Jory Strong: Ghostland

“Now is the time for building alliances, for strengthening them with blood ties.”

Aisling experienced a stab of pain to echo the one she’d felt when she learned her mother had carried her for gain. This was her father’s reason for her birth. “You want to use me to form an alliance with the Djinn.”

He released her wrist. “It is one possible use. But there are others.”

They might have been discussing what to plant in the fields, which animals to breed and which to sell or slaughter-the practical decisions of farming. She blinked back tears, refused to let him hurt her with his coldness. With his failure to acknowledge even her name. She swallowed her pride, her pain, thought instead of Aziel, whose voice held such longing when he spoke of the Djinn, of Zurael, who’d come to mean so much to her.

Aisling’s hands curled into fists. She met her father’s eyes boldly. “What will you do if I summon him?”

The sword appeared in her father’s hand from nowhere. The sight of it made Aisling’s breath grow short and her lungs fill with ice, but she stood her ground.

Approval shone in her father’s face. “Aisling,” he said, and the sound of her name was a symphony, a beautiful chorus that brought tears to her eyes along with a terrible knowledge.

His voice was as much a weapon as his sword. With it he could offer praise so glorious she might do anything to bask in it. Or he could deliver tortured visions of damnation so horrible her mind might shatter.

When the effects of his voice faded, he said, “You owe a debt, but I won’t take your free will as part of my price. This moment has long been in the making. It’s no accident Aziel has been your companion since birth. Summon The Prince’s son. You are willing to risk my wrath and surrender your soul in order to protect him; give him the chance to show he returns your feelings, that he is willing to give up a kingdom for you.”

A hundred different images crowded in. A hundred remembered touches.

Hope warred with fear.

Memories competed.

Zurael’s fury over being summoned the first time. The promise of retribution she’d seen in his eyes. His acknowledgment later that he’d come to kill her.

Rest easy, child of mud. You’re safe from me unless you summon me again.

His gentleness. His protectiveness and possessiveness. The way he’d kissed away her tears before leaving with the tablet.

I want you, Aisling, only you. If I hadn’t promised to return to the Djinn as soon as I gained possession of the tablet, then I wouldn’t leave you, not even for a moment.

Aisling’s hand went to the base of her throat in an unconscious gesture, seeking the familiar comfort of her fetishes, only to be reminded by their absence that they’d been destroyed. Once, their loss would have left her feeling uncertain, frightened by her gift, but now she knew better who she was, what purpose her life might serve.

Her father stood in front of her, offering her the very future she’d barely let herself dream of, one with Zurael. It wasn’t a trap. It was a test. And she would rather risk summoning Zurael and seeing hate in his eyes than to never know what would have happened if only she’d had the courage to believe in herself and in him.

“I’ll summon him,” she said, thinking her father meant to take her into the ghostlands when he positioned her so she stood with her back inches away from his chest.

Instead he lifted his arm and it was as though his sword cut through an unseen barrier separating her world from his. The spirit winds swept in, circled and swirled, waited to do her bidding.

“Zurael. Serpent heir. Son of the one who is The Prince. I summon you to me,” Aisling said, and this time she could feel the winds carry her words deep into the spiritlands.

He arrived bare-chested, wearing flowing trousers and looking every inch the heir to a kingdom. Aisling’s heart leapt at the sight of him, rejoiced at the hunger in his eyes as they roved over her, as if the angel at her back, the one he’d once called an enemy, didn’t exist. As if he welcomed her summons.

The sword in her father’s hand disappeared, and with it the entrance into the spiritlands. “You will stay in this world and join with my daughter?”

Zurael’s attention went to the being that stood behind her, and Aisling stilled, felt her pulse throb at the base of her throat. She was afraid hatred would flare in his eyes, suspicion; instead there was only steely resolve. “You and my father have accomplished what you set out to do. But don’t think you’ll use us as pawns again. Aisling is mine and I won’t be easily parted from her.”

“I would expect no less from The Prince’s son.” Her father stepped away, taking his icy chill with him. “Finish it so I may bear witness that the first of the alliances has been sealed.”

Zurael pulled Aisling into his embrace and shuddered with pleasure at once again having her in his arms. He’d been surprised by the sight of the angel, but not shocked, not after Irial’s revelations, not after glimpsing the depth of the game his father and the others played.

He should have guessed what Aisling was, seen the proof of it in the caress of angel-red stones against the angelite blue of hers when he visited the House of the Spider. But even had he known it, he would have been helpless against her. She’d enslaved him, enthralled him from the first with her gentle spirit and indomitable courage.

He would give up a kingdom for her. He would give up his soul for her.

“Bind your life to mine, Aisling, take my spirit into your keeping so we can live and love in this world and beyond.”

“Yes,” she whispered, and he pressed his mouth to hers, moaned when she parted her lips and tangled her tongue with his in heated welcome.

His cock thickened, urged him to meld the physical with the spiritual. And he promised himself he would as soon as the angel was gone, knew that whenever he coupled with Aisling, whether it was a tender joining or a primitive claiming, it would always be a melding of two souls into one.

He gave her his breath, his spirit. Willed himself into her keeping as if she were one of the vessels used to bind the Djinn of old. He felt the connection between them deepen, as if gossamer strands joined to form an elaborate spiderweb holding both of their spirits at its center.

Desire flared between them, hot and fierce. Her body was soft against his, her small tremors of need nearly his undoing.

Reluctantly he ended the kiss and pulled away. He turned his head to find he and Aisling were alone in the room.

Her gasp drew his attention to her arm, to the coiled serpent inked around her wrist, worn like the bracelet he’d become when they’d been cast into the spiritlands together. He glanced at his own arm and saw only tanned skin where once he’d worn the mark of his house.

It was done then. But unlike the first time she’d called for him on the spirit winds, he felt no fury. He felt only joy that she knew his name.

Aisling laughed when Zurael picked her up and carried her toward the bedroom. She unbound his braid as he walked, reveled in the way his face tightened and his eyes grew molten at her touch.

They needed to talk. About what they’d learned. Where they’d live. The dangers facing them. But for the moment, for always, her happiness would be found in a Djinn’s arms.