by Jenn Stark
I thought about the robed shadow that had flickered in the maelstrom. “Who’s seated currently, and what holes do you need to fill?”
Armaeus didn’t answer, and silence stretched between us. Eventually, we reached the Luxor, and I stared up at Prime Luxe soaring above it, all metal and crystal and fierceness. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t live there. My home was at the Palazzo at the other end of the Strip. And that wasn’t really a home either, I supposed. It was… I didn’t know what it was, suddenly.
Time to go. “Well, have a good evening. It’s been fun.”
Armaeus turned to me. His eyes continued to glow with that eerie half-light. “Are you sure I can’t tempt you to continue our conversation?”
I thought about Nikki. Hopefully the cops had taken her to the hospital, where she was being tended to by strapping young doctors. I thought about Simon and his baker’s dozen of personal guards, turning on all the lights in the Foolscap. I thought about Brody and Dixie—leaving together, both of them aglow with the surge of power that Armaeus had fed into them.
“How long will it last?” I asked again, shoving my hands into the pockets of my hoodie and nudging the now dormant scroll case. “The augmentation, I mean. The power surge. How long until everyone goes back to normal?”
He glanced back down the Strip. “The effects will vary. For the Connecteds with at least moderate innate ability, it could last several days. For those unfortunate enough to be at SANCTUS headquarters when you threw the scroll case at the screen, the effect will likely last far longer.”
“Yeah, well. They had it coming.”
Armaeus’s lips twitched. “With today’s actions, SANCTUS will be in disarray. Some will not be able to handle their newfound psychic abilities. Some will far better than they would prefer.”
“Which makes them like the rest of us. And the people here in Vegas?”
“Impossible to tell.”
“Right.” I thought a little bit more about Brody and Dixie. I glanced again at the spires of Prime Luxe.
“My offer to extend our conversation stands, Miss Wilde,” Armaeus said quietly. “I assure you, I only wish to talk.”
I nodded. “I could use a good talk right about now.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Magician’s penthouse living room was bathed in soft light when we reached it, the dim glow accentuating the magnificent view of the Strip. He crossed to the bar, and the familiar sound of thick-cut crystal glasses clinking together should have helped unwind me. Instead, it kicked me up another notch. I pulled the scroll case out of my hoodie and set it carefully on one of Armaeus’s shelves.
“Miss Wilde?”
I turned, and Armaeus was beside me. His eyes now practically gleamed with the unholy fire of the power surging through him. He handed me the scotch, and I took it, taking a sharp swallow.
“Kreios was unaffected, right?” I asked. “He seemed pretty much normal, anyway. What about Eshe?”
“Eshe was in deep meditation at the time. She knew the confrontation was coming, and she wanted to take advantage of it in her own way. She seeks to maintain her hold on the enhancement long enough to undertake her own oracular attempt—not solely to be able to guide someone like you and interpret what you see, but to view the world with her own eyes. If she can reach a transcendent state to seek out the answers she craves, she will no longer need intermediaries. As to Kreios, yes. He appeared unfazed by the blast. That bears further study. He was also unsurprised that he was not affected, which, frankly, is more curious still.”
“He’s psychically deaf?” He’d said something about that after the Rarity attack, but was it true?
Armaeus wasn’t convinced either. “Or so he would prefer us to believe.” He rolled his glass in his hand. “The Fool was unaffected because he was protected by the Mongolian crown.”
“What about me?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Because I sure as hell felt it when the pulse was set to ‘pulverize,’ and, obviously, I was pumped up enough to hold that scroll case without singeing my skin off. But I don’t feel different now.”
“It’s a very good question.” Armaeus set down his glass, untouched, and took mine from my hand. He tilted my face up to the light. “Your eyes remain the same. Your energy does not appear to be affected.”
“Oh?” I struggled to keep my voice steady. It’d been a long day.
“No.” He drew his fingers along my chin, the pressure sending excited whorls of sensation skittering along my nerves. I knew he was aware of my physical reaction, but for once, he disregarded it. “You spoke directly to Llyr, which was very dangerous, and quite foolish.”
