LITMIR.BIZ

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Kallista scooped him up, wove him into place with the others, ready now as the magic rolled on to find Aisse. She was sleeping, somewhere dark and smoky but safe, seeming to think she dreamed when the magic first caught her up. She woke only as it spun them tighter in the ecstasy it made.

      Kallista held on fiercely, twining their separate selves into a glorious whole—Torchay’s strength, Obed’s truth, Fox’s order, Stone’s joy, Aisse’s faith, Kallista’s will…Joh’s vision. All her marked ones were there.

      The magic pushed them, pulled, whirled and tumbled them as it rose to explosive heights. Again and again, Kallista hauled it back, building the power and the pleasure with each check of its escape while it bounced again through each one of them. Her pleasure fed theirs, which fed back to her and into the magic which then spilled back through each of them to push the cycle higher still.

      “Goddess!” Someone screamed it, or maybe all of them did. And the magic exploded out of Kallista’s control.

      It blasted through them in a seven-fold sexual climax before it erupted into a cloud of glittering fallout visible to every naitan in Adara who might chance to look toward Arikon. Then it drifted slowly down, folding back into its separate homes.

      Kallista blinked, alone inside her body again, and found herself seated on the floor, her arms draped across Joh’s naked legs, her face buried in his lap. Torchay sat slumped against her, weighing her down, and Obed lay curled on his side a short distance away. She shoved at Torchay and he shifted his weight off her, leaning bonelessly against the chair holding Joh.

      “Beware of what you ask for,” Torchay mumbled through lips that didn’t seem to be working quite right.

      “I asked for nothing.” Obed sounded bitter, his voice choked with some hidden emotion. He’d told her more than once that he wanted nothing to do with sex by magic.

      Kallista wanted to go to him, to bring him closer, but she couldn’t move from her spot. She stretched out her leg, touched him with her bare toes, and he flinched away.

      “I’ll kill him.” Torchay lifted a hand toward the sword hilt over his shoulder, then let it fall again. “Later. When I’ve rested up a bit.”

      “Don’t kill him just yet, please.” Kallista rolled her head to one side and Joh gasped. The chains rattled and she realized his hands were tangled in her hair. He started to pull them back, but Kallista managed to close a hand over his wrist and prevent it.

      “I hope Fox and Stone manage to get themselves out of the snow before they get frostbite,” she said, her mind not quite turning all its gears yet. They were alive. They were safe.

      “What are they doin’ in the snow anyway?” Torchay raised his hand again, and this time managed to push his half-dry curls out of his face by means of lowering his head to meet his hand.

      “Hunting, I think. That was the impression I got.” Her thumb made little circles on the skin inside Joh’s wrist. “I imagine they scared off whatever they were hunting and everything else within hearing distance.”

      “Aye, likely.” Torchay opened an eye, then both of them, meeting Kallista’s gaze. “They seemed well, safe enough.”

      She settled her cheek more comfortably against Joh’s thigh. “They did, didn’t they?” The box full of fear had vanished from her mind.

      Torchay sighed, pushing away from the chair to sit unsupported. “Might as well not have bothered with bathing. Soon as I change my trousers, I’ll get the key from the lieutenant.” He shook his head at her. “Do you always have to pet the new ones?”

      Was she? Kallista lifted her head a fraction and saw her hand stroking over Joh’s thigh, her other caressing his wrist. “I suppose I must.” She slanted a look at Torchay. “Did I not pet you enough when you were first marked?”

      “We were busy escaping from Tsekrish, as I recall.” He leered playfully at her, a bit of Stone rubbed off on him, perhaps. “But if you want to make up for it, I won’t object.”

      She lifted a hand weighted down with invisible rocks and pointed at the suite door. “Go get the key.”

      “After I change.” He crawled to his hands and knees and used Joh’s chair to pull himself to his feet. In silence, Obed hauled himself upright and staggered after him. Kallista bit her lip, watching him go, then put her worry out of her mind. If Obed refused to share what troubled him, she couldn’t resolve it on her own.

      If things didn’t get better, something would have to be done. She didn’t want to let him go. Besides her personal feelings, they needed the magic he carried, but if he couldn’t bear to stay, she would have to do it. That could wait, for now.

      Her neck scarcely seemed strong enough to connect head to body, much less actually raise her head from its very comfortable spot, but she forced it to do so anyway. “Joh?”

      His cheeks were wet with tears that squeezed from beneath his tight-closed eyelids. When she whispered his name, he raised a shoulder and wiped his face across it. “Sweet Goddess—” His voice rasped like stones grinding together, its former deep richness lost. “What was that?”

      Kallista had to laugh, though it sounded little better than Joh’s croak. “The magic.”

      “Saints and all the holy sinners—why didn’t the Tibran fall to his knees and beg you to keep him when I brought him as a prisoner to Arikon?”

      “It’s never been like that before.” She had lazed on the floor long enough, but halfway to her feet, a wave of dizziness hit her. She managed to collapse on the arm of Joh’s chair, then slid down into the seat, more on top of him than beside him. “Sorry,” she mumbled, holding her head up with both hands.

      “Head down.” He nudged at her elbows propped on her knees. “You shouldn’t have tried to stand so soon.”

      “They did.” And she was the captain. Maybe she didn’t have the same strength as her men, but she’d always been able to match Torchay in sheer endurance.

      “They weren’t holding that—that madness together. You were.” Joh urged her head toward his knees, moving his chains out of the way.

      “It wasn’t like that before.” She let him push her where he wanted, unable to argue, until the dizziness began to fade. Then it felt too nice, even if she was bent nearly in half. And she could think again.

      “What was different about it?”

      “Before, it was only me and the one I was touching. Well, except with Obed, when Stone got in the way. But then it was only the three of us, because we were all touching. And it only happened when the marked one wasn’t with us when he was marked. Like you. It didn’t happen with Aisse and Torchay at all.” Kallista lifted her head again, and when the dizziness remained at bay, she sat up, resting her head against Joh’s shoulder in case it returned.

      Joh cleared his throat. “Never everyone at once?”

      She took a deep breath. “You smell good. They didn’t bring us scented soap.”

      “Doubtless because I had more odors to scrub away and disguise.” The smile was audible in his voice.

      “At the weddings,” she said, finally answering his question. “When we all took hands at the end, something like that happened, but not so…intense.”

      “Ah.”

      “And of course, we were all there together and holding hands. That was before Torchay and Aisse were marked, of course, which could be the difference. That they weren’t part of the magic then. But I think it happened this time because my magic has been asleep for so long. When your mark woke it, I think it needed to—to make sure we were all still together. All still bound.”

      “What happens next?” Joh asked.

      “I get the key to those shackles of yours.” Still tying up his trouser laces, Torchay came

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