by Kira Brady
Grace’s nose scrunched up. “You don’t know that.”
He shrugged. “It’s a life, and I’m responsible. Tiamat is sick with it, which makes her more helpless and more unpredictable than ever. Being helpless doesn’t sit well with her. She lashes out. I don’t know which way to step to keep out of reach of her claws. And she doesn’t need me anymore, so that makes me irrelevant. So I want to hear you say, ‘Yes, Kai,’” he mimicked a high falsetto. “‘Yes, I have a plan.’”
“We’re working on it.”
“That’s not bloody good enough.”
Grace held her hands up, and he realized his anger was setting fire to the air around him. He took a deep breath and tried to find his center.
“You and me, Kai, we understand each other. I’ve been there with Tiamat housed inside my brain, so don’t tell me I don’t follow. I follow. Believe me.”
“Zetian . . . is there any way to save her?”
“Zetian’s good as dead, Kai. Don’t go soft now.”
He kicked the dirt again. “You survived Tiamat’s possession—”
“What, you like her now? A ‘soul-sucker’?”
Did he have a soft spot for a damsel in distress? Nah, he’d always been attracted to smart, assertive women. He would have thought Zetian would be the first to sign up to the Dragon Mother Goddess’s cause, but she hadn’t. She’d thrown in her lot with the rebels when she’d found a way, even possessed, to warn them when she could.
His silence was enough of an answer for Grace. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He couldn’t take the pity in her voice. “Forget it. Forget I asked. Tiamat has started killing people and trapping their souls in clay pots in her hanging gardens, so that she’ll have an army ready for her spawn to rush the Land of the Dead, or some shit. I’m next. I can feel it. Don’t leave me in some damned pot, Grace Mercer.”
“Just sit tight. We’ve got your back.”
There wasn’t much else he could do. Lady have mercy, he’d succeeded far too well already.
Lucia gasped as the Change took her. She’d pulled out the hummingbird mask and—unthinking—had brought it to her face. So small and frail a thing it seemed, but it had survived in the pocket of the cloak through the Behemoth’s charge, the earthquakes, and the fall through the maze. As soon as it touched her face, Aether stormed through her, ripping her skin inside out, blasting her core self out from this human body to flit, wings and beak and tiny feathered body, in the air. It seemed a lifetime since she’d last Changed, and suddenly she had wings again. Hummingbird instead of Crane, but still, she could fly. She could leave this place and return home.
But not without Corbette.
His concealing expression had settled back into place—the cold panel of iron that hid the flesh-and-blood man beneath. His hair was rumpled, cheeks flushed, clothing askew and dirt smeared across his sculpted cheekbones. His trousers still lifted in interesting places, and she felt a mirroring rush of heat low down. Interrupted just when it was getting good. It was a pity to leave him like this.
His head turned an inch as he listened for her. “Lucia?”
She couldn’t answer, but she flitted near his head and hoped it was enough of a clue for him. Then she let the wind bear her up. It sung to her of the mountain passes and the fresh buds of spring, of the ice crystals that chimed from the rooftops and the crisp creak of bare tree limbs in the fall, of the steaming corn of summer and the deep freeze of midwinter.
And then the Aether, like the rising sun, lit a path for her across the sky. She’d missed this—the connection to the very fabric of the universe, the steady pulse of the heartbeat of the earth that rang across the shimmering strands, the shining water flowing through her as her body melted and reformed in the Change to totem half. She shot into the air and left Corbette far behind.
She remembered the first time she’d flown with the wings of the Crane. A brash thirteen-year-old, she’d thought she knew everything with the arrogance of youth. But she’d never touched the sky until the third night of her vision quest. The Lady had come to her in a dream with the tip of a long white feather and painted her skin the color of snow. She’d taken her own blood to mark Lucia’s temples, and that’s when Lucia had known there was no going back. The pain of the first Change, and then the pleasure of rising above the tree line to soar with the stars in the sky. Wild and free, the way the Lady had intended her children to be.
