Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL)

by Archer, Jill

  “Who?” Fara asked.

  “Ari,” Rafe said. He’d known who I’d meant. Maybe both of us had been more aware of the time than we’d wanted to admit. We’d probably both been waiting to see what would happen when Revelare Lucere wore off.

  If Rafe was nervous about Ari being angry with him for uncovering his secret, he showed no sign of it.

  “Oh,” said Fara. And then she looked angry. I realized then what a mess the whole thing could become if I sought out Ari flanked by the Angels we’d brought. He and I needed to sort out our differences on our own. But the Angels refused to leave my side. Rafe blathered on about his oath and Fara harped about what a huge bone she had to pick with Ari—huge, bigger than the bones from the keep!—and I realized she’d been wronged by him as well. Not nearly as much as me, obviously, but enough, I suppose, to justify accompanying me to meet him. And, truth be told, my knees were starting to shake just a little. Having some support if things went awry might not be a bad idea.

  We found Ari in the dirt courtyard of the collapsed keep at Stone Pointe. He was (not that I’d expected anything but) in human form. I guess he’d found clothes from some unsuspecting and generous Shallows settler. Now that we’d found him, he’d turned his signature down to the lowest hum. I could barely feel it. I guessed he was being courteous. He had to know how volatile my emotions were right now. He must have correctly guessed that had I felt even the slightest uptick in his signature, anything might have been possible, from a full-scale Stone-Pointe-keep type of collapse to an all-out conflagration, Ebony’s Elbow–style.

  I kept my gaze averted from his, as well as my signature. I didn’t trust myself to look at him yet. I didn’t want to see anything in his face. No hurt or pain or loss or regret . . . because the next thing I’d wonder was if those emotions were real.

  The Angels and I stood on one side of the planked bridge and Ari on the other. It would have been fairly melodramatic had the moat bridge been constructed anywhere but the Shallows. But it was hard to have a big dramatic showdown across the three or four boards we’d been walking over for the past two days, which were tied together with only a few pieces of vine. I wondered if someone would be able to tie me together like that . . . Maybe Rafe knew a spell called Vine or Tie or Bridge or . . .

  “Noon.” Ari’s voice jerked me out of my reverie. My gaze locked with his. In the light of the sinking sun, his eyes looked almost mulberry. I wanted to blast him with waning magic. I wanted to more than I’d ever wanted to blast anything in my entire life. I wanted to sob uncontrollably and I wanted to yell until I was hoarser than Fara. But none of that would make yesterday go away. I was stuck with that memory, forever. Oh, I’m sure an Angel could find a spell to take it from me. But if I wanted to live a real life—and I did—then I couldn’t use magic to intentionally erase things. So I decided I would dismantle my relationship with Ari, and in an organized way. I didn’t want a collapse or an implosion or any kind of sinking into the muck. I swallowed.

  “You need to apologize to Fara,” I said.

  “To Fara?”

  “Yes.”

  After a brief pause, Ari cleared his throat. And then he said, “I’m sorry, Fara.”

  I don’t know what I expected. Maybe for Fara to say for what? just to get the ball rolling for me. Or maybe for her to start badgering Ari on my behalf. But she must have seen through my stall tactic—breaking up with Ari was hard—and decided to leave us to it.

  “Come on,” she said to Rafe. “Let’s stand somewhere where we can’t hear them.” And then they walked off. So they didn’t (quite) leave me alone with him.

  When they left, Ari’s signature cracked the least little bit. It was like putting my cheek next to a crack in a kiln. Instinctively, I threw up a shield, but my emotions quickly turned it into an aggressive thrust. Ari redirected it harmlessly into the pile of ruins behind him. I ratcheted down my output. The last thing I wanted was to turn this into a magic fight. We’d both lose that, in more ways than one.

  “Did you know what you were before Rafe cast Revelare Lucere?”

  He could have lied. He could have said no, that this whole thing had been as surprising and shocking and horrifying to him as it had been to me. But he didn’t hesitate.

