The statement earned the woman a sympathetic smile. “Well—” Nicholai shrugged—“you can still be the ‘good guy’. They may not give you credit for it, but … that shouldn’t take away the satisfaction of doing the right thing.”
Pulling the Chronometer away from her heart, Elowyn stared down at it for a long moment. She traced the edges with her gaze, following the curves of the face, and the linear shapes of the numbers carved into it. She watched as the second hand methodically made its way around, not knowing it had only minutes left to live. “Here.” She held the object out to the man. “Take it.”
He saw the hesitation in her eyes. The way she still clung to it with a hardened grip. Reaching out with care, Nicholai grasped the Chronometer with his metal hand and removed it from her possession before she changed her mind. “Thank you.” He lifted his free hand, patting her once more on the shoulder. “You know, I’m embarrassed to admit that it took me a while to learn Panagea had pegged you all wrong. I’m sure your people will learn it in time too.”
The woman was quiet as he slipped back out of the room. Whatever had transpired in the short time that he was with Elowyn, Nicholai wasn’t sure, but Wulfgang stood at one end of the room, flanked by Brack and Granite, while Rennington stood at the other, with Revi, Bermuda, and Kazuaki standing beside him.
Happy to see that an end had been put to the two men’s squabbling, he traipsed over to the God of Salvation and held the shimmering object out toward him. “Here.” He placed it into Kazuaki’s waiting palm. “You’re the only one among us capable of destroying it.”
Kazuaki glanced down at the Chronometer, the predictable ticks puncturing his ears. He lifted his gaze to Nicholai, his expression flat. “Is she all right?”
Filling his lungs, the former Time Father froze. “She will be.”
With his eye on the watch, Kazuaki made a fist. The Chronometer held at first, and then as if it was made of nothing more than glass, it shattered in the captain’s palm.
Whatever animosity lived in Rennington and Wulfgang faded. Everyone watched the pieces fall to the ground. Fragments bounced across the tiles until gravity pushed them into their final resting places.
Eastern was freed.
“Well, then,” Brack announced, never one to favor complete silence, “three down, five to go.”
✽ ✽ ✽
It took less time than Elowyn thought it would to make the arrangements following her announcement. Much to her disappointment, the people rejoiced when she publicized her fall from power. She wanted to believe that they were celebrating freedom from the dictatorship of the Chronometer’s wielder … but she knew what they were really celebrating: their severance from her.
She couldn’t blame them. After having abandoned them for a year, they were entitled to their bad blood. It stung, but she’d get through it. The medic had survived far worse than mass, public disapproval.
Nicholai and the crew had already boarded the ship by the time she gathered the last of her belongings. With bags in hand, the woman stared at the airship, the setting sun catching the mixed feelings in her eyes. She was about to move forward to ascend the ramp when a voice from behind caught her off guard.
“You sure you’re leaving then?”
Elowyn spun around. The sight of Wulfgang filled her vision, and she felt her heart constrict; but for everything she had endured in the last several days, the woman recovered well. “It’s better to be somewhere I’m needed,” she replied, her shoulders tightening. “Peoples’ heads are clearer now. They’re free from the gods’ manipulation. They’ll only get better, the more the news of the medication spreads.” She sighed, turning her attention back toward the airship. “So long as Eastern has good people vying for leadership, it should be all right.” A long pause occurred before Elowyn stole a glimpse of Wulfgang from the corners of her eyes. “I don’t suppose you’ve considered throwing your name in the ring? If my time spent in the Underground was any indication, you’re a very good leader.”
Wulfgang snorted. “I’m a soldier, Elowyn. Not a politician.”
Having already predicted his response before he said it, Elowyn only smiled and nodded. “If you’re not anchored here … the crew could always use a soldier on the ship.”
The man pinched his lips together and half of a grin split his face. “They’ve already got one.”
Knowing there was no love lost for Rennington Platts, and no earthly way that Wulfgang was referring to the Southern soldier, Elowyn felt a blush invade her cheeks. She tried quickly to conceal it, tucking hair behind her ears. “Thank you, Wulf.” She held out her hand, proposing a farewell.
