Mariella shuddered slightly.

  The feeling that ran through her was not all one thing. If it was all pain, she could have borne it more easily. If it was all pleasure, she would have just bitten her lip and tried not to make embarrassing sounds that Tybalt would tease her about later.

  But it was pain and pleasure, both intense, mingled.

  On the one hand, she could feel the energy searing her with every contact it made against the mana pathways that channeled aura throughout her body. Just like Scrimshaw, when Tybalt fixed her broken rib, it was scalding hot, a sensation she had never needed to get used to because of her natural resistance to actual physical heat.

  On the other hand… It was Tybalt. She could feel Tybalt. Not just his hand on her skin. She felt love in the energy that invaded her. His heart was clearly conveyed through his aura. There was a gentle aspect to it, as if he was tenderly caressing her. It was so loving that she almost forgot about the pain. Mariella wondered if it was even possible to lie with one’s aura. She suspected not. Even if it was possible, this man who had possessed two mage classes for all of two weeks would not know how to do it. Despite the fact that he was trying to alter her, to improve her, as she might have characterized it if she disapproved, every moment of the contact felt loving and filled with concern for her condition and how she was experiencing it.

  Just like that night, she thought. She smiled giddily and looked up at his face. His eyes were closed, and his brow furrowed in concentration. He was completely focused on her.

  You love me too. I don’t need to wonder. This is real. This—

  She felt the part of her that Tybalt had wanted to alter, and there was a sudden, jarring pain, as if a broken bone had been jerked suddenly back into its proper position. Her mouth opened slightly, and a stunned expression spread across her face. The pain was just a little sharper for a moment.

  Then his aura withdrew from her. It would have been sad, cold, desolate.

  But she felt a tiny spark of it remain. Some little part of Tybalt remained with her, in her core.

  She swallowed and looked up as Tybalt opened his eyes.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said. He leaned down and kissed her cheeks, and Mariella realized, for the first time, that there were tears streaming down both sides of her face. With the dazed look on her face, he had mistaken them for painful tears rather than tears of joy. He must have thought she was in shock. “I won’t do that again.”

  “No, it’s all right,” she heard her voice say. “Do it again if you find anything else you want to change.”

  He looked at her curiously, and she made herself explain.

  “Tybalt, I felt your energy like we were one,” she said, stumbling over what she meant to say. “I mean, I felt your love. I felt how much you cared.” She swallowed a lump in her throat, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “A part of you is a part of me now. Forever. I’m thankful. I feel… closer to you than I’ve ever felt to anyone in my life.”

  It sounded a little too mushy as she spoke, but she didn’t care. She could still feel a little spark of his power inside of her, like a warm hug in her heart.

  The necromancer finally smiled and nodded, and he kissed her gently on the lips.

  “I do love you, you know,” he said. He sounded almost surprised.

  “I love you too,” she replied instantly.

  I thought I might love you more, but it’s hard to say after that experience.

  “We’re going to get married,” she added. “That’s decided. No doubt about it. So, tonight…”

  Tybalt nodded. He understood.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “The faster we get through the rest of the day, the sooner we’ll be lying beside each other.”

  They rose, and ignoring the curious look from Kistana, the two lovers continued up the mountain toward the Twinleaf hut.

  Mariella barely remembered to check how Tybalt had changed her status. But it was obvious as soon as she thought to look.

  Purifying Fire had become Chthonic Fire.

  Chthonic Fire: Conjure flames that relentlessly burn anything and anyone not connected to some degree with the chthonic affinity. Consumes mana.

  Simple. Practical. In a matter of a couple of minutes, Tybalt had made her more useful to their shared cause.

  Her old Purifying Fire would have burned anything that had evil within it. It was a broadly defined skill. The danger of that was that it might destroy things she loved as well as things she hated, because almost every human heart had touched darkness at some time or other. Who was to say who was good and who was evil? Mariella had thought she was capable of judging, but she no longer felt confident in that.

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  Tybalt’s corrupted version of the skill not only altered the affinity but also made it a skill that could never harm him or the beastfolk who had treated them as heroes.

  Chthonic meant underworld, which she intuited included anything connected to Death God Mudo.

  The flames couldn’t even burn her now, as she thought about it, because she had that little spark of Tybalt in her core. It wasn’t dying down or disappearing.

  She clung to his arm a little more tightly as she felt it. That bit of her lover inside her kept her warm through the rest of the afternoon, as the necromancer raised more undead and conducted more experiments just outside the Twinleaf hut, seemingly mostly repeating the same efforts from earlier.

  The day seemed to pass in a blur, and before she knew it, the fire mage was inside, seated in a circle with the Twinleaf family, holding a wooden bowl full of venison stew.

