by Kira Brady
“I see.” Her pauses in the climb suddenly made sense. “Are there spirits inside?”
“Some. Some of them are empty.”
“And below us, all are empty now, aren’t they?”
“I can’t leave the birds trapped in there!”
She tried to snatch her hand away, but he wouldn’t let her. “Don’t be defensive. What if they’re being punished—”
“Like your eyes?”
He cleared his throat.
“I can’t stand to see you suffer either,” she said.
“I’m not a little bird in need of protection—”
“Then climb the damn mountain on your own!”
“Lucia—” He pulled her to him. Words never heeded him around her. They always came out wrong, twisted to new meaning that he’d never intended, but he had a better use for his tongue. He couldn’t stand the distance between them. Without her, he was lost. He’d been lost for a long time—far longer than their trip through the Gate. His world had shifted to orbit around this strange, headstrong young woman. The angry slant of her mouth gave way. He took little bites of her lips until she opened for him. If this staircase never ended, maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He could think of worse tortures than to kiss Lucia for eternity.
“Touch me,” she whispered. Taking his hand, she guided it to her breast. He needed no more invitation. There it was, just like he remembered, soft and round with a puckered tip that pulsed into his palm. He took time exploring her. Without sight, touch was his greatest weapon. Every cell of skin was more sensitive. Every whisper guided him like a strike of bright red across canvas. She was his map with her moans, her body’s response. He could make her body sing with no guide but the hitch of her breath.
Soon the fear in his pulse gave way to something hotter. He could untie a corset with his eyes closed, but this wasn’t just any woman. This was Lucia, and he needed to make it good for her. He needed to make it perfect. So he went slow and waited until her heart fluttered in the hollow of her neck and her moans rose higher. He freed her breasts and made love to her mouth and fit his body between the V of her thighs. Gods, he’d dreamed of seeing her face when he took her, but in this cavern of sound and touch, love had never been such a sensory game.
She pulled at his shirt, and he eased his arms out of it. By the time he’d slipped out of his pants, she was already naked. Skin to skin, he was drowning in feeling. Lady be. He slid one arm beneath her to shield her from the stair’s edge, and pulled her close. His cock throbbed against her welcoming heat. She hadn’t even touched him yet, but just holding her against him was more pleasure than he could remember. His blood raced, breathing ragged.
Lucia arched off the stairs when Corbette slipped his fingers inside her. She cried out. She wasn’t completely naive, but these weren’t her fingers exploring sensitive places in the dead of night. At that moment, the events of the Unraveling were a distant memory. She knew that had been all about power and control. This was completely different, and she had the power, she had the control, because she could see. Corbette found his way in the dark to take her with him into a new world of sound and sensation and taste.
She didn’t want to be the only one drowning. She reached out to explore his lean, sculpted body, sliding one hand into his hair and bringing his mouth back to hers. Her tongue mirrored the movements of his fingers down below: in and out, building a slow, steady rhythm. He circled, and she moved her tongue in the opposite direction, around his lips. He tasted of the salt sea air.
Suddenly he shifted and pulled his mouth away. He was breathing heavily. He shook his head, frustration in every line of his face. “If I could see you, Lucia . . . Lady be. I want to look into your eyes. I can’t tell what you’re thinking. Do you want this? Please.” The word was guttural. His body vibrated, every muscle tense. The tendons of his neck stood out.
She’d brought the mighty Raven Lord to his knees. “Yes. Please.” She needed this as much as he did.
A sharp cry, almost Raven-like, came from his throat, and then he pulled her to straddle him. She braced her knees against the stair and then he was inside her, slick and hot and full almost to the point of pain. His body shook beneath her. He rested his forehead against her lips, and they breathed together, once, twice, three times, until her inner muscles relaxed and he slid in deeper. She couldn’t help the moan that seemed to come from the place they were joined right up through her torso and throat to vibrate inside her skull.
