“Politics win wars,” Khavah Dantò’s voice echoed in her head.
Aria exhaled, blowing out anger and inhaling patience, even though her entire body shook. “1,2,3…” she counted silently. She couldn’t attack a member of Caeli’s power structure without evidence. “4,5,6…” No one would believe her anyway. “7, 8, 9, 10…” Politics, Aria. Politics.
“Is there something we can help you with,” she said, her smile dripping with sugar and it made her sick to her stomach.
It was hard to discern Ose’s body language due to their mask and concealing clothing so Aria didn’t know what to make of their stance, their head tilted to the side and their hands clasped. “No. This Ose is usually in the service of your greatness, am I not? Such as now. This Ose is here as a messenger from The Great Mother to Ahn.”
Ahn perked up. “Oh? Thought she wouldn’t be talking to me for another week or so tops!” Ahn grinned. “What is the message?”
Ose approached and offered up a thin envelope. “Only this. Reveal nothing.”
Ahn frowned. “That’s usually my motto,” he murmured as he plucked the envelope out of their hands. He ripped the envelope open and fished the out its contents. He read over the lines over and over again, head moving to and fro as he did, and seemed to go a little pale. His eyes jutted left and then right before he took the missive to the edge of the port. Without a word of warning, he tore it into smaller pieces and let the former letter, now confetti, flutter out over the water.
“That was dramatic,” Liam remarked.
“And very necessary.” He turned towards his cousin. “I apologize, we must cut this meeting short. I need to speak with a certain Great Mother…urgently. My Little El, are we still on for Saalu Mane Ata tonight?” The Astral neophyte beamed and nodded. “Be prepared to lose! I need to regain my lead back!” She nodded again, her smile splitting her face in two. “With that, Aria, I bid my departure.”
Aria nodded her consent. “We can talk further at the meeting. I’m sure most of our questions are best answered with the entirety of The Fallen present.”
Ahn gave a quick nod of the head before he motioned for Liam. The Astral bodyguard gave Elle a shrug before he turned and followed.
Aria began to excuse Elle and herself when Ose stepped close to Aria. Aria refrained from recoiling back like Ose was poison. “Your Greatness,” they said. “Can this humble servant have a moment of your time?”
Aria narrowed her eyes but nodded slowly. It was an opportunity. “Of course.” One thing Aria loved were opportunities. “Elle, stay back 200 feet.”
“But–”
“It’s okay. Ose deals in secrets and I don’t want to make them uncomfortable. I doubt anyone off the street is going to attack me but I recently taught you alar, correct? If you think I’m in any kind of danger use it.”
The young woman sighed, her shoulders deflating before she nodded and began walking backward away from them. When she was the two hundred feet back as instructed, Aria smiled. “What is it that you wanted to discuss?”
“Please excuse my rudeness, it’s just that this Ose is curious. Curious to know if you’re really the Aria I once knew.”
That you killed. “I am. I feel as if I fell asleep, dreamed a long dream and woke up when the time was right.”
“Ah,” Ose said, voice rough like skin being scrapped over rocks. “Seems all of the rumors are true, I see.”
Aria raised a brow. “Rumors? You deal in intelligence. How do rumors serve you any good?”
Ose laughed. “All intelligence starts with rumors. When this Ose heard the rumors of your return, so many thoughts came to mind! How wonderful and spectacular an event to have you back. Think of how many people would be anticipating your return! Plans. Plans were made. Plenty of plans.” Ose’s voice darkened for a moment. “What a blessing. The day you died, I mourned so.”
Aria swallowed back her bitter rage. “I’m sure,” she offered.
Ose stepped closer and Aria winced as their burnt smell pervaded the air. “Do you remember much about your death?”
Aria’s eyes narrowed. “I remember enough,” was all she said.
Ose hummed. “To think someone as resilient as you succumbed to a blade handled by an amateur.”
Aria closed the space between them, standing close enough that she thought she could see through the mask. It was very thick and Aria always wondered how Ose saw through it. “How do you know it was an amateur?”