“Llyr.” I repeated the name. “You knew I was looking for him all this time, didn’t you?”
“Not until you brought his image to me scrawled on a bar receipt.” His gaze met mine. “As I said then, there has never been a Council airplane with Llyr’s symbol inscribed on it. We have done our level best to eradicate all imagery related to it.”
I stared. “But I saw it—“
“Yes. Which shouldn’t have been possible. The fact that you did is another piece of the mystery in which you are mired, Miss Wilde.” He paused, letting the moment play out. “You saw him long ago, as well, I suspect. The day you left Memphis.”
I met Armaeus’s gaze, knowing what he wanted. Though he’d been responsible for bringing the Connecteds into harm’s way, that hadn’t technically voided our deal. Our deal had been that, if he helped me protect the Connecteds, I was to give him a piece of my mind. Literally.
But now I wanted that too. Whether it was the influx of power or the adrenaline from a job well done, the idea of exploring my past didn’t bother me at this precise moment. I needed to know, to understand. And Armaeus could help me.
“How long would it take?”
He shifted closer to me. “But an instant. I swear that would be all that I need.”
“Fi—” Armaeus bent toward me before I could finish the word, and covered my mouth with his. Instantly, my mind shuddered and balked, the scene racing before me ripped whole cloth from the fabric of my past. Breakfast alone at the table. The note, the touch of wrongness on its page. The surge of fear, of needing to run, to escape, to fly—the race to get out of the house and into the yard, falling, running, slipping, until everything went up in a surge of smoke and fire and sound—all around me. And then I saw—I saw…
Armaeus broke away, and I sucked in a huge breath, swaying in his arms. He scowled down at me, his face like stone, and a surge of all that leftover grief and fear and rage welled up within me, so strong I nearly choked on it.
“What?” I gasped, searching his eyes. “What?”
Armaeus blinked, then apparently could truly see me again. An emotion I’d never seen before crossed his face. It was almost…tender. Full of wonder.
Annnnnd… Something inside me broke.
“Kiss me again, Armaeus,” I whispered before I could stop myself. “Now, before all the pain returns. The questions. I want more. I want it all.”
He went very still. “You’re not yourself.”
“Aren’t I?” I stood up on my tiptoes and brushed my lips against his. There was no fear this time, no wall of self-preserving terror. Instead, I needed the Magician, more than I’d needed anything in my life. Needed Armaeus’s hands on me, his mouth on mine, his heat surrounding me. Needed something to penetrate to the icy-cold core of my emotions and thaw the pain that was gnawing at me, turning me dead inside. “Please.”
Armaeus’s war with himself took about three point five seconds. “I will do this because it is pleasure, and healing, and pleasure and healing are what you most need.”
That sounded conditional, and I wasn’t about conditional. But as Armaeus dragged me into a rough embrace, I didn’t care. With a swipe of his leg, my knees buckled and I fell to the floor, his body covering mine as he ground me into the thick carpet. And his mouth was everywhere. On my mouth, my temple, down the curve of my n
eck. His fingers tangled in my hair, pulling my head back, exposing my collarbone to his questing lips. My back arched instinctively beneath him. He brought his left hand around and pushed my tank top up high on my chest. Then breath hissed from my lips as his fingers closed around the weight of my breast, kneading it, rolling the nipple in his hard fingers, teasing with both pleasure and pain.
“Yes,” I moaned. “Yes—that. Please.” I strained toward him. His mouth met mine, and I drank him in, surrounded by his heat. Power shot through me, exotic and sure, filling me up.
For a moment, we hung suspended together, out of time and space. I pulled back, and his eyes transfixed me. In that moment, I felt the awesome power of him, yes, but also the endless ache of enforced isolation that had stretched across the centuries of his long life. Isolation that fed and honed his abilities, but that also held him apart from the most basic tenet of his powers. The wild, primal magic that I could feel if only…if only…
I let him in again for the briefest moment. Felt the long, searching tendrils of his mental touch slip over and through my mind, