“Your people.” Winters returned a vicious smile. “Let me ask you this, warlord, how much territory do you think you can reasonably and effectively hold right now? If you had to. If you had to be sure you could keep it?”
Nikodemus cocked his head while he thought about it. “Bakersfield to Shasta for certain. East to the Sierra Nevadas. Part of Nevada.”
“As far as Oregon?”
“Maybe.”
“What if I’d asked you that question a week ago? Same answer?”
“No.” He stretched his arms over his head, one corner of his mouth curling up. “Definitely not.”
“Less than today? Or could you have held more a week ago?”
“Look, Maddy.” Nikodemus gave her one of his amiable smiles, and he jumped off the table to land silently in front of her. “I see where you’re going with this.”
“Good.”
Nikodemus closed the distance between him and Winters, and put a hand on her cheek. “Maddy. Maddy. I can take down Sessani without expanding my territory to its practical limits.”
“What you mean is you’d attack a witch who hasn’t made you any promises or oaths. Outside your territory. How do you think the Russians will feel about that? Or the Portland mages? Or anyone else you’ve been trying to convince that you’re only interested in keeping the rules in your territory?”
His eyes flashed silver and stayed that way.
“I shouldn’t have to be the one to point this out. You don’t have me.”
“I figured that was obvious.”
“Suppose you added me back, Nikodemus? What’s the practical limit then?”
“Parts of Oregon for sure. Probably as far south as San Louis Obispo.”
Winters was in full-on shark mode. “You can’t afford to lose Kynan. You’d be in a significant backslide. You’d weaken every single one of your sworn.”
“That’s no excuse for not doing the needful, Maddy.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not. But a sanction for something that wasn’t his fault, because he survived?” She shook her head. “I thought you understood politics better than that.”
Nikodemus studied her.
“You’d weaken yourself and, worse, make yourself look weak.”
“You tell me the options.”
“The bonds can stay. I’ll swear to you again.” She lifted her hands. “Problem solved.”
“Problem not solved.” His eyes were liquid silver now. “The problem is fucking worse.”
The room fell dead silent.
“Why?”
Nikodemus made a vicious jab in Kynan’s direction. “He won’t let me take your oath. He can’t, not with the bonds closed. It’s him or me, Maddy. So here’s the real choice. Either you leave us both, or you swear to Kynan. Those are your fucking options.”
Nobody said anything, but the wards in the office shook the windows.
CHAPTER 24
Addison stared at Maddy with her mouth open, then snapped her teeth closed. “No fucking way.”
The silence deepened. Maddy breathed lightly because several of the wards along the molding and baseboards had turned to ash. Nikodemus’s inscrutable expression reminded her, for the first time in a long time, that he was not human. Not remotely. It scared her that Nikodemus, the master of looking relaxed when everything was going to hell, was so impenetrably serious.
She got nothing from Kynan. Carson had gone still, but she’d returned to her protective stance in front of Nikodemus. Until moments like this, it was easy to forget Carson, her good friend, was one of his personal bodyguards.
She didn’t want to look at Kynan, but he’d cut himself off again, and she had to—needed to—see him to get some idea of what he was thinking. While she’d been confronting Nikodemus, he’d walked to the windows and now stood with his back to the wall between the two windows. Impassive. Hands shoved in his pockets. At least with him here in the room she could pretend she was fine. She wasn’t, though. Inside, she was hollow because he’d cut her off again even though he knew what that did to her. “You bastard,” she said.
Kynan was stone-faced.
“Maddy,” Addison said. “He’s trying not to make this worse.” She looked at Kynan. “Until we know for sure what happens next, Kynan’s playing it smart by keeping himself the hell out of it for now.”
She addressed Nikodemus. “Does it make a difference who I swear to?”
“Not much.” He was back to using that curt, surly tone with her. She didn’t care for the attitude. After all her years of work for him, she didn’t deserve that from him, sworn or not.
