She swallowed, then nodded. “Yeah, I do know. Thing is, I’ve spent too long living in limbo, waiting to figure out who I am and what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“And you’ve got that figured out now?” He wasn’t asking to be funny, either.
That got a crooked smile out of her. “Some of it, anyway. And loving you is one of the things I’ve figured out. I didn’t mean for it to happen, didn’t want it to. But I woke up next to you this morning and realized I was exactly where I wanted to be, despite everything. I want to be with you, live with you, combine my life with yours. I want to rip out that gods-awful carpet in the cottage and lay down polished oak, and sneak some smoke motifs in among the hawks. I want to wear your jun tan on my arm, and I want you to wear mine. I want us to fight over what Strike and Leah should and shouldn’t do, and leave all that shit at the door, so it’s just the two of us when we’re at home, no gods, no destiny, no prophecy, just a man and a woman in love.” She paused, looking at him, her grin going even more crooked. “And the thought of that scares the living shit out of you.”
“Yeah,” he said, because it did—not just because of what she’d said, but because he could picture a whole bunch of it, and that brought nothing but panic. He didn’t know how to love her, how to be her mate. He didn’t even know if he wanted to do either of those things. He’d been so certain he was going to buck prophecy that he hadn’t even gone there. “I wish I could give you what you want,” he said finally, knowing that was about as lame as it got. “But I can’t say the words when I don’t know what I’m feeling.”
“Well,” she said after a moment, “it’s like I said before: I might not like what you say some of the time—hell, lots of the time—but I know you only say what you’re thinking. In this case, I’d rather hear the truth than have you knee-jerk an ‘I love you’ when what you really mean is, ‘I want us to keep sleeping together.’ So thanks for the honesty, at least.”
“If . . .” He faltered, not sure what he wanted to say, but knowing it couldn’t be good for them to part like this almost exactly forty-eight hours before the vernal equinox, when she and her magic were supposed to play a major role in their very survival. He finally said, “You know I’ll do anything I can to protect you, right? And I mean anything.”
Her smile went sad. “I know. But the thing is, you’ve already proved your point. The gods—or destiny, or whatever—might control some of what’s going on around us, but they don’t control us as people. They don’t control our hearts. I fell for you because of the man you are, not the one you should’ve been. And if the very things that made you who you are mean that you can’t love, or don’t know how to love, or need more time, or just plain don’t love me, then that’s just my bad timing.” She lifted a shoulder, though there were tears in her eyes now, and her voice broke a little when she said, “Another lifetime, maybe.”
She reached up on her tiptoes and touched her lips to his in a kiss that tasted of farewell. And this time when she walked away, he didn’t go after her. He stood there looking after her long after the door to her suite closed quietly behind her, leaving him alone.
And later, when he lay in bed, equally alone, he stared up at the picture of the sea and sky, and realized for the first time that none of his father’s paintings had any people in them.
Alexis had meant to go straight to bed, but once she was inside her suite she found herself prowling the small space, unable to settle. She was tempted to go find Izzy and invite her for a drink, which used to be her normal routine when she was involved in a relationship implosion, whether as the dumper or dumpee. This was different, though. This was the first time she’d gone all the way to “I love you.”
“Go find Izzy,” she told herself. “She’ll talk you out of it.” But that was the problem, really, because she knew the winikin would try to do exactly that. Alexis, though, wasn’t in the mood to be talked out of loving Nate. She wanted to wallow in it, revel in it, and curse him for being an emotionally stunted asshat, who also happened to be gorgeous, intelligent, more or less rational, a strong counterweight to her opinions on the royal council, and an increasingly powerful mage of the sort she wanted at her back during a fight.
Oh, yeah, and he was great in bed. But still, an asshat. So instead of calling Izzy, she hit the minifridge for the split of decent champagne she’d bummed from Jox and stuck there on the off chance Nate surprised her and they had something to celebrate. “Face it,” she told herself as she tore the foil, undid the cage, and popped the cork, “you didn’t think you’d be celebrating. This is ‘drown your sorrows’ bubbly.”
