Page 69 of Return of the Nine

Looking at Daphne, she shrugged, “Um, thank you?”

He snorted and patted her on the shoulder, his face in a wicked grin. “Close enough.”

Chapter Nine

Teyha was nervous as she went through her daily tasks of cataloguing the few photographs from her first visit to the Temple of Shadows. She hadn’t put them into the archive, because they were her last link with her parents and their last trip together.

It was that emergency that necessitated the flare system at least once per day or at scheduled times.

She tried to remember them in everything that she did, and her job of archivist and guide crossed both of their disciplines. She hoped that she made them proud.

The access to the Shadow Land had been an alternate from the one she had first taken with her parents. The first route was faster but far less stable as her parents had found out after she had left them to engage in a meeting with the faculty of the Gaian University. Speaking engagements had been arranged, and she had returned to her parents as quickly as she could. She was too late by twelve hours.

It was something she lived with every day that she walked into the archive and saw the discoveries of her family posted on the walls.

A shadow caressed her arm, and she turned to see Ekinar in the doorway. She wanted to tell him that he startled her, that she was surprised, but she had felt him coming, and he had known she was expecting him.

Teyha tried to keep her mind blank as she walked up to him. “So, I hear that we are a pair now.”

He didn’t say a word but lifted her off her feet and pressed her against the wall, his lips found hers and shadows coveredher completely, wrapping her in a cocoon that felt like being surrounded completely by the man holding her.

His lips teased at hers, and she gave into him without a second thought. She wrapped her thighs around his hips and hung on as her body soared under the all-consuming touch that was not barred by clothing.

Ekinar’s kiss lit a fire in her that burned along her limbs until she bucked and shivered in his arms from no more than his lips on hers and his shadows around her.

She gasped and waited for the trembling to subside. He slowly, deliciously, let her body slide down his until her feet were on the floor.

“I believe that Apolan has some information for us so that we may complete this bonding with a bit more dignity than a wall in an office.” He trailed her lips with a tendril of shadows.

When Teyha turned her head, Reesha was staring from the hallway. “I was coming to tell you that you had a visitor, but I am guessing that you know that.”

Reesha’s unacknowledged talent was to share vision. She could touch your head and project what you saw through your own eyes. It was one of the spookier talents that Teyha had met in her life and not one that you wanted enacted on you.

It took a few tries, but Teyha said, “I figured it out. Reesha, this is Ekinar Rossing, Emissary of the Shadow Folk, and he will be requesting that I help with explorations of the ancient cities.”

Reesha nodded. “Of course. There is no one better. Do you want me to cancel the readings to the children?”

Teyha frowned. “I have not thought that far ahead.”

Ekinar put an arm around her. “I have an idea for that, and I am sure that Apolan will be amenable if you can take the journal you were reading from along with us.”

Teyha shook her head. “No, but I can make a copy.”

“Good. I would hate to disappoint those little faces. They werehypnotized by your voice.” He squeezed her waist.

“Okay. Can you suspend my speaking engagements at the Uni? I get the feeling that I will be a little distracted for the next few weeks.”

Ekinar didn’t give Reesha a chance to continue the conversation. He used his grip on Teyha’s waist to lift her up and out of the archive to a waiting transport.

She didn’t make a noise, her body was completely supported by the shadows, and they had chosen interesting areas to support her.

“How much can you lift with the shadows?”

He smiled as they sat in the transport and the driver aimed for the Embassy of the Nine. “Up to five hundred pounds. Your weight barely registers.”

She snickered and let second thoughts creep in.

“What are you thinking?”

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