She glared at Nikodemus, plenty pissed off. “If we’re going after Sessani, and we better be, we can’t be handicapped. Maybe those mages didn’t plan for this exactly, but they planned for something to happen that would keep us from going after her. They wanted Kynan and me out of the picture and you damaged. Are you really going to let them win?” She looked around, from Nikodemus to Carson to Addison. “I refuse. I refuse to let that happen, and the rest of you should, too.”
Addison sighed. “Nobody’s arguing with you. Or didn’t you notice?”
“Nobody’s doing anything either.” She wasn’t going to be shut out, but there had to be a better solution than killing Kynan or exiling her to whatever was Nikodemus’s equivalent of Siberia.
“What if you swore to Addison, Maddy?” Carson asked. “He wouldn’t go after her.”
Addison shook her head. “If you think that, you don’t know him very well, Because yes he would. Just like I’d go after him if it was necessary.” She shot a look at Kynan. “Not to mention, and no offense, Maddy, but I don’t want your oath.”
She stared at the ceiling and didn’t end up anywhere but boxed in. Leaving Nikodemus and everything she’d worked so hard to put together was unthinkable. The room stayed quiet. Kynan remained opaque to her. Nikodemus didn’t move, but Carson was keeping one eye on Kynan and the other on her. At last, she lifted a hand and let it fall to her side as she surveyed the room. “Either I do what gives us the best shot at taking down Sessani and the others, or I don’t.” The weird thing was, once she understood the choices before her, she relaxed. “It’s that simple.”
Nikodemus acknowledged that with a curt nod.
Without moving from his place holding up the wall, Kynan spoke up. Still opaque to her. “Maybe I don’t want her oath.”
“That’s a lie,” Maddy said without meeting his eyes. “He wants it more than anything.”
Kynan moved just his head to spear her with a hard look. “We want things that aren’t good for us all the time.”
“That would be a problem,” Nikodemus said slowly. “If you’re not sure about taking her on, warlord.” His attention focused past her. On Kynan. He was being careful because there was power in words, and Kynan was dangerous.
The temperature in the room dropped several degrees.
Carson shifted toward her husband.
Someone rapped once on the door.
“Everything all right?” That was Gray outside the office door. Calm question, but there was tension there, too.
Nikodemus barely raised his voice, but his words carried. “Stay where you are.”
The window to Kynan’s left cracked. Everyone looked. Except Kynan. His shoulders stayed against the wall. His hands weren’t in his pockets anymore; he’d hooked his thumbs into the front pocket of his jeans. Still cut off from him, Maddy knew he was holding because of the tiny pinpoints of fire flickering through his eyes. Through the window, she saw Durian come around a corner at a run.
The temperature dropped again.
“I’m asking, Kynan,” Nikodemus said in a low voice. “Asking. That’s all.” He tapped a finger on the desk. When he looked up, he was not happy.
More pinpricks of fire appeared in Kynan’s eyes, and one of the wards over the door released with a sound like a gunshot. Kynan tipped his chin and lifted a lazy hand. The wards quiesced.
Ice formed in
the crack in the window glass. Carson tensed, one hand raised. The oath between Carson and Nikodemus flared. Cold seeped through Maddy, too. Addison was on her feet. Kynan didn’t so much as flinch.
“You can’t keep me cut off like this,” Maddy told Kynan. “You know you can’t.”
He relented. Some.
“I make my own decisions,” she said. “I make my decisions based on all the available options and facts. You don’t make them for me. I decide what risks I take. Me. Not you. I decide about my life. Not you.”
He didn’t move.
“I have the answers to my questions. I’ve heard the available options, and I’ve decided.”
He turned his head just enough to get her fully in his view. “I don’t get to say no, is that it?”
Her heart turned to lead. “You have that choice. But I don’t see how you can say that and then object to me swearing to Nikodemus or anyone else. So I’m going to call bullshit, Kynan.”