Not only that, it wouldn’t hurt to anesthetize her growing fear of what was going to happen at the equinox. Up until this point she’d managed to mostly push thoughts of Camazotz to the back of her mind. Now, though, with the clock ticking down and the two prophecies combining to warn her against the Volatile while at the same time urging her to find him, she was stumped . . . and scared.
Figuring that if she were going to drown her sorrows, she might as well do it right, she booted up her laptop and jacked it into some sort of easy listening station, heavy on the instrumentals, and drew a bath and added some bubbles. She swapped out her clothes for her good robe, pinned her hair up atop her head, and took the bottle with her into the bathroom.
Within a half an hour, the champagne and bubbles had eased the physical aches, if not the ones inside. She let her head fall back on the edge of the tub, thinking as she sometimes did of who might’ve lived in her suite before the massacre, and whether she—or he—had ever done what she was doing at that moment: soaking away a shitty day and wishing the future could be something other than what was written.
Thinking that, she drifted off to sleep . . . and dreamed of a dark-haired warrior with a hawk’s medallion and the power to make her heart and mind soar.
Anna was up early the day before the vernal equinox. Okay, in reality she hadn’t slept more than a few minutes at a time the night before, so the concept of being “up” was pretty relative. The equinox was still more than twenty-four hours away, but as she lay in her bedroom at Skywatch beneath a sheet and light blanket, she could feel the power buzzing beneath her skin, feel the visions trying to break through. Yet more than anything she wanted to pull the covers over her head and wait until it was all over. Or better yet, go home and pretend that she was nothing more than human, that the marks on her arm were just tattoos, the yellow quartz pendant just a piece of costume jewelry. She missed her bed, missed her home and her husband. She didn’t want to be where she was, didn’t want to be who she was.
Groaning aloud at the self-pity, she tossed the covers off her face and said sternly, “Get up. Stop being such a girl.”
In her mind, the exhortation echoed in Red-Boar’s voice. The older Nightkeeper had wanted her to be as strong as Strike, if not stronger, wanted her to care as much as her brother did, wanted her to turn away from the modern things she craved and focus on tradition and duty. Don’t be such a girl, he would snarl. Do it again. And though they’d been only pretending to work the spells because the barrier had been offline and there was no knowing whether it would ever come back to life, she’d done as he’d said, and had tried harder and harder to be a good Nightkeeper . . . until the day she’d left for college and hadn’t looked back. Only now she was back, and it wasn’t clear that she was being all that helpful. She’d endangered Skywatch and the Nightkeepers by insisting on keeping Lucius alive even though he was a clear threat. Hell, she’d barely even managed to help during the meeting with Iago, getting a single useful detail out of him when there had been so much more to gather, if only she’d known how. But that was a job for a mind-bender like Red-Boar. Or his son.
It was the thought of Rabbit that finally drove her out of bed. He, like the rest of them, hadn’t asked to be born into this mess. What was more, he’d started off at a serious disadvantage, child to a single parent who’d denied him a true Nightkeeper name and refused to accep
t him into the bloodline until almost too late. Strike and Jox had done their best with the kid, but they’d walked a fine line, trying to help without alienating Red-Boar, who had been antisocial at his best, pathological at his worst.
Then there was Rabbit’s magic, which both awed and scared Anna—a sentiment shared by most of the Nightkeepers and all of the winikin. It might not be fair, but there it was: his magic didn’t play by the rules and neither did he. Was it any wonder most of them had tried not to get too close? That doesn’t make it right, her conscience nudged; he’s just a kid . He was the same age as most of the freshman undergrads in her intro lectures. And he needed help.
Moving slowly, feeling sore all over though there was no reason for it, she dragged on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved pullover and headed for the kitchen.
Izzy met her in the main room, handed her a mug of coffee—cream, no sugar—and aimed her for the stairs that led to the lower level. “Jox says you’re to go down right away.”
“Great,” Anna muttered into her coffee. “I’ve been dressed for, like, three minutes and I’m already late.” But she headed downstairs. She hesitated outside Lucius’s warded door, but then kept going to the adjoining rooms where they’d locked Rabbit and his friend—girlfriend?—the previous night.