  “Yes, I knew. I’ve always known.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “What would you have said? You’re still dealing with the fact that I executed demons for your father before enrolling at St. Luck’s.”

  “You never would tell me how many. Would you have told me about this?”

  “About the fact that I’m a drakon? Go on, Noon, you can say it.”

  We glared at each other. What right did he have to be angry?

  “Yes, I would have told you about it. I wanted to tell you about it. I was just waiting for the right time. And, no, I’ll never tell you how many demons I killed before St. Luck’s because I don’t know. A lot, Noon. A Hundred. Hundreds. But they all deserved to die. Just like Jezebeth and just like this one.” He pointed with his thumb behind his back toward the rubble. “What happened here? After I . . . left?”

  “Shifted, you mean,” I sneered. “Go ahead, Ari, you can say it.” Luck, I couldn’t believe I was stooping to this level with him. “His name was Biviennik, by the way.”

  “Who?” And then I lost it for a moment, because Ari’s question reminded me of Beetiennik’s when he’d asked who Burr was. And then I thought, what’s the difference, really, between any of us? How many years would it take before I couldn’t remember the names of those I’d killed?

  “The demon you killed!” I shrieked. But no magic was thrown. I wiped a stray tear away from the corner of my eye and made sure I looked away until they were dry. I turned back toward him with my hands clenched. Ari’s face was painful to look at. It was hard to believe he was faking the emotion I saw on his face. It was too raw. He took a step toward me, but something he must have seen in my face made him step back again. He must have known if he tried to come near me, this conversation was over.

  “I killed the other one,” I finally said, once I had my voice and my emotions under control again. “Beetiennik.”

  “You executed a demon?”

  “Yes, Ari. Me. With Rafe and Fara’s help.”

  He continued to look surprised for a moment and then he shook his head.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help.”

  I laughed, a sort of herniated hiccup. Of all the things I was mad at him about, that one hadn’t occurred to me.

  “You know, you didn’t tell me what you were either when we first met,” Ari said. “You pretended to be a Hyrke.”

  My mouth opened to respond, but no words came out.

  “You didn’t declare your magic until the threat of death forced you to,” he said. “How is that different than my true form being revealed by Revelare Lucere?”

  I blinked. How was this about me?

  “What if we’d met a year ago, Noon? A year before you were forced to declare your magic? Would you have told me about it?”

  “I declared,” I hissed. “It may not have been what I wanted at the time, but no one had to cast a spell over me to reveal what I was. I finally decided I was sick of being a coward and I plucked up the courage and declared my magic to the world.”

  Ari grimaced.

  “Besides,” I pressed, “we hadn’t even kissed before you knew what I was. In fact, you claimed to know from the very first moment you met me. Well, I didn’t know about you!” I was yelling again.

  But, instead of looking guilty or backing down, Ari went right for my emotional jugular.

  “So maybe you’re better than I am,” he said. “Or maybe you’re just less afraid of losing me than I am you.”

  He tried to take another step toward me. This time, I held my hand out. “Ari, please. Stop. I don’t know how I feel about you anymore. I don’t know if anything about you is real or what things about you to trust. And what you did to that hellcnigh
t . . . Well, it’s a lot to take in.”

  Ari looked away for one moment. Clearly there was some small part of him that regretted that he’d bitten Biviennik’s head off while in drakon form. But my guess is he was only sorry I’d seen it, not that he’d done it. Sure enough, a second later he turned back to me and all traces of guilt or embarrassment or repentance were wiped clean.

  “I guess you would have rather I teased him or toyed with him, or bit him and dragged him off to be eaten later, or done at least one of the atrocious and horrific things that demons do to their victims. Right?”

  I fumed. The killing had been brutal. But it hadn’t been cruel. It had been quick. Was his kill more gruesome because he’d done it with drakon teeth and jaws whereas I’d performed mine with magic and steel? I elected to forgo arguing with Ari over Biviennik.

  Because I wasn’t breaking up with Ari over Biviennik. I was breaking up with him because I couldn’t trust him.