“Everyone is an amateur in comparison to you but…” Ose chuckled. “This Ose know a lot. It’s my job to.”
“You know who killed me?”
Ose’s head inclined back. “Of course I do. But that information costs and the price for that information is far more valuable than money or prestige. More than you could ever offer me…alive.”
The silence and tension and animosity, an animosity Aria still didn’t understand, stood thick between them like a dense fog. Revenge sang sweet in Aria’s blood and the hand that had reached for her sword earlier, itched to grab her spear, thrust hard and pay the consequences later. Ose was a human–the price of killing one was tremendous.
Aria took a step back. “Doesn’t matter who killed me. They tried something foolish and thought they got away with it, thought they’d rid Caeli of my existence for good. The joke is on them.”
“Indeed. This Ose does agree. If I had killed you, I’d be very cross,” they noted, their voice low and dangerous. It would be remiss of Aria to not notice Ose’s ownership of words, a slip, an error…or an intentional threat. “You made a fool out of many people.”
“It was my pleasure.” Aria had collected all the information Ose seemed willing to give and with that had no more use for them. They said ‘many people’. Was my death a coup? How many conspired to see me dead? Why did they involve my son?
She couldn’t ask those questions because she knew Ose wouldn’t tell. At this point, she just wanted to be away from them and their disgusting smell, and meditate. Her rage would not do anyone any good.
“Elle,” Aria called out. The Astral bodyguard’s head snapped in their direction. “We are leaving.”
“Be careful, Your Greatness,” Ose said as Aria turned from her to leave. “Things will be much more dangerous for you.”
Aria rounded on her. “Stop calling me Your Greatness. It’s not my damn name. And another thing,” Aria said, the stiff veneer of maturity slipping a bit and pettiness taking over. “That “This Ose” shit is really weird. If you ever wonder why you don’t have friends, it’s that. And the mask! And the gloves, for The Creator’s sake! It’s hot as a bear’s ass out here! And you STINK.”
Aria’s payback for their terrible discussion was hearing Ose sputtering as she joined Elle at her side.
“Is everything…” she paused and looked over Aria’s shoulder, “okay?”
Aria smiled. She didn’t want to alarm Elle or give her and anyone else a reason to distrust Ose. Not until could prove what she knew. “No. Just…conversation. Politics. All the crap I hate.” She clapped the young woman on the shoulder. “Okay! Would you rather eat or spar?”
Elle's eyes lit up. “Spar,” she whispered reverently.
“Sparring it is. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER FIFTY ONE
“I know you enjoy that I’m a secretive bastard but I thought we were working on transparency going forward. You did say that didn’t you?”
“Nope. Never said that.”
Ahn opened his mouth with a retort but instead slumped. “Where did I get that from?” he murmured to himself.
“Again, no clue but Ahn, I am in the middle of a like… really important meeting. What do you want?” Khavah Dantò said. Khavah Dantò’s vessel was now Spring Dantò and with Spring Dantò came the vernacular and personality of a teenager. Penume stood right behind her and he could see her mischievous amused smirk over Khavah’s shoulder. Damn woman.
“Yes,” he hissed. “You want me,” he thumbed his chest, “to
lie to my cousin?”
“I wouldn’t call it a lie,” Khavah said, flicking the jewel hanging down from the center of her bright head wrap.
“It is a lie and it’s a very huge, big, gigantic lie!”
“Omission of the truth.”
“What do you think she’s going to do when she finds out that we knew all along her son was alive? Not only is he alive, but the leader of The Eleven, the very group we summoned her back from la-la land to fight! Of course I have to tell her!”
“You can’t and you won’t,” Khavah Dantò countered. “The moment Aria finds out about Azrael is the moment we lose her. She’ll go batshit. Plus, she won’t even see him. We never saw Shemhazi’s ugly mug until the end when he was forced to fight.”
Ahn resisted the temptation to roll his eyes. “Are you summoning the Nonpareils?”
