The Story of the Trees - Sword, Ring, and Crown Book One

Chapter Thirty-Five

I wanted to get lost in this storm, and I closed my eyes. I could feel my spirit unraveling, and Ciaran shouted, "Push it back to me!"

The windows shook, and we glowed like suns. Sheet music on the grand piano went flying as a sudden wind blew things around. The table fell on its side and Persimmon howled in surprise then vanished. All the chairs but one flipped over and hurtled several feet, crashing into walls and clattering against the floor.

Why? Why should I push it back? It was such a fabulous solution to it all. Give in and get swept away. I waited, and I felt Ciaran tremble against me. He was trembling and gasping. His emotions were growing from delight and connection to worry. "Princess, stop now before we go too far! I don't wish to lose you!"

His panic snapped my brain back into attention. I was hurting both of us. So I pushed. I pushed his force back into him, and some of mine as well. He caught it, spooled it, and held it within him. A deluge of elation and need arched my back. I had never felt anything like it and it felt like the whole universe was on pause. Ciaran bent me backward and stared down at me with his lips parted and his eyes ablaze with passion.

The only sound I could hear for a moment was the beating of our hearts. With my life force still caught like a minnow in a net and our bodies meshed together, the intimacy of the moment was nothing like the way I'd felt doing this exercise with Brin. Ciaran's eyes dazzled with sparkles and swirled with unnamable hues. I felt his desire, but I wasn't ready to give in even though my body was saying otherwise.

"Ciaran..." It was the only half-hearted protest I could make. If he pushed, I'd be done for.

He released all of his air in a loud shout, and my life force came back into my body with a slam made me exclaim as well. I felt complete with it all, and then some. I felt like the lifeforce returned was mixed up with his, and it throbbed like something alive within me.

"Madeline... what on earth do you keep doing to me..." His voice sounded unsteady, with none of the teasings he usually did. He let go of my other hand and hugged me with both arms. They trembled against my back as my heart tried to find a slower rhythm. I felt a gentle squeeze, and then he released me to go sit down with a heavy thump on the sole chair that hadn't been knocked over. I was pulled into his lap.

He gazed at me with a wonder that I never thought I'd see on this arrogant and cocksure man. Then he clutched at his head as though it ached. He spat out a stone and laughed, and laughed some more.

The stone looked like an opal, but it flashed with multicolor fire all on its own the way Ciaran's did when he was overcome.

"I didn't kiss you! How!" I blushed from head to toe.

"If I were a young maiden, I should sob in a corner while exclaiming that I could no longer be a bride." He wiped his eyes. "Oh, sweetheart... If we had kissed, now that would have sewn things up."

I stood a chair up and landed on it with a thump as I stared at the opal. He placed it in my hand. "I don't get it. Why didn't that happen with Brin, Rielte, or Noc?"

"They are not linked, nor are they consorts."

My eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Did you know this would happen?"

I swear to the Almighty! If he knew...

Ciaran shook his head. "As part of our punishment for our grand hubris in the thirteenth century, the Creator ensured we could not have true children any longer. He wanted to make sure our line could not grow beyond the few that we are. None of the Edentrees could have a child. None, that is, until you were born from what I can only think was some mixture of science and magic. Your father is quite the scientist... why I remember one time..."