“What are the other nine? I may have seed samples in the ark.”
“Agaricus mushroom, astragalus, cordyceps mushroom, coriolus mushroom, Dang Gui root, He Shou Wu, lycium fruit, polyrhachis ant, and salvia root.”
Siri mentally compared his verbal list with the one she recalled putting together a thousand years earlier. “No, I don’t have any of those.” She shook her head. “So much has been lost. Irrecoverable.”
Rafael reached for her hand, the first contact he had initiated. “We’ll get by with what we have,” he assured her. “It’s important to be alive. Everything else we can improve upon. Eventually.”
His optimism in the face of crushing hopelessness had to be the most remarkable thing about him. It had been no different when he lost his only son. He had picked up the shards of his life and kept going, faithfully attending to his daily duties despite the wrenching despair. She stared at their intertwined fingers. Grief lingered about him, such a familiar and inevitable part of him that she hardly noticed it. She could not; she would not let herself forget the one wedge between them that could never be removed or changed.
Ashra’s voice cut through the bittersweet moment. “Siri!”
Siri rolled her eyes. “Here comes trouble.”
Ashra’s wings flared as she strode into the room. “Talon told me about your injuries. How dare you keep that information from me?”
“I wasn’t thinking straight.”
The icrathari queen’s golden eyes blazed at Siri’s flippant answer. “You weren’t thinking straight for seven months? How much longer would you have gone on lying to me?”
“Ah, technically, I didn’t lie—”
Ashra spun on Rafael. “And you—you and Lucas conspired to keep it from me.”
Siri shot to her feet and placed herself between Ashra and Rafael. She did not think Ashra would attack Rafael, but she had never seen Ashra this furious. “Leave Rafael and Lucas out of this. I told them…I told Lucas, at least, to keep things quiet. Rafael figured it out on his own. I didn’t want my injuries to be a distraction to you or Tera; you have enough to worry about. Anyway, we’re past that now. My wounds have closed and—”
“Lucas said that the healing wasn’t complete.”
Damn. Lucas had been privy to that part of the conversation as well. It was time for the entire ugly truth to come out. “Do you recall the injuries you sustained while fighting Megun and how they took a long time to heal?”
“Yes.”
“It was probably aconite blood poisoning. It slowed your self-healing, and in my case, wrecked it entirely.”
“How is it I recovered without treatment?”
Siri shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps because you’re older, stronger, and meaner? Regardless, Rafael knows of some herbs that might help counteract the poison. It wouldn’t hurt to have antidotes on hand. The daevas have used poison twice now. If they use it again on us or on the vampires, I want to be prepared to counter it.”
The fury in Ashra’s eyes banked at Siri’s matter-of-fact response. By the time Siri finished speaking, Ashra was once again perfectly calm and in control. She glanced at Rafael. “How could the daevas have developed the poison? Could Elsker have supplied them with aconitum?”
Rafael shook his head. “Only if Elsker used seed samples from the ark. I don’t even grow aconitum until I need it, and my seeds are securely stored. There is no aconitum anywhere else in the city.”
“The seed vault in the ark has not been opened since I sealed it a thousand years ago,” Siri said.
“Which means that he obtained aconitum elsewhere,” Ashra said. Her head snapped up. “The daevas. They have it somehow.”
“That’s impossible. From what you, Jaden, and Talon have described of their underworld cavern, there’s no way they could have cultivated plants of any sort.”
“It’s not as if they gave us the grand tour of the place,” Ashra countered. “Do you have another explanation for how they got their hands on aconitum?”
Siri huffed out her breath. “No.”
“If they have aconitum, they could just as easily have something else, couldn’t they? Including, perhaps, an antidote, or other poisons?”
Siri’s eyes widened. What else did the daevas have? She had assumed that their culture had degenerated to primitive tribalism. What other conclusion was she supposed to draw from their lack of clothing, their language of guttural grunts and snarls, and their profound affinity for violence?
Siri gritted her teeth. The last point proved nothing. The humans had a profound affinity for violence, and until the apocalypse, their civilization had been the most advanced on Earth. As for the other two traits, could she have been misled, lulled by the daevas’ apparent simplicity to grasp the true complexity of their civilization?
The traitor Elsker had once called the daeva culture rich and complex. Could he possibly have been right?
Siri looked up and met Ashra’s eyes. They had known each other long enough to not need words to communicate. Digging into the nuances of daeva culture and knowledge was now her top priority.
The only problem was she had no idea how to tackle the challenge, short of venturing deep into daeva territory.
Chapter 9
Rafael shook his head as he settled with a silent sigh into a chair by his fireplace. During the day, the people of the city kept him busy with their request for herbal cures, but his spare time was consumed by his research with aconitum to find a cure for Siri’s blood poisoning. That day, however, had passed into darkness. The hour was late, and the night cool. He was exhausted.
Over the past three months, he had spent most of his evenings in a greenhouse laboratory in Malum Turris where he cultivated aconitum plants and tested various cures against them. It was, as Siri had pointed out, safer than growing aconitum in his herb garden.
