by Kira Brady
“I’ve had two broods of children,” Tiamat said. “Do you like children?”
“Sure.” He’d never given it much thought. Jace was the family man. Jace would have made a good father. Kai had always pictured himself the fun uncle who would swoop in to visit with mad stories and dangerous toys. But now with the very real possibility that he’d procreate with a Dreki possessed by a deranged Babylonian goddess . . . for the first time he very much hoped he was sterile. The grip of his fingers turned hard over her creamy flesh. Tiamat winced, but she liked it rough.
She traced her long nail down his bare abdomen. Her full breasts threatened to pop out of the tight band of red silk she had wrapped around them. Zetian had always had a knockout body, but she’d been cold and calculating. Tiamat in her body had the same goods, but she had an earthiness that Zetian lacked. She had no boundaries, no shame in her body or her pleasure. She liked it every way, any time of day, no matter who was watching. Harder, faster, deeper. Gods, she was hot. A whiff of her heavy perfume, and he was raring to go. Trained like a dog. Sweat dripped down his back, from his forehead, across his upper lip. He loathed himself for the way she could make him hard in an instant.
She talked incessantly. He had to work to pay attention, because somewhere in that stream of conscious thought were the clues he needed to take her down. The Kivati were depending on him. During the millennia she’d spent mute and in pieces drifting around as a phantom heart, she’d saved up every thought, every word, every shadowy feeling that she wanted to share, and they all came spewing out now from between Zetian’s ruby lips. She talked all day. During sex. Even in her sleep.
The challenge wasn’t so much getting her to share her plans, but sifting through the mounds of murderous garbage to the necessary information hidden like splinters of gold. He needed to know how she was moving her troops and why, not how many ways she could disembowel a general and which courtesans she’d had sacrificed back in ancient Babylon. Her train of thought—always morbid—lacked the immediacy of mortals. The here and now held no meaning for her, because she’d killed for millennia and planned to kill for millennia more.
Not if he had anything to say about it.
She dug her nails beneath the waistband of his jeans, and his dick sat up and took notice. He’d always taken the lead in the bedroom before. He’d had no idea a dominatrix could turn him on so much. She could tear him apart with one errant claw. Her ability to manipulate the Aether was better than Corbette’s, better than a dozen Kivatis combined, but not all powerful. That was the only leverage they had. He just had to figure out if she was hiding some secret knowledge or power beneath the unrelenting narration of her thoughts. It would be easy to become complacent when she droned on about the city she planned to build—with gardens to rival Babylon and palaces for the many brats she intended to birth—with, Lady damn him, him.
“Kai, sweet,” she crooned. “Let’s try it again, hmm? I yearn to feel life quickening inside me.”
He turned his grimace into a grim smile.
She mistook it for a bloodlust he didn’t share. “Soon we will lead our children across the plains to vengeance. Soon the earth will run crimson with the blood of our enemies. The violence in your heart pleases me. You can let it go with me. Let yourself embrace the bloodthirst. I know you feel it.” She shot out a claw from her fingertip and sliced it lightly across his naked chest. The pain was a welcome reminder—he needed to watch himself. Her tongue darted out to lick the line of blood that dripped off his erect nipple. She sucked his nipple into her mouth and his balls tightened.
“What kind of ruler abandons his people?” she asked with a characteristic jump of topic. “You should not have been subservient to the Raven. You have too much power in you to bend your will to a coward. No wonder he tried to leash you all with very human morals. You are not human.” She trailed her fingers down to his straining cock and wrapped her hand around it. A low purr rumbled in her throat. She sent a pulse of Aether through him, and it blazed up his skin. His eyes rolled back, and he had to fight to keep conscious above the rising tide of pleasure. He needed all his wits about him. He wouldn’t betray those Kivati who’d escaped into hiding.
