by Jill Archer
I didn’t know what to say. Which parts of what she’d just said were true? Had she and Ari been lovers? Had the hostility I’d felt in her signature been real or a ruse? Now that I’d survived this test, would she be thinking of even more clever, diabolical ways to kill me?
Luck, how I hated working with regulare demons! At least with the rogares you knew where you stood. With demons like Cliodna, the question of friend or foe changed every day, every hour, every moment. Who was it who’d said, “The only difference between a rogare and a regulare is that the regulare hasn’t been caught yet”?
So here’s the thing. I totally lost it later that night. After all my earlier passing of tests and impressing demons like Yannu and boldly standing up to demons like Cliodna, I lost it with the one demon I really needed to keep it together for – Ari.
“Why did you serve grape wine tonight?” I asked, eyeing the bottle of Black Gilliflower that I’d taken out from under Ari’s sideboard. “Why didn’t you serve this to each of your guests and then ask them whether or not they had anything to do with blowing up the Memento Mori viaduct and dam?”
After his camarilla had left and Fara had gone to bed, I’d told Ari that I needed to speak with him. Then I’d led him in here to the place where he’d reminded me he was a demon before almost kissing me. To the place where he’d so forthrightly claimed he would try to seduce me.
Yeah… Not. Gonna. Happen. Seduction required a clueless partner, which I wasn’t any longer.
It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours and Ari had made no major moves, but I wasn’t going to wait. I was going to knock that cocksure expression off his face and force him to be honest with me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to start over with him, but I knew for certain that I did not want to continue as we’d started.
I was perversely pleased to see that my question made Ari uneasy. He grimaced and perched on the edge of an upholstered chair. Then he blew out his breath and surrendered – to my opening volley at least.
“Because it doesn’t work on demons.”
I’d suspected as much, but it still made me furious to hear it. I guess the only good thing was that Ari hadn’t tried to beat around the bush about his answer. He’d ’fessed up to the fact that he was more interested in hearing my secrets than revealing his. Still, my desire to slap him was so strong, my fingertips crackled with fire.
“You slept with Cliodna?”
I could almost hear his inner groan. Yep, these conversations suck, don’t they, Ari? Well, deal with it. Feel these petty human emotions like the rest of us.
“Which one of them told you?”
“Does it matter?”
He stood up. “No,” he said, running his good hand through his hair. He started pacing. “Does it matter that it’s true? I don’t need to drink Black Gilliflower to admit it.” At least he had the guts to look me in the face then. But I gave no ground and pressed on immediately, my tone clipped and my signature at a very tightly controlled boil.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it was a long time ago. I don’t love her. She knows that. I love you. She knows that too.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Noon, we’ve never talked about the people from our pasts before.”
“Maybe we should have.”
“Really? Do you honestly want to hear about mine? Because I don’t want to hear about yours.”
“Then why suggest the Black Gilliflower? Now you’re just lying to yourself. But you know what, Ari? Like you, I don’t need a glass of ensorcelled wine to admit there’s someone in my past. And it wasn’t a long time ago. But he wasn’t trying to kill us. He only ever tried to save us.”
I felt the uptick in Ari’s signature as he realized who I was talking about – Rafe.
“You left us in the Shallows,” I continued, my voice softer, almost as if I still couldn’t believe it, “and then… everything happened. The Stone Pointe keep collapsed, but it might as well have been my entire life. We barely made it out alive. And then we spent two months in a rowboat getting home. Do you remember what the eastern hinterlands are like, Ari? Do you remember how many water wraiths live there?!
“And then another month waiting for any sign of you… where you might be… whether you were alive or dead or just never coming back. I finally lied for you. Lied to my father and the faculty and to everyone we know – except for Rafe and Fara. I told everyone you disappeared. And I got on with my life. I only thought about you every single minute of every single day. And then… I finally didn’t. I only thought about you once an hour and then once a day and, by then, I’d not only proved I’d earned my Primoris rank but I’d fought my way through the Gridiron matches to become St. Luck’s Laurel Crown contender. See how far bitterness and heartache can take you?”
