The Barbed Rose. Gail Dayton

Kallista leaned forward to see him past Torchay.

      “What does it mean?”

      “Demons,” Torchay said. “Felt like demons. Smelled like demons.”

      “I think so,” Kallista agreed. “I wish I had dreamed it.”

      “So do I.” Torchay shuddered. “I want no more of them.”

      Kallista sifted through the dream details Torchay had given her, hunting meaning. Huddled between the warm bodies of her iliasti, she felt cold, a cold that she feared no amount of warm bodies could chase away. “The demon threatens Arikon,” she said. “It’s here in Adara, not across the sea.”

      “It threatens us.” Torchay stilled her hand on his knee, pressing it flat beneath his hand. “It wasn’t some mass of humanity I was defending. It was you. It was the twins. And we need your magic to stop it.”

      “You think I don’t know that?” She would have thrown herself to her feet to pace save for Torchay’s arms holding her back, Obed’s arms joining them. “I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how to bring it back. Belandra doesn’t know. Nobody knows.”

      “Easy now, love.” Torchay kissed her forehead, offering comfort. “We’re in Arikon. Perhaps there’s something in the archives.”

      “You don’t think Serysta Reinine has had scholars scouring the shelves since the girls were born?”

      “We can ask. We’ll find a way. Somehow. It will happen. Your magic will return.”

      Kallista nestled her cheek against Torchay’s chest, enjoying the feel of skin against skin, and sensed more than felt Obed’s withdrawal. Physically, he was present. Emotionally and otherwise—Kallista sighed.

      “I can sense all of you through the links,” she said. “Before today, I couldn’t. It’s improved that much, at least.”

      “Aye.” Torchay stood, lifting Kallista in his arms. “But now, you need to sleep. We all do.”

      “Without any more dreams.” She meant to catch Obed’s arm, to bring him with them, intended to, but didn’t. He followed anyway as Torchay bore her back into the sleeping room. Maybe her plan was working.

      Kallista sorted out the strand that hummed of Obed, barely tasting his faint exotic scent that faded as she sought it. As if he pulled away even here. Maybe the plan stunk.

      They had bigger things to think of than a moody, bad-tempered ilias, but Kallista couldn’t help feeling in the bottom of her gut that—despite the demons—this was important. As sleep came to claim her, she wondered whether it might be important because of the demons.

      Kallista woke to the touch of kisses along her collarbone above her chemise, to the caress of silk-soft hair trailing over her breasts. She opened her eyes to the sunlit scarlet of Torchay’s hair as he kissed his way up her throat to her mouth.

      “Good morn, sweet ilias.” His lips spoke against hers before opening in a deep, drugging kiss.

      She felt half-asleep, lost in a sensual dream as Torchay brought her body awake with the stroking of his rough-callused hands. She’d missed this, missed him these last few months.

      “Good morn to you.” She returned the greeting as his mouth left hers to follow the path his hands had taken. “No more dreams?”

      He shook his head, not bothering to disturb his focus on lips against skin as he shoved her chemise up out of his way. Kallista’s whole being concentrated on the same path, but even so, she noticed the bed felt empty. “Obed?”

      “Awake. Gone.” Torchay licked his tongue down the slope of her breast and across her nipple, bringing her up in an involuntary arc. He smiled against her skin and made her gasp.

      “Joh?” She could say that much.

      “Asleep.” He made her gasp again as his fingers slid between her legs into the wet, slick heat there.

      “You sure?”

      Torchay lifted his head, met her gaze. “Do you care?”

      His thumb stroked across her sweet spot as his fingers slipped inside her, and Kallista came up off the bed onto head and heels. “No.”

      He smiled and moved his body over hers, into the place she made for him in the cradle of her hips. She smiled back. Oh, she had missed this, the heat and silken strength of him pushing deep inside her. Her breath sighed out as she took him in, and they fell into the familiar rhythm old as life itself.

      “Call the magic.” He breathed the words so quietly, she wasn’t sure she heard him.

      “What? Now?”

      “Do it. Call magic.” He drew back, holding his weight on his hands, never ceasing the deep rhythm as the lightning-bright blue of his eyes gazed into hers.

      “Are you—” She locked her legs around him, trying to hold him still, but couldn’t stop the motion of her own hips. “Is this no more than an attempt to wake my magic?”

      She tried to fight free of him. Torchay collapsed, pinning her with his full weight, pressing her down.

      “No,” he growled. “This is me making love to you. Nothing more. And nothing less.”

      He pushed deeper inside her, and she gasped. “I love you, Kallista. For ten years, I’ve loved you. Don’t make this harder than it is.”

      “Then why—” She fought for breath as he stroked inside her again. “Why magic?”

      “After yesterday, you have to ask?” He nuzzled her ear, licked her earlobe, brought himself out and back in. “I listened to the others wonder how much better ordinary sex might be with the magic added. I want to be the first to know. I wasn’t the first one marked. I wasn’t the first one you took to your bed. I want to be first at something.”

      “Oh, Torchay.” Kallista’s throat clogged with tears she refused to shed—save for the one, no, two, three—that got away. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him close with arms and legs, urging him on with an undulation of her hips. She turned, hunting through his wild red waves of hair till she found his ear. “I loved you first,” she whispered. “I love you most.”

      He rose back onto his elbows, giving her a faintly mocking smile as he picked up his pace. “I bet you say that to all your iliasti.”

      She smiled, tried to shake her head, but the pleasure he gave her distracted. So she reached for magic instead, and found it.

      Massive and sluggish, slow to rise, the magic allowed her to coax a tiny shred of it to life. Enough to make Torchay gasp as it flowed down the link between them. She played it back and forth, matching the magic to the rhythm of their increasingly frantic passion. He drove into her, harder, faster, until all three of them—Torchay, Kallista and the magic—exploded into climax together.

      And Joh screamed.

      CHAPTER SIX

      Torchay was on his feet, a blade in his hand, before Kallista could fight off her body’s after-sex lassitude and scramble to the edge of the massive bed. Obed burst into the room, sword drawn, and Joh cried out again, thrashing on his narrow cot.

      “Joh.” Kallista stumbled across the crowded space to bend over her new ilias. She smoothed his hair back out of his face and caught it between her hands. “Joh, wake up. It’s a dream.”

      Behind her, Torchay had the key, was unlocking the chain from the wall. Joh shuddered, moaned, still caught by the dream. Her dream, she knew, one she should be dreaming. She got an arm beneath his shoulders, hauling his limp weight up into her lap where she could cuddle him against her naked body. Torchay had awakened from his dream when she held him close. Maybe it would bring Joh back.

      “Wake up, soldier.” She spoke into his ear. “Wake. Leave