To die as lovers may (Early Access) (Patreon)

Warm energy thrummed along the sensitive veins of Feira’s inner forearms. It wasn’t the familiar flashes of solar heat that she had travelled with all of her second life. Instead, an urgent humming at her wrists, as though enveloped in an insistent friend’s hands.

Rory had heard a voice. A demanding woman, searching for Feira. She didn’t reveal her name, but she was able to make her target more than clear. Incessant, urging Rory forward with a magnetic pull in her icy-blue arms.

For Feira, though, silence. Despite the woman’s apparent demands being… Feira herself. For what end reason or goal was yet to be determined.

Rory had been undeservingly understanding when Feira decided not to bring her on the journey ahead. She didn't know where she was headed, how long she would be, who she was meeting. All of these unknown variables were reasons to both keep Rory away, and bring her along for support. Eventually, her concern for her young protégé’s well-being won out.

This was clearly Feira's problem alone to address, Rory didn't need to be dragged into it.

It did not sit well in Feira's stomach that she was being lead to Venus. A planet under attack from air, land and sea. Sulphuric gas floated up in clouds from underfoot, tendrils of wild jungle vegetation crawled over every surface, and now the Venusian ocean threatened to collect ancient and abandoned cities like silver.

Feira trailed the shattered coast until her wrists were yanked inward, luring her away from the sea. Not a dowsing enchantment, then, Feira thought sarcastically. Padding over the undergrowth, Feira allowed the armlets to lead her, despite her better judgement. She had come this far, it would be a waste to turn back. It was becoming increasingly clear where she was being brought, the why was still a mystery.

Ishtar Academy. An ironic choice of location to meet a warlock. Perhaps it was intentional.

Feira huffed to herself as she brushed through hanging vines and shouldered splintered rock out of her way. She was not built for hands-on activities. If the woman drawing her out into this wilderness could see her, she hoped she didn't appear as worn out as she felt. There was a sensation of eyes upon her, but then there had been since she slipped the bracers onto her arms.

Mighty columns, and crumbling platforms jutting out from them, rose up around her as she journeyed deeper into the heart of the academy. The sky was stormy, but that wasn’t unusual for Venus. There was no sun to be seen, no ally in sight.

Finally, it appeared she had reached the centre. Intricate floor tiling and amputated statues greeted her ahead of a grand and desolate courtyard.

When the toe of her boot touched the first flat grey stone of the courtyard, a stillness struck her. The air, the bushes... the armlets. Feira stilled too, only her eyes continued to roam, searching the ruins around her.

A long, slender leg preceded a tall woman stepping out from the shadows of a crumbling stone column. Black, dress-like robes billowed about her like smoke. Dark hair curtained her face and thick black kohl had been brushed around both of her eyes. A ripple of intimidation and attraction ran over Feira’s brain simultaneously.

“Who are you?” Feira called.

“You know who I am.” The woman spoke with a deep and sultry timbre to her words.

Feira yanked the armlets off and threw them to the ground between them. "No, I don't." Darkness followed the woman like the clouds of sulphuric gases. "Explain yourself."

“You are mine," the woman announced simply. Her confidence was alluring. She toed down the short stone steps to the courtyard. "You shall be mine again. You always have been.” Suddenly, she was only a few steps away. Her speech was entrancing and enchanting.

“I don’t know you,” Feira whispered.

The woman circled her and wafts of heady perfume followed. “You did once,” she said simply.

Feira struggled to keep her thoughts in order, the woman’s presence pressed in on her like a tight silk wrap. “And you remember that?”

“No,” she admitted. Her ink-black brows crumpled slightly. “What would it change if I did?” She blinked slowly, her eyes scraping over Feira like sharp nails. “Our bodies remember.”

Feira knew exactly what she was referring to. The desire that crackled between them, prickling at the back of her neck like the warning of an oncoming storm. Of darkness approaching.

But darkness was right in front of her. Embodied in one of the darkest beings the universe was capable of manifesting. And it wasn’t the armlets pulling at her anymore.

The woman was right. Knowledge wouldn’t cancel out intuition. It wouldn’t satisfy the squeezing sensation in the pit of Feira’s stomach.

“Tell me your name,” she begged. “Just that much.”

“Mircalla.” A soft and sweet smile curled at her lips as she added, “and you are my wife, Feira.”

Feira blinked, stepped back off the tile, and blinked again. She was not married. Flustered, she took the easier question to start. “How do you know my name?”

“Your little apprentice,” Mircalla cooed. She tilted her head and the cascade of black hair that swung with her held Feira in a momentary trance. “Are they always so talkative? Or only when wearing enchanted listening devices?”

“Rory doesn’t talk,” Feira said too quickly. A spark of protectiveness that only fuelled her flames.

“Maybe not aloud.”

“Leave her out of this.”

“I had no intention of including them." She glided closer, unafraid of the flames flickering over Feira's body defensively. The light brought out a more intense beauty to her features. "You are my one and only concern.” There was a flash of vulnerability in her eyes, her assuredness dropping just long enough for Feira to notice before she continued. “I have existed for as long as I can remember, only to search for you. I walk because it may bring me closer to you. I breathe that it will keep me here another moment to continue my journey towards you.” She released a deep, relaxing breath and watched the air she blew distort the flames curled around Feira's shoulders. "Do you not feel it, too?"

