Leviathan's Rise

by Bokerah Brumley

  “Change,” I whispered. “Please change.” I couldn’t murder a defenseless woman.

  Jane shook her head. “Do what you have to. I won’t blame you, but I won’t change. I never meant to murder your mate.”

  I had no vengeance to bestow. Only fury over her deranged attempt to kill me that wound up killing my mate. The eventuality that Arún had prepared for. The wound that disappeared the moment I reunited with him.

  And then Vic was beside me, stroking my hair and pulling me away from Jane. “Wings, I know you don’t want to do this.”

  I slid to the side. What had I done?

  I glanced around the room. The Librarian, Lev, Mara, and even Jason stared at me with horror etched into lines of their faces. They looked as though they were watching a wild lion devouring a child, and their reaction crumbled the remaining shards of resolve.

  Something fluttered in my belly, and warmth spread through me.

  The babe. My child was trying to reach me.

  Arún’s baby.

  Love warred with bitterness. Mother and daughter sensations wrapped me as they had when daylight broke over the horizon. All fight drained from me.

  In that moment, one word broke through.

  Mama.

  A sob caught in my throat, and I pressed my hands over my eyes. Maybe I didn’t want to wear another stain of death on my soul. Maybe I wasn’t strong enough to pay a blood debt. I didn’t want to be that person.

  Would taking another life alter me? Wound me? Wound our baby?

  Arún had already known. It changed everything.

  I fled the room and wrapped my wings around me like a cocoon as I ran. The door clanged shut behind me. Vic yelled something, but I didn’t stop.

  20

  Confessions

  Mara

  Woe’s wing-quivering exit had been magnificent. It had made them all forget what Jane and I saw in my memories. Maybe I could slip out while they all glared at one another.

  I eased away from the small group, backing carefully toward the door. I had to keep my options open.

  I envied Woe’s passion. Right or wrong, she’d taken a stand. While I spent my time waffling between trusting a crazed woman to keep her promise and wishing to join the family I had stumbled into.

  She spoke the truth she had. With the kind of passion I’d been missing since the Boss clamped the bracelet around my ankle.

  I’d give anything to save my sister. But I had caused the rift in the family, and the truth stung. My shoulders drooped.

  Jason cleared his throat, breaking the stunned silence that Woe left in her wake.

  “Well,” Jason said. “That was…”

  “Explosive,” Lev rumbled.

  Vic grimaced. “Unnecessarily so.”

  Jason spun toward her. “How do you figure?”

  “You had no right to do what you did to her.” Vic drew herself to her full height and crossed her arms, her eyes flashing. “You should have asked her first.”

  The air snapped with frustration. Jane studied her fingernails, already resigned to accept whatever consequences came as a result of being coerced by the Boss. Admiration swelled in my breast, but I took a step back into the shadows of the bookshelves.

  Jason lifted a brow. “The safety of our group—the balance of the city— has been my job for more years than you’ve been around. You can’t possibly know the weight of that responsibility. I do what I have to do.” His mouth twisted, and pain cast a shadow over his ire. “No matter how much it costs me. I won’t be questioned by you.”

  “Who else will?”

  “Will what?”

  “No, Vic,” Lev began.

  “Who else will question you, Jason? You keep doing things to push Woe harder and harder. She’s made to be like you. Okay with the cost of the next objective.” She glared, her eyes glassy with unshed tears. “No matter how it tears her heart.”

  “That’s enough, Vic,” Lev thundered. “You don’t understand what it’s been like waiting for something, anything for one hundred and fifty years. What he did, he did for me.”

  Lev’s gaze moved to me.

  At that, the Librarian’s eyes widened. He tugged on his mustache and winked out. Altercation made him as nervous as it did me. I moved to the edge of the room.

  Everybody else in here ran toward it with open arms.

  “Use her? Use Woe? That’s the farthest thing from the truth,” he said. “I had to do this no matter how Woe answered.” He tilted his head. “Better to apologize than ask forgiveness.”

  Vic crossed her arms. “That’s a nonsense excuse.” Her gaze narrowed. “And you know it.”