“We can’t,” Penume offered as she clasped her hands behind her back. “They haven’t told Choe Yeong that Aria is back and there is no plan on doing it until the War is won. In order to summon them, we would have to explain that his mate was reincarnated and why.”
“You seem to have some sort of aversion to explaining things.”
“Well,” she continued, “we did promise them that their fighting days were over,” Khavah added.
“Listen to how stupid that sounds!” Ahn threw up his hands. “We aren’t going to summon the freaking Nonpareils to fight in the freaking war? They are the strongest of us!”
“You want to summon Hatshepsut and tell her we couldn’t manage a group of rebels on our own? ‘Your eternal retirement period is over, you guys, so like come up here and save our asses…again. Oh yeah, tell Choe Yeong that we summoned his mate from the dead to help and forgot to tell him.’ That’s going to go over so smooth, dude.”
Ahn did roll his eyes this time. “She is going to be angry, yes but–”
“Angry? She might fight with The Eleven just to prove a point! No, we stick with the plan. Aria does not find out about Azrael, Choe Yeong does not find out about Aria, and no one, not Hatshepsut, not Kato Kinto, and definitely not those two bird braid idiots, Bokhtar and Delir, are to know about any of this.”
“What about Gozen? She’s pretty level-headed.”
Khavah raised her hand as if she were going to smack him and Ahn relented.
“Fine. I want it on the record that I was totally against this. Totally, totally, against this so that when she starts whacking off heads left and right, at least mine will be hacked off last. Because the moment she faces Azrael on the battlefield, we are all as good as dead.”
CHAPTER FIFTY TWO
Grand Capitol Room
Elysian, Caelian Territory
Aria rolled her eyes. She didn’t hide it. To make sure they knew she was rolling her eyes, she added a painfully loud exhale to go with it. Khavah, who sat to her left, clenched her fist and her jaw and if Aria could read minds, she would see that if she could, she would probably like to clench Aria too.
“Is there a problem, Aria?” she said, her words seeping out between of her lips as if it were the last wisp of her patience.
“Yeah,” she said, placing her head on her fist. “I thought this was a meeting about the information my cousin and his team has discovered. We’ve been talking the colors of napkins for this feast for two hours. Don’t you have like…a napkin color picker somewhere under that skirt?”
Yusuf snorted into his cup of tea but a hot glare from his mother, back to Winter Dantò, had him rushing to fix the smile on his face. “She does have a point,” he said after he composed himself. He placed his cup down on the platter and a servant came and refilled it. He smiled at her and winked, a minuscule flirt, which for a notorious cad such as Yusuf, was rare. Aria guessed his mother’s presence smothered his need to be …well, him.
“I second that notion,” Song chimed in. “I mean as excited as I am to see Aria’s stupid face again, I’m hoping I wasn’t called back here, early might I add, to discuss how loudly we are going to trumpet her birth…re-birth? Her being a zombie.”
“Zombie? It’s a good thing we called you back,” Gadriel sniffed. “Another year or two down there and you would have come back speaking all kinds of earthly colloquialisms none of us can understand.”
“Stop showing your age, Gaddy,” Song rejoined, making a face at one of the elder angels on the council.
Gadriel offered her his profile in a huff and Khavah raised a hand for quiet. “Ahn, if you could please,” she said, looking to her right. “Relay your information before this meeting devolves into its usual antics. I swear to The Creator! I now understand why it takes so long for me to get reports!”
“Nah,” Ryuu said. “Your reports are late because Sariel is a terrible note taker.” His large frame wasn’t made for the, as he put it, “dainty” velvet chairs that lined the floating metal table large enough to accommodate just about everyone in Caeli. His chair was larger and resembled a throne more anything else. Ryuu liked it. Ryuu didn’t like a lot of stuff so nobody bothered him with the fact that it was ugly as hell.
Sariel, the third eldest council member, obviously took offense to that, if going by how her face went red, matching her hair, and the way she said, “Outrageous! I take offense to that!”
“Ahn,” Khavah stressed. “Now? Please?”