Siri often worked beside him. Their work with jujube fruit and ligusticum rhizome yielded little by way of curing blood toxicity, but their easy conversations on science, medicine, and herbs made the evening hours fly by. Her smiles and laughter coaxed matching ones from him, and her constant presence reminded him that even though he had lost Stefan, he was not alone.
He had, to his surprise, found a partner who shared his professional interests, and who—between complex discussions on herbology—astonished him with stories of Earth, as it had been, with sprawling cities and soaring towers, sparkling beneath a gentle sun.
He chuckled, recalling their conversation earlier that day. He had set down the glass test tube before casting her a narrow-eyed glance. “Metal passenger-carrying transports without drivers?” Rafael frowned. “What kind of idiot do you take me for?”
“It’s true,” Siri protested with soft laughter that did not enhance her credibility. “Self-driving cars were the safest form of transportation in the twenty-first century.”
“But…why?”
“Some of the cities were massive. Imagine a horse, running at twice its top speed. It would have taken that horse four hours to travel from one end of the city to another.”
Rafael frowned.
“It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?” Siri said. “Aeternae Noctis is only ten miles across at its widest point. The largest cities sprawled over hundreds of miles.”
He shook his head. “So much…lost.”
“Ten billion people. Millions of species. Gone.” She turned away.
Rafael followed her to a window overlooking Aeternae Noctis. People pushed handcarts along its cobblestone streets. The tallest building was the three-story town hall, topped by a cracked bell. Farm animals meandered from their sheds and fields on the edge of the city to wander the streets.
She waved her hand over the city. “This is all we have left. Twelve thousand people and a tiny fraction of the plant and animal diversity that existed before the war.”
“Tell me about it.”
She shrugged. “There isn’t much to tell. Humans have waged war from the beginning of time, but
as their weapons grew deadlier, their patience grew shorter. When they began their final war, Rohkeus, our prince, ordered the construction of Aeternae Noctis. The humans detonated their ultimate weapon one night, destroying countless lives and incinerating the atmosphere. We completed Aeternae Noctis mere hours later and shoved into it everything we could. The city’s engines rumbled to life as the sun cracked its first lethal rays over the horizon.” Siri’s shoulders slumped on a silent sigh. “For a thousand years, the city fled from the sun, safely ensconced in eternal night.”
“But not anymore.”
Siri chuckled. “In the panic of the apocalypse, Rohkeus forgot to convey some really important instructions—like the fact that our palladium glass dome filters out most of the heat of the sun. He never intended for Aeternae Noctis to stay trapped in the night, but we didn’t realize his master plan until the recent daeva attack stranded the city in daylight.”
“What happened to Rohkeus?”
“He died—assassinated by a human a thousand years ago, moments before the city took off.” She pressed her lips together, as if to hold back words. Siri leaned her head against the window. In that moment, she seemed unutterably weary.
His chest ached.
For her…
They had a deal—her healing in exchange for the waking of the children, but it was not only Stefan’s face that kept him going through each frustrating hour of futile research. It was hers; the faint crease of a frown when she moved too quickly; the lingering pain in her eyes.
Deal or no deal, he would have done anything for her.
But why? Why the wrenching twist of empathy for an icrathari?
Siri continued, “The people we saved didn’t count their lives a blessing. The devastation they had wreaked on their Earth drove most of them to suicide, so Ashra ordered us to seize all the children. We placed them in stasis—like your children. After the first generation passed on, I redesigned the interior of the city, stripping all modern technology, and then we released the children from their sleep. For years, the vampires served as teachers and mentors, and then Ashra ordered us to pull back into the tower.” A wry smile danced over Siri’s lips. “She knew then that fear would always be more effective than benevolence. Keep the humans’ attention turned inward, focused on monsters stronger than them, and they would not have enough time or energy to unravel the strangeness of their eternal night.”
“Until Jaden.”
“Yes, but Jaden’s different.”
“So now you rule through benevolence?”
“Ashra? Benevolent?” Siri chuckled at the irony she must have heard in his voice. “Habits are hard to break. Fear was an extremely effective tool, but the truth is, we need the vampires fighting daevas, not quelling internal riots. Hence, the invitation we extended to you to join the council. The humans need a voice, and we need someone who isn’t afraid to speak when surrounded by vampires and icrathari.”
“And I am that person?”
“Aren’t you?” She gestured at the greenhouse laboratory they shared. Beyond the glass doors, vampires went about their business in the tower, paying him no attention. “You’re almost one of us.”
Almost one of us.
The words had startled him less than the question and the plea in her tone. It seemed as if she were trying to convince herself of something, but what? She was an icrathari—one of the three immortal rulers of Aeternae Noctis. What did she have to prove to anyone?
She held her hand out to him. It was small; Siri was scarcely five feet tall, but he had seen Ashra and Tera in battle. Their strength was proportionate to age, not size. Siri could have broken his neck with no more effort than snapping a twig.
He had no reason to take her hand, but he did. The palm of her hand was smooth against his calloused skin. He clasped her hand between both of his. So fragile; he did not manage to check the irrational thought.
