by Kira Brady
“Yes.”
“But not you. You’re alive. You’re a survivor.” He kissed her just above her ear. “I hate not being able to protect you. But you are stronger than you know. I’ve watched you come out of the shell where you retreated after the Unraveling, and stand up to me and take matters into your own hands when you saw the need to do so. Do you know how many people would have come this far in your shoes? Many people recognize the difference between right and wrong, but few are brave enough to act on it. You are stronger than Rudrick will ever be.”
She swallowed against the tears welling in her eyes. “I’m not strong.”
He laughed. “Lady be, how many people aren’t afraid to tell me when I’m wrong? And I was wrong, Lucia. So very wrong.”
“About what?” But Rudrick turned the corner and found them, and she didn’t have time to see what Corbette meant, because the giant took up the sky and the blackness swirled out from him, a radiation of despair. She fought against the memories as they welled up: the altar and the manacles and the knife. The blood and the pain and the shame.
“He’s dead, Lucy,” Corbette said. “He only has as much power as you give him.”
She nodded and released his shirt.
“Lucia Crane,” Rudrick boomed. “Stand forth and listen.”
“I’m done listening to you,” she said. She slipped her hand into Corbette’s for strength and planted her energy deep into the earth. “You ruined everything. You lied to me—”
“I told you my truth,” Rudrick said.
“But it wasn’t my truth. You tricked me. You seduced me with your arguments and preyed on my insecurities and played me for a fool. And I am so angry!” Her voice rose until she screamed the last. “You hurt me!” Gods, she’d wanted to say these things for such a long time. She’d stored up words like arrows in the black of night for this moment, and she hoped they drew blood. She was so tired of his ghostly memory drawing her own. “You made me feel so small and worthless. But I’m not. I’m not.” Each word loosened the clamp around her chest until anger outweighed the fear. More sky slipped into view behind the giant’s head, and every word shrunk him a little more. “I’ve given you the power to hurt me for far too long. Well, now I take it back. All of it! I’m done cowering from you! I’m done letting you ruin the rest of my life. You mean nothing to me. You are nothing. You have nothing that I want to hear, and I reject everything you say.”
Rudrick had shrunk to his normal size, just a wiry man of average height. He was pale as a wraith. His hands hung down, palms toward her.
“You have no power over me,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice was an ordinary voice, the same one she’d heard countless times. It meant as little to her now as it did before he’d tried to change the destiny of the universe.
“You should be.”
“I thought I was doing the right thing. Just look what has come to pass under Corbette’s rule—”
“Shut up. Any power you gain by taking away someone else’s is cursed.” He took another step toward her, and she shot up her hand. “Stay back.”
“I thought you didn’t fear me.”
“I don’t.”
“I’ve been trapped here waiting for you. You let the others go. You can free me too. Go on, free me. I said I was sorry.”
Corbette growled low. She could feel him fight himself not to lunge across the distance and punch Rudrick. The violence of him stained the air. Once, it would have frightened her, but he didn’t move. She didn’t think it was the blindness that stayed his hand; he could pinpoint Rudrick well enough by his voice.
“You,” Rudrick spat at Corbette. “Look at you, holding the hand of your enemy. You don’t even know what she is.”
He was testing Corbette. Taunting him. He grew another foot. She waited for the wind to pick up and drown her with strange emotions, but nothing happened. Lady be. What was she?
Corbette’s hand tightened in hers. “I’m exactly where I need to be.”
Rudrick smirked. “You ever wondered why her blood could open the Gate? Fair Lucia. Blue-eyed serpent in our midst.”
Blue eyes. Serpent. Who was she? Lucia felt what little blood she had left drain from her face. Still, the wind didn’t pick up. The Kivati would take the knowledge of her Drekar blood as a death sentence. She’d be worse than moon-marked. She’d be one of the untouchable. Dead girl walking. She searched Corbette’s face for the revulsion she knew must be etched across it. His face was tense, but he didn’t let go of her hand.