“Lady be,” Corbette whispered. He tilted her hips up, pulling out in a slow, agonizing motion, and then slid her down again to the hilt. Her fingers dug into the muscles of his shoulders as sensation rippled through her core.
Eyesight was apparently not a critical part of making love, but she’d hate to miss the fierce intensity of his expression while he took her. He kept one hand on her face, and didn’t miss this time when his lips found hers again. He knew her face, even blind. She wondered if he’d studied her when she wasn’t looking. She’d certainly studied him. Her darkest imagination had never come close to painting this reality. He was fire and night; she was light and Aether.
Years of restraint frayed in a matter of minutes, and then she was moving her hips against his, the rub of her clit against his pubic bone driving her faster, higher. Corbette called out, a low grumbling like the mountain’s roots rubbing together. The tinder struck, and sparks exploded through her nerve endings. She’d trekked miles through a place that felt so wrong—this felt so right. The dead land climbed beneath them, and their joining breathed life back into its barren soil.
When she came back to herself, she rested her head against Corbette’s naked shoulder. A lock of his hair fell across his eyes. His blank eyes. She was whole, and he still couldn’t see. He was completely at her mercy, and they clung to each other on a steep, never-ending staircase in a strange, topsy-turvy world. The absurdity of it made her laugh.
“Do I amuse you, my lady?” Corbette asked.
“Very much. You can amuse me anytime you like,” she said.
“I wish . . .” He shook his head. “If we had more time—”
She sighed and kissed his mouth. The only certainty about the future was that it was dangerous and deadly. Corbette was not a man to build castles in the sky. “One thing at a time, my lord. If we get out of here alive, if we defeat Tiamat, if we have anyone left to save—”
He gripped her arms. “We will.”
“Good. One of us has to keep on task.” She forced herself to pull away. “We’re almost there. Let’s keep moving.”
His eyebrows rose, but he helped her off his lap and pulled on his clothes.
There were more and more spirit birds in the trees as they climbed. Wrens and sparrows. Crows and kitty hawks. They twittered and watched and waited. Her thighs burned from the never-ending climb. Just when she thought she could climb no more, they reached the top. Her feet and hands were blistered and throbbing. Her clothes were tattered, salt and mud-stained. Her spine felt bowed by the weight of lifting one foot after the other to the top of the world. But the view from the top was almost worth it. From there, she could see two glowing orbs on opposite sides of the sky: the Lady Sun and Lady Moon, sisters to the Dark Lady. The strange, brightly colored stars fingered out like rays across the streaked sky.
She turned back to the mountaintop. “We’ve reached some gates. I hope they lead to the palace, ’cause I don’t think I can walk any farther.” The gates rose twenty feet out of the soil. Scales of bronze wove in a serpentine form across the front, and at the center jutted a giant head of some sort. The neglect was evident: spiderwebs covered every inch, as if they hadn’t been open in a long, long time. She brushed the spider silk back, and found jewels inlaid in the bronze like a thousand sparkling, watchful eyes, decorative as a peacock’s feathers. “I wonder how they open,” she said.
“Is there a lock?”
“If there is, it’s hidden in the cobwebs.” She pounded on the gates, but they di
dn’t budge. Brushing back more of the spiderwebs, she uncovered the head in the center. A giant snout, glowing eyes, and wicked sharp teeth. A dragon. She snatched her hand back, but sliced her finger against one of the fangs. Hissing in a breath, she stuck her finger in her mouth.
“What happened?” Corbette asked, instantly alert. He’d become attuned to her every tiny noise and movement. She couldn’t hide anything.
She pulled her finger out of her mouth. “Cut myself. No worries. It’s shallow.” The dragon glared at her. “The gate is shaped like a dragon. It’s a thick wall of bronze scales with a giant head in the center, mouth open. I bet we’re supposed to put something in the mouth to open it. A sacrifice? Why would a dragon be guarding the Palace of the Dead?” She watched a drop of her blood glisten on the dragon’s fang before rolling back into its mouth.