She brought his joined hands toward her face and rested her cheek against the back of his hand. Something—he didn’t know what—trembled through him.
Love?
No, it couldn’t be.
But whatever it was, it shook him. The world—his world—did not seem quite what it was.
Somehow, it was because of her.
He had taken his leave of her shortly thereafter and retreated to his cottage to surround himself with memories he understood instead of emotions he could not fathom. He stared at the trappings of his son’s short life—a scruffy teddy bear, a wooden cart. The ache still pulsed through him, but the sharpness had dulled into an almost tolerable pang. He could never have believed that the icrathari who took his son from him would be the one who gave him the strength and grace to survive his son’s loss. When had Siri come to mean so much to him? When had he lost control of his life?
The only sound was the crackle and pop of wood settling in the fireplace as he slowly flipped the pages of the book of herbal remedies handed down through generations. He traced the illustrations of plants that existed only in the memories of men and women long dead. Without the herbs he needed, he could do nothing for Siri.
Rafael ground his teeth. He could not explain his need—his compulsion—to do something…anything…for Siri. He had even suggested an expedition into the daeva caverns in search of the antidote, but she refused to entertain the idea. “Far too dangerous,” she had told him. “Absolutely out of the question.”
So what else could he—?
A soft knock on the front door interrupted his thoughts. The door opened, and Talon looked in. A smile eased across Rafael’s face. “Come in.”
Come to think of it, when had he become friendly with vampires and elder vampires? When he walked past them in the tower, they greeted him as if he were one of them. Lucas and he had yet to talk about Lucas’s attack on him, but Rafael had been careful to keep his distance from the vampire who hated him.
Talon wore a smirk. “We didn’t see you in the tower this evening, so Jaden sent me to say hello.”
Rafael’s brow furrowed. Elder vampires and vampires possessed few social skills—they had no need for politeness when their fangs and claws kept law and order in the city. Saying hello was entirely out of character, even for Jaden, who retained more human characteristics.
Talon sauntered to the fireplace, pulled up a chair, and straddled it. “We were wondering if you might be interested in a little…escapade.”
“What sort of escapade?”
“The sort that is likely to get us into lots of trouble with Ashra.” Talon looked positively gleeful.
Rafael knew enough to be cautious. He had not had many dealings with the icrathari queen, but he suspected Ashra did not have a sense of humor. He chose his words carefully. “I expect an elder vampire might survive her wrath, but would I? What did you have in mind?”
Obviously, he hadn’t chosen his words carefully enough. Talon’s grin was radiant like a child given his heart’s desire on his birthday. “Jaden wants to explore the daeva caverns and asked if I wanted to come along.”
“And you’re here because…”
“We thought you might want to join us.”
“Seriously?” Rafael burst into laughter. “Me?”
Talon shrugged. “In the low-ceilinged caverns, flight offers no advantage to the daevas. The narrow corridors funnel their attack. Under those conditions, two elder vampires in prime health are more than a match for the daevas. We are as strong, as fast. We can do anything they can, except fly.”
“But why would you want to go into the caverns?”
“Me? Because I have a bone to pick with the daevas who imprisoned me for five hundred years. Jaden? Because he’s looking for a cure.”
“A cure for what?”
“Aconite blood poisoning. Just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“Ashra has trace levels of aconite in her blood. Nothing like Siri, but enough to be detected now that Lucas knows what to look for. Jaden wants the antidote ready before his child is
born.”
Rafael’s jaw dropped. “His child? But I thought vampires were…”
“Sterile? We are, but apparently, Jaden and Ashra took to the bedroom before he was transformed into an elder vampire. The child she’s carrying is half-icrathari, half-human. No one knows what to expect. Apparently, it’s never happened in the thousands of years of icrathari civilization.”
Rafael shook his head. “That’s amazing.”
“Yes, that child is the only one Jaden will ever have, and it has him completely on edge. He’s giving all expectant fathers, and mothers too, a bad name. He’s determined to clear every obstacle out of his child’s way.”
Rafael breathed deeply through the stabbing ache in his heart. He had felt that way about Stefan. Jaden, at least, would never have to worry about his child getting culled in the icrathari lottery. Resentment and anger tasted bitter in his mouth. He swallowed hard and waited until he was certain his voice was steady. “So, the daeva cavern?”
“He’s convinced we’ll find aconitum and its antidote in there. It would be crazy, wouldn’t it, to develop a poison without an antidote?”
Rafael shrugged, his tone self-mocking. “The best poisons are those without antidotes.” His job, as an herbalist, however was to make sure the best poisons did not exist.
The familiar pang stabbed at his chest with near-physical force.
As an herbalist, he had failed Siri.
Talon grinned, his teeth flashing white in the dim light of the room. “Anyway, Jaden is going into the caverns, but he wouldn’t know what to look for. He doesn’t know the difference between a poppy and a petunia.”
“Usually, they’re not even the same color,” Rafael murmured.
“Will you come with us?”
“So what’s this about getting into trouble with Ashra?”
“She doesn’t know, of course. She would veto it otherwise. She won’t risk Jaden, not for anything.”
“Not even her own child?”
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