Ari was looking miserable now, but I was just getting started. He’d brought this on himself with his dishonesty and duplicity and smug smiles and self-righteous declarations of seduction.
“You want to know how I got rid of your signare?” My voice was no longer soft. It was harsh with recollection. “I was cursed. And then I nearly died. Oh, not like the night the keep collapsed or the countless times the wraiths nearly killed us. Or even all the times I’d felt like I’d died, but it was really just another Laurel Crown contender beating me up or burning me. NO. This ‘nearly died’ was for real. Brunus Olivine shot a suffoca ignem-laced arrow straight into my heart. Finally! Finally, something happened to me that was worse than finding out you’d lied to me.”
Ari stood a few feet away from me hunched under his cloak, his good hand clenched into a fist and a ferocious expression on his face. If I wasn’t already far, far past the point of no return, it might have given me pause. But as it was, I merely took a breath and kept going, my anger still seething.
“By the time I got your letter – you know, the one that said it was probably best that you left me alone? The one that said I should stay close to my Guardian? – he’d already saved me more times than anyone could count. In fact, it’s fair to say that Rafe brought me back to life.
“So you know what I did with your letter? I burned it. Until there was absolutely nothing left of it. Not a single trace.”
I stood fuming. Had I intended to tell Ari this much? There were other things, actually, that were more important. Rafe had told me I should tell him everything. But did any of what I’d just said matter to anyone but me?
I lost a little steam then and gestured helplessly, toward who or what I don’t know. I think I was just remembering the rest of Fara’s introduction earlier tonight. Was a rehash of everything I’d accomplished really necessary to make the point I was trying to make? No.
“I don’t need you anymore, Ari.” I stared at him, still fired up enough to feel no fear. His eyes had blown past mulberry and cranberry and now were red-hot. “I came up here to help you, but to do that you need to be honest—”
“—I left you in the Shallows because you told me it was over.” Ari’s voice was low and rough and tinged with not a little madness. “You said you couldn’t be with me anymore and I believed you, because I felt your anger and your fear and your repulsion in your signature. I wanted nothing more than to stay, but I knew if I did, it would only make things worse. Possibly drive you away forever. Make it impossible for you to forgive me. So I shifted, and left, like you wanted. But I didn’t go far. I made it to the other side of the Blandjan and then… I just dropped out of the sky. Crashed into the brush. Broke my wing. And lay there.”
He was deadly still now, his eyes no longer red-hot.
“For how long?”
He shrugged and avoided meeting my gaze.
“Ari? Honesty, remember?”
“I don’t know,” he said in a flat voice. “Weeks? Months? All I know is the weather was different and I’d nearly starved to death by the time I shifted back. I wouldn’t have bothered if I hadn’t known it was the first step in getting back to you.”
His si
gnature was masked, but I had a feeling it was because he was trying to shield me from something rather than hide something from me. It suddenly occurred to me how bleak and lonely and hopeless he must have been feeling. He must have blamed himself—
“The broken wing likely stopped me from abducting you and flying off to some cave in the hinterlands.”
Was he serious?!
“You wanted honesty.”
His gaze finally met mine and I could see that he was a man tormented by his bestial side. He took a shuddering breath, looking nearly defeated.
“Please don’t say you don’t need me anymore. Because I need you. You burned your signare into my heart too, Noon, and it’s still there. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you. I want you in my bed and in my life, and whatever I have to do to get you there, short of abducting you – maybe – I will do.”
I nearly ran to him then. I almost forgave him totally. I was this close. And, if it hadn’t been for Cliodna and the Black Gilliflower – and if he’d left out that mind-blowing abduction comment – I probably would have. (Did his maybe mean he was still fighting that urge? As if he’d ever be successful. I’d like to see him try.) But, a moment later, I was glad for my reserve. Because there were things Ari still hadn’t revealed to me. Namely, himself. He still hadn’t shown me his mangled arm.
