“Hold on,” Thom ordered. “I’m doing my best, but you have to pitch in too.”
Pitching in sounded like so much work. Hadn’t I done enough? Hadn’t I earned my rest?
“Mom,” a young voice sobbed nearby. “He won’t wake up. Daddy won’t wake up.”
Daddy.
My fuzzy thoughts pointed like an arrow straight to Edward Boudreau, but I was an only child.
Child.
Phoebe.
Cole.
She meant Cole.
Cole wouldn’t wake up?
The lids I couldn’t heave open seconds ago lifted with tortoise speed, and I let my head fall to the side. “Cole.” I twitched my fingers, too weak to move my hand, let alone my arm. “Cole.”
“He fainted when your heart stopped,” Miller explained, leaning over me. “He hasn’t come to since.”
“Cole.”
“Hold still and listen to me.” Thom replaced Miller. “You’re the tether holding him here. You must live if you want him to survive.” He brushed his fingers across my cheek. “Rest, Luce. The best thing you can do for him is to take care of yourself.”
Eyes falling shut, I reserved my strength. “Conquest?”
“I don’t scent her on you.” Thom pricked my arm, and my thoughts spun slower. “You’ll have to search within yourself to know the truth. Later.”
“Sleep.” Miller stroked my hair. “We’ll take care of Cole.”
Loopy from whatever Thom had pumped into me, I slurred, “I’m ’live, right?”
“Yes.” Miller chuckled softly. “Thank all the gods and goddesses, yours included.”
“Pretty sure … my god … exists,” I mumbled. “Think I saw him … a minute … ago.”
For a few seconds there, I had seen beyond the dark to the brightest, whitest light imaginable.
My gut told me if I had walked into it, I would have found Uncle Harold and Aunt Nancy waiting for me. I swear I smelled her chocolate chip cookies, a lure guaranteed to set my feet on the path to eternity. I took one step, despite my best efforts to ignore the promise of happiness everlasting.
But the pain had anchored me to my body, the weight of an elephant herd doing yoga on my chest.
A second pinch on my upper arm shooed the elephants away, and I relaxed into the weightless darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Warmth cocooned me, and I snuggled deeper into its source. Well, as deep as one can snuggle into a boulder. Happy to keep my eyes closed, I ran my fingers across the defined muscles in Cole’s chest, sucking in a breath when mine began to ache from the effort of raising my arm.
“Are you all right?” he rumbled from above me, where his chin rested on the crown of my head.
“I think so.” I touched an itchy spot beneath my collarbone, brushed my fingers over scratchy gauze, and froze. “Oh crap.” I flung open my eyes. “I’m alive.”
“Yes.” He leaned forward, kissed my forehead. “You are.”
Vague memories of Phoebe wailing for him surfaced next, and my pulse decided to go for a run. I looked him over, but I found no obvious injuries. A few new scars marked his body, but they were well on their way to being healed and nothing I wouldn’t expect to find after Hart Island. “Are you all right?”
“I’m as okay as you are.” A smile tugged on his lips. “Conquest died, and I survived.”
Relief flooded me in a giddy rush that pushed out actual giggles. God, I sounded like an idiot. And I didn’t care. Not one whit.
“Did you get injured after?” I lowered my arm when the skin began to pull. “I remember Thom saying … something. You were hurt, right?”
“I survived Conquest.” His rough fingertips traced my cheekbones. “You almost killed me.”
A moment passed where I was certain my heart had stopped in my chest. “What?”
“You’re my mate.” A new light shone in his eyes. “You almost died, and you almost took me with you.”
“Why are you smiling?” I would have shoved upright, but I hurt too much. “Those are two very bad almosts.”
“You’re my mate,” he repeated, rolling onto his back. “That makes me happy.”
“Men are weird,” I huffed. “Charun males are even weirder.”
“All this time I thought I belonged to her, body and soul.”
