Umbra, p.27
Umbra, page 27
With the pain gone, Jess realized other things she hadn’t had room to process before. The vitality he spoke of was evident in his altered appearance. Both strength and healthfulness were apparent in his body. He still held her loosely in the water and as she stood up, brushing the back of his neck, her hands traveled down his chest, and her smile grew as she witnessed the radiant one on his face—his fuller, stronger face.
“You’re hot.” She flushed as he grinned. “You know what I mean, you’re…”
“Alive,” he said.
His skin was warm.
Now that Rune’s power was restored fully, it was an overwhelming thing to behold.
“I became the winds, too,” Rune explained. Sorrow and something like apology marred his features.
Knowing seeped through Jess. In the deepest past, Jess knew Silva had once governed the Heights. When she had been those winds that Rune spoke of…or when her shadow self had been.
“You govern both the Depths and Heights,” she clarified.
Rune nodded solemnly, the sheen of his ebony eyes both the night sky and an ocean of its reflection. “I didn’t understand it before. I’m so sorry, Jess.” Pity clouded his eyes.
Jess had the sense the land was falling away from her. Similar to what she’d felt when she and Rune had risen on the Storm-born’s back into the maelstrom. She remembered the land opening up below them, encompassing all the ridges of the Silva Mountains, threaded with rivers, and the vastness of the Alban Sea reaching out.
Jess realized that Rune was all of that now. He’d become the sole Umbran god. Alba of the Depths and Heights. He’d become what she could not be. Her shadow self was gone. The part that had been a goddess was dead. And the rest of her, as she and Rune had already discussed in the mountains, was through and through, Earthen. But what that made her now she didn’t know. Loss swept through her. She wondered about the seed magic that had allowed her to portal on Earth. Would it be gone now that the goddess part of her had died?
“If I could give it back to you, I would, Jess, in a heartbeat,” Rune uttered.
Jess swallowed the lump in her throat. She knew they’d already spoken of their fundamental differences, that he belonged here in Umbra whereas she belonged on Earth. But speaking about it pre-emptively was different to feeling it. It struck her now with crystal cold certainty. And that certainty meant other things, too. Even as they stood together, the warmth pouring off Rune’s very living body in a way that would previously have made her want to lean into him, that would have made her need to touch his skin, to run her hands down the angles of his face, that urge was gone. Gone was that magnetic attraction that had seemed like something Jess had no power to fight. That had pulled them towards each other as if it was something so much greater than themselves. And it had been. It had been to lead them here. To restore a god to the Shadowlands.
“I know,” Rune said. Regret and sorrow for what Alba and Silva had been, and for how much they’d been to one another in this lifetime, etching itself across his face and suffusing those two words. “I felt the return of your earthen power through the Shadowlands. All the shades of Umbra rang with its…foreignness.”
That’s it. He’d said it. He felt it, too. Foreignness.
There was something different between them because of the nature of their magic. It was as if their very essences didn’t fit with one another anymore. Jess’s gaze brushed Rune’s bruised eyes and she saw how deeply he felt it, too. Grief lapped at them both in the silence of the cavern. Jess watched the Umbran shadows gliding around Rune, brushing up against him like a cat. She could see how they were drawn to him. She knew they’d obey his directions. She knew that they were an intrinsic part of him. But the feeling she got from them was an unnerving one. She was disquieted by the sight of their traceries around him, arcing over his back like shadow wings.
Despite the weight of all the loss ringing through her, Jess quashed it down. She needed to tell Rune about Mara and the Fomors. Jess shuddered as she remembered the way the lake had been only minutes ago, etched with those three moons belonging to the kingdom of the Fomors, a gaping wound in the fabric of Umbra.
Mistaking her shiver for cold, Rune took her hand and they walked out of the lake.
Jess stopped him on the bank. “Mara nourished the portal and the Fomors with her iron-tinged sluagh ever since she became queen. She boasted to me about her ties with the Ones Below. I think she’ll return. I think with you—a god, whole again—she and the Fomors will invade Umbra and try to conquer it again.”
