Hearts of Chaos

by Kira Brady

  “You’ve waited? You left me nothing!” If he were whole, he’d Change to Raven and be done with it. Fly into the sky and find Lucia in an instant. Aerial view, fast pace. But his all-too-human feet had to make do, and he was forced to march away from Halian in a slow, useless retreat. “You know what? I don’t need you. Don’t follow me. You were a lousy father.”

  “Stick to the path, boy,” Halian called after him. “Across the desert and sea to the palace. If you don’t follow any advice, follow that one. The path—”

  Corbette tuned his father out and followed the tracks Lucia had made in her flight. He missed the sea salt air, the feel of the fresh up current carrying him higher, and the thrill of the land dropping beneath his feet. Flying was freedom. Nowhere had he ever felt peace like he did far over the Pacific Ocean.

  Except in the presence of a young woman who forgot herself and made him laugh. When she thought he wasn’t looking, she broke his rules, mocked his orders, and ignored his edicts. They were all but incompatible, except when he stood next to her he felt the calm of the blue ocean calling to his soul, even while his blood pressure went through the roof. She was the serpent who could deconstruct his carefully planned Eden, and he’d worked so hard to keep a safe, chilling distance between them.

  But his Eden had been destroyed anyway, and the only thing he had left was hope and a slender, beautiful woman who was getting away from him. He hurried to catch up. He found her because she was limping, and the torn soles of her feet smeared blood on the needles behind her.

  Rushing to her, he grabbed her hand. “Lucia—”

  “Is he here?” She turned, her hair twirling out in a wave of white. It framed her perfect heart-shaped face and contrasted sharply with her red-rimmed eyes. Trails of tears streaked down her muddy cheeks. Light sparked in those eyes. The banked anger flared to life, and his heart bled for her. “Is he after me?”

  “No. You’re safe.” She sank against his chest, startling the hell out of him, and he wrapped his arms around her. Gods, how he’d wanted to hold her like this.

  “I can’t believe I ran. I just—it’s so easy to be brave in the dark of my room, safe behind Kivati walls. I think of all these things I would do differently, all the words I would say if I saw him again, but when the moment came, I panicked.”

  “You were brave, Lucia. No one faults you.”

  “But I fault myself, don’t you see?” She looked up into his face. A smear of muddy tears crossed from one delicate cheekbone to the next. “I need to fight my own battles.”

  “You don’t have to. I failed you once, but I never will again. I swear it.”

  She pulled out of his arms. Cold filled the space where she had been. “I’m not some delicate pet you need to coddle.”

  “I never said that—”

  “I will stand on my own two feet. Rudrick will come again, won’t he?”

  Corbette nodded.

  “You have to promise me you’ll let me face him.”

  Her skin was so youthful, but pain made her eyes old. Hardship had worn furrows between her brows. Experience had stripped the simple, the shallow, from her lovely face, replaced lovely with something deeper. Something wiser and unexpected. In a word: beautiful.

  “Promise me!” she said.

  His gaze caught on the parted line of her mouth. Lips swollen from crying. A salty sheen gave them luster that no chemical gloss could match. There was a drop of pain in true beauty—the shadow of a cruel world that carved out the soul to hold more.

  More pain. More joy. More pleasure. He couldn’t refuse her.

  “I promise,” he whispered, and then his mouth was on hers and the hint of salt gave the depth of realness to the kiss. She opened for him, and she didn’t hold back. There was nothing proper about that kiss. He could taste her strength in the fierce mating of their tongues and teeth.

  “Make me feel alive,” she moaned against his lips. Her fingers dug beneath his ripped shirt and pulled it from his shoulders. He loosened the clasp of her cloak, and the blue wool fell—soft as a bird’s feather, the silent swoosh of his self-control following hers out the window—and then she was exposed to him, breasts and shoulders bare beneath the wet, translucent chemise. His weight bore her down to the bed of pine needles with the cloak bunched beneath her. No more walls between them.

