Engraved: Book Five of The St. Croix Chronicles

by Karina Cooper

  When it came again, I flattened myself against the wall on the far side of an entryway into a dark room and held my breath.

  Snuffling. As though a hound of hell were searching for a scent to follow.

  I’d heard this same thing many a time, often folded into nightmares fueled by my opium use.

  Ashmore used to visit with his dogs, and I had feared him at the time—feared his presence as though he were a terrible demon of hell come to take my soul. I had not known him truly, too far gone in my own fancies to care, nor had I known that he traveled often with great big beasts, shaggy and friendly and entirely too smart for their own good.

  They sounded just like this when they put noses to the ground and inhaled all in their path.

  And like the dogs, I had no doubt the thing the Ferryman had become would find me.

  Heart in my throat, I did not waste the time to pray. I lobbed my weight off the wall and ran, hoping I could trust my senses enough not to trip, desperate to escape the same unholy thing that had tested Ishmael Communion.

  In my wake, I heard a snarl, a sudden yelped awareness, and fear took over.

  I don’t know how I navigated the turns, how I found the room without losing my way as I had before, but I did.

  I all but fell into it, collided with crates so familiar as to draw a hallelujah from me in welcome relief, and kicked shut the door behind me.

  The one on the far end remained wide, and as I scrabbled for the latch, I imagined another beastly Ferryman filling the space behind me.

  The bolt slid home just as the full weight of a man given undue strength slammed into the panel.

  It shuddered.

  The latch twisted and bent.

  I stumbled backwards, ran into a stacked tower and sent it clattering to the floor. Glass shattered in rough-hewn boxes, phials spilled out like pallid diamonds in the dark, and the scent of something spicy, bitter and altogether familiar filled my nose.

  It was the same that tainted the air when Osoba had crashed into the crates below our battleground.

  As I thought. Whatever it was the Veil had created, it had done so in bulk.

  Working quickly, I seized the edge of another stacked crate and pushed it into the door bowing beneath every hammering blow. Crate after crate leaned against it, and some fell from the slipshod barrier, casting more glass, shattering more phials and spilling more of the murky liquid.

  I held my breath as the air turned rich with the pungent brew.

  It crawled into my nose and eyes, burned and blossomed like a flowery warmth.

  That I knew, too.

  What was it with some of the more powerful alchemical compounds and its reliance on opium? My father’s had utilized it, this creation used it. Its presence indicated a certain necessity for separating the body and the soul, and that now seemed terrible to me.

  Throwing the crook of my elbow over my nose and mouth, I forged through the mess for the far door. I needed a match, a lamp or something.

  All but blinded by the biting fumes, I did not see the hands that reached for me, or the shadow that peeled from the hall at my left.

  A blue spark formed in the watery haze my vision had become.

  “Watch out!” Hawke’s voice rebounded in the dark, and as though my instincts knew what he demanded, I dropped to the ground and rolled away.

  The blue spark turned into a flame, and the hands I had not seen, attached to a Ferryman who had not been so impulsive as to lose his humanity to the serum offered his brethren, began to beat wildly at clothing suddenly caught fire.

  He screamed.

  At the other end of the storage room, a howl shrieked in rage.

  I sprawled with my back half against the hallway wall, fingers scrabbling for purchase as I struggled to peel myself from the floor.

  Hawke bent into my sight, his hair a filthy tangle, grime smeared over his skin, and bared his teeth at me. “Damn you,” he snarled.

  Not the finest welcome I’d ever received, but expected.

  The Ferryman’s body jerked and writhed, a walking filament of flame, and the fire burned away at all the shadows left.

  I flinched, shuddering; the awful sound, the stench of burning flesh, the relief at finding Hawke alive and the fear of what it meant all proving too much for the last of my reserves.

  When the Ferryman’s body jerked back the way I’d come, vanished into the room, I clutched at Hawke’s shoulders and rasped, “The serum.”

  He did not pause to question my meaning.