Apprehension prickled over her as she stared at Rune’s living, breathing form as imaginings of the enemy tearing Umbra…and him apart worried her.
“I’m counting on it,” Rune answered. “I won’t leave Umbra unprotected ever again, I’ll defend this land and its people with my last breath.” His determined gaze fell on the lake as if he still saw the hideous portal that had been there.
“But Mara shared her divisive magic with them—the Fomors are as invulnerable to iron as she is,” Jess stated.
“We’ll find another way to defeat them,” he answered with confidence.
“How?” Jess asked, scowling at the pool, too.
“We’ve already shown them that creative magic is stronger than destructive magic. You proved that by bringing us back. And the earthen magic I sense in you—although changed—is still a startling intensity, Jess. We’ll defeat them, together.”
Jess’s stomach somersaulted at the thought of how much they’d lost through her creative magic. How much they’d changed. How much she had. Rune spoke of her magic as still being strong. But the goddess part of her had died.
Unwilling to pull at that thread again, Jess suggested, “We’d better start by finding a way out of here.”
“Agreed. We should get word to the others.”
Jess’s heart stamped in her chest.
Astra. Skiron and Sunny. Are they…?
“They’re fine,” Rune assured her, reading her alarm. “I’ve already sensed them, making their way down the mountain. Wait here, I’ll go ahead, and check the ways clear.”
Within minutes, Rune was a blur. Soon, his shades blanketed the white wolf who crept through the caverns, too. His duskiness led Jess safely out onto the clifftops of the capital. They didn’t linger around the Iron Keep that bled into the olive cliffs. Instead, they stalked along the ridges, climbing down to the plains. A short run across the landscape brought them to the Depths portal, and they portaled to Pheist Acrum. They’d settled on going to Skiron’s as Jess was eager to be assured of her father, Matteo, and her pack’s safety, too. At Pheist Acrum, Rune was able to turn the pheist away from them now, the fearsome animals respecting the commands he imbued in the waters. This time, he and Jess exited the lake leisurely.
Coming out into the valley and to the approach of Skiron’s house, an evergreen perfume startled Jess. All the longing that she’d felt since leaving Earth seemed to push itself up. She felt the very foundations of her being quivering with anticipation. And she knew, without a sliver of doubt, a Rom stood outside the glowing house in the distance. A whirlwind of relief and longing lunged through her. She had the urge to bolt through the sheared fields and fly as fast as she could towards them.
Instead, she shifted into her human form as Rune manifested on the air, but his look was knowing. Not because he could sense her feelings down any blood bond, but because now he could make out the energies in Umbra, feel the earthen power nearby as surely as he felt her own foreign one, too.
Rune said, “I sense three earthen energies. Go to them,” he said. “I’ll go up the mountain to get the others. As long as the storms aren’t too strong, we should all be able to portal through the Heights here in no time.”
A wry smile wove its way over Jess’s face. “If the storms are strong, you can tame them you know?”
Rune huffed a laugh. “I suppose I can.”
A look passed between them; a fleeting regret again but laced with resolve. Jess watched as Rune disappeared on the air, his shadows carried off by the winds.
Then thoughts of her father and Matteo caught her up. Three earthen energies. Her father, Matteo, and Dearbhla. They were here. They were safe. She didn’t restrain herself any longer. Jess shifted into her wolfish form. Tearing through the valley, every muscle straining as she charged towards the silhouette of the tree-like house in the distance, enshrined in warm light.
29
INTENTIONS OF GOLD
Since they’d arrived yesterday, Matteo had spent most of his time out in these shorn fields. Dearbhla had joined him at dusk and dawn, staking out the approach to the Seelie house during the dangerous window of Eventide, when an attack from Theo was possible. But nothing had come. Now night had fallen once more. But he couldn’t leave the approach, couldn’t bear to leave the path that wound through the valley from the Depths portal of Pheist Acrum, where Jess had told them to come.