  He scooped his hand down her front to cup one small breast. The nipple peaked in his palm. So tight. So warm. The noise she made was a moan, not a sob. Her hands trailed up his spine. Soft fingers, cool skin, she caressed his bare back and he arched into her. Threading his other hand into her silken hair, he tilted the angle of his kiss to go deeper. Her body was small and supple beneath him, just right to sink into. The smell of crushed cedar and her—Lucia—invaded his nose. Mud, of course, endless mud, but beneath that rose her own unique scent, and if he’d still had a totem he would have bathed in it.

  But the man wanted to claim her in a different way, and her body was yielding, her mouth just as desperate as he was. He licked the sensitive inside of her lip and popped her breast out of its confines. Leaving it to the cool mercies of the air, he made his way down to her linen drawers and the slit at the crux of her thighs. She froze at the first intrusion of his fingers, but he didn’t give either of them time to think. Sliding between the slick folds of her womanhood, his thumb pressed the tight ball of nerves at her entrance. With a gasp, she arched into his hand. He used her momentum to plunge his first two fingers into her wet heat, and she broke apart in a long, tearful scream.

  Chapter Ten

  Lucia shook, and Corbette held her. He crooned nonsense into her ear and smoothed his hands down her arms and over the flat plane of her stomach. Her eyes burned. Her body was not her own. Little waves of pleasure pulsed out from the place he’d touched. She squeezed her thighs together against the ache. She had wanted something to block out the painful memories, and he’d done that and more.

  “It will be okay,” Corbette said against the crown of her head.

  It was just too much all taken at once: the shock of losing her totem, seeing Corbette for the first time beneath the mask of the Raven Lord, learning of his past, the nightmare of facing Rudrick again, then, right on its heels, the fulfilled fantasy of Corbette finally—finally!—seeing her as a grown woman. A desirable woman. But now she couldn’t stop shaking. Her emotions jumbled together, beating like a caged thing in her breast.

  “I’m fine,” she said. She buried her face against his chest so she wouldn’t have to face him. His skin smelled like rugged male and a hint of copper. Too late she remembered he’d been injured and pulled back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to crush your chest. Are you hurt?”

  “No.” Sitting back, he slung an arm around his knees and watched the horizon. His brows were a slash of midnight. He suddenly felt miles away.

  She waited for him to say something. The wind shushed through the trees.

  Finally he glanced back at her. Nerves skittered through her belly. “I can’t lose control again, Lucia.”

  “Why not?”

  “I put too many people in danger.”

  Anger washed away her nerves. He regretted it so soon, did he? “But you have no Aether,” she pointed out. “What are you afraid of?”

  His eyes seemed to grow darker. She swallowed. If he still had his totem, his eyes would be pure violet. “I can’t touch the Aether,” he said, his gravelly voice sending shivers down her spine, “but there are still thousands who are waiting for me to bring the Scepter back to the Living World and vanquish Tiamat once and for all. What can I tell them while I dally here? That my personal pleasures were more important than their lives and freedoms?”

  She’d been reduced to a dalliance. Heat flooded her cheeks. She brought herself to her feet and dusted herself off. “Responsibility. I get it.”

  “It is who I am.”

  “I know.” She felt like her skin had been turned inside out. Raw, exposed to the elements. Her lips abraded from his kiss. Her flesh
still sensitive from his clever fingers. But their intimacy had made him feel nothing. What a fool she was!

  She snatched up her cloak, moved warily across the border into the desert, and wished she could be anywhere else.

  “Lucia, I—” Corbette raised his hand toward her and then let it fall. If he didn’t know what to say, she couldn’t help him.

  “No worries, my lord. It won’t happen again.” She turned and strode away, crossing the edge of the forest into a desert. The boundary between the two cut cleanly across the land as if the blade of the Sky God had sliced the world in two. On one side a dappled forest, life and a bit of light and clean-smelling growing things. On the other, sand—pure volcanic black—piled in dunes across the horizon. Prickly plants struggled their way out of the thin soil. Cactus and night-blooming poisons. In the distance she saw a red figure trekking across the sand with the fast, smooth gait of a mudslide. She forgot her hurts for a moment as hope flared. “Look!”

  “Enkidu,” Corbette said, and pulled himself together in an instant. “Hurry.” He broke into a jog, and she followed. The shifting sands were easier on the torn balls of her feet than the forest path had been, but she was still in rough shape. Concentrating on the pain took her mind off her bruised ego. It was ego he’d stabbed, not anything more vulnerable. Certainly not her heart.

