“Navy?”

  “The fleet, sorry. My world calls military ships navy.”

  She nodded. Then a moment later, “Military?”

  I chuckled, and started a long explanation.

  By the time we got back, it was time for dinner, and then we all retired to our quarters, which was arguably my favorite part of the day. For obvious reasons, as sleep always came quite a bit later…

  Chapter Thirteen

  One foot in front of the other, and deep steady breaths, was my mantra as my legs ate up the shoreline. I hadn’t give up on my morning runs, and false dawn was rising to the east. The craziest thing about this new world, were the stars. I could clearly make out the little dipper and the big dipper, as well as the north star. That was about it though, I’d never been all that enamored of astronomy, but I could recognize a few things. The sky was very familiar.

  That meant what? I was on a parallel world, in another universe, or another multiverse layer, or… who knows? The goddess sent me here and that’s what mattered. That it seemed to be an earth didn’t make much difference.

  I supposed without the healthy body and healthy mind philosophy, I’d have quit my morning runs a while ago. With magic I just didn’t see a way I’d ever have to physically fight a foe. But then I was alone right now, and there was always a chance I’d be accosted by those without magic. It was perhaps ironic, that I was safest from those that others would consider the most dangerous, because of my particular brand of magic.

  Yes, I had my light spell rock, a new one that is. I’d never found the old one that I’d lost on Pheles when I was captured, but I could kill them from a distance just as well with its replacement. I’d even used a more complex light spell, which had varying degrees of radiance.

  But… if I ever wanted a non-lethal force option, my martial arts would be the best bet in that case. So I had more than just one reason to keep up with it.

  Unless they had swords of course, then they were getting the laser. I wouldn’t take too large a risk with my life, but if it was reasonable to apprehend, I would take the small risk.

  Of course, there were other benefits too. My stamina was barely adequate to satisfy my insatiable mates as it was. Thank the goddess for healers.

  It was also one of the few times in the day I was alone, and could recharge my batteries. It was almost overwhelming at times, and other times completely boring as hell. And this was just the first island, I had eight more years of this to look forward to, and I can’t imagine it will be less boring the second time once things quieted down, or the twentieth, or the fortieth.

  Damn, I was depressing myself.

  I slowed when I felt her magic, and turned my gaze slightly to trace the curve of the shore, and saw her a couple of hundred yards further up. Memories of the times Amara had intercepted my morning runs in the past swamped me, as I slowed to a light jog.

  She’d been so different then, always smiling, flirty, and obviously happy to see me. She’d been light on her feet, and teasing both in word and body language. It wasn’t until the deception she’d been perpetrating against the council had ended, that things had changed between us. In other words, when there was no longer a good reason to remain apart. At the time, I’d had no clue that being together was even an option.

  I hadn’t realized just how important she was to me, and how much I’d enjoyed those times, until she’d stopped coming.

  I wondered again, just what she, Sharon, and Lia had talked about for ninety minutes a few days back, as I came to a stop about ten feet away from her. Of course, I wasn’t dumb enough to ask.

  Her dark blue eyes were focused on me, and her long platinum blonde hair was down and being blown by the slight breeze wafting in off over the water. She was wearing those robes that hid so much, but also teased as the part facing that breeze partially clung to her womanly curves.

  Her beautifully sculpted face wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t smiling and warm either. It was… neutral.

  I’ve said it before, but she was still the most exotically beautiful mortal woman I’d ever laid eyes on.

  “Good morning Amara,” I said, the old customary greeting I’d used during these rendezvous from the past just slipping out.

  She smiled at that a bit wistfully, for a moment, and then her face cleared.

  “It is a good morning. I’m sorry Tony, I’ve been… selfish, and we’ve both suffered because of it.”

  My heart reacted treacherously. I felt a cautious hope at those words, but I’d no idea where she was going with it yet. I didn’t like that lack of surety at all. It felt wrong, and shouldn’t have been that way, not between us. I supposed she saw the reaction on my face, or body language, or perhaps she read it with her nature magic.

  She took a few steps closer, but stopped well outside of my personal space. Her face looked a little pained and unsure, and I wanted to wipe it away.

  “I don’t deserve to be so easily forgiven.”

  I looked away for a moment, “Don’t you think the suffering you put yourself through is enough? I love you Amara, for a long time now. I’ve had Sharon and Lia to get myself through, while you’ve been alone. There is nothing to forgive between us, only to heal.”

  Perhaps I would have been right to be angry at what she put me through, but I honestly wasn’t. Whatever hurt there was, hadn’t been done with the desire to cause pain. I’d been angry right at the beginning, but it’d been impossible to hold on to.

  She shrugged helplessly, “How do we fix it? I love you too Tony, for longer than you have me. I deceived myself, while acting as Mary. It was easy then to justify staying away from you, and at the time you didn’t even know of our potential connection, so I wasn’t hurting you at all. After I revealed myself, and talked my father into helping drive off the kingdom forces, I retreated and hid. I had no idea that you would discover the truth, or that you’d be fool enough to trespass inside Raethsari to come get me.”

