by Carol A Park
He narrowed his eyes at her. Xiu hadn’t seemed to know anything about what was happening in their world, but Chati did? That seemed…odd.
There was only one god he knew of who had a finger in their world, and that was Danathalt.
And Danathalt was somehow working with the Conclave.
What was it that crazy bug lady had said to him, the last time she had talked to him? That she didn’t have anything personal against him? Or by that, did she mean Chati?
Were Danathalt and his patron friends, even allies?
He hesitated. What help, exactly, would she offer? Could she stop the Conclave from hunting them? Force them to abandon this war and leave the outer regions alone?
Or was this all a ploy to get him to reveal his purpose here so they could be stopped?
He needed to talk to Ivana. Get her take. She had had the advantage of being below the notice of the goddess and so could merely observe.
He, at least, didn’t trust this creature. Xiu was borderline apathetic, but he had helped them get further on their journey, at any rate.
Chati seemed borderline insane.
No, he revised. There was no “borderline” about it.
He bowed to Chati. “My lady is generous, but I need to think on this offer. May my companion and I retire for the evening and speak with you again tomorrow? Our journey has been long.”
Chati sniffed and scratched at her neck scar again. “You may. But leave your servant. I wish to speak with her further.”
Vaughn blinked and glanced at Ivana. He didn’t want to leave her alone with this crazy goddess; he had no doubt she could defend herself against normal foes, but one who could remove and reattach her head at will was beyond normal.
Ivana shrugged and jerked her head, indicating she didn’t care.
So he let himself be led away by the moon-lady, who had reappeared.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Monster
After Vaughn and the xchotli had gone, Thaxchatichan turned her eyes toward Ivana.
Ivana wished she wouldn’t.
Ivana was no stranger to gruesome sights, but someone literally taking off her head, throwing it across the room, and then picking it up and setting it back on again with nary a bat of the eye easily took top marks for the most bizarre.
She had been thankful that up until now Vaughn’s patron had seemingly seen her as unimportant and had ignored her.
Even she was a little nervous as to what this creature intended now.
Thaxchatichan paced closer to Ivana. Was she going to attempt to seduce her now, having—incredibly—failed to seduce Vaughn?
But the goddess stopped in front of her. “What are you?” she asked.
Ivana blinked. “My lady?”
Thaxchatichan flicked her hand. “You are mortal, but you are not one of my siblings’ chosen, nor a xchotli. How did you enter the portal?”
“I don’t know,” Ivana said honestly.
That seemed to aggravate her. She walked around Ivana in a slow circle, looking her up and down. “You lie,” she said in a low, dangerous voice.
“My lady, I do not. I had no intention of coming here, and I don’t know how it happened.”
Thaxchatichan continued to circle her. She narrowed her eyes. “Hmm. Very well.”
Ivana relaxed. She was tired, wrung out, and she just wanted to sleep.
Thaxchatichan’s lips twisted cruelly. “I’ll find out what you really are, why you lie, and we’ll have some fun in the process, won’t we?”
Ivana’s heart sank; she sincerely doubted that.
Thaxchatichan stepped back from her. “Show me your secrets,” she hissed, and then the lights went out.
Even the starlit backdrop was gone; it was pitch black.
Ivana swallowed and began stepping slowly backward. As long as she didn’t turn, she could find the door. It was directly behind her.
Except it wasn’t.
She took one last step back, and when she did, she could see again, and the entire room had changed.
She started. She recognized this place. This was the road outside Lord Kadmon’s gates. She had been here before, recently, and a long time ago.
An illusion, of course. But it didn’t feel like a mere illusion. She turned, slowly, in a circle. Gravel crunched underfoot. Cold air seeped through her thin garment.
The gates opened, and a carriage emerged.
It was only then that she saw the two figures huddled near the gates.
She stepped back again. It felt so real. But she couldn’t be in two places at once. She couldn’t be both the girl at those gates and the woman she was.
Not an illusion—she was hallucinating. She had to be. Chati had done something to her…
The taller figure stepped forward into the road, blocking the carriage.
Ivana’s throat tightened. No. She couldn’t live this again.
She couldn’t hear the words from the distance she stood, but she didn’t need to. They had been emblazoned into her mind over a decade ago, then buried—never forgotten, but rehearsed in her recent nightmares.
Gan Gildas—he hadn’t been a Ri yet, then—stepped out of his carriage.
Her heart quickened. Please don’t make me live this again, she pleaded inside, but she pressed her lips together. She wouldn’t beg this crazy goddess for succor. She wouldn’t.
Her father drew his ceremonial sword.
Despite her efforts, a whimper left her lips. “No,” she whispered. “Don’t. Papa. No.”
Gildas ran him through.
Dream-Ivana threw herself on her father’s body, and real-Ivana wrapped her arms around herself, unable to tear her eyes away, trying to hold back the pain seeping from old scars.
She could hear her own screams now, echoing in her ears.
Her fault.
The scene changed, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
Until she saw what it was now.
