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Urianger had never doubted that Stronk would come, but seeing her there in his doorway at The Bookman’s Shelves (four years for him since the last time he’d seen her, but only her clothes had changed) overwhelmed him.
“Unto a world weary of heroes, a hero wends her way,” he said.
Stronk Boulder, the Warrior of Light, the woman who had mourned Moenbryda with him as their own. Like most things he cherished, Moenbryda had brought Stronk into his life. Moenbryda was his light. When she found love in the freshest face of the scions, who was he to deny her that happiness? She’d pulled him into bed with Stronk one night, and he’d gotten to know how soft the strong hands of the tall Roegadyn monk could be. When Moenbryda had saved them and Stronk had held him after and told him all the things Moenbryda would have said because she wanted them to live, that had been when Urianger had fallen in love.
It was no wonder his Moenbryda had felt the same. Here was a woman who would save the world, and he would do anything to keep her safe.
That vow had not changed as the years had stretched on.
He’d stayed on at the Waking Sands when all other members of the scions had gone missing and been painted fugitives for the murder of Sultana Nanamo Ul Namo. He looked for ways to clear her name, to bring back his friends—his family. He refused to suffer another loss. It felt like Moenbryda guided his hands with her white auracite to help him study primals even though she was gone and Stronk was sneaking back and forth between him and Ishguard.
He’d played traitor for the Warriors of Darkness and let Minfilia go to The First to save his world and theirs. He knew it had hurt Thancred. He knew he might lose Stronk’s trust. But he’d exhausted all other possibilities. The outcomes where she died or a shard flickered out weren’t viable. He would rather have them all alive and safe than be beloved. He’d cried when Stronk told him he didn’t need to be forgiven for what he’d done. He’d closed his eyes to keep from doing so when Minfilia told him she didn’t blame him and that Thancred would come to understand in time. Only Moenbryda had believed in him like this before them. Their faith made his love burn for them even brighter.
That faith kept his heart steady, kept it easy to believe that Stronk wouldn’t die, that she’d make the right decisions, that she’d save Doma and Ala Migho in spite of Zenos. That and Thancred had kept him steady as he’d worked undercover to support her efforts with as much information as he and Thancred could gather.
And now the faith he’d kept since he’d been ripped from her in The Source was rewarded as she found her way to him in The First.
Il Mehg was all the more beautiful for her presence.
“The Exarch did send word that thou wouldst seek me out, but ne’er did I imagine thou wouldst arrive so soon.”
It was all he could do to greet her while staying on his feet with Thancred and the reborn Minfilia beside him instead of falling to his knees and throwing his arms around her in joyful relief.
“Full glad am I to see thee once more, my friend. And none the worse for thy travails.”
She made him show her how glad when Thancred and Minfilia went ahead to the home of the Nu Mou in Pla Enni, after he’d performed the invisibility enchantment to avoid further troublesome pixies on their way.
“Stronk,” he gasped as she pressed him back against the stone of the cliff he’d waited for her under.
“You turn us invisible in this paradise, wearing clothes like this, when we’re finally alone, and expect me to control myself?” She pressed a kiss to his ear, letting her mouth skip over the sensitive flesh from base to tip. “It’s been days for me instead of years. I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you.”
He gave in and kissed her. She was warm, and solid, and just as he had left her. He doubted she’d even cut her hair since they’d last parted, the short sides still soft and longer than when she touched them up, the cascades that fell down her back still the same familiar length that his hands knew by heart. He buried his hand in her red hair and drew her down to him, kissing the white tattooed line across her ochre nose. He encountered so few Hellsguard Roegadyn in his life, but even among them, Stronk was singular. She towered even taller than Moenbryda had, but somehow reaching up for both of them had always felt right.
She fell against him, her mouth impatient, insistent. “You don’t know what seeing this much skin is doing to me,” she said between kisses. “From the full-body robe to this? How am I supposed to look at you without wanting to kiss your shoulders…” she dripped her head to do just that, pulling him up against her and making him gasp with the full-body contact. “And pull on this?”
Urianger moaned as she slotted her fingers through a link of the chain on his back. It was linked to his collar, and thought the piece was solid enough to keep him from being choked, the feel of her guiding his head back with the steady pressure on the ornamental chain was heady.
“I assure you,” he gasped, “that is not its intended use.”
“Enlighten me.” Her lips grazed his ear before she pulled the tip gently between her teeth.
He tipped his head back and tried to breathe. He grasped for the edge of the page of his first astrological tome in his mind, and started to explain interpreting the stars and the cards, understanding the connection between all things, head and heart and body and world, the interconnected nature of the stars and their fate, the links in each chain and the chains that connected the anchor points of his gem-focuses a symbol of how inexorably they were all linked together.
