Jallina turned the cup in her hands, staring at the small eddies the motion created.

I smirked. This was her “I’m thinking” activity. I could see the wheels in her head turning.

“You were really made a master.”

“The news is going to go out tomorrow.” I traced the rim of the coffee cup. “Today is my day off.”

The laughing didn’t quite make it out of Jallina, but her lips twitched. “Your day off.”

I nodded regally. “Master Dorian saw fit to give me a day.”

“Master Dorian is a jackass, isn’t he?”

A burst of laughter escaped me. I slapped my hand over my mouth. “I thought exactly that yesterday.”

“And are they going to announce this to the public?”

Taking a giant swallow of coffee, I tried to steady my nerves. “Tomorrow morning at dawn. There’s some… ceremony thing they have to do to install me as the newest master.”

But a moment later, I shook my head quickly. “I’m not ready for this, Jallina. This isn’t who I am. I’m a teacher, and that’s really all I wanted to do.”

Jallina grabbed my hand across the small table. “Don’t think like that. Don’t go into this with a ‘you’re not worthy’ attitude. You are. You’re smart, kind, and your magic has been growing. I’m sure that you’ll grow even more.”

“It was nearly unanimous. Who was the last one?”

“Whoever wasn’t there.” Jallina pulled her hand back. “Whoever didn’t show for the announcement in the meeting. That’s the way I understand it. You show up if you agree with the decision.”

“Even you know more than I do about the council!”

A low chuckle rumbled through her. “Only because that’s what I studied in college. Remember that. I only know these things because of my history training. The common person wouldn’t know that.”

“So who wasn’t there?”

Who hadn’t been there?

“Master Argo wasn’t. He was the only one.”

“Ah, Master Disagreeable from the Southern Temple. He doesn’t like the council. He has a particular problem with Vitus. Doesn’t think that someone as powerful as Vitus has any place in an office.”

“It’s not an office, really.” Confusion rolled through me.

With an indulgent smile, Jallina patted my hand. “No, no. Not a literal office. He thinks a mind like Vitus’s should have been trained for the military. For defense. Not politics.”

My eyebrow went up. “Vitus? Political? He has a mouth on him!”

Jallina sighed. “Doesn’t he, though? A dreamy one…”

Gasping, my jaw dropped. “You like him?”

She straightened in the seat. “He’s a very good-looking man.”

“Oh, my gods, you have a crush on Master Vitus!”

She glanced around furtively. “Will you keep it down?”

I wanted to cause trouble. “You know he’s available. He’s not dating anyone that I know of, and he’s not mated.”

Her hands slid over her face. “Oh, I regret this.”

“Want me to set you up?”

“No! Oh, this was a bad idea.”

I patted her hand. “I’ll drop your name at dinner.”

“No, please, no. Don’t.”

Her hand was trembling. I was surprised. She really liked the guy, at least from afar. “Jallina. Jallina, look at me.”

Her eyes were fearful as she brought them up.

“I’m not going to tell him, Jallina. I was teasing. I would never do that to you, you know that.”

With a quick glance at the floor, she gave a mirthless chuckle. “Yes. I know. My obsession with him is unhealthy. I have tried to keep it under wraps. But the man has a body to die for and…” She cleared her throat. “Never mind.”

“It’s okay, Jallina. Your secret is safe with me.”

“I’m sorry. This went sour. We’re supposed to be talking about you taking on the role of leader of S’Kir and ended up talking about my lusting after one of the masters.”

We could go on like this for hours. I bit my tongue and let my laughter settle for a few minutes. The coffee was a critical cover up for that.

Jallina also sipped her coffee and cleared her throat. “So, is anyone allowed to come to this ceremony? I’d like to be there for my friend.”

“Not the sunrise one. There’ll be another in about a week that will be a public announcement and party.”

My hands started shaking. Again. I couldn’t stop them. I was going to be named a master, one of the rulers of S’Kir. A person who was sought out for their wisdom.

Jallina grabbed my hands and tried to still them.

“You’re trembling.”

“I’m terrified.” The confession fell from me.

“What wisdom do I have? Lemon goes well with tea. Willow bark is a good painkiller. Don’t wear black with brown. Steak should be cooked medium. Vinegar is a great deodorizer.” 

“That’s not the kind of life advice people are going to seek from me.”

