by Kresley Cole
I trusted Aric to pick what was important from my ramblings. I spoke until I was on the verge of unconsciousness again.
Whatever I’d said affected him. He yanked off his helmet so he could press his lips to my forehead as he clutched me close. . . .
I must have blacked out again; I jolted back to awareness when Aric yelled, “Circe, let us pass!”
The sound of waves, and then water receding. Was the Priestess nearby?
Thanatos galloped upward, upward, the air growing even colder. Just when I was about to drift off again, Aric told me, “We’re home.”
I was back at the castle of lost time? I opened my eyes, squinting. We rode through the giant gate and into the courtyard. Hooves clattered on the brick. Gas lights stung my eyes.
“I’m getting you help. Just hold on.” Aric cradled me against his chest as he dropped from Thanatos and rushed inside, spurs ringing. “Lark, get the EMT!”
Lark . . . I’d missed her over the last few weeks. She’d led Aric to me. They’d both fought to save me.
“We’re prepped and ready to go in the nursery, boss,” she answered. “Under the sunlamps, just like you said.”
Sunlamps. Clever Aric. They had strengthened me before. But I sensed I was beyond help. He hurried down the many steps to the underground nursery, telling me, “Stay with me. You must stay with me.”
He laid me on a bed. I squeezed my eyes closed against the blazing overhead light. I heard shears as my clothes were cut away.
Lark sucked in a breath. “She’s one big wound. I’ve seen roadkill in better shape.”
“Enough!” Aric snapped.
A man said, “She’s been bitten multiple times. Those are bullet wounds in her chest. The EMT? Wasn’t his name Paul? He’d patched up Lark after Ogen’s attack. “Her legs are . . . done. What do you expect me to do for her?”
His tone murderous, Aric grated, “Unless you want to die by my sword, I suggest you—save—her.” I knew how menacing his face would look right now. I’d been on the receiving end of his threats enough.
“I-I’ll try to clean these wounds, sir,” Paul said, his voice scaling higher. “And start a drip. Lark, can you help me? She’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Shouldn’t Eves have started healing?” Lark asked. “When I sliced off her cilice down here, she was regenerating in seconds.”
“Give her time,” Aric said. “The injuries are significant.” He brushed damp hair off my forehead. “Feel the light, sievā. You will heal. You always heal.”
I could feel the warm lamps, but I didn’t sense even a twitch of regeneration—
A woman’s scream. “E-Evie!” Was that . . . my grandmother?
I tried to say, “Gran.” Blood came out of my mouth. For so long, I’d fought to reach her. She was with me at last, but I couldn’t speak a word.
“The Sun did this to her,” Gran said. “Did you kill him, knight?” I sensed her and Paul on one side of me, Aric and Lark on the other.
“No. I believe they survived the helicopter crash.” They had?
“Then why don’t you leave my granddaughter’s care to us? While you go finish the job?” She sounded as murderous as Aric had.
“I won’t leave until she’s healed.”
“You should have found her sooner! How could you not find her before this happened?” Why was my grandmother baiting him? “You’ve located her so many times before.”
I knew she considered him a villain, but couldn’t she see that he cared for me? He’d rescued her from North Carolina, bringing her back to this castle—for me. He’d taken on two Arcana and a Bagger army to save my life.
To try to save me.
I still might turn.
Sounding like he was about to strangle her, Aric said, “The Fool has silenced our calls.” No wonder I’d heard nothing. What was Matthew up to? “After following every mile of the flood’s path, every fork, every twist and turn, I scoured the countryside for the Empress—from here to Fort Arcana. For some reason, she went in the opposite direction of this castle. I wisely had Lark dispatch sentries in all directions.”
“Wisely? Evie’s dying! Or worse.”
“She can hear you. Govern your tongue—or leave.”
“I am her grandmother!”
“Even my eternal patience has limits, Tarasova.”
“You’re threatening . . . threatening . . .” Her words trailed off.
I heard a strangled cry. What was going on? Why couldn’t I see?