Or calmly shifted in front of me.
I walked over to him. “After the melee tomorrow, let’s patrol the gorge. Just us. We can look for any sign that Displodo might be a rogare and talk more then, okay?”
If he was disappointed by the fact that I didn’t respond to his declarations, or if he was surprised that my voice now sounded normal, he didn’t show it. He nodded, looking contemplative.
“Until tomorrow then,” he said and I left, eager to escape the temptation to do something I’d later regret.
9
STONEWALL
Get up! You have to do the dishes.”
Wha…?
My whole body ached, my vision swam, and my thoughts sloshed around in my head like the broken boards of a barrel that had been tossed over a waterfall.
Who was shaking my shoulder?
I tried to slap her hand away, but she easily evaded and shook me harder.
“Don’t you remember?” She asked in an utterly annoying sing-songy voice. “I wash everything but the kitchen sink. That means whatever’s in there is your job. So get up!”
I rubbed my eyes, briefly wondering where all of Ivy’s pictures were, and then remembered where I was. The chambers I’d been sleeping in were far more luxurious than Room 112 of Megiddo, but apparently not even a sumptuous four-poster bed with velvet curtains, feather pillows, and five-hundred-count sheets could make me feel as if I hadn’t drunk an entire barrel of Black Gilliflower on my own, which was completely unfair since I hadn’t even had a sip. I hoped that damned bottle was resting in the bottom of a trash bin somewhere.
Of course, I was so tired I probably would have crawled in there with it if it hadn’t been for Tenacity, who was sitting on the edge of the bed smacking my leg. “I’m kidding,” she said. “About the kitchen sink. I cleaned that out last night – and what a job it was! Nothing like ending your day mucking offal out of a two-tub terrazzo sink.” She clasped her hands together, raised her head as if giving thanks to… who exactly I’m not sure, and sighed blissfully. Then she looked down at me, her expression serious.
“You melted your alarm clock, you know,” she said, her voice now deadpan. “And that you will have to clean up yourself.”
I groaned. How many alarm clocks was this now? I pulled the covers up over my head only to have her rip them off me. Jeez. Thankfully I didn’t sleep in the buff.
“Do you treat all the patron’s guests like this?”
“Only the ones who burn things by the side of their bed in their sleep.”
The crowd was bigger today. I wasn’t sure if it was because word had gotten out that yesterday morning’s melee had been interesting to watch or because everyone wanted to see the patron spar, which I gathered was not a normal occurrence. Regardless, there were about three times as many Hyrkes gathered on the observation platforms this morning as there had been yesterday.
Yannu introduced me to the team we’d be sparring against. Unsurprisingly, since she’d been my biggest weakness yesterday, Malphia was its captain. But the fact that I’d found Yannu to be a formidable opponent hadn’t escaped his notice either. In lieu of sparring directly against me this time, however, he’d added not one, not two, but three other bunyips to Malphia’s team. Each and every one of them was as large and dense, both physically and magically, as Yannu had been. In fact, it was almost as if he’d cloned himself. Not only did their signatures feel almost indistinguishable from his but their names were Yuri, Yarin, and Yavin.
Malphia’s final team member was a hidebehind named Vannis. Hidebehinds were mostly rogares, and to this day I have no idea what motivated Vannis to join the ranks, but it wasn’t so he could chum around with his fellow regulares, that’s for sure. He seemed to dislike everyone. Over seven feet tall and whip-thin, he looked like a bear who’d been stretched on a rack. He was lanky and loping and covered in black, bristly hair. When I turned my head, he faded into heat haze and his signature disappeared.
Terrific. One distraction and he’d be all but invisible.
My team was exactly the same as yesterday, except for the addition of Ari. He’d emerged from his chambers after breakfast dressed in battle gear and an easy smile – almost as if he were looking forward to the burns, blood, and sweat we’d all be covered in by the end of the morning. His signature was gauzy, even shimmering, and the edges of it bubbled around mine like liquid sunlight.