Seeing the gold-red shimmer of wards across the doorway and not in the mood for magic, she raised her voice. “Knock, knock? Izzy said you were waiting for me.”
A muffled voice called, “Just a sec.” Magic hummed just behind her jawbone, the red-gold shimmer cut out, and Nate opened the door. “Come on in.”
After what Izzy had said up in the kitchen, Anna was expecting to be the last one there. She hadn’t, however, anticipated how much it would bother her to see Strike, Leah, Jox, Nate, and Alexis looming over Rabbit, who was sitting on the side of a camp cot, wearing track pants and a hoodie and staring at the floor, jaw set in the sort of mulish intransigence she’d always associated with his sire.
His hair had grown out from its skull trim to a military brush, and he was thinner than before, especially through his sharp-angled face, as though the last vestiges of the childhood he’d continually rejected had been burned out of him. His eyes flicked to her momentarily, and she felt him weighing her, trying to decide whose side she was on. Then he looked back down, and she didn’t have a clue where he’d shelved her.
The sight of him was a forcible reminder that he wasn’t a kid at all. Hell, he was light-years from the freshmen she’d just been comparing him to. He was, what, eighteen? Yet at the same time, he was a stronger mage than any of them, save, perhaps, for Iago. And that, she knew, was the problem.
Humans and Nightkeepers alike feared that which they could not control.
Help him, whispered a familiar voice inside her skull, one that she knew was a construct of her own mind, a bit of wishful thinking. Even so, she shot back, I’m going to try. It’s not like he makes it easy, you know.
Besides, she’d already endangered the Nightkeepers by bringing Lucius into the mix. Where did she draw the line?
“Okay,” Strike said, breaking the tense silence. “We’re all here. Let’s get started.” When Rabbit just kept staring at the floor, throat working, the king prompted, “Don’t worry, kid; you’re safe now.
Just start at the beginning and walk us through everything that’s happened since the museum bust.” He took a risk and gripped Rabbit’s shoulder, though the teen wasn’t big on being touched.
Rabbit didn’t shake him off, though, didn’t even react. He just stared at the floor and whispered, “I killed the three-question nahwal.”
Which was so not what any of them had expected him to say. And it so incredibly not good news.
Shock rippled through the room. Strike’s jaw went very tight, and Leah nodded as though she’d figured it’d been something like that; Jox muttered under his breath and cast his eyes upward to the gods. Anna’s stomach knotted, and her breath whistled out as she tried to even conceive of such a thing. She’d nearly died in her one encounter with a nahwal; it was difficult to imagine killing one, impossible to work through the implications besides the most obvious: that there would be no more free answers for the Nightkeepers.
Nate and Alexis seemed to be the only ones who didn’t have any outward response to the news, which seemed odd, given that they were the ones who’d nearly died trying to enact the three-question spell. More, Anna had assumed they’d been planning on enacting the spell again, during the equinox.
It only stood to reason, given their need to find the Volatile.
As her own shock dimmed, Anna gave the two of them a long look, realizing that while they stood side by side, there was a distance that hadn’t been there before, an awkwardness that didn’t bode well for tomorrow’s battle. Alexis might be able to call on the goddess alone, but a Nightkeeper was always stronger with a mate than without, which made it seriously bad timing if they were arguing, or worse, had broken up again. Just as Patience’s and Brandt’s magic had weakened the more they fought, so too would Nate’s and Alexis’s. And frankly, Alexis needed all the magic she could get.
Get a grip, people, Anna wanted to snap. This is a war. Let’s be practical. But the current crop of Nightkeepers hadn’t grown up steeped in the old ways, and didn’t always buy into the expectations of their ancestors’ times. That added a too-human element to what should’ve been a warrior’s life and a soldier’s strategy.
One problem at a time, she warned herself, but felt a skirr of worry at the realization that the members of the royal council weren’t at their best going into the equinox. Strike was messed-up over Rabbit, as was Jox to a lesser extent, and Leah was trying to keep the two of them on an even keel.
