He must have forgotten the low tent ceiling. She cringed to avoid it, but she still smacked one of her raised elbows along with her head against the long pole that formed the top of the A-frame.

“Ow!”

“Shit,” he snapped. He lowered her onto his lap immediately and hugged her.

She draped her arms around his neck and collapsed against him, dissolving into hiccups of laughter. So much for trying to keep what we’re doing quiet and private.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, cupping the top of her head and rubbing at the spot where she had hit the pole.

Straddling him brought them into alignment, and the length of his c**k pressed against her hypersensitive flesh. She lost her laughter as escalating hunger sank its claws deep into her flesh. “I’ll let you make it up to me,” she mouthed against his lips. At the same time she flexed her hips, rubbing herself along his hot, stiff penis.

“Gods, yes, let me make it up to you.” He gripped her by the back of the neck, and as he kissed her hard and deep, he eased one hand between them and probed gently at the folds of her moist, sensitive skin until he found her clitoris.

A lightning bolt of pleasure jolted through her. As she moaned, he fisted his hand in her hair, held her in place and swallowed the sound with his mouth. She broke into a light sweat and started to shake as he stroked her, holding himself so tightly, the muscles in his chest and arms were rock hard.

She could feel the moisture of her arousal pouring out of her and coating his fingers. She rocked against his hand while she gripped his c**k and fitted the thick, broad head against her entrance. Come on, come on.

Not yet, he said tensely in her head.

She growled, and he swallowed that sound too as he pierced her deeply with his hardened tongue, f**king her mouth with the same kind of rhythm he used as he stroked her. The lightning built, stronger and stronger, and she tried to twist, tried to impale herself on him, but he held her imprisoned with his fist in her hair and his hand between her legs. When she couldn’t get what she wanted, she whined and clawed at his arms.

You’re impossible. You make me crazy.

She didn’t know if she just thought the words again, or if she actually said them telepathically. Her mind was glazed, her body filled with light. Just when she wanted to scream at him, the lightning peaked. She arched into her climax, gasping, and that was when he finally penetrated her. She was so ready for him by that point that his c**k slid smooth as butter inside her, a liquid penetration that brought her pelvis hard against his and she peaked again, every muscle in her thighs shaking.

He clamped one arm around her hips and pumped up into her, once, twice, as he ground his mouth against hers. She gripped him with her inner muscles while the pleasure twisted her up and wrung her out, all their laughter and sexy talk burning away to rippling intensity.

Then it was his turn to make a sound, a quiet, shaken groan. She felt him climax deep inside of her, the outpouring of his pleasure beginning in the echoes of her own, and she wrapped her arms around him, holding him tightly as he rocked into her.

Breathing heavily, he loosened his grip in her hair at last. She pulled her mouth away from his to rest her head on his shoulder as he cradled her.

“My gods, you burn me up,” he said against the skin of her neck. “I go up in flames every time.”

“I do too,” she whispered. Lucky, she was so, so lucky.

She felt limp as a dishrag as she draped on his chest, and he shook out one of the blankets to wrap it around her. She didn’t even bother to move when he lay down on his back and tucked her pack behind his head; she just went down with him.

She wasn’t exactly comfortable. Her pack felt rough and lumpy against her cheek, and she would probably have to move off of him soon. But she was so tired. She didn’t think she could get more saturated with a sense of his presence or his vitality, and she didn’t want to lose any shred of the comfort that it gave her.

Which made it even more of a pity that she couldn’t take any of that comfort with her into sleep, or into her dreams.

SIXTEEN

The man had such compelling green eyes.

She didn’t know how she could see the color when he sat in silhouette just outside their tent. Behind the man, the passageway blazed with black flames, while every living soul in the camp shone white as the stars. The man’s outline was immaculately still.

“Won’t you join me?” he asked gently. “Your soul has a light like no other. Together you and I could transform the world.”

“You can’t get in here,” she told Amras Gaeleval. She peered out from underneath the flap at him. Somehow she had dragged her clothes on, but she didn’t remember it. Dragos had to be in the tent with her. He was here the last time she looked. Cold sweat broke over her face. She did not dare take her eyes away from Gaeleval to check.

“No, I’m afraid I can’t,” the man said. “Your camp’s defenses are not perfect although they are working somewhat. But I can ask you to come out here, Pia. That is what you like to call yourself, isn’t it? Pia Giovanni.”

Dread bled through her body. She gripped the edge of the tent flap tightly. “You can’t compel me with that name.”

“No, like all the Wyr, you have another Name, don’t you? A true Name. Wouldn’t you like to tell me what that is?”

She wanted to so badly. He was, after all, her closest and best-loved friend. Why, if she hadn’t met Dragos first, he might even have become her mate. Maybe he could still become her mate. She and Dragos had, after all, only been together for seven months.

NO. Everything inside of her threw that concept out violently. She yanked her gaze away from him to look at the towering flames that shone so black they burned against her retinas.

She said coldly, “That was a mistake.”

“I’m sorry you think so,” Gaeleval said. “I could have meant it, you know. You are unlike anybody I have ever met. I believe you may be unique. I could even consider giving up all the others, if I could only have you.”

She felt better once she looked at something other than him, and she realized that his eyes were a focus for his persuasion. Now if she could just find a way to get out of the dream. She had been so upset when she dreamed with Dragos that waking up had been easy.

“Do you know what I think is sad?” she heard herself asking.

“No, I don’t. But I want you to tell me everything you think and feel.”

She thought of the tall man she had seen so briefly in the apartment behind Beluviel, of his striking features and the autumnal spark of his chestnut hair, and how all the other Elves had looked to him. She thought of the sentinels, of even Aryal in her own abrasive, infuriating way, and how they all projected such unending strength.