“I’m exactly where I want to be.” Corbette’s voice held the full force of his dominance.
Tears spilled down her cheeks. Whatever secrets her parents harbored didn’t matter. Only this: the Raven Lord, dragon slayer, didn’t care if she had Drekar blood. He wanted her, Crane or no, pure Kivati or no. The knowledge shook her like an earthquake.
“I can do this,” she murmured.
“I know,” Corbette said.
His trust melted the last shards of fear spearing her heart. She lifted her chin. “Rudrick Todd, I absolve you—”
“Good.”
“—of the power to hurt me ever again. I take it all back. You are no longer bound to this place by any chains that connect you to me.”
His smile flipped. “But—”
“There is nothing between us. Your actions during your life are between you and whatever spirits you hold holy. May the Lady have mercy upon your soul.” Her voice ended in the deep chime of a bell. At each peal, Rudrick staggered back. His body continued to shrink. His pale skin turned the matte white of an egg, and the next ring sent a crack shooting across his face. More fractures cut his skin. The bell tolled the last beat of twelve. He screamed and shattered into a thousand translucent pieces. They flew into the air and turned into the gray wings of moths. The moth cloud rose into the sky and began to burn. Smoke rose into the orange night. Ash fell like the soft fluttering of snowflakes.
“He’s gone.” Lucia’s voice was barely a whisper.
Corbette could hear her deep inhale catch in her throat. Her small hand pressed in his was icy. “Good.” There was no pit of hell too deep for the Fox. It had taken every molecule of his self-restraint to let Lucia handle him. To expose her to her attacker and let her take the heat. Not to protect her. Not to take care of her.
Sometimes, his father used to say, you gotta fall before you can fly.
He’d always read that as his father’s excuse for abandoning his people and his children. He’d heard in those words his father’s reluctance to put himself out in order to protect the ones he loved, and Corbette had sworn never to do the same. He’d dedicated his life to protecting those he loved from the horrors of the outside world. He’d made a promise, and he’d stuck to it, whatever it took. But maybe in his zeal to protect his people, those walls of defense had become more prisonlike. What if it was fear, not courage, that drove him? He’d never have let Lucia face down her demons on her own if he could have fought them for her.
He did her a disservice. She was so much stronger than he’d given her credit for.
“You did well,” he said.
She made a little choked noise, and he pulled her into his arms. Ah, well. So much for letting her stand on her own. He couldn’t help this feeling of emptiness when she wasn’t in his embrace. He couldn’t help this driving need to make her happy. It had become of utmost importance to his existence, like oxygen to his lungs, and he wasn’t sure where this new vulnerability fit into the impenetrable mantle of the Raven Lord. He hugged her close, needing to reassure himself that she was there and unharmed.
“Lucy,” he crooned. “Light in my darkness.”
She cried into his chest. He brought her down to the hard-packed earth, leaned back against the thorny hedge, and pulled her into his lap, where she settled heavily and let herself be rocked. “Look at me. I’m blubbering all over your shirt.”
“Cry all you want,” he said into her hair. “Let go.”
&nbs
p; “I wish I could be like you,” she sobbed. “You never cry.”
He huffed out a laugh. “Lady be, it isn’t a strength not to cry. Strength comes from finding your balance with the universe: the joy and the sorrow, the dark and the light. There is no one without the other, nor should there be. Only in the center is there peace.”
He smoothed her long silky hair and hummed a little lullaby his mother used to sing until Lucia’s sobs turned to hiccups and she lay calm and easy against his shoulder. They sat in the stillness of the night for a long while, until even her hiccups subsided. She wiggled in his lap, and he knew the precise moment she became aware of him, not as a chest to cry on but as a man. The silence changed subtly. Not the soft retreat of low tide, but the gathering before the rush of an incoming wave.
He couldn’t see her face, but the tension in her body told him all he needed to know.
“Corbette—”
“I can’t do anything about it. Don’t worry. I’d never ask for—”
“Emory.” A finger touched his lips, and then her lips, soft and surprising, salty from her tears. Against her hip, he hardened further, but instead of pulling away, she adjusted herself in his lap to straddle his thighs and place the stiff heat of him right where he wanted to go.