“Dragons have always been the ancient guardians of treasures and sacred places. The Ishtar Gates in ancient Babylon were carved with dragons. They’re immortal sentinels incapable of being bribed by humans’ sad sob stories.”
“But they’re barred from the Land of the Dead,” she said.
“They weren’t always.”
“Maybe they aren’t meant to be forever. This makes it look like Asgard and Grace might be right—he will pass through the Gates and be welcome here.” Lucia looked down at the abandoned fence, the overgrown weeds sticking out from between iron bars, the cobwebs thick across the metal spikes. “If anyone is welcome here anymore.”
Corbette growled.
“They’re not all evil,” she said.
“Children of Chaos—”
The gates groaned. Gears screamed beneath the bronze scales. The dragon snout started to belch steam, and the scales lifted to reveal row upon row of hands cast out of bronze. Each hand held a little silver bell. They began to ring, a peal fit to wake the dead.
Corbette covered his ears. “What did you do?”
She clapped her hands over her ears too. The bells were too sharp, too high. Mind splitting. These seemed the opposite of the bells they used at Kivati Hall to keep out the wraiths; these kept out the living. Her eyes watered from the pain. The bells drove her back toward the stairs, where birds lined the trees. “Help us! Please.”
In a great rush, the birds rose into the air as one and flew into the dragon’s mouth. “No!” she shouted, but instead of being impaled on the fangs as she had done, their bodies fit through in a river of rainbow feathers. The gates creaked under the pressure. Protesting, the metal bent and finally gave way in a resounding crash. The bells stopped ringing. She watched the cloud of birds disappear far down the path where the turrets of a palace were barely visible.
“I guess it was a good thing I freed them,” she said.
“What happened?” Corbette asked.
“The birds opened the gates for us. Come on.” She took his hand and helped him through the twisted metal of the gate. “There’s an inscription on the gate.” She brushed back some of the spiderwebs. “I can’t tell what it says. Looks like an ancient pictorial language. Babylonian?”
Corbette shrugged. “I can’t help you.”
Inside the gate, she found an ornamental garden with overgrown bushes and trees. Exotic flowers ran rampant over empty fountains and wrought-iron benches. Hidden in nooks were statues of long-dead gods from every corner of the earth. She pulled the Deadglass from beneath her shirt and adjusted the fit to her eye. It was supposed to see ghosts, but the garden was empty. There were no more parishioners for the forgotten deities. Spider silk traced from the tip of one statue to the toe of the next.
She imagined the garden as it had once been—vibrant, filled with birds in a rainbow of feathers, the hedges pruned to within an inch, spiral paths leading to sacred altars, music floating on the flower-scented breeze. She felt like a trespasser, and she was. What had happened to make the dead abandon it?
Dropping the Deadglass beneath her shirt again, she squeezed Corbette’s hand. “We’re following a long path of beach pebbles and quartz through a garden. Lady be—I can see the palace!” She let out a whoop of joy and squeezed Corbette’s hand. The palace rose like a black blade from the colorful grounds. It should be foreboding, but after so many miles and who knew how many days, seeing it meant the end of the journey was within reach. Architecturally it was a mutt: a forest of minarets and onion domes, lace-carved stone and shiny blue-black rock. It combined an eclectic mix of cultures and styles in a bizarrely cohesive whole. Her eyes couldn’t focus on any one piece for very long; it was like an Escher drawing. She didn’t think it followed the laws of physics. The architecture of the Living World was a pale imitation, but then it had things like gravity working against it. How many dreamers returned to build their castles and churches with the fading memory of the Palace of the Dead singing in their sleep-encrusted minds?
How it stood up, how it held together, how so many strange staircases and turrets could meld together in a harmonious whole, she didn’t know. She tried to convey its image to Corbette, but words failed her. “The palace is black,” she said instead. “It feels like coming home.”
His head cut to her. “This isn’t your home.”
“I know, but that’s the emotion it invokes. This sense that I want to get down on my knees and worship here—not the building, but this sense of wonder.”
He tugged on her arm, reeling her in like a fish. “We will go home, together.”