To this Seelie house, where a bemused fae had received them. They’d claimed friendship with the fae’s son, Skiron, as Jess had told them to. The Seelie and his other son here had been nothing but kind, despite Matteo, Piera, and Dearbhla being strangers, and an unlikely set of travelers: two Roms and a Rem astride an Unseelie pucca.
Despite the Seelies’ hospitality, Matteo had found it almost impossible to sit still. Civility demanded that he join the others for meals, but he was always the first to stalk outside again. The pucca was a happy excuse. The animal was grazing on the hedgerows, but he’d gladly feigned going to check on it whenever he could. But it was the path he watched with hopeful expectation, despite Jess having told them that she didn’t know how long she and her companions would be in the mountain. He watched the valley with eager-eyed anticipation.
It was both hope and dread that drew him out here. Hope that Jess would, somehow, miraculously, show up. And dread that when she did, he must own his abject failure. Frustration beat through Matteo as he once more heard Giovanni’s gravelly command ordering him and Piera gone. But his ire towards his Alpha was soon consumed by thoughts of Theo. How he longed to rip the smug expression off of that weasel’s face. Matteo would have given anything to have been the one the mage had caught instead of Giovanni. That way he wouldn’t be standing here, waiting to so utterly let Jess down. Piera had remained in her wolf form most of the time so far. She was clearly trying to numb everything she was feeling by giving herself over to her animal form. It was another reason he was constantly out of doors. Guilt twisted through his gut as he imagined telling Jess what had happened. How would he ever be able to look her in the eye when she found out he’d abandoned her father to that hateful mage?
But equally, the lack of not knowing where Jess was, and that growing worry…what she was, wore him down.
Their hosts had offered some interesting information when Matteo had disclosed that Jess and Skiron were in the Silva Mountains, chasing information about Queen Mara. The Seelie had said that there could only be one way they’d find that. They had spoken of stories in the storms. Of the voices of the faded in the winds being able to be caught on pucca-back and herded into caverns to be listened to. It had jogged Matteo’s memory: he remembered when Jess had asked him about fae libraries and about her friend, Astra, being caught in the Heights for riding a pucca. Where the context helped shine a light on some of the things Jess was doing, it didn’t assuage his worry. Now, he kept seeing Jess up in the mountains, battered by great storms, flung around on huge wild pucca. Then again, as he’d stood here and contemplated everything else that Jess had disclosed to him and her father during that too brief mirror call they’d shared, these worries paled compared to the other.
Jess had said that the Sidhe was part of her and that together, they were the goddess Silva. At the time, he’d been so aware of Jess’s crystal-clear eyes looking at him for reassurance that he’d given it to her readily. And would do again, gladly, should she ever ask for it. But that was the worry that plagued him most. What if she returned and had no need of him whatsoever? Wasn’t there a kind of poetic justice to all this, he thought bitterly. Hadn’t he been so conceited when he’d first met her? Hadn’t he deigned to tell Jess his prognosis concerning her rage blackouts, suggesting that she was suppressing her instincts and shifter abilities? Now this piece of herself, that she’d been connected to from the beginning, was none other than the key to restoring the goddess Silva. The real burden that had torn at him since that mirror pool conversation tormented him. What if she returned an Umbran goddess, cold and distant, with no feeling in those beautiful blue eyes, and that insufferably stubborn expression that he loved so much was wiped away?
If that is the case, may the goddess instantly strike me down for my failure.
It was with these thoughts in mind that he saw a streak of white ahead through the valley. At first, he thought it was a bird, but it stayed too close to the ground. As a warm ambery perfume captured Matteo, his heart thumped with anticipation and he couldn’t keep still. Cloaking himself in black fur, he bounded towards the scent, his own paws an answering call to those drumming towards him.
