Chapter 9
It really was unfortunate how much of magic took place in dark, dank places.
As Rhys helped Vivienne step over a particularly large rock just inside the entrance of the cave, he wondered why his ancestors couldn’t have laid down ley lines somewhere warmer, somewhere a little less damp. Beaches needed magic, surely.
But no, his ancestor had apparently been the sort of grim fucker who preferred caves, so now Rhys was dodging dark puddles of water and slime-covered rocks.
Although, he admitted as Vivi once again placed her hand in his, the little ball of light she’d conjured hovering over them, the company certainly wasn’t bad.
“How far into the cave are the lines?” she asked now, dropping his hand to reach up and push her hair back from her face.
“Not far,” Rhys said, peering into the gloom in front of him. His father had drawn him a map, probably using ink made from raven’s blood and five-hundred-year-old parchment, but Rhys had pointedly left the foul thing behind, fairly certain that he’d be able to find the lines on his own.
Now, however, as he walked farther into the cave, the walls becoming narrower around him, he wasn’t sure that had been the best idea. He could feel the magic, of course, thrumming like a second heartbeat underneath his feet, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, but where exactly was it coming from?
Not quite as clear.
Pausing, Rhys looked around him. The main chamber of the cave came to a dead end a few yards away, and all he could see was solid rock on either side. Had his father’s map mentioned a secret entrance? Or was this more of his bad luck mucking things up? His father may have sworn he wasn’t cursed, but Rhys couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that something wasn’t right. Maybe this was part of it.
“St. Bugi’s balls,” he muttered, and Vivienne paused, looking up at him.
“Are you lost?” she asked.
“No,” he said, entirely too quickly, and she narrowed her eyes a little.
“Rhys.”
“I am not,” he insisted, and then turned in a circle, the light drunkenly trailing after him. “I just . . . need to get my bearings a bit.”
“Mmmm,” Vivienne said, crossing her arms. “And do your bearings tell you there’s a hidden opening just past your left shoulder?”
Rhys spun around, squinting into the darkness, at first seeing only more slick, wet rock.
And then . . . there it was. The slightest shadow in the midst of all that darkness, cleverly hidden against the rock.
Turning back to Vivienne, Rhys raised his eyebrows. “Have you been here before?”
She shook her head. “Never. I mean, I knew where the cave was, but Aunt Elaine was always really strict about this being a sacred space not to mess with.”
Frowning, she shook her head. “But it’s weird. It’s like I knew where the opening was before I saw it. Like I knew if I looked in that spot, I’d see it.”
Rhys wasn’t sure what to make of that. It was possible she was just better at picking up the magic here than he was, family bloodline be damned, or maybe she’d caught a glimpse of it earlier that hadn’t really registered. In any case, he no longer had to stand here looking like a complete tit, so he nodded toward the cleft. “Onward, then.”
As soon as they stepped into the hidden entrance, the air around them seemed to change. It was immediately colder, so much so that Rhys shivered, wishing he’d brought a jacket.
Here, the passage was so narrow they had to walk single file, the damp rock brushing their shoulders, and the farther they walked, the more insistent the hum of magic became, Rhys’s ears feeling like they were stuffed with cotton, his body covered in goose bumps.
From behind him, he could hear Vivienne’s breathing getting faster and knew she must be feeling it, too.
But that was nothing compared to what he felt when the slim passage opened up into another chamber, and the ley lines glowed before him.
The whole cave was lit with a soft purple, flowing rivers of pure magic pulsing on the floor, and Rhys’s mouth went dry, his knees feeling shaky.
That was, unfortunately, not the only thing he was feeling.
Turning behind him, he saw Vivienne standing just inside the entrance, her eyes wide, her chest rising and falling, and when she looked over at Rhys, he saw the same mix of surprise—and heat—in her face.
Thank sweet fuck, or this would’ve been truly embarrassing.
“Right,” he started, clearing his throat, “so this is awkward and probably why this sort of thing is usually done alone.”
