Excerpt of Born of Mist and Legend by Kat Bastion

“What was it like?” Brigid asked.

“Dying? Painful,” Skorpius replied.

“Nay. Losing a love so great.”

“Excruciating.” A mortal’s truth for a long vulnerable time. And Brigid had just strayed where she had forbidden him to go.

I thought we weren’t talking about our pasts.

Her eyes narrowed. When we were kissin’, you asked about love.

Right. Because he’d needed her to be certain that she understood the stakes if she risked her heart. “Love lost is the greatest pain. Death?” What he’d rather they remained focused on, the final price of what they were up against, for them, for every being. “Not as bad as humans make it out to be. For a mortal, aging is inevitable; bodies in the material realm are fragile and Earth’s elements, harsh. But that’s all part of human experience. Life is the messy adventure between birth and death. Accepting that illness and death is our destiny makes the suffering a little more bearable.”

Brigid eased into his space again and placed gentle hands on his chest. “Which is why, if love is not for us, then I’d like to get to the tuppin’.”

“Love is not for us?” So resilient. So innocent. “Take a close look inside, Brigid. That ship has sailed already.”

Her lashes lowered, face tilting down.

With a finger touched under her chin, he lifted, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Be unafraid in this. As you are with all things. Seize the adventure, no matter the consequences.”

A tentative smile curved her lips.

“But make no mistake, there will be consequences.” As there are with all things worthwhile.

“If we tup?”

“There you go with that word again.” He snorted at how casual she acted about it. Then his brow furrowed. He had assumed she was an innocent. “What do you know of tupping?”

Shoulders squaring back, she lifted her chin off his finger. Fierceness sparked in her eyes. “I’ve watched our animals mate. And I might have caught one of our warriors and his leman once in the back of the stables.”

“Then you understand basic mechanics.” Not much else to be gleaned from that sad education.

“Aye.”

Another singular frisson of threatening energy pulsed, at a quicker interval. Stronger. And each time the reverberation escalated by a fraction. As if the source of the phenomenon approached nearer. Yet Brigid seemed unfazed, unaware.

“There’s more to a coupling than what you’ve witnessed, goddess.” Skorpius drew her closer when another escalating energy pulse tripped through him.

She tensed in his arms at the last word, eyes narrowing. “What ‘consequences’?”

Another electrifying pulse. Powerful. Dangerous.

They’d run out of time.

Skorpius needed to wrap things up. But he’d formulated a rough plan. “We’ll be bound together.” Which was part of the plan, but he needed her to fully understand, commit with full knowledge.

“We’re already bound together, angel.”

“More than we already are.” Another pulse boomed. Like base vibrations of a giant’s footfalls. Only the giant seemed to be approaching from somewhere in the ether, a parallel realm.

“Aye. More than the slender magick thread that ties us.” She touched a finger to her sternum, then pressed her palm to his chest, over his heart.

Shocked, he blinked heavily. “You feel our connection?”

Boom. The foreign pulse vibrated through him again.

“Aye. One thread to tie your heart to mine, not in love, but bound by duty. As guardian.” In illustration of not only her awareness but her power, Brigid tugged that delicate thread taut, then sizzled a slight bit of her magick along it.

Skorpius’s mouth fell open, but he had no words. Stunned speechless for the first time in his immortal life. No tether had ever been manipulated in such a way. By any being.

Boom.

One of her fingers tapped his chest. “The second thread exists to bind us in another manner, not to guide or protect, but to monitor. As executioner.”

“You feel them both.” He’d been reduced to statements of the obvious. Because the stunners from Brigid kept on coming.

Yet something else kept coming that he could no longer merely just monitor.

Boom.

“I wonder, are you certain ’tis you who are the guardian of me? Are you certain I’m the one who’s the threat to time?”

“No.” Skorpius wasn’t certain of anything anymore.

BOOM!

The last reverberation jarred him so hard, his teeth rattled.

Far behind and high above Brigid, an immense hole tore open into Earth-realm, a black nothingness that blocked out a large portion of the bright blue sky.

Their time had come.

Skorpius crushed his lips to hers. Close your eyes. And keep them closed.

Her soft lips molded to his as she obeyed and drifted her eyes shut.

Burst your magick along our tether, as powerful and fast as you can.

When her surge came then blossomed, he exploded his magick outward, hoping to join their two forces along their connection and radiate the combined energy outward.

Because together, they needed to create something greater and more protective than a multilayered dimension.