There was another long silence during which she imagined everybody was holding their breath, waiting for Kynan to explode into anger. But he didn’t.
“Warlord,” she said. “I am at peace with this.” She walked to Kynan and stopped just out of his arm’s reach. For several seconds, he stood with his back against the wall looking at her as if he had no idea who she was. If she hadn’t known better, she would have believed he was human and that she’d hallucinated everything that had happened between them.
She locked gazes with him and then went to her knees at his feet. She bowed her head and pressed her fingers to her forehead. The intention behind that rocketed through her. Eyes on his face now, she opened herself to him, and when he released his dead drop of his bonds, it was water found in the desert.
He held out his hand. “You need to be certain, Winters,” he said in a low voice.
“I am.” She placed her palm on his and blanked out her images of him naked, his hands on her, the feel of him inside her. Everything his earlier promises had put into her imagination. She stood and took a step closer, enough to set her other hand on his shoulder. Oaths got sworn all the time. It wasn’t neurosurgery, and Kynan wasn’t a novice. Neither was she.
His fingers tightened on her hand, bringing her closer. As if they were lovers about to kiss. She tipped her head away from him, and he put his other arm around her upper shoulders, sliding up until his palm cradled the back of her head. A sliver of magic extended between them, then more, a little more, and his eyes briefly went from fire-flecked to filled with flame before they settled into an unearthly solid gold. The connection between them enveloped her. The sensation was drugging. Addictive.
“I have to ask.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” He held her head so she couldn’t see Nikodemus or Carson. She knew where they were, but the only thing that mattered was Kynan. “If you say yes, you have to intend your loyalty to me, Winters.” He pitched his voice low, his mouth right by her ear. “You talk a good game, but you better fucking have believed every word you said in here.”
“I meant them.”
“All right then.” He dipped his head toward her throat, but stopped short of contact, eyes locked with hers. She said the words that cemented her oath to him. Both of them. Both of them made the promises that mattered. A shudder went through her when his mouth touched the side of her throat, opened. She melted against him. He bit harder than she expected, and the pain shocked her into numbness. His magic opened up, and she wanted to weep from the emotions that went to war in her. His half of the oath wound around her and through her.
He let go of her long enough to crease the side of his neck with a finger. Blood seeped from the cut, and when he brought her closer, she went up on her toes to reach his neck because without the blood exchange to bind the oath, none of this mattered.
She trembled, and he tightened his arms around her. Another loop closed. Safe. Done. They were all safer now. Her predominant reaction was a bizarre sense that she had found home.
Kynan continued to hold her. His tongue licked at her throat along the seams and dents his sharp incisors had left, and his magic remained open to her. She understood they were both more than a little giddy from—and more than a little turned on by—that moment when she’d accepted his protection and his dominion. She would, if necessary, give her life for his. He’d do the same for her.
Nikodemus had what he needed, which was Kynan safe and her continuing obligation to him, flowing through Kynan’s oath to him. And she had what she needed.
Meanwhile, Kynan threaded his fingers through her hair, holding her tight. A warlord’s power was increased with each sworn he took on, so, she reasoned, it made sense that she would feel the difference in him now that he’d taken his first sworn. “Mine,” he said in a low voice that wound through her like smoke. “Mine.”
CHAPTER 25
Maddy sat in the living room with the others and fought to center herself. She did not doubt for a moment that swearing fealty to Kynan had been the right choice, but every few minutes she was terrified because she’d been lying to herself, and she wasn’t even sure when the lies had started.
Years ago? Probably.
Swearing fealty to Kynan had been the right choice. What she did for Nikodemus made a difference. Her association with him gave her the resources and time to help magic users in significant numbers She, personally, could participate in building a world where the demonkind and magekind could live in something approaching harmony. She had no regrets about her decision. Not one.