  “Ari, you said you felt my magic the moment we met, that ‘I could never hide from you, any more than you could ever hide from me’ because ‘that’s just the way our magic works.’ But that’s not the way it works. I never knew about you, Ari. I never had even the slightest suspicion that you were a drakon. I should have. But should have just makes me wrong.”

  Ari’s eyes glistened, but I was sure it was a trick of the light. I had never, ever seen him shed a single tear.

  After some time had passed, during which neither of us said anything, Ari finally asked, “So where do we go from here?”

  “Where do we . . .” I echoed crazily. “We don’t.” I put my hands on my hips. “What was your plan? Go back to St. Luck’s and just pretend this never happened? Are you really going to continue training as a Maegester after this? You’re a drakon!”

  “And you’re a woman.” Ari looked me square in the face. I sputtered.

  Another moment passed. It would be midnight before anything was settled between us.

  “Why do you want to train as a Maegester anyway?” I asked, remembering Rafe’s theory about Ari somehow using me and St. Luck’s as a path to rule the world. It had seemed pretty far-fetched even when I was tanked up on his spell. But I still wanted to hear Ari’s answer.

  “It was Joy’s idea.” I nodded. That actually made sense. “And your father’s.”

  I stilled. “Does my father know? About you?”

  “I don’t know,” Ari said slowly.

  “Ari,” I said, thinking of Rafe’s theory again. “Why are you dating me?”

  Would he tell me the truth? Would I know if he was?

  “Noon,” he said carefully. “I’m going to answer your question, but I want you to do one thing for me before I do.”

  I looked across at the man who’d been my lover, the man I’d loved, and still loved, who was now a stranger, and wondered how many more revelations I could take. Here was when he would tell me that, though he’d started dating me to get closer to Karanos, he’d fallen in love with me. And I would have no idea whether to believe him or not.

  “What?” I said stonily, bracing myself for the worst.

  “Open up your signature. I want you to feel what I’m saying.”

  “Signatures aren’t lie detectors, Ari.”

  “I’m not talking about lies, or even words, although I’m going to talk. I just want you to feel.”

  I knew, in the bottom of my heart, that I’d regret it. But I did it. I opened up my signature.

  If feeling his signature before had felt like feeling the heat from the crack in a kiln, this was stepping into liquid fire. All the emotions that I’d expected to feel when I’d first seen him tonight were there: hurt, pain, loss, and regret. Those emotions swirled around me ready to flay me alive. But at the center of all that fiery darkness was a white-hot core. It was love. I could feel it.

  I nearly shut my signature down because I didn’t want to feel it. But Ari ran across the bridge and grabbed me by the arms.

  “I never dated you to get closer to your father, Noon.” I stepped back, but Ari stepped with me, keeping hold. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rafe and Fara walk toward us.

  “I don’t love Nouiomo Onyx,” Ari said, rushing now to get his words out. “I love Noon, the woman who hates fire but wields it anyway, the woman who wanted to grow flowers but couldn’t, the woman who offers sacrifices to deities she’s not sure she believes in, the woman who hates to kill. Or cause pain. The woman who wanted to be a healer, but had the courage to embrace the dark magic she’d been born with.”

  The Angels arrived.

  “I love you, Noon,” Ari said.

  I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. At least not to that.

  “You’re wrong about one thing, Ari. I do believe. I just believe in living, breathing people more than I believe in magic. I want to be my own waerwater, my own black onion. I want my head and my heart to determine someone’s fate.”

  “Your heart, huh?” Ari said softly. “Well, you heard what I had to say, and you felt what I feel for you. What does your heart say about me?”

  I swallowed. My throat hurt.

  “It says it’s broken, Ari.” I pushed his hands away. “What do you think it says?”

  “And what do you say?” Ari’s voice was immeasurably quiet, but even the Angels must have heard the unshed emotion in his voice. I knew they were ready to cast.

  “I can’t be with you anymore. I’m sorry.”

  Just before he closed up his signature I felt the liquid fire rush into the kiln. I imagined the whole thing was internally combusting right now. But all he said was, “I’m sorry too.”