  Plucking me from the floor, he cradled me against his chest and ran.

  The man’s screams abruptly ended.

  In our wake, it seemed as though all the air was sucked from the corridor. A dry, eerie prickling needled my skin, and as I clutched Hawke’s shoulders, I watched a nascent crimson flicker as it crept into view.

  Because it would cost us both in speed if I tried to be put down, I wrapped my legs tightly around his waist, clasped my hand at the sweaty skin where his shoulder met his neck, and yelled in his ear, “Run!”

  A labored snarl was my answer.

  The explosion began in the storage room and whipped like a river of bruised flame down every corridor available to it. The whole shuddered around us, like an earthquake, and sweat bloomed on both of us as a bitter, searing heat lashed in either direction.

  I felt a scream rise as the fire whipped after us, faster and faster.

  We fell into the pens, and it was I who had the presence of mind to kick closed the door and brace for the impact that would come.

  It was Hawke who utilized the gift that I had so ignorantly disbelieved.

  He needed no words to shape it. Unlike Ashmore’s Hamaxa, the protection Hawke crafted seemed less of a shield and more of a fierce strength. He flattened me to the stone floor, covered me with his own body. Bracing his feet against the door, he forced my face against his chest as the fireball formed of noxious alchemical creation and sorcerous flame slammed into the barrier.

  Heat pooled around the edges. The animals trapped inside the cages on either side of us reared and snarled, roared in mingled panic. The smell of scorched hair and fur filled the pen, and it grew so hot that I had no choice but to squeeze my eyes closed lest they bubble and froth. All I could do was cling to Hawke as he protected my flesh with his own body.

  It seemed like an eternity.

  In truth, it must have lasted only a few seconds.

  Silence once more descended.

  Hawke stirred above me. Something soft fluttered to my face, and I opened my eyes to find bits of hay and char floating in the air around us.

  A faintly blue shimmer clung to the dust motes left twinkling in the vacuum.

  Hawke’s eyes, as blue as those motes, filled all of my sight.

  His mouth, always so harshly shaped, opened, but before he could allow any number of hurtful things to fall from it, I captured his nape in one shaking hand and sealed his lips with a kiss.

  A groan began deep in his chest, half a growl.

  Bracing both forearms on either side of my head, letting all his weight crush me to the floor, Hawke swept his tongue between my lips and kissed me so hard, and so thoroughly, that all my defenses crumbled.

  And with them, the only thing allowing me to stay upright.

  Battered, bruised, aching from head to toe, I gripped his hair in both hands. The last I saw as my eyes closed was the blatantly possessive gleam in his.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I woke feeling as though I’d been battered in a street brawl and left the loser.

  A dull thud kept ringing in my head, a rhythmic pattern that seemed all at once soothing and too loud. It mirrored the thrum of pain lancing from forehead to heels.

  I stirred, groaning.

  A rough hand caught my head before I could move it. “Stay.”

  My eyes flew open.

  The pen had not changed, sprinkled with ash and scattered hay, but the temperature had eased. A stiff breeze smelling ov
ermuch of smoke cooled my skin.

  We sat at the far side, just below the still broken window. Hawke was propped against the wall, and I curled at his side as though he were meant to be a pillow.

  A hard one, for sure, for he had not been made a soft man.

  Yet the arm braced behind my shoulders protected me from the harsh stone, and the cushion of chest beneath my head was so endearingly provided that I had trouble rationalizing the intent.

  “The animals,” I said instead, a rasp.

  “A little seared, but alive,” he told me. He sounded weary, and still too strained.

  “You?” I caught at the hand splayed over my head, tugging it aside so I could lift my face to see for myself.

  “A little seared,” he repeated, the faintest curve tugging at a corner of his mouth, “but alive.”

  If only barely that. He looked rather more like death warmed over, his skin sallow and dark shadows beneath the eyes that hadn’t lost any glow.

  I shifted, removing my weight, and that muscle in his jaw that I often provoked leapt.