They were going to want to know if they should turn to one profession or the other. They would ask me to mediate their disputes.

And magic. They would ask me to help with magic.

That was my real weakness. I was a poor magic worker. I was not strong.

This was all wrong. I shouldn’t be named to the council. I had hundreds of years of learning to do yet. This was pure insanity.

 “Can’t you talk to them? Make them see you don’t feel you’re ready or right for this?”

That mirthless chuckle bubbled up from me this time. “Oh, Jallina. You’ve been around them a few times. You’ve felt the power rolling off them. There’s no arguing with them. There’s no talking them out of anything.”

“Especially Master Dorian.”

“Sweet heaven, especially that man.”

The coffee shop was mostly empty by then, and the reason I’d asked Jallina there needed no audience or prying eyes.

I took another sip of coffee and lowered my voice. “Jallina, I need your help.”

She bobbed her head. “Of course. Anything.”

“No, this isn’t a blanket ‘of course.’ Don’t say that until you hear me out.” I kept my voice quiet. “I need your help on a more sinister level. I’m learning things I didn’t want to, and I need help.”

Jallina laid a hand on mine. “Good, bad, sinister. I am your friend, Kimber. I’m an ally of the temple.”

“Elex had me thinking the other night. About how I really don’t know much about the people in S’Kir or what they think and do. I’ve been in the temple so long that I feel as though… Well, I don’t know people. They’re about to make me a master, and I’m unprepared. In so many ways. But I can find out what the people think. Of me, or Master Dorian, of the opposition, of most things. You and your sister are already in with the Loyalists, and we often chat enough that us being seen together would raise no suspicions.” I paused, then finished. “I want to create a little personal spy ring.”

Jallina’s eyes lit from within. “Really.”

“Yes, really.” I tried to hide my smirk. “You could try to be less happy about this. I’m asking you to be a spy.”

Her answer was a whisper. “I already am.” She grinned. “That you’re asking me to help you is what I hoped for. Where did you get the idea to have a little spy network?”

Averting my eyes, I rubbed my neck. “I’ve been reading, of course. There are some interesting novels out there, about high ranked people using spy networks. I just thought…”

Jallina touched my hand. “You thought right. Let’s talk about this—there’s a lot a future master needs to know about the people she’ll be guiding and the spies she can and cannot trust…”

 

*  *  *

 

The sun was setting, but warm fingers of its dying light couldn’t touch me.

I was so cold.

Every ounce in my frigid veins was nothing but fear. I didn’t know how to stop being afraid.

Sobs tore from me once in a while. I tried to rein them in, but more and more, I was overwhelmed by everything.

I didn’t want this. Not one bit of it.

I wanted Danai alive, and I wanted my apartment back. I wanted just to go to class tomorrow morning and scold Griffin for being a little craphead to his classmates.

Instead, when the sun rose tomorrow, I would take the robes of a master.

Warm arms slipped around me, and I felt myself resting against Elex’s chest. Finally, some of the cold that had held on tight started to let go.

“I’m sorry, Kimber,” he whispered.

“What for?”

“That you have to deal with this.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I still can’t help feeling guilty in some way.”

Standing and watching the sun as it set on the day, and in some way, set on the end of my normal life, seemed fitting. Elex’s body behind mine chased away the rest of the chill.

“Things are going to have to be different now,” Elex said. “I wanted to have a simple life with you, but now that’s not possible.”

“But you still want a life with me.”

He kissed the column of my neck. “Oh, yes. And more. It just won’t be simple.”

A woman’s laughter floated on the breeze. I wasn’t sure whose laugh it was, but the source of it was a silhouette running across the garden lawn in the light of the moon.

Elex stood behind me, just watching with me. He was a warm comfort, and I fought an urge to tell him all I had discussed with Jallina that afternoon.

She had happily helped me set up a spy network with her connections. Her information net was large and fruitful, and she knew the work well. The position she held at the stables was a cover, a disguise to be in the right place for the information to file into her.

To my delight, she’d even given me a code name. This way, no one would know whom the information was for that she and a few others were gathering.

I wasn’t happy I had to create the network, but I was grateful I had someone who knew what they were doing.

I would only tell Elex if I had no choice.

He was right. Things were going to change.

I had my first secret from the man I was falling in love with.

