“True. But that still doesn’t give me a reason to help you. If you don’t succeed, I will lose a great deal. The Korvad will turn on me, and if I survive, I will have nothing.”
“The Korvad?” Max repeated.
“The ones who took Nayan’s heart, silk, and horn. The ones who own the city.”
“They don’t own it. No one owns it,” Scooter said.
“Might makes right, and they have all the might they need,” Ilanion said caustically. “Things have changed a lot since you left.”
“Then it’s time they changed back.”
“Which still brings us back around to the question at hand. Why should I help you? What can you offer besides the threat of death? I have a snug territory inside the Torchmarch, and the Korvad leaves me mostly alone.”
“You didn’t strike me as the keep-your-head-down-to-save-your-ass kind of a guy,” Max said. “I thought you had bigger balls than that.”
“Spoken by one who’s never met the Korvad or lived in Chadaré,” Ilanion returned, his mouth twisting.
“I have little to offer,” Scooter said. “Except the harvest of what’s left of me, should I fail. That is worth a great deal.”
“I am no butcher,” Ilanion spat, earning him some respect from Max.
“Then our negotiations must be at an end. I have nothing else of value to offer,” Scooter said in a voice devoid of any emotion.
“So I can kill him now?” Max asked.
Scooter let go a slow breath. “It would be safer for us,” he said reluctantly.
“I can promise not to pursue you,” Ilanion countered. “Or help your enemies. That much I can do.”
“You think that’s worth your skin?” Max asked.
“It means that if you kill me, you do so for no reason. I’m not a threat. Besides, time isn’t your friend.”
Just then, she became aware of the baying of the gargoyles. They sounded too damned close.
“I can turn them away from your trail,” Ilanion said.
“They belong to you?”
“They listen to me.”
“I don’t think he wants to die today,” Max said to Scooter.
“Neither do we. Make your promise, and we will be on our way,” he told Ilanion.
“Let me up. I’ll make my promise on my feet,” the winged man demanded.
“Before or after you cook us?” But Max released him. She retrieved her two swords as he stood, his armor clanking.
He stared at her a moment. “Most would have kept the dagger in my throat until the promise was made.”
She shrugged. He was right. But she had too much experience being compelled into something she didn’t want. It went hard against the grain to wish that on someone else. “A forced promise isn’t worth much in my book.”
“Magically, it makes no difference. Coerced or not, I’d have had to stand by it. Now I could simply fly away or boil you in magic.”
“You could. Will you?” Maybe she should have been worried, but she wasn’t. He’d been too honest about where he stood with helping them.
The corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile, and he shook his head. “No.” He reached up and took off his helm. His hair was gold-streaked chestnut cropped close to his head. His cheeks were wide and sharply cut, his brown eyes almond-shaped, with long lashes and bold, expressive eyebrows. Max expected him to have a beak for a nose, but instead, it was large, straight, and blunt. More like the wedge of an ax. Blood continued to run from his neck wound. He seemed unconscious of it. He bowed to her, his wings flaring.
“My lady Max. It is a quite a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Her brows rose as he straightened. Seriously? But he seemed completely genuine. “I’m sure having me poke you in the throat was seriously special, and you trying to cook me was just beyond all kinds of fun, but can we get on with this? Your pets are getting awfully close, and we need to be gone before anyone sees us.” She glanced up as a flicker caught her eye. “Too late.”
Something dark glided through the shadows. Max squinted but couldn’t make out what it was. The thick shadows of the city were impenetrable, even to her Shadowblade eyes. Whatever it was, chances were, it wasn’t friendly. They were out of time.
“We should get going,” she said, reaching for Scooter. She swung him up in her arms. “Coming or staying?” she asked Ilanion.
He scowled, yellow sparks flickering in his eyes. Max’s lip curled. He was too damned witchy for comfort. He jammed his helm onto his head and strode toward his two companions. “I am going to regret this,” he grated, and then swept them into an iron grip. His wings beat the air with powerful sweeps that sent dust and debris scudding across the cobbles.
