Magic Rises kd-6

by Ilona Andrews

  “Too much information.” Hugh’s one-night stands were the last thing on my need-to-know list.

  “You asked. But you’re not his one-night stand, Kate. Or are you?”

  I gave him my hard look.

  He grinned, a wolfish sharp grin. “You know what I’m looking for in a partner? A challenge.”

  “Good luck.”

  He laughed quietly, a raspy sound. “Perhaps we’re overthinking it. Maybe your Beast Lord is leaning toward her because he needs a wife and her father isn’t planning to destroy everything he stands for.”

  Ouch. “Is that what Roland wants to do?”

  Hugh sighed and surveyed the people below. “Look at them. They think this gathering is about them, their petty territorial clashes, their problems, their lusts, wants, and needs. They gorge themselves, squabble, and flash their fangs, and all the while they have no idea that it is all about you.”

  Thin ice. Proceed with extreme caution.

  He turned toward me, blue eyes luminescent. “There are thousands of shapeshifters. Kill a hundred and there are always more. But there hasn’t been another one like you for five thousand years. I would slaughter everyone in that room below for a shot at a single conversation with you.”

  The imaginary ice was cracking under my feet. He was taking this someplace very strange. “Laying it on kind of thick, don’t you think?”

  “I’m only stating facts.” Hugh leaned back on the rail. “Spar with me. You know you want to.”

  I leaned forward and pointed to my forehead. “Tell me if you see IDIOT written on there.”

  “Scared?”

  I shrugged. “Scared of what will happen after I ruin your face and Hibla starts a massacre.”

  “You have my word I won’t let you anywhere near my face.”

  “Let?”

  Hugh grinned.

  In another minute, I’d need a rag to mop up all of the smugness dripping off him. “Big talk for someone with a scar on his face.”

  “If you win, I’ll tell you how I got it.”

  I waved my hand at him. “That’s okay. I don’t want to know that badly.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Does it matter? So far you’ve ducked every question I asked.”

  “I didn’t think I had a fighting style,” Hugh said. “If it comes within range, I can kill it, but I thought what I did was a hodgepodge of techniques that worked. It’s not something one ponders: what is my special brand of violence? And then I saw you. Admit it, you felt it.”

  I did. I’d never before seen anyone who fought like me. We had been completely in sync, so perfectly that the memory of it was disturbing.

  He looked at me. “I want to experience it again. Spar with me.”

  “Sorry, but I’m done playing.”

  “Kate, come on.”

  “I mean it. No.”

  Hugh chuckled. “Mean and a tease.”

  Below us Curran stood up. Lorelei stood up, too. Now what? Curran walked across the hall and out through the door under the gallery. Lorelei followed him.

  “Would you like to spy on the lovebirds?” Hugh asked.

  “No.” I didn’t need any favors from him.

  “Having the right intelligence is the key to winning a war.”

  “I’m not at war.”

  “Of course you are, Kate. You’re at war with yourself. A part of you knows that there is more to life than being the Consort. A part of you is wondering if he is betraying you. They are going to talk, whether you listen in or not, and hearing them won’t change what they have to say.” He nodded to the left. “I’m going. Feel free to join me.”

  Something inside me snapped. I had to know. I didn’t trust the man I loved enough not to listen in. That said volumes about me and right then I didn’t care. “Fine.”

  Hugh walked to the nearest door and held it open. I walked through it into a long curving hallway. I could see a balcony at the end. A light breeze, cold and spiced with the salty dampness of the sea, swirled around me. The sky was a brilliant blue, and against this happy, sunlit turquoise, the pale rail of the balcony seemed to almost glow.

  A long rug stretched across the stone, swallowing our footsteps. Voices drifted up from below. I stopped just short of walking onto the balcony and propped myself against the wall.

  Hugh leaned against the opposite wall, watching me.

  “You don’t take good care of yourself,” Lorelei said.

  And she was ready and willing to help him with that.

  “You make so many sacrifices.”