  I caught his face in both hands. “Who are you?”

  His head fell back against the stone wall. His hair slid like an inky curtain over his shoulder, tangled and streaked with ash. He stared at a place above my head and said simply, “I don’t know.”

  I would not let him off so easy. No matter how much sorrow those words caused. “Hawke.” I tugged at his face, and when he did not obey, I caught him by surprise. Throwing a leg over his waist, I straddled his hips, knees planted firmly, and loomed tall enough to look down into his face direct.

  My hair slid between us, a sullen garnet hue that glinted against his.

  To think that such a detail would cause so much ache in one heart.

  His expression locked.

  I smoothed both hands over his cheeks, sharp with stubble. I didn’t say anything else, only watched his face, drank it in as though it might be my last.

  The tension in him did not ease with my presence. It seemed to get stronger, to tauten until he was little more than a beast leashed down.

  I didn’t like it.

  His hands closed over my waist as though he meant to pull me off him, but hesitated. His mouth tensed. His fingers dug into my flesh, earning a double beat of my heart, but instead of pushing me off, he growled and pulled me closer to him.

  “Damn you,” he said again, but groaned it as though it hurt. One hand caught me at the back of my head, held me close enough that he could bury his face into my hair. His breath warmed my scalp. “Why can’t you ever leave well enough alone?”

  I pressed my cheek against his heartbeat. “I’m selfish,” I said.

  His laugh was sharp. “I have always known that.”

  It didn’t cut. Not really. I had never thought to hide my flaws from a man I’d never intended to bed. What a fool I’d been. I caught at his shirt in one hand. “Tell me what ails you,” I whispered.

  The palm spread over my head tightened. “And if I do? What will it fix?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Finally, a truth,” he said, no small amount of sarcasm, but his lips nuzzled into my hair and I could not stop myself from feeling as though he were inhaling my scent. Memorizing it, as though he’d never know it again.

  I flattened my hand against his chest and pushed away, scowling. He let me go, but only to loosely encircle my tattered braid with his fingers. “Tell me,” I demanded.

  “Will you let me be if I do?”

  “No,” I said flatly, shaking my head. “I will never let you be again.”

  The light this drew to his gaze was a hungry one. I watched it seize him, felt the rise of his pulse in his chest, and his teeth clenched hard enough to turn his jaw rigid. “Don’t,” he said from between them. “Don’t tease me, Cherry. I am not waxing pretty when I say that I cannot control myself.”

  “You are doing well,” I pointed out. “You haven’t savaged or ravished me yet.”

  “Yet,” he repeated darkly, and pushed me off his lap.

  I hurt, but I had keen reflexes. I did not fall but slid away, and leapt to my feet as he did. Despite his words, it was not for me that he reached, but for the bars of what had been his pen. “Cage—”

  “Whatever name I had, I don’t recall,” he said tightly, barely a growl. “I have always been the Veil’s tiger. Do you understand what that means?”

  “It means,” I said softly, “that there is a whole world out there that you don’t know.”

  “Oh, I know,” he said, but without humor or interest. “I know what it is to be born cursed. To have this...thing within me that will never cease wanting.”

  I watched the rigid set to his shoulders as he gripped the bars, feet planted and knuckles sallow.

  He was trembling, but it wasn’t for fear.

  I wanted to reach out, to touch that broad back and splay my hand over the taut proof of his strength, but I dared not.

  Not yet.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Madness.” His head bowed. “Hunger. Fury.” Dust fell from the cage’s ceiling. “Power. It is the curse of a people whose last breath is one of revenge. It is savage and unrelenting, and when the pleasures of a razor’s edge are no longer enough, it craves brutality. I crave brutality.”

  The low voice with which he spoke did so without softening. Menace filled every consonant, until I could not doubt for one moment that what spoke was a monster.

  It explained something of the faces he’d shown me. The ringmaster who had always been powerful. The polished showman who’d craved my subjugation, the symbol of a girl who had always flaunted his rules.