They rose off the ground and flew down the street like an arrow. Ilanion’s speed and strength were stunning. Almost like Tutresiel or Xaphan. He turned on his wing at a right angle and then again. Scooter moaned as they jolted. Max firmed her grip, but there was no way to comfort him or make him feel better. It was all she could do to hold on to him and keep the two swords pointed down away from Ilanion. The points of his gauntlet talons cut into her flesh.
They swept more turns, staying low between buildings so they couldn’t be seen across the rooftops. Max looked back. A shadowy shape followed them, a streak of charcoal sliding through the air behind them.
“We’re being followed,” she said to Ilanion.
“I am aware,” he said, never slowing.
“What is it?”
“A minion of Kratos.”
“Who’s that?”
“A bad guy. One of the Korvad.”
He dropped suddenly and skimmed close to the ground, gliding into a long tunnel that led beneath a sprawling compound of boxy gray stone buildings that looked like warehouses. Ilanion dropped to the ground inside the broad tunnel, releasing Max and Scooter. She set the latter on his feet, keeping her arm around him to steady him.
He leaned heavily against her, his body shaking beneath the sheltering layers of his robe. It was such a change from the all-powerful being she’d met just weeks ago and totally different from the bastard who’d tossed her against the cliff over and over just to make her learn how to get into the abyss. How much time did he have left? They’d been bleeding him for thousands of years. How long until he was dead? And why in the hell had he waited so long to come back and fight? Why had he waited all this time to find Max?
There was no time to ask or get the answers. From the looks of it, Scooter had maybe days, if not hours.
Max eyed their surroundings. It was as much a trap as it was a hiding place. The only visible ways in and out were the tunnel mouths, and those could be easily blocked. On the other hand, it was going to take a little while until anyone found out where they’d gone to ground. Except for that damned shadow creature. It had been following close. Even if it hadn’t seen Ilanion drop into the tunnel, it would have a pretty decent idea where to narrow the search.
“I thought you weren’t going to help us,” she said.
“I was wrong,” Ilanion said abruptly, and rubbed a hand across his mouth as he thought. “We haven’t much time. Kratos will be coming.”
“Got a plan?”
He shook his head. “I’m equal enough to Kratos, but the Korvad will destroy me. They want Nayan a great deal.”
“Shouldn’t you want him?” Max asked, an insane idea percolating in her mind. “I mean, he’s valuable, if for nothing more than to sell to the Korvad. Am I right?”
Ilanion’s wings flared as he thrust his shoulders back. His jaw jutted, his eyes turning to liquid gold. “I don’t deal in butchery,” he said in a cold, guttural voice. Magic flickered across his skin and wings as his entire body tightened.
Max waved away his protest. “Yeah, but you might, right? No one in their right mind would hesitate to take such a prize as Scooter. At least, my bet is that’s what the Korvad thinks.”
Beside her, the being in question nodded. “That’s true.” His voic
e was whispery and thin.
“I wouldn’t!” Ilanion’s anger was quickly firing into rage. His lip curled. “I should kill you where you stand.”
“Oh, shut up,” Max said, frowning. Everything hinged on her. On whether she could pull them all into the abyss and back out. Hell, she could hardly manage herself. Now she wanted to take the golden boy and Scooter, too? She was insane. Not that she had any other choice. So she’d do it. She looked back at the bristling Ilanion.
“Hear me out. What I need is some time to retrieve Scooter’s heart, silk, and horn. The only way I can do that is if he’s somewhere safe and I can get around without someone crawling up my ass every minute. The best way is if you take us prisoner. You can set up some kind of auction or whatever. They’ll see it as a play for power and money. That should give me time to do what I need to do. That is, if you really want to help us. You can walk away now, no harm, no foul.”
“Except that the Korvad will shortly know I had my hands on you both, if they don’t know already.” Ilanion’s eyes narrowed, and he folded his arms over his chest. “I can’t walk away. They won’t believe you escaped.”
Max shrugged. “I can rough you up. I promise to make it look good. They’ll never suspect a thing.” She smiled wolfishly and rubbed her hands together.
