Please note: The following scene takes place after the first chapter of In the Shadow of a Hoax though it does not contain spoilers. It is intended for an 18+ audience due to the depiction of sex and strong language.

As Auri walked the main thoroughfare of Sevens after her luncheon with Nixus, she could feel the tension stretched between them, and it seemed as if it was at a breaking point. She wasn’t sure, however, if that meant it was in a good way or a bad one. She was feeling sensitive. Too much of everything. A word. A look. The absence of one. It was as if the forest was on fire around her, and she was standing amidst the flames waiting for them to burn her. She could feel the tension in him as they walked, the flutter of her heart reverberated with each of his breaths, and he’d sped up forcing her to keep up. Being so attuned to him was both glorious and frustrating.

In the weeks since he’d returned, finding a way to be together had proved nearly impossible. With her mother’s dictatorial stance on keeping Auri within the confines of the cottage added to the amount of work she’d been given to keep her there, sneaking away had proved nearly impossible. Though not completely. Each night, she’d slip through the hedge into the waiting arms of Nix.

“I hate all this sneaking around,” she’d said into his shoulder only a few nights prior.

“Introduce me,” he’d replied, his breath and lips in her hair.

“It’s not that simple.” Auri had leaned back to look up at his face covered in the shadows of night. “How do I tell them how we met? And when they start asking questions–”

[...]

Now she rushed past the mercantile, the last shop in the village as they started down the country lane that ran into the forest on the way to the cottage. “Are you sure the obscurity worked?” she asked. She glanced at Nix, she could see his mind was elsewhere, and insecurities grabbed a hold of her. “Nix?”

He glanced at her and smiled. “It worked.” He grabbed hold of her hand and pulled her along the lane.

When he’d returned, he’d asked her to leave with him, but she didn’t know if that’s what he wanted anymore. All the secrets and lies, the situation in which they found themselves, the waiting and tenuous nature of trying to find a way to be together, made her wonder if he was regretting the offer. If he was ready to be rid of her. Only the god-yoke was a complication she didn’t know how to factor to understand the impact it played? She had a terrible feeling that she wasn’t going to like the answer. He’d been so reticent since returning—aside from standing up for Tarley at The Copper Pot, which had made her want to strip him naked, climb up on him, and possess him—he’d maintained a respectful distance. Though every part of her was a night sky lit up by an electric storm, he didn’t seem to feel the same.

“Something’s bothering you,” she said more than asked as he all but pulled her down the road.

He hummed a noise again, distracted.

Annoyed at feeling ignored, Auri yanked her hand from his grasp and quickened her pace, hurrying down the wooded lane past Nix. Trees stretched over the dirt road creating dancing shadows of dark and light as the summer sun reached through gaps in the trees. Beyond the roadway, the forest was thick with trees and shrubs. She wanted to pick up a stick and hack at leaves, mar the shrubs. She wanted to scream and yell, but she didn’t have a good reason to do it other than the rush of feeling building inside of her. So she stomped down the road instead.

The shadows stretched out in front of her, making her step falter as Nix formed in front of her. “What’s wrong?”

“I asked you that. And you ignored me.” She stepped around him and started down the road picking up her pace so now she was near to running.

He formed in front of her once again, stalling her progress. “Auri?” His tone was less a question and more a warning.

The thought of it being a threat made her skin heat and her pulse race. She wanted to slam her mouth against his and bite his lower lip, but instead she narrowed her eyes with irritation. “You’re somewhere else. I don’t know why I even snuck out. I could have stayed home and made tinctures.” She was annoyed with herself for her petulance. She didn’t want to stay at the cottage and make tinctures. She wanted to be with him[...].

Nix quirked a brow. “Is there something else you’d rather be doing?” he asked, then he grinned.

She pushed past him, lifting her skirt and rushed away.

He formed in front of her again, only this time, he grabbed her and hoisted her over his shoulder, carrying her off into the forest. “I love a good chase, and I always win, remember?” Her skirts took up so much space, he muttered under them. “I miss your trousers. I can’t see where I’m going.” But still he traipsed into the shadows of the forest.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Somewhere I can get my mouth on you.”

“Nix!” Her skin heated.

“Why do you think I’ve been in such a rush? Why I’ve been distracted? I’ve been thinking about all the things I want to do to you.”

Being carted through the woods by Nix set her heart racing. She wasn’t annoyed anymore. She was anxious with anticipation.

Nix set her down and forced her back against a tree. With a hand on either side of her, he leaned closer. “Why are you annoyed with me?” He pressed his lips to her neck.

She hummed and grabbed hold of his shoulders. His darkness reached up and around them like arms, drawing her closer, the warmth of their tether piercing her heart with heat, trapping her against him. It was a trap she desired.

“I feel–”

“Frustrated?” Nix asked against her skin. He ground his hips against her.