  “Thank you so much,” said Kistana as she consumed the food hungrily. Her tail wagged back and forth quickly, and it reminded Mariella more of a dog than a cat in the moment.

  She looked at the catgirl, curious. Why is she so happy about a bowl of stew? Has she not been eating right? She looks healthy.

  Mariella already felt certain that the catfolk tribe had abused this girl in some way, from the bitterness she clearly held in her heart toward them, but it was hard to understand the way Kistana’s mind worked.

  “Um, you’re—you’re welcome,” Vidalia said a little stiffly. She had been a little cold toward Kistana since meeting her, but it was hard to be rude when someone was thanking you. “It’s not… You don’t need to say that. I’m cooking for everyone, so of course there was some for you. You’re protecting Lord Necromancer, which means you’re indirectly protecting the whole mountain range and all of the tribes.”

  Tybalt smiled at the sight of Vidalia seemingly getting along with Kistana against the foxgirl’s own will. Even Uncle Edmund smiled, though he looked a little reluctant about it. The conversation moved toward what Tybalt would say when he met with the fox tribe’s Council of Elders soon—a meeting that Vidalia and Mariella had gone to arrange while Tybalt was handling business in the Valley of Martyrs that morning.

  The fire mage let herself drift through that conversation, barely engaging at all. She was in a good mood, from the afternoon’s activities, from the anticipation of her and Tybalt’s bonding later, and from the warm atmosphere at dinner.

  Everything conspired to lull her into a happy, peaceful frame of mind.

  Nothing disrupted that. The discussion around the dinner table continued pleasantly until the family was finished eating, and soon, everyone had turned in to sleep.

  That was when Tybalt took her by the hand and led her out to their spot by the stream.

  The couple walked for a while in near perfect silence until they reached their destination. Mariella noticed that they were being followed from the hut, but she was fairly certain that Tybalt hadn’t. The fire mage didn’t say anything.

  I don’t know why Vidalia is following us, but I can guess.

  The two women had a certain understanding of their common goals—their shared obsession with the same man being an important element of those. Mariella felt a little bad that Vidalia’s beastfolk customs meant that she could not yet be with their future husband.

  If Vidalia wanted to be there when Mariella slept with him, that wasn’t a big deal. They had already shared intimate moments.

  Tybalt stopped close to the water. That pulled Mariella’s attention back to the present. Right. It was time. He smiled at her, and she felt the usual warmth below her stomach. She swallowed, and then he kissed her.

  Then they stripped naked and made love under the moonlight. By half-spoken agreement, the fire mage and the necromancer took no precautions against pregnancy that night. They allowed themselves to do everything as it came naturally to them.

  As far as Mariella was concerned, they were already married, merely waiting for a convenient time to hold a ceremony.

  After they were done, Mariella and Tybalt lay together for a long time, bodies entwined, softly kissing and caressing each other. The fire mage conjured her new Chthonic Fire to keep them warm, and it danced over their bare skin, providing heat without burning either of them like a miracle from a different, future age. Covering them like a blanket.

  Rarely had magic felt so magical.

  “Tybalt, with the Army coming after us, and the gods… It feels ridiculous to ask this, but are we going to be all right? It’s not going to change anything for me if the answer is no. But how confident are you that you can work this situation out? Save the beastfolk, defeat the Kingdom, defend yourself against the gods…?”

  The more she said, the more ridiculous it sounded. She felt a bit bad for even asking. She knew she must be ruining the mood after they’d just had such a good time together. Tybalt was undoubtedly worrying about those questions all the time. And she was willing to stand beside him and die. She hoped he wouldn’t doubt her.

  “I don’t know if we’ll be all right,” Tybalt said honestly. “I think we have our fair share of advantages, but the Kingdom has millions of people. Your father was right that we’re going to have to kill a lot of them and play pretty dirty to win. Even then, it could be dicey. Did you mean what you said earlier? About following me to the end of the world?”

  “Yes,” Mariella replied instantly.

  “Then we’ll be together. Even if we’re not all right, at least we’ll be together.”

  She kissed his chest and nuzzled up against his collarbone.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you, too,” Tybalt replied. He swallowed. “It seems as good a time as any for me to give you this. I made it earlier, after… after we spoke. If you choose to wear it, it would symbolize that you’re betrothed to me.”

  Her heart skipped a beat, and she tightened her grip around his waist.

  The necromancer reached into his pants lying on the ground and pulled out a slender white ring. After a moment, Mariella recognized that it was a bone Tybalt had reshaped, with a small crystal she could not identify placed as the stone.

  No one will mistake me as being betrothed to anyone other than you, wearing a ring like that, she thought, both amused and very happy.

  “It’s beautiful,” Mariella said, taking the ring and slipping it onto her finger. “I’ll never take it off.”