  I smiled, “It seemed like a good idea at the time. I missed you, and still do.”

  She shook her head but smiled despite herself.

  “So where does that leave us?”

  I stepped a bit closer, “I don’t know, that’s up to you. If it were up to me, I’d kiss you right now, and love and cherish you for the rest of my life. I’d make it my mission to never see a look of sorrow on your face again.”

  The words were so damned corny in hindsight. But I’d meant every damned one of them at the time, and still do.

  She frowned, but there was a look of longing in her eyes.

  “How can you forgive me so easily? I feel like things are broken.”

  I turned and looked out sea for a moment. My immediate flip thought had been because I loved her, but I knew love didn’t really work like that. It didn’t magically wash everything away. Love was hard at times, yet, this was almost easy and natural.

  Finally, I looked back and directly into her large blue eyes as I said, “Understanding, and faith. I understand, at least a little bit, what you fear. Call it compassion? My worry for you, and my desire for your happiness overrides any pain I’ve felt at your absence. I know it isn’t really about me, it’s about your fear of the loss of me. I also have faith, that once you get passed it things will be alright. I have faith in the goddess, that she wouldn’t have paired us if we weren’t right for each other.”

  She smiled, and things shifted a little.

  I detected true curiosity in her question.

  “Elves believe the goddess promises us to another with magic. Promised by magic. Humans generally aren’t sure, and many believe it’s just a natural unexplained thing. How can you be so sure?”

  I frowned, “I’ve told you I met her right?”

  She nodded.

  I tried to explain, “When she healed me, she also changed me, for this world presumably. I felt her love, and her grace. For the first days on this world I was very much at peace with the change, unnaturally accepting. I could still feel the… echo? That works I think, the echo of her presence, of her… essence.”

  It was hard to put into words, but Amara let me struggle with it without interruption as I paused for a minute.

  “Once it wore off, I missed my home, but I’d already made a few friends here, and had mostly come to terms with it. It helped me adjust. What helped the most with that of course, was my connection to Sharon and Lia, even before the bond was completed, I could feel an echo of it. Like… the completed bond passed from the future back to the present.”

  I frowned, that sounded stupid, but accurately described my feelings. It wasn’t really accurate though, since I knew not everyone that felt that bond went through with it. Which… was stupid. But given humanity was involved in the equation, that’s no big surprise.

  “That bond is lighter, and smaller than even the echo of the goddess’s presence that she left with me, but it also has the same flavor. It is the same.”

  I’d never really told anyone that, or really thought it all the way through completely before, but it was true. It was easy to believe the bonds were from the goddess, because the ephemeral magic of the bond was hers. I guess maybe it wasn’t faith then, because I kind of had proof, at least for myself.

  “So I suppose it’s easy to be sure, since I met her, and felt the source.”

  We stood there for a long moment, true dawn was here now, the sun peeked up above the horizon.

  Amara finally spoke, and her voice quavered “Will you join me in my quarters tonight?”

  I supposed I’d said something right.

  “I would love to.”

  She stepped back, and started to walk off.

  “No kiss?” I asked.

  I’d meant for it to sound teasing, but it came out a little too seriously.

  She turned her head and looked over her shoulder with a teasing grin, and my heart skipped to see that look on her face once again.

  “Something to look forward to.”

  “Besides,” she added coquettishly, “If I kiss you now, we won’t make it off this beach, and I want our first time to be better than that.”

  Damn, now I was going to have to finish my run with a hard on.

  She snickered, as if reading my mind, or more likely she’d just read the lust in my eyes and the bulge in my pants, and then she left.

  Evil woman.

  Then again, she might’ve been right, the sexual tension between us had been extremely high there at the end, my eyes hadn’t been the only ones showing desire. We wouldn’t have made it off the beach if I got my arms around her. There was also the matter of limited time, we both had places to be, and duties to see to. Later that night we’d be able to spend the whole night and do it right.

  I didn’t really want our first time to be a rushed quickie either.

  I watched until I couldn’t see her anymore, and then adjusted myself before finishing my morning run…

  Chapter Fourteen

  Daphne looked mutinous when she came in and joined us for breakfast.

  I’d already let Sharon and Lia know the change of plans for tonight, when I went back up to the room to shower and change. They hadn’t seemed all that surprised, but they were pleased. After a bit of teasing, they also took care of my sexual tension.

  Then teased me a little more, since I hadn’t lasted more than thirty seconds.

  I studied the remarkable young woman for a moment, Daphne’s dress while nice was more practical today than elaborate, and her normally down and flowing honey blonde hair was pinned up on the sides, with the rest of it in a braid that hung down her back. Her piercing green eyes always displayed intelligence and intense awareness, but this morning there was a glint of stubbornness in them as well.

  Call me crazy, but I had the feeling that stubbornness was aimed in my direction.

  “Good morning Daphne.”

  She looked at me like a predator eyeing a tasty kill, and then she smiled.

  “Good morning Tony. I need a break from being stuck inside, and from instruction. I’d like to check up on the training sessions for the guard. The fleet as well, if they aren’t out on the ship today. I also need to go shopping, and engage a tailor to increase my wardrobe.”