Cuddling him, I waited to hear what he said next. “She assumed the characteristics of a Convallarian, and I thought … I never accepted the mate bond, but she mated me all the same. This proves the only hold she had over me was her own. I’m truly free of her, Luce.”
“I’m glad.” I pressed a kiss to his side. “You deserve to make your own choices.”
“You’re the choice I made.”
And it had nearly killed him. God forbid charun do one thing that wasn’t life or death.
“If Conquest is dead,” I wondered, “what does that make me?”
“Human,” Thom said from the doorway. “As near as I can tell.”
“Human,” I echoed, dumbfounded. “How?”
“Wu brought Conquest’s host back to life with his healing magic,” Thom explained. “He used the body to create a cage to hold her soul, reanimating you in the process.”
“I remember this story.” Wu had explained the impossibility of it all to me, and it still gave me the creeps to hear my origin story. “Where does the surprise plot twist come in?”
“We theorized Conquest was a partition in your brain. This proves you were two souls inhabiting one body.”
“I’m not charun at all?” I was just getting used to the idea, damn it. “I’ve lost my dragon?”
“We don’t know,” he admitted. “The dragon appeared to be a biological function rather than directly tied into Conquest’s consciousness, but with her gone … ”
An unexpected pang rocked me. “The dragon might be too.”
Might was too kind a word considering they could sniff out Conquest from a mile away. They would have been the first to notice if any part of her lingered in me, including a whiff of Convallarian.
“I’m sorry, Luce.” Thom backed away to give us privacy, and I let him go without a fuss. Clearly, the loss of my wings had struck a nerve. “Often what we wish for isn’t what we expect when we receive it.”
I had wanted to be human, and now I was.
Reaching deep inside myself, I pulled on the space where the cold place always waited, but frost didn’t fill my mouth, and my breath didn’t fog. I took stock of myself and came up short. The tension riding me these last few months was gone. There was no push and pull in my thoughts, no tug of war in my gut. I was, perhaps for the first time in my life, at peace.
Weird.
The theory I was mortal had merit according to my catalog of aches and pains. “How long was I out?”
“Six days,” Cole rasped softly.
Almost a week and the world hadn’t collapsed around me or fallen on top of my head while I slept. “Where is Dad?”
“Downstairs with Phoebe. He’s teaching her to play poker.”
“The Rixtons?”
“They’re back home, with Nettie. I’ll call them, let them know you’re awake.”
Exhausted from the effort of sitting upright, I reclined back onto my pillows. “I can’t believe the farmhouse is still standing.”
“It’s seen better days, but it’s structurally sound.” He hesitated. “It can be repaired.”
“I’m going to buy it from Dad.” I fiddled with the sheets to avoid his reaction. “It’s been on my mind for a while now, but I didn’t want to think that far ahead.” I reached for his hand. “I loved growing up here. I bet Phoebe would too. There are plenty of rooms for the coterie … ” I remembered then, that they were free. “Thom is here to watch over me, but where are the others? Have they … ?” I swallowed. “Did they … ?”
“Leave?” Maggie strolled in with a cinnamon roll on a paper plate and a paper cup that smelled like coffee. “What do you think?”
&nbs
p; Stupid tears filled my eyes, but I couldn’t blink my vision clear. “Mags.”
“Portia too,” she reminded me. “Here. Eat. You’ll feel better.”
Santiago swaggered in behind her and announced, “I’m taking your old room.”
“What?”
“Your old room,” he said, stealing the sugary treat. “It’s mine now, much like your breakfast.”
No surprise there. He had basically moved himself in weeks ago. Still, he could have asked first.
“We figured you could take the master suite.” Miller carried another plate with an undefiled roll that he passed to me. “Your dad’s old room is twice the size of yours, and you’ll need the extra space if you’re going to share a bed with Cole.”
“Um, yeah.” Heat sizzled in my cheeks at the frank assessment. “I would like to share a bed with Cole.”
Soft laughter rumbled through him, and he clasped hands with me, but he didn’t say a word.
