Deep breath, she told herself as he took a wide wingback chair opposite hers, putting the ornately carved coffee table between them. Wait it out. Dez hadn’t exactly agreed to her requests… but he hadn’t outright denied them, either. He’d seemed on board with still letting the winikin lead their own fighting teams. As for the other… well, he hadn’t turned her down yet. Once Sven’s debriefing was over and they could get back to—
“We were just discussing what should be done with Zane and Lora,” the king said, startling her. “Your thoughts?”
Sitting up straight, she shot a look at Sven, who didn’t seem nearly as surprised as he ought to have been. Instead, he just scowled like he’d bitten into something rotten. “Why is it even under discussion?”
Of course he would see it that way—treason was one of the few things punishable by death under Nightkeeper law, and he’d always hated Zane. Even though she knew some of that stemmed from Sven’s wanting to protect her, irritation sparked and grew, and she snapped, “Because not all of us are so comfortable with—” She bit off the word “death,” knowing that was a too-low blow. “Sorry. Shit.”
He ignored her apology as if it didn’t matter either way, though she had seen him flinch. “What’s your answer, then? Imprisonment? Why should we waste manpower keeping tabs on those two, not to mention running the risk of looking like we’re tossing out the writs left and right, and pretty much doing whatever we damn well please?”
That should’ve seemed ironic, coming from him. Instead it was an indication of just how serious things had gotten all of a sudden. She could feel time slipping away from them, could feel the balance among the winikin threatening to skew too far away from center. Leaning in, she said urgently, “This isn’t about you, or even about the writs. It’s about needing the winikin to come together as a valid fighting force, and fast. Sasha managed to heal up the two who got hurt last night, but there’s already some serious rumbling going on, and lots of people pissed off, both because of what Zane and Lora did, and how their capture went down.” She didn’t blame him for that, though; there had been plenty of people involved in the plan, including her, so the failure was shared. If anything, the winikin would blame her for not seeing the Nightkeepers’ grandstanding for what it was. Gods knew she blamed herself for it. Now she needed to regain their trust as best she could. “The way I see it, my best chance for getting them to rally behind me is if I get some concessions from the king, ones that they care about, and that make them feel like they’ve got some say in their own destinies.”
She expected Sven to argue that this wasn’t a democracy and they all had to follow the damn leader. Instead, he simmered down and nodded, if slowly. “Okay, I get that. But I don’t see how Zane and Lora play into it. Don’t tell me you want to do some sort of a trial with the winikin version of a kangaroo court?”
His tacit acceptance probably shouldn’t have surprised her, and it definitely shouldn’t have warmed her. Because it did both, there was an edge to her tone when she said, “A trial would waste time that we don’t have, and I think it would stir up more questions than answers.” She shook her head. “No, I want to have Rabbit reprogram them and then send them home.”
There was a beat of silence and a flash of disbelief before he said, “You’re fucking kidding me.” He stared blankly at her for a long moment, then turned to Dez and Reese. “You’re not seriously considering this, are you?”
The king and queen, who sat together on the couch in jeans and sweatshirts with their heads tilted together, had been quietly observing the exchange. So quietly, in fact, that Cara got a sudden chill of premonition that there was something else going on here, that they hadn’t been waiting just to get Sven’s full version of what had happened during the bar fight. They seemed to be waiting to be convinced. But of what?
Heart thumping, she put in, “Obviously, we would only do it if Rabbit thought it was safe. He’s going to be the one questioning them. He’ll know if he can block their memories strongly enough to make it work.”
Sven shook his head, dividing his attention between her and the royal couple. “Use Rabbit to question them? Absolutely. But don’t let them go. What if the blocks fail? What if somebody recognizes their marks and tracks them back here? Hell, what if the Banol Kax find them and get inside their heads? They’ll know everything there is to know about us.”
“You think I don’t know that?” All those possibilities and more had kept her awake long into the night, talking it through with herself because there wasn’t anybody else she could use as a sounding board. “But think about it. If Dez orders their execution, he’ll be no better than Scarred-Jaguar, at least in the eyes of the winikin.”
“I don’t think…” But Sven trailed off. “Shit.”
“Exactly. He’ll be worse, even, because Scarred-Jaguar never actually used the death penalty. And you said it yourself—imprisoning them would be a waste of manpower. Worse, it could give them a chance to win over other rebels and stir things up, and we don’t have the time for that.”
“Some sort of stasis spell could work.”
“After you dropped a dozen winikin last night?” she said pointedly, then shook her head. “Even without that reminder of how easy it would be for you guys to overpower any one of us—or, hell, all of us—a stasis spell would come across as an abuse of power.”
“And Rabbit mind-bending them wouldn’t?”
“It’d be different,” she asserted, as she had done fifteen minutes earlier to Dez and Reese. “He’d be stripping them of their memories and implanting a cover story that explains where they’ve been for the past year. The trads will see it as punishment for them to lose their winikin heritage like that; the rebs will think the punishment is them not knowing to defend themselves—or how—when the end comes.”
He shook his head. “I still don’t like it.”
“I don’t see a better answer.” She shook her head as frustrated weariness started to encroach on the bravado she’d been channeling since she got to the royal suite. “If you do, bring it on.”