“I think you must have been a good man once, a strong man,” she said. “You were a Guardian of your people, and you were put in a position of trust and power. I know you’re a gifted one, or you wouldn’t have been able to do all that you’ve done.”

As Gaeleval leaned forward, the small light from the campfire fell on his beautiful face. He stared at her and whispered, “I have always done my duty.”

Were there tears in his eyes? She didn’t dare look too closely. He was too deadly.

“Calondir said you are an ancient and an adept,” she said softly. “What makes me really sad is, I think you’ve become a monster, but I don’t think you’re evil. Numenlaur didn’t honor the pact and cast out its God Machine, and the responsibility for that betrayal of trust lies on your Lord. That’s not on you.”

“Camthalion was convinced that we must be strong and hold to our original course,” Gaeleval said. “All the other Elves had been mistaken, led astray by their lesser gods and inferior desires. Only Taliesin was worthy of grand purpose, and the god’s message was clear in the shape of the crown that Camthalion held. So he convinced all the others to leave and he ordered the passageway barred so that they could never return.”

“The God Machine was a crown?” she asked. If Camthalion had held a crown, how had Gaeleval gotten it? Had he taken it, or had Camthalion died? Was Gaeleval his heir? “You don’t wear a crown.”

His expression turned bittersweet. “I never wanted to rule,” he said simply. “I only wanted to serve.”

Her gaze fell to his hands. He was cupping something. He noticed the direction of her gaze and held open his fingers. The God Machine sat in his palms, an intensely burning black lotus of Power, eternally renewing itself. She had never seen anything so revolutionary. It was only a sliver of the god’s Power yet it held an essence so pure it could birth solar systems and burn down empires. It was a piece of the engine that drove the universe.

The Machine no longer looked like a crown. It had taken another physical form that spilled out between Gaeleval’s fingers. It took a moment for her to recognize what it was. When she did, her chest throbbed with a ferocious ache.

He held a string of plain, wooden prayer beads.

However he had gotten the God Machine, Dragos had said that the more he used it, the more it would work on him and affect his mind. The beads looked worn. She imagined him fingering the string. Perhaps he had prayed for guidance.

And the longer Taliesin’s item had been held in check, the greater the change it would bring into the world.

“What happened to you?” she whispered.

She had not expected him to answer, but then he did.

“I was summoned to the palace and when I arrived, I found everybody dead,” Gaeleval said softly. “All the attendants. Camthalion’s children, along with their mother. They had been kneeling in the throne room and their throats had been slit. Camthalion was still burning when I got there. He had poured oil over his head and set himself on fire.”

“My God,” she breathed.

“When I looked for the crown, it had vanished. These were on the floor at Camthalion’s feet.” He looked down at the string of beads as he fingered them. “As soon as I saw them I knew they were meant for me. When I took them, I understood that Numenlaur could not continue the way it was. The Elves had been torn apart by ambition and war, and they had been scattered across the Earth on a lie. Camthalion was right, but he did not have the strength to see his vision through to the finish. Our time should have ended long ago. We just refused to see it. We must draw this age of brokenness to a close, unite together one last time and pass on.”

So he intended both empire and destruction. He had such ruined nobility. Something tickled on her skin. She wiped her face, and only then did she realize that her cheeks had grown damp.

“Please, Amras,” she said. “Please try to listen to me. No matter how much conviction or purpose you think you feel, you don’t have to rule anybody. Camthalion was delusional, and now the Machine is affecting your mind too. It isn’t too late for you, and it isn’t too late for any of the others either. Let them go. Numenlaur has been cut off from the rest of the world for too long, but we can help you adjust. Just give me those beads. Let me hold them for you for a little while.”

“I am so tired of being a Guardian,” he said, his voice worn and threadbare with age. His expression held a sadness that could break apart the world.

“You don’t have to carry that burden any longer. You can let go and rest. Let me help you.” She held out her hand.

If she could only get her hands on those beads for a few minutes. If she ran away from everyone and everything as far and as fast as she could go, she could fling them into the nearest ravine or river. It didn’t matter where. Anywhere, anywhere, as long as the Machine was taken out of Gaeleval’s hands and released.

There wasn’t any way to stop the Machine, and she wouldn’t try. She would let it go and it would work its way through the world, enacting the god’s will according to its original purpose. She wouldn’t even say anything to anybody. She could explain what had happened as soon as she got back.

She met Amras’s gaze again. He gave her a small, grave smile and reached for her outstretched hand.

• • •

Dragos never knew what woke him.

It wasn’t the influx of cold air into the tent. If he set his mind to it, he could sleep outside through a howling gale. It wasn’t Pia shifting her weight off him or moving around. After sleeping in the same bed for seven months, they had grown used to each other’s presence in every permutation and position imaginable.

For whatever reason, he stretched and opened his eyes.

The Power of the God Machine continued to blaze in the nearby passageway fire, in the stone that burned but never melted. He could also sense the interwoven defensive spells from the magic users in camp.

Pia was already dressed, her tangled hair knotted on itself in a way that he never could understand. She put her hair up that way whenever she didn’t have any other way to fasten it, and it always fell apart when he ran his fingers through it.

She knelt on the edge of their rough, makeshift floor, holding the flap open as she peered out. He couldn’t see what held her attention. He yawned so widely, his jaws cracked.

“What are you looking at?” he asked, his voice gravelly from sleep.

She didn’t respond to him, although he saw her lips move. She wiped her face. Was she crying? He sat up, angling his head to better look out the flap. That was when he heard her whisper, “Let me help you.”

There was nobody outside. Nobody that Dragos could see, at any rate. There was only the wind and the fire, and the magic users’ spells.

Along with the Power of the God Machine as Gaeleval wielded it.

Dragos roared and lunged at her, slamming his own Power down in a shield around her.