by Jenn Stark
I realized I’d gone completely tense. “Then why aren’t you pushing more?”
“Because in the end, I will not have to,” he murmured. Somehow, his mouth had moved near mine, and I could almost taste the pressure of his lips. “In the end, you’ll welcome me back to you—to your body and your mind. You will see the power I can guide you to, and you will want to drink in that power. And watching you have that realization will be infinitely sweeter than anything I would gain from forcing your hand…or from forcing my hand upon you.”
As if to punctuate his words, Armaeus lifted long fingers to trace a pattern down the side of my neck, out to the shoulder that had been punctured by the first bullet. At the gossamer touch of his hand, healing warmth rolled out over my skin, sinking into nerve and sinew, knitting together bone, rushing oxygen into newly formed capillaries. Cells filled with light and life and magic, and I couldn’t speak from the wonder of it.
The Magician drew his hand down my arm, and additional injuries responded, the pain drifting away instantly, as if on a puff of smoke. He stroked my fingers back to life and massaged the jagged scars along my thighs, erasing the evidence of the wide pin holes and stapled skin with long, mesmerizing brushes. All along, he murmured words I couldn’t understand and that I didn’t truly want to hear. I didn’t want to think of Armaeus invoking arcane lore to heal me. It was more fulfilling to believe it was by his touch alone, by his will alone that I could become stronger, more whole.
“I can’t believe you waited four whole days to do this,” I groaned, and his laugh was low and challenging.
“There are repercussions to every decision you make, Miss Wilde. If you decide to learn on your own, you have the satisfaction of a self-determined path. But it is a path filled with pain and fraught with doubt and indecision. If you choose to open yourself to me—to anyone in the Council, you give up the power to direct your instruction as you see fit. But there are compensations for the release of that control.”
“Compensations,” I whispered, too lulled by his words to police my own reactions. I curled my fingers into his as they drifted down to my hands again, and pulled him close. Obligingly, he bent toward my face, and the touch of his lips against mine was a benediction. Something yearning and fierce opened up within me, responding to that light touch with a need too strong, too primal to be called back—
And on its heels rushed the whirlwind of loss, the endless wrenching pain that had consumed me, body and soul.
“Stop.” I pulled myself back bodily, but Armaeus pursued me, and instantly I realized the trap he had baited for me so surely and so well. To allow his healing touch to take hold was to give him more access to my mind, and where I gave an inch, he invariably took a mile, pushing against cracks in my armor I didn’t know I had.
Betrayal roared through me, quick and hot, and I was blinded by a sheer white wave. I screamed, and it screamed with me, and nothing else could matter—nothing else would matter as long as its tyranny held forth.
Ordinarily, once begun I couldn’t untangle myself from Armaeus’s hold. But by the time I finished thrusting myself away from him, I was fully awake—awake and alone.
Perhaps more importantly, I was in the Devil’s penthouse office, about five feet away from his richly inlaid desk.
At night.
In a hospital bed.
A hospital bed. This seemed a critical detail as I scrambled out of the unit, my hands going for my clothes, my hair—I was dressed in lightweight scrubs. I was at least reasonably clean.
And I had no idea how I’d gotten here.
“Sara Wilde. Always a pleasure.” The dulcet tones of Aleksander Kreios’s luxurious voice drifted through the room, immediately prior to the appearance of the Devil himself. I stood, turning quickly, and staggered with dizziness.
“How long have I been here?” I barked. My voice sounded stronger. I felt stronger too, despite the head rush. “What happened to me—how long has it been?”
“Since you were in the hospital room with the charming Dr. Sells, screaming in Sumerian? Well, that’s been about two days, I should think.”
I blinked at him. “Sumerian?”
He nodded. “Of course, that could have been the result of the technoceutical Dr. Sells had pumped into you.”
“Oh, I…” His words hit me with a thud. “Wait a minute. What?”