Kynan was across the room deep in conversation with Nikodemus, and that wasn’t a one-on-one she was going to interrupt. He was a bright presence in her consciousness, a constant hum of power. She’d been through a similar experience after she’d sworn to Nikodemus. Change was always stressful. She’d been equally certain of her decision to swear to Nikodemus. Being sworn to Kynan was both the same and completely different.
With Kynan, there was an edge she’d never felt with Nikodemus. She would never, ever be safe again because Kynan was so much a part of her. The return of her life had come at the cost of leaving her with the raw truth that Kynan Aijan had the power to destroy her privately. Intimately. She could no longer pretend it wasn’t true. Somewhere along the way her ability to protect herself with self-deception had ended. If he chose, if he stopped caring, he could annihilate her very soul.
How could anyone live with the possibility? How did anyone choose a life that could be destroyed without wanting that to happen?
She struggled to connect herself with the others. She’d always been one of the insiders, and now that she was sworn, she was again among Nikodemus’s inner circle. So why did she feel so disconnected? The others were all familiar strangers instead of intimate acquaintances. She knew their names, their quirks, their skills, strengths, and weaknesses. Gray and Carson were her friends, her good friends, yet she felt no connection to them.
The living room table was piled with food, pizza, beer, soda, and an array of junk food. She liked junk food as much as the next person, but she was afraid if she tried to eat, she’d throw up.
She couldn’t keep her eyes off Kynan. Her awareness of him was all the usual and more. The way he sat, how he listened, the expression on his face, the way he and Nikodemus interacted were all subtly changed. Or was it that she saw a different truth? She had no idea. As she watched, she saw how often the others glanced at the two warlords.
Maddy had been around demonkind long enough to know how to assess their relative rank. Everyone was making the adjustment to the change in Kynan. Including her. Kynan’s oath to Nikodemus flowed through to her, and she was grateful for the familiarity. But her oath to Nikodemus had never sizzled with the tension that sang between her and Kynan.
“Hey.” Addison put down a chair and sat so she blocked Maddy’s view of most of the room. “Can we talk?”
She hoped Addison didn’t think Maddy’s oath to Kynan was going to make
them friends. If she did, she was wrong. She and Addison barely tolerated each other. They were pleasant when they had to be, but they were never going to be friends. “If you want to.”
Addison leaned forward with her forearms on her thighs and her hands clasped between her knees. Maddy was aware of Tau’s attention on them. He was sworn to Addison, so naturally, he was wary, but the idea that Addison would need protection from her was ludicrous from any perspective. Addison cleared her throat. “I know we’re not best buddies.”
“No. We are not.” She did not want to be nice, especially since she was aware of how much Kynan liked and respected Addison. There were blood twins who made room for others in the relationship. Addison’s husband, Harsh, had once been in just such a relationship, so there would be precedent if Harsh and Addison agreed to bring in Kynan. The primary issue, though, was that she didn’t care to be sitting across from someone whose directive had come down to “kill Kynan if necessary.”
“I appreciate what you did,” Addison said. This month her hair was bright magenta underneath. She still looked like the college kid she’d been when Bejar had taken her. “It didn’t have to go that way, and I guess—I’m assuming here, but what the hell. I figure you didn’t really want to swear fealty to Kynan. I know you dislike him.”
Maddy gazed at Addison with a look she usually reserved for addressing someone in her capacity as Nikodemus’s lawyer when that someone wasn’t cooperating. “Yes. You are assuming.”
“Did you?”
“I did what was best for all concerned.”
Addison gazed at her. “Best for Kynan? Or best because you wanted back in with Nikodemus?”
“Lose the chip on your shoulder.” Maddy glanced at Kynan and found him watching Addison. Nothing to see here. Nothing to see. Just a fun chat with Kynan’s ex. “I’m really not in the mood. You were there. Everything I said reflected my feelings. If you think that means I didn’t want to swear to Kynan Aijan, then you’re not half as smart as I thought.”
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