The Rising Read online

  Indeed, Irma and Minnie, the most timid and those Teddy had assessed had suffered the greatest in their minds at what had been done to them, ducked and burrowed so close to Teddy, their frightened eyes surveying the tall, dark, formidable warriors surrounding them, he had to curve them in his arms and pull them closer.

  As they did this, Teddy noticed the expressions on Faunus’s and Saturn’s faces change from jovial and relieved at having found their friend, to forbidding and furious as they sensed something very bad had happened to the women in Teddy’s huddle.

  He wished they would not look like that, for it only made them appear even more frightening.

  “We all have been through hell,” he said. “And we need a hearty meal, warm baths, a good night’s sleep.” He focused on Faunus. “And I need to speak with you. Urgently.”

  “La creatura?” Faunus asked.

  Yes. He had read Teddy’s message.

  “Yes,” Teddy answered.

  Faunus gave a tight nod then he looked over their heads and barked in Firenzii, “Ride back. Secure every room in that inn we passed. Have them start a meal. Much meat, thick bread, butter, many potatoes. And have them heat water for baths. Make haste.”

  One of the warriors strode off to his horse and Faunus’s eyes came back to Teddy’s huddle.

  They skimmed over the women, before they leveled on Teddy.

  “We cannot go back,” Teddy told him as calmly as he could when he regained Faunus’s attention. “I need to take care of my girls. And then we must get to Notting Thicket without further delay.”

  Faunus said nothing to him, simply looked again over his head and ordered in Firenzii, “Procure eight horses. Good quality. They must be able to withstand a long day’s swift ride.”

  When he replied, Teddy continued to speak in the language of the Vale, for he did not want the women to worry about what he said or think he was hiding anything from them.

  “They need to go home, which is the other way, not to the Thicket.”

  “We stay with you,” Moira declared.

  Teddy gave her gentle eyes and murmured, “Poppet, we are saved.”

  All the women pulled in tighter.

  “We stay with you,” Moira repeated.

  He held her gaze before he tore his away and looked up to Faunus.

  “All right, they stay with me.”

  Both Faunus and Saturn were again taking in Teddy and his women.

  They had tight jaws and fiery eyes.

  Finally, Faunus decreed, “Let us ride.”

  Fresh from his bath (he had taken the last) and checking on all the women (save one, where he was headed right then), Teddy nodded to the warrior who stood at the end of the hall in the upper floor of the inn and received a nod back.

  Then he stopped at a door and knocked.

  “Yes?” Moira called.

  “It’s Teddy,” he called back.

  He heard the lock turn and the door opened.

  Then, his new, clean tunic was fisted at his chest in her hand and he was pulled into the room.

  She shut the door and locked it behind him.

  “Moira,” he murmured, peering beyond her to see she had a single room with a slender pallet atop a nondescript base, a small table and chair, a chest, a tiny fireplace with iron, and naught else.

  Though the pallet looked fluffy, there was a clean pillowcase over the pillow and many woolen rugs to keep out the chill. And the fireplace might be tiny, but a robust fire burned there, warming the room.

  “The others?” she asked.

  “I have checked on them. Three and three, next door and across the hall from you,” he told her.

  “They are well?”

  “You ate with them, Moira. And demanded to take the penultimate bath.”

  She glared at him.

  He gave in.

  “They are fed, as you know, and all have had baths, as you also know. Faunus has managed to get them clean nightgowns, and you know this too, as you are right now wearing one. And with the bag of coin he laid on their desk, the innkeeper’s wife is searching for clean, warm gowns and cloaks for all of you for our journey tomorrow, and my guess, to get that coin, she will find them. They are settled in, they know the Firenz guard this inn, and they might not be fully restored, but they are in decent spirits.”

  She seemed to deflate after he reported this, and he remembered why he liked her so.

  She was stubborn but she was also strong and most of all, she was caring.

  During their journey, in the night, exhausted from walking, the women had slept as best they could, pressed together for warmth under the stars.

  Not he and Moira. They took turns staying awake and keeping watch.

  And it was she who should have had the last piece of ham.

  But she gave it to Terra, who was the slimmest, and seemed to get slimmer by the day, thus Moira declared, needed the sustenance more than she.

  Yes, she was stubborn.

  But mostly, she was kind.

  “We will request they get word to your families,” he said carefully.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “Moira—”

  “Is he your lover?”

  Teddy suddenly felt a sickness in his stomach.

  But he lifted his chin and said, “Yes.”

  “He is very tall, and he is very muscled,” she decreed, rather than turning snide or looking repulsed.

  “Um…yes,” he agreed to her obvious assessment.

  “And exceptionally handsome, in a Firenz way.”

  He was that.

  “Moira—”

  She gave a terse nod. “He cares deeply for you. You are his love. We can trust him. Trust them.”

  Teddy wasn’t sure he was Faunus’s love.

  But yes, they could trust him. And them.

  And he could not quite put his finger on understanding the feeling he was feeling at her reaction to discovering who Teddy was, or rather, how he was.

  He did not mention that.

  “Of course you can trust him. And all of them. I would not lead you astray.” He then took her jaw in both hands and dipped his face to hers. “And as such, I am sure I can speak to Faunus. He will give you and the others a guard. Keep you safe as they take you home.”