Staring at the offering, Wulfgang hesitated. An unfamiliar awkwardness overcame him as he reached out to shake it. “If you ever find yourself back in Eastern,” he said, his words dragging slowly out of his mouth, before he looked her in the eyes, “I wouldn’t hate it if you paid me a visit.”
Elowyn smiled, her grip on his hand lingering. “I will.”
Feeling far too vulnerable, Wulfgang cleared his throat and released Elowyn from his grasp. “Good. You know … there’s no bad blood for all the unflattering things I said about Elowyn Saveign in the Underground, I hope. I … I didn’t know that you were, uh …” He trailed off, clearing his throat. “I’ll, uh … I’ll keep this place from becoming a shit heap for as long as I can. From a footman’s position, anyway.”
Sliding her hands over her torso, Elowyn gripped her elbows. Her smile broadened. “Then, I’m sure Eastern will be perfectly fine.”
Wulfgang watched as she ascended the ramp, joining the others on the airship’s main deck. As Kazuaki barked orders at Revi to start the engines, the medic held fast to the railing, staring out at the city she used to rule. She did not give it the best of herself, but she gave it a lot. Where she failed to shift the viewpoints of a patriarchal society, she’d have to find an internal pride, for the things she managed to accomplish. Perhaps, now that Eastern was no longer plagued by the restrictions of the all-powerful Chronometer, someone else in the division could rise in the ranks by earning it, and accomplish what she could not.
Elowyn amused herself with her daydream. Mairyn Catteral would make an incredible leader, she thought. The woman was a terrifying, no-shit-taking kind of lass.
The helium-filled zeppelin lifted the airship into the sky, sputtering with the help of the steam engines. Gears cranked, forcing the vessel farther upward. The medic glanced out, sighting the position of the sun on the horizon as they headed onward, toward the Southern division. Toward Bartholomew Gray. It would be good, she thought, to see her old friend again.
Chapter Three
Warm skin. A rhythmic heartbeat. Bermuda kept her eyes closed as she rested her head against Kazuaki’s bare chest. It was easier to lose herself in the tranquility his body afforded her. The luxuries were welcome. Balminess and sweat from the efforts of their previous engagements radiated into her once frozen bones.
Sex, and the embrace that often followed it, were the only two things that banished her perpetual chill these days.
As if he sensed her distaste for the cold, Kazuaki wrapped his arms tighter around Bermuda’s body. He frowned, able to feel every hard protuberance of her skeleton beneath her pale skin. The captain eased his grip. She felt too frail to clasp so firmly.
Though no breeze flowed into the closed cabin doors as the airship flew on evening clouds toward Southern, Bermuda felt a small shiver rattle through her spine. She buried herself deeper into the chest of her lover, cursing the fates for threatening to take one of the last few things that kept her warm.
No, she reprimanded herself. It was not the fates that dared to steal her simple pleasures.
She had done this to herself.
Relaxing as much as her muscles allowed, Bermuda melted farther into Kazuaki’s embrace. The hammock swung gently as she laid atop him. It was not an ideal place to employ in lovemaking; the strings often left diamond-shaped patterns in their skin for
hours after. Then again, given the choice between sex in a hammock, or no sex at all …
Neither the quartermaster nor the captain had the will power for that.
As Bermuda lost herself in the metrical ease of Kazuaki rubbing heat into her back with his hand, she found it hard to remember existence without him. A year lost to Mimir, in a cockboat on the ocean … and she, lost to herself, bathed in the blood of gods and goddesses. The woman never thought she’d find herself in such a state of peace again.
It was unreal to feel this serene, knowing she was closer to death than she had ever been before.
For the briefest of moments, her peace was disrupted when Kazuaki stopped rubbing her back and winced. He pressed his fingers into his throbbing temples, his teeth grinding shortly after.
“You can go if you need to,” the quartermaster said, knowing full-well what plagued the one she loved.
Kazuaki huffed, trying to will relaxation back into his mind. “I’d rather not.”
Readjusting her position, Bermuda flattened her hands on Kazuaki’s chest. She looked up at him, resting her chin on her fingers. “You’re going to have to answer their prayers sometime.”
