Page 60 of Dark Fae's Destiny

“I can’t do this.” Quinn holds my gaze with his beautiful dark onyx eyes, brimming with heat—and astonishment. “I can’t debase you like this in front of them, Ariana. I thought I could… but this darkness inside me. It isn’t like them anymore. I’m not… one of them. I’m not a Vampire. And I can’t even pretend to be, even for one moment, anymore.”

“It’s okay, Quinn.” I reach to cup his cheek in my palm as we hold hands and he draws me close.

“We have to nullify this barrier around us, though—” As he protests, I see in his eyes what he’s afraid to say.

That he’s failed us, because he can no longer be entirely in his own darkest Night anymore.

“It’s okay.” Lucca steps to us now, coming into our trio as Quinn and I hold each other. Wrapping his arms around us, Lucca cuddles in close. “None of us is entirely Night, Quinn… and I don’t think we should even pretend to be anymore. Even though it sparks my desire to think of doing all my wildest, wickedest fantasies with both of you… I want that to be when we’re together, alone, having a good time rather than in dire straits. Is that what you’re feeling also?”

“Yes. I believe so,” Quinn says as he inhales. “I want to wield my Night to help us, but I find I can’t just delve into my innermost darkness like that anymore. Being with you both, discovering that my Light still lives within me… it’s changed me. I am still a dark Master, but only because I am a Dark Fae Master… able to wield both my Night and Light simultaneously. Rather than diving so far into the dark, anymore.”

“Then be that.” Cupping his face in my hand, I stroke his cheek with my thumb as my deepest, truth-reading intuition sings inside me. “Just go with it, Quinn, and see where it takes us. At the union of all things, we are a Light beyond the Light—we’ve discovered that when we manifest the Ascendant Sigils between us all, and the Music that goes with it. I don’t think we’re supposed to be either mortal Light or Night anymore… but their union into something greater. If we are truly something greater, like the ancient Ascendants, before their Fall when their Light and Night split… then be the union of your Dark and Light now. Don’t hold back anything that you are. And we won’t, either. And we’ll just see where it takes us.”

“And if our unified Light and Night can’t raise the Music and blast us out of here?” Quinn asks, a dire look in his dark eyes. His heart is full of woe; I grip his hand as Lucca sets his palm to Quinn’s fast-beating heart.

“Then we go out fucking.” Lucca chuckles as the most beautiful, incredible power lights him up within the torch-lit darkness, making his blue eyes shine like ancient stars. “They can watch,” he juts his chin at the Societas Sanguinis, “but this is just for you, me, and Ariana. Pretend no one is there at all, just like you said earlier. Let’s light up the night with how much we love each other. And if we go out like that… well, so be it. No better way I’d rather die.”

“Me, neither,” I say as I squeeze Quinn’s hand, moulding to him as I press Lucca’s hand to his chest.

“Me, neither,” Quinn says now as the slowest, most beautiful smile lights him up, rather than take him to his most diabolical darkness.

Quinn still wants to do all those sexy, incredibly wicked things I see brimming in his eyes. Lucca does, too, as we come together in our trio, pressing close and beginning to kiss. But we’ll do those things in the privacy of our own boudoir, thank you very much, once we survive this.

For now, we go out fighting.

And for us, the best way to fight is with true love in our hearts.

Nothing else.

22

MAGIC

As Quinn, Lucca, and I come together, kissing in the torchlit darkness beneath the dome of Night the Vampire Council has sealed us in, I feel the true resonance of our hearts. A beautiful sensation opens in us now that we’ve decided to go out fighting, and rightness fills me.

As my own innermost power from the House of Shadow Truth rings through me like a bell, Quinn and Lucca feel it. They shiver, eros heightening between us as Quinn’s dark eyes shine like ancient stars and Lucca’s gleam bright in the darkness.

Fire surges around us within the dome. Made of Quinn’s red-gold darkfire, Lucca’s diamond-sapphire rainbows, and my dark, oil-slick rainbows with their flashes of gold and silver, that firelight careens around us now as we realize we can still raise our own magics inside this barrier.

Though the Music has been outwardly stripped from us by the Vampire Council tethering their barrier to ancient Vampire relics far beneath the earth, it hasn’t been stripped from inside us. I feel that Music blossom tenfold now, then a hundredfold, as we hold each other and kiss.

Our Music is only being shared through our bonds and bodies, just like what happened inside the still-point. Still, that sensation feels so very good as I’m rung like an ancient chorus of bells between my lovers, that I shiver with a mighty sensation in the night. Quinn and Lucca do also, as I realize we’re all feeling this.

A resonance we’ve never even come close to matching before.

“Gods… do you feel that?” Lucca says as we move together, swaying like we’re dancing. It’s as if that sensation doesn’t just move this deep Music inside us, but moves our very souls, playing us like the oldest instruments of the cosmos.

As Quinn growls a deep sound now, it’s Fae, wicked, and wild, all at once. Lucca echoes it, as I do, as well.

The three of us drawing tighter in our circle, ready to do this.

“I want you, Ariana…” Quinn growls at my ear now as that Music floods us, moving us and making our bodies dance. As he steps to my back, snarling low with passion in my ear now, his oh-so-soft lips whisper over my neck.

As he wraps his powerful arms around me, I’m suddenly reminded of that evening long ago in the waterfall grotto, when we first felt this massive music of the Night move between us. This is so much more now, however, as Night and Light, and all vibrational harmonies of the Music go ringing through us.

Lucca has stepped to my front, grinding against me possessively now as Quinn massages my waist with his strong hands.

And there is nowhere else I’d rather be.

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