by Karin Cox
“What if...? I felt my body tensing, hardening, at the sensation of her nipples firm against my chest, of her flesh so near. My lips brushed up her neck. Discovering a pearl earlobe, I kissed it tenderly, despite myself. “Skylar ... what if I cannot stop?”
She pulled back, her earlobe sliding from between my lips, and I knew she had read my thoughts and that they angered her.
“I am not a Vampire, Ame ... nor a Sphinx. I am as strong as you. If you cannot control yourself, I will control you.”
But I saw the doubt in her eyes. You already do, came my thoughts. I am here. I cannot resist you.
I reached for her again, and she offered me her neck, but when my lips met her skin, it was not to bite. Fangs bared, I hesitated, and my kisses sought the hollow of her throat, where her breath fluttered.
I craved more than her blood—her bones, her core, her breath.
At her throat, the leather thong of the silver-tipped feather she wore stopped me. I wanted to kiss the empty space where its plume tickled the cleft between her breasts, to feel the prod of her nipples against my hungry tongue, but when I brought my hands up to remove it, she stopped me. Instead, she guided my lips to the point below her jaw, where her pulse beckoned.
“I cannot live with your guilt, Ame, and nor can you,” she cautioned. “I will make love to you only when you are mine alone.” Her tone was wistful.
“Skylar,” I groaned. Around us, the water turned to molten gold as I gleamed. “I cannot control myself.” I slid my hands up the curves of her body, over hips and waist and breasts.
Her voice, though thick in her throat, was soft as the coo of doves as she pushed my hands away. “You must, Ame,” she murmured. “We must. Now drink.”
She barely flinched as I broke the skin, but when my teeth and tongue met her vein, she shuddered and then relaxed, softening into my steady sucking until only her nipples remained firm against my chest. Blood gushed into my mouth, wild and natural, unfiltered and free, and so fast that it seemed like liquid light. Its beat was erratic, drums and cymbals and a strange humming crescendo that made me realize I was glowing again while she had turned as pale and cold as a corpse. My fangs released too quickly, and with a gulp that burned all the way down my throat, I pushed her away in horror. Silver hair swirled around us in the water as she sank.
“Skylar. Skylar!” I clutched her limp body up and shook her.
What have I done?
Hers eyes flickered half-open, her smile weak but radiant. Slowly, a pale light returned to her face and some of the weight returned to her body. “You enjoyed me,” she murmured.
It was all I could do not to shake her, she had alarmed me so. “You said you would control me!” I panted.
“I did.” Gray eyes gleamed triumphantly. She leaned up to find my lips, her tongue gentling out mine and becoming more insistent as her strength returned and as she tasted her own blood there. “There is so much more to come, my Swan,” she whispered when she pulled away. She kissed away a trickle of blood at the corner of my lips and added with a laugh, “You are still so very messy.”
I remembered the Vampire in the alley in Athens, and how precise and clean Skylar’s kill had been.
“Yes. Someone was supposed to be teaching me how to draw blood cleanly.”
She threw her head back, and her laughter rippled the surface of the pool; all of the careful guards she employed to keep her face impassive were off duty. She glowed.
“That Cruxim has been busy.”
“Busy, yes,” I muttered, despite my honor, trying to pull her closer, desperate to feel the heat of her again through the cooling water. “But what activity could make a proper Cruxim too busy to teach me how to kill like she does?”
“A proper Cruxim has been too busy teaching you how to live,” she said gravely. She leaped out gracefully, onto the pool’s edge. “Enough play. Hop out and sleep! When we are rested, I will teach you how to kill.”
“I have killed all my life. Have pity, Skylar, come back and teach me how to love,” I wheedled, catching her around the waist and trying to pull her back in. She pushed at my chest, beat her wings, and wriggled free to flap back out of my reach.
“Only your soul can teach you that, Amedeo,” she said, more seriously than my play had warranted.
Confused by her sudden change in tone, I said nothing. I simply followed her from the pool and into the warmth of the nest and the sanctity of sleep.