Focusing on the other sounds and sensations in the grand room helped. He dropped his hands to circle Zetian’s swanlike neck. He focused on the sound of a violin playing nearby. Minor key, gypsy ode. He could get used to this, if he could pretend it was just Zetian, not Tiamat, in front of him. He might not like the Dreki, but he respected her. She’d been a kick-ass fighter, a cunning adversary, and a scorching lay. If she hadn’t been Dreki, adviser to the man who’d killed his brother, maybe things could have turned out differently between them. But that chance was past. Tiamat looked out of her eyes and pulled her puppet strings. Was Zetian still somewhere inside that shell? Did she know what was happening to her, a passive observer? What a cursed hell that would be.
“You wouldn’t want another lesson, would you?” Tiamat hissed.
And there went the daydream where he was engaging in lewd behavior with someone remotely sane. Tiamat had already stripped the flesh from a man’s bones using nothing but Aether and one of Kai’s Thunderbird feathers. It was a sight he could never forget.
The man had been a good warrior of the Kivati. Too honorable to bow to the Babylonian Goddess of Chaos. Too moral to pretend, even if it would save his hide. The hatred in his eyes as he’d hung from the rafters of Kivati Hall, bleeding and broken, had been all for Kai. He’d died thinking Kai was a traitor. Kai could only stand at Tiamat’s side and watch, helpless to act just as he’d been helpless to save his brother.
Kai had to convince the Kivati, Drekar, humans, and most of all Tiamat that he’d switched sides. Even as his captured people were led in one by one to pledge their allegiance to this monster or be slowly tortured to death. Right before they died, they always turned their shocked, betrayed eyes on him. He took their hatred and locked it inside. And every death took a bit of his soul through the Gate too. For the first time he wondered if this was what Corbette had endured through a century of rigid rule—he did it not for himself, but for the belief his actions would better the whole. But Corbette always made his personal sacrifices look like his first choice; he was a better actor than Kai.
Lucia put her hand on the door handle. She didn’t want to leave the warmth of the shack, but Corbette was right, the Enkidu was getting too much of a lead on them. Who knew what damage Tiamat had wrought back at Kivati Hall? They needed the Scepter so that they could deal her her final death. Still, Lucia felt like she’d been worked over by a couple of baton-wielding Ishtar Maidens. Even when she’d trained with Grace she’d never felt this tired. The fall to the water had left bruises, and the ancient mangrove forest had taken all the energy she had left. The mud waited, cold, damp, and endless.
“Let me give you some advice, boy,” Halian said. “Don’t refuse a gift in the Spider’s realm. Don’t take paths that are not yours to follow.”
She could feel Corbette’s already iron spine snap straighter. Just then, something buffeted into the shack. With a crash, the walls shook, and the masks tapped against their moorings. A bit of earth fell from the ceiling beams. She dropped her hand from the door, which shuddered and creaked. Someone banged on the door; it sounded like a giant.
Corbette yanked her back and put himself between her and the door. “What’s waiting for us, Halian? Is this a trap?”
Halian’s face fell. “No, son. You think so little of me.”
“Do you have a weapon?”
“How you gonna kill something that’s already dead?”
The wind roared outside. Lucia.
She clutched the back of Corbette’s shirt. “Did you hear that?”
“Stay close to me.” Corbette’s hand twitched like he wanted to pull Aether to him. When he threw open the door, a wind burst through, knocking him back. It circled the lodge and banged all the masks off the walls. The fire sputtered.
Luciiiiiaaaa
, called the wind.
She found herself walking forward toward the door. There was someone out there waiting. Waiting for her.
Corbette struggled to get the door shut, but the wind held it open.
Luuuucia, Luciiiaa.
“Lucia, no!” Corbette ordered.
She walked past. The roar of the wind and creak of the wooden beams faded away as the summons took up residence in her head. Lu-seee-ah. Thick cedars had sprung up across the mud plain. The rough red bark resembled dragon skin. Brown needles piled over the ground in a thick carpet. The forest was bright after the dark of the mud and the dim of the lodge. She almost didn’t see the man who stood waiting beneath the tree canopy. His red hair blended with the bark. His wiry build wasn’t much thicker than the trees.
