Eve of Destruction

by C. E. Stalbaum

  The bodyguard’s gray eyes finally swiveled over and flicked between the two of them. “The truth is that the Vakari is out there right now, and I wouldn’t worry about anyone getting past her. But more to the point, I’m not convinced Chaval is actually looking for us. He knows we’re here, but he’s waiting for something.”

  “Like what?” Eve asked.

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” Aram said, glancing away again.

  When he didn’t elaborate, Zach just sighed and shrugged. Eve kept her arms crossed tightly across her chest and waited for Danev to finish. A few minutes later he walked over and gestured for them to follow.

  Five minutes later, they were inside a dual suite on the third floor. The rooms weren’t quite as massive as the Calio, but they still felt like they would fit perfectly inside a mansion.

  “You two get that room,” Danev said, nodding his head to the adjacent suite. “That way Aram can watch the only entrance.”

  “Leave the adjoining door cracked if you want, but don’t close it,” Aram instructed.

  “Fine,” she said, dragging her bag into the adjacent room. Zach followed quickly behind her and pushed the door closed anyway.

  “You all right?” he asked as she dropped her bag and flopped down on the bed.

  Eve closed her eyes and tried to push the pain out of her forehead. “What do you think?”

  “We can still leave if you want,” he said softly as he pulled out some clean clothes. “Just say the word and we’ll hit the train station.”

  “You’ve said that at least twice now.”

  “Yeah, well, I mean it.”

  She sighed but smiled despite herself. She’d never doubted that he meant it. She could ask to leave tonight and he would do everything humanly possible to make it happen. She could tell him they were staying here for a month, and while he would definitely complain about it, he would still stay with her the entire time.

  He was the only reason she was holding herself together at all.

  “Thanks,” she told him.

  He smiled back. “I’m scared too, if it makes you feel any better. But I actually think we’ll be all right.”

  She didn’t know what he was basing that on, but right now it felt good to hear it anyway. In truth, it wasn’t the fear that was bothering her so much right now. She was scared, certainly, but anger had long since pushed everything else aside.

  She was angry at Maltus for what he hadn’t told them before they left. She was angry at her mother for having not told them a lot of things. And of course she was angry at Chaval for having put them in this place to begin with.

  But most of all, Eve realized, she was really just angry at herself for not having the power to fix any of it.

  She glanced over to her bag and the spellbook tucked inside it. She wondered what answers might still rest within its pages, but right now she was too tired to read or think straight.

  “I’m going to change and go to sleep,” she said.

  She stepped into their private bathroom and slipped out of her dress and into her sleeping gown. She briefly considered drawing a bath, but decided to wait until morning. She wasn’t even sure she’d be able to stay awake long enough to enjoy it.

  Zach was busy setting out a blanket on the couch when she came out.

  She stopped and put her hands on her hips. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting my bed ready.”

  Eve sighed. “You’re sleeping in the bed with me, you kreel.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, but nothing came out. “You sure?”

  “Goddess, you’re thick sometimes,” she said, sliding under the sheets.

  Eventually he took off his shirt and followed her in, then blew out the lantern on his side of the bed. Eve watched him fidget sheepishly for a few minutes as he tried to get comfortable without moving too close to her side.

  “What is it about this that bothers you so much, anyway?” she asked softly.

  “You mean besides the Vakari following us or the megalomaniac hunting us down?”

  She rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  He let out a deep breath. “I don’t know, it’s just…awkward.”

  She smiled over at him. The light from her lantern glinted off his blue eyes, and she decided she actually liked the way he looked when he hadn’t shaved for a day or two.

  “Well like you said,” she murmured, “there’s a lot going on. I think a little awkwardness is the least of our problems. You’ll sleep better here.”

  “Probably,” he admitted, giving her a quick smile then rolling away.

  On impulse, she pressed up against him and wrapped her arm around his chest. It was shocking what just two years in the service had done to his body. He’d never been overweight, but he definitely hadn’t been this…solid before, either.

  “Is this a scar?” she asked into his ear as she brushed across a calloused spot near his belly.

  “Shrapnel,” he said. “The nurses didn’t get a chance to look at it for almost two days.”

  She frowned. “You didn’t have a mage in your unit?”

  “Not at the time. Very few do. I know that’s not how it’s described in the papers or war novels, but magi aren’t exactly lining up to join the service. I was just lucky it didn’t hit me somewhere important.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, pressing more tightly into his back.

  “For what?”

  “For the fact you even had to do that. You should have come with me to Rorendal. I could have convinced mom to loan you the money.”

  She felt him sigh, and he slowly turned around to face her. “It wasn’t about the money…mostly. You know that school was never my thing.”

  “You were a good student,” she reminded him.

  “I was an average student with a really smart friend,” he corrected. “And I didn’t want to lean on you forever. I needed to do something for myself.”

  She frowned as she looked at him, and once again she appreciated how much he had changed in such a short time. As familiar as they were, she realized she was finally looking into the eyes of a man and not a boy. She wondered if he saw the same transition in hers.

