Page 54 of Hers to Keep

She huffed with indignation.“Put me down.”

Ashdei ignored her very reasonable request.“Cisco also mentioned that you were worried that nothing had changed with your magic.”

“I just don’t feel any different.If I’m a Prince, shouldn’t I feel something?”

“Yes, but perhaps the answer isn’t that nothing changed so much as when it changed.”

“What do you mean?And where are we going?”

He kept his own counsel until they reached the spot where the Old One had confronted her and he set her on her feet.“I think you forged a connection to the nexus when you stood here and faced down the Forest Lord.”

She looked down at the pavers under her espadrilles, but it just looked like normal ground to her.She had no idea what she was supposed to see or sense.“It didn’t feel like my magic when I channeled to attack him.”

Ashdei nodded, watching her carefully.“What did it feel like?”

Mari shivered as the memories of that moment rose.“Like fury.Like wrath.”

His blue-flame gaze flicked over her.“Because you were angry.”

Her fingers curled into fists.“He was trying to take away what was mine.”That was a very goddess thought, though it didn’t come as a separate voice like it had before—it was just hers.

“Avarice looks good on you.”He folded his arms across his chest.“Feel that again.It’s a different sort of desire than you usually channel.”

She let herself look over the form of the man before her, taking in his muscular frame and his improbable length of silver hair.Her mouth watered as their night together floated through her memories.He too was hers.

I am, he said into her head with a pleased smile.“Reach for the power under your feet.”

She remembered reaching for Dohal that first time, weeks ago.Stretching her senses down into the earth, she searched for anything that felt familiar.Something golden shimmered at the edge of her awareness.The goddess’s power had always felt gilded and shiny to her.

Mari still wasn’t sure what she was looking for.She was about to say as much when golden fire raced through her, burning along her veins.

Ashdei’s smile sharpened.“Good.Open yourself up to it.”

She relaxed little by little, letting her hands fall open and her head drop back.The magic inside her blazed white-hot.Her feet left the ground as she floated up on currents of energy.

“If I had any doubt you were a goddess before, I would be certain now,” Ashdei said, with reverence filling his tone.

“He can’t have what’s mine,” she said, in a voice vibrating with the promise of thunder.

“No one can,” her demon agreed.

The blue-fire halo of his magic sprang up around him as he stepped closer.He reached for her hand.Power arced between them just before they touched, making her gasp.The magic she drew up from the earth was vibrant and shining, but his was something else altogether, like the slick heat of bodies entwined.

She pulled him closer, needing to feel the sizzle of his power against every part of her.Golden sparks shot through blue flame as their bodies collided.

He wrapped his arms around her, tugging her down so that he stared into her eyes.“The magic you draw from the nexus is natural.But the magic you get from your mother is Incarnate, like mine.”

“So I can use both?”

Ashdei nodded.“You’ve been doing it all along without being aware of it.Dohal’s magic is earth magic.When you’ve channeled him in the past, you were using it.”

“What does that mean?”

“We’re about to find out.Draw through me.”

She rested a hand on the side of his neck.The pulsing of his magic was hot under her fingers.She’d never tried to do it on purpose before, so she had a brief moment of doubt when she wasn’t sure what she was meant to do.

And then, as if some barrier between them had been lifted, his power flowed into her in a torrent.His desire and magic spiraled through her, dancing with the golden light that glowed from somewhere below.Nothing had ever felt so right.Every cell of her body vibrated with power.

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