“Lucia,” he said. He wore a tuft of hair at his chin. His robe—Lady save her. His white robe still bore the bursts of red at the sleeves and hem. The blood . . .
Her blood.
She stumbled back, but the door had shut behind her. She could hear Corbette pounding on it from the other side. He called out to her. Her fingernails scraped against the wood.
“Lucia.” Rudrick stepped forward.
“Get away from me!”
“Lucia.”
“Corbette? Corbette!” Her throat constricted. She was alone with Rudrick. Alone and vulnerable. She looked down at her wrists and found thick iron manacles circling her slender bones. “No!” She turned her back on the man who’d savaged her. Panic vibrated across the bones of her skull. Change, she needed to Change. To fly. But the Crane was gone.
“Let me explain,” he said in that sly voice—the same voice he’d used to convince her to betray her people, the same cloying persuasiveness that haunted her dreams. He had seemed so logical. Corbette has lost it, he’d told her. You must be strong for your people. And she’d let herself be dragged under by that reasonable, seductive bullshit.
“Shut up!” she yelled, still trying to pry the door open. “I have nothing to say to you! You have nothing to say to me. You’re dead. You’re gone. Just . . . just shut up!”
“Don’t you?” And suddenly Rudrick was on the porch next to her. He leaned languidly against the banister watching her with those dead eyes.
She scrambled back and fell down the stairs. The ground rose up to catch her, and thick needles softened her fall, but still it hurt. As she lay on her back, Rudrick towered over her. The memory shot in a bullet through her mind, present and past mixed together just like the Aether storm during the Unraveling. She threw her hands up to protect herself and screamed; the sound ripped through the cedar forest. Birds fell out of the trees—all different species and sizes. They called and cawed, hovering in the air.
“Corbette!” she screamed. In a great cloud of feathers, the birds rushed the shack, claws extended. Rudrick howled and fell down the stairs as he tried to get away from them. As the birds hit the door, the walls of the shack came down. Corbette stormed out, black as a thundercloud. He took one look at Lucia on the ground and Rudrick’s bloody robe, and he launched himself off the porch and onto the Fox. Landing on top of Rudrick, he wrapped his hands around the smaller man’s throat. They rolled across the carpet of needles. Lucia crawled away to the shelter of the nearest trunk and shivered in her cloak.
Halian came out. “Don’t, son—”
Corbette got one hand free and tried to gouge Rudrick’s eye out. The birds settled back in the trees, still screaming. Even the trees seemed to lean away from the fight. Halian marched down the stairs and tore the men apart. He was insubstantial as a ghost, but had the strength of an aptrgangr. Corbette went flying. Rudrick gathered himself and stood, fists ready to defend himself again.
Lucia wondered if Rudrick had the same hidden strength—if it was a property of the dead here in their Land. If he did, he might have killed Corbette. A new wave of shame engulfed her.
“Get out of my way, old man,” Corbette bit out. “Don’t you know who this is? He destroyed the world!”
“Be that as it may,” Halian said, “this is not your fight.”
“The fuck it isn’t.”
“This isn’t your world, boy. You’ll call down the Lady’s wrath if you don’t stop—”
With a primal yell, Corbette launched himself again at Rudrick and threw Halian out of the way. Lucia could only watch, shivering, with a sense of being outside her body. She could see herself wrapped in the blue cloak. Helpless. Just as she’d been helpless once before. She’d imagined this moment a hundred times. What she’d say to Rudrick if she could do it over. What she’d do to Rudrick if she ever saw him again. Training with Grace, it was Rudrick her fist had planted into with every punch. It was Rudrick she stabbed, kicked, sliced, and boiled alive in every one of her waking dreams. Now here he was in front of her, and she was paralyzed. She had her chance to tell him all those perfectly crafted words, and she couldn’t think of a single one.
Corbette rammed his fingers into Rudrick’s mouth and tried to rip his jaw off. He couldn’t see through the violent haze. Pain was a distant throb, reason a distant pulse. He’d imagined killing Rudrick in a thousand creative ways, and the lying, murdering, rapist piece of shit had the gall to show up here and attack Lucia again.