He smiled unwillingly. “Thanks,” he said dryly. “Suppose I agree? They won’t let me take you back to my compound. They’ll have it blockaded within the hour.”
“Not a problem.” She hoped. “All you have to do is agree or not.”
He frowned, his attention moving to Scooter. “Nayan, what’s going on?”
“I told you, Max is unique.”
The answer clearly didn’t make Ilanion happy. But he wasn’t getting anything more.
“So? What’s it going to be?” Max prodded.
He looked her up and down like he was hoping to develop X-ray vision. Finally, his mouth pursed as if he’d eaten a live scorpion, and he nodded. “Very well. What do you require from me?”
It took Max a second to understand what he meant. “Just don’t actually try to take us prisoner when we get there,” she said. “I don’t want to have to kill you, but I will if you turn on us.”
“You can try,” he said. “I won’t make the same mistake again. However, the issue won’t come up. You have my word.”
It wasn’t binding, like a promise, but giving his word still had tangible power.
“Good. Then let’s get out of here before we can’t.”
Max reluctantly dropped her swords on the ground. It was going to take everything she had to bring Scooter and Ilanion into the abyss. She didn’t need extra baggage. She looked at the eagle man. “How attached are you to your armor?”
He frowned confusion. “What?”
She shook her head. “Never mind. But if we get there naked, it isn’t because I want to see you in all your glory.”
“How do I find a place to land?” she asked Scooter, realizing suddenly the flaw in her plan. She had no idea where she was going beyond Ilanion’s compound, which sounded like a military installation.
“Just pick a place and want to go there. Try to narrow the choice,” he told her weakly.
“That’s all? So, like, just pick the kitchen, and that’s where we’ll end up?”
“Too many knives,” he said with a ghost of a smile. “Pick a soft landing.”
“Like a bed?”
Scooter nodded.
“What are you talking about?” Ilanion demanded.
“Saving our asses. Now, shut up.”
She reached out and grabbed each man’s hand. She snorted inwardly. Men. As if. Scooter was a god or a demigod, and Ilanion was no doubt the same. She wondered if they’d met at godlet preschool. Or maybe godlet Boy Scouts or Little League.
She pulled her mind away before she broke out into hysterical giggles and wove her fingers together with theirs.
She closed her eyes and sank into the awareness of every cell of her body. The wonder of it still amazed her. But it wasn’t enough. She pushed out, trying to sense her two companions. It was different from her sense of her clothing. That was more simple. These were whole bodies, plus clothing. She wondered what would happen if she missed parts of them. What a jigsaw mess that would be. A liver missing here, a spleen there, a couple of arms and one eye, maybe a few toes and fingers . . .
Drawing a deep breath, Max concentrated. She pushed her awareness into the men. They were nothing like her. They felt entirely alien. Still, there was a cohesion to them, a sense of themselves. She traced the edges of their bodies and went deeper, finding where their blood pulsed. She paused as she found a twisting of putrid magic where Scooter’s heart should have been. It felt swollen and hot, like a tangle of molten metal. She could feel its wrongness—it was rotten and festering, like a disease. She found the same on his head—a gaping hole filled with blinding heat and decay. It threaded through his body in a filigree of carrion and corruption. No wonder he was dying. He was rotting from the inside out.
Ilanion was different. He was filled with sunlight, and it did not burn. Gold ran through his veins and sheathed his wings. Internally, he had two hearts and a huge pair of lungs. The rest of him was enough like a human to make getting a sense of him easier. Max already felt tired. She chewed her lower lip, pushing once again to take in Ilanion’s armor and Scooter’s robe. She might as well go for broke.
She didn’t give them any warning as she dropped down into her fortress. She plummeted, holding them tight in the net of her awareness.
She’d thought that going through the first time was bad. This was infinitely worse. Now, instead of pulling herself through the eye of a needle, she was pulling all three of them. And somehow both men seemed to have swelled up. They were the size of barns.