“Are you sure?” he asked. He stopped her with his hands on her upper arms, though it pained him to do so.
“You want me even if I have Drekar blood?”
“I don’t care if you’re all human, woman,” he growled.
“I don’t care if you’re half hydra and sprout twelve heads. It’s madness to want someone who turns my world upside down. You don’t follow directions, you don’t act as a proper person should, but—gods!—there is no one I’d rather take this journey with. I’ve lost everything I thought mattered—my people, my throne, my totem, my powers, even my gods-be-damned eyes. But I’ve found you.” He ran his thumb across her cheeks and wiped away the tears. “Don’t cry. Please. I can’t bear it.”
“And when we win? When you get your sight and totem and powers back and we kick Tiamat’s ass? What then?”
“I’ve spent a hundred years fighting change. I thought I had it all and there was nothing I could do, save defeat the Drekar, that could make my world any better. I was wrong. You make it better. I never realized I was caged until you showed me the bars.”
She kissed him, soft and gentle. He sunk into her embrace. Her lips soothed the rawness of his speech. Her hips rubbed against him, and he forced himself to pull away.
“I won’t take advantage of a woman in distress. Don’t do this because you feel obliged. Don’t do this to please me. I think the utmost of you whether you will or not. You have to know that, Lucia. I want your friendship more than I want your body. There must always be honesty between us.”
“Are we friends then?” Her voice hid a smile.
He kissed her again, a light, breezy thing that was the palest shadow of what he wanted to do to her. “I’d like to be your friend.”
She slipped her hand between them and down the front of his trousers. “You’re right, I’m not proper. I have no qualms about taking advantage of a blind man.”
He grinned. “You, mademoiselle, have me at a distinct disadvantage.”
“I need you.”
He sobered. Her hand still rubbed him distractingly. “And maybe there is no cure for this blindness. I’m not sure how we’ll get out of this. Would you want a blind man for a mate?”
A little hitch caught in her throat. “If I’m not the fated Crane, will you still want me?”
“Gods, yes.” He leaned into her and spoke the words against her lips. “There is nothing in either world that could keep me from wanting you.” He leaned her down to the scratchy earth, her cloak beneath them and everywhere the scent of broken leaves and crushed earth. Something dug into his hip from beneath her cloak. “What is that?”
He felt her rummaging beneath the cloak. “The hummingbird mask. I’d forgotten about it. I wonder what Halian meant for—”
There was a flash of Aether, a searing tingle like bubbles in champagne, and then the warm weight of Lucia was gone, and he found himself alone in the darkness with only the soft whirring of wings for comfort.
At the edge of the Gas Works, behind the caved-in towers and burnt-out engines that used to turn coal into gas, Kai waited. The pump and boiler houses hid him from view, Lake Union stretched in front of him, and between the beams of the building he could see the grave markers reaching out of the muddy earth like midwinter blooms. The markers and toppled towers were all that was left to show the battle with Kingu had taken place. Might as well have given in then, because the current state of the city was a certain downgrade. Lady be, he thought he had it all then: a sweet gig where he saw action and got rewarded, but no one depended on him to make the hard decisions. Corbette called the shots and he could criticize the man in private as much as he wanted. He didn’t have to shoulder the burden.
Snowflakes danced in the air, a light dusting across the top of Kite Hill like powdered sugar on a cake, but here at sea level the ground was too warm for it to stick. The snow touched the ground and dissolved. Disappeared into the earth with just a sparkle of dew. Tiamat had grown too hot in her newly created Babylon. She’d demanded cooler weather, and the Aether workers gave. Kai let his feet take root and sent his energy down into the ground, not his Aether power but simply his breath and his subconscious connection to the pulsing beat of the earth.
He opened his eyes and found the Reaper in front of him. She had her blade out.
“This is dangerous,” Grace said.
“I walked. She’s tucked in bed.”