It didn’t matter that Rudrick was already dead. Corbette hadn’t been able to save Lucia the first time, but he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
“Emory! Emory, let him go!” Halian yelled, and his father’s voice siding with the Fox only served to fuel Corbette’s rage. Rudrick had challenged his rule, violated his woman, and thrown the world into a disaster the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the Great Flood.
With the unnatural strength of the damned, Rudrick managed to pull Corbette’s hand out of his mouth. “Must make amends,” he said before Corbette’s fist smashed into his jaw. He spit out a tooth. Dead he might be, but he still felt pain. Corbette could see it in the wince of his lifeless eyes, hear it in his groans and grunts as they wrestled on the ground.
He only vaguely heard his father arguing with Lucia. Get your tainted feathers away from her, he wanted to yell. “Die,” he told Rudrick, “in great pain.”
“I did,” Rudrick replied.
And then Lucia was there tugging him away, and in his surprise he loosened his hold and Rudrick got a last elbow into his windpipe. There was no more struggle after that. He needed air; Rudrick didn’t. Corbette broke away, gasping for breath. Halian hauled him up and held him back. If he got his hands on Rudrick again, he’d make sure the fucker never got back up.
“Halian says—” Lucia began.
“Silence,” he choked out. “Do I look like I care what you have to say, old man?”
“But he’s your father.”
“In name only. He hasn’t been much of a father to me since I was nine.” He shook off Halian’s hold. Lucia stood with the cloak clutched tightly around her. She needed steel, not wool. Her eyes were rimmed like the brightness of the Lady Moon. The edges of her thin lips were lined in sorrow. She looked so much older than eighteen. An ancient, world-weary soul. Rudrick had done that to her, and for that he deserved eternal torment.
Lucia wasn’t crying, but she kept Corbette’s body between her and her attacker. In this he could protect her. The wind tore at the branches overhead. A storm was coming. The land seemed alive with Aether energy. It cut him that he couldn’t touch it, couldn’t soothe it. It felt . . . malignant.
Slowly, Rudrick rose from the ground and wiped the blood from his lip. “Let me say my piece. She freed the others. She can free me too—can’t you, Lucy?”
“Don’t call me that!” she snapped.
Good girl. Corbette straightened his shirt. The buttons had been torn off, and it hung open across his chest. One shoulder seam gaped. The threads strained like a surgeon’s stitches to keep a semblance of order to his person. He felt for the raw patches along his jaw, the bruises forming across his ribs. “You are not fit to breathe the same air as the lady.”
“Give him his say,” Halian warned. “It’s the law.”
“Whose law?” Corbette asked. “You might have suffered murderers gladly, but I’ve run things a bit differently since you’ve been gone.”
“The law of the dead,” Halian said.
“And what law is that? Forgiveness? Not for him. He killed millions of people.”
“And he’ll have to answer to them too. But not to you.” Halian pushed him back, leaving Lucia without a protector. Her thin shoulders shook, and her face resembled freshly peeled bone. A little cry like a sparrow escaped her throat. A sob, and then she pivoted on her heel and ran.
“Lucia!” he called after her, but she didn’t turn. Her cloak billowed out behind her like wings. Her bare feet left divots in the thick carpet of needles. Lady be, he could hear her sobs echoing off the silent trees. He’d failed to protect her from suffering . . . again. He would take care of this for her. He picked up a thick log from the ground and spun. The crack of wood against flesh shot like lightning to the sky. Rudrick screamed. His form dissolved, each atom splitting off into a mass of black particles of his rotted soul. They swirled up into a funnel that twisted to the strange, starry night above. The high-pitched whistle forced Corbette to cover his ears. He shut his eyes, leaned away, and the twister passed him by. The scream faded.
“You fool,” Halian said. “He’ll be back.”
Corbette dropped the stick. “I stopped seeking your approval a long time ago, Father.”
“I haven’t waited all these years to watch you throw it all away.”