In the middle of the maze, she spotted a strange tree reaching toward the sky. The blossoms on its branches sent shivers down her back. She flew toward it for a closer look, and a wall of fire shot up from the ground. The wall of flames blocked her from the tree on all sides. But she could see through the orange and red sparks that the blossoms were not normal blooms. In the center of each five-fingered sawtoothed leaf blinked an eye. Human eyes. Animal eyes. Beady black spots of insect eyes and the giant organs of whales. She knew what she had to do.
Lucia flew back down to Corbette and let the Aether roll through her. The Hummingbird wings melted to human arms and skin. The twig legs and talons lengthened to slender human thighs and calves and tender bare feet. The long, pointed beak shrunk to a human nose, still a trifle over long. She dropped to her knees as the Aether left her. The mask fell to the ground. The emptiness of her totem’s abandonment struck her anew. Frantically, she reached out for the Aether again, but it blew through her outstretched fingers. It wouldn’t come to her call.
“Lucia?” Corbette’s voice was sandpaper.
“I’m here. I know where we need to go. The mask let me fly, but . . .”
“But the Aether left you once you took it off.”
“Yes.” This sorrow he would understand.
“And now, I suppose, you’re naked as a jaybird.”
Heat suffused her skin from her roots to her toes. She cleared her throat. She needed Aether to pull clothes from the Aether.
“Ye gods,” Corbette sighed. “I’ve never wanted for eyesight more.”
Chapter Sixteen
Lucia led Corbette into the center of the maze. She’d memorized its shape on her flight, and now the twists and turns seemed as natural to her as breathing. With him at her side, there was nothing she couldn’t do. Turning the last corner, they arrived at the tree surrounded by a circle of fire. The flames leapt right out of the ground, but didn’t burn the grass or leaves. No heat, just a steady white-orange flame. The tree had almond-shaped leaves with serrated edges and silver-petaled blossoms that opened and closed with the snapping of the wind. They glittered with the iridescence of an unearthly magic.
“What do you see?” Corbette asked.
“A tree in the center of a wall of fire. At the very center of each tree blossom grows an eye. The petals open and close over them like eyelids. They’re watching us.”
“Eyes.” His excitement was palpable. “They’re watching for evil. Wait a moment.” He tugged her hand and she found herself wrapped in his arms again. His hold was unbreakable, almost too fierce, far beyond gentlemanly. He could crush her if he wanted, even without the Aether. His body contracted with physical power, even sightless, even stripped of his totem. Her heart tripped in her chest. This was the true Corbette—an untapped reserve of power that he kept carefully leashed. Maybe it wasn’t his design to control all those around him, but rather his need to control himself, this wild heart of him, to spare them all his overwhelming nature. “Your heart is racing. Do I frighten you?”
“No.” But she could tell from his flared nostril that he smelled her lie.
“I can’t see you. Not the emotions flickering across your face, not your body language. But I can feel your shiver when you’re pressed against me like this. If you ran, I couldn’t follow.”
“But you would.”
He bent his head and took a deep breath at the base of her neck. “Does that alarm you?”
“No.”
“It should. I don’t trust myself around you. If you want to run, this is your chance.
Now, before I get my eyesight back. Now, run, hide. No looking back. No regrets.”
“You give me an out now? It’s far too late for me.”
His arms tightened around her. She might have been hurt that his words let her go, but his body told a different story. His hard length dug into her hip like a running iron. His brand would forever be on her soul. “Are you sure?”
“Emory—”
“Be sure. Be very sure you know what you promise.”
“Would I abandon you blind to the carrion crows? Do you think so little of me?”
“No. But it would be a greater mercy to leave it at this for both of us. Don’t pity me, Lucy. Don’t stay out of some sense of obligation or kindness.”
“You’re a damn fool.” His breath on her neck tickled. He nipped her skin right over the nerves running down her neck, and the sensation shot down her body to weaken her knees. She locked her legs to keep herself upright. “The tree is only a few feet away.”
“Be sure,” he repeated and let her go.
She wobbled a step before finding her balance in the sudden cold. Corbette was an element all on his own. She could give him up about as much as she could give up oxygen, but she knew what he meant; there would be no half-truths between them. His uncompromising nature demanded all or nothing. “You’re not the only one with demands,” she said.
