Chapter 28: What Sylas Did
#28 of The Mating Season 5
Chapter 28: What Sylas Did
After making the last preparations at Yuri and Enya's, the group set out the next morning from the sun village. Without Kel and Aliona, they were considerably smaller in number now, and so Kilyan's tense body was twice as alert almost to the point of paranoia.
It had rained during Nontikmah's burial ceremony and it started raining so heavily now that the group made camp before they had barely crossed the wastelands. The sun village was still apparent in the distance, sloping steadily upward on its great hill under the gloomy sky. Kilyan could see the ships and fishing boats pulling in to port as he and the others made camp beneath the sheltering curve of a hill. There were only four of them now: Kilyan, Keeno, Inden, and Wynn. An anxious Yuri had cast a shaman's blessing upon the traveling group. It wasn't as strong as sorcerer magic, but Kilyan was grateful for any blessing he could get.
"So we takin' watch in pairs or what?" Keeno said around a twig in his mouth as he and the others dropped off their traveling packs. There were only three males, after all, and two males usually sat watch together.
"Um." Kilyan peered off worriedly into the distance. "No one is so tired they're going to sleep, right?"
"I'm tired," Wynn confessed. It was true: she had spent the night before in Inden's warm embrace. After returning from the burial ceremony to Enya and Yuri's, Wynn had - overcome with frustration and misery - gone up to one of the guestrooms to be alone. Inden had checked in on her, and they made love well into the night as a result. That morning, they were more than tired.
Inden sheepishly admitted he was tired too. Kilyan and Keeno weren't fools: they knew why the teenagers were tired. But they chose to ignore the fact: there were more pressing matters at hand. Now lesser numbers would mean greater vigilance, and the odds of being accosted by loners or merchants were now stacked against them.
Kilyan nodded for his daughter and the winged prince to go on to sleep, Keeno would wake Inden in an hour.
Wynn climbed happily into her sleeping furs, glad that for the first time in her life, she hadn't been lectured to death for sleeping with a male. It was almost bizarre. Her father - so strictly traditional! - letting her sleep around with Inden and Sylas? But Wynn reminded herself that with everything that was going on, Wynn's unruly behavior was probably at the back of Kilyan's troubled mind.
Wynn decided to stop thinking about it. If Kilyan was going to let her, then there was no point pondering and complaining. She closed her eyes and sank into dreams, and it seemed the moment she had, she was in Sylas' arms. Sylas was in her sleeping furs with her, and she was laying against him, his arms were strong around her, and her cheek was on his chest.
"Sylas . . . you're in my dreams this time, aren't you? You're not astral," Wynn said, gazing off as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"I'm a fox. I can walk the boundaries of the real and the unreal. It's . . . part of what I am."
"So am I in love with something that isn't real?" Wynn teased.
"Baby," Sylas smiled down at her, "I'm as real as they get."
Sylas pulled Wynn close, and gazing with dark desire into her smirking face, he kissed her. He held her closer, with the sheets twisting around their legs, with the dark sky and winking stars towering above the dry plain, he held her close and peered thoughtfully into the distance. Wynn lay with her curvy body and its round softness pressed against Sylas. Her cheek was still on his hard chest, and she too was gazing in thought.
"Sylas?" Wynn said after some time.
"What is it?" He stroked her mane idly, the blue eyes staring, unseeing.
"Why did you fall in love with me?" Wynn asked. "That night we first met and you licked me under the swing."
Sylas smiled to himself. "You looking for an ego-trip?"
"Sylas! I just wanted to know - no one had ever licked me - before . . ." Wynn stammered herself into an embarrassed silence, but she was put at ease when Sylas stopped his teasing and stroked her mane.
"I know, Wynn. I'm teasing you," he told her gently. "So you want to know." He heaved a breath and went on. "As you know by now, I'm a lot older than I look. But the thing about that is, foxes age differently than mortals. So when we met, I really was seven years old. But by fox time I had been around more than a century. It takes foxes a very long time to grow up, basically. Took me a hundred years just to get born, maybe a couple decades to reach the age of seven. And let me tell you something, Wynn: after decades of watching pups come and go, after decades of looking for the mortal I would one day choose, I knew I'd never meet someone like you again." He squeezed Wynn tight as he spoke.
Wynn's bosom swelled from the tight squeeze of his arm, and she closed her eyes happily when his paw smoothed down her back and over her buttocks, leaving a thrill of pleasure in its wake.
"But . . . why was I so different?"
"You were like me," Sylas answered in the typical arrogant vein, and Wynn laughed.
"You were feisty and fiery," Sylas went on, serious now, "and full of a power I knew Inden would never be able to withstand. You were a smart-ass always smirking behind your father's back, and that amused me. You seemed clever, so I knew I would have someone to talk to during our hundred-year stay in Miras Eii. And you had the same strength as your father, the strength to withstand a great deal of pressure. Being the fox queen, as you now know . . . it will involve pressure."
Sylas' voice became bitter as he spoke, and Wynn knew he was thinking of his mother. While standing among the others in the pouring rain during the ceremony held at Nontikmah's grave, Wynn was the only one who seemed to sense that Sylas was there. She wasn't surprised by this, of course, but it saddened her that while Kilyan had his best friend, his parents, his family to comfort him, Sylas was alone.
The young fox king stood some way off in the slashing rain, his ears forward and drooping, his tails low, his feet even stained with mud. He was astral, but he might as well have been there.
Her heart going out to him, Wynn had moved from Aliona's side, and picking her way through the sad crowd, she stood beside Sylas. The fox had been standing with his head bowed, and without looking at him, Wynn took his paw. Sylas' ear flicked and he sniffed but he did not look up. He squeezed Wynn's fingers in silent acknowledgement and that was all. Then he was gone.
When Sylas had vanished, Wynn looked across Nontikmah's fresh grave, and her eyes met with Inden's. The winged prince seemed the only one to have noticed Wynn's strange behavior, and Wynn knew that even if Inden could not see Sylas, he knew the fox had been there. Contrary to being angry, however, Inden moved to Wynn's side and shielded her with his wings for the remainder of the ceremony - almost as if he thought he was shielding Sylas from the rain too. She wanted to tell him that Sylas had gone, but she didn't think she could get the words out. She hated it, having to see her father and Sylas so wretched. She glanced across at her father, who was telling a fond story about Nontikmah, as was the custom the day after the burial. Kilyan was smiling bravely, but behind that smile Wynn knew was a deep and guilt-ridden despair. Of course Kilyan would blame himself for Nontikmah's death: he had impregnated her.
It all seemed so stupid suddenly, the fox kingdom. Wynn suddenly hated that she was about to make herself queen of the same kingdom that had caused her father and her lover so much pain. And but for Sylas, she was prepared to abandon such a fate.
"Fate," whispered Sylas, his voice low. "It's a terrible word, isn't it? But being the fox queen is your fate now, my princess. Whether you like it or not."
Gazing with troubled eyes into the distance, Wynn clung tighter to Sylas and answered, "But I don't understand! Why couldn't we just walk away from it? What did you do to me to make it irreversible?"
Wynn saw his paw move toward her face. He cupped her cheek and stroked it with his thumb just beneath the sweep of her lashes. Wynn gazed anxiously into his eyes when he lifted her face to his, and after kissing her tenderly on the lips, he answered at last, "I loved you."