They were trusting their advisers to balance them out, perhaps not realizing that Nate and Alexis were having issues of their own. That left it up to Anna to oversee all five of them and bring some perspective, which was exactly what she didn’t want to do. It was like she’d told Red-Boar the year before, when he’d pressured her to rule in her brother’s place: She didn’t want to lead the Nightkeepers. Hell, she didn’t even want to be a Nightkeeper.
But, like all of them, she hadn’t exactly been given much choice in the matter.
“Okay, people, let’s take a breath,” she said, aware that they’d all sort of frozen in the wake of Rabbit’s announcement. “We knew something had happened to the nahwal; now we know what. Let’s move on. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going to get comfortable.”
Ignoring Rabbit’s quick sidelong look and her brother’s scowl, she dropped down to the floor and sat cross-legged.
Seeming to shake himself out of wherever he’d gone in his head, Jox said, “Wait. I’ll get some folding chairs.”
Because gods forbid the king sit on the floor, Anna thought with a kink of amusement at the thought of her little brother, who’d regularly eaten worms and bugs as a child, being unable to sit his ass on the floor.
Nate dropped the ward to let the winikin through, but when he went to reset the guard, Anna said, “Wait. Why isn’t the girl in here? Myrinne?”
“Because it’s not safe,” Nate said immediately. “We don’t know who or what she is.”
“She’s important,” Rabbit said without looking up, the hoodie falling forward to shadow his face.
Anna said, “How so?”
One shoulder lifted. “Dunno. She just is.”
She crouched down and got in the teen’s face. “Your father saved my life twice last year, which means I owe him. Since he’s not here to tell me to take my owesies and shove them, you’re going to have to do it . . . or else you’re going to have to let me help you.”
He looked at her for a second, and she saw a flash of the boy she remembered from years past, one who’d wanted to be a good kid but had always seemed to get in trouble regardless. Then that flash was gone and there was only the pale blue of his eyes, which went hard and dangerous when he said, “I’ll tell you everything, but
you’ve got to promise me that she’ll be okay. I don’t care what she is, or what the witch or Iago did to her; she stays safe. She doesn’t become anyone’s bond-slave, she’s not blood-
bound, and she’s not sacrificed. You let her go free and set her up however she wants, or I’m not talking.”
“Out of the question,” Strike said. “It’s too dangerous.”
Rabbit didn’t even look at the king, kept looking at Anna. “You say you owed my old man? Then make it happen.”
“If we agree to this,” Anna said, emphasizing the “if,” “then you have to swear to mind-wipe her before she leaves—and I mean wipe, not light blocks, not something that you think you’re going to reverse when we’re not paying attention.”
The teen’s face went white, then flushed brick-red. “You knew?” Now he did raise his head. He stared at her full-on. “You knew I could mind-bend and you didn’t tell me?”
“We figured it out after you left,” Anna said. When he kept on glaring, she firmed her voice.
“Rabbit, we guessed. We didn’t know for sure until just now.” He’d confirmed it by his reaction, which was potentially good news for Lucius.
Rabbit looked up at Strike and Jox, and his voice shook when he said, “If you didn’t know about the nahwal , and you didn’t know about the mind-bending, then why didn’t you come looking for me more than that once back at the museum? Did I finally reach my last forgivable fuckup or something?”
Anna started to respond, but Strike cut her off with a sharp gesture and motioned her away from the teen. She backed off and Rabbit stood, letting his hood fall back as the king strode toward him, got in his space. The teen stuck out his chin as if he were looking for a punch.
Instead of throwing a fist or an accusation, though, Strike said, “I tried. Jesus, kid, I tried. We all did. Leah and I couldn’t pick you up, not even a trace. You were off my radar—still are; Iago blocked your ’port lock back at the museum, then let you loose to see what would happen or something. Since I couldn’t lock, we’ve had Carter turning over all the rocks he can think of. Leah’s called in favors. Jox even went to New Orleans to search.” His voice went rough when he said, “We’ve looked at John Does in half a dozen morgues, and thanked the gods each time the body wasn’t yours. We’ve been killing ourselves trying to find you.”
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