Max felt her hold on them slipping. Not in this lifetime. She set herself, planting herself solidly inside the fortress. She concentrated, holding on to them with all her might.
Strength flowed up her legs, accompanied by the searing chill of the abyss. She grasped it and hauled as hard as she knew how. Nothing happened. She gritted her teeth and dug deeper. Every muscle strained. Capillaries popped and healed. Bones snapped and knitted back together. Muscles tore, and tendons ripped. Max didn’t let up. She’d get them through or die trying.
Stubbornness won the battle at last. The world split in half, and they plunged through her fortress into the blackness of the abyss.
She sighed with relief as pain ebbed. Scooter floated beside her in his robe. He looked terrible. Worse than the first time they’d come through the abyss. His blue-flecked obsidian eyes were dull, like scratched marbles. He was skeletal, his hair lank, the gold running through his scales and hair a tarnished gray. He nodded at her as if to say well done. She scowled.
On the other side of her, Ilanion didn’t look any different, except that his armor and wings gleamed with an inner light, and his eyes had once again turned to liquid gold. He was staring at her in total shock.
She gave him a cocky grin, then dove back down into her fortress, all the while thinking of Ilanion’s bed.
The first time, pulling them through had been like giving birth to a killer whale. The second time was much worse. It felt like she was being passed through a meat grinder. Or rather, like she was stuck inside it, getting chewed up over and over and over.
Still, Max held on to her companions tenaciously. If she let go, they’d be lost in the abyss.
She put all her strength into pushing back through her fortress. It seemed to take forever. Then, suddenly, they were falling. A moment later, they bounced onto a bed. Except that it was more like a cloud of feather pillows. Max sank face-first, swallowed up in a soft, cloying fist. The bed smelled of Ilanion, sex, perfume, and sweat.
She rolled onto her back and kicked her way out of the sprawling mass of comfort, bashing her head into one of Ilanion’s wings as she did.
She slid off onto the floor. The bed was set on a broad, l
ow platform in the middle of an enormous room with a coffered ceiling, deeply piled rugs, backless couches and chairs, a fireplace that could fit a moose inside, paneled walls with brightly colored paintings, and elegant decorations. Crystal chandeliers sent prisms of light dancing through the room.
It was about all Max managed to notice before exhaustion and pain swamped her. She swayed and felt herself melting to the floor in a liquid heap. Her head spun, and she couldn’t focus on anything. Her body throbbed and flared with pain. She was broken, and she was out of fuel to heal herself.
“What’s the matter with her?” Ilanion said.
“She is new to traveling the abyss. She used all her strength.” Scooter sounded impossibly weary. “She needs healing and sustenance. Or she will die.”
Max told herself to prove him wrong. Move! Sit up and get on with the job! But her body refused to answer. It felt like climbing up Mount Everest just to keep her heart beating and her blood flowing. It wasn’t until that moment that she really believed she might be on the verge of dying. Shit.
A spurt of energy flooded her spirit. Not today. She was not dying today. She had too much to do, and she needed to get home and let Niko and Tyler berate her for vanishing and apologize to Alexander for being such a wimp about loving him. Loving him? Crap. But it was true. Apparently, imminent death had brought on a moment of clarity.
Her determination meant nothing to her body. She had used up everything. There was nothing left.
“She’s bound somewhere,” Ilanion said, and she felt one of his fingers glide across her forehead and down the bridge of her nose, as if it were following a trail of magic.
“To a witch.”
“I thought she was yours.”
“She was given to me.”
“She can’t be yours if she’s bound to a witch.”
Max could hear the disdainful curl of his lip when he said witch. Like he wasn’t one. She wanted to point that out, but her mouth was frozen rubber.
Her heart slowed. She felt thin—wasted and transparent. She needed calories. A lot of them, all mainlined directly into an artery. If it wasn’t too late.
She took a breath. Half a breath. Her lungs refused to expand. Her thoughts felt fuzzy, like someone was pulling apart the threads of her mind. Ilanion and Scooter sounded far away and blurry, as if they were under water. Or she was.
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