  Her voice had been pleasant, but there’d been an undercurrent of steel in it as well.

  I could tell she’d fight very hard this time, and honestly with the remnants of the old guard cleaned up I thought it might be safe enough. Still, didn’t royalty have that kind of stuff done for them, and invite tailors up to the keep, or palace, whatever? Maybe that was just in books and stories back home?

  Of course, there were no gardens here, royal woods, or anything like that for her to go outside in relative safety. Perhaps it was just this keep, and things would be that way back on Pheles?

  I nodded slowly, “It should be safe enough, if you don’t leave our side, and agree to a larger protective force.”

  She raised an eyebrow, and her eyes twinkled with amusement. Her tone was a bit teasing, and only just short of flirty.

  “I will have to be measured at the tailor’s, but other than that I can agree with your conditions and not leave your side.”

  I couldn’t help the visual that her statement brought up, and looked away before I could blush in shame from imagining the young woman being measured with little to no covering. She may have been sixteen, but she was definitely a woman, and one that already showed the promise of how devastatingly beautiful she’d be in just another year or two, when she fully matured. Her sophistication at that young age didn’t help either.

  Regardless, she’d thoroughly won this round, and had me retreating. Apparently my mates agreed with her, because they weren’t bailing me out. I was also a little shocked, perhaps naively, that she’d used that tactic to rout me, so to speak. I wasn’t so naïve to think she didn’t realize exactly what she was doing.

  Still, it was relatively safe, as long as she listened when things were truly dangerous I couldn’t complain too much. We just couldn’t afford to be too lax, ever.

  “Sounds like a plan,” I muttered, as I dug into breakfast.

  I surreptitiously signaled the guard with two fingers, she’d have Daphne’s guard detail doubled before breakfast was done. With Sharon, Lia, Marie, Jenna, and I along as well, and the elves lurking somewhere nearby, that would have to be enough…

  There’d really been no training facilities here. Small ones, for the local guard, but only large enough to train a few at a time, as new guards were added from normal turnover. As a result, the training facilities were in two different directions. With earth wielders, the stone buildings had gone up in minutes, and the rest of it within a day or two.

  The guard training was done out of the city, in the opposite direction from the port. The facility for fleet training was right next to the port on shore, which is also where another ship was being built. Two ships weren’t much of a fleet, three if I included the one for the trainers, but this was one of the smaller settlements and I was sure we’d get more volunteers next time. If the ratio continued to be about a fifth of the magical population, then there’d be a lot more volunteers in the future.

  It would also be more difficult most likely.

  Each facility included barracks, class rooms, warded magic rooms, and several volunteer instructors from sorceress haven. I’d been initially surprised at how many volunteers there’d been, but in hindsight that was probably the first time those with a more scholarly bent had been able to contribute to the cause which bound sorceress haven together.

  They’d all jumped at the opportunity to contribute to the war effort in their own way.

  I’d never been to either facility, though I’d seen the fleet one from a distance on my morning jogs. Truthfully, I was looking forward to getting out as well, the daily teaching of dry subject matter was getting to me as well. I couldn’t really blame Daphne, since she wasn’t able to escape for runs like I did every morning.

  We left the keep, and there were twelve guards plus the six of us in the middle. It was a little cool, maybe sixtyish out. We headed inland down the main road. There were a few people out and about, who looked at Daphne, and watched us curiously, which was a good thing as far as I was concerned. Apparently the population was fairly confident now that we wouldn’t turn on them, and it had only been a couple of weeks.

  It probably helped that it was a smaller community, and I doubted that the larger cities would be so easy. Although, I imagined punishing their oppressors and freeing the magic in the sorceresses had gone a long way to move things along. The former could be viewed as just another conqueror, their perception counts more than our intention regarding that matter, but the latter action of freeing the sorceresses was much less likely of having twisted perceptions applied.

  Maybe that was the key factor to how the populace perceived our presence and interference in a more positive light than I’d expected. I also hadn’t counted on the stories of sorceress haven, perhaps their reputation was boosting ours.

  We left the city, and it was about another half a mile away. Training was always better done away from a city, as I’d been taught when I’d learned from Matthew. Out of control magic was bad for breakable things, like buildings, and cities.

  Daphne walked closer to me, “Thanks for this, I thought for sure I’d have to argue more this morning.”

  I smiled, “You were very patient while things were iffy, I should have thought of this myself now that things have calmed down, but my first inclination is to keep you as safe as possible, but that isn’t really living is it? We’ll find a balance your majesty, eventually.”

  One thing I’ve learned is that women love to make deals. I might as well be gracious in my loss, it will give me points for the times she really did need to be kept in a secure and controlled environment. Plus, she’d been right this time, and it was worth admitting it just to see her bright smile.

  Sometimes things between us were hard to balance. She was queen, my friend, and my charge. The former meant she was in charge, the latter meant sometimes I was in charge, and the middle one meant we were equals of sorts when in private. There were bound to be some bumps on a road that complicated.