The flames writhed and danced as if in a trance. Echoes of laughter, music, and moans flowed through me. Flowers trickled to the ground like snowflakes, fallen from the hair of women as they danced.

I’ve held you in my heart for so long. Too long. I grow tired of waiting...

My heart pounded in time with the drums. Desire flooded my body. I tried to shake the feeling away but I couldn’t rouse enough effort.

Through the flames you sit, so innocent, so ripe… You’ve always been mine, Deira. Mine to love. Mine to touch.

His words made my body burn.

Mine to do with what I will. And I will do so many things to you.

I couldn’t breathe. All I saw were naked bodies before the flames.

We belong together.

And then… Movement from the corner of my vision. A figure, walking beyond the fires, studying me between the flames.

I knew. I knew it was Nox.

Thick straight hair, the color of molten gold, fell behind his shoulders and framed a strong face of immense beauty. His eyes were light, a pale color I couldn’t detect, and they held an expression of confidence, power, and seduction. He moved with his hands clasped behind his back and a half-grin tugging on the corners of full lips.

Balen’s warm, rough palm slid over my thigh as I stared at the figure beyond the flames. Everywhere around me, couples lay together under the moon. I was rooted to the chair, unable to look away from Nox, as Balen moved my hair away from my neck then brushed his lips against my exposed skin.

Lust snaked through me. My head fell back a notch to allow him more access. His tongue flicked out and licked my skin.

I heard a moan and realized it was my own.

Nox smiled through flames that twisted and caressed around him. The stillness of his expression, the knowing smile, told me he knew what I felt. My heart pounded harder and faster than the drums echoing through the night.

Noises of abandonment echoed around us, spurring me on and making me lose my inhibitions.

I lost Nox in the flames, but found him again. A hand on my bare back, stroking. Another cupping my breast then pinching my nipple hard. I felt these things and yet Balen had not touched me. It was Nox.

“Dear Dagda,” I breathed, not able to take my eyes off him. He smirked as the invisible fingers pinched harder.

CHAPTER 19

Balen growled low in his throat. He cursed, rising so quickly, his chair toppled. He lifted me onto the table, scattering cups and plates out of the way. There was no one else on the dais but us. I still heard the others, coupling, finding release, offering prayers to the goddess. Waves of that same need echoed in me too. Balen stood between my thighs, his hands gripping my hips, his eyes blazing fiercely, possessively.

I wrapped my legs around his waist, lay back on the hard table, and stared up at the pregnant moon, the essence of Anu filling me as I drew Balen down and kissed him, closing my eyes and opening myself to the goddess’s will.

His hot tongue plunged into my mouth. Everywhere he touched me, I burned. My pulse pounded between my legs. I wanted him to touch me there so badly. And when his big hands slid up my thighs, taking the gown with them, and finally touched me, I nearly sprang off the table.

“Please, Balen,” I whispered against his mouth, needing so much more.

He continued to swirl his fingers around me until I was panting and begging. Then, his hand was gone. He gathered me in his arms, holding me tightly to him, before sliding into me. Aye, that’s what I’d wanted.

I looked at him through different eyes as he moved, seeing the blue flame surround us, seeing fire dancing in his eyes, eyes that were a version of his own. Lives that weren’t ours flashed before me. Lovers. Battles. Death. Cries from the War Raven. And soft tears from a female.

Balen uttered words against my neck, but they were words of power and not of his voice. I was drowning, lost in wave after wave of pleasure. The gods had filled us, Sydhr and Anu, and they came together in a fierce longing that spent our bodies and left us weak and shaking when it was over.

* * *

I awoke the next morning to the feel of the warm sun on my face and soreness in my back and thighs. The aftereffects of too much wine pounded my head. I rolled over, away from the direct sunlight to find Balen sleeping soundly next to me. I didn’t remember him getting into the bed with me. In fact, I remembered nothing after—

Dear Dagda.

I sat up straight, clutching the blanket to my chest as the images came one after another. Balen and I . . . on the table. Nox touching me through my mind. Heat seared my face. I slid off the bed, taking the blanket with me, and went to the garden.

The morning air was cool, but the sun had already begun warming the stone tiles under my bare feet. For a long time, I stared at the scene, the flowers opening themselves up to the sky, and the small brown birds flitting back and forth from tree limbs to the fountain.

I bit my lip. How could I have bared myself to everyone? To him? I wanted to leave, to run from all the new and overwhelming emotions. I wanted it to stop. I didn’t want to feel so much for Balen. I didn’t want to hurt in the end.

