive mewling that threw him into action, for there was naught to accomplish about the spilled blood or the life lost. Grabbing the swaddling blanket that had been made for the little one, he carefully wrapped up the wee innocent and held her to his heart.
Oh, the cruel fate that had brought about this miracle. And now what?
Tohrment looked up from the bloodied birthing bed and the now cooling body, his eyes burning with horror. “I but turned away for a moment... may the Scribe Virgin forgive me... but for a moment did I —”
Darius shook his head. When he went to speak, he had no voice, so he placed his palm upon the boy’s shoulder and squeezed to offer comfort. As Tohrment sagged in his own skin, the wailing grew louder.
The mother was gone. The daughter remained.
Darius bent down with the new life in his arms, and retracted Tohrment’s dagger from the belly of the female. He put it aside, and then he closed the lids on those eyes and drew up fresh sheeting o’er the face.
“She will not go unto the Fade,” Tohrment moaned as he put his head in his hands. “She has doomed herself... ”
“She was doomed by the actions of others.” And the greatest sin among them was the cowardice of her father. “She was doomed long afore... oh, merciless fate, she was doomed long afore... Surely the
