The Flame of Wrath (45 page)

             
Hands moved to cup the Empress' face. She surrendered to their whims, allowing her face to be lifted. No masks hid the emotions written with such abandon across her face.

             
Why did you leave me
, her eyes said.
Do you have any idea how worried I've been, how frightened? I love you so much and I hate you for that.

             
Autumn's eyes had shifted from their flat gray to a piercing blue littered with iron flecks. She urged Aurea forward.

             
As their lips parted against the others, she pushed her long-held passions into her lover as the sensuous entrance of her soft tongue. It caressed Aurea's tenderly in a swirling dance.

             
The blond drew closer. She moved until she came to sit upon Autumn's lap. Her legs encircled around a narrow waist wantonly. She released a purr from the depths of her throat, feeling it reverberate within the recesses of her lover's mouth. That sound quickly gave way to a low moan as palms which never broke contact with her skin slid down the flanks of her back. Her body writhed and shook beneath Autumn's touch. She intensified their kiss with all her might, scorching the woman with a kiss, the way that Autumn ignited her with her hands.

             
Nails carved a path of descent along her taut back. As her head fell back with a moan, Aurea felt the swells of her arching buttocks gripped possessively. For a brief instant, she saw the stars of the sky pulse brightly. Their beating life fell into a perfect harmony with the throbbing she felt alive in every part of her. Her ragged breath rose up into the night. The stars shifted as their bodies began to move together as one. She swooned violently. Her body fell forward as hundreds of stars began streaking wildly across the sky.

             
What fires Autumn's touch had created were birthed anew by the liquid heat which ran in quickened intent along the warrior's stomach. She arched her quivering abdomen against the fiery fount. Her eyes were alight in a way they had never been.

             
Aurea lifted her head to peer into those expressive orbs. She gripped tightly at her lover's shoulders, cleaving to her with all she had. In Autumn's eyes she saw the sky for all its beauteous glory. More than this, she witnessed the truest splendors of the Djidjiga constellation for it lived there like the very flames of the Empress' eyes.

********

              Beneath a streaking sky, Lucidian women garbed in flowing hooded capes danced for the moon. Their beautiful faces were but a deeply-sought mystery. A mask concealed the area surrounding their eyes though it exposed the seduction of moistened lips and delicate jaws.

             
The land around them was pristinely white. New-fallen snow had covered everything with the freshness of new beginnings. And yet, in this land of alabaster perfection, the arcing lines of their dancing created an intricate pattern of circular unity much like the moon for which they danced.

             
The meteor shower had begun.

********

              Her lover's entire body was fevered. Autumn could feel it so clearly beneath the sensitive planes of her palms. Every inch of Aurea that they traversed greeted her hands with blazing heat. The more she felt that heat, the more she yearned to draw it out, to allow it to consume her in its never-ending intensity.

             
Autumn ran her hands upward along Aurea's firm thighs. Her left hand cupped at the very instant which a sensuous leg met a voluptuous swell while her other hand curved inward, daring to seek out the depths of desirous heat.

             
Aurea cried out against her lover's mouth. She was slain. She had been shown the same unrelenting force which Autumn demonstrated upon the battlefield. This was what it was to die. This was what it meant to fall in Autumn's wake.

             
Casting unified shadows along the ground, their dance grew more impassioned. Nails ran as purposeful reminders of pain and mortality. Kisses rose and fell like the flames beckoning from the campfire.

             
Aurea's fever only continued to rise. The heat emanating from her body brought stinging tears to Autumn's eyes. Still, Autumn refused to step away from its heat. She offered herself up to it as a sacrifice.

             
The Empress leaned forward, guiding the dark-haired woman to rest against her back. As she left enslaving kisses over her torso, leaving no inch uncovered, her nails dug sharply into Autumn's erotic hip. She breathed deeply of the enticing perfume to sweeten the air. It possessed the same powerful qualities of any Djidjiga blooms but caused the bloom to pale in comparison.

             
The blond lowering with deliberate slowness ran the tip of her tongue down Autumn's abdomen, savoring every new sensation.

             
Autumn's body arched upward in a slow rise. She reached down with both hands, clutching full curls within her grasp. Her fluttering lashes were open just long enough to take in the sight of otherworldly movement.

             
The Queen commanded her eyes to focus. The heated air around Aurea was rippling. As the Empress' passions grew, her aura raised upward like radiant halos to her every action. Passion blazed scarlet. Then suddenly it lurched skyward taking the gossamer form of a crouching giant.

             
Crimson wings outstretched, its body loomed over Autumn. Though she could see the trees in the distance behind it, her eyes also caught sight of the fire's light dancing off dragon scales or shimmering against its massive claws. The harshness of its yellow eyes glowed like summer suns. Its wings rose higher in a menacing stretch.

