The color changed, lightening, and returning to her beautiful blue.
I just want to move forward. I want you to find the source of my obsidian power and break the sheath so that I can serve as I should have been serving all these centuries.
He turned in another circle. I can see nothing here, nothing like a tunnel. What if you tried to access the power? Meet me here, be with me here?
It felt like a strange request but he felt a shift within her body and her mind, because that’s the only way he could describe it. He felt her mind descend toward him.
Leto, I can see you within my soul, just a darker blue than my obsidian flame power. We share the same color.
A tremendous sensation of pleasure flowed through him as she approached.
He heard her moan aloud.
Are you feeling what I’m feeling, he asked.
Desire?
Yes. Can you sense what I want to do?
She didn’t answer. Instead, from what felt like a great distance now, she tugged on his arm and pulled him over on top of her. She made her intention clear as she spread her legs. He entered her swiftly.
Then he understood just how close they were in this moment and that breaking her power open would be extraordinary.
As he moved into her physically, she joined him within her soul. He felt her reach for her power, down and down, very deep until he could hear and feel the rumblings of the earth. Was it in his mind or beneath his cabin? He couldn’t tell.
But her obsidian flame power, connected to the earth, began to flow upward. He pushed into her body, harder now. He could feel her grabbing at his bu**ocks, his waist, his back, his shoulders. Her fingers glided over his sensitive wing-locks.
He moaned.
The power of the earth rose.
It’s coming. Leto, can you feel that? My power?
Yes, God yes.
Up it rose, then it caught him, a warm rush of heat and light that swept over him, through him, around him, Grace with him. He saw the tunnel now but only as an exit point. He must have come from that direction, which meant he’d already entered the seat of her power, which was the seat of her soul.
His mind or his soul, or whatever combination of himself he was in this moment, separated from Grace and he began to glide faster and faster through the channel, up and up, into her mind where her memories and thoughts pummeled him anew, then out, up, and away. At the same time, he pumped hard into her. Pleasure rode his c**k as he released into her and as she screamed her ecstasy at the same time.
He trembled at the pleasure that kept going, kept riding him, that seemed to flow back and forth from mind to soul to body and back, an endless whirlwind of sensation. He roared and once more she cried out. The bed shook, or maybe it was the house.
He came again and again, something so impossible yet possible. His mind was full of her beauty and her power. It was her power that held the sensations on this seemingly endless ride.
At last, the end came, and with it a sense of satisfaction he had never known in his entire existence. He felt her body grow lax as well. He lowered himself down on her, savoring the feel of her br**sts, her hips, her legs as she stretched out beneath him.
He kissed her lips and opened his eyes.
Only then did he realize her body glowed an exquisite shade of blue, just as she had glowed at the event grounds earlier when she had accessed her obsidian power.
He kissed her. “Headache?”
She smiled, offering a soft curve of her lips. “Not at all.” She pushed at his hair and reached up to kiss him. “Can I say how amazing that was?”
He nodded and kept nodding, like an idiot. “Incredible, but you didn’t experience pain?”
“No, but as you left, the tunnel took shape, as though you created it.”
“Is that what happened?”
“I think so.”
“Then you were right. Your power is very different from that of your obsidian sisters. And very erotic and very beautiful.”
* * *
Grace was changed.
She could feel it deep within her body, her mind, and, yes, even her soul.
Her obsidian power was fully expressed now, though she could hardly guess at the implications for the triad.
She looked at Leto as with new eyes, clearer eyes. She petted his back and stroked his wing-locks. Who was this man who had been able to sink into her soul, to see her, to know her worst deeds and most heinous secrets? He hadn’t judged her at all, even though she still judged herself, still hated that she had rejected the infant because of the baby’s sire.
A clarity came to Grace, about herself and her life and the illusion she’d sustained all these centuries.
After the death vampires had taken her innocence and almost her life, she had withdrawn into a hard shell full of piety, restraint, even propriety. These were the walls behind which she had hidden for the past two millennia. She just hadn’t seen it.
She’d always admired Thorne and Patience, their warrior-like qualities, even their shared exuberance for life. What her life could have been had died the day she had given up her daughter. That was what she knew right now. For nearly two thousand years, she hadn’t lived, not really.
Oh, she’d performed good works, she’d made use of her intellect and studied hard, she’d prayed and meditated, she’d eased the sufferings of the less fortunate and righted wrongs wherever she had found them.
But she had never lived, not as she was meant to live, not as a woman of power and strength and formidable preternatural ability ought to live. She also knew this was why she was connected to Leto, even physically in this moment with his male part anchored in her femaleness.
“I don’t know what to make of this,” he said.
She leaned up and kissed him. “We’re both being called to stand up and fight, Leto. I get that now.”
Her power suddenly rumbled very deep in the earth, then spread upward through her legs once more.
“I can feel that,” he whispered.
She stared into his eyes, nodding in return. A prescience came to her, powerful and frightening. “There is something we must do,” she said.
“I can sense it as well.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Something is on the horizon, something very bad. If we’re to survive—” He let the words hang.
She knew the answer. She felt it in her bones. “We must complete the breh-hedden right now. We have to be connected for what’s coming.”
“Yes.” He put his hands on her face, pushed her hair back. He kissed her hard.
“You feel it, too,” she stated. “The necessity of it.”
“We’re about to go through hell.”