Spear of Destiny James Baldwin (free romance novels .TXT) 📖

“Yeah. But that doesn’t mean I want a partner for it.” Karalti yawned and stretched, flopping over onto her back. “When I’m doing that, I don’t really think about you or anyone else. It’s more like an itch I gotta scratch sometimes. When you’re mating with Suri, I get the urge… but I don’t want to be involved.”

“Huh.” I smiled at her. “Makes sense to me.”

She wiggled over to me and cuddled up. “Can I ask you a favor?”

“Mm?”

“You brought food with you, right?”

“Yep. Sure did.”

“Can you… can you feed me?” Her lips parted, and her eyes darkened again. “I REALLY want you to feed me after this.”

I arched my eyebrows. “You mean feed you like the way you wanted Suri to feed Cutthroat?”

Karalti pouted, and shoved at my chest as I chortled.

“Fingers are fine,” she grumbled. “I just… mmm… let’s do that, and go to sleep in here. It’s so nice.”

“We’ll get all wrinkly if we sleep on the moss here,” I replied. “Come on: let’s go pitch a fire, and I’ll feed the Tidbit tidbits.”

“Yeah!” Karalti pushed herself up to her hands and awkwardly swayed up to her feet. I wasn’t doing much better. It took a couple of goes to roll up to sit, and when she offered me a hand, I accepted it. We hobbled out into the open like a couple of old people, clutching our backs and groaning.

“Are we going to be okay after this?” I asked her, as we slowly headed for the soft grass beyond the mineralized bank. “You and me, I mean? I loved this, but… you know. I don’t want to change what we have, either.”

Karalti’s eyes danced as she plopped down onto the meadow, huffing a soft breath through her teeth.  “It’s changed, and it’ll keep changing. Just like we will. I think we’ll grow and change for as long as we’re both alive.”

I bent down to kiss her on the top of her head. “Then here’s to us both living for a long, long time.”

***

I woke to the sound of a Message Alert. It was the early morning, the sun just starting to rise through the morning fog that hung over the lake. Grumbling, I rolled over onto my back and picked up the call. “’Llo?”

“Hey there, lover boy.” Suri’s voice purred into my ear as if she were speaking right beside it. “I’m back with Gar, safe and sound in Kalla Sahasi. How’d things go?”

“Things?” I repeated, laying my forearm over my eyes. Karalti burrowed her head into my armpit with a soft chirp, still sound asleep. “Yeah. Things are, umm, thingy.”

“Vash told me it was Karalti’s time of the month, and you two went and took a night out to preen each other.”

“Preening, yeah. Guess you could call it that.” Thanks to the magic of videogame physics, I didn’t feel any of the aching or fatigue now that I’d slept… ten hours? Damn. “How’re you? How’s Cutthroat?”

“She’s decided that she is the new captain of the Strelitzia,” Suri replied. “We aren’t getting’ her out until those eggs hatch. Gar’s just given up. We’re in the parlor now, and he’s drinking all your brandy.”

I had a momentary mental image of Gar standing at the bar, sobbing and chugging. “Oh, well, you know. Nothing reminds me of my first time like a guy crying.”

Suri laughed, snorted, laughed some more.

“I’m a terrible person, Suri,” I sighed, stretching out. Karalti and I had hooked our sleeping rolls together. It was warm and cosy and I really didn’t want to leave, but I had a feeling that duty was just about ready to call. “Any word from Rin?”

“Yeah. She said to call you and Special-K back to base. She was able to make the weapons we need. The ships are ready and are at the castle skyport, waiting for departure.

My eyelids fluttered open, as I suddenly thought back to Ororgael’s smug, sneering voice. You will have nothing, and you are – and always will be – too weak and stupid to catch up… There’s nothing you can do to stop what’s coming.

I also remembered what I’d said back to him. The fuck there isn’t.

“Give us an hour,” I said, shifting up to lean on my elbows. “Make sure everyone and everything is ready to go. We’ll leave as soon as Karalti and I return to base. It’s time to show these Void-bitten assholes what we’re made of.”

Chapter 57

The Bashir Desert: 4 Days Later

We saw the maelstrom as soon as we crossed the mountains.

The howling pillar of black sand was half a mile across, soaring into the otherwise-clear desert sky. The Stranged storm generated its own lightning, bursts of light snapping out like whips. From inside, we could hear the distorted, haunting roars of the Voidwyrm Empress.

I stood neck and neck with the Court Mage of Litvy, Szonja the Living Flame. She was a striking older woman in her sixties, with very long, lustrous grey hair and blue-violet eyes, elegantly attired in red and dark burnt orange robes. Her name had less to do with her appearance, and more to do with her ability. She was an Arch Elementalist, a graduate of Jeun’s magical college, and her specializations were fire and air magic.

“There is a tear in the fabric of reality. That is what is causing the storm.” The sorceress lowered her spyglass, lips pursed. “Whatever foul magic Hyland used to create this rift, he cast it from a single point. Do you see the terminus of the cloud?”

I opened my eyes wide, zooming my vision to look at the top of the whirling tempest. There was, in fact, a single point of origin there. “Sure do.”

“To permanently stop this storm, we must repair that singularity.” She stowed the glass