  He walked backward across the bridge, never taking his eyes off me. And then he shifted. He suddenly grew five times his human size and crouched before us on four legs instead of two. His dove-colored skin turned greenish black. His tail lengthened, its thick base extending a good twelve feet or so into a narrow, pointed tip. At least there wasn’t a scorpion’s stinger on its end. I shuddered. Ari reared and then lowered those lance-like spiral ridges at us. The Angels stiffened. I stood my ground.

  I’d said I didn’t trust him. But I knew he wouldn’t hurt us. At least, not with his body or his magic.

  “What was that spell you cast over Sasha, Tosca, and Brunus at the beginning of the semester, Fara?” I said, “The one where you turned them all to ghosts and swished them away?”

  On the other side of the bridge, Ari snorted fire. It reminded me of Serafina. But Ari was at least a thousand times bigger than she’d been. If he chose to singe something with fire, the effect would be far greater than a few tiny burn marks created by a sneeze of blown embers. Fara glanced between Ari and me and shook her head. “Let him leave his own way,” she said.

  Ari’s massive wings beat the air, ruffling my hair. I felt a final puff of warm air and a fleeting echo of his white-hot signature core, and he was gone.

  We stood for a moment looking at the ruined keep. Finally, I broke down. Fara pulled me into a fierce embrace and, inspired by my spell request, I suppose, quoted the verse from Joshua 5:34: “We are all but pale spirits to be poured over the land until the time shall come to be made whole again.”

  “You will feel whole again someday, Noon,” she whispered hoarsely. “I promise.”

  Chapter 29

  Rafe found me the next day in the small tin-roofed storage shed on the Secernere side of the Shallows, the one we’d walked through when we’d first arrived. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor amongst the fishing poles, tackle boxes, crab pots, and birdcages contemplating the silver spice box with the words “For Ebony” on it. I’d been contemplating it, for hours. I’m sure it’s because the box conjured up the fatalistic sentiment I’d been feeding myself since Ari had left yesterday. “‘Better late than never’ is a lie.” No kidding. On time is definitely best. Like the fact that Ari should have revealed to me before yesterday that he was a drakon and not just a human member of the Host like me.

  Rafe came in quietly at o
ne point and sat next to me. It reminded me of the time we’d made tea together on board Cnawlece. Our silence was companionable, not uncomfortable. After a while he said:

  “I really do know the spell Pat on the Back.”

  Despite everything, I laughed. “Who taught it to you?”

  He shrugged. “I learn most of my spells on my own. Or I design them myself. None of the traditional ones ever seem to do what you need them to do.”

  “Maybe you should have been a gap filler.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What is your specialty, Rafe?”

  He fiddled with one of the birdcage doors, pressing it open, then shut, then open again.

  “Looking out for you, Onyx. Luck knows you need it. So how ’bout it?”

  “How about what?”

  “Pat on the Back,” he said, just the tiniest put out that I’d seemed to have forgotten the spell that he’d offered.

  I smiled, playing along. “How long does it last?”

  Rafe’s taupe-eyed gaze met mine. “As long as you want it to.”

  He left a few moments later. He wasn’t insulted when I didn’t take him up on his offer. I think he realized I needed exactly what we all suddenly had so much of—time. We had at least a week before the Boatman was due to arrive. So I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to unravel the mystery of the spice box.

  What had “Better late than never” is a lie meant to the person who’d engraved this box? What had been too late for Ebony? Legend said she was a water demon who gave her memory of home to her wandering lover so he could find his way back to her. But why had her lover been wandering in the first place?

  Burr’s mother (the near-incontrovertible Alba) had said that Grimasca’s lover was a big black river serpent who liked to hunt with him. According to her tale, Grimasca had bitten her and she’d drowned.

  I had no hard evidence, but I thought it likely that Grimasca and Ebony had been the two lovers both Alba and the legends spoke of. So if Grimasca bit Ebony and then she drowned, it seemed safe to assume she’d drowned from a hellcnight bite.