She nodded.

“Needy.”

“Yes.” She shoved her hands into his hair and pulled his head away so she could look at him.

His hips pressed against hers though the layers and his dark eyes seemed darker and dropped to her mouth. “Auri?”

She nodded, struggling to catch her breath. “Please.”

His lips met hers. Soft, supple, then demanding, and she bit his lip.

He reared back. His tongue ran over his lower lip, he growled, and attacked her with his mouth.

Auri clawed at his clothing. “I need you,” she said between kisses.

Nix groaned, bent and lifted her skirts, gathering the fabric in his hands, and turned them so his back was against the tree. “Undo me,” he ordered.

Auri reached between them and fussed with the buttons on his trousers, as he lifted her skirt. “Switch,” she ordered and pulled up her skirt and Nix unfastened his buttons so much quicker.

Their mouths met again in a frenzy of movement. Somehow between kissing and moving garments to make way for one another, Auri was straddling Nix, who was now sitting and palmed his length. When the tip of his silky heat met the ready heat of hers, she sank down onto him. Nix sucked in a breath as she gasped her relief loudly disturbing a flock of tiny birds in the underbrush that took flight.

Their fucking was frantic.

His hands gripped her shoulders, pulling her down to give himself the leverage to thrust deeper. The rustle of her skirts as she moved, hiding where they were connected, just as they were hidden in the woods. She ground her hips against him, rocking, lifting, sinking as he panted breaths.

“Fuck, Auri.” He didn’t stop swearing, words coinciding with his thrusts.

“Nix. I’ve needed–” she gasped, but didn’t finish the thought. The word you moved through her chest. “Yes,” she repeated. “Yes.”

You. You. You.

“Auri,” Nix repeated and grasped her hips, pulling her off of him.

She cried out her disappointment at the loss, but once he’d gotten her onto her back, pushed inside to join her once again, she gasped with satisfaction.”Yes.”

“This.” He reached between them to pleasure her with his touch.

She came up onto her elbows, looking over the fluff of her skirts at Nix fucking her, fondling her, his body pushing into her again and again. She tried to sit up, frantic to kiss him, but he pushed her back. “Let me,” he ordered through his teeth.

She watched until she couldn’t hold herself up any longer. “Oh stars. Yes,” she cried out with pleasure as she came on the forest floor, bucking against both his hand and his sex.

With vigor, Nix renewed his efforts but lost his rhythm, becoming more frantic. “Auri. I love you,” he said brokenly. “I don’t want to sneak around. I want you with me. All the time. Auri. You’re mine.”

“Yes,” she panted, climbing with him again. “With me.”

“Nix. I’m coming.”

“Oh, fuck. Auri,” he grunted, riding her orgasm with her until he pulled out and found his, spilling his seed into the loam of the forest floor. When he’d caught his breath, he laid next to her, his arm drawing her closer. The leaves in the trees fluttered around them, birds sang, bugs buzzed, the call of a crow, and the trees creaked as they shifted, reminding them where they were.

“Fuck, Auri. I’m sorry. I–”

She turned her head to look at him. “I’m not.” She smiled, feeling like her head was suddenly clearer.

“I’ve lost my ability to think clearly. Thoughts of you, thoughts of what we share have taken over my waking consciousness as well as my sleeping one.” He searched her face. “It has made me unruly.” He pressed his mouth against hers, then said. “Come home with me, Auri. Please. To Elcadia. As my wife.” He dragged his mouth across her skin, to her neck.

She closed her eyes, and sighed, relaxed and languid now that she was satiated, how happy the renewed sentiment made her. This—she remembered this. Then she smiled up at the leafy sky dissected blue like a kaleidoscope changing shape as the breeze moved the leaves. The feel of his skin, the smell of him, like these woods and something spicy.

“I missed this,” she said, running a hand through his black hair.

He moved so that he could look her in the eye. “So you’ll come with me?”

“I want to–”

“But–” he frowned.

“We have to figure out the truth,” she said.

“My father has summoned me,” he said at the same time.

Auri stopped. “What? You’re leaving?”

With a sigh, Nix sat up, then helped Auri stand. They put themselves back together with the myriad of buttons and fasteners and ties mixed with kisses. When Auri finished straightening her clothing, she looked at him.

“I’m compelled to answer him.” He plucked a small wildflower from her hair, twirled it between his fingers then offered it to her. “I don’t want to go,” he said, then brushed her back of the loose leaves and twigs caught on the fabric of her clothes.

Auri wasn’t sure what to say. The crushing disappointment of knowing he’d leave after the elation of finally reuniting with him completely. Instead of saying anything, she turned and walked back through the forest to the road. She recalled the darkness the plagued her when they’d been apart.

When he joined her there, “I sense your frustration.”

Auri looked up at Nix. “Oh. You do? So perceptive.”