"Yes," Feira answered without hesitation. Her voice reduced to a breathy sigh. She couldn't find a reason to lie.

Mircalla smiled. It warmed Feira in a way her flames could never.

Slender fingers wrapped over Feira's and Mircalla was leading her once again, this time into the dark of the cavern she had appeared from. Feira allowed her flames to stretch out like the jungle around them, tickling along Mircalla's skin to her elbow. A timid touch, testing her… wife. Mircalla remained unbothered, dragging her deeper into the darkness. Feira’s feet followed her feelings before her thoughts.

Into the dark she bounded. Hand-in-hand with the darkness, Feira’s heart was bursting with bright euphoria.

In the nook of a half-collapsed building, Mircalla spun them, as though dancing through the darkness. Concrete hit Feira’s back and Mircalla’s face was suddenly inches from her own. Her flames licked at the wall behind her in small bursts and the light shone dully off the sharp canines that displayed when Mircalla smiled.

For a moment, only the sounds of their breaths filled the tight space between them. Their breath mingled into a mix of mint and sugar. The soft tip of Mircalla’s nose traced the bridge of Feira’s down to her philtrum. Feira’s breath stuttered.

Their lips crashed together, tongues rolling, and hands lurching forward to clutch at each other’s clothing. They sunk to the floor in a tangle. Wretched and desperate. A lifetime unshared to claim back. The territory of Feira’s mouth was under hostile takeover. Mircalla’s tongue was coaxing whimpers and whines from her that should have been embarrassing, but there was only a dead city around them to hear. Miracalla’s skin was refreshingly cool and Feira let herself burn against her, knowing her heart simply wouldn’t allow her to hurt her wife. Her love, long lost, but never truly forgotten. Reincarnation couldn’t erase the string that connected them. In their last life or the next.

Layers were peeled off. Scratches were left. Bruises were made. Stars were seen through the concrete ceiling. Re-acquainting themselves with each other’s bodies by firelight.

Laid atop their nest of clothes, they were warmed by Feira’s fire despite the dark corner they had tucked themselves into. They were coiled into each other, limbs wrapped around limbs. A longing to be tied together pulsing from their hearts. Feira allowed her eyes to slide shut, listening to faraway waves crash against the shore. Earth and sea were battling for control in the distance, the wind whipped at the crumbling buildings, and in Feira’s chest fire smouldered peacefully.

Mircalla shifted, but kept their interlocked bodies intact. She placed tender kisses along Feira’s jaw with the utmost intention. Carefully picking her way down the vulnerable flesh. The tips of her teeth tickled the taut skin of Feira’s throat. Hesitation, offering the opportunity to pull away. Feira shivered in her embrace, but made no effort to escape the sharp approach of Mircalla’s fangs.

Two points of pressure. Then piercing pain. And then a flood of adrenaline that sent shivers through every inch of her body. A groan against her neck sent vibration straight to her groin.

Her hands reached blindly, searching for Mircalla’s skin. A hundred shades lighter than her own. When her fingers found her, she clutched her close, hips gyrating against the intense shakes that wracked her.

When the fangs retracted, they were both panting.

“Will this… turn me into-”

“No,” said Mircalla, licking her lips with a loud smack. “It is a claim, not a conversion.”

“Since when am I yours to claim?” Feira asked breathlessly. Her neck felt cold and wet, but only in one clean patch. A neat and precise bite.

Mircalla chuckled darkly. “Since you vowed yourself to me in another life.”

“You vowed yourself to me, too.” It felt true, not that Feira could prove it or remember it. None of that mattered anymore.

Mircalla bared her teeth in a vicious, flirtatious, and hungry smile. “Bite me if you dare.”

Feira faltered. The urge to sink her teeth into any living being had never occurred to her before, not in this lifetime, but now it struck her like a hammer. Mircalla wearing a bruised and bloody mark on her neck, an imprint of Feira's teeth for anyone to see. It brought on shivers of need, flashes of heat that were nothing like her solar magic. It burned through her blood.

She twisted them, flipping Mircalla to the bottom of their entangled pile, and latched herself to the smooth skin at the join of her throat. For a few moments she simply sucked small bruises to the surface. Then, she braced her teeth in a wide bite and surged forward with all of her strength.

Mircalla howled under her, it quickly turned to a laugh. Wild and wicked.

Feira hadn’t managed to break skin, but she pulled the chunk between her lips as she retreated. A guarantee of a beautiful indigo mark. It would compliment her wife’s pale skin and dark hair perfectly. Just as Feira’s bloody mark would suit her bronzed skin, hair and eyes.

She sunk flat against Mircalla, sighing satisfaction against the opposite side of her neck.

“You and I are one forever,” Mircalla murmured into Feira’s hair. A flush of embarrassed heat shot through her as she thought of the rust-brown mop on the top of her head. Hair care had not made it even to the bottom of Feira’s list of priorities in years. Recently she had been hacking it off herself whenever it reached her shoulders. She probably looked like an animal that rolled around on rocks to shed excess fur.

Mircalla’s eyes were soft, though. Slowly drifting over every inch of her, as though she couldn’t take her all in through one look alone. As though she were in awe of Feira. She smiled serenely and reached out to pinch one of Feira’s flushed cheeks.

“Forever,” she repeated.