Kreios leaned against his desk, considering me. He was effecting his usual appearance once again, a tall, lean beach bum billionaire. His sun-warmed hair curled over his shoulders, and today he wore a linen shirt, untucked, over ragged-hem khakis. His feet were bare, his perfectly pedicured toes as tan as if he’d spent the entire summer on the beaches of his native Greece.
“Dr. Sells, it appears, took Armaeus’s lack of interest in you as an opportunity to explore your abilities as well. Without his tacit instruction not to interfere with your recovery, she put two different combinations into your system. The first, I was able to remove in time. The second, I’m afraid I was not so lucky. That might have been administered via food. Your reaction was quite impressive once it set in.”
“She drugged me?” I stared at him. “I thought that was Armaeus…”
Kreios’s indolent smile widened as the blush spread over my face. “Armaeus was, in fact, there. You didn’t imagine that—and in fact, the technoceutical effect lowered your mental defenses sufficiently that he assumed you’d reached out to him. And don’t act so surprised about Dr. Sells’s actions. Your abilities place you in a rarified league, one normally occupied by superstars and world-class athletes. Those who cannot be you will seek to use you to further their own aims. Not unlike Armaeus, though I would say he does so not out of personal gain but for the betterment of magic in the world. If that distinction is meaningful to you.”
I couldn’t process Armaeus’s motives right now. “And Sells? Is she aware you’re on to her?”
“An excellent question, and no, as it happens. We do not seek to limit the progress of medical science merely to ensure it doesn’t inadvertently hurt one of our own.” He smiled at my reaction to his words. “And, yes, make no mistake. You are on the path of becoming one of us, Sara Wilde. As much as you refuse to believe it.”
For all his reputation, the Devil never lied. In fact, he delighted in inflicting the discomforts of truth. So as much as I didn’t want to accept his words, I believed them. I believed him.
“I’ll keep that in mind. What happened to Armaeus?”
“Nothing at all. He said he recognized the infiltration of the drug in your system the moment he got too close, and released his hold on you.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “He lied to you, then. I pushed him away, and he wasn’t ready for it. I won that round.”
“If you insist in making it a competition between you and Armaeus, I insist on taking a ringside seat.” Kreios smiled. “But in this case, I wouldn’t split the hair. Something he saw stopped him, or something you did stopped him, but in either case, he stopped. You returned to a coma-like state, much to Miss Dawes’s distress, and we arranged to have you moved to this location forthwith. Miss Dawes has been gracious enough to relocate to my domain for the duration, and has stepped out to gather some actual food for you, since it became clear you would be waking within the next hour or so.”
“Uh-huh. Became clear how?”
“Because I decreed it to be so.”
“Right. Just like you decreed me to imagine Jiao and General Som covered in blood so I’d run out into the ambush the generals and God only knew whoever else had arranged for me?”
“Exactly like that,” he said.
I’d guessed the Devil’s trickery the moment Nikki had told me that Jiao and Som hadn’t actually been shot in the Palazzo VIP suite. Illusions weren’t lies to Kreios. They were games, and woe be to the idiot who didn’t stop to question them.
Idiots like myself, as it turned out.
Kreios gestured to a nearby chair. “But I think Miss Dawes shall find h
erself delayed just long enough that we can have this next conversation quite completely. And quite completely alone.”
Chapter Thirteen
Kreios moved away from the counter and approached me. His expression had changed to one less amused and more concerned. “You begin to worry me, Sara Wilde. I find I do not like being worried.”
That…I wasn’t expecting.
Suddenly tired, I sank into the plush chair, appropriating the small cushion on it as my personal stress toy. “And you’re worried, why?”
“Because you’re no longer behaving in any way that the Council can predict, and while I thrive on that reality, you must be aware that Armaeus does not. The volatility of your reactions has him wondering ever more what took place in Hell. And who else besides you might know about it.”
I looked sharply at him. “Do you?”
“I know what he knows, which is everything you have spoken aloud, whether to yourself or to Nikki.” He waved away my protest. “You forget that what you tell others is spoken into the wind, and the wind has its way of reaching me.”