“Good. Demand me anything, Lucy.”
“A kiss.”
His lips quirked. “For luck?”
She had to swallow against the sudden fear that he wouldn’t like what he saw when he finally had all his strength back. She needed luck. Luck to get out of here with her heart intact. Because once Corbette was whole, what could keep him at her side? “I won’t be second to anyone.” The demand tumbled out. “Not even the Kivati.”
He stilled. “Neither of us is completely free.”
“You told me not to stay out of a sense of duty, but you can’t do the same yourself.”
“Don’t ask me for that.”
“You said anything.”
He covered his eyes with his palms and rubbed. She could feel the struggle tearing at him. Gods, she wanted to spare him the pain, but she couldn’t take this decision from him. She couldn’t accept anything less.
“And what of your sister?” Corbette asked. “Your parents? You want me to leave them to fend for themselves? To let the demons and demigods, Drekar, and wraiths separate us and pick us off, one by one? To let our people scatter to the four winds and disappear into human society? Children and grandchildren become less than they could be as the blood thins, until none are left who can Change as our Lady intended? Until we are no more than human, one body, one soul, with only the memory of our time touching the sun left to comfort to our root-bound feet? No. I don’t think you would prefer that. I don’t think a woman who frees the souls of darkness would willingly strip her people of their sacred power. It would be a cage, Lucia. A prison for the likes of us. No animal survives in captivity with its soul intact.”
She took a step back from him. Of course he was right. She didn’t want to leave her people unprotected, but she was afraid. The Crane was supposed to lead them, but she felt unequal to the task. If he wouldn’t leave the throne, then the only way they could be together was if she became a leader of equal power. Could she do it? The edge of her nose prickled, and she wiped it on her cloak. She wouldn’t cry. “Wait here,” she told him. “I’ll find you new eyes, my lord.”
“Lucia—” He held out his hand, but she was done talking and she wouldn’t beg. She turned her back on him and pulled the Hummingbird mask from her pocket. The shock of Aether when it touched her face was a live wire through her body. Her limbs twisted and turned and she sprung into the sky on wings softer than air. The thrill of flight, the feeling of right that came from reconnecting to the soul of the universe, the wind in her feathers and rush of speed. She would take this away from her people? Already there were those who couldn’t Change, and she’d seen the broken jealousy in their eyes.
Could she take responsibility for protecting that magic for the entire Kivati? Was she strong enough to match the power of the Raven Lord? Pushing away her frustration, she flew at the higher branches of the tree. But the fire circle roared up, knocking her back and singeing her tail feathers. It wouldn’t let her pass.
What was she missing? She tried again, and again the fire rose up. She zoomed straight up until the air grew too thin and her lungs ached, then dive-bombed down, trying to reach the tree from straight above. But the fire had no upward limit, and it threw her back. She spun in the air and plummeted toward the ground, slowing her fall at the last moment with a flurry of wings. She landed in the ground and the mask fell off in a rush of Aether. It took a moment to find her balance again.
“Lucia, are you okay?” Corbette’s hands fisted at his sides.
“I’m fine. I can’t fly over. I can’t reach the bush.”
“It’s another test.”
“The gods give us all the tools we need to pass, don’t they? Why would the Lady set us up to fail?”
“Why indeed.”
She picked herself up and brushed the dirt off. The fire warmed the air, one small consolation for her naked skin. “Trust,” she said. “I don’t think I’m meant to do it alone. What if you try the mask?”
“And I try it alone? If it’s meant to test our trust, we must do it together.”
“But there is only one mask.”
“Maybe we’re not meant to fly over it.”
“Through it?”
“Why not?”
“Walk through fire?”
He laughed. “I’ve followed you this far. What’s another sheet of flames?”
Lucia pulled the Deadglass from the chain around her neck and looked at the fire. It saw the truth and the tree saw evil. Was the truth evil? The nature of truth wasn’t so black-and-white. The truth could be freeing. It could also be life-shattering. What truth did being the Crane ever bring her? Here she’d found some measure of peace, as if the land meant for her to come and claim it, as if the caged inhabitants were waiting for her to set them free. What if Grace was right, and the prophecy had nothing to do with the Kivati and everything to do with the spirits who lived in the darkness of death?