Dream-Ivana at night, alone in a clearing with Airell.
Ivana choked back a cry. Even this hadn’t been in her nightmares.
The two embraced, and she threw herself forward to try to grab dream-Ivana, stop her from making the worst mistake of her life, but her hands went right through her.
“Stop!” she screamed. “You idiot girl! Stop!”
Dream-Ivana didn’t stop.
Ivana sank to the ground and wrapped her arms around her knees, forced to watch this sequence live itself out again in front of her.
Her fault.
It changed to another moment. Dream-Ivana stood at the side of a wagon, wrestling with the bonds of her sister, knowing in her heart she would fail to free her.
She was close enough to see the betrayal in her sister’s eyes when dream-Ivana begged her forgiveness and ran, lest she be captured herself.
The scene lingered long enough for real-Ivana to watch the tears flowing down her sister’s face, a moment she had never actually seen.
“Ana!” her sister screamed again after the fleeing figure. “Ana,” she whispered. “I hate you.”
Ivana gasped and scrambled backward. She had no memory of that. Thaxchatichan was planting things in her mind, or her mind was making them up.
No. Thaxchatichan was dredging up her worst fears.
Even with that knowledge, hot tears were on her cheeks.
Her fault.
She sat alone in a tiny room, weeping in the dark.
She and her sister knelt at a family grave, her mother freshly laid out.
She held the body of a tiny infant, born too soon to live.
She stood above a corpse, at her feet the body of a man who had trusted her, and turned away, dead inside.
All her fault.
“Stop this!” she screamed, unable to take it anymore. “I beg you. Stop this!”
The scene flashed back to the first. Gildas got out of his carriage.
Real-Ivana ran forward and fell between her father and Gildas. “Don’t do this,” she begged
her father. “This isn’t your fault. This isn’t your mess to clean up.”
Gildas ran her father through, the phantom sword passing right through her own body.
Ivana, stood, paralyzed. Her father’s body didn’t fall this time. Instead, it turned to her, blood gushing from the wound, and looked directly at her. “What have you become, Ana?”
And her nightmare came to life. Bodies all around her. Her mother, her sister, countless nameless people rose from a lake of blood and surrounded her. “Monster,” they chanted. Monster, they whispered.
She knelt to the ground, curled up in a ball, and covered her head with her arms. She wouldn’t look. She didn’t have to see. She could bury it; she had done it once before…
Monster. Monster. Monster.
“Stop this, please,” she whispered.
“Enough!” a new voice boomed into the room. And then everything vanished.
Everything except the gaping, bleeding wound in her own heart.
She didn’t look up to see who had spoken. She didn’t even care who her rescuer was. She still knelt, trembling, on the ground.
“What purpose do you have here, sister?”
“Entertainment?” Chati’s voice said, saccharinely innocent.
The new voice growled. “Leave playtime for your own,” it said. “You won’t learn what you seek to know from this one. Let her be.” A rustle. “Take her back to her room.”
Two hands on each arm dragged her away because she couldn’t move on her own.
Monster. Monster. Monster.
Vaughn paced in the room, agitated. Whatever Chati had wanted with Ivana, it couldn’t have been anything benevolent, and it had been far too long for his liking.
When the door opened, he spun. Two of Chati’s attendants, but not the moon-lady, pushed Ivana into the room and shut the door behind her.
She stumbled and fell to her hands and knees, trembling.
Alarmed, he rushed to her side. “Ivana! What happened?” Had she been tortured? But to what end? She appeared unharmed, but…
She looked up at him. Her face was tight, and something almost savage flickered across her eyes. She pushed herself to her feet and unbelted her robe, letting it fall open to a clinging short shift she wore underneath.
Heat rushed through his body. Even so, he found himself backing away from her. There was nothing sensual or suggestive in her expression. She stalked toward him and then shoved him back against the wall, pressing herself up against him.
“You want me?” she said, her voice raw and grating. “Take me.” She kissed him, her tongue immediately questing at his lips to part them, and then she pressed her thigh against his groin.
He groaned, and she kissed him again, this time so hard, his teeth bit against the inside of his own lips.
Something wasn’t right. She wasn’t right.
He took her by the shoulders and pushed her back.
“What’s wrong?” she snapped. “Change of heart? Twinge of conscience? I won’t resist. I mean it. Do whatever you want with me.”
He didn’t know what Chati had done to her, but she most definitely wasn’t in her right mind.
He cupped her face in his hands and looked into her eyes. There was something manic there. Something desperate. “No,” he said softly, and then he took an educated guess. “I will not help you abuse yourself.”
She stared back at him.
And then she crumpled.
He caught her as she sank to the floor, one arm around her waist, her back against his chest, and when they were both on their knees, she began to sob.
He hesitated, then wrapped his other arm around her.
She grasped his arms and held them against herself, as if they were a lifeline.
And she wept.
Hot tears splashed onto his arm, her entire body shuddering and convulsing with sometimes silent, sometimes vocalized cries.
