His mouth is eager against hers, hot and moist, and she urgently needs to feel the mossy earth against her bare skin, to feel him inside her. Naked, he is as gorgeous as she fantasized, with the muscled body of a man who captained the sculling team at Yale. A young witch of notorious powers, from a family of power, a guy so out of her league she’d never dared do more than daydream about being with him.
She closes her eyes, lost in the sensation of his kisses, his lips against her skin. Her dress comes off. Her body arches in response, her moans echoed by others coming from the forest. May Day. Beltane. The night of greenwood marriages. The budding of summer. Of wine, and communal baskets of foil-wrapped condoms—not like ancient times, when the heightened fertility level of the night went unchecked.
He moans as she takes his cock in her hand, exploring the hard silk. She uses her mouth and lips to slide the condom down his shaft.
“Chandler.” He groans her name. That’s something she never thought she’d hear from his lips. Beltane. She’s the Queen, and he’s her May King.
He smooths back her hair and looks at her for a long moment. Moonlight slants down, lustrous on his blond hair and the leaves of his wildwood crown. The light catches on a deep scar that stripes his forehead, missing his left eye by inches before marking his cheek. She knows the story behind the scar, about the fae attack and him fighting them off. His prowess. His skill with magic. His faery sight, which allowed him to see through his attackers’ glamour. The sight the fae fear.
When he enters her, she screams from the pleasure. It’s Beltane. A night for unbridled passion. No questions. No worries. Let the Gods and Goddesses predict the future. Crazy. Wanton. Greenwood sex. As it’s always been for the single and married, for the free and not so free—or at least that’s what she tells herself as they scramble to find condoms strewn on the forest floor, before making love for a second and third time.
Chandler jolts awake. Something is wrong.
She rises, pulling on her dress and leaving him behind as she runs toward the edge of the forest and the brightening horizon. A delicious ache from lovemaking in the greenwood lingers in her body… then again, it’s as if it happened years ago.
Confusion comes over her. Chandler holds out her arms. Sleeves of dragon and monkey tattoos color her skin. She touches her head. No hawthorn wreath. Soft bristles of close-cropped hair instead of long curls. But she senses the May King rising from the moss in the forest. And she senses Peregrine growing in her womb.
She blinks and she’s in a different, older forest, an oak forest where the ground is snarled with roots. The Isle of Anglesey. Castle Aberlleiniog. The sacred grove on Summer Solstice. She knows for certain that’s where she’s standing. She was there only five months ago with Rhianna, though she believed her to be Athena at the time.
Ahead, purple mist rises from the ground. Chandler’s fingers itch to dig in that spot, to unearth the amethyst crystal that she knows waits there, the peach-size stone that once crowned the head of Merlin’s staff. But there is no need to dig. The crystal now lays in her cupped hands.
Light from the rising sun slices through the forest and catches in the stone’s facets, sending rays of purple light shooting up onto her face. But that’s not important. Something is wrong. She needs to get out of the forest, has to before the sun inches any higher.
The oaks part, making way for her as she runs. She reaches the edge of the oak forest and comes out on the top of a grassy hill. Below is the coven’s vineyard. Devlin, Chloe, Em, Brooklyn, Midas… even the auxiliary members of the Northern Circle wait by the remains of the Beltane bonfire, looking toward her. There are others there too, Gar and Lionel.
She quivers at the sight of Lionel and wildness twirls in her belly, like when the May King took her into the forest. But the sensation fades as Em walks up the hill toward her with Merlin’s Book of Shadow and Light in her extended hands. It’s closed, and the triangle-shaped gold key that opens it is affixed to its cover, the key that Athena’s spirit is bound to.
When Em reaches her, Chandler sets Merlin’s crystal into the center of the triangle-shaped key. As she lets go of the crystal, pain streaks across her chest. She groans and falls to her knees. Her head rolls back in agony as the red dragon on her chest claws its way free from her skin and soars into the sky. Its eyes are red and gold, like the coals in a fire. Its wings are razor sharp and shade everything below it bloodred, as crimson as a redcap’s hat.
Chandler clutches at her chest, expecting to discover a gaping wound. But her skin has already healed.
“Be wise. Be strong.” Peregrine’s voice comes from inside her.
Another child calls from the greenwood, echoing him. “Wise. Strong.”
Her instincts scream for her to search for that child, a boy-child lost in the forest. A sad child whose voice she doesn’t know. But her gaze catches the outline of a second dragon rising against the red horizon. Rising fast, razor wings spread, tail lashing in anger as it turns to face her dragon.
“Daughter.” The Great Fire Salamander’s commanding voice yanked Chandler from the vision.
“Yes,” she replied, bowing her head. Her body still tingled as if she’d just left a lover’s bed. She rested a hand on her belly and sensed a phantom quickening, the memory of Peregrine’s first heartbeats.
“Daughter of earth and fire,” the Great Salamander said. “Be wise. Be strong. Listen to the quiver of your heart and the shiver of your soul. Be your dragon when you must.”
She opened her mouth to ask what it all meant, but another flood of memories brought on by the vision sent her thoughts reeling in a different direction: The May King. After that Beltane night in the forest.
“It was fun,” he’d said. “Maybe some time we can get together again.”
“I’d like that.”
A week or two later, she called.
“I’m going to be in town,” she said. Some things need to be discussed in person.
He hesitated. “I’m going to be away.”
She tried two weeks later. He didn’t answer. She didn’t leave a message.
She called the next day. No luck.
A month later, or maybe two, another call.
He answered. “Chandler?”
“I need to tell you something,” she said.
His voice hushed. “It was fun. But you can’t keep calling.” He hesitated. “I’m getting married. I don’t need you messing it up. The marriage is important to me, to my family.”
“I didn’t realize.”
“I haven’t known her that long. Things just came together.”
“Oh. Ah—congratulations.”
“Yeah. Goodbye.” He hung up.
Her anger came. It passed. Guilt grew and faded, ebbing like the ocean as her belly widened and Peregrine arrived. Hard emotions returned every year on Beltane, and when she saw photos of him and his family in the witching newsletters. But those feelings calmed and wore away over time. Her adoptive mother had been a fantastic parent without the help of a man, a far better mother than her biological one had ever been. It was better for Peregrine if he and his father never knew each other, healthier than being cast aside by a parent whose flame of love had gone out, or perhaps had never been there to start with.
Chandler squeezed her eyes shut, pushing back the memories and the sting of tears. The afterglow was gone from her body. Her thoughts were settling back to normal.
The Great Salamander’s words returned to her.
“Be wise. Be strong. Listen to the quiver of your heart and the shiver of your soul. Be your dragon when you must.”
She glanced toward the firepit, ready