  Eve wasn’t sure how long they sat there looking at each other, but somehow they gradually managed to drift closer together. She could feel the warmth of his breath on her lips…and then a warning bell started ringing in her head.

  She didn’t know exactly when it had happened—and she certainly didn’t know why—but all of a sudden she wanted to kiss him more than anything in the world. She wanted to press herself against him. She wanted to find out what else had changed in the two years they had been apart.

  And then it was happening. Their lips were together, and she was pressing so hard against him it almost hurt. Her hands were dragging across the taught muscles in his back, and his were running along the softness of her thighs. Her toes curled and her skin tingled.

  Then he was on top of her, and she was wrapping her legs around him to draw him even closer. His hands had somehow found a way beneath her gown, and hers had started working at the belt to his trousers…

  Someone knocked at the door.

  Eve pushed Zach away and nearly tumbled out of the bed before realizing the sound hadn’t come from the adjoining door; it had come from the suite’s entrance in Danev’s room. She wiped a hand across her lips to dry them and glanced over to Zach. He’d already rolled off the bed and pulled his pistol from its holster.

  Eve took a deep breath and called to the Fane. Her skin prickled as she wrapped herself in a kinetic barrier. She reached out to Zach to place the same spell on him, but he’d already snuck over to the adjoining door and had his ear pressed against it.

  “Stay here,” he warned as he gently pushed it open and peered into the other room.

  Eve bit down on her lip as memories of the Calio flashed in her mind. He had been overprotective then, too, and she had nearly bowled him over as she r
ecklessly charged into danger. She should have probably learned from the experience, but right now she wanted to do exactly the same thing…

  “I’m not here to kill you,” a muffled female voice said from outside. Her strange accent was thick but understandable. “I brought you a gift.”

  Eve frowned, and despite Zach’s warning she hopped off the bed and crept over to peek past his shoulder. The only light came from a single weak lantern, but she could still make out Aram, fully dressed and alert, standing next to the door. Danev was nowhere to be seen.

  “I can wait,” the woman added. “I’m not sure you can.”

  Aram grunted and holstered his gun. He seemed to take in a breath to steady himself, and then he opened the door.

  Standing outside was a tall, gaunt woman in a tattered black overcoat. A red scarf covered the bottom of her face, and her head was crowned by a wild shock of auburn hair. She wore a scabbard at her hip and a baldric full of knives around her chest. In one hand she held a hat, and in the other was the thing they had been searching for this entire time.

  Eve gasped reflexively, and the foreign woman’s green eyes squinted through the darkness to latch onto her. It had to be too dark over here for any human to actually see her, but then, Eve already knew that this woman was definitely not human.

  Not anymore.

  “So, you decided to show yourself,” Danev said with no small trace of irony as he emerged from the shadows in his room.

  “It’s time for us to join forces,” the Vakari told them. Her eyes never left Eve.

  Danev cocked his head. “Is that so?”

  “You have a lot of questions, and I have some answers,” she said. “The bottom line is that you are important, little girl, and it’s my job to keep you alive.”

  ***

  Zach ran a hand through his hair as he listened to the Vakari’s every word. She called herself Shaedra, and in any practical sense, she was probably the most dangerous person he had ever met. For that reason alone he should have been completely on edge, his finger hovering over the trigger of his pistol.

  But he wasn’t. He was having trouble concentrating at all. Instead his eyes kept flicking over to the other woman in the room, but this time it wasn’t because he was worried about protecting her. This was something much, much more confusing.

  He understood lust. He was a grown man, after all, despite how Danev and Aram spoke to them sometimes. What he didn’t understand was lust for Eve, if that’s even what this was.

  It didn’t make sense. He had known her too long. He had seen her in all the ways that took the mystery out of another person. Most of the time he didn’t even think of her as a girl—and certainly not as a woman.

  But everything was different now, and he realized belatedly that he’d just been trying to deny it during the whole trip. They had spent two years apart, and they had both changed a lot. He had grown up, and she had…well, she had too, in more ways than one.

  He risked a furtive glance over to her as she sat cross-legged on the nearby chair in her nightgown. She was pretty enough but certainly not glamorous. She had always been far more interested in books than appearances; he hadn’t even seen her put on makeup before until recently. But sitting here right now he couldn’t help but appreciate the softness of her amber eyes, the subtle curves of her hips, the shapeliness of her legs…

  He ground his teeth and turned away. For a soldier, his discipline certainly left much to be desired. Right now there were far more important things to focus on than some incredibly silly dalliance that both of them would ultimately regret. Their lives were very much at stake here, and perhaps the lives of many other people as well.

  “You could have killed Chaval and saved us all a lot of trouble,” Aram commented after the Vakari finished with the tale of her evening’s exploits.

  “You think I didn’t want to?” Shaedra asked.

  The bodyguard grunted derisively. “We’re to believe instead that you respected the Enclave’s wishes? Your kin aren’t exactly known for unswerving obedience.”

  “Unlike, say, the loyal hounds of the Crimson Eclipse?” she countered. “Did you finally get sick of playing fetch for them, or did you actually learn to think for yourself?”