In the moonlight was another figure. A male. His throaty laugh drifted up after the woman’s laughter. We watched as the silhouettes chased each other in the dark, clearly playing a game.

Walled off from the outside world, the courtyard was locked to anyone who didn’t have a room overlooking the area. Those rooms were taken over by the temple masters.

The merry chase went on for a few minutes until the male ended it abruptly. He leapt out from behind a bush and wrapped his arms around the woman’s waist, pulling her in tight, and both of us could see the hot, passionate kiss they exchanged.

His hand, visible by the cresting moon, caught the neckline of the woman’s dress and pulled it down. His head dipped to the exposed breast, and the delighted moan that floated up told us he had pulled a ripe nipple into his mouth.

It was wrong to stay here. At the same time, I couldn’t move, enchanted by this play.

The woman’s hand gripped his hair and pulled him tighter. There was no mistaking the delighted little moans floating through the air—followed by her gasp as he had magically unbuttoned and unfastened the stays in her dress.

These were two of the masters in the temple, using their powerful magic for sex play.

The dress slipped from her body, puddling on the ground. Her pale white form had only the sleeveless shift left, which fell just to her waist and the short petticoats.

A hand crept into the petticoats.

“Gods and goddesses,” Elex breathed in my ear.

“Do you think they know we’re watching?”

His answer was soft. “I think they hope we’re watching.”

“Scandalous…”

“Is it? If that’s what they want, who are we to deny them?”

I tore my attention from them. “Are you enjoying this?”

Pushing his hips forward, his thick erection pressed against my back. “Aren’t you?”

I was. I didn’t want to admit that, though.

Not yet.

The couple had moved to a bench, and the shadows still obscured their faces but not their movements. His hand was firmly inside her clothes, and she had worked his pants open.

Elex’s hand worked in circles on my backside.

Her hand moved up and down, clearly pleasuring him.

The soft cries of sexual pleasure drifted on the night.

Gods, I was so wet.

A moment passed, and she pulled his hand from between her legs. He made a small moan of displeasure.

But her intentions became clear. She slipped off the bench, pulled the half-shift over her head, and tossed it with the dress. Kneeling in front of him, the moonlight let us watch her shining hair rise and fall.

She had his cock in her mouth.

His head tipped forward, and his chest heaved. He was enjoying her mouth as he ran his hand, carefully, through her hair.

Elex’s hand slipped into my dressing gown from my waist. He found my nipple—not that it was difficult. I had responded to the erotic scene in front of us.

“You do like what you see…”

“I do.”

“Keep watching.”

I exhaled as his finger circled my plump bud.

The woman’s hair still traveled up and down, but it was more frantic now, and his chest was more like bellows than a pair of lungs.

A long, low moan came from the man as his hips popped up, shoving deeper into her mouth.

Elex pinched the taut peak, as his other hand found the belt that held the robe closed.

As the man came in the woman’s mouth, my robe fell open and Elex wrapped his hands around my breasts and plumped them.

I was naked below the robe, and I didn’t even care. I just wanted his hands on me as we watched.

The woman’s head rested on the man’s thigh. He was still trying to recover, and she was patient.

In one instant, he was panting. In the next, he had pulled her up to the bench, stripped off her petticoats, and lifted her leg over his shoulder.

His head dipped into the juncture of her thighs.

He was going to eat her.

The idea sent a bolt of liquid heat to my own pussy. I couldn’t help the slow path my hips traveled as the scene unfolded in front of me.

Elex’s hand was on a new part of my body, snaking down to my mons. From being unsure about this, I now wanted to tell him to hurry and get his hands on my pussy.

But he was in no hurry. “Stay still, Kimber. The more you move, the more likely they’ll see us. If they see us, we have to stop.”

Oh, I didn’t want him to stop.

The woman on the bench was in a similar position. Her words rode the wind up to our room. “Oh, yes, please. Please. Make me come…”

Elex’s finger finally found my clit and brushed over it, not kindly. I thrust back against him, pressing myself against his cock.

“Do you want to come, too?”

Afraid to speak, I nodded.

“You have to stay perfectly quiet.”

I agreed easily.

His finger found a rhythm that matched the movement of the man’s head between the woman’s legs.

Her naked breasts heaved. Her hands trailed up her own body, and she played with the peaks that were clear in the moonlight.

Elex scraped his teeth across the skin of my shoulder, and my body flared again. I pushed my hips back, silently asking him for more.

