He released a breath when he saw it. Part of him was still transfixed every time it appeared over her heart. His finger traced the words he’d written. A memory locked in the black vault of his mind.
For her, my hand and voice.
For her, my body and mind.
Her strength in weakness.
Her sword in battle.
Her balm in pain.
I am hers.
Hers to cherish.
Hers to hold.
Hers to command.
The world around him ceased to exist. There was no city. No war. No angels or brothers or elders. Nothing could distract him from the purity of her voice. Her mating marks gleamed in the darkness as she continued to sing.
“My beloved holds me as the sky holds the moon
Vast and eternal
Our union is without end…”
Ava pushed his shirt up and over his head so they were both bare before the other. Her voice rose and fell as she sang the words legend said were given by the Forgiven to their children. The vows that bound them, not only in this life, but the next.
“My beloved warms me as the sun warms the earth
Sweet and rich
Our love mirrors the heavens…”
He felt the magic swell. The small electric lamp by the bedside flickered out and the only illumination was from the small window and the spells that lit their bodies. Tugged from his chest, the power spread over his skin, lighting his talesm prim, both old marks and new, before it traveled up and over, like a thread of quicksilver under his skin.
Malachi burned for her.
“My beloved is my own
First before others.
Before the bond of kin
Before mother or father
Brother or sister
Before the angelic host…”
He could feel her voice swell, reach a crescendo.
“This day I make my vow
I pledge my soul’s magic to my beloved
In time of joy
In time of grief
In darkness and light
In life and death
This day I promise…”
And Malachi waited to hear the words she would give him, the words he would carve into his own skin in the ritual room, marking his body and heart as hers for all time. The words he would wear for the world to see that his mate had claimed him as her own.
“I promise,” Ava whispered as she wrapped her arms around his neck, “to love you and protect you in every way I can. I will not let fear rule me. I will trust you with my heart and my song.” He heard her choke back tears, and he pressed her cheek to his as she continued. “Because I called you in the darkest night of my soul. You heard me and you returned.” She brushed a kiss across his temple. “You are my home.”
She sat back and framed his face with her hands, looking into his eyes as she whispered, “Da livkara bavatara ma.”
This scribe belongs to me.
The force of the mating spell drew a groan from his throat as it hit him, powerful and sweet. Ava’s magic was blinding light edged in darkness. He closed his eyes as his back arched and the fire burned beneath his skin.
“Ava!”
“Stay still.” She braced her hands on his shoulders as he leaned back and let the power of it wash over him. “Don’t move. I can see them.”
“I can feel them.”
Pleasure and pain roiled in one intoxicating wave as the burning grew. He felt the knife dip into the fire and ink. The doors of memory slamming open in his mind.
Through the searing pain, he felt her. Through the flood, she held him. Her magic lifted him, turning his mind in circles as the invisible knife carved the ancient runes. Over his shoulders and chest. Down his arm and across his back.
“Touch me, Ava,” he groaned. “Please.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t.”
He needed her to anchor him, because the flood of magic began to take him under. He could feel his power rushing back. It was like waking up after a vivid dream. Days and weeks and years tumbled in his mind, like the strands of an intricate tapestry tangling, unraveling, then forming something new. But the pattern was familiar. These were his years. His moments. His words.
They fell into his mind until their weight threatened madness.
Then…
One piece locked into place.
I heard you!
A hiss of steel and the bite against his skin.
Another piece locked.
“Do you have a name?”
A name?
“My name is Malachi.”
Another and another and another.
Colored threads twisting in a hedgerow. Pine needles on the forest floor. Salt and cedar and wind in the pines.
In the crash of memory he became hers again.
“You make the voices go away.”
A kiss.
One touch that had changed the world.
“You’re not crazy, Ava. You’re a miracle.”
A miracle.
He didn’t know what was real except for her.
She was real. The single voice in his mind.
“Come back to me.”
So he did.
“MALACHI.”
He heard her. Smelled the magic in the room like the lingering bite of ozone after a storm.
“Malachi?”
He blinked his eyes open and saw… everything.
Ava’s hair hung around her face, a dark halo surrounding radiant gold eyes. Her mating marks still lit the room, and a sheen of silver reflected on her breasts. He looked down, then looked back at Ava. Her smile trembled on her lips.
“They’re back.”
He nodded. He could feel every inch, even the aching scars on his back where he knew his family marks had returned. But he couldn’t take his eyes from her face. She must have given him new eyes, because his mate’s skin was luminous.
“Does it hurt?”
Malachi paused. He knew that it must hurt. His brain registered the pain in his arms. But it was nothing to the pure jolt of power her mating song had given him.
“Will you say something?”
“No.”
He sat up, wrapped his arms around her waist, and tackled her to the bed.
Ava gasped as he covered her. His mouth fell on hers in a ravenous kiss. He felt her breasts crushed against his chest. His hands tangled in her hair. Heat and magic and hunger swirled together in a vicious cocktail of need.
Malachi kissed her mouth, opening her lips with his tongue to taste her. Stroking along the lips that had worked such painful, beautiful magic. He bit her lower lip, sucked it into his mouth, and released it before he did the same to her upper.