She hummed appreciatively and divested him of each adornment as his words guided her to them, freeing up access to his soft, aching skin.
How he had missed her.
How unimportant the focused flow of energy and crystals in his cuffs and chain links seemed under the gravity of her combat-roughened fingers.
“Stronk…” he groaned as her fingers traced his throat, now free of its collar.
She lowered them to the soft grass and kissed him until he was gasping and begging.
“Please,” he said, tilting his hips up against her. “Mine own light, let me into thy heart.”
She smiled, knowing what he meant, but clearly unwilling to let it go without teasing him. “You’ve never left it, you book-ridden fool.” She kissed the tip of his nose, and then kicked out of her loose monk trousers. She looked even more like an Astro with nothing by her black tunic swirling around her knees.
She slid her hand under his robe and he moaned as she stroked his thighs and palmed him.
“Thal’s balls,” Stronk said appreciatively as her hand only met continuous skin. “You really aren’t wearing anything under here, are you?”
“There was, ahh, no need. And after the pixies made off with my laundry once…”
She moved his robe out of the way and rubbed her slick, warm, perfect mons against him.
He reached for her, and she bowed her head into his hand—kind, radiant, warm. “You do not know what emptiness my life hath been without you.”
She closed her eyes and brought her forehead to his. “Let it never be empty again.”
“Please,” he begged again, rocking up against her.
Sweet, merciful thing that she was, she guided him inside her, and swallowed his oaths of love with her tongue. She rode him, putting her powerful body to the task of love-making instead of violence. He held her tight, wishing he could create a future where violence wasn’t part of her life. Where her very soul wasn’t being torn apart by light she absorbed for the good of others. Where her life wasn’t one of a martyr.
She gasped, clearly close. He interrupted her rhythm, pulling her hips down against him with quick, unexpected force.
“Haa, Urianger!” Her mouth hung open with ecstasy, and he filled it with his own, twisting his tongue with hers as she pulsed around him. She shook in his arms with the force of her orgasm and he fell against her as he was swept up in it. The world narrowed to the sparks of contact, the places where Stronk moved and he burned, where he pulled and she gasped.
He was happy she kept her hair long in the back. With his fingers buried in it, he felt like he wouldn’t lose her. A red streak of connection, the tail of a comet to hold and follow.
They stayed like that for a moment, simply holding each other and panting into each other’s mouths.
“That vision you had…” Stronk pushed his hair from his eyes, then traced the edge of his ear from base to point. “You really saw me die?”
Urianger swallowed. He’d lied to many people for many things, always for the greater good. This was lie he would bear as well, for the same reasons—but especially for her.
“It is in the past,” he said, nuzzling her neck, holding her tightly by the waist. He didn’t want to let her go. “Everything I have and more I will bring to bear to see thee safely through this.”
Stronk settled her muscular arms around his shoulder and kissed the top of his head. “Just so long as you don’t go dying to keep me safe. I don’t want to win without you.”
He closed his eyes to keep from crying, and then turned to the task of cleaning up. She smiled over his tidying charms, and warmth swelled in his breast at the opportunity to use them intimately again instead of to fix spilled tea on a tome’s pages.
There was no tidying charm that could take the color from their cheeks or the smell of intimacy from their skin, nor the small dark marks from Stronk’s neck or the bite marks from his ears.
It would not take much of Thancred’s skill to discern what had transpired. He might be a few summers older and changed from his care-free tavern spying days into a world-weary guardian of a teenager, but his eyes were still sharp.
And indeed, when they arrived late and disheveled, Urianger watched Thancred’s eyes flick between pieces of evidence to the contrary as Stronk spun a tale of troublesome pixies. He nodded an acknowledgement with little more than a knowing smirk, however, before telling Stronk where to join Minfilia and their Nu Mou contact.
He fixed Urianger with a raised eyebrow when he made to follow her, though, stopping Urianger in his tracks. “Just couldn’t help yourself, could you?”
The tips of Urianger’s ears burned hotter. “I haveth not the faintest ide—ah!”
Thancred slapped him companionably on the rear. “Shut up. Well done. Let’s catch up to her before she starts to wondering what we’ve been up to with the pixies.”
Urianger closed his eyes and took a breath, then followed.
He was surrounded by so much love.
He would not lose them. Whatever lies he had to carry, whatever strings of fate he needed to spin and pull and cut, he would see them through this, even if it made him unworthy of their love.
Sullying himself had always been worth it.