He should’ve expected it, really, or maybe his father should’ve warned him, but then no, that conversation would have been excruciating enough to cause death, so maybe that was for the best.
Magic always had a physical effect. Some spells made you tired, some made you giddy. Some left you crying for reasons you didn’t understand.
And some magic, for whatever reason, turned you on.
Apparently the ley lines were of that variety, and given the intensity of the magic in this cave, the effect was . . . similarly intense.
Probably magnified by the fact that he was currently sharing this cave with a woman he’d once had a lot of truly spectacular sex with, and he should not be thinking of that even a little bit right now, not the slightest bit.
But as he slammed his eyes shut, it was all there, unspooling in his brain in an X-rated highlight reel: Vivienne’s legs wrapped around his waist, Vivienne’s hair against his chest, the feel of her nipple under the lazy sway of his thumb, the hitch in her breath when his hand slid between her legs, the way she laughed when she came, which had always seemed extraordinary to him, that perfect, breathless laugh against his ear—
“Rhys.”
He didn’t shriek exactly as he opened his eyes to find her standing very, very close to him, but the sound wasn’t far off, and then he made the mistake of putting his hands on her arms to steady himself.
Even through her sweater, her skin was warm, and as he looked in her eyes, he saw her pupils were huge, the black nearly swallowing the ring of hazel around it. “This is some kind of magic thing, isn’t it?” she all but panted, and he nodded, his hands now moving up and down her arms when what he needed to be doing was stepping far the fuck away from her and possibly running back out into the main cave to stick his head in all that cold water.
Her fingers curled around the front of his shirt. “Rhys,” she said again, her voice calm and steady even as her gaze moved to his mouth, her tongue darting out to wet her lips.
Rhys just barely managed to keep from groaning, his hands sliding from her arms to her waist. If he kissed her now, would that honestly be so bad? Couldn’t they just look on it as a little formality, one last kiss before they parted forever?
That was romantic. Epic, even.
Didn’t a man get to be epically romantic in a magic cave?
He ducked his head, moving in closer. God, she smelled good. Like something sweet. Vanilla, maybe. He was going to taste every bit of her until he found the source of that scent.
Vivi’s eyes fluttered shut, her breath coming out in a shaky sigh.
And then she seemed to steel herself, her arms suddenly going rigid between them, shoving him back so hard that he actually staggered a little.
“Did you seriously bring me,” she asked through clenched teeth, “to a magic sex cave?”
Rhys blinked at her as Vivi made herself step back because right at this moment, it was taking all her willpower not to launch herself at his face. His stupid, handsome face, currently wearing an expression somewhere between confusion and outrage.
“Beg pardon?” he finally said, and Vivi moved even farther back, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She was practically shaking with how much she wanted him, her head spinning, her heart pounding in her chest, her ears, between her legs.
She took another step away from him, and his eyes widened, his posture stiffening. “You don’t think I knew this was going to happen, do you? Or that I brought you here on purpose? I mean . . . I did bring you here on purpose, but I had no idea—”
Vivi shook her head, which also seemed to help clear it a little. “Of course not, don’t be gross. I’m just saying that maybe you should’ve, I don’t know, asked your dad or your brothers or someone what exactly you’d be getting into in here.”
“Ah, yes, the old ‘Father, will this job you’re sending me to do involve a magic sex cave?’ talk. Truly, I was remiss not to have it.”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
“Then don’t be ridiculous. No, I didn’t ask the exact specifics of this particular job. And for all I know, no one else has ever been in here with his ex-girlfriend, so this may just be a unique-to-us situation, Vivienne.”
Some of the fog of desire was starting to lift now, and Vivi felt her breathing slowing down, her pulse not pounding nearly as hard. Had she just overcome the magic out of sheer irritation, or was it actually wearing off?
It must have been because Rhys was no longer looking at her like he wanted to eat her alive. He just looked pissed and more than a little offended, and Vivi told herself that was definitely the safer option right now.
“My point is,” Vivi said, steadier now, “that you apparently had no idea what you were actually going to find in here, or you would’ve been warned about it. You didn’t even ask, did you?”
