Page 181 of The Stolen Throne
Sounds like what we’ve been doing since the day we met.
We complete the second circle successfully. No broken thread, no looking away, and our bodies in lockstep.
“Hold your heads steady.”
Again comes that feathering touch, around my forehead now, but this time, when she draws it to encircle Reven’s head like a crown, I glimpse the gossamer-fine thread she uses. So fine that I can only see glimmers of it as it catches candlelight. Like our love. Connecting us and yet such a simple thing to cut.
“In unison, repeat after me,” she says again, then takes another breath.
Only this time, before she starts the words, a deep violet glow rises up from underneath us. The priestess invoking her power. Then, she places her glowing hands over each of our hearts and starts to speak.
Only with you am I able to breathe;
Without, I stumble, I hurt, I perish.
My soul to you, only you, I bequeath
and pray with every heartbeat you cherish
my gift so deeply that nothing—not time
nor distance, nor the heavens, nor the hells—
can touch love beyond reason. This sublime
love which may never break or be felled.
Once joined together, in this troth we make,
let me become the star by which you guide
all your thoughts, your paths, your steps, and forsake
life without your soulbound mate by your side.
These true promises I give you by rite.
In each hereafter, let us reunite.
With every word, every syllable, her power brightens, warmth passing into me, through me, and the shadows inside me turn incandescent with heat and sensation, the magic almost blinding in its beauty.
“Bless these lovers, oh goddesses, oh six daughters of Nova,” she calls out in a ringing voice.
A wave of power seeps into my body from her touch. Her warmth shifts into heat, a sharp burn that sears through blood and bones and into my core, taking up a thrumming inside me.
I grit my teeth and try not to move, to squirm with this delicious intensity. This need.
New lights join the priestess’s. Both golden and purple. But these lights come from…us.
“Oh,” the priestess helping off to the side exclaims. “You are Imperium?”
“Yes,” Reven and I say. Together.
“Oh my,” is all she says to that. Though her tone doesn’t indicate that’s a bad thing. “Be prepared for your powers to react oddly for some time to come.”
I manage to keep a snort inside me. My powers acting oddly is nothing new for me. Reven, either, for that matter.
The heat is still spreading, still building, and the throbbing through my veins, through the shadows that already connect us, draws in and melds together, focused and pulsing between my thighs.