  He couldn’t possibly be buying this crock of bullshit. The man who manipulated seven different sets of alpha personalities on a daily basis couldn’t possibly be this stupid.

  “It must be lonely sometimes.”

  “It is,” Curran said.

  He was lonely. We had been together almost 24/7 for the past two months, yet he was lonely. When in the bloody hell did he have a chance to be lonely, exactly?

  “It gets to be too much sometimes for one person. I understand,” Lorelei continued. “After my mother left my father, I had to go with her, and I didn’t really have a choice. I miss my father. I miss being somebody. In Belgium, because of my uncle, my mother and I aren’t permitted to actually do anything in the pack. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be aware every minute that you are a guest and you must think over every word that comes out of your mouth. I would give anything for a place where I belong. Sometimes I wish I could sprout wings and just fly away. Just be gone to someplace better. Some place where I matter.”

  She fell silent.

  “I’m sorry it happened to you,” Curran said. “Sounds like you feel trapped and alone.”

  “I do. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to heap my problems on you.”

  “It’s alright.”

  “No, it’s not.” Lorelei sighed. “Sometimes I just feel like I have nobody to talk to. At least no one who understands me. I’m sure you know how that feels. Your mate is human. There are some things that she simply can’t understand.”

  I fought to keep from grinding my teeth.

  “We are different,” Curran said.

  Yeah, those differences didn’t bother you until now, jackass.

  “I’m sorry she couldn’t be with you and share in the thrill of bringing down the prey after a long hunt. It is such a rush to hunt next to your mate. You are so selfless to give up that joy. I don’t know if I could do that.”

  Oh, give me a break.

  “We all must make sacrifices. Hunting with my mate is just one of the things I can’t do.”

  The way he said it, with deep profound regret, stabbed me straight in the chest.

  “Perhaps she could become a shapeshifter?”

  “She is immune,” Curran said.

  Lorelei inhaled sharply. “So you gave up half of your life for her? I’m so sorry. What if her children are born human?”

  You bitch.

  “Then I will deal with it.” He sounded cold like a glacier.

  My chest hurt. The world gained a slight red tint. I concentrated on breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.

  “I shouldn’t have mentioned it. It’s just that she’s so much more fragile than we are. Humans die of disease. They’re weaker and easily hurt. If her children are born human, they would inherit her weakness . . . You shouldn’t have to give up your . . . I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.”

  Exhale. Inhale.

  “I appreciate your kindness. It’s about time for us to go back,” Curran said. “I will be missed.”

  Exhale.

  “Of course.”

  A door thumped closed. Hugh shook his head. “I wasn’t sure before, but now I know—the man is an idiot.”

  The pain sat in my chest, hot and solid. “Don’t say it.”

  “He’s a man of limited vision, Kate. All he cares about is the immediate: she’s telling him that you can’t hunt with him, you don’t grow fur, and he isn’t defending
you. Sweet gods, your children might be human. The horror. He hasn’t even considered what it means to have you on his side long-term. You handed him a priceless red diamond and he’s reaching for glass beads because they are bigger and flashier.”

  “It’s none of your business.” This was it. This was his angle. Separate me from Curran and present himself as a better alternative. Hugh was playing me. I was walking along the edge of a cliff and needed to be sharp or I’d plunge down, but the red mist in my head was making it hard to concentrate.

  “There are dozens of girls like Lorelei. They think they are special because they were born shapeshifters and they are cute and spoiled. They expect the world to bend for them.” Hugh pointed toward the hall. “I can go in there right now, ask for one, and by morning I’ll have ten just like her. You are special, Kate. You were born special, and then you passed through Voron’s crucible, and you’ve excelled. Curran can’t see it. There is an old word for it: unworthy.”

  “Will you be quiet?” I ground out.