  “What did you see back in that clearing after we ran away, Teddy?”

  Her stubbornness was an obstacle to much.

  Her intelligence was just plain annoying.

  He dropped his hands, but she caught both of them and shook them.

  “What did you see?” she pressed.

  “Poppet—”

  “All right, you don’t wish to tell me that. But tell me this. We are safer with you and your warriors, whatever you saw, are we not?”

  No one was safe.

  But anyone was safer surrounded by thirty Firenz warriors.

  “Yes,” he said quietly.

  “Then we will send messages to our families and stay with you. They can come to get us from wherever we go…with you.”

  He knew there was no talking her out of it, so he did not try.

  “All right, love,” he muttered.

  She squeezed his hands. “Teddy.”

  He focused on her again.

  “I don’t care who you love, and I don’t care who loves you. I know the man you are. Do you understand?”

  He nodded, so much happening around the region of his heart, he did not trust himself to speak.

  “All right,” she whispered, and again squeezed his hands. “Sleep well and I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “You too, poppet.”

  She smiled at him.

  He bent and kissed her cheek.

  They let go and he turned, but before he unlocked the door, she called his name.

  He looked over his shoulder at her.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, then lifted a hand slightly at her side to indicate the warmth and shelter about her.

  “We all survived,” he reminded
her.

  “Because of you.”

  He gave her a soft look, she returned it, then he set about unlocking her door, leaving her room, and he heard it lock again behind him before he’d taken one step down to the chamber he would share with Faunus.

  Saturn had the only other accommodation in the inn. Another single on the other side of Moira.

  The rest of the warriors were either guarding the inn or hunkering down in tents around it.

  He opened the door to his room, which was much larger, and saw both Faunus and Saturn at the table before the window, their big bodies sprawled in chairs designed for the Dellish, which meant they dwarfed them. A fire was raging in the iron in the grate, making the room warm.

  And with a full belly, a clean body, seeing his friends sitting there, a bed but a few steps away, of a sudden, he was worn through and all he wanted was to climb in that double bed, pull the rugs over him and sleep for a month.

  Alas, he could not do that.

  “Sit here,” Faunus demanded, arising from his chair. “If you sit on that bed, you’ll fall into it and not tell us the words that need to be told.”

  Teddy went to the now-vacant chair while Faunus sprawled himself on the bed, his head in his hand, elbow to the bed, close to the foot, so he could see better, Teddy in his chair.

  It was altogether too pleasing of a view, but fortunately, Teddy was too exhausted to waste time appreciating it, and definitely could do nothing about it.

  “Start from the beginning, il mio amore,” Faunus urged.

  Teddy looked to Faunus.

  He then looked to Saturn, who was pouring wine into a pewter chalice. This deed done, he slid it across the table to Teddy, who took it up, swallowed a healthy dose, and put it down.

  And then he started at the beginning.

  There were many times the room grew close due to the weight of their combined fury, or stagnant due to their shock at what Teddy told them.

  But neither interrupted him all the while he spoke, sharing his story from the moment Fenn took him at Nyx and Lorenz’s back step, to when they met in the forest just hours before.

  He ended with his eyes on Faunus.

  “We need to find an aviast. We need to get birds to King Mars, King True, King Aramus, Prince Cassius, Queen Ophelia. They must know. They must prepare.”

  “First, Teddy, this earth has lost Queen Ophelia. Princess Elena is now Queen of the Nadirii.”

  “By the gods,” Teddy murmured.

  “Second, Airen is in the throes of a civil war. It started but days ago and all the rulers of all the realms are there now, fighting it.”

  Teddy just stared at him.

  Bloody hell.

  How long had he been captive and then on the run?

  The world had turned over.

  “And last, this creature you mention, you are sure it is the Beast?”

  “It transformed from man to…to…” He shook his head and looked between the two men, though he settled on Faunus again. “It is impossible to describe. Hideous. Fearsome. Powerful. In the form of a man, he crushed a man’s head between his bare hands. As the Beast, his claws severed Fenn’s head and he drank from the neck. He was not a troll. He was not a gogmagogg. I do not know of anything in magic, of this earth, even in lore to describe him. Except the Beast.”

  Head still in hand, Faunus tipped it back to catch Saturn’s gaze.

  Teddy looked to Saturn and saw the end of his shrug, and when he noted he had Teddy’s attention, he wrapped his fingers around the wine bottle, reached across the table and poured Teddy some more.

  He then poured himself more and got up to add some to Faunus’s goblet.

  They were all silent and they drank.

  It was Teddy who spoke.

  “I understand you do not wish to appear like you’ve lost your mind by sharing this with your ruler.”

  “We will share it,” Faunus decreed. “Though, Teddy, it is not that I do not believe you believe what it is you saw. But we will just describe it rather than saying the Beast has risen. It is not outside the realm of what we know of this Rising to do whatever they will to get what they want. To call forth a creature. Create one. You said yourself a Rising priest was with the thing when it emerged from the earth. Perhaps they did something with dark magic, using those women as sacrifices, that they can no longer control. Whatever it is, Mars must know. They all must know. Yes?”