“Stasis. It’s neater, cleaner, and the winikin will get over it eventually.” He turned to Dez. “I’m taking the job. Which means I get a vote here.”
Fatigue took a backseat fast. “Wait. What job?”
Dez, though, got an ominous spark in his eyes as he zeroed in on Sven. “You’re sure? You’re really in?”
“One hundred percent.” He turned to Cara, and there was an implacable sort of wariness in his eyes as he said, “I hope you won’t hate me for this, and that we can figure out a way to make it work so things will be easier for you, not harder. I respect the hell out of you, both as a woman and as a leader… but everything inside me says that this is the right thing to do.”
“Okay, now you’re scaring me.” And not just a little. Her pulse thudded thickly in her ears and her stomach churned. “What are you talking about?” She turned to Dez, her voice threatening to wobble. “What’s going on here?”
“Things within the winikin are worse than any of us thought,” the king answered. “You’ve got factions within factions and your own people are trying to kill you. Now you’re asking me to give them weapons and autonomy, and let a couple of traitors go free because it’ll make you look like a leader.” He shook his head. “That’s a tough one to swallow, Cara. A fucking tough one.”
“If you were going to say no you would’ve done it already.” She hoped. He wasn’t just playing with her, was he, trying to make some other point she hadn’t gotten yet?
“I’ll give you what you want, on the condition that you accept a Nightkeeper liaison, a mage who will be right beside you every step of the way, helping rather than overseeing, but with veto power over your decisions.”
Cara’s heart stopped. Literally stopped. “A… what?”
“A Nightkeeper liaison.” Dez shook his head in sympathy, but said, “Sorry, that’s the deal. I need to know the winikin are under control, Cara. I can’t have this b
lowing up in my face. Not now. Trust me; you’re going to want to take the deal.”
This wasn’t happening, couldn’t be happening. Oh, gods. Her heart had started up again, but it was bumping off rhythm, fluttering against her ribs like it was trapped and trying to break free as the second shoe dropped. Sven had brought up the subject. He had said he would take the job. Which meant he had known about this. Worse, it meant he was the guy. Her liaison.
Oh, hell, no.
She was on her feet without having realized she had stood, though somehow Dez and Sven still seemed to tower over her, their presences expanding well beyond their physical bodies, part of the magic of the magi.
Refusing to feel puny, she balled her hands into fists and glared at the king. “What’s my other option?”
“I’d rather not go there. I hope you’ll take the offer instead.”
“But the politics—”
“Have to be secondary to the success of the war.”
“They…” Damn it. “You’ll be undermining me, crippling me as a leader. Worse, you’ll be running the risk of losing the rebels. We need them, damn it. They’re the younger generation, the fighters.”
“So you’ll find a way to spin it so they stay,” Reese put in. “Make this into a positive, not a negative, maybe even a concession you’ve squeezed out of the king.” That got a grunt out of Dez, making the queen’s lips twitch. She stayed focused on Cara, though, with eyes that weren’t unkind, but said simply, Deal with it.
“Not him.” She turned on Sven, teeth bared. “Not you.”
He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness belied by the smooth shift of his bulky muscles and the aura of leashed wildness that surrounded him. “Think it through. Now that you’re wearing my mark, the winikin are going to put us together in their heads no matter what you say. Rather than trying to ignore it, let’s use it instead.”
It didn’t help that he had a point. “How long have you known this was a possibility?” Tell me you found out this morning, that it was a surprise to you too. Except that she’d been closeted with the king for an hour and Sven had just gotten out of bed. Maybe Carlos told him. Maybe…
“Since right after I came back.”
Fury pounded through her. “Five days ago. He talked to you about being the liaison five days ago, and you didn’t say anything?” Not even after they hooked up, after he’d told her he cared about her. Which made her wonder how, exactly, he defined caring. Was it when he was horny? When things were convenient? What?
“Originally, Dez asked me to take a good, hard look at the winikin right after Aaron’s funeral went so wrong. He was afraid it was an inside job.” When she did a double take, attention caught, he shook his head. “I didn’t see anything that made me think it was… but then again, I didn’t catch wind of what Zane and Lora were up to, either, partly because I didn’t like him to begin with, and partly because I refused to use you or Carlos for information.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. But Dez asked me to keep things under wraps.”
Which had to trump her feelings, damn it. But that didn’t make it okay that he’d gone behind her back, or that he and Dez had been making decisions about her winikin without her knowing there was even a discussion going on. And Sven? Gods, she couldn’t work with him on a day-to-day basis. It would be… impossible.
“It’s a good offer,” Dez put in. “What’s more, it’s the only one you’re going to get, so I suggest you take it.”
In other words, she was getting a liaison whether she liked it or not; it was up to her whether it happened smoothly and with a prayer of spinning it to the winikin as a positive, or happened with her kicking and screaming, and making things even worse on the solidarity front.
“We can make it work,” Sven said quietly. “We know how to get along… we just haven’t had much practice over the past bunch of years.” And the damn thing was, he didn’t seem at all uncomfortable with the idea. He was acting like their teaming up was the most logical solution, like it should be on some late-night top-ten list of great ideas, despite their having all but agreed last night that they should steer clear of each other.