  At that, Jane raised a hand. “Since I took part in the intrusion, I must offer my apologies.” Jane dipped her chin and studied her feet. “I was told Woe knew and approved my presence here.”

  Jason flinched, and Lev turned ashen.

  “You lied?” Vic’s voice rose to a shriek, and I wanted to melt into the wall.

  “Jane wouldn’t have come otherwise, and we wouldn’t have been able to find out what we know,” he said.

  Each harsh word landed like a whip’s lash on my heart. I squeezed my eyes closed. If I let it go on, I would be the reason another family broke. Despite how much I wanted my sister, I didn’t know that I could bear it.

  Vic glared, and Lev scowled, drawing his pipe from this pocket. Jane waited nearby, hovering on the edge of some decision I couldn’t figure out.

  And Woe was gone. All of them were pieces of a whole that crumbled.

  This is what the Boss wanted. This fracture. This rift. This is all my fault.

  In the silence, the muscle in Jason’s cheek worked, flexing faster than his heart was probably beating. He turned toward me and bared his teeth, his expression wolfish. “We had to find out what she knew.”

  Everyone else turned toward me, their expressions ranged from curious to furious. But Lev’s impacted me most. He considered me with an ocean’s worth of sorrow, and it pulled at his cheeks, his shoulders, his head. His sadness lapped against the edges of my heart and knocked on the wall I had tried to build to protect me from caring about the consequences of my quest to bring the Keepers into the Boss’s trap.

  “We know you’re not telling the truth,” Lev said, finally.

  Jason growled something ugly.

  “Maybe it’s time for you to tell what you know.”

  My sister would be the one to suffer, but I couldn’t live out the lie anymore. I couldn’t do that to the family that—under different circumstances—I would have liked to join.

  Jane pursed her lips. “We still haven’t told them what we saw.”

  “What you saw. I knew it had been there all along,” Jason said.

  Lev sighed and settled in his wingback chair. The Librarian still hadn’t reappeared.

  I stepped out of the shadows and into the midst of them. They turned the fury of their glares toward me, and my knees quaked.

  “The block was only to keep her,” I pointed to Jane, “from discovering the real purpose behind my arrival.”

  Vic snorted. “You four have a good time sorting out this mess.” She stalked toward the exit. “I’m going after Woe.”

  Jason marched to his desk and took a seat behind it. He struck a presidential pose, and I wondered if he intended to issue judgment, complete with a gavel.

  When the door closed behind Vic, I shivered.

  It reminded me of the sound of a jail cell door slamming shut.

  21

  Help

  Woe

  Jane deserved to die for the things she’d done, but I couldn’t kill her while my baby watched. I could not judge her, and I would not be the sword that took her life.

  Cold air rushed over my face as I climbed toward the clouds. I turned and dove toward New Haven City.

  Perhaps I deserved death, too, for the lives I’d taken. The thought brought an acrid taste to my mouth, and I flew home as fast as my wings could carry me.

&
nbsp; In broad daylight, I landed in the alley next to the luxury apartment building and strolled around the corner. As yet, the doorman hadn’t discovered my secret. I lived there when I wasn’t at the Cavern. As Arún’s wife, I had inherited his penthouse when he’d died. I waited at the glass door until a buzzer sounded, then pushed it open and stepped inside.

  “Already called the elevator,” the cheerful doorman quipped. “Can I get you anything else, Mrs. Woe?” Dressed in an old-fashioned bellhop uniform, Sam had been the doorman since a few weeks before Arún’s “death.”

  “No. Thanks, Sam.” I swallowed and limped across the marble floor, hoping he wouldn’t be in a chatty mood.

  Sam frowned. “Ma’am, are you alright?”

  No, I’m not alright.

  I sniffed back another gush of tears. “I’m just tired. Don’t worry.”

  “Well, you know, Mr. Arún asked me to look out for you, Mrs. Woe.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be fine.” I had to be fine. There wasn’t another option.