The finality in his voice sent a thrill down her back. Maybe he didn’t intend what had happened between them to stay in the Land of the Dead after all. His lips were a smooth line of peach. Always a thin line, always disapproving, but now they softened, parting. She slid up his chest to reach them and pressed her own mouth to his. His whole body melted against her, and his arms held her close. “We can do this thing,” she told him. “We’re almost there. Maybe, in the way of dreams, no time at all will have passed, and we’ll come out into the Living World before Tiamat ever arrives at Kivati Hall—”
“Or maybe, like Odysseus, years will have passed.”
“Cynic.”
“Realist.” He let her go. It was cold outside the comfort of his arms. “I always expect the worst, so I’ll be ready for it.”
She looked him up and down. His shirt was undone, his usually sleek hair irreparably mussed. His trousers were crusted in dried mud and ragged around the ankles. Scratches marred his skin. His sightless eyes stared straight ahead.
“The worst, huh? And how is that working out for you?”
His strong fingers tapped his mouth once, and the edge of his lips curved. “Very well indeed.”
She swallowed at the gravelly promise in his voice. “Let’s go fetch the Scepter. There’s a shower and a bed with my name on it somewhere in the Living World.” She hoped he would join her in it.
Chapter Thirteen
Kai lay next to Tiamat in the dark. A thin shaft of moonlight cut across the great silk-hung bed that used to be Corbette’s. It painted a line of star-yellow over Zetian’s bare torso, along the curve of one perfect breast, up the swan neck and heart chin to kiss the corner of her mouth, and hit her eyes, now closed. The rise and fall of her chest was the slow, steady rhythm of deep slumber. He lay in the dark and took a moment to watch the body of the woman outside the crazed goddess. He’d known that body, made love to that body, touched every inch with every inch of his own. Tiamat was insatiable. When she was awake, she was never still. There were no moments when he could lie like this and meditate on the mockery his life had become. His eyes slid down over her skin to where the red silk sheet just covered her belly button. Her stomach was still only slightly curved, in the normal shape of a healthy female. Would it grow round soon? Would he lie here like this in five months? Eight? Would she let him live to watch her stomach bulge out with their monster child?
If she didn’t conceive, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying.
Slipping his hand between the headboard and mattress, he found the hidden knife. He had to
try, even if she woke before he could finish cutting off her head. But what would happen if Zetian died and Tiamat fled into another body? Kai didn’t have the skills or tools to bind her and banish her like Grace did. Zetian would die for nothing. All he could buy them was a little time. He’d imagined cutting off her head as she slept countless times, but the tiny doubt that a seed might have sprouted in her womb held his hand. It was selfish, this small hope.
If Jace could have seen him now, would he have disowned Kai as his brother? Kai had saved lives by distracting an enraged Tiamat with sex and soothing the chaotic deity inside the Dreki body. But she was Primordial Chaos, and this order they’d created couldn’t last. He thought of Apsu and Kingu and those brave or foolish gods who’d lain in her bed before him. His days were numbered.
Where in the twelve territories was Corbette?
Still, he didn’t pull out the knife. He watched the moonlight slowly creep over her closed eyes, and she stirred. His whole body tensed. Her eyes opened. He released the knife. To cover, he smiled his lazy smile and moved his hand to draw his fingers along the curve of her belly, down beneath the sheet—
She seized his hand.
Oh, shit.
“Help me.” The whisper was so faint he thought he’d imagined it. He was prepared for an attack, but not for what he saw in her eyes. The woman looking back at him was not the ancient Babylonian goddess of his nightmares. Her eyes were wide enough to show the whites all around. Fear made her young, a child compared to Tiamat, but a woman he’d fought before. “Help me,” she whimpered again. Her slender fingers squeezed his.
“Astrid Zetian?” he whispered back.
A little sigh slipped from her parted lips, and then her eyes rolled back in her head. Her eyelids flickered, and the presence he’d grown to loathe clicked back into possession. “You dare wake me?”