  He kept talking, never raising his voice, his tone reasonable but insistent. “I work with shapeshifters. I know them. I have them in my order. They don’t think like us. They like to pretend they do, but their physiology is simply too different. They don’t experience complex emotions, they experience urges. It’s a cold, hard fact. Shapeshifters are ruled by instincts and needs: the urge to survive, to eat, and to produce offspring. Everything they do is dictated by animalistic thinking: they feel fear and it drives them into forming packs; they’re driven to procreate and so they become aggressive toward their competition in an effort to pass on their genes; they make children—”

  Maddie’s mother flashed before me. “They love their children! They defend them to the end.”

  “So do cheetahs and wolf spiders. But expecting compassion or complex emotions from them would be foolish. It’s a survival instinct, Kate. When a human mother loses a child, it’s a life-breaking tragedy. When a shapeshifter child turns loup, they grieve and weep for a month or so, and then they get to work on a replacement.”

  Hugh raised his hands in front of him about a foot apart, palms facing each other. “They have tunnel vision and they live in the moment. Right now Curran’s instincts are telling him you are a problem. Being with you is too complicated. You don’t fit neatly into the structure of his world, and others are questioning his choice. You are a source of friction and now he’s found a more suitable alternative.”

  I didn’t want to hear any more. I pushed from the wall, but he blocked my way.

  “Move.”

  “Ask yourself if you will be content living your life in his shadow. You know you were meant for greater things. Deep down he knows this, too. He knows he can’t hold you or he would’ve begged you to marry him. When a man wants to share his life with a woman, he offers her everything.”

  “Move.” If he didn’t, I would move him.

  “You need to blow off some steam. I have an exercise yard full of swords. Spar with me.”

  “No.”

  “If you’re too scared to try, just say you’re scared, and we’ll come back to it when you grow a backbone.”

  Voron. That was what Voron used to say to me. He would critique my fights, he would batter me in practice, and when I came up short, he’d reprimand me. “Do better” was bad. “Sloppy” was worse. But nothing compared to “Say you’re scared.” There was no worse sin than to not try because you couldn’t scrape together enough courage.

  The anger that had simmered boiled over. The ice cage cracked. I was so done. He wanted a fight, I would give him a fucking fight. “Fine. Lead the way.”

  CHAPTER 15

  I followed Hugh down the stairs. We emerged into the hallway and I nearly walked into George. She saw Hugh. Her smart eyes narrowed. “Hey, Kate.”

  “Hey.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Out for a little exercise.”

  George turned. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  We walked through the hallways to a door. Hugh pushed it open and we emerged into the inner yard. Six large racks of weapons greeted me, spaced in a crescent along the nearest wall. Swords, axes, spears. He must’ve taken time to prepare. It wouldn’t help him.

  I strolled along the racks. I recognized a few Japanese blades, but most were European, bastard swords, rapiers, sabers. An ancient falcata waited by the Greek kopis, a Roman gladius rested next to a hand-and-a-half, and a German messer next to its descendant, the saber. Falchions, claymores, tactical blades, every single one of them not only functional but beautiful, a kind of weapon that was a tool of war and a piece of art. Voron would’ve loved this. It had to be Hugh’s personal collection. It was beautiful, as long as one ignored the man in the cage slowly dying of thirst in the corner.

  I glanced up. Christopher was watching us through the bars with haunted eyes. I had meant to bring him water this morning.

  Hugh stalked on the other side, watching me.

  “Kate,” George said. “What are you planning to do?”

  “We’re planning to spar,” Hugh told her. “Just a friendly competition.”

  “This is a really bad idea,” George said.

  “What do I get if I win?” I asked.

  Hugh nodded at his priceless swords. “You can have anything here.”

  I surveyed the blades. I would be insane to turn one down. “Anything?”

  “Anything in this courtyard. But if I win—”

  “You won’t.”

  “If I win,” Hugh said, “you’ll tell me how you killed Erra. What magic you did, what moves you used. You will re-create that fight for me, down to the last little detail.”

  George shook her head. “Kate . . .”

  “Deal.”

  George sighed.

  I shrugged off my sheath and set Slayer down by the closest rack. I needed a similar blade, something with the same reach, weight, and balance.

