Chapter Thirty-Nine

Boru Karn

She waited for us in the big wide darkness; a sleek ship, built for opulence. A ghost ship, stripped for war, for stealth. We would need all that and more now. There was a message in Tage's alliance with Hayden Burke, a warning. The first of many, Sully and I knew.

The Karn's crew, Marsh, Dorsie, Aubry, even Gregor, were subdued through the two hour briefing in the readyroom, as the Karn streaked an oblique path toward Dock Five. We needed supplies, we needed fuel. We needed information. We needed to know who our friends and our enemies were.

We had to warn the former, watch the latter.

But we had time-several days, one jump.

Dorsie was first to rise when the briefing ended. "I baked a srorfralak pie." She glanced at Verno, then to Ren. "With that special gravy you like."

I knew Ren couldn't see her shy smile. But he could read her rainbows, gravy-flavored ones.

Marsh seemed relieved, clasped my hand tightly. "Had me a little worried this time."

Only Gregor had little to say. But the set of his mouth, the narrowing of his eyes, said what he didn't. I was Fleet. Ren, he believed, was a mind-fucker and those were two things he had no intention of forgetting.

That was something Sully would have to deal with, eventually. But right now we both needed sleep more.

I fell asleep in his arms, barely remembering my head touching the pillow.

I woke, hours later, the pungent smell of coffee like an elixir. An angel of heart stars card was propped against the nightstand lamp.

I shoved it in the pocket of my robe and padded to the main room of our cabin.

Sully had pulled on his black pants, but nothing else. I snuggled against his bare chest on the couch and sipped my coffee. He ran his hands through my hair.

Then his fingers moved and another angel card appeared in front of my nose. I took it, laughing softly. "Am I to be inundated with these because of my choice on the bridge that day?" That had been one of the first times I'd seen Gabriel manipulate matter. We'd been on the Meritorious, playing games, in more ways than one, I realized.

"The bias is mine." He hesitated. "Do you know angels used to have wings?"

I didn't, nor did that seem possible. Not with our culture. Winged creatures had always been demons. Angels, like the ones on the card, were benefic spirits recognizable by their halos. But never wings.

"It's true. In ancient, very ancient myths, angels originally were winged. And loved. Revered."

"Sully-"

He touched my mouth. "Hush, Chasidah. Gabriel needs to tell you a story." He paused. "No. Gabriel needs to answer what you've asked, many times. But could never tell."

I shifted slightly to put my coffee down, then wove my fingers through his.

"I don't ever remember not being able to read people's thoughts, their resonances. Though it took me awhile to understand what I saw. What I heard. I tried to explain it to my Takan governess, to my parents. But I knew their thoughts immediately. Crazy kid. Wild imagination. But always, a fleeting fear. What if...?"

His thumb traced a pattern on my hand. "What if he really can? What do we do with him? Where can we send him, to keep him away from us? So I stopped telling. But I didn't know how to stop listening.

"When I was ten, I found out I could move things just by thinking about it. I knew then not to tell anyone. I found out if I looked at a toy, and really thought about it, thought about its shape and color and what it felt like, I could make another." He smiled grimly. "I had a lot of toy starships. Not that anyone noticed."

And I had a growing collection of angel of heart-stars cards.

"The more I did these things, the easier they were to do. It was as if something were feeding me energy, from another room. But I could never find that other room. So one day, I just decided to let it find me."

"The Kyi," I said.

He nodded. "I was always there. It just took me twelve years to meet myself."

"In the mirror."

"It started before that. It felt like a memory, except I'd be awake, aware that my body felt different. I just couldn't see any difference.

"Then that morning instead of pushing that odd feeling away, I stepped into it. I don't know how else to explain it. When I turned, I saw wings. On me. Part of me. They moved. They made me look like the demons in storybooks I'd read, like the ones in the paintings in the church."

His voice dropped. "I thought at first I'd created them, just as I'd made more toys. But I couldn't uncreate them. I couldn't shift back to what I was."

"But you can, now."

"It took me three days to figure that out. They were the three most horrible days of my life. I went looking for Winthrop's pistols, but he kept them locked. I didn't know how to unlock things with my mind, then. Or I'd be dead."

In the mind of a twelve-year-old boy, death was preferable to life as a demon.

I put my arms around his neck and rested my head against his shoulder. His warmth move through me as his hands pressed against my back. "When did you finally understand you were a Ragkiril? Stop being afraid?"

"I knew what a Ragkiril was from reading the books from the church, the ones the Takas always had. It took me years after that to learn what a Kyi-Ragkiril was. But I've never stopped being afraid. And I still don't like mirrors."

There were none in our cabin on the Karn, except for the small one over the sink in the bathroom. But there had been one in the monastery on Moabar. He'd stood behind me, braided the beaded ribbon through my hair, touched my mouth.

"Unless you're with me," he added softly.

He was watching my memory instead of facing himself in that mirror. Gabriel Ross Sullivan, age thirty-nine, still afraid of what Gabriel Ross Sullivan, age twelve, had seen. Still afraid to let Chasidah Bergen see. I remembered his voice in my mind: Hush, he'd said, when he'd made love to me. Don't look. Don't open your eyes.

I didn't want it to be that way anymore. I framed his face with my hands. "Chasidah wants to make love to Gabriel."

He knew what I asked, though it took him a moment to push aside the fear, the shame that hovered around him. He pulled me to my feet, his eyes finding that infinite darkness I recognized. A darkness rippled over him like a cape charged with flashes of silver for one breath, not even two, then snapped into form. Two wings, arcing, more silvery than I remembered from the shuttle bay. He held them straight down, their edges just framing his muscled arms and shoulder, his black pants. They were smooth; I remembered a slightly velvety feeling when they'd brushed against me. Not at all like a jukors jagged, thorn tipped wings.