             
In the very instant that Autumn felt herself entered by the softest bit of flesh she had ever felt, the creature leapt for her with open jaws. She let loose a cry which ripped from her soul. Her world fell to blackness as she was devoured.

********

              The eerie stillness of twilight had quelled the world of its life. That stillness forced her body to tense violently. Her eyes flashed open to reveal a stormy gaze. She gasped, disoriented and afraid. The arm draped across her body returned her to the events of the night before. She released a whimpered sob as her eyes followed the captivating line of the arm to the sleeping blond whose beauty gave her sleeping face an entrancing glow.

             
Autumn extended a shaking hand. She touched the Empress' face with the utmost tenderness, fearful that anything less would cause the woman to stir. An odd sort of bravery touched her soul then. She spoke scarcely above a whisper, daring to say to Aurea's dreams what she realized she could never say to the blond during her waking life.

             
“As long as I exist,” she said, “it will be as one who loves you.”

             
Aurea tightened her embrace around the comforting form she felt pressed to hers. Still, she did not wake.

             
“And long after I am gone, I shall wait for you where judgments do not exist so that despite our deeds, both yours and mine, all that will matter is that I love you and you love me.”

             
Lowering her head, the Queen's dark hair fell sadly around her face. She parted her lips to speak, but instead watched a horrifying stiffness grip Aurea's body.

             
Blue eyes ripped open. They were held by the deepest reaches of terror. “No,” Aurea rasped.

             
With a sudden brutality, Aurea was wretched from Autumn's arms. She cleaved tightly to Autumn's hands with tears streaming hotly down her cheeks.

             
Autumn dug her heels into the earth, even as it gave way beneath her. She reached out with a desperate hand, holding with all her might to the fallen tree while her other wrist was fiercely held within Aurea's hands. Her eyes went to the fire born again of smoldering ashes. It reached outward as if owed an offering. The cost for their night together would be the return of the alluring blond.

             
“Don't let me go!” Aurea pleaded. “I want to stay with you.”

             
Autumn's hand upon the tree began to slip. She looked from it to Aurea and then back again with tearful eyes. “I'm losing my grip,” she cried. “Stop the spell!”

             
“I can't!” Aurea sobbed. She felt the ghostly arms of the fire pulling her into it. Already the lower half of her legs had slipped into the fires. Desperation flooded her eyes. “Come with me,” she begged.

             
Heart breaking inside her eyes, Autumn thought of her men, thought of her father, thought of the druids who had died and all because of Aurea's design. “Stop this war,” she countered suddenly. “Stop hunting the druids.”

             
Aurea growled loudly. Her body was lurched backward again with a stinging slide of her nude skin over gritty earth. “I can't!”

             
“Can't or won't?”

             
Together both, Autumn and Aurea were pulled that much closer to the fire as Autumn lost her grip of the tree.

             
As they slid in tangled struggle toward the fire, Aurea fell silent. Her eyes peered up into Autumn but still she could not answer.

             
That silence said more than Aurea had dared to dream. And so it was that they found themselves here yet again. They were two islands separated by seas of raging differences.

             
Quaking with sadness and regret, Autumn freed her hand from Aurea's grasp.

             
“No!” the Empress cried. She cleaved frantically to the ground, feeling the dirt reach deeply beneath her nails.

             
All that remained of her body now were her shoulders and arms. She gazed sorrowfully to the woman shakily beginning to stand. “Why aren't you fighting to keep us together?” Aurea demanded achingly.

             
Autumn bent down to collect her cape. She wrapped it around her body with tears streaming down her paling cheeks. Her face turned toward the direction of the rising sun. The battle would begin yet again very soon.

             
“We were pulled apart long ago,” she answered hoarsely, before she turned and left for the war, Aurea's war.

             
The Empress fell under the long shadow of Autumn's departing form. She screamed in fury and sadness as the last of her strength gave way and she was pulled completely into the fire. She plummeted into its depths then emerged through the other side. Her body violently crashed against her bedchamber floor.

             
Naked, alone and trembling, Aurea curled into a ball and cried for what she had lost while somewhere at the front, she knew that Autumn prepared to lead her men into another day from which she might not return.

Chapter Nineteen

             
O' but you were warned, you foolish many. What have you now? You are but fallen stars, destined to blaze as you fall painfully into the black night. What horrible sins have you committed?

             
Bitter tragedy, spare no truths for feeling's sake. Ring out with the clarity of stinging honesty and say: T’was not the faithless who condemned the world. T’was the faithful.

             
Killing can never be righteous especially if that righteousness was bestowed upon oneself. Do not linger upon the delusion that dogma makes the reflection of one’s own monstrosity easier to bear. Blood stains whatever she may touch whether you are holy or wicked.