When I awoke many hours later, night was falling and I was alone in the nest. I sat up, seeking out Skylar. She had turned her back to me to dress in doeskin trousers with silver stitching and a white corset that left her shoulders bare. It cinched in her waist and breasts. As she spun to face me, she looked petite and elfin, all wings and hair and hips, with the bruise of my fangs at her throat like a gaudy rose. Something about the way she dressed so quickly made me think she was angry. Had I drunk too much? Was there something else I should have done? Should I have returned the favor? Had she wanted more from me than the deep sleep we had both fallen into, bodies entwined, as soon as we entered the nest.
“Thank you,” I whispered, my eyes on her bruised throat.
“Do not thank me for that, Amedeo,” she said. Her eyes blazed as she reached up and snapped the thong that tied the feather at her throat. Tossing the pendant into the open mouth of a conch shell on the shelf, she said, “Never thank me for that.”
I knew not what to say to calm her as I climbed out of the pool and began to dress. The buttons on my cotton shirt were small and carved from deer antler, and as I fumbled with them I noticed the scars on my chest had faded to the worn silver of a stretch mark. I traced them with a fingertip, wondering, wanting to share this change with Skylar and to ask her how it might have happened, but her strangeness cautioned me not to speak. I gave up on the buttons, hoping she might comment on it, but she did not, and a quick, unexpected rage welled inside me. She had turned from fire to ice so quickly. How could she dismiss me while I still felt as full and heavy as a tick with the gift of her blood?
"It is not my blood that weighs on you. There is no weight I would lay upon you, Ame, except that of my own body. I offer you only lightness. It is the stone in your heart returned to sink you with it.”
I wanted to snarl back at her that there was no such thing. Honor alone bound to me Sabine. Perhaps it always had.
I wanted to scream at Skylar that my heart was hers, all hers. She could cut it out and hang it like a feather at her breast, if she so desired, but I was interrupted by the sound of wings on the balcony.
“Enter, Daneo,” Skylar called. Her words were punctuated with the snap of the silver cuffs she fastened on her wrists.
Daneo’s cold eyes took in my part-open shirt and the constellation of silver scars on my chest. He frowned. One eyebrow, escaping the scowl, quirked at Skylar in question as his eyes loitered on the blood-red mark at her throat.
Ignoring him, she pulled knee-high boots of soft white leather on over her trousers.
“Skylar, Rosario has brought the stone.”
“Thank you, Daneo.” Straightening, she smoothed her hair back into a high, gleaming knot on the top of her head. “Bring it to him.”
But her mind spoke words only for me: “So you see, it is true. Your stone has returned.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“No!” I shouted, palm out. “Do not bring the stone here. I will come to it by day. Take it to the Council Hall.”
The thought of Sabine’s anchorstone here in the Eyrie, in the place where I had taken Skylar in my arms and forgotten all else, seemed a sacrilege to me. I could subject neither of them to such a trespass. I fumbled with the last button, hiding my body from Daneo’s stare, and walked to Skylar.
Her body was tense, electric—static with my nearness.
“It is in Cascadia,” Daneo said. “We flew for it late last night. You enjoyed the Cygnus Amoratus, Skylar?” His sharp eyes darted between the two of us.
Skylar ans
wered his question with one of her own, “Why there?”
“For safekeeping.” His lip curled as he added, “I bring bad tidings. We may soon have need of his Sphinx lover.” The word seemed as sharp as the teeth in his mouth.
Skylar crossed the room in an instant and snatched up a javelin off the wall. I had not noticed it there, where it lay on a high shelf. It seemed almost a natural part of her as she carefully balanced its weight in her hands. Propping it against a wall, she then turned to the shelf again and took down a quiver of arrows, all silver-tipped and fledged with swan feathers. As she strapped on the quiver, she said, “Daneo, there is death in your tone. Tell me what has happened.”
“Xanthos.” Daneo bowed his head. “The rumors the wind has been whispering to the Silent Sisters are true. They have learned how to kill us.”
Skylar’s gasp was interrupted by Daneo’s command. “Shintaro and Samea will speak to you both. In Cascadia. Immediately.” He nodded curtly, spun on his heel, and left.