His trepidation grazed my mind. My acceptance brushed his. "Just because you're a Kyi- Ragkiril doesn't mean you're not normal. This is what you are. There's nothing-"

"Hush." He touched his lips to the side of my face, lay his cheek against my temple, eyes closed. He drank in my acceptance. His wings lifted slightly as he sighed.

I turned and kissed him. "Gabriel. Nothing to fear." I ran my fingers through his hair, through the sprinkles of silver that glistened like the silver shimmers in his wings.

I ran my love for him through his mind.

He kissed me back, hard, clasping me against his body.

I slipped one arm around his neck, reached with my other hand for the hard-soft edge of one wing. Touched him, felt the muscled softness against my palm as I stroked him.

He sucked in a quick breath. Heat arced through me, spiraled.

Velvet. I was right. I could feel the muscles in his wing tremble under my fingers. I caressed a part of himself he thought was hateful, that I found beautiful. Told him so, with my own rainbows, with my own spirals.

He buried his face against my neck and moved his wing forward, letting me explore it. He whispered my name, trailed shivering kisses against my skin.

I ran my hands down both wings as far as I could.

He raised them slightly, responding to my touch, needing it. Aching for it. Aching for me. He splayed his hands against my waist, his hips arching against me.

I kissed his throat. He groaned, thrust his fingers through my hair at the nape of my neck, brought his mouth down on mine. Sucked kisses from me, hungrily. Pleasure spiked through my senses like a rush of bubbles bursting through the surface.

I slipped my hands under the inside of his wings and found the hollow where they met the heat of his body. I stroked up under their arch, pushing gently. I felt the strength of the muscles that had lifted me up the core of Marker, to safety. He pressed his wings over my fists, demanding my touch now.

I stopped being gentle.

A thousand stars blazed through my mind, my body. He clasped me hard against him, throbbing, wings quivering, breath rasping between hot, frenzied kisses that bruised my mouth.

"Ky'sara-mine, let me love you."

He lifted me easily. My legs locked around his hips as his mouth kissed, sucked, his wings splayed wide, powerful behind him.

I ran both hands through his hair, then across the wide arc of his wings again, marveling at the most incredible man I'd ever known.

He raised his face, his obsidian eyes glittering with intense desire. He lowered me, my body sliding down his with an almost electric friction. He unfastened robe, snagged my underpants deftly, yanked them to the floor. He rose from a half-crouch, his tongue trailing up my belly. He lifted my shirt, his mouth on my breasts.

I let the robe slide down my arms. His mouth came down hard on mine before the robe hit the floor.

I wriggled my fingers under his belt and waistband of his pants, demanding. He complied, one hand locked in my hair, the other unthreading his belt. Pants fells, shoes were shoved off. Then nothing but bodies, hard and soft, hot and slick, touched, melted against each other. Mouths whispered, sucked, groaned. He unraveled my braid. My hair cascaded down my back as heat flared up my spine.

I caressed his wings again, moved my hands down them, over them, under to their hard, sensitive muscles. They rippled under my touch, and suddenly vibrations of incredible pleasure roared through my body.

This is what I feel when you touch me. His voice whispered deep in my mind. He cupped his hands under my backside, lifted me to his waist again, over hot, throbbing hardness that I wanted inside me now.

He knew. My rainbows must have challenged the color spectrum, shifting to ecstasy. In three strides we were in the bedroom. He kneeled over me in the center of the bed. "Chasidah, angel-" His fingers brushed my face, but for the first time, made no move to close my eyes.

Then suddenly the cabin disappeared and we soared, climbing through gray fuzzy soft. I wrapped my legs around his waist, looked at him, looked at what moved just beyond his shoulder. His wings were silvery, glistening and ethereal in their beauty. We soared, our bodies thrusting together, rhythmically, insistently. Heat pulsed at my center where he throbbed between my legs. I ached, my need and his need for completion almost unbearable. Then his wings beat down, hard, forceful. He plunged inside me, stroking, filling me, claiming me. Possessing me, thrusting again, his kisses demanding all and giving everything at the same time.

My breath caught in my throat at his raw power, at his incredible passion. I arched against him, pleasure cresting, peaking, exploding as gray fuzzy soft poured over us. And somewhere in the galaxy, four suns went nova, comets blazed wildly and stars leaped through the darkness with uncontrollable joy.

We clung to each other, trembling. The sweep of his wings slowed, but they were still powerful, holding us aloft in the Kyi. An invisible wind whispered through our kisses, played with my hair that drifted, fluttering, with each push of his wings. He tasted like starlight. More stars danced in his eyes when he looked at me.

The darkness inside him was no longer infinite. It ended in an effervescent silvery light.

Time passed, hours folding into instants. Seconds exploding into forever. Gray fuzzy soft hazed, fading. The cabin focused into view. The coverlet under my bare back was damp and rumpled. The man lying over me hot, skin slick. He stroked my face with incredibly gentle fingers, his wings spread across the bed, holding that heat against us like a soft blanket.

I leaned up, caught his mouth in a long kiss. "This is who Gabriel really is," I told him. "Someone I love. Someone I always will." I brushed my palm down the soft warmth of his wing.

He watched as I caressed him, his eyes bright, his breath shuddering softly. He lowered his face, his mouth against my ear.

"Chasidah, angel. I forgot to ask you something."

"Umm?"

"Will you marry me, ky'sara-mine?"

Ky'sara. And to me, he is ky'sal. An almost unbreakable link. All that I am, is his. All that he is, is mine. A selfish, hedonistic desire to have in a time that was sure to get more troubled, more dangerous, more desperate. A time where jukors were born, and Takas were dying. A time to fear.

Only fools boast they have no fears.

No. Only fools underestimate the power of love.

"Yes."