  Teddy nodded. Relieved.

  It was the Beast, he knew it to his bones.

  But even if they didn’t think that true, they were still going to send their warnings.

  “Because of this, it is unnecessary to go to the Thicket as True is not there,” Faunus declared. “You must talk to your women. Get them to allow us to escort them home so that we can make our way back to ours.”

  Teddy shook his head. “We still must go there.”

  “Why?” Saturn asked.

  Teddy looked to his friend and dipped his voice low when he told him, “Because they slaughtered all those women. We must go to Crittich Keep. We must report what was done, so if those girls’ bodies have not yet been found, they will be, and they can be given their pyres and their families can know. Knowing will bring great sorrow. And I do not know, I can only assume, but my assumption is, not knowing would be worse.”

  Saturn nodded.

  Teddy looked to Faunus and he nodded.

  “And if the others that ran away are still out there, they must be caught. They must pay for what they did to those women.”

  He did not receive nods from either man to that, but the intensity of their stares communicated they were in hearty agreement.

  So, Teddy finished it.

  “And if we’re in the Thicket, if we’re at the Keep, which is the administrative base of all constabularies around Wodell, not just a prison, my girls might feel safe enough for me to leave them.”

  “You have done well by them,” Faunus said quietly.

  “I have done nothing no other man would do.”

  “You are wrong.”

  Teddy pressed his lips together.

  Faunus held his gaze.

  Teddy fought squirming under the warmth of pride and affection Faunus was giving him through his look.

  “It is time for me to find my pallet,” Saturn muttered.

  Teddy broke from Faunus’s hold and looked to his friend.

  He was up and grinning down at Teddy. “I am glad we found you and you are well. I imagined many things when we found you, too many of them not good. Though, discovering you with a harem was not amongst them.”

  Teddy chuckled.

  Saturn came to him and chuffed him on a shoulder with the side of his fist.

  He turned and dipped his chin to Faunus before he left the room.

  Slowly, Teddy took a large swallow of his wine before he set the chalice down just as slowly and with even less haste, he looked to Faunus.

  The instant they locked eyes, Faunus whispered, “Come to bed.”

  Teddy was on his side and Faunus was the same, behind him, moving inside him, his arm about Teddy, stroking his cock.

  His strokes in both places were deep, thorough, intimate.

  And it wasn’t until Faunus’s work at both front and back had gathered in Teddy’s balls, drawing them up, causing his head to arch back and hit Faunus’s shoulder, that Faunus’s hand around his shaft tightened, drawing the climax out in a violent gush.

  He then rolled Teddy to his stomach, straddled his thighs, and Teddy closed his eyes and memorized the smooth, deep, rough strokes up his arse before Faunus grunted quietly and gave him his seed.

  He remained buried even as he fell to his forearms on either side of Teddy and pressed his lips to Teddy’s shoulder.

  “You will sleep well now, no?” he whispered in Teddy’s ear.

  “Yes,” Teddy murmured.

  “Like Saturn, I imagined many things in the finding of you, and they were all not good.”

  “Faunus,” he wh
ispered.

  “I am glad I am not a seer.”

  “Thank you again for finding me.”

  He slid out gently, pushed away, but only to roll Teddy to his back and settle atop him.

  And then he said, “Mio amore, I’d ride to the end of the earth to find you.”

  He then kissed Teddy tenderly before he shifted from the bed, brought a wet cloth to cleanse his seed from Teddy’s arse, before he took it away and brought a dry one to spread over the bed so neither had to countenance the wet.

  Faunus then tangled Teddy up in his long limbs and pulled the covers to their shoulders.

  He had never slept as such with a lover in his life.

  It was beautiful.

  Teddy settled into Faunus’s strength and warmth, the soft bed, the aftermath of good sex, the release of what felt like an eternity of fret and worry and fear, letting over to his exhaustion, and was nearly asleep when Faunus muttered, “This Moira does not have feelings for you, does she?”

  “In that way?”

  “I do not know the bent of your question, but I mean in the way she wants a cock that is mine.”

  Teddy grinned even as he gave a slight tremble at Faunus’s claiming of his cock.

  Faunus misinterpreted his tremble and pulled him closer before he pulled the covers up higher.

  Ah, Faunus.

  His Faunus.

  “No, she does not have feelings for me in that way,” he answered.

  “This is good, for Saturn intends to win her.”

  All fatigue left him, and his head snapped back.

  “Faunus, that cannot happen.”

  Faunus looked down at him through the dark. “Why no?”

  “Because she’s just been through hell.”

  “Not because you are overprotective of her because you guided her out of that hell and due to this, you now consider her your kin?”

  His kin?

  Well…

  “Perhaps a little.”

  “Calm, bello, Saturn will handle her with care.”

  “Saturn fucks like a bull,” he clipped.

  Faunus chuckled before saying, “He won’t do that the first time.”

  Good gods!

  “He cannot court Moira,” Teddy decreed.

  “I will let you tell him that.”

  Teddy blew out a breath.

  Faunus chuckled again, then fell forward, now trapping Teddy with his body as well as their tangled limbs.