A muscle twitched in Kazuaki’s jaw. He tilted his head to look down at her. “The only prayers I want to answer are yours.”
With a wry smirk, the quartermaster bounced her brows up and down. “You already did.”
“You know,” the captain mumbled, a playfulness in his tone as he slid his hands down to her sides, “I hear some people pray for hours on end. Multiple times a day.” He slid one hand up to cradle the side of her head and leaned forward to steal a slow kiss. “Just a suggestion,” he added, hovering near her lips, “if you’re ever feeling deprived of spiritual enlightenment.”
Bermuda grinned through another kiss, her eyelids closing as she laughed. “Do you take me for a religious woman?”
“I’ll take you however I can get you,” he replied, running his fingers through her hair. “And if memory serves, I heard a few ‘oh, gods’ slip out of that mouth, so don’t try to fool me.”
“Mm. Yes. You got me.” Bermuda smirked, leaning into his palm. “I’m as devout as they come.”
“And I wish to keep you coming.” A devious look swept onto his face. “Devoutly, of course.”
“Oh, my gods.” Bermuda rolled her eyes, trying to disguise her amused smile and swallow her depraved snickers. “Just go answer your peoples’ prayers, before they forget you entirely.”
Kazuaki held fast to his smirk, casually sliding her naked body off him before he threw his legs over the side of the hammock. “I could never be so lucky.”
She knew he joked, but Bermuda recognized the half-truths in his statement. Yes, of course Kazuaki would have preferred silence over the constant barrage of citizens pleading for his assistance … but not at the cost of his existence. At least, she hoped he wouldn’t.
Her hungry eyes stole a final appreciative look of him as he dressed himself; no sense in showing up nude to bring the people the salvation that they so desperately craved. Unclothed salvation from Kazuaki Hidataka was reserved specifically for her. “I’ll wait up for you,” Bermuda said as he pulled on his last boot.
After swinging his long jacket over his shoulders and sliding his arms inside, Kazuaki adjusted the collar. He offered the woman a debauched smirk. “For more ‘praying’?”
Bermuda shook her head, chuckling softly as she swept some hair behind her ear. “I’m practically on my knees already.”
A lewd expression slid onto Kazuaki’s face. He lifted an index finger and parted his lips, a moment away from what Bermuda could only imagine was a lecherous remark. She cut him off with a laugh.
“Just go. The faster you leave, the faster you can come back.”
The captain lingered before he closed his mouth and nodded. “As wise as you are beautiful.”
Bermuda looked down, a welcomed heat flooding into her cheeks. In the seconds it took for her to glance back up, Kazuaki was gone. Vanished, to grant salvation to whatever mortal beckoned him.
The woman stood in the shadows of their cabin, staring at the spot where he had disappeared. His absence reminded her of just how cold she was. Bermuda bent down, scooping up the clothing she had discarded earlier, and returned them to their places on her body.
The quiet was almost maddening when Kazuaki was gone.
Her gaze traveled over to the phonograph in the corner of the room. Bermuda placed a hand on her hip. Would Aggi ask for it back, when they inevitably traveled to Northeastern to retrieve his Chronometer? She liked the man; but he’d have to pry it out of her cold, dead hands.
As Bermuda glanced down at her fingers and began rubbing them together for warmth, she realized that may occur sooner rather than later. Lifting them to blow a stream of heat onto the frozen digits, she headed for the door. A little fresh air would do her some good.
One thing was certain, she thought to herself, as she climbed the stairs to the main deck: if she was prematurely knocking on death’s door, she wanted very much to check off one nagging thing that remained on her ‘to-do’ list. A promise she had made long ago at Panagea’s center, when Mimir resurfaced …
If she could drive a knife through Nordjan’s heart, she’d die a happy woman.
Nordjan of the Northern division. She owed the man a thing or two. It was his disturbing desire to see his will come to fruition that freed Mimir from his wretched well. The delusional lesser god would have never had a chance to steal Kazuaki away for a year had he not been guided to the immortal captain’s location by Nordjan’s hired hands.
Fog filled the sky as she slipped her body out the door. Bermuda pulled her apparel tighter around her frame, cursing to herself for not grabbing an extra layer of clothing. She should have known better by now.