Until Miller got me thinking about it, I hadn’t noticed we weren’t in my room. This was the master suite, but not how I remembered it. The walls had been given fresh paint in a soothing blue color, and the air smelled like lemons from where the coterie had polished the wood trim and scrubbed the floor. The bed was new too. Dad had slept on a full-size mattress. This was a king at least. More like a king and a half.
“We’ve begun moving our things in.” Miller toyed with a fidget spinner. Must be a new habit. Back in the day, Maggie had a drawer full of them, all confiscated from students. “We assumed you wouldn’t mind, but we understand you’re building your own family now.”
“You guys are my family.” I goggled at him. “Of course you’re welcome to stay here. Do you really have to ask? I’m glad you want to stick around.” I plucked at my sheets. “I wasn’t sure if … ”
“We’re coterie,” Portia said. “We’ve been together for so long it would feel weird going our separate ways.” She winked. “It’s not like we can go back home, so we need to get serious about making a new one here. Together.”
The reminder of how I ended up on bedrest made me shiver. “How do we know it worked?”
“I examined the breach site myself.” Santiago leaned against the doorframe. “I used the coordinates I’ve logged a dozen times, but there’s nothing there. Just sediment. The lower seal is gone.”
A grimmer thought occurred to me. “How do we check on the upper seal?”
“Knox made the journey with Wu,” Miller said. “He waited until it was done, checked the seal, and returned with Wu’s body for the enclave to bury.” He lowered his head. “They’ve moved into Haven. They’re finally home, just like Wu wanted.”
“I don’t much traffic in miracles, but I’m still here.” I placed a hand over my heart. “Are we sure … ?”
“I examined the body.” Thom sat at the foot of the bed. “He died in service to his people.”
That was a pretty way of saying Wu had sacrificed everything he had and some things he didn’t in order to take revenge on his father. I hoped, in the end, it had just as much to do with preserving the legacy of his wife’s memory through their children as it did getting in the last blow.
I wish I could have been there with him, but Knox would have been the greater comfort. Whatever Wu and I shared beyond our resonance got tangled in lies, guilt, and betrayals. What he had with Knox was simpler. Though, with Kimora’s death, it became more complicated.
I surprised myself by saying, “I would like to visit his grave.”
There was no excuse for what he had done to me, but I wouldn’t exist without him. I would have remained on a slab in the morgue if he hadn’t chosen me as a vessel for Conquest to fill. Try as I might, I couldn’t deny him thanks for that much if for nothing else.
“I’ll take you,” Cole promised. “We can pay our respects together.”
“I would like that.” I exhaled through my lips. “Making peace with him feels like a good start.”
Forgiveness would come easier now that we had survived, somewhat intact. From there … who knows?
With Wu and Kapoor gone, I no longer had an “in” with the NSB. I had reported directly to Wu, and we had been set on pursuing his goals, and since they paralleled mine, I hadn’t put up much of a fight. Rixton might have a point. I needed to sit and think, now that I had the luxury of time, on what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
Learning Wu’s remains had already been interred made me question how the cleanup had gone on Hart Island in my absence.
“We burned Death and Janardan’s remains and scattered them across the water,” Cole told me. “It’s what they would have wanted.”
Days ago, I thought I had said all my goodbyes, but I had missed so many. Attending funerals wasn’t my favorite leisure activity, but they brought much needed closure. I had missed the Trudeaus’ funerals. Wu, Kapoor, Death, and Janardan had also been laid to rest while I recovered. I’m not certain a flowery ceremony would have made any difference in how I grieved for them, but I wish I had gotten a chance to pay my last respects.
Now that I thought about it, no one had mentioned Kapoor. “Did the Diorte locate Kapoor’s remains?”
“No.” Miller frowned. “The larger corpses were hauled out into the ocean, where the Diorte spent their final days.” That must include the bodies of Death’s younger and more unusual children. “The smaller ones … ”
“They’re fish food,” Santiago spelled it out for me. “The enclave decided to dedicate a bench to Kapoor in their communal cemetery.”