“Then Armaeus knows it too.”
“Of course. But he also knows there is much that you have not shared with Nikki—or anyone on this earth. Much that can only be determined by returning to Hell.”
“But he’s immortal now. He can’t go there.”
He nodded. “Which presents him a perplexing dilemma, with only one solution—he must pull the information out of you, piece by harrowing piece. As you can imagine, I suspect that experience will not be particularly enjoyable for you.”
I scowled. The event Armaeus wanted to know more about was no walk in the park for me either, though I suspected he wouldn’t react to it the same way I did. Then again, it hadn’t been his heart that’d been crushed.
Kreios watched me with almost a predatory fervor as I worked through that particularly unpleasant memory. “Your mind has held fast against me, but the expressions on your face…” He drew in an unsteady breath. “It’s been some time since a mortal has been able to hold so much out of reach. So close that with a touch it should unravel. Yet it remains locked tight against me.” His smile turned feral. “I can see why Armaeus remains intrigued.”
“But you can’t get in.” I stated this as fact, but I was still relieved when Kreios shook his head.
“The Magician was right about something else: you’ve grown stronger for your time in Hell. It would seem the profound grief you experienced was worth it.”
“I’m not grieving,” I snapped, not missing the flare of interest in Kreios’s eyes. “I’m pissed. Get your emotions right. And Armaeus is stronger too, isn’t he?”
“He’s—different is a better way to put it,” Kreios said. “Not stronger, exactly, but more willing to use his strength as needs demand, and more willing to agree that the need is great more often than not.”
“You mean he’s getting involved with mortal magic.” I thought about Armaeus at the Paris mansion, his thinly veiled goading of me until I’d thrust him back with a surge of ability I hadn’t known I had. “It’s not actually me he’s interested in, it’s the Houses.”
Kreios shrugged. “It’s mostly about you, admittedly. You fascinate and defy him. It’s a dangerous combination. But to answer your question more directly, yes. He’s getting involved with mortal magic. He would like very much to discover the remaining three Houses beyond Swords, and to explore the House of Swords more deeply.”
I grimaced. Of course, Armaeus wouldn’t want to emotionally invest in me. Not the way he once did, before our respective trips to Hell. That might have been too much to hope…and to bear.
“He is concerned that the dragon Llyr is stirring,” Kreios continued, his gaze dropping to the pillow I clenched. “He wishes to ensure it’s the Council’s hand that’s dipping into the pools of magic scattered throughout the world, not our enemy’s.”
“But Armaeus doesn’t care about the mortals, does he?” This also wasn’t a question, for all that I wanted Kreios to deny it. “He cares about the magic, the balance of it. But not about the practitioners.”
Kreios lifted his brows, genuinely confused. “There will always be more practitioners.”
“See? See? No!” Anger blossomed anew, quick and fierce. I flung the pillow at Kreios so quickly, it took him all of the one point seven seconds required to lift his own hand and stop the cushion a breath shy of his face, with a force that ripped through the air, far more potent than required. I mean, come on. The thing was a pillow.
Only it wasn’t a pillow anymore.
Suspended in the air between us, the cushion had morphed into a writhing cat-o’-nine-tails, its leather strands spiked with sizzling barbs and coiling with power, ready to score across Kreios’s face.
The Devil remained still, but his expression was arrested with pleasure as he surveyed the dangerous weapon. “I had no idea your tastes ran so eclectic, Sara Wilde,” he purred. “Perhaps when you are finished enraging the Magician, you should come see me.”
“Stop it,” I said, and the projectile dropped to the ground, once again a harmless cushion. I stared at it, then up to Kreios again, the beginnings of fear gnawing at my stomach.
“Who did that?” I asked. “The whole leather thing. Was that you? Because I wasn’t doing it. Not intentionally anyway.”
“It was you.” The Devil’s expression had turned positively rapt. “I expected a pillow and had no interest in getting hit with one. Getting smacked in the face with a set of barbed lashes would have been even less appealing, I assure you. Though far more invigorating.” He watched me as I sank back in my chair. “You seem…unduly concerned.”