  A thin, humorless smile drew across Aram’s lips, and Zach couldn’t help but shiver. He had never seen the ex-Eclipsean angry before, and one look at the man’s deadpan face told him he didn’t want to. He had the distinct impression he was staring at a coiled snake, or perhaps the eye of a gathering storm.

  “So it was the Enclave that sent you?” Danev asked, his tone casual and obviously meant to diffuse the tension. Despite wearing only a sleeping robe he somehow still managed to look poised. “I’d wondered about that.”

  Shaedra kept her eyes locked on Aram for a long moment before shifting to the older man. “I don’t work for the Enclave. I work for Glenn Maltus.”

  Eve drew in a sharp breath and closed her eyes. Zach knew exactly how she felt. How many other lies had their old neighbor spun over the years? Could they trust anything about him at all at this point?

  “He wanted you to keep an eye on Evelyn, then?” Danev continued, gesturing to one of the nearby empty chairs.

  Shaedra nodded and dropped into the seat. “Yes.”

  “I suppose the obvious question is why,” Danev said, sitting down again himself. Aram, notably, remained standing. “What is Glenn’s reasoning? And why didn’t he have you come forward earlier?”

  Shaedra’s eyes flicked to Eve. “His reasoning is simple. He cares about you.”

  “Not enough to tell me the truth, apparently,” Eve replied bitterly.

  The Vakari shrugged. “Humans lie more to the people they care about than anyone else. He wanted to try and protect you. He figured you weren’t ready for what he was about to tell you.”

  “You mean that he worked for the Enclave?” Eve asked sharply. “Or was it that my mom and Chaval were lovers? Or maybe that she started this entire Dusty revolution in the first place? Which one was it?”

  “None of those.”

  Eve frowned. “Then what? What didn’t he want to tell me?”

  Shaedra held up the journal. “What your mother wrote in here.”

  Everyone in the room stared at her expectantly, and eventually the Vakari snorted and shook her head.

  “It’s funny, in a way,” she went on, dropping the book in her lap. “Even Chaval had no idea why the Enclave was so interested in you. He knew they’d assigned Maltus to keep an eye on your mother, but it wasn’t until recently that he realized they were even more concerned about you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Eve asked breathlessly. “They’ve never bothered me before, not even the recruiters at the university.”

  “I didn’t say they wanted to recruit you,” Shaedra corrected. “I said they were concerned about you—so concerned, in fact, that if not for Maltus, they probably would have sent me or another Vakari to kill you.”

  Zach shook his head. “What? Why?”

  “The Prophetess had a vision of a civil war,” Shaedra explained. “A vision where the Dusties and the magi fought for control over Arkadia, and in the process, the Fane itself was destroyed.”

  Zach tried to swallow but found his mouth had gone dry. He turned to Eve, and her entire body was trembling.

  “How?” she asked.

  “Because,” Shaedra said, “you’re going to kill it.”

  ***

  Eve’s stomach sank. The words hung there in the silence, and it was all she could do to keep breathing.

  “You’re saying she’s the Avenshal,” Aram whispered after a few seconds. “You’re saying the daughter of Edeh’s Prophetess is the Chosen of Abalor.”

  “I’m not saying that,” Shaedra corrected. “Tara DeShane said that. Those in the Enclave that believe she really was touched by the Goddess naturally agree with her.”

  “They were always a minority,” Danev said, his voice distant. “Even back at
Valmeri after all she had accomplished, they still refused to believe.”

  “It’s probably the only reason you’re still alive,” Shaedra said, her eyes still locked on Eve. “Some of the magisters wanted you dead before you were even born.”

  “That’s not…” Eve choked, her voice dying before the words could form. She balled her hands into fists and clenched her jaw. “That’s not possible.”

  The Vakari shrugged. “I don’t know; I’m just telling you what the magisters think. They could all be full of drek for all I know, and frankly I don’t particularly care.”

  “You don’t care about the Avenshal?” Aram asked, his eyes narrowing. “You don’t care about the death of the Fane?”

  “I feel it dying all around me every second I stand in this screlling city,” Shaedra told him. “The way I figure it, you don’t need some evil, god-cursed mage to destroy the Fane. You people will do it on your own eventually anyway.”

  “You can’t survive without it either.”

  She laughed. “I already died once, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “You’re just playing some sick and twisted game,” Zach hissed.

  Shaedra just cocked an eyebrow at him. “I got bored of lying centuries ago. Pull yourself together.”

  For a moment Eve thought he might pounce at her, but instead he just gripped the armrests and quietly seethed.

  “So Glenn knew about this prophecy,” Danev said softly, “and he sent you to protect Eve against the Enclave and Chaval?”

  “Yes, at least until he made a final decision.”

  A cold tingle worked its way down Eve’s spine. “A decision about what?” she asked.

  Shaedra didn’t even blink. “About whether or not to have me kill you.”

  Eve collapsed back into her chair. Glenn Maltus, one of the most helpful men she had ever known…and he had seriously considered killing her? No, despite all the things they had learned about him, despite his connections to the Enclave, she couldn’t believe he would actually—

  And then she glanced back towards her room, remembering the spellbook tucked away in her bag, and suddenly she understood.