  “It’s moving too fast,” she said. “I’m slowing you down. Go catch him.”

  He looked back, and she saw his need to protect her warring with his need to stop the Enkidu and save their people. “I can’t leave you—”

  “Go!”

  Corbette finally took her at her word and started to sprint toward the clay man. He was fast and gaining on Tiamat’s unnatural creature, but suddenly the ground shook. Lucia fell to her knees, narrowly escaping a mouthful of black sand. When she looked up, she saw Corbette, too, spread-eagle on the ground. The dunes had shifted and the landscape changed again. The new horizon was empty; the clay man had disappeared.

  “Damn it.” Corbette rose and shoved his shirtsleeves up to his elbows.

  “Run. You might still be able to catch him.”

  “I can’t even tell what direction he’s gone in. It’s useless if I catch him but lose you in the desert. I’ll get you out of the Land of the Dead, Lucia. I swear it by the Lady.”

  A little shiver took her. The Aether around them rolled through his words, and even though he couldn’t seal his promise with a binding oath, she knew he would see it come true no matter what.

  He tilted his head at her in that gesture that said he’d been Raven far too long to be fully human, even when stripped of his totem. “How are your feet?”

  “Fine.” If he could ignore his injuries, she could too. She was determined to show him that she wasn’t the delicate creature he thought her to be. It had been a mistake to let everyone assume she was broken after the Unraveling. She had to work ten times as hard now to prove them wrong. “Let’s move. Either we beat the Enkidu before he gets to the Scepter, or we intercept him on his way back. Either way, we can’t let Tiamat get it. It’s the only thing that can defeat her. Every moment we spend here lessens our chances of getting back out alive.” She set out across the dunes, hiding her wince at each step.

  He saw it anyway, but gave her the point. Even if he regretted their “dalliance,” he was now treating her like an equal. She steeled herself against any tender feelings for him. If—no, when they got back to the Living World—they would have to work together to stop the Kivati from unraveling. No more ancient tournaments and archaic marriage rites to make policy decisions; they’d have to sit down and hash things out like civilized beings. Just because their Animal counterparts would fight to the death didn’t mean that was the way leadership should be decided. If anything, this journey without their totems would be a good place to start a rational dialogue about the future of the race.

  She just needed to convince the Raven Lord. She glanced over at him and caught sight of his stormy face. A blush crept up her cheeks. Sleeping with him was definitely the wrong way to start a rational, civilized discussion. She started brainstorming her argument. How could she convince him his father was right, that the Kivati needed to integrate with the world? It was a careful balance: to keep their ways and magic alive while joining with humans and other shifter races to forge a new future. Either way, this was the last time they would be alone together.

  Tiamat had to be defeated, but a little piece of Lucia didn’t want to go back. She wanted more time to figure out what made Corbette tick when he was just a man, not the infamous Raven. She would need to know all his weaknesses if she was going to win him to her way of thinking.

  Just when she’d steeled herself against any tender feelings for him, Corbette reached out to take her hand. His nose seemed more hawkish than usual—a shadow of the Raven. “Lucy,” he breathed her nickname. The sound whispered from the deepest hidden part of him, as if he’d only spoken it in the hour before dawn in the hermit’s quiet of his own thoughts. His hands settled warm on her biceps and rubbed some warmth into them. The friction ignited and her heart dropped low in her belly to pulse, a shadow of his touch back in the forest. It was a human quality, this weakness for touch. His severe mouth parted, and she forgot all about policy and political relations. Her toes dug into the sand and her chin tilted up of its own accord. Her mouth softened with the memory of the friction and heat that waited on the other side of the barrier between them. His hands tightened.

  And then there was a roar behind him, and the sky turned an unearthly shade of blue. Another roar like the steam from an iron horse and the screech of wheels across the rails. Corbette spun her behind him, blocking her with his all-too-human body. She had to peer around his back to see what stiffened his shoulders and made the muscles in his neck tighten.

  It was a monster with the head and legs of a water buffalo and the body of a giant hippopotamus. Blue as starlight and translucent. Horns so sharp they seemed to cut the air. Its forelegs were big as old growth logs. Its whiskers of gold made it more dragon than bovine, but there was no mistaking who this was.