I grimaced. “I don’t know what’s happening to me, Kreios, and I want to know. Before I met you people—for a long time after I met you people, I was an artifact hunter. I’m good at being that. Successful. Now everything is changing, and it’s changing too fast.”
“Too fast for whom? I assure you, I’m enjoying the transformation.”
“But what am I transforming into?” I drew my feet up, hunching over my knees. “I’m now supposedly responsible for the entire House of Swords. What was Soo thinking?”
“You don’t consider yourself a worthy leader?”
“I can’t even pick up a sword without cutting myself. So that would be no. No, Kreios, I don’t consider myself ideally suited to manage an entire organization dedicated to the damned things. And I’ve got my own generals allied against me—well, most of them anyway—and if I were them, I’d ally against me too. Annika was out of her mind to choose me.”
“You recovered her amulet for her, restoring the source of ancient power to the House. Some would say that’s a sufficient test of your abilities.”
“That was a job—and not an especially hard one. Weird, but not hard. It’s not like anyone was attacking me when I grabbed the thing, other than Soo’s own mom. And I outweighed her.” I shook my head. “No. Annika wasn’t thinking right.”
“And then there’s the healing you performed on her general at the Palazzo.”
“For which I’m still pissed off at you, thank you.” I glared at him. “Besides, there were a lot of people there that I didn’t heal.”
“Which is exactly the point. You do not have a sense for the dramatic, Sara Wilde, and it’s something that you’ll need to cultivate should you wish to truly lead. You were attacked on all sides and went down. The men who had previously opposed you could not by honor let you be killed by an outsider. It would violate their code.”
“Lucky for me.” I winced, recalling the thuds of the generals’ bodies as they’d toppled over me. “They were dead men before they even reached me.”
“Not all of them.” Kreios lifted a hand, and a figure appeared before us, an illusion, of course, but a powerful one. General Ma-Singh stood with his cane and his sling, staring resolutely into nothing at all. But unlike the man who had hobbled up to me in the hospital, he was dressed in the same armor I’d seen him i
n outside the Palazzo—black and fitted, booted and belted. Only the helmet was missing. His eyes still carried the intense fervency they had when he’d taken bullets for me, staring me in the face.
“You held his gaze while the rage built within you, the healing fire. You thrust that fire toward him when it was your own body that needed repair. You kept his life burning within him, and he knows it. That is a powerful ally within your own House.”
I sensed the truth of what he was saying, and Soo’s pendants stirred at my neck as if to underscore that truth. The faint echo of fire deep within me stirred too. Kreios was right. I did that. I at least did that one thing. And yet… “If I were truly strong, I would have saved the others too.”
“The others didn’t see you. They acted out of honor, to be sure, but they were committed to the form, not the person. By the chance of his position, Ma-Singh saw you. And to him, that connection proved lifesaving. It is not a stretch for him to say to others who might be skeptics that they have only to look into your eyes to become committed to your cause.”
I stared at him. “He did not say that to anyone. Please tell me you’re making that up.”
Kreios smiled indolently. “He can be quite convincing if he wants to be.”
“No, no, no.” My head began to throb. “I need to find that stupid Honjo sword. It’s the only way I’ll be able to fake my way through the succession fight and then figure out what I really need to do.”
“Then it would appear you’re lucky to have me.”
I should have been expecting the person whose voice rang out across the Devil’s office, but I wasn’t, and the sudden appearance of Eshe in the doorway of Kreios’s office took me aback. Today the High Priestess apparently had a business meeting, because instead of her usual toga-and-sandals, all-Cleopatra-all-the-time attire, she’d wrapped herself in a red bandage dress that emphasized every one of her multithousand-year-old assets. The High Priestess of the Council was its oldest seated member—or had been, up until Michael the Archangel had returned to claim his role as Hierophant. I wondered if she minded being the kid sister.