“I’ll be back.” He reached out and touched her. “We can’t be apart for long.”

“What do you mean?”

“The god-yoke. Remember.”

She tilted her head. “I remember the connection and being able to talk to you in my mind during the spell. I remember Lexa being disgusted by it. I remember feeling like I was dying without you after the spell ended, until we were reunited. That god-yoke?”

He nodded.

“That is all I know, so if there is more to it, maybe now’s the time to tell me.” She started down the lane toward the cottage.

“I’m hoping my father has news for me.”

“News? What aren’t you telling me?”

She turned down the stretch of road that cut into the woods toward the cottage. The summer trees were full of green and whispered to one another in the light breeze. The shadows were weighty and pulsed, reaching toward Nix as they walked through the forest.

“My mother said it was unbreakable.” He stopped, took a deep breath and faced her. “She described it like the creation of a universe.”

Auri understood the sentiment. The heat she felt in his presence. The way when they were together how perfect it felt. How when they coupled it felt like an explosion of stars inside of her. A universe. “But–”

“A severing, or the ending of the bond is like dying. She called it ‘fading.’”

“Wait,” Auri took a step back suddenly making the connection to what he hadn’t said. “You don’t have a choice to be here. We don’t have a choice–”

“Auri, don’t.” Nix took a step after her as she took another one away. “Don’t make it about choices. Please.”

“But it is! It has everything to do with it. You didn’t choose to have your star parts connect with mine.”

He grinned. “I like when my star parts connect with yours.”

“Stop!” she stomped and suppressed a smile. “I’m serious.”

He sobered. “I know you are.”

“Nix!”

“Auri, maybe we couldn’t control the yoke, but do you think we could control our feelings?”

“How would we know?” she asked. “How would you know you fell in love with me because you wanted to and weren’t compelled to by some legendary god rope stringing us together by some magical force.”

“Or you with me?”

She opened her mouth to say she’d fallen in love with him long before some magical thread had connected them, but how could she be sure that was true. “How do we know what’s real?” Auri felt the golden tendrils that connected them, the arcs of energy that tethered her heart to his, her body to his. While she loved that connection with him, for the first time, her mind questioned if he did. “What if this is just like you being locked back up in a different sort of spell?”

“How can you say that?”

“How can I not?” She crossed her arms over her chest. He was angry she’d said it. “You are a god who’s been locked away from the joys of the universe, and now we can’t be apart from one another without pain of separation. Does that feel like a different prison of the same kind?” She wanted to reach out and smooth an unruly black curl on his forehead, but she curled her fingers into fists instead, her arms still crossed around her.

“Is that what you think? Does it feel like a prison to you?”

“We’re both in prison aren’t we?” She thought of the cottage, the sneaking around, the inability to be separated.

Nix threaded his hands, put them on top of his head, and turned away from her. “Do you want me to find a way to sever the yoke?” he asked but wouldn’t look at her.

Was that what she wanted? “I want us to choose.”

“I can’t believe you think I wouldn’t choose you.”

“How can you know that you would? How can you know it isn’t the yoke making you feel that way? How can you know I’m no different than the first key keeper–”

“Don’t,” he said, angry now, his eyes flashing with it. “What part of I love you, what part of missing my companion, what part of wanting to be with you makes you think that isn’t me making a choice?” His anger pulsed in dark tendrils around him, swirling like smoke and reaching toward her. “You wouldn’t choose me. That’s what you’re implying.”

Auri took a step into his angry shadows. “Nix.”

He turned and walked away from her.

She followed him.

Nix pulled up short and turned on her, close though to reach out and touch her, but he didn’t. “Do you feel compelled to love me, Auri?”

She met his gaze and shook her head. “Just because I don’t feel it, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.” She hated that she was saying these things, but how could she not?

“I love you, Auri. Whether the feelings I have are bolstered by the yoke or not, I love you.”

She wanted to take everything she’d said back, but didn’t. She also knew the question would always linger in the back of her mind. The ‘what if.’ So she said, “I think you should find out how to break it.”

Nix opened his mouth, and she could see he was going to argue, but instead his face swirled with the shadow, the anger thickening round him. And instead he grabbed a hold of her wrist and whisked them into the shadow from where they stood in the lane to the place just before the doorway through the hedge.

Then he let her go and stepped back. “If that’s what you want, Auri.”

Being without him wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted to know if what they had was real. True.

He bowed his head, then disappeared, his form leaving her sight as he swirled in shadow that collapsed as if he’d never been there at all. Her heart pinched with the loss, the threads they shared now taxed by the distance between them. She moved through the hedge feeling as if she’d done the right thing, but wondered why it hurt so much. Tears filled her eyes blurring the green tunnel of the hedge as she walked and she realized she’d been right about the tension. It had snapped and broken. Then she sat in the tunnel and cried.

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The Letters