“I’m glad.” I picked at my cinnamon bun. “It’s good that his sacrifices will be remembered as well.”
“Let me take that.” Maggie set the snack on the bedside table I hadn’t noticed, also a new addition to the space. “You can eat it when you wake up, if you’re feeling hungry then.”
“When I wake up?” I barely swallowed a yawn. “Who says I’m going back to bed?”
The truth was I didn’t have the strength to leave it, so it’s not like it was a long trip to lean back.
“I do.” She helped me settle and covered me with a blanket. “Sleep.” She kissed me on the forehead. “We’ll figure out the rest later.”
“Okay,” I mumbled, eyes drooping, and rolled over to nestle against Cole.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
An uneasy stillness pervaded the house when I woke, and it set my teeth on edge for reasons I couldn’t pinpoint. I held still and strained to pick up movement in the rooms next to this one or downstairs, but I heard nothing.
Ezra was dead. Wu was dead. Kapoor was dead. My sisters — all dead.
The coterie ought to be safe. I ought to be safe. We had earned our quiet retirement from the grueling climb to the pinnacle. Residual adrenaline must be to blame, shocking me awake at the slightest provocation. PTSD for the post-apocalypse. I’d take it. Struggling to cope meant I was alive.
Unable to shake my worry, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and padded onto the landing. I ducked my head in my old room, but Santiago wasn’t there. I didn’t enter, too afraid of boobytraps, but I didn’t trust its emptiness. It didn’t have to mean anything other than the guys had gone into town to pick up more food or supplies, but the ball of dread wringing out my gut warned it meant something.
I tiptoed downstairs, wincing each time the stairs creaked, and I almost laughed at how much it reminded me of being a teen and attempting to sneak out past Dad’s room without waking him. The impulse caught in my throat when I walked into a scene straight out of my top five worst memories.
Cole sat in Dad’s chair, tension knotting his shoulders, and Sariah stood behind him, a god killer dagger in her hand, its edge resting against his throat.
Not so long ago, her father, Thanases, had held an identical pose behind Cole while her mother lounged on his lap. But Sariah knew Cole better than War ever had, and she didn’t risk a more dramatic entrance.
“Auntie, so glad you could join us. The boys were just giving
me an update on your health.”
“As you can see, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” She kept the dagger poised below his Adam’s apple. “You know how I worry.”
“I do.” I clenched my hand on the bottom rail for support. “Family, right?”
“Right.” She leaned down, pressed her cheek to Cole’s. “And since we’re all family here, I’m giving you the opportunity to ally with me before I start picking off your coterie, one by one.”
Heady with déjà vu, I took my time answering. I had lived this scenario once before already, and it ended with Maggie bleeding out on the lawn. What would it cost me this time? Who would it cost me?
Without turning my head, I scanned the room to ensure I grasped the entirety of the situation.
Cole sat front and center, her showpiece on clear display. Thom stood across from them. Portia shielded Santiago, who fiddled with his phone behind her back, no doubt attempting to reach any allies we might still have in the area, and Miller shielded Portia for Maggie’s sake, which made her fume.
Dad was missing, and so was Phoebe. Thank God. However this resolved, I didn’t want them anywhere near it.
That meant it was up to me to buy time until backup arrived and pray they would get here soon.
“Your coterie is dead.” I faked Conquest with everything in me. “What do you have to offer?”
“An army.”
“I have armies.”
“Think what we could accomplish if we combined our forces.” Her eyes glittered. “Ezra is dead. His heir is dead. You are the most powerful charun remaining on this terrene, and your coterie is intact.”
She had gotten some of her details wrong, but that worked to my benefit, so I was in no hurry to correct her. I was no longer powerful. There was some debate whether I was still charun. I couldn’t count on my dragon when it might no longer be a part of me. I was just human. Just Luce. And Cole was dead if she figured that out before I got him free.
“I fought to liberate this terrene, not enslave it.”
End Game (The Foundling Series) Page 23
