Page 82 of Incubus

Gods, she had a point. Then I did what I should have done long ago, I turned my back on the goddess. My sisters stared up at me, curiosity and concern scattered on their faces. They were my true home.

I looked from one to the next and realized I had a gift for them—something Artemis would never give unless pushed. Freedom. “I lived more on the dirty, hardscrabble Earth than I ever lived here. It’s cruel and different, and mortals are a pain in the ass sometimes. But it’s also beautiful and always changing. Being cast out wasn’t the worst thing that happened to me. Staying here would have been. And I wasted one hundred years trying to run back to this place, but now all I want to do is run to…”

Roth.I didn’t realize the truth of my words until they came tumbling out of me. I was glad to be out of Artemis’s service. Happy even though I was now indebted to Apollo. At least I knew he would let me travel freely and live a life without Artemis’s rules. And he would never cast me out for scratching an itch. It was as if I had climbed to the top of Olympus and proclaimed an end to my servitude, and it felt wonderful, though my sisters were eyeing me like I’d lost more than my life that dark day in Ares’s lair. Roth had taught me something essential, something I never would have found cloistered here with my sisters. Love.

“I hold no one prisoner here.” Artemis’s voice cracked almost imperceptibly as she stared down her nose at me. “If your sisters want to follow in your folly-filled footsteps, I won’t stop them. They will always be in my service, but they are not slaves as you make them out to be. I decree here and now that my warriors may travel freely so long as they always heed my call for aid.”

Her words were a challenge, one I knew my sisters wouldn’t take up. At least not yet. But before long, Artemis’s warrior maidens might begin testing the boundaries. Might even venture to earth or the Underworld. And they would be the better for it.

“Really, Arty? You hold out this long only to waste it on that trollop by your side?” Apollo had sidled up to me, munching on an apple. His casual air seemed calculated to rile his sister.

“Don’t you dare judge me.” Her voice sliced like a knife.

“I’m just saying it seems like you would have gone for a guy who wasn’t already in love with someone else. Am I right, ladies?”

The warriors tittered at Apollo’s question. “Don’t act like you didn’t know, sis. Paris here, he’s had his eye on someone else for, how long has it been? Are we talking thousands of years?”

Paris had murder in his eyes.

Artemis stopped stroking Paris’s arm and directed her gaze at Apollo. “Leave. These. Lands.” Her voice was measured, but power imbued every word.

“Fine, sis. I’ll just take my prize warrior here, and we’ll be on our way.” He put a hand at my lower back to lead me from the arena.

I gave one more look at my sisters, hoping that I’d at least encouraged them to question Artemis or to seek out new adventures.

“She’s not really mad,” Apollo said conspiratorially, still crunching away on his apple. “For a goddess who’s had a guy ripped apart by dogs for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, that was nothing. She’ll be over you in no time. Paris, though. Now that’s going to sting a bit.”

Apollo was right. The gods were capricious to a fault, mercurial even when at their best.

I allowed him to steer me away from the goddess’s wrath, but I was only concerned with one thing. “Where’s Roth?”

“He’s in the meadow,” Elena stage-whispered behind me. “You know which one I mean.”

Without so much as a by-your-leave to Apollo, I took off. My limbs were energized from the thought of Roth being so near, though my pace was far slower than it would have been at full health.

I crashed through the undergrowth, not caring if the entire forest heard me coming. The familiar thicket appeared ahead, and I never hesitated, shrugging through it and into the cool night air that flowed through the starlit meadow.

I didn’t have a chance to call out for Roth before I was swept up in his arms. His warmth was like a radiator of heat. I’d never felt an embrace so complete. He was kissing me in a flurry, pressing his lips to my hair as he spoke in Latin. Lifting me farther, he encircled my waist with one arm so he could kiss my face and neck. His delicious lips sent warm shivers down my spine.

After covering every inch of bare skin with light caresses, Roth set me on my feet, and my knees went weak—and not just from the tiring run.

But Roth’s face made me inhale sharply, for it was drawn and pale, like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. He looked wild, feral even, as if he had become a part of the Forgotten Forest.

“Roth, you’re sick!” I ran my fingers down his gaunt jawline. “Do you need—”

“No.” He cut me off. “It’s fine. We’re fine. I mean, we’ve waited for you—both of us.”

I took his meaning but could scarcely believe the incubus could go for so long without an infusion of sexual energy. No wonder Roth looked like a ghost. “How?”

“Because you’re mine.” As if that was the only explanation he needed.

He swept one of my flowered braids away from my face so he could again search for any sign of hurt. He pulled open my robe to check my chest for the deadly wound. Nothing remained but a single scar that ran diagonally over my breast. Roth lowered his lips to it, gently tracing it with whispered words and sending a tingling sensation all over me. His hands opened the emerald fabric the rest of the way, and he crushed me against him. I shuddered at the feel of his warm chest.

“I thought I’d lost you.” He softly stroked my back. “Apollo told me you lived, but he didn’t know if you’d wake—”

Roth’s voice broke, and we stood in silence. I buried my face in his chest, and his spicy scent enveloped me. “Mmm.”

“I love you, Lilah. More than I can put into words.”

---