Kissing him back with all my heart.
He takes it deep inside himself. Mikkel’s kiss scorches my lips now as we kiss hot and bright together at last, rather than drowning in our mutual darkness.
I still feel his vast inner darkness seething behind his light, though it’s been overcome for now. He still has a lot of damage that one simple moment of brightness can’t solve, but I know we’ve made progress as he devours me now with his kiss.
And I devour him right back.
I feel it as our dragons twine together, at last. No longer adversaries, no longer trying to see who is the most dominant in this relationship, I feel us come together, as Mikkel’s incredible dragon sweeps me up.
It’s not dark and devastating this time, but bright, complex, and vulnerable, as he kisses me and grinds hard into me now with abandonment. Despite everything he’s been through, he’s rock hard, as our auras coil and wind together all through our beings now, complete. It took the threat of death to get us here, but I feel it as our bond finally solidifies.
Into a truly loving partnership neither of us will ever leave, much less forget.
That blistering bond fills us up now, terribly dark yet so scorching and bright. I feel it as we twist together harder, tighter, Mikkel’s powerful hand gripping me to him behind my neck as he seizes my ass and hauls me in, close.
I know we’re going to fuck, right here, right now in front of everybody—and for the first time, the prospect of doing that doesn’t send me running screaming for the hills.
But even as things get hot and heavy between us, there’s no more time to get it on.
As a veritable battalion of guards pours in now through the damaged wall Lærke had been assaulting earlier.
“Time to go!” Bjorn roars as he seizes me, hauling me back hard from Mikkel and breaking our embrace.
Mikkel doesn’t growl at Bjorn, however, as I’m ripped from him. Because we all know it’s time to fight; all that renewed sex energy between Mikkel and I just gets funneled right into bloodlust now, as we harness our dragon-powers and shift up.
We barrel through the arriving guards like a battering ram, with all that renewed heat scorching through us, escaping into the hall. We have to shift down again almost immediately, however; though the dungeon’s catacombs were ample to allow guards to shift up and keep their captives in check, the Copenhagen palace’s underways are too tight to permit us to pass in our dragon-forms.
It’s a blessing and a curse, as we rush through the passages butt-ass naked now, hammering furious drives of magic behind us as we fight. We still haven’t hit inescapable waves of guards anywhere. Most of the Jarl’s forces must still be occupied by Emil’s distraction at the gate, as we run smack-dab into another minimal party of guards, then another, dodging and weaving our way through the palace but never getting caught.
Gradually, we make our way up to the light. Dawn has come and gone; it’s full morning now, warm and bright outside as we rush up to a lofty marble hall covered in Baroque gilding, the palace’s main level.
We’re aboveground, finally, and though all of us have space to shift now, we don’t—because we’re beat. Even though none of the guards we’ve met have been able to halt our progress, fighting them in our exhausted state has us struggling for control over our magic now, as exhaustion swamps us.
It’s been a long day and night, all of us drained from our insane magical shenanigans over the last week, and certainly the last twenty-four hours.
The only objective now is to get the hell out without being trapped; but as more cordons of guards surprise us over and over, we have to take a wild zig-zag route through the palace, a place I don’t know at all.
Mikkel, Lærke, and Ström don’t know it, either. None of them have dealt with the Jarl of Copenhagen in person, and none of us has ever been invited to this palace. It leaves us at a severe disadvantage now, as we’re surprised by yet another solid knot of guards we have to blast through and fight.
Despite our unified Bloodbond with Baldur, and Mikkel finally finding his inner light, we’re exhausted from sustaining this endless, high-level magic. Bjorn has to half-carry Mikkel now as Ström supports Lærke, Baldur struggling along beside me, though I have to shore him up plenty.
The magnificent resonance our dragons made to free Mikkel is nearly spent. We’re running on fumes as we’re suddenly caught by another knot of guards.
And we escape through a towering door, covered in gilt.
Mikkel, Bjorn, Ström, Lærke, Baldur and I careen into a massive hall; Bjorn slams the doors shut before casting his Bloodwind at a gargantuansilberskraebeam to make it thud down into an ancient lock and keep our assailants out.
I notice at once that the hall we’ve come to isn’t like the rest of the palace; though everything we’ve been through so far was built in the Baroque era, with gilding and floral designs everywhere, this towering hall is far older by a few thousand years.
A classic Viking-style hall but of gargantuan proportions, dragons are carved into ancient timber beams all around, which support a ribbed and vaulted ceiling like the underside of a ship. The massive timbers are all painted a scorched, bloody red, though gilded paint has been used everywhere in runic script to show the Blood Dragon whorls of magic we use when we fight.
The floor is white marble, however, a modern addition to the ancient,lofted hall. But the moment we jog across the center of the space to get to an open door on the other side, a massive bloody red and searing gold sigil lights up on the floor we’re crossing.
A towering field of vicious magic goes rushing through the hall as we cross that sigil. It’s unlike any Blood Dragon magic I’ve ever seen or felt, as that whirling vortex of black, red, and gold power assails us.
It hammers us to our asses inside the gargantuan hall as it slams all the doors around the space shut, magically locking them with insane rune-phrases for containment that blaze red and black with vivid gold.
Suddenly, I know this is the Jarl’s Hall we’ve been trapped in—purposefully, as over three hundred guards are now revealed by clever illusion magic in every vault.