  Hugh stalked along the racks, thinking.

  Falchion . . . No. A saber would give me an advantage, but this had to be an even contest. He was stronger; I had no doubt of that. He was six inches taller, muscled like a gladiator, and outweighed me by sixty-five pounds at the very least. His shirt molded to him, and the muscle on his torso looked hard like body armor. But all that muscle mass came with a price. It would cost him in endurance and speed, and I had endurance coming out of my ears.

  We stopped at the same rack. Two nearly identical swords waited before us, each thirty-two inches long. A deep bevel ran down the length of the double-edged blades. People called it the blood groove, because they imagined blood dramatically running down the bevel. In reality the groove wasn’t made to channel blood, but to lighten the weight of the sword without compromising its resilience. Despite its size, one of these twin swords would likely weigh only about two and a half pounds. Let’s see, a classic type six cross-guard, with widened flattened ends bent slightly toward the blade. A four-inch grip, wrapped with a leather cord. A plain round pommel. Not a work of art, but a brutally efficient tool, designed to take lives.

  “Fate,” Hugh said.

  I took one sword; he took the other. I swung my blade. Hmm. Lighter than two and a half pounds. More like two pounds, six ounces. No, five. Point of balance about five inches. Good sword. Fast, strong, lively.

  We walked away from the racks, giving ourselves some space to dance.

  “Why don’t you use your own sword?” George asked.

  “He might break it.”

  “I wouldn’t.” Hugh put his hand on his heart.

  “He would,” I told George. “He’s a sonovabitch.”

  Hugh laughed. “We just met and she knows me so well.”

  I shrugged my shoulders, moving them forward, stretching my back. “Rules?”

  “Full contact,” Hugh said. “Yield.”

  I had expected first blood. “Full contact, yield” meant neither of us would hold back and we wouldn’t stop un
til one of us was backed into a corner or in real danger of losing a limb or our life. One of us had to say uncle for the fight to end.

  “You sure about that?” I had a lot of aggression to work out.

  “Are you afraid?” Hugh asked.

  “Nope. Your funeral. Ready?”

  Hugh spread his arms. “Introduce me to the afterlife.”

  I thought you’d never ask.

  I walked toward him. He would expect a European opening with a European sword. He wouldn’t get one.

  If I killed him now, he would never tell Roland about me. It could be just a sparring accident. My sword slipped and cut through his aorta. Oopsies. Dreadfully sorry.

  I was closing the distance. Hugh still had his hands out. He had no idea how pissed off I was.

  I could make it look like an accident. I could make him pay for everything that hurt inside me.

  I picked up speed, spun, and let myself off the chain, flying into movement like a pebble shot from a slingshot. The world slowed; each second stretched as if underwater.

  I slashed diagonally, right to left over his chest. He stepped back to dodge.

  I sliced right to left. Another step, hands up.

  A low lunge, cutting left to right across his lower stomach. Hugh still dodged, but now with a purpose. He’d identified the cuts—I was hitting along eskrima’s cardinal angles. About time. I reversed the slice, cutting in the opposite direction across the stomach. Hugh moved to parry, point of his blade down, body turning, planning to catch me with his left elbow.

  Our swords touched.

  I hammered my left fist into his jaw. The jawbone crunched and popped out of its socket. Hugh’s mouth hung open, his lower jaw out of place. I’ve had my jaw dislocated before. Right now the pain was exploding in his skull and it had to be excruciating.

  Hugh stumbled back. I drove him across the yard, striking as fast as I could. Hit. Hit. Hit. He staggered. My blade caught his biceps. Blood swelled, bright and red. The magic vibrated in it like a live electric current. First blood to me.

  Hugh punched himself. The jaw slid into place. He reversed the grip and brought the sword down, cutting at me with powerful strikes. Dodge, dodge, parry. Ow. I batted his blade aside with the flat of mine, but if it had landed, the sheer power of it would have taken my arm off. Good that I wasn’t planning on standing still.