LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter 2

      “Why aren’t any spirits attacking us? Shouldn’t there be spirits attacking us? I was told there were going to be spirits everywhere, blighting the land and slaying the living, and yet all I have seen that was even remotely threatening was a one-legged harlot who seemed to feel you owed her money for services rendered several years ago.”

      Hallow, riding next to Deo, looked first askance at his companion, then over his shoulder to where Allegria, the light of his life and fire in his loins, rode chatting with the red-headed Shadowborn woman she had taken under her wing. Allegria hadn’t been all too pleased when the harlot had accused him of partaking of her wares and slipping out without paying—which Hallow had not done, since he had always been very scrupulous about such things—and now he sensed a bit of frostiness lingering in his wife’s gaze when it rested on him. “Yes, well, I think the less mentioned about the lady in Bellwether, the better. As for the Eidolon…”

      His words trailed away as a growing sense of unease prickled along his spine. He rubbed the back of his neck, eyeing again the thick copse of trees lining either side of the road that led eastward, toward Kelos. There was no sign that anything was amiss, but he felt as if his nerves were twitching a warning that danger lay all around them, ready to spring upon the unwary.

      “They certainly aren’t the threat I was promised,” Deo grumbled, looking dissatisfied.

      “You are the only man I know who gets snappish when someone isn’t trying to kill him,” Hallow commented with a wry sense of humor that he knew Deo would ignore. Allegria would have appreciated it, though. He glanced back to smile at her, hoping that her partiality to him would thaw any remaining coldness regarding their landing at Bellwether, but even as he caught her eye, a flicker of movement to the side had him suddenly filled with rage.

      Arcany pricked his palms as he pulled on the light of the stars that sat behind the sun, but the chaos magic within him rode high, filling him with a red-hot anger that threatened to spill out at the potential threat to his beloved.

      A man emerged from the woods with a basket of fallen branches strapped to his back. He watched the company ride by for a few seconds before lifting his hand in greeting and turning to march off to what was no doubt his home.

      “Hallow?” Allegria pressed her heels into her mule, pushing between his horse, Penn, and Deo’s massive black charger. “What’s wrong? Why have your runes lit up like a lantern? Do you sense something? Is it the Eidolon? Ella,” she turned in her saddle and called back to the Shadowborn woman, “tighten your bowstring, and make sure your quiver is at hand.”

      “At last!” Deo said, his voice full of satisfaction. He pulled his sword from his back scabbard, glancing around quickly. “Where are they, Hallow? I see naught. Are they visible only to your eyes? That will make it a bit more difficult to smite them, but if you tell me where they are, I will take care of them.”

      “There’s nothing,” Hallow said quickly, subduing the various magics that twisted inside him in what seemed to be an endless dance. The arcane power that he pulled easily from the sky even when Bellias Starsong was hidden, as she was now, was as natural to him as breathing. The blood magic that he’d gained during his visit to Eris was a little less natural, its complexity shifting and changing even as the chaos magic roared to life, drenching him with a hot, burning need. The runes etched in silver and bound to his wrists and ankles kept the chaos from overwhelming him, but lately, as his body learned to cope with the three different types of magic dwelling within, the chaos magic’s rush of red power had shifted from the urge to destroy to one much less lethal.

      Although certainly more embarrassing.

      “Allegria,” he said, his voice husky with desire. The need to slake suddenly overwhelming urges on her body rode high when the chaos magic chose that outlet for its power. There was a plea in his voice for her to move away from him, to give him the space he needed whenever the chaos took over his emotions.

      Not that he often had been successful in quelling its demands by such means. Usually, he just hustled her off to whatever bedchamber had been assigned to them and indulged his desires, leaving them both boneless and sated. And although Allegria had said she understood the situation, and never blamed him when he interrupted her with one of the chaos times (as he’d come to think of them), of late she had started to bandy about the phrase, “my lusty stallion”— not at all a nickname he relished.

      He’d always been in control of the magic he wielded, dammit, and he wasn’t about to be known as a man who couldn’t so much as glance at his wife without being driven to bed her. Vigorously. Sometimes multiple times a day.

      “I don’t see anything,” Allegria was telling Deo, scanning both the tree line and the road ahead. “And the Eidolon I met were quite visible. I don’t think they could be in a corporeal state if they weren’t visible, could they? Hallow, do you know if—” Her eyes widened, accurately reading the mingled desperation, apology, and sexual desire in his eyes. She blinked for a moment, then gave a little chirrup of laughter that she hid with a hand placed over her mouth. “Oh. I see. It’s…uh…no, Deo, get back on your horse. There are no Eidolon here. Hallow was…mistaken.”

      It was too much for him. He pulled Penn aside, dismounting and dropping the reins with an order for the horse to stay put. “I believe I need to…er…” He gestured toward the woods, unable to drag his mind from the struggle to control the chaos magic’s lustful demands.

      “Ah?” Deo made a face, then nodded. “Yes, I need to make water as well. Too much ale from the one-legged harlot that you refused to pay.”

      Hallow would have liked to dispute that comment, but the sooner he removed his body from the temptation of his delectable wife, the sooner he would regain the upper hand with the chaos magic. He stumbled off to the copse, swearing under his breath at the loss of control, promising himself that just as soon as they took care of the Eidolon threat, he would focus his attention on mastering the magic that had been forced upon him. Perhaps new runes? He’d never heard of protection against lustful urges, but he would simply have to search the library of the former master of Kelos for what aids he could find.

      Everyone had evidently decided that this was indeed the perfect moment for a nature break, because the sounds of their small company dismounting reached his ears as he pushed deeper into the woods, his hands fisted as he struggled to control the arousal that gripped his entire body. If he could just have a few minutes to himself, he knew he could best it. At least until the next time he felt threatened.

      “Hallow?” Allegria’s voice wrapped around him like silken threads. Rustling sounds accompanied his name, along with the snapping of twigs. “Are you all right?”

      “Don’t,” he warned, doubled over. His fists pressed hard into thighs while he struggled to

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