Page 14 of Dark Night Golden Dawn
The two of them looked mildly confused.
“What was odd?” Enzo asked. “Using the portal?”
Thea nudged her in the side, playfully. “You haven’t been out here in a while, have you? Snapping from one place to another can be disorienting.”
Her sister was right, of course; she hadn’t been to a ritual or portaled since she moved in with Mark, but that wasn’t it. Enzo and Thea smiled at her, gently, sweetly. Both were perfectly calm. They hadn’t had the same experience she did. Harlow sensed that this was neither the time nor the place to explain. “Yeah, I guess I haven’t portaled in a while. I felt a little sick after.”
Thea smiled sympathetically. “Are you feeling better now, pal?”
Harlow nodded and the three of them walked together in thoughtful silence toward the Grove. As they neared the clearing, the air changed, growing cold and viscous. Harlow felt the individual strands of magic, distended and thick with too much aether. Her brow furrowed as she pushed through them, feeling them scrape against her spirit body uncomfortably. The part of her that, as a sorcière, was always just beyond the material world cringed at the unnatural feeling of bloated aethereal threads. The trails of bobbing lights floated in a spiral to the night sky and all around the clearing, as more and more of this season’s participants and their families gathered in the clearing.
Enzo took her elbow, and Thea led the way through the crowd to where Selene and the sillies stood together. Aurelia was standing on a low stone dais in front of a pair of wooden effigies decorated in purifying herbs, with the other leaders of the Immortal Orders. Merhart Lear, the arch-chancellor of the Trickster’s Chosen, stood next to her, locs of their snow-white hair twisted into a crown atop their dark head, the emerald green of the Order of Masks’ pallyra setting off the cool undertones in their skin beautifully. Lear was one of the few snow leopard shifters and their feline intelligence was evident as they chatted amiably with Aurelia. Berith Sanvier, leader of the Order of Night, stood apart from them, eyes narrowed in annoyance.
The Order of Night had no use for unions between themselves or other Orders for the purposes of procreation, but they participated in the season to broker unions of power. Harlow had to admit that not all vampires were bad, nor were theyinherentlyevil; Katerina Spencer was one such example, along with her House. But Berith and the House of Remiel were something different.
Berith was said to be one of the first vampires, not sired by venom but born from a union between the first of the Illuminated and a human who carried the extremely rare Gene-V. And he was the Order of Night’s king, rumored to have killed tens of thousands of humans in his long life. His moonstone eyes were cold in contrast to his crimson pallyra as he gazed out over the growing crowd. When Pasiphae Velarius, the arch-chancellor of the Illuminated, joined the other three leaders on the dais, Berith squirmed as the glowing light of her eyes fell upon him.
“Someday that will be you up there,” Selene said to Enzo as she hugged his shoulders proudly as any parent.
“Not for another hundred years or so,” he mumbled, looking slightly embarrassed when she kissed his cheek. The arch-chancellor of the Order of Mysteries was required to have completely matured into their magic, something that usually took at least a century.
Meline and Indigo giggled, while Larkin looked slightly bewildered by the crowd. Harlow moved to stand behind her younger sisters. She wasn’t sure if it was what happened in the woods, or some deeper instinct, but something about this gathering didn’t feel safe. Someone brushed against her back and when she turned, she found Finn McKay standing behind her. His pallyra was gold, as all the Illuminated’s ceremonial garb were, and its color did nothing for his pale skin. It was one of the few times she’d ever seen him look bad in something.
His stormy eyes lit softly in the dark, but were narrowed in suspicion as he looked at the dais. She forgot herself and asked the question on her lips. “What’s wrong?”
He glanced down at her, as if noticing she was there for the first time. “Getting here was strange.”
She was about to ask him what he meant when Pasiphae began talking. Unlike Finn, the gold of her pallyra set off her brown skin and glossy black hair beautifully. “Welcome friends. Welcome to the seventeenhundredthseason.”