Aric bit out a curse in Latvian.
Lark said, “Uh, what’s happening to the old lady?”
A scuffling sound. A moan.
“Jesus,” Lark muttered. “Eves, you’re having the shittiest two weeks in history.”
16
“I’m here, sievā.” Aric brushed a cool cloth over my forehead.
Death’s vigil. How long had he been caring for me? I was suspended in some kind of twilight; I didn’t die—yet I hadn’t healed.
I thought I’d understood physical pain. A few months ago, I’d amputated my own thumb to get free of cuffs so I could fight Death. When I’d drowned not long after that, I’d felt as if my lungs would burst. Then an ogre had choked me, snapping my neck. Lately? I’d lost an arm, been tossed around in a flood, and been bitten and drained by ravenous Baggers.
Yet real pain and I had never been introduced before now.
The Bagmen’s mutation ripped through me. Whatever Empress power I still possessed battled it. A war had erupted inside my body.
“Fight this. Fight,” Aric urged me. He sat next to me on the bed, taking me into his arms. “You must return to me.”
I tried to speak, to tell him I loved him and to ask about Gran, but no words passed my lips.
“I know why dying might seem tempting”—because I could follow Jack?—“but I need you. Come back to me.”
Another wave of agony hit. I heard a scream.
Mine?
Voice thick, he said, “I wish to the gods I could take this pain for you.” He rocked me. “You’re too strong to die, and too stubborn to turn. Your only path is to come back to me.”
How could he be so good to me when I’d hurt him so deeply? I remembered his blood-curdling roar when I’d ridden away from him—to be with Jack. . . .
As hours—days? weeks?—passed, Aric remained with me. At times, I could tell he was biting back sounds of grief.
Other times, he talked to me. He told me about my grandmother: “The sight of you gave her a . . . shock. But she will recover. Just as you will.”
He told me about the other Arcana: “Lark sent a scout back to that clearing to collect her falcon and my sword. There were no bodies at the crash site. As I suspected, Fortune and the Sun survived.”
One time I heard a wolfish whimper, and a slobbery tongue licked my hand. “You have a visitor,” Aric said. “Your favorite.” Cyclops? He’d made it! “I’ve always appreciated the potential of the wolves, but I never thought we would owe our lives to them.”
Now another wave of agony hit. My screams echoed. I didn’t want to scare anyone, but I couldn’t choke them back.
“I need to help you.” He sounded so gutted, as if his pain mirrored mine. “How can I help you?”
I didn’t think anything could be done. And so, I had two new missions.
To make sure Aric killed me if I began to turn. And to extract a promise of bloody revenge against the Emperor. As soon as I could speak.
Aric tensed against me. “She returns.”
Footsteps neared. “Is there . . . any change?” my grandmother asked in a weak voice. Were her words slurred?
She was maddeningly close. If only I could communicate with her. Did she know that Haven was ash? That her daughter had died?
Aric answered, “The Empress will rally.”
“Sir . . .” Paul was down here as well? He did pretty much everything around the castle, from cooking all meals to stitches. I didn’t envy Paul his job at Castle Death.<
br />
The man was brave enough to say, “She might be starting to turn. If you wait too long, she could bite another.”
The idea of harming someone else sickened me even more. I whispered, “Kill me,” but no one seemed to have heard me.
“I will do nothing,” Aric said, “until—or unless—she craves blood.”
I shuddered.
“Leave her with me,” Gran said. “You shouldn’t be in this bed with her, holding her like that. She’s a girl of seventeen.”
“She’s a millennia-old Empress.”
“I should take care of her,” Gran insisted.
“You forget that this is my home, Tarasova. I will do as I please.”
I wondered why he hadn’t told her we were married. Aric hadn’t been shy in announcing that fact to Jack.
But that had been before I’d rejected Aric and his claim on me. Before I’d broken this man’s heart. . . .
17
My eyes darted behind my lids as I hovered between sleep and wakefulness. I was in a bed. I sensed plants all around me.