“For how long?” she asked, hating that the answer mattered too much. “A week? A month?”
“As long as you need me.” Which wasn’t really an answer, because undoubtedly he’d be the one to decide when that ended.
“I don’t need you. That’s the point.” Go away, she thought almost desperately. The longer you stay, the harder this is going to be. She didn’t want to get used to having him around, because it would only hurt worse when he left. She didn’t want to have him filling the shadow Zane’s absence would leave, didn’t want him beside her at meetings and strategy sessions, didn’t want him going over all her plans, arguing with her, throwing his weight around and making her defend decisions that should’ve been hers alone.… And if a small part of her wanted exactly those things and so much more, she stuffed it deep down inside where all her other stupid fantasies lived. Shaking her head, she turned to Dez. “This isn’t going to work. We’re going to spend so much time butting heads and contradicting each other that we’ll never get a damn thing accomplished.”
“Who else did you have in mind as second in command?” Sven asked unexpectedly.
“I… Shit. Natalie, I guess. She’s got ties to the rebs through JT, but she’s also got a huge appreciation for the traditions. And the others understand why she’s working with Lucius, so there wouldn’t be a problem there.”
“And she doesn’t have an iota of combat experience,” he countered. “Not to mention that it doesn’t make any sense to take one of our few trained Mayan scholars out of the library. I’m not assigned anywhere right now, though, and the winikin might not like me all that much, but they like me better than most of the magi.” He rose from the chair so they were standing facing each other, with the carved coffee table between them. “I don’t need to be in charge, and I’m not going to challenge you or make you look bad. I just want to help you.” His eyes softened slightly. “Call it payback, call it guilt, call it whatever the hell you want, but let me do this, okay? I won’t let you down this time.”
He was right, she realized; she didn’t have an obvious choice for Zane’s replacement, and she’d proven all too well the day before that she didn’t do her best thinking when she was under pressure and didn’t have someone else backing her up with a reality check. Maybe the answer would have been obvious… if it hadn’t been for what had happened in the coyote cave.
It wasn’t just the sex—she thought they could have chalked that up to the magic and the moment, and walked away from it. But all the things he’d said after, and then their argument last night… that had been them, not the magic. At least, it had been for her, and that’d had her reacting from emotion rather than logic. As for him… well, she didn’t actually know where he was coming from. It didn’t make any sense to her that he would be spouting words of almost-love one night, and then the next morning be ready to work side by side with her like it was no big deal. There wasn’t any trepidation in his eyes, no silent plea that she go with it and he’d explain later. Had he pushed his emotions behind the wall of his warrior’s talent? Or had he set them aside that quickly? If he had—
“How about you give it a chance?” The suggestion came from Reese. “Just the two of you on a trial run outside of the compound, a two-person op you can work without feeling like your every move is being scrutinized.” She shot a meaningful look at Dez. “Sometimes things get simpler when you take some time away.”
“I don’t want…” Cara began, but then trailed off, because this wasn’t about what she wanted, hadn’t been in a long time. If she agreed to this, she’d be buying Zane’s and Lora’s lives, not because she sympathized with them, but because they had become political currency. She didn’t think Dez understood just how much they mattered, or how much resentment would be stirred
up if they were executed, spell-frozen, or even simply imprisoned. With the wounds of the massacre still too fresh in many of the winikin’s minds, they needed to know that there was a way out of Skywatch somehow. So finally she said, “I take it you’ve got an op in mind?”
It was Dez who nodded and said, “You know the screaming skull the nahwal mentioned? Well, Lucius tracked it to the Playa Maya Museum in Monterey. We want you to steal it.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Zane’s brain was a seriously weird place, and Rabbit felt right at home. The twists and turns made sense, like he was driving in a strange town but somehow knew exactly where to find the gas stations and fast food, as if he’d been there before in a previous life. Or, more accurately, as if he’d recently spent time in a very similar town. Zane might’ve been misguided and far too ready to buy into his own self-serving interpretations, but he’d honed some of the same skills Rabbit had found himself needing more and more lately, as he tried with increasing frustration to reconnect with his mother’s spirit, while hiding those efforts from everyone, including Myrinne. Especially Myrinne.
Secrecy. Suspicion. Righteousness. Contempt. Rabbit sent his consciousness through Zane’s mind, passing memories and signpost-bright emotions, picking through the labyrinth until he found what he was looking for.
When he did, he brought his perceptions closer to the surface, to the point where he could feel his own body sitting hunched over beside Zane, and could sense Dez, Sven, and Cara sitting nearby, waiting tensely for the intel that could make or break the winikin’s life. Lora was already free and clear; she hadn’t known anything, and had been painfully easy to reprogram. She was the kind of person who would always look for a pack leader to tell her what to do, how to feel. As far as she now knew, she had spent the past ten months or so as part of a whack-job cult, which she’d been lured into by a guy she met online. She was ashamed of the guy and the cult, and didn’t want to talk about either of them. She just wanted to get back to her life, and shouldn’t present any further problems for the Nightkeepers.
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