“Same rules as yesterday,” Yannu said, “except that the team with the first captain to be incapacitated loses.” He grinned at me, his two huge tusks poking through his lips. His thoughts were clear.
I’d be easy meat.
I swallowed and refused to look at Ari, too afraid either he or Yannu would see it as a sign of weakness.
As he had yesterday, Yannu gave us a few minutes to confer.
“Stay where I can see you,” I told Fara shakily. Expectancy was already pooling in my signature and it was making me jittery. “Climb up on one of the boulders. Cast Impenetrable over yourself. Nova and Virtus can circle its base and defend you. That should keep you protected and preserve your potentia.”
She scoffed. “Noon, I’m your Guardian, remember?”
“Yeah, but I need you ready to cast whatever it was you cast over me yesterday that saved me from Malphia.” I bit my lip, a nervous habit I wished to Luck I’d been able to banish. I doubted any of the demons would intentionally try to kill us during the melee… but then again, who really knew? If one of them was Displodo, the melee would provide the perfect opportunity for them to try to kill both the patron and the Council’s investigator. And, even if Ari and I weren’t in mortal danger, how bad would it look if we lost with half the town as witnesses?
Malphia, three bunyips, and the near-invisible hidebehind. Holy Halja!
Ari had been unusually quiet. Back when we were working together, he’d never missed an opportunity to voice his opinion – or at least give me some sign if he thought my plans weren’t going to work. It was a trait that had always annoyed me. His know-it-all attitude had chafed. But now that I had a little bit more experience and skill, I realized not asking his opinion on strategy here would be plain dumb. He was the one most familiar with these demons, after all. And we were running out of time. I turned to him. He had the oddest expression on his face. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
“Well?”
“You don’t have to worry about Malphia,” he said. “At least not if we share and swap magic like we used to. Open your signature. Relax and use me as your anchor. Malphia’s magic is strong but there’s no chance she’ll be able to attack you the way she did yesterday if we
work together.” He paused, giving me a chance to say no.
Did I have a choice? I’d been feeling Ari’s signature along with every other waning magic user’s since I first arrived. But I’d never opened up completely. For one, I didn’t like feeling all of them. And two, completely open my signature to Ari? Share and swap magic with him? Every waning magic user on the mountain would then know how we felt about each other. Ari would know how I felt about him. And I’d know how Ari felt about me, although he’d made it pretty clear last night.
Still…
Being told something, no matter how emotional the delivery, was very different than experiencing it.
“Ready?” Yannu called.
I took a deep breath and nodded at Ari, not trusting myself to speak. His expression turned serious then and he quickly told us the rest of his plan. We broke off and joined the others at the bottom of the old amphitheater.
“You lost yesterday,” Yannu told me. “So you can start high again.”
Fara immediately cast us up using both older and newer favorites. Then she, Virtus, and Nova fled for the relative safety of the sidelines while Ari and I shaped swords and squared off against Malphia’s team. Yannu signaled and, suddenly, the air was full of clanging, scuffling, growling, and grunting.
I lost Vannis almost immediately. I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t sense him. If not for that, I might have delayed cracking open my signature completely, but doing so was almost instinctive when I realized he’d disappeared. Besides, I’d told Ari I would, and now wasn’t the time to be waffling or second-guessing myself.
So, just as I was lunging toward Yavin (Yuri?), I relaxed my signature. It was weird for my brain to be telling my magic to soften, slow, and expand while simultaneously telling my muscles to brace, quicken, and contract. For a moment, both my fighting and my magic felt sluggish and uncoordinated. Then, with a whoosh of blistering heat, Ari’s magic saturated mine. Instantly, I felt infused with feelings of solidarity, relief, and exultation. As if Ari had been waiting for this moment – the moment we could join forces and attack an adversary without any of my old hesitation – for his entire life. Almost effortlessly, the two of us pushed back three bunyips. I wouldn’t have believed it possible if I weren’t the one advancing on them. Their sunken eyes seemed to pop out of their heads in disbelief.