When they were close enough that he could make out her wide muzzle and the pronouncement of her iron-sheathed claws, he shifted into his human form. In a flurry of silvery hair, fair skin, and fae leathers, she was here. He crushed her to him, relief and happiness pounding through him. She squeezed him tightly, too: nothing like the remote goddess he’d pictured. She was the same fierce, stubborn shifter who mangled his insides with her mere proximity, never mind teeth or claw; she pierced his heart afresh every time.
Selfishly, he never wanted to let her go, but his throat bobbed as he knew he must tell Jess about her father, tell her about his failure to protect her family. He tried to take a step back, but she clung harder. Justice seemed little served as he found himself exactly where he wished to be, his hands running down her back in comforting motions and relishing the way she fit so perfectly against him. He lost himself in her spicy scent and a new one he noticed—crisp, spring water. It wasn’t unpleasant, quite the opposite—something so fresh and revitalizing about it. He’d happily get used to it if she let him hold her like this. But then the awareness that the longer he left breaking the news, the worse it would be for her, tortured him and forced him to try to step away.
“Please, hold me,” she murmured against him.
Matteo gripped her harder, grateful that his unspoken prayer seemed to have been answered. Something tore at him, too, for the vulnerability in her voice. The urge to do nothing but what she asked constricted his chest, but he whispered reluctantly, “I need to tell you something about your father.”
She broke away, her wide eyes shining with apprehension.
Matteo cursed himself for making her think the worst and hurried to say, “Theo captured him at Villa La Alba.”
“But there’s three earthen energies here,” Jess blurted, her gaze straying to the house.
Momentarily bewildered, he realized she somehow sensed the other shifters in the house. He explained, “Piera—your sister and Dearbhla are inside.”
The full force of understanding and horror rippled across Jess’s face as it sank in that Theo had her father. Jess clenched her hands, her eyes darkening with anger.
Matteo hung his head, understanding her rancor at him perfectly. “I’m so sorry. I failed to protect what you hold dear.” Giovanni’s heartfelt phrasing that night in Villa Silva colored his words as he felt the sting of how much Jess had lost over and over again and how he kept failing so spectacularly to protect her. His brown eyes traced the cut grass, wanting the earth to swallow him up, to take away the hot prickle of shame creeping over him.
Instead of berating him or turning away from him, Jess stepped closer. “I hold you just as dear, Matteo.”
His breath hitched in his chest as he dared to look at her. Her eyes were alight with such an affectionate expression that he found his heart hurrying with…hope. But it couldn’t be that things had changed between her and Rune, could it? Before Jess had left Earth, she’d told Matteo that she believed Rune had been made by Alba. In the same way, Jess was destined to restore Silva, Matteo suspected Rune was destined to restore Alba.
But Matteo’s foolish heart didn’t seem to care about that as Jess stood there gazing at him with that gods-damned tender look on her face as if he were something inextricably important to her. As if she could feel something of that rightness between them that he always had.
Oh gods, I want to kiss this goddess again.
The sound of footfalls through the grass interrupted them and the scent of a clean mountain spring magnified as Rune came into view. The same scent that was all over Jess as if she’d bathed in it. Rune’s scent: the living, breathing god. The same anguish Matteo had felt when he’d scented their entwined aromas at Villa Silva tore through him. As the commotion of Jess’s friends filled the night around them, Matteo felt as if he were plummeting. He took in the sight of the shadows collecting around Rune like wings, around Alba. Amidst the heartfelt reunions going on around him, he felt as if his chest were caving in.
Because Jess and Rune are Silva and Alba. And you can’t get more perfect for each other than that, can you?
30
TWO FRONTS
The plot of land around the tree-like Seelie house was abuzz as Astra, Skiron, and Sunny returned. Their relieved and excited exclamations clamored for Jess’s attention. Equally, Jess marveled at the sight of Sunny. Like Rune, he was so full of life. His pallid skin shone bronze as it had on Earth when he’d fed… a lot. But his heart beating a natural, steady rhythm was something that it would take an age to get used to.