Rhys didn’t answer, his hands shoved in his pockets, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “What if there had been darker magic in here? Something that made us want to kill each other instead of . . .”
She wisely let that thought trail off, her face still hot, her skin still tingling.
“But there wasn’t,” Rhys said, and for the first time, Vivi noticed that the pendant at his throat was glowing a little, the same purple as the lines on the floor.
“But there might’ve been,” she countered, and he sighed, tipping his head back to study the ceiling.
“You asked me here with no idea of what we’d actually be facing,” Vivi went on, and he groaned, throwing up one hand.
“And you agreed to come with me!”
“Right, because apparently I didn’t learn my lesson about trusting you nine years ago.”
They stood there, staring at one another, and suddenly Vivi wanted nothing more than to be back in her own bed, sitting in her pajamas and catching up on grading, Rhys Penhallow nothing more than a faint memory of a misspent summer.
Then Rhys sniffed, shrugging his shoulders. “Fine,” he said. “I am, as always, a feckless idiot who throws himself into things, so let me go ahead and finish throwing myself into this, shall I?”
“Rhys,” she started, but he had already turned away, crouching down by the lines on the floor, his arms extended, and Vivi swallowed hard.
This was for the best. He might not exactly be a “feckless idiot,” but he’d always be reckless, always leap without looking.
Vivi thought again of Gwyn’s card of him. The Fool. The card of chances and risks.
And Gwyn had painted Vivi as The Star—peace, serenity. Steadfastness.
She and Rhys had been doomed from the start.
At least this time there wouldn’t be any screaming or crying. They could go their separate ways, maybe not as friends, but at least as adults, people who knew who they were and what they wanted and where they belonged.
Which was definitely not together.
In front of her, Rhys flexed his fingers, and Vivi could feel a slight change in the air. Where it had been cold before, now it felt warmer, like someone had just opened an oven door nearby.
Vivi’s hair blew back slightly from her face, and Rhys lowered his head, his hands still held out over the pulsing purple lines, his lips moving, but the hum of magic too loud for Vivi to make out any words.
Under her feet, the ground gave a slight tremor, and a flash of light shot out from Rhys’s fingers.
Vivi shivered, wrapping her arms around herself, her own magic tingling in her veins as she watched the light race along the rivers of purple.
For a moment, the lines on the floor glowed even brighter, so bright it almost hurt to look at them, and Vivi lifted her hand to shield her eyes.
And then there was a sudden crack!, a shower of pebbles raining down as Rhys shot to his feet.
Vivi looked down.
The lines on the floor were still purple, but they were growing darker now, a black crust slowly oozing along the sides, blotting out the color.
The ground was still shaking.
She looked at Rhys, confused, as the temperature in the cave plummeted again, colder this time, so cold it almost hurt, and as the ley lines began to writhe on the floor like snakes, Rhys grabbed her hand.
“Run!”
She didn’t have to be told twice.
They made their way through the narrow passage back to the main cave, the ground still trembling underneath her feet, and while Vivi watched lines of purple and black steam as they hit the pools of water.
When she and Rhys ran back out into the night, they both stood and watched as the magic raced past them.
Toward Graves Glen.
The shaking had stopped, and the night was suddenly very quiet in the wake of all that chaos, the only sound the occasional hooting of an owl and Rhys’s and Vivi’s rasping breath.
Stepping in front of her, Rhys stared off down the hill, shoving a hand through his hair. “The fuck was that?” he gasped, and then turned and looked at her. “You may have had a point about me not being all that clear as to what I was up to here, but I’m pretty sure that”—he jabbed a finger in the direction of the stream—“was a massive cock-up.”
Vivi looked up the stream, then up at the sky, where the moon seemed even bigger and brighter now, remembering that night with Gwyn, the same moon, the candle flame shooting high, and a cold sort of weight settled in her chest.
Rhiannon’s tits.
“So, um. Rhys.”
He turned and faced her, his eyes still wide, his chest still heaving, and Vivi offered up a shaky smile.
“Funny story for you.”