Page 91 of A Frozen Pyre
A moment later, Dwyn flattened her palm against her lower back. “Go,” she said. “First wind, then exchange. Think wind in your first heartbeat; think of the trade with the second beat.”
“What if I fuck it up?”
Dwyn made a face. “If you can’t think two thoughts, one after the other, then you’re an idiot and you don’t deserve to live. Now, go.”
Ophir stumbled out of the alley and immediately regretted ever asking. She was angry with Dwyn for forcing her into the street before she was ready. She was angrier with herself for not having her hood up at the start. With a flick of her wrist, she covered her dark blond hair and began walking down the street. It would be more suspicious to idle amid the shops and milling townspeople on the main walkway of Gwydir. At least if she was moving, they’d have less cause to stop and stare.
Her pulse quickened as she closed in on the man. She fought the urge to look over her shoulder at Dwyn, butshe knew the siren was watching. It comforted her that no matter how much Dwyn teased or pestered, she believed in her bones that she’d be at her side in an instant, slaughtering every man, woman, and child in the city to save her if she fell ill and things went awry.
She didn’t have time to wrestle with the morality of her confidence in her partner. She wasn’t certain she’d taken a single breath. When the air around her began to shimmer and spin, she knew for certain that she hadn’t.
Ophir sucked in a lungful of air as she plastered a friendly, beautiful smile across her face. It was one she’d seen Dwyn use time and time again. She extended a confident hand to the man, batting her lashes and grinning as she urged him forward into the space between the nearby bakery and what may very well have been a bank. It was chilly enough that the side streets were nearly empty, and she wasn’t concerned about onlookers.
Confusion and misogyny were her allies. Not only would the man be too perplexed to stop her, but she knew that most males would not chase away a pretty woman. Perhaps an unevolved part of him would hope she’d fallen in love and was pushing him into the alley with a hasty, primal mating call. She knew the larger part would be the bits of his brain that reassured him that no woman could do him harm. It was with that certainty that she’d put a hand on his arm and taken six confident steps with him into the narrow gap between buildings before she thought two subsequent thoughts.
Wind, and exchange.
The gale-force whipped her hair and kicked the snowflakes into the air before she knew what she’d done. She tilted her head back to look to the sky, searching for signs of a change in weather in the split second it took her to understand that she was the storm itself. Hurricane gusts picked up a withered male husk. Ophir gulped in horror and stumbled backward into the bank’s wall before a hand was at her arm.
“Come on,” Dwyn said urgently.
She pulled Dwyn onto the main walkway as awnings crumbled, chairs toppled, women screamed, and carts skidded madly into the street.
“Go, Firi!”
Dwyn positioned herself firmly at Ophir’s back, shoving her forward as they crossed the bridge and ran for Castle Gwydir. She squinted against the bits of gravel, hardened snow, and strands of hair that whipped against her eyes with violent intent. She stumbled blearily over the slippery winter slopes of the front lawn as wind howled too loud for her to hear what was being shouted. Attendants yelled for them, concerned only for the safety of the women who crossed the castle grounds.
The moment they burst through the door, Dwyn interlocked their fingers and tugged Ophir forward, refusing to break their hurried stride until they’d rounded the corner, mounted the stairs, and burst through her chamber door.
Sedit jumped down off the bed and trotted into the washroom as if he knew better than to be present for the energy they brought to the bedroom.
The door hadn’t clicked fully closed behind them before Ophir’s back was against her bedroom wall, Dwyn pushing her into the stones as their mouths met. The giggles of excitement, the thrill of escape, the rush of power that pulsed between them was intoxicating. Ophir attempted to push off the wall, but Dwyn shoved her against the surface until she was pinned. She drove her fingers into Dwyn’s hair, balling them into tight, silken fists as she pulled her closer. Dwyn’s rosemary flavors mingled with passion and snow and panic and crime and love and revenge. It was exotic and inebriating, each new taste burning and quenching all at once, too much and not enough.
Dwyn’s fingers worked deftly against her dress, tearing where the ties wouldn’t relinquish their knots until they both tumbled, half-naked, half-crazed, onto the bed. Ophir arched her hips up off the mattress as Dwyn yanked off whateverremained of her shredded winter gown and tossed it to the floor. Lips sucked in the tender, desperate peaks of her nipples. They kissed and grazed and traced the soft skin of her stomach. Ophir squirmed and twisted and begged with her body for that mouth to find the hot, wet, wanting place as a soft, perfect tongue licked and swirled and tasted between her thighs. As she bucked and gasped and writhed, each tantalizing sensation building and growing until it erupted in a magnificent, denominating, screaming explosion, Ophir experienced the drunken thrill of what it meant to make love in the face of death.
Thirty-Two
“Princess Ophir?”
Ophir popped her head up from between two milky thighs.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Dwyn pouted.
“Who is it?” Ophir called over Dwyn’s knee.
Dwyn groaned and grabbed the pillow beside them. She slammed it on top of her head. “Now that you know how to drain, can you go kill her for us?”
“I’m sorry.” Ophir rested her head on Dwyn’s knee. “We can finish later. But murdering my future subject for interrupting sex is in poor taste.”
“You’re right,” Dwyn agreed, hips rolling as if desperate to consider their session. “We do it like the queens of yore. Off with her head.”
Ophir wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “What is it?”
The woman cracked open the door, scarcely giving Ophir enough time to yank the sheet up over her breasts. Dwyn couldn’t be bothered to shift beneath the covers. The attendant had caught them together on more than one occasion and was unable to be fazed. She’d seen Dwyn’s bare body nearly as many times as Ophir. The woman leveled them atired, unimpressed face as she said, “We’re to begin packing for the journey south for your wedding.”
She rested on the final word as she looked between Ophir and her naked companion.
Emboldened by the challenge, Ophir raised a brow. “I can’t wait. I’m sure my future husband is thrilled,” she said.