I could feel him smile. “Someone likes this.”

The only thing I could do right then was to exhale slowly. I wasn’t long for this.

“Come for me.” The man on the bench had raised his head just enough to make his demand.

“I need your fingers in me,” she spoke.

Elex slipped two fingers in my channel and pumped.

I was becoming senseless. 

The man’s hand slipped between her legs, and though we couldn’t see it, the groan and gasp of the woman let us know he had slipped his fingers inside her channel.

I wondered if he worked her as thoroughly as Elex moved his fingers in and out of my pussy. I could imagine if they were new to each other, it was even more intense.

He would know exactly where to push and pull and press and twist.

The fingers in me were confident, as Elex pushed a thumb against my clit.

The orgasm took me by surprise, and I barely had the presence of mind to bite my lip. I had to stop the yell I wanted to let out. I couldn’t see for the sheer delight that blinded me. My sex greedily pulled his fingers. It wanted him deeper—I wanted him deeper.

He chuckled as the woman on the bench came as well, her pleasure escaping on a breath that probably took all of her effort to keep mostly silent as well.

“My cock is so hard, Kimber.” Elex’s words weren’t loud enough to be carried away.

I was still coming down from the mind-blowing orgasm. I glanced down at the bench and saw the man was now sitting next to the woman, stroking her calf as she also calmed.

“I want you inside me,” she breathed.

“Good, because that’s where I want to be.”

I tore my eyes away from the couple on the bench and found Elex’s gaze over my shoulder. “Fuck me, Elex. Right here.”

Hot breath caressed my cheek. “Oh, baby, yes.”

Surprising me, Elex pulled my robe closed and cinched the belt at my waist to hold it there. He moved his hands to my backside and started inching up the fabric in the back.

The woman on the bench rolled over when I had looked away for just a moment. She was on her hands and knees now, and her partner was smoothing his hand over her rump appreciatively.

“Lean forward,” Elex whispered. I swore I heard the same words from the bench below.

I placed my hands on the railing, and he nudged my legs apart as the man below did the same to his woman.

There was something so deliciously filthy in knowing they wanted us to watch them.

It was magnified again as I felt Elex nudge his erection against my pussy. He moved through the cleft, spreading my cream on him and me.

“Oh, sweet lord and lady,” the woman hissed—and I knew he had slid into her.

Elex slid into me just a moment later, pushing my body, causing me to tremble in pleasure. This was so right and so wrong at the same time.

The man below thrust against the woman, and I knew Elex was watching—because his cock slid in and out of me at the exact same pace.

I whimpered.

“You like watching.” His words dusted over the shell of my ear and his teeth nibbled there a moment.

“I do. I shouldn’t.”

“Why not? They want us to see them.”

Elex mimicked the man’s movements, thrust for thrust, and stole my thoughts.

His words took my breath.

“See how she’s enjoying his cock. She loves the feel of his thick erection moving in her quim. He’s moving faster and harder now because he can feel his own climax in his balls, churning. He wants to fill her with his cum, to make her orgasm one with his…”

Elex was describing himself as well.

His hips slapped against my ass, driving himself deep, deep inside. I wanted to come again. Between the thick shaft driving me, and the erotic scene in front of me, it was only another moment.

“Oh, gods, yes!”

Her orgasm was quiet but potent and happened at precisely the same time as I fell off the cliff to my own built-up desire.

I dropped my forehead to the railing and bit down on my thumb to keep from screaming my climax across the courtyard.

Both Elex and the man came at the same time—the grunt of release and the moan of pleasure from him floating up to us as Elex’s cum bathed my walls deep inside.

Just as my legs were about to collapse, he banded an arm around my waist. Elex pulled me up from the railing, turned my head, and plundered a brutal kiss from me as he slipped from my sheath.

I tried to catch my breath, glancing back at the couple on the bench. They’d fallen forward, his head resting on her waist as they panted, trying to catch their own breaths.

Sweeping me up from the balcony, Elex turned and walked inside.

“Come, the aftermath of that should be theirs alone, as ours should be.”

I put my head on his shoulder.

My pussy throbbed in satisfaction, and I realized I never would have thought in these terms before. Never would have let him take me on the balcony while we watched—and were watched in return.

There was no way that couple didn’t know we were there.

Elex was right.

Things were changing.