She had masked her thoughts, I knew, as we hurtled down the cliff face, avoiding the balconies that jutted from each Eyrie. We landed at the bottom near a strong door decorated with carvings and filigreed silver. Like most things in Silvenhall, it seemed alive, and I thought I saw snakish movements in the silver in the seconds before Skylar pressed her hand to a hidden cleft in the stone and the door ground open.
“This will be the quickest way,” she said. “And the safest with night upon us. With Xanthos’s death, you will have made more enemies here.”
I scoffed. “Daneo is the worst of them.”
She threw me a look that commanded silence, and I followed her into the passage beyond. It was musty and dark, wending downward, ever downward, in a great spiral that soon made me dizzy. The comforting glow of worms wriggling in the rock was the only light; their luminance highlighted veins of precious metal, and I ran my hand along one as we circled down. “What is this place?”
“Militra Mine,” Skylar told me. “The source of Silvenhall’s wealth and our path out should we ever be attacked. It burrows down deep, below the cascades.”
When we had corkscrewed so deep into the mine that I felt small and stale and longed for the light like a moth, the passage terminated in a small chamber and began to wend up again. Up and up we flew, my wings battling gravity, my brain shaken by the speed of our flight. When I saw the blue gleam of night above, I rushed to it as if from the ocean’s depths and found myself in a dazzling cavern of white.
Stalactites dripped light from the roof, and steps of ice, blue with cracks and runnels beneath the surface, climbed up to an altar of enormous wings carved of ice. A million candles set there dripped sizzling, fragrant wax into the cold air.
“Welcome to Cascadia.”
I recognized Samea’s voice. Still dizzy, I whirled around to seek her out and nearly lost my balance. She sat on a great white throne, her legs covered by a white bearskin and her hand clutching a crystal scepter that reflected the icy shades. Braids pulled her hair back from her forehead, and her skin seemed almost as pale as the marble pillars that propped up the ice.
“In some months, the cascades flow.” She gestured towards the steps as she came toward us.
“It is beautiful,” I said, awed.
“Yes. But like all that is beautiful, it is also dangerous.” Her eyes alighted on Skylar, then her head swung towards the foot of her throne, where Sabine’s anchorstone—the head and breast as lovely as a mortal’s and then the crumbled, eaten-away torso—had been laid.
“A stranger sees danger all around,” I offered, wary now of what I might be accused of in this palace of ice.
“And is well to.” Samea nodded. “But you are no stranger now, Amedeo. You have drunk the blood of Silvenhall.” She pointed to the marks on Skylar’s neck. “You have made your blood-troth.”
Shintaro stepped from an icy alcove where the pale tones of his cloak had obscured him. Kisana, her gown hidden by a white fur, followed him.
“Let us not waste time with pleasantries,” Shintaro said. “Tell me, for I must know, what do they know about us, Amedeo?” One of his hands clutched at his stomach.
I blanched. “I know not what you mean.”
“Do not play coy.” Daneo flapped toward me, eyes gleaming like a harpy’s. “They attacked us at Delphi. Hundreds of them, led by the one they call Beltran.” His eyes narrowed. “Do not pretend you do not know the name well.” He flung a hand towards the inert marble. “Xanthos was burdened by the weight of the stone. They overpowered him.” His voice broke, and he stalked towards me, his eyes colder than the ice. “Tell me, traitor, why is it that they all wear this?”
Something smashed against the ice at my feet, staining it a deep crimson.
“What is it?” I stepped back from the spreading scarlet.
“A vial around their necks, filled with human blood to force down our throats once they have weakened us with their sheer number! Human blood, like the blood injected in your veins. The blood that, this morning, has sickened both Shintaro and myself to our guts following your blood-troth.” Daneo pointed to what was left of the pendant. “Some of them wear many. Tell me how Beltran learned of our weakness!”
I shivered, considering the danger, the power of a million Vampires, each bearing the one weapon that might destroy Cruximkind. “I do not know how he learned of it, only that he has long suspected. Twice he tried to force me to drink from a mortal, and twice he failed. I told no one, except Sabine.”
“The Sphinx.” Daneo’s nostrils flared. “You should have never let the words cross your lips.”