“She’s afraid of the snow?”
He turned his face back to the grave markers. “Nausea.”
“Gods damn it, Kai.”
“What am I supposed to do?” He threw his hands up. “I’ve been placating her, buying you time. You know how many times one of the Kivati escaped only because I distracted her? You don’t like my technique? Fuck you. She’s got this whole plan down to the wire, and there’s only one place I fit in.”
“Giving it your best shot. The world thanks you.”
“Don’t fuck with me. Corbette was supposed to be back by now with the Scepter.”
“What if he’s not coming back?” she asked.
“Corbette always comes back.”
“He’s certainly taking his sweet time.”
“He can’t abandon us. Even if he’s dead, his cursed ghost would be back to warn us.”
“You have such faith in him.”
Restless energy took Kai to the edge of the barn and back. “Tell me you have something else. Tell me you have another plan all worked out, and you’re just waiting to save the day because . . . because?” He leveled the full weight of his frustration at Grace.
She looked away.
He grabbed her shoulder, and she brought up her knife. He didn’t move to defend himself. The blade cut a thin line of red across his wrist. “My time has run out. It’s done: she’s pregnant. I can’t cover for you anymore. Tell me you have a plan.”
The tip of her knife lowered. “Leif has this theory.”
“Your plan is a theory?”
She pushed his hold off of her shoulder. “When Tiamat’s Heart was in me, she didn’t have control. Leif says my soul and will were strong enough to keep her trapped, plus the runes on my skin. But it started with my soul.”
“Zetian is Drekar; she has no soul to fight.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe? That’s why Tiamat wants the Scepter. Besides taking over both worlds, she’s planning to save her children from the curse, benevolent mother that she is.” The irony was chilling. If Tiamat was an ideal mother, she’d twisted every ideal of motherhood he knew. Motivations that sounded sane in a normal person were subtly rotten in her hands. She’d save her children, but kill millions to do so. She’d bear children, but only to worship her. With the knife in her hand and blood
soaking the earth, she’d whisper so convincingly, “But I did it for you.”
Kai turned his back on Grace. Why did you leave, Jace? You’d have five different fail-proof plans by now.
“Have you seen any trace of Zetian inside her body? Any thing at all? An out-of-character word from Tiamat? A—”
“Yeah.” Kai crossed his arms. He didn’t want to feel pity for the woman trapped with Tiamat, but he couldn’t get her damned helpless plea out of his brain. Zetian might have been a bitch before being possessed, but she’d chosen to warn him the last few times she surfaced. She’d saved more than a few lives with her insight into Tiamat’s brain. “I’ve seen her ten times. Maybe more. I think the”—he cleared his throat around the foreign word—“baby has split Tiamat’s attention, or drawn it inward or something.”
“When? Where? Can she communicate?”
“When Tiamat is deeply asleep. Sometimes she can say a bit. We have her to thank for knowing Tiamat’s latest plans.”
“I’ll remember to tell her thanks when I see her,” Grace said in a flat voice. “Can she communicate any other times?”
“Sometimes when Tiamat is . . .”
“Is . . . what? Don’t make me beat it out of you.”
Kai felt the side of his mouth kick up. He cast the Drekar’s little human fighter another glance. “I don’t doubt you’d try.”
Grace crossed her arms. “So? Only when Tiamat’s dead asleep and . . . ?”
Kai kicked a piece of broken concrete with the toe of his boot. “Or when she’s orgasming.” Lady damn him, he could feel embarrassment steal across his cheeks. “She’s coming, and then her eyes widen in this pitiful, helpless look that punches me in the gut, and then it’s gone, and just Tiamat, confident, arrogant, insatiable goddess witch is back.” He covered his face with his hands. “My soul is marked every time. I don’t want to feel anything for her, but I do.” He dropped his hands. “I do. And now there’s some evil spawn in her belly, and the hell of it is, it’s my evil spawn. I don’t know if I’m saving the world or damning it anymore. All I know is the world might survive, but I’ve damned myself for eternity.”