  The elevator dinged as the doors slid open. I pressed my thumb to the pad Vic had installed. A double beep sounded as I stumbled over the threshold, and for a moment, I thought Sam would dash to my rescue, but he’d already turned his attention to a parcel delivery man.

  Thank god.

  The lift closed behind me, and I pressed the button for the top floor. I stayed in Arún’s home to feel closer to him, but tonight, he felt farther gone than ever before. Why had he gone?

  I licked my lip and tasted blood. Dabbing at my mouth, my fingers came away crimson-tipped. The injury must have come from my fight with Jane.

  The elevator door opened in the center of the apartment. Suddenly, I had to know how Ishka was handling her brother’s death and resurrection.

  Once inside, I sent the lift back to the ground floor. The thought of food turned my stomach, so I crossed the lush carpet to the bedroom instead. I grasped several geodes from Arún’s shelves and positioned them on the floor so they were all touching in a sort-of star pattern. Colors shot from each geode and mixed until a rectangle appeared against the only white wall in the room.

  A portal opened, creating a window in Eilean Ren, the capital of Fae realm. Arún taught me a portal viewing trick so I could see him anytime I wanted.

  Since I did not intend to visit, the portal geodes showed me an image of the Far world. Beginning a distance outside the city, the light spire broke the horizon line and marked the royal home where Arún and his sister had grown up. Throughout the realm, Fae strolled the streets, awash in unique shades of magic.

  Ishka.

  I pushed that one word toward the viewing gateway until the landscape flowed past me. I hadn’t checked on her since I had taken Arún’s body home for the royal burial that his title demanded. Colors muddled together as the scenery changed from outlying fields to castle.

  Once over the thick wall, my motion decelerated, and I dropped down to float over the beautiful gardens. Over a shorter interior wall, and then I hovered above a circular courtyard. Beneath my vantage point, Ishka worked in the center of a private garden. Even paler than Arún had been, she remained lithe where Arún had been muscular, but they shared a similar tall height.

  A dark Fae man lounged in a fabric hammock behind her, reading. That was a development I hadn’t heard about.

  Ishka hummed a song I didn’t recognize as a family of Hum-fairies flitted about her, darting in and out of a small house that hung from one of the lower branches. A young Fae girl danced beneath the branches of the tree, nearly glowing with joy. Happiness shone on Ishka’s face. Yet, more than that, contentment did, too.

  Arún.

  I commanded the portal, and the image swooped upward and away from Ishka’s bliss. The scenery changed and blurred from the speed of movement.

  Arún kneeled on the beach, sifting through sand grains and rounded bits of colored glass. The muscles in his back flexed with each movement. In the distant morning fog, a bright red bridge stretched across a bay.

  He must not have found the evil squid yet, or he’d be home, but I hadn’t expected to find him making sand castles on the beach.

  I miss you.

  He froze and glanced over his shoulder.

  He turned toward me, his arms outstretched. I miss you, he mouthed, and then he blew a kiss.

  I couldn’t hear him back, and I would go mad… waiting.

  With my toe, I moved one of the portal stones, and the vision disappeared, a blank wall in its place.

  Longing and grief coursed through me I needed to be…

  Somewhere else for a while.

  If only I could tell Ishka about my pregnancy, if only I could have a guarantee that she wouldn’t tell her parents about their grandbaby. If I could trust myself to not give away news of the baby, Ishka would welcome my visit, and I could stay in Arún’s old apartment. I could catch up on the dark stranger in her garden.

  The Fae Blight made her sterile and knowing Arún had a child would have pleased her more than anything.

  But I didn’t trust me most of all. Especially after the mess with Jane. I decided I wanted to pursue peace. Then, the first moment I could, I attacked her and begged her to fight back. My emotions weren’t dependable. My behavior would follow.

  If I visited Ishka, I could avoid the mess of everything in New Haven City. I wouldn’t have to see Jason or Jane or deal with them all checking on me.

  But I would only be trading it for a whole new set of problems, and it wasn’t fair to ask Ishka to keep something like that from her parents.