---The Book Wrath

********

             
It covered the brooding Empress. She felt it upon every part of her. Love, she reeked of it. She bathed with a fiendish brutality but still it would not abandon her. It thrived in her memories, anointing the air in torturous breezes that brought her lover's scent. She trembled beneath phantom caresses.

             
Her hands rested against the massive windows within her bedchamber. She glared outside to the sunlight in its contented perfection.

             
“Stop this war,” she heard hauntingly. “Stop hunting the druids.” It rippled throughout her subconscious.

             
Her hatred rose to seethe her skin. “This is their fault,” she grumbled. Her fingers curled, digging her nails against the surface of the windows with a crackling whine.

             
The pouting fullness of her cherubic mouth quivered. A flash of Autumn's body arcing upward to live as the fertile alter to which Aurea knelt and prayed both infuriated and enslaved the Empress. She shook with its vividness.

             
“She chose her path,” she glowered. “Now I choose mine. If I am to suffer then so will she.” She shoved off the windows walking with burning eyes toward the doors. The golden train at her back glided over the ground as if carried by the currents of her hatred alone. “Let her pains start by the loss of her beloved druids.”

********

              For days, the tap of hammers became an ominous sound. It signified the arrival of a newly posted imperial decree.

             
As people gathered around the hanging documents accented with the Empress' seal, gasps filled the air.               Throughout the land these proclamations read:

             
The druids ----once thought to be divine by their closeness to all things holy---- have fallen from grace. They are but mortal men, who have abandoned their righteous faith by surrendering to mortal desires. They have been swayed by the witches of Lucidia. Together, they work to undermine the good deeds of the Empress.

             
Any druids within the land are to be feared and reported upon sight. Any aiding of the traitorous brotherhood will result in immediate punishment from the Empress' enforcers. Information regarding their nesting grounds for rebellious cells will be rewarded in gold.

             
The Pyrosians looked from one another in dire shock, disbelieving what both their eyes and ears had told them. Could it be? Were the druids truly in league with the Lucidians? Surely it must be so because the Empress, herself, had made the claim.             

             
They walked away from the news, carrying it upon their shoulders as a bitter burden. This was but the first of many weights to touch their souls.

             
During the desperate times of war, when supplies were beginning to grow more costly, gold would greatly help so many. Still, would it be enough to inspire the motivation needed for betrayal?

             
One by one as the weeks went on, the ailments of a heavy heart were forgotten or in part mended by a heavy purse. During those times, it became hard for neighbors to hold one another's gaze. Trust among brothers grew painfully scarce. Those who did aid the resistance did so with all the more secrecy while living in the constant fear that at any moment their actions would be uncovered by the enforcers.

             
Each day, the Empress' vice grip upon the land grew to unprecedented levels. She oversaw all with a cool disposition from her palace walls.

             
Aurea would have all she wanted and more. This had been the promise she had made to herself. It was only a matter of time before everything and so much more was hers and hers alone.

             
As Aurea watched over the land, the very name of 'druid' was becoming synonymous with treachery.

             
“Highness,” she heard.

             
The bewitching blond turned her head slightly. She listened to the report coming from over her shoulder.

             
“Soren was seen outside of Blessed Vine. The Knights are drawing in on him. It's only a matter of time before he's apprehended.”

             
Aurea's smile played slowly across her lips. “Good,” she purred.

             
The messenger's unwillingness to leave inspired the Empress to turn. She looked to her with frosty patience.

             
Forcing herself to swallow her fears, the messenger delivered the news which she knew would bring about Aurea's rage. “The forces upon Logos have diminished by half.”

             
Aurea's eyes slit. “What?” Her voice was quiet and deadly.

             
“An attack came which devastated the army,” the messenger explained. “We still hold the isle, but reinforcements will be needed in order to maintain control. If Lucidia were to attack now, Logos would be lost.”

             
“Send men from Whispering Winds and Rune,” Aurea commanded.

             
“But, Empress,” the messenger stammered. “Those men were supposed to move to the front to grant reprieve to Angels. Their province has been at the front since the beginning of the war. Their men are---”

             
“Needed at the front where they will stay,” Aurea finished bitingly.

             
The messenger felt a sickening turmoil swirl within her stomach. “Yes, Empress.” She bowed while trying to blink away tears.

********

              Just over the ledge, a winding sea of silver dazzled in the moonlight. Its steady waves came as the breaths of each soldier.

             
The newly replenished Lucidian army unknowingly sliced through the remaining hopes of two shivering Pyrosians hidden within the tall grasses. Looking away from the ominous scythe the Lucidian masses embodied, the reconnaissance slowly began to slink away upon their stomachs. Even as they withdrew, they realized that they were still beneath the shadow of the reaper coming to claim them all.