Aria leaned forward on her elbows as her cousin stood. He picked up a halo from the table and pressed some information onto its surface. A large clear paneled box lowered to the center of the table and hovered there.
“I have good news and I have terribly horrible news. Pick your poi–” Ahn’s speech was interrupted when the doors to the Grand Capitol room were pushed open in a flourish and Anais and Pythia Phi entered the room. She saw Ahn stiffen and Bon Baji fail at not sneering.
Aria barely glanced at her.
Most people had polarizing opinions of Anais. They either loved her, as Parker and everyone at the Temple did–even her Babu Tito had been absolutely bewitched by her. Or completely hated her–such as the rest of the members of The Above. Aria didn’t care one way or another about her. Anais was Anais. She respected her strength and tried to ignore all of the other annoying qualities about her overbearing personality.
“Don’t mind me,” she said, taking a seat. “I’m standing in for Dennes. He has something to settle at Be’er Sheeba.”
“Where is your husband?” Khavah asked.
Anais shrugged. “Sick or something. I haven’t seen him all day. Is Vethi here? She should know,” Anais threw out, pursing her lips.
“Vethi is handling something for me,” Song informed. “A light arrow went missing.”
“Yes, I know. I was being…,” she sighed. “Go ahead with your meeting.”
“Glad you could join us, Anais,” Bon Baji said, between clenched teeth. “Of course you’re not interrupting by showing up two hours late.”
“I didn’t think I needed your permission,” she maintained, her voice ripe with venom. Her face brightened a moment later, a smile across her face. “However I am glad to be welcomed.” She looked around. “Pretend I’m not here.”
“I am always a person to look a serpent in the eyes,” Ahn hissed looking at Anais, “before it strikes me down so I’ll give you all the unfortunate news we’ve discovered first.”
“Subtle,” Ara deadpanned.
Ahn smiled. “I do what I can.” He began tapping on the halo, his finger dancing and flying across it until three images appeared on the screens. “This is a sample Marcus was able to smuggle to us from a mass manufacturer of The Eleven. What we are dealing with is a souped-up form of Qeres, cultivated in their labs for the last decade. The Eleven have been nice enough to call it “Triple 6, T6 or Angel Killer”. Has a ring to it if a horrendously painful death is your thing.”
Ryuu narrowed his eyes. “Qeres isn’t painful. It’ll make you sick, weaken you, sure, kill you if you’re not careful but it doesn’t hurt. It would have to be an extremely large dose for burnout.�
��
“They’ve turned it into a pathogen. Qeres is just the base. They’ve concentrated the formula, quadrupled the thermogenic compound and introduced a few things we can’t identify. We’ll need to run tests. So with T6, instead of falling into an uneasy coma or puking your guts out over the course of a few days, if the poison enters your bloodstream and your healing system fails, the thermogenic found in it literally burns you alive from the inside. Quickly. I’m talking minutes…seconds.”
There was an audible gasp from around the table. Aria stared at the screen, watching the vial of gold liquid rotate on screen, her feelings just as muted as she was.
“Two.” The picture changed to a vial of silver liquid. “Despite our ignorance of how they plan to breach the Blood Border, we do know they are going to try. They’ve recruited an army. A sizable one, then filled the damn the ranks with humans.”
Gadriel looked over his teacup before taking a long sip. “We fight on behalf of humans, not against them.”
“Explain the Army of the Fallen, then,” Elle said from her position behind Aria. Bon Baji’s Astral bodyguard, Dre, and Parker’s guard, Bolden stared at her, shocked she would speak out. Seff’s guard, Nikki, opened her mouth to reprimand her, but Liam raised his hand as if it were okay and the rest fell back in line.
“The Army of The Fallen supplicates an already existing army of humans in fighting others. Not because we chose to, but because, just with like everything else, anomalies,” Liam intoned.
“This is different,” Sariel supplied. “We helped, yes, but it was mostly left in the hands of humans. How are we supposed to fight against them? We’ll slaughter them. It isn’t our way.”
A Third of the Moon and the Stars Struck Page 33