The crowd murmured a greeting back to her. Seventeen hundred years of this. The Illuminated had started this tradition a mere hundred years after the War of the Orders, after they had finished exterminating those that stood against them—the season was a show of goodwill, according to them. Harlow fought to keep the sneer off her face. She felt Finn shift behind her as more people crowded into the clearing. His chest bumped into her back and she felt his hands on her arms, bracing them both as the space in the Grove tightened, constricted by the surge of the crowd.
“Sorry,” he breathed, his mouth uncomfortably close to her ear. Heat flooded her abdomen, gathering at her core in a way that made her want to scream. How dare her body betray her this way?
Harlow had space to step closer to her family, to give him more room, but she stayed stubbornly rooted in place. She told herself it was because she wasn’t going to move for him, but part of her knew she enjoyed the heat pooling between her legs, the heavy weight of her breasts, so apparent now that he was touching her. When the crowd settled, his hands disappeared. He stepped backwards, a shock of cold air hitting her back, but she could still feel the heat of him like she was an asteroid drawn into his orbit—she couldn’t quite step away.
Pasiphae was talking about duty now. The Orders’ duty to the world, to humans especially, to maintain safety and order, to ensure the freedom and prosperity the world now experienced, would continue through the strength and cooperation of the four Orders. Harlow could hardly hear the words. Her body tuned itself to Finn’s. She could hear each breath he took, and her chest rose and fell in time with his.
And she knew, because she knew how sensitive the damn Illuminated’s senses were, that he could hear the way her heart beat faster, feel the synchronized breaths they were taking, and could likely scent the wet desire gathering between her legs.
“Unbelievable,” he growled as he yanked her close to him, one hand spreading possessively across her abdomen as he pinned her to him, his other arm shielding her from some oncoming threat.
Harlow didn’t have time to wonder at the close contact. A vampire stumbled into them hard as Finn’s arm warded her from the impending collision. Harlow stifled a cry as she crumpled into Finn’s embrace at the impact. Vampires got their physical strength from the Illuminated though, and it only took Finn’s outstretched arm to push the creature away from her.
“So sorry,” the vampire slurred. “Had a bit too much of a drunk co-ed before I came. My first season….” She hiccupped slightly and wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth.
Harlow wondered if the co-ed had survived the encounter, as the vampire disappeared into the crowd. It took a lot to make a vampire drunk, and if she’d been drinking only from the co-ed, they were very likely dead. The utter helplessness she felt at this realization was frustratingly familiar, as was the rapidity with which her mind put it aside. There was nothing she could do. As long as the Illuminated’s control over Okairos went unchallenged, there was nothing anyone could do about individual acts of violence like this.
Finn’s arm lingered around her waist longer than was necessary, his fingers spreading over her belly as though he wanted to caress every soft curve of her body. Her breath caught in her chest and she felt his lungs stop in time with hers.
“Are you all right?” he whispered. The arm he’d used to shield her lowered slowly, as though he was afraid something else might threaten her and that hand, the one that pinned her against him, only pressed harder, as though he was as desperate as she was to drink in the electric heat passing between them.
She nodded, unable to form words. No one had seen the encounter, it happened so fast, but Enzo glanced back at her, noticing the trajectory of Finn’s hand, which was moving tantalizingly lower by the second. Enzo winked at the two of them.Winked.
Finn’s hands fell away and he pushed her upright so quickly she nearly fell forward into Thea, who seemed determined not to look back, even though Enzo was elbowing her suggestively. Harlow glanced back at Finn, only for a second. It was a mistake. His gaze was fixed on her, his expression full of so much longing she felt it reverberate through her, tingling in all the best, worst spots, until her toes involuntarily curled inside her boots. His lips parted, as though he too was remembering the way it felt to be deep inside her, and then the mask fell.
The open look in his eyes shuttered and his expression was dry arrogance again as he backed away. “See you at Alaric’s,” he muttered, his beautiful upper lip curling slightly.
She hated him. She wanted him. Shehatedhim more.