She adjusted the Deadglass until she could see each sliver of sparking fire jumping and dancing and writhing in the devil’s dance. Up close, the color separated out into a rainbow of dots, blues and purples mixed with greens and teal and strawberry maroon. Like a Seurat painting where the individual dabs of color tricked the eye to see the bigger picture, a picnic on the Seine instead of a canvas of tiny dots. She searched the wall of color for an opening of some kind. Adjusting the gears again to zoom in, the Deadglass separated the dancing dots of flame further. She zoomed in again, and again the colors spread. It was a trick of the eye, she knew it, and yet the Deadglass told the truth. There were separations between all molecules, even so tiny as an atom, and in that space ran the Aether, massless and measureless and true as the ocean was deep. What proof did she have of the Aether, except what she’d seen and touched and felt to the hidden core of her being? Human scientists were dead certain it didn’t exist, but deciding something was irrelevant didn’t unmake it. No amount of wishing could make the world spin round in the opposite direction, and yet here in this impenetrable wall of flame, the Deadglass showed that in between the molecules of fire, there was all the space she needed to slip on through.
Fear was a distant buzz. She squeezed Corbette’s hand and embraced the disruptive creativity of the Deadglass. The colors pinwheeled. The slivers of fire flared as she stepped to toe them. No, she ordered, obey my command. And they flickered and cursed in the kaleidoscope, but she seized those spaces between and slipped through, pulling Corbette behind her. The heat of the fire engulfed them. Her skin screamed out at the nearness of it.
In the next breath, they were through.
She stood shaking on the other side. The Deadglass dropped
back to lie between her breasts. Letting go of the mindfulness of change released the fear too, but there was no turning back. She didn’t let herself turn around to see the wall of fire. She didn’t give herself time to imagine what might have happened if she had let doubt win the battle. This quest wasn’t over.
“What do you see?” Corbette asked.
“The tree grows up from a circle of clover. The eyes are too high up to reach. I’ll use the mask.” She found the Hummingbird mask in her pocket and put it on again, the Aether more real than ever as the Change burned through her. All the eyes in the centers of the flowers were different shapes, sizes, and colors. Some tiny, some huge, some slit in a cat eye, oblong and round, with pupils and without. There were bulbous frog eyes and hexagonal insect eyes and tiny black dots. No two seemed the same, but she found two that were at least human. The petals opened for her as she hovered over the blossom and stuck her long needle beak to the center of the eye. The Aether shot in a tingle up her beak, and the eye disappeared from the center of the flower. She came back down to where Corbette stood, stoic and calm but for his clenched hands, and touched her beak to the center of his eyeball. The Aether left her in a rush.
Corbette staggered back. Hurriedly, she flew to the tree and speared another eye. She brought it to Corbette, and the shock of Aether threw him to the ground. His eyeballs jittered back and forth as if he were having a seizure, before both eyelids opened wide and a beacon of light shot out from each pupil. Then he closed his eyes again and the light was gone. He sat up and stared at his hands, turning them over to study the nails and the palms and the small birthmark at the base of his thumb.
Lucia let the Change hit her again and the mask fell off. She landed on her knees beside him. “Did it work?”
Light shredded the blackness. Color: searing reds of the fire; purple-bronze of the maze; the swirling golds and cobalts of the strange Van Gogh sky; his hands, a cooler tan, marked with ten thousand miles through a war-torn world. He curled his hands into fists and uncurled them, watching the skin slide effortlessly over muscle and bone. Strength coiled there. The power to kill, Aether or no. The force to keep shape-shifters in line and carve a kingdom from the rubble of the last. His own hands, his iron grip a tool to mold the universe to his will. But now they were so much more. In the dark, they’d been his eyes, his lifeline to the world around him. He’d used them differently. Gently. Tentatively. They’d allowed him to focus on Lucia’s soft body on a deeper plane.