  To combat loneliness, I stayed with Vic more often. With the recent events, that was out of the question. The penthouse apartment was too large and too empty without someone to share it with. Otherwise, I didn’t really have any place I could go.

  The buzzer sounded at the door and interrupted my melancholy. I pressed the com button. “Tell the priest to go away.”

  “It’s not a priest.” Sam sounded confused. “It’s a woman.” He paused. “Do you need a priest?”

  “Hello, Wings.” Vic’s voice brought tears rushing to my eyes.

  I sniffed. “Never mind about the priest, Sam. Send her up.”

  While I waited, I stared out the window at the view of the city. Then I stared into the empty fridge. Just as I considered staring at Eilean Ren again, somebody pounded on my door.

  “Just a minute,” I yelled.

  A muffled voice answered, then the handle jiggled. A double beep sounded, and the door swung open.

  Vic stood there, dressed in jeans and a stained t-shirt. For once, she looked…average. The realization troubled me, but I didn’t let on. She held two bottles.

  Lifting the empty one, she said, “I slipped something in Sam’s drink. He won’t remember a thing about me tomorrow.” Lifting the other, she said, “You’ll need this. I’m surprised you aren’t doubled over already.”

  I smiled. “I’m glad you came, Vic.”

  But it was good to see her, and since I’d gone so long without the fizz-tonic, maybe that meant I wouldn’t have hyperemesis gravidarum for the entire pregnancy. Extreme morning sickness wasn’t the romantic side of being pregnant. I glanced at the liquid. I didn’t want to spend the next however-long on the couch, waiting for the room to stop spinning.

  “Thanks,” I said, coming close enough to reach for the tonic.

  Vic yanked it away from me. “First, hear me out.”

  I leaned back and crossed my arms. “What is it?”

  She sighed. “Lev needs help.”

  “Lev?”

  “More than you know,” she said. “Can I come in?”

  I didn’t answer her but motioned to the living area. I settled in the farthest corner of the couch. The thick carpet muffled her steps.

  She plopped onto the end of the couch. “You know Mara?”

  “The white-haired woman?”

  She nodded and handed me the fizz-tonic. “When Jane tried to eat her, she figured out Mara h
ad a toy that somehow belonged to Lev.”

  I couldn’t help the gasp that escaped my lips.

  Vic eyed me. “Jane decided not to eat Mara. Instead, Jane sent her to talk to us, hoping that it would earn some brownie points with you.”

  “With me?” I hopped up and started to pace. “She tried to kill my mate. How would a toy even begin to make up for that?”

  Vic raised a hand and tugged on an earring. “I’m telling the story. I won’t argue with you about her motivations.”

  “Fine,” I said, settling in a different chair that gave me a better view of Vic’s face. “Go on.”

  “Mara has some sort of memory block on memories from her life.”

  “It’s a trap,” I muttered.

  “Tell me something I don’t know. They all know it, too.” Vic shot me a look. “It was the only option Lev has had in years, so he took it. Jason went along as wingman. After they got back, they found Jane and asked her to help, the same way Arún helped Jason with remembering Frank’s death.” She walked to the window. “That’s the summation what you walked in on.”

  Curiosity got the better of me. “Did it work?”

  With her back to me, Vic nodded. “Not only did it work, but Lev and Mara are planning a trip to his hometown.”

  I won’t ask about Jason. I won’t ask about Jason.

  Vic blew on the window and drew a heart in the condensation. “Jason is beside himself.”

  I frowned. “How can you tell?”

  “Everybody in the Athenaeum is mad at him.”

  At my look, she grimaced. “When he’s miserable, he tries to drag everybody with him into his misery. It’s been his way for as long as I’ve known him.”

  “He deserves it.”

  “I don’t disagree with you there.” Inside the heart, Vic drew a hairy face. Probably one of her friends from the Himalayas.

  “What does any of that have to do with me?”

  “Lev wants to apologize to you. He wants you to meet Mara, and he wants to ask you a question.” Vic grinned at me over her shoulder and wagged her eyebrows. “I think they’re sweet on each other.”