“Even I did not know!” My voice flared angrily, and despite myself, I flapped back at him. “How could I know whether it was true? I knew not. Even after he injected me with the boy’s blood, I lived. I knew nothing about Cruxim, not even whether any other like me even existed, apart from my sister, her father and the one they call Monsieur LeRay. Do not blame me, Daneo. You do not know me.”
Skylar stepped forward and put her arm on Daneo’s own. “I had hoped that when Amedeo survived the Haemacra, they might forget it. Or consider it a lie. Do not blame, Amedeo. He has done more to dispel it than to encourage it. Any one of us might have betrayed the secrets of the Cruximus. Any Cruxim, under torture, might have betrayed that knowledge. But he did not. He revealed it only to a Sphinx, a creature so secretive we know not where to find one, let alone how to rouse one.”
Daneo stared at the smashed vessel at my feet. “Well, they know now. Xanthos’s death will only incite more attacks against us. What can you do to prevent that?” he spat at me. “What can a half-eroded Sphinx stone do to prevent that?”
“I know not, but I am prepared to find out.” I spread my hands imploringly before Samea and Shintaro. “Let me hear the Sphinx’s riddle. Help me understand what is meant by the Cruor.” I took a step forward and raised my voice. “Let me hunt! Let me fight!”
Daneo gave a low, bitter chuckle. “You want us to trust you. You want us to share even more of the Cruximus with you—who has half-poisoned us with traces of a dead boy’s blood still in your veins. You ask us to overlook what you have already revealed and to whom you might reveal our secrets. You are just like your mother! You cannot be trusted!”
“Trust!” I scoffed, thinking of the falsified Swan at the back of the Cruximus. “Your own lies make you afraid of what I might reveal.”
“I am afraid of nothing you tell her,” Daneo said, pointing to Sabine’s anchorstone. “Only what you tell Beltran.”
It was all I could do not to fly at him. “You insult me. I hate Beltran most among all who walk the Earth. If I met with him, it would be to tear him limb from limb.”
Daneo growled suspiciously. “A task you have failed before. You should never have been brought here. You are an abomination. An insult to all Cruxim.”
Kisana interrupted with a sigh. “Perhaps Amedeo’s place is not here in Silvenhall,” she said. “It does not matter. He is here, and so now is
the Sphinx. The time for blame has passed. The time has come to determine what it means and to act upon it.”
“It means he should be cast out immediately,” Daneo insisted, “and the stone with him. No good can come of this union. We have seen what happens when beauties meet a beast.”
“You would condemn Skylar then too,” Samea cautioned, “for she is entrusted with his guardianship. Where he goes, so too will she.”
“Damn her too,” Daneo snarled. “She sought out her trouble.”
“Trouble you and I both tried to hide,” Samea reminded him in a whisper, “yet could not.” She moved to examine the stone at the foot of her chair. “Why do you think it refused to be hidden, Daneo?” She clapped her hands together. “Come, Amedeo. Rouse her. Let us hear what the Sphinx thinks. The guardians are old and wise. Let her tell us whether your coming here was fated.”
“I cannot.”
Daneo spat upon the ice. “He is useless.” He flung a hand toward Sabine’s stone. “And she is the millstone that will drag us all to Hell.”
“Quiet, Daneo,” Shintaro cautioned. “Be still your warring, and let us hear him.”
“I cannot,” I repeated. “Not while it is still night.”
Samea’s laughter echoed around the icy chamber. “Of course. By day only are Sphinxes stone. Tell me, where is your Sphinx by night?”
I growled. “On the floor of the ocean, in a gilt cage.” I declined to tell them of the true tortures Beltran had subjected her to, encasing her body in searing, molten gold.
Samea’s violet eyes squinted. “How did she come to be there?”
“The Vampire Daneo speaks of put her there. Not for that alone would I see him dead, although it would be enough. He is a tyrant. A rapist. A monster.”
Samea put up one hand and tugged the fringed hood of her long, pale gown up over her hair. “It is always cold in here.” She walked to me and rubbed at the gooseflesh on my arms. “And lonely sometimes, too. What you speak of is abhorrent even to one used to cold and to loneliness. Accept my anguish that we did not bring her to you earlier.” Her eyes were kind, but there was a further question in their depths.