When the pain had finally dwindled to a manageable level, I cracked open my eyes. Could only make out a white blank.
Ah, God, why couldn’t I see? Would my sight return? I blinked over and over. Maybe I was turning, my eyes gone filmy?
No, some kind of brightness blazed down. Oh. The sunlamps. I was in the nursery.
Blurry images began to take shape. Why was there a bed down here? Vines and rose stalks traipsed over my body and the footboard.
Beneath the mass of green, I shifted my limbs, flexing my muscles. My arms and legs were weak and sore as hell, but healing.
I eased my head back. Aric sat up against the headboard, his eyes closed. Vines and rose stalks covered him as well.
In sleep, his brow furrowed, his lips thinned. He had golden stubble over his lean cheeks and dark circles under his eyes, looking older and more exhausted than I had ever seen him. He wore black pants and a thin dark sweater, but I could tell he’d lost weight.
How long had he been here with me? After our history, I was surprised he could tolerate the plants overrunning him.
Memory fragments from my recovery surfaced: his soothing words, his care, his updates about life around the castle. He’d challenged me to heal and stayed with me the entire time.
All around us, plants—even trees—merged to make walls. He’d chosen to remain inside my deadly green lair. I stretched my arm over him, savoring his warmth and strength.
His amber eyes blinked open. He found me staring at him, and his lips curved. “Sievā.” Pinpoints of light radiated from his spellbinding gaze.
“You’re okay with these plants?” I murmured, my throat scratchy.
His smile widened. “I’m thankful to them. They comforted you more than I could have.”
I didn’t know about that. “How long was I out?”
“For weeks.”
My jaw slackened. “That can’t be right.”
“Those Bagmen bit you more than a dozen times. Your legs were badly injured and you’d been shot. Your regeneration ability had much to contend with.”
I did remember landing feet first. “Will I . . . turn?”
“I do not believe that. You would have already.” Aric would never lie to me.
I relaxed somewhat. With a wave of my hand, I moved the vines off the bed, off him.
He appeared to relax a touch as well. “If someone had said a few of months ago that I would nod off while surrounded by the Empress’s vines, I’d have called him mad.” He reached for a glass of water on a tray. He helped me sit up and brought the cup to my lips. “Easy.”
I drank enough to quench the worst of my thirst. “The Emperor is planning to attack the castle. Soon.”
“I know. You told me. Happily, you led the Sun in the opposite direction of our home.”
Our home. “I did?” Totally meant to do that.
In a strange tone, he said, “Do you not remember any of the things we talked about on the journey here? Any of the things you told me?”
I cast my mind back. The whole time was a blur.
His gaze flicked over my face, reading my confusion. For some reason, he seemed to be closing down right in front of me. He straightened his shoulders, his demeanor growing distant and formal. “You must have many questions.”
A thousand. “Why weren’t we able to communicate with each other?” I vaguely remembered Aric touching on this, but not what he’d said. “I called and called for you.”
“The Fool disconnected everyone. I don’t know why. Perhaps to conceal some players from others. Or perhaps because he’d been weakened.”
In the days before abandoning me, Matthew had suffered nosebleeds and increased disorientation. Normally, I hated to think of him in pain. But after his betrayal, I relished the idea.
“Empress?”
I blinked. “What happened to you after Circe’s tidal wave?”
“I began searching for you as soon as I broke free from the flood. I feared you couldn’t survive without . . . your arm. You must forgive me for that.”
“There’s nothing to forgive.”
“How did you survive?”
I recalled being caught in that whirlpool with Bagmen, terrified I’d get bitten. Apparently that had always been my fate. “I latched onto a cell-phone tower. I climbed up and waited out the waters.”
“Climbed with one arm?”
“I didn’t say I climbed well. Circe’s an ally, isn’t she?”
Nod.
“Will she help us kill Richter?”
He scrubbed a palm down his weary face. “When the time comes.”
“The time? As soon as I recover.” Then I remembered—my grandmother was here! I reached for him. “I need to see Gran. I thought I heard . . . is she okay?”