I went back inside and nudged Balen’s shoulder. “Balen. Wake up.” He rolled onto his back, flung his arms wide, baring his magnificent nude form to my view. He squinted at me then dragged his fingers through his hair before scrubbing a hand down his face. “What is it?”

His rough voice jolted me out of the distraction he posed lying there. “The Lia Fail. Our search has not even begun.”

“Drem searches for it.” His eyes closed.

I drew back in surprise. He hadn’t told me that. Why hadn’t he said anything? The notion gave way to a small hurt. I gripped the blanket tighter unsure of how to feel about his admission. He didn’t have to tell me everything. But we were in this quest together… I nudged his thigh. “Still, we should focus . . . not get lost in—” I made a sweeping gesture—“all this.”

One eye popped open. “All this what?”

He stretched his big body, and I tried valiantly to avoid ogling him. “This . . . place. Getting too comfortable. I don’t know…” I added lamely.

Confused lines appeared on his forehead. He pushed up onto his elbows. “We did agree to stay for the festival.”

Mention of the festival heated my face. “Aye and the festival is over.”

He fell back onto the bed and closed his eyes again. “You want to leave now? This morning?”

I busied myself with locating the clothes I had arrived in. They’d been cleaned and placed in the chest at the end of the bed. Under the canopy of the blanket I held, I donned my leggings, and then tossed the blanket over Balen to jerk my tunic over my head.

I sat on the bed to pull on my shoes. It dipped as Balen got up.

He walked to my side, naked, and without a care in the world, and settled next to me. “There’s no shame in what we did last night. Running away from here won’t change anything.”

Balen was too insightful for his own good. I was running away, wanting to get away from the memory of last night, and how much I actually enjoyed it. It felt wrong that I had, that I let Nox affect me in that way, that I lost myself to abandon.

“We did what the gods willed of us.”

“I know.” I laced my boots. “But I still think we should move on…”

With a heavy sigh, he got up, and padded into the bathing chamber.

The presence of the gods filled everyone at the festival. It was natural, a tradition firmly rooted in my own world. But there was a difference in knowing your customs and practices, and actually participating in them. It was difficult to reconcile what I knew and the embarrassment of what we’d done together out in the open.

I braided my hair then went to the table by the hearth where breakfast awaited us. My appetite was tremendous. I ate a full plate of fish, bread, fruits, and cheese, washing it all down with cold water.

Balen joined me at the table, filling his plate silently, his expression somber.

“You’ve really been in contact with Drem?” I asked.

“Aye.” He didn’t touch his food. “Deira, the festival is something that’s done every year here in this world, as in our own. But I should have realized, due to your upbringing you might not have taken part before, might not have witnessed what happens... In the light of day, things can tend to look coarser. But,” his gaze stayed steady on me, “I don’t regret what we did. Sydhr might have been with me, aye, but I was in control. I wanted you, needed you in a way I have never needed anyone.”

A knot formed in my throat and my cheeks went warm. I tucked those words away, committing them to memory while it occurred to me that Balen was just as vulnerable to me as I was to him. The realization was humbling and empowering. I captured his face in both hands and kissed him. “I felt the same,” I said.

We stared wordlessly at each other for a suspended moment before Balen broke contact and picked up his plate. “Drem has found a source of light in the forests of Cathair Crofin. It could be the Lia Fail...”

“Cathair Crofin?” A shiver went up my back. “Deirdre says the forest is home to lost souls. That those who enter rarely return.” It was the same place my father had died.

“Aye, she told me as well. But we should remember mankind is not accustomed to such magic and darkness. Their legends and tales are things you and I understand well enough. What frightens them might not frighten us.”

“Is the forest mentioned in the foretelling?”

He paused in his chewing, then resumed, not looking at me. “There is mention of a dark place, but that’s all.”

Would he die in Cathair Crofin?

The flapping of wings and the scattering of other birds in the garden broke my macabre thoughts. I hurried to the gallery arch to see Drem settle onto the fountain then use its beak to pick at a spot under its large black wing.

The creature had spoken to me in Innis Fail, had breathed its fiery breath into the night sky, and now it was trapped in the form of a raven. That creature held part of Balen’s soul. They were tied together by some ancient bond set by Sydhr himself, a bond that I could not begin to fathom. No matter how many times I saw Drem, wariness and misgivings followed.