This was all wrong. I shouldn’t be named to the council. I had hundreds of years of learning to do yet. This was pure insanity.
“Can’t you talk to them? Make them see you don’t feel you’re ready or right for this?”
That mirthless chuckle bubbled up from me this time. “Oh, Jallina. You’ve been around them a few times. You’ve felt the power rolling off them. There’s no arguing with them. There’s no talking them out of anything.”
“Especially Master Dorian.”
“Sweet heaven, especially that man.”
The coffee shop was mostly empty by then, and the reason I’d asked Jallina there needed no audience or prying eyes.
I took another sip of coffee and lowered my voice. “Jallina, I need your help.”
She bobbed her head. “Of course. Anything.”
“No, this isn’t a blanket ‘of course.’ Don’t say that until you hear me out.” I kept my voice quiet. “I need your help on a more sinister level. I’m learning things I didn’t want to, and I need help.”
Jallina laid a hand on mine. “Good, bad, sinister. I am your friend, Kimber. I’m an ally of the temple.”
“Elex had me thinking the other night. About how I really don’t know much about the people in S’Kir or what they think and do. I’ve been in the temple so long that I feel as though… Well, I don’t know people. They’re about to make me a master, and I’m unprepared. In so many ways. But I can find out what the people think. Of me, or Master Dorian, of the opposition, of most things. You and your sister are already in with the Loyalists, and we often chat enough that us being seen together would raise no suspicions.” I paused, then finished. “I want to create a little personal spy ring.”
Jallina’s eyes lit from within. “Really.”
“Yes, really.” I tried to hide my smirk. “You could try to be less happy about this. I’m asking you to be a spy.”
Her answer was a whisper. “I already am.” She grinned. “That you’re asking me to help you is what I hoped for. Where did you get the idea to have a little spy network?”
Averting my eyes, I rubbed my neck. “I’ve been reading, of course. There are some interesting novels out there, about high ranked people using spy networks. I just thought…”
Jallina touched my hand. “You thought right. Let’s talk about this—there’s a lot a future master needs to know about the people she’ll be guiding and the spies she can and cannot trust…”
*
The sun was setting, but warm fingers of its dying light couldn’t touch me.
I was so cold.
Every ounce in my frigid veins was nothing but fear. I didn’t know how to stop being afraid.
Sobs tore from me once in a while. I tried to rein them in, but more and more, I was overwhelmed by everything.
I didn’t want this. Not one bit of it.
I wanted Danai alive, and I wanted my apartment back. I wanted just to go to class tomorrow morning and scold Griffin for being a little craphead to his classmates.
Instead, when the sun rose tomorrow, I would take the robes of a master.
Warm arms slipped around me, and I felt myself resting against Elex’s chest. Finally, some of the cold that had held on tight started to let go.
“I’m sorry, Kimber,” he whispered.
“What for?”
“That you have to deal with this.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I still can’t help feeling guilty in some way.”
Standing and watching the sun as it set on the day, and in some way, set on the end of my normal life, seemed fitting. Elex’s body behind mine chased away the rest of the chill.
“Things are going to have to be different now,” Elex said. “I wanted to have a simple life with you, but now that’s not possible.”
“But you still want a life with me.”
He kissed the column of my neck. “Oh, yes. And more. It just won’t be simple.”
A woman’s laughter floated on the breeze. I wasn’t sure whose laugh it was, but the source of it was a silhouette running across the garden lawn in the light of the moon.
Elex stood behind me, just watching with me. He was a warm comfort, and I fought an urge to tell him all I had discussed with Jallina that afternoon.
She had happily helped me set up a spy network with her connections. Her information net was large and fruitful, and she knew the work well. The position she held at the stables was a cover, a disguise to be in the right place for the information to file into her.
To my delight, she’d even given me a code name. This way, no one would know whom the information was for that she and a few others were gathering.
I wasn’t happy I had to create the network, but I was grateful I had someone who knew what they were doing.
I would only tell Elex if I had no choice.
He was right. Things were going to change.
I had my first secret from the man I was falling in love with.
In the moonlight was another figure. A male. His throaty laugh drifted up after the woman’s laughter. We watched as the silhouettes chased each other in the dark, clearly playing a game.
Walled off from the outside world, the courtyard was locked to anyone who didn’t have a room overlooking the area. Those rooms were taken over by the temple masters.
The merry chase went on for a few minutes until the male ended it abruptly. He leapt out from behind a bush and wrapped his arms around the woman’s waist, pulling her in tight, and both of us could see the hot, passionate kiss they exchanged.
His hand, visible by the cresting moon, caught the neckline of the woman’s dress and pulled it down. His head dipped to the exposed breast, and the delighted moan that floated up told us he had pulled a ripe nipple into his mouth.
It was wrong to stay here. At the same time, I couldn’t move, enchanted by this play.
The woman’s hand gripped his hair and pulled him tighter. There was no mistaking the delighted little moans floating through the air—followed by her gasp as he had magically unbuttoned and unfastened the stays in her dress.
These were two of the masters in the temple, using their powerful magic for sex play.
The dress slipped from her body, puddling on the ground. Her pale white form had only the sleeveless shift left, which fell just to her waist and the short petticoats.
A hand crept into the petticoats.
“Gods and goddesses,” Elex breathed in my ear.
“Do you think they know we’re watching?”
His answer was soft. “I think they hope we’re watching.”
“Scandalous…”
“Is it? If that’s what they want, who are we to deny them?”
I tore my attention from them. “Are you enjoying this?”
Pushing his hips forward, his thick erection pressed against my back. “Aren’t you?”
I was. I didn’t want to admit that, though.
Not yet.
The couple had moved to a bench, and the shadows still obscured their faces but not their movements. His hand was firmly inside her clothes, and she had worked his pants open.
Elex’s hand worked in circles on my backside.
Her hand moved up and down, clearly pleasuring him.
The soft cries of sexual pleasure drifted on the night.
Gods, I was so wet.
A moment passed, and she pulled his hand from between her legs. He made a small moan of displeasure.
But her intentions became clear. She slipped off the bench, pulled the half-shift over her head, and tossed it with the dress. Kneeling in front of him, the moonlight let us watch her shining hair rise and fall.
She had his cock in her mouth.
His head tipped forward, and his chest heaved. He was enjoying her mouth as he ran his hand, carefully, through her hair.
Elex’s hand slipped into my dressing gown from my waist. He found my nipple—not that it was difficult. I had responded to the erotic scene in front of us.
“You do like what you see…”
“I do.”
“Keep watching.”
I exhaled as his finger circled my plump bud.
The woman’s hair still traveled up and down, but it was more frantic now, and his chest was more like bellows than a pair of lungs.
A long, low moan came from the man as his hips popped up, shoving deeper into her mouth.