He took my offered hand, then stared at our clasped fingers. Still so unused to touch. He cleared his throat. “She was weak when I found her, and her health hasn’t improved. But she’s stable.”
“She’s been down here though.”
His thumb rubbed my skin. “After the first day or so, the many steps to this level proved challenging.”
“Will you move me closer to her?”
Firm shake of his head. “You’re not ready.”
“I could take a sunlamp and a couple of houseplants. Please?” I squeezed his hand.
He exhaled. “And still, I can deny you nothing.” He lifted me in his arms, and carried me toward the stairs. “You can stay in the guest room next to hers. I’ll have all your things moved from the tower.”
Because I wasn’t a prisoner anymore. “Maybe just some of my clothes. I like my room up there.” I’d painted the walls and made myself at home.
As he settled me into bed in my new room, my nightgown shifted, and I winced at the bruises on my legs, my skin mottled black and blue. Then I clung to his hand, not wanting to let him out of my sight.
He frowned and pulled away. “I’ll be right back.” He drew his gloves from his pants pocket, donning them as he crossed to the door.
Lark sidled past him into the room. “Evie!” she cried. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been wearing two casts, one on her arm and one on her ankle, but now she was all healed up. “The unclean one is back! I thought you were unclean before you got Bagger funk all in your veins. You missed me, didn’t you?”
“I did. Thank you for helping to save my life.”
“Yeah, well, you owe me.” Her smile faded. “I don’t suppose you saw Finn anywhere?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I thought he’d be at Fort Arcana, but the place was abandoned. I saw . . . part of Cyclops.” Hadn’t the wolf come to see me? Or had I dreamed that? “What happened at the fort?”
“After the big attack, Fortune flew over it with Richter. She was just carting him around, like they were on a fun date or something. He must’ve been outta Emperor juice, ’cause he started gunning up the place.”
As lo
ng as I was alive, Richter’s days were numbered. I’m coming for you, Richter. I would replace his laughter with screams.
Lark continued, “Finn couldn’t run with his bum leg, barely got to an outbound truck. I leapt up to fang the chopper to buy time.”
So strange to hear her talk like this, as if she’d been there. Which she kind of had been. In the form of Cyclops. Red of tooth and claw. And later she’d attacked Fortune through Scarface—saving me.
“Those choppers drive me—I mean, my wolves—batty. Anyway, Richter shot up Cyclops until I couldn’t hold on. I dropped right in the middle of the freaking minefield. And ouch. Needless to say, I couldn’t keep up with Finn’s truck.” Her eyes flickered animal red as she said, “When we take care of Richter, save Fortune for me. That bitch and I have a date.”
“Noted. Did your falcon survive?”
“Yeah. She’s one of the scouts I’ve got searching for Finn.” Lark shuffled her feet. “Death told me you’d been riding out to meet Jack, to leave with him.”
And yet Aric had come for me and saved my life.
“Eves, I’m really sorry about the Cajun.”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. My recovery seemed to have loosened my tourniquet. Tighten it!
A sudden thought occurred. “Lark, where are the clothes I was wearing?”
“Dunno. Paul probably burned them. They looked like you got dunked in Ragu or something—”
“There was a ribbon in my pocket.” My last physical tie to Jack. “Please find it! Please!”
“I’ll try.” Cocking her head, she muttered, “I hear your grandmother coming. Gotta scram. I’ll check back in later.”
I had so many more questions, but Lark slipped out.
Aric entered with Gran, helping her along with his gloved hands.
She looked so different from the last time I’d seen her. Her face was worn, and her hair had grayed even more. She’d lost a lot of weight, and her dark brown eyes no longer twinkled.
“Evie!” she cried, limping to my bed. She wrapped her thin arms around me.
I returned her hug. “Gran.” Her scent cast my mind back to my childhood, bringing on a rush of memories: Her pushing me on the swing at Haven. . . . Gran and Mom laughing when a duckling chased me. . . . Gran teaching me how to tend her beloved rose garden; the soil had been so warm. . . .