  “The Behemoth,” Corbette said, and the monster stamped the ground. It was white-hot fire, and its hooves burned the sand to glass. There was beauty in its hoof prints, swirls of color with a sparkle of Aether. It was a thunderbolt solidified, pure destruction and the righteous left hand of the Lady of Death. There was no pity in its empty eyes, just a swirling film of Aether, and she saw her own death reflected back at her.

  “Run,” Corbette said.

  She stayed put. There was no use running. Even if she could Change to Crane, the Behemoth would follow her across the heavens. It was even less land-bound than the winged people, and it would never tire.

  The Behemoth stamped again and opened its enormous jaws. Teeth the length of her leg. A forked tongue not unlike the Drekar. She was struck by the similarities, and she wondered if perhaps their two races weren’t quite as different as they’d all learned at their mothers’ breasts. The Damned and the Just were just two sides of the same coin.

  The monster roared. She covered her ears against the sound. Even Corbette leaned back like a great wind pushed against him.

  “We come in peace!” Corbette yelled back. “The Scepter. Your people need you, my Lady. Tiamat has risen and means to take over the Land of the Living—”

  The Behemoth charged.

  There was a great rush of burning air, and Corbette threw Lucia to the ground. Her face landed in the sand, and he was on top of her, protecting her, smothering her. She turned her head so she could breathe, and the heat scorched her eyebrows. Corbette shielded her from the worst. A hundred yards away, the Behemoth turned. Its hips swayed as it lumbered around. Behind it was a glistening lane of black glass, which still smoked.

  Corbette pulled her up. “Hurry. It’s coming back.”

  “We need help,” she said. “Call your father.”

  “No.” He walked over to the black glass and tried to reason
with the Behemoth again. The Behemoth had a thick ring in its nose that smoked like the glass. It was silver, like the rings in Corbette’s ears. The monster was not moved by Corbette’s plea. He was going to get himself killed.

  As the Behemoth charged, she pushed in front of Corbette, slipping her long blue cloak from her shoulders and holding it out like a matador’s cape.

  “No!” Corbette shouted.

  Beneath the pads of her fingertips, she felt water. She glanced down to find the cloak was no longer blue wool, but a flowing sheet of liquid she could use as a weapon against a fire-made Behemoth. She waved it in front of the monster, and it veered to the right, leaving another smoking lane of black glass across the desert sand, missing them entirely. It slowed a hundred feet out and began to make its plodding turn.

  “Give me that,” Corbette said. They engaged in a brief tug-of-war with the water cape, enough time for the Behemoth to charge again. Corbette was too much the gentleman to let a woman stand in front of him, but neither could do a thing with the cape if they both stood dumbly in the line of fire. He let go.

  The first time had not been bravery, but an unwitting act of stupidity. The second time was the hardest; she knew what was coming and still faced down the monster. That was bravery: knowing the worst and doing it anyway. She jiggled the sheet of water or maybe just her arms shook, and the Behemoth raced past again, again veering when she stepped in front of Corbette.

  It occurred to her that the Behemoth didn’t want her.

  “It’s after you,” she said.

  “Run then. I’ll buy you time.”

  “No. Call Halian,” she said. “The dead are not powerless. We need his help. Ask for it. We can escape together.”

  The muscles in his jaw jumped. He looked up to the blue swirling sky and called out, “Halian Corbette!” The Behemoth stamped the ground again, and another foot of sand shook from the dunes around them.

  Kai stood next to Tiamat at the edge of the grand palisade newly constructed to the south of Kivati Hall. The blunt end of Mount Rainier was a smoking crater to the South. From here, he could see the slave gangs laying stone down the promenade, and, at the base of the hill, clearing the bones of buildings from the path of the long road. The slaves were human. The taskmasters were Drekar and Kivati who had converted to Tiamat’s cause. Some did her bidding in the hopes of sharing her power. Most did so in fear for their lives. She had no loyalty, only a chaotic interest in what pleased her at the moment. Allies and rebels alike danced on a tightwire to stay on her good side. With her power rivaling that often Cor-bettes, no one could stand up to her. She was intent on creating a world in which there was no free will, only obedience to Chaos.