He swallowed and tucked her head under his chin. He had no words for her, didn’t even know what had prompted this sudden breakdown, so he simply continued to hold her tightly to himself.
Eventually, her sobs subsided and her shaking stopped.
He held her until she pushed herself away.
He let her go and sat back on his heels.
She stared at the floor for what seemed like an eternity until finally, she lifted red, swollen eyes to his. “I just want to sleep,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. She rose and wrapped her robe around herself again.
He didn’t ask for an explanation. He merely nodded and stood.
She turned her back on him, kicked off her slippers, and curled up on top of the bed of furs.
He picked up one of the blankets and laid it over her.
She grabbed his hand as he withdrew. “Don’t leave,” she said. “Please.”
He hesitated. Then he lay down next to her. After a moment, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back against his chest.
She didn’t resist.
And for the only time in his life that he could remember, he fell asleep with a woman in his arms that he hadn’t slept with.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Uninvited Guests
A heavy pounding woke Vaughn in the middle of the night.
Or at least, he felt like it was the middle of the night. He had lost all track of time in this place.
Who in the abyss is making so much noise? he thought in his half-awake state, and he rolled over to go back to sleep.
The pounding sounded again.
He groaned, and Ivana stirred next to him.
That, more than anything, stirred him to full wakefulness.
Ivana was next to him. They had shared plenty of rooms in their travels together, but never a bed.
More pounding.
The door, he realized belatedly. Ivana sat up, and he rolled out of the bed and pushed himself to his feet.
Before he even had the door open all the way, another almost-but-not-quite human pushed his way into the room—on the tall side of average, but still within a believable range. He appeared young—perhaps in his twenties—with flawless skin the color of burnished bronze that seemed to shimmer when he moved.
He kicked the door shut behind him, and Ivana was on her feet, her hand at her thigh in a split second.
The stranger held up his hands. “I mean you no harm.” He glanced at Vaughn. “We must go—now.”
Vaughn ran a hand through his hair and eyed the man. Compared to everyone else around here, he was downright casual, even normal. He wore a baggy V-neck shirt with pantaloons and a pair of practical leather boots. His eyes were what stood out. They were white, but not white like a bloodbane’s. Vaughn could make out the location of his iris and pupils inside a slight ripple within the white, and then the irises where translucent, almost clear, with a normal black pupil in the center. “I’m sorry, but who are you?”
“A friend,” the man said. “You’re in danger. We must go now.”
Vaughn glanced at Ivana, and she shrugged.
He could well believe they were in danger, but would they be in more or less danger by going with this stranger?
Steel rattled faintly in the hall, and then the door burst open. Half a dozen warriors clad in steel of Chati’s colors—silver, white, and blue—streamed into the room.
The stranger waved his hand at the group, and they disappeared. He grabbed Vaughn’s arm, yanked Ivana over to him, and a moment later began to emit a bright white light from himself.
More soldiers streamed into the room and immediately fell back, squinting as the light grew brighter.
Vaughn’s eyes started to water, and he had to close them.
When he opened them, they were no longer in the guest room.
In fact, based on the distinct lack of silver, white, and blue décor, he didn’t think they were in Chati’s palace anymore at all.
Instead, they were on a wide portico twenty feet up overlooking a grassy plain dotted with flowers of every color of the rainbow;
the sun was shining and there was a light breeze in the air.
Had the stranger just…moved them to some other location, just like that?
Nearby, an enormous, brightly colored bird perched on the railing, and it cocked its head to look at them and then let out a loud trill.
The stranger strode over to the bird and flapped his hand at it. “Oh, hush,” he said.
The bird hopped back and flapped its wings but didn’t fly away. Instead, it squawked several times, followed by another trill and a decidedly defiant look at the stranger.
The stranger sighed. “So much for a discreet entrance,” he muttered.
He turned to face the portico doors, seeming to steel himself for something.
Ivana sensed it as well, for she took a step back and hovered her hand near her thigh.
The portico doors swung open. Another too-tall-to-be-human man strode through; he looked Fereharian, with deep bronze skin like Ivana’s and the stranger’s—though it didn’t shimmer. He wore a sleeveless tunic that hung to his knees and belted at the waist with a cord threaded through with the same brightly colored feathers that were on the bird, creating a feather skirt of sorts over the tunic. More of the feathers were woven into his white hair, which hung to his shoulders in braids. At his chin was a small, tapered goatee; the rest of his face was clean-shaven—and bearing an expression of barely contained fury.
That didn’t bode well.
The stranger immediately fell to one knee and bowed his head. “I beg your forgiveness, Great Father,” he said before the other man could speak. “But I must speak with you—”
Great Father? As in, Zily? Exactly whom they wanted to talk to?
Oh, this definitely didn’t bode well.
“You dare to come here again?” the white-haired god said, pinning the stranger with eyes that shimmered and rippled with constant changes of color. “I expressly forbade you from bothering me any further!”
