Page 138 of Ulune's Daughter

We agreed on an uneasy truce over Kellan’s body. I don’t bitch about him servicing her “darker needs” and he doesn’t object to me staying overnight several times a week. Sometimes he sleeps with us in his fur, other times in his skin. We haven’t fucked her together, but I can feel Kellan working toward asking for a threesome.

I’d rather it was Luca, but I’ll deal if it’s Law. Whatever adds to her happiness. Which is contagious, and incandescent. I didn’t understand what Law meant when he called her Faery’s dark star, but I do now. When Kellan’s this happy, she glows. It’s a crystalline glow, like the ring around a winter’s moon, piercing and eerily beautiful. It’s addictive, bathing in that radiance. I couldn’t give it up now that I’ve felt her light. And seeing how brightly she shines when we’re together beats back any lingering doubt that I don’t belong in our strange, strained foursome, that I’m not enough for her.

It's her glow that penetrates those sealed vaults in my mind and heart, cracked open by Kim’s visit, and seeps into the darkest corners. It’s what prompts me to say, when we’ve finished the cake and fruit and wine and stretch out on a pile of pillows in front of the fire, with her head on my shoulder and her claws tracing gently over the tattoo on my pec, “You never ask about it. What it means. Everyone else who’s seen me naked has.”

Her fingers flatten against my skin. “I’ve told you my thing is resonances. Vibrations,” she says, her voice barely a whisper over the soft crackle of the fire. “It’s deep. Like a whisper underground. And it’s awful. A long scream of terror trapped in stone, frozen under ice. I wouldn’t ask you to relive whatever it is, Rho.”

I slide my hand over hers and hold it against my heart.

“When I was twelve ...”

I have to swallow against the thickness in my throat. Kellan waits, relaxed against my side, but alert, her magic swirling around us, ready to snatch my words out of the Air and tuck them inside her to keep them safe.

It’s her stillness and silence, such a contrast to my family’s rush to plaster over my pain with condolences, that opens my heart and throat and lets me speak.

“One night when I was twelve, I fell asleep in my bed and woke up in my great-uncle’s basement. It was All Hallows. Everyone was celebrating and then sleeping off their hangovers. My parents didn’t realize I was missing until dinner-time All Hallow’s Day. The search started that night but they didn’t reach all the members of our extended family until the next morning. That’s when they realized he was missing, too. Thirty hours. That’s how long he had me. He etched a rune into me every hour. He had four to go. Sacred geometry, right? He told me all about it while I screamed and fought against the wards and chains he’d bound me with.”

Kellan’s thumb strokes over my skin, directly over my heart, but she doesn’t offer platitudes. She listens and lets me speak.

“His Elements were Earth and Air. I’d been taught Earth healed. And Air? I liked Air. Warm breezes, storms. I loved thunderstorms as a kid. I loved hearing the whip of the wind and the crack of thunder when I was safe in my own bed. Until my great-uncle used lava and lightning to carve thirty runes into my chest.”

She turns her face into my shoulder and presses kisses into my skin.

“He’d never even hit me before that. Not a swat when I was noisy or annoying or broke shit. I loved visiting his house. He had a huge place with a barn and horses and a pond. Dad taught me to breaststroke in that pond. I spent practically every school vacation I could remember with him or my other Grampy and my cousins. One big happy family.”

I choke on that thought and cough to clear the tightness in my chest and throat.

“I have no idea why he picked me. There are other Water mages in our family. One of my cousins had two fucking Elements. Why me? I screamed that at him as he chanted and burned me inside and out. Over and over,why me, Grampy, why me? He never answered me. I still don’t know.”

“Does there have to be a why?” Kellan asks, her voice low and soft.

“No, I guess not. Maybe it would make me feel better. Maybe not. It niggles at me sometimes, but it doesn’t really matter. He did it. After being my Grampy for twelve years, he finally showed his true face. And he was a monster.”

“His end, his final acts, aren’t what define his feelings for you, Rho. It’s the twelve years of love that came before the madness?—”

I shake my head. “Don’t make excuses for him. I’ve heard them all before. I don’t believe them. He knew what he was doing. It wasn’t temporary insanity. It was opportunity.”

“Opportunity to do what? Did he ever tell you?”

“Yeah. A great summoning, he called it. Opening the doors above and below.” I shift her hand down so her fingertips splay over the seven glyphs forming the top arch of the unfinished symbol. “Do you know Enochian, the language of angels?”

“I haven’t studied it extensively but I can read a little,” Kellan says. She slides up onto her elbow and studies the symbols. “Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Uriel. I’m not familiar with the other three but I’m guessing they’re Sariel, Raguel, and Remiel. The seven archangels from the book of Enoch.” Her fingertips slide to the bottom of the circle. “Dan-Enochian. I only know the personal glyph for Asmodeus but if your great-uncle was opening the doors above and below, I’m guessing these are names of the nine archdemons.”

“Yes.”

Luca’s translated those and eight more of the glyphs, leaving six no one’s ever recognized and four known only to Grampy Niles.

Her fingertips trace to the empty center of the circle. “A wheel. Do you know what would have gone in the center? The Mother’s name?”

“No, he never told me what the name was until the glyph was done.”

“Forgive my academic curiosity, Rho. That’s not what’s important here.” She slides back down against me and hugs me tightly. “I’m so sorry you suffered that. I’m so sorry he hurt you.”

“Yeah.” I blow out a long breath.

“How did it end?” she asks gently. “How did you get away?”

“My Dad and uncle found us. They started breaking down his wards. They think the backlash of the wards breaking while he was carving the thirtieth glyph killed him.”

---