  The nature of the man who’d taken me in this very pen as though he were nothing but a rutting beast.

  “You’re wrong,” I said softly.

  He jerked, as though he’d forgotten I was there. The bars groaned, but he didn’t let go; was he afraid that he might hurt me?

  Claim me?

  I wanted to laugh, but feared the result this might bring. Instead, I walked with gentle tread to him. “It is not brutality you crave,” I told him. “Nor is it fear. It is not blood or pain, but—”

  He turned so quickly that were I somehow ready for it, I couldn’t escape. His hand spanned my throat, and I cried out as he slammed me into the bars. His lips peeled back from his teeth, eyes blazing as they bore into mine. “Don’t speak to me as if you know,” he gritted out. The arm braced over my head held on to the metal, as though it might keep him from something rash, but the strength of his grasp around my throat was not kind.

  My heart knocked around, pulse a staccato thrum of fear, but I swallowed the surge of instinct screaming that I should fight, run.

  That I was prey, and he the beast that would take my flesh and blood.

  Instead, I wrapped both hands around his wrist. “You, the thing you say is in you,” I said with effort. “It wants me.”

  Hawke’s eyes widened.

  “’Tis me that you have always craved,” I rasped around the bruising ache. Panic welled within me, but I strained atop the tips of my toes in his grip and doggedly pursued my reason.

  My wanting.

  “Listen to yourself, Cage,” I whispered. “Listen to what it demands of you. What is it that you wanted when you turned me from the Menagerie?” Black spots popped at the corners of my sight.

  Hawke’s jaw shifted. “I wanted to protect you.”

  That he himself acknowledged it brought a warmth to my chest that might have also come from the need to breathe. Tears filled my eyes. “And when you placed me on that stage?”

  “To possess you,” he said hoarsely.

  His fingers loosened.

  Oxygen filled my head, a tide of blood that made me dizzy. “And here,” I said. “In this very chamber. What did you want?”

  Hawke’s eyes did not close. The arcane color did not dim, but seared into me with a hunger, a possession, he had already made.

  One he had refuse
d to take responsibility for.

  I had made up my mind. I would no longer give him the choice.

  I pulled his hand away from my throat, lifted it. As my lips closed over his battered knuckles, a tremor took him. “Don’t,” he whispered harshly.

  My tongue slid over callused skin. The tip of his thumb slipped between my lips, and I held his gaze as though this weren’t the most brazen thing I had ever in my life done.

  A gasp shuddered through his chest.

  I nipped at the pad of his thumb and demanded, “Tell me what you wanted.”

  “To claim you,” he groaned, and then he was no longer willing to play. He crowded me against the bars, all too familiar, and caught my head between his hands. His kiss, this time, was not so savage, but it did not leave room for denial.

  That was perfectly all right with me.

  When I kissed him back, I gave him everything he had ever taught me, every last ounce of passion he had awakened within me.

  We were both panting when we parted. His forehead touched mine, and I realized at some point he’d let go of me to seize those bars again.

  His lips, damp from my tongue, parted. “It will never be so easy,” he said hoarsely.

  I closed my eyes. “I don’t care.”

  “Damn it, Cherry, you—”

  “I don’t,” I said louder, “care. I will spend the whole of my life infecting you with my very existence.”

  He caught my nape in one hand and held me to his chest. “No,” he said against my hair. “Just for the rest of mine.”

  I wouldn’t rise to the bait of semantics. “We’ve only one thing left to do.”

  I’d come to put an end to the Veil. I intended to do just that.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Unlike the poor lions, who’d suffered some discomfort by way of the alchemical combustion, the rest of the underground maze had not fared so well.

  Hawke opened the door with care, but was forced to shove it aside when it caught on collapsed timber and fallen earth. It all smoldered, as though the fires of hell had consumed it and left only skeletal remains behind. We didn’t travel far before we found the tunnel collapsed and gaping hole leading to the grounds above.