             
“There is no end to them,” Zahara gasped. She met Echo's eyes once they had reached a safe distance from the Lucidians. Their scouting expedition had been meant to give them an advantage of preparedness, but as they looked into each other's eyes, they knew the truth. This bad news would deeply wound a morale-deprived army.

             
“We must warn my cousin at once,” Echo whispered.

********

              Autumn gazed down into the bowl of meager rations in her hands. She relished the warmth of the bowl against her skin and even gave a contented smile as steam rose up to kiss her face. The warm meal would help to bring a bit of comfort to her men, but she realized that the supplies were running low. Soon, she would have to send her men into the countryside in order to hunt for food. She pushed that thought away, forcing herself to focus instead on this meal she would soon enjoy with her friends.

             
A slight frown touched her face as she thought to her friends. Where were they? Zahara and Echo were supposed to arrive long ago. She tensed suddenly wondering what might have happened to them.

             
As she caught sight of her friends approaching from the darkness, her face softened. She smiled as she set down her stew. She rose to greet them, but fell short of her usual warmth when her eyes met theirs.

             
Autumn tensed, bracing herself for the worst. “What's wrong?” she asked.

             
Zahara and Echo glanced between themselves, wondering who would be the one to deliver the news.              

“Someone
, tell me something,” Autumn warned sternly.

             
Taking in a deep breath, the two women began their recount of enemy territory. They informed her as to the Lucidians' overwhelming numbers and named off what weaponry they had clearly seen. When they were finished, silence weighted the air.

             
Weakly, the Queen of Angels sat atop a large stone. She was suddenly unable to stand. 

             
“Highness?” Zahara ventured tentatively.

             
At the mention of her name, Autumn woke from her silence. She returned to her place at the fire. “You did well,” she rasped. “Come and eat.”

             
“But, Autumn,” Zahara protested.

             
With a motion of Autumn's chin toward the fire, the women were silently commanded to sit. They begrudgingly took their place around the fire. Silently, they watched as their leader spooned warming stew into bowls for them.

             
Echo received the bowl with concerned eyes. Autumn seemed to change each day she participated in this war. She only vaguely glimpsed the carefree woman she had loved, the woman she affectionately called her cousin.

             
Zahara stabbed angrily into her stew. She ate with that same zeal, using stale bread to push down her bitterness toward their situation.

             
“We must call for Myth,” Autumn said, disturbing the silence.

             
Echo paused, mid-bite. “Yes, of course,” she said. She rose to her feet only to find herself face to face with the beautiful woman with enchanting green eyes.

             
Myth smiled slowly into Echo. She tenderly reached out her hand. She caressed her cheek before moving beyond the ebony-haired woman to greet the others.

             
As their family now sat completed, they resumed dinner, but in that moment the unspoken hovered in the air.

             
“You called, Autumn,” Myth asked as she picked delicately at her bread.

             
“When are reinforcements coming,” Zahara questioned suddenly.

             
Myth's eyes rounded sadly. She chewed at a morsel of bread. She felt it grow slightly within her mouth. “They won't,” she whispered knowingly.

             
Enraged, Zahara leapt to her feet. “But they promised!”

             
A sharp look from Autumn warned the Guardian to lower her voice. Though they were apart from the men, on a quiet night raised voices could easily be heard throughout the Lucidian stillness.

              Apologetically, Zahara lowered both her head and her voice.

             
Devoting her attention solely to the woman with the gift of sight, Autumn listened intently. “What do you see?” she prodded gently.

             
Myth gazed heavily into the fire. She used the strength and purity of its light to help her find her way. “Though we may reach out for a helping hand and find none,” she started, “we are not alone. This is the time for us to band together as we are. If we can survive this trial, divinity will intervene.” Her voice grew distant while she slipped deeper into a trance. “We must remember the reason we are fighting.”

             
“We're here because of the Empress,” Echo thought aloud.

             
Autumn frowned as she shook her head. “No,” she said thoughtfully. “We are fighting for our lives. This now has nothing to do with Aurea.”

             
Myth slowly woke from her trance, finding Autumn's eyes.

             
“How can you say that?” Echo asked in pained confusion. “This has everything to do with Aurea.”

             
“No,” Autumn voiced firmly. “It doesn't.” She sighed and found her old friend's eyes. “This stopped being about Aurea a long time ago, cousin.

             
“What happens back home, with Aurea, with Logos, it isn't part of what we are doing here now. We're cut off from all of that and yes, that's because Aurea isn't sending us help, but regardless of why we're cut off, the fact of the matter is, we're all alone out here. The only thing we need to focus on is making sure that we take care of ourselves; that we defend and protect each other because we're all the family that any of us has. We aren't fighting for Aurea or a cause we don't believe in. We're fighting for our lives because if we don't, no one else will. The Empress won't!”