As the quartermaster paced the ship’s main deck and stared up at the sky that was typically peppered with stars, she found herself frowning. Bermuda doubted very much that Umbriel would have approved of her spending her last remaining breaths sucking the life out of another human being. She owed the late Earth Mother everything and more. It was Umbriel, who had once siphoned Mimir’s influence from her body … Umbriel, who had saved her life when Bermuda set out to seek vengeance and a place to put her anger …
“I hope you don’t hold it against me,” she whispered to the ether, trusting that in some way, Umbriel would receive the message. “I’m forever grateful for your sacrifice. I guess you and I just have a different approach on what’s right and what’s wrong.”
The quartermaster closed her eyes, letting the airstream toss her hair about. It was the deafening roar of the engines that kept her from noticing Elowyn and Rennington as they stood behind her, far across the deck.
Elowyn squinted to better glimpse the quartermaster through the fog. The setting was ethereal. The woman looked like a ghost, as pale as she was against the blackness of the moving sky. The medic frowned, and without removing her gaze from Bermuda, addressed her words to Rennington. “She looks so frail.” Not at all like the merciless, cutthroat Bermuda that she remembered. Elowyn pinched her lips together, finally tearing her sight from the quartermaster long enough to look to her companion. “What happened to her?”
“About a year’s worth of military-grade stimulants,” Rennington replied. Crossing his arms, he leaned against one of the poles that housed the heavy-duty cords keeping the airship’s zeppelin in place.
The confession widened Elowyn’s eyes. What would that do to a body? Drawing on the memories of her time spent in Northern’s military, Elowyn had witnessed her fair share of what the stimulants did to men in the short-term. To consider what long-term damage it would do … it caused her to shiver. “Gods alive,” she whispered, shaking her head, “that would ruin any soldier.”
Having watched Bermuda’s descent into revenge-fueled desecration with his own eyes, Rennington’s awareness afforded him a certain amnesty. His heart bled for her, of course, but ex
posure had numbed him to a degree. It was the only way to endure the sight of it, without losing himself to her madness. “Speaking of soldiers,” he muttered, an unamused expression plastered on his face, “what the feck is up with that Wulfgang fellow?”
Elowyn’s brows pulled together as she tilted her head. “What about him?”
Rennington pushed himself off the pole that he leaned against, long enough to puff out his chest and mockingly stagger about. “I’m Wulfgang Hion,” he ridiculed in a dramatically gruff voice, “I’ve known you for two minutes, but you’re better off here, blah, blah, blah.”
“Oh, stop it.” Elowyn rolled her eyes as she smacked Rennington in the chest with the back of her hand. “He’s ... a little archaic. Rough around the edges, but he did a lot for Eastern in his own … ‘Wulfgang’ sort of way.”
“Gods alive …” Rennington chuckled as he returned to his comfortable position against the pole. “Have you wanted to bang him this whole time then, or is this a recent revelation?”
The medic spun, a blush streaking through her look of incredulity. “Excuse me?”
With a snort, Rennington raised the pitch of his voice, taking on as much faux femininity as his coarse voice would allow. “He’s rough around the edges,” he teased in Elowyn’s tone, flapping his wrists and jutting out his hip. “He did a lot for Eastern, and now I wish he’d do a lot for my lady bits.”
“You’re getting a punch,” Elowyn threatened, holding a clenched fist near Rennington’s face.
The Southern soldier laughed before he whacked it away. “Don’t hate on me. I’m just making up for lost time.” Stretching his arms above his head, he sighed and leaned back. “Obviously, you made the right choice coming with us.”
Elowyn forced half of a grin before her eyes fell to the ground. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, she had left a piece of herself back in Eastern. Not with Wulfgang, but the division itself. It was always difficult to leave failure behind. “Think what you want about him,” she muttered, keeping the conversation fixated on Wulfgang, to keep her from opening the box that contained her letdown in leading Eastern. “His heart was in the right place. He reminds me a lot of you, actually,” she admitted, finding Rennington’s gaze, “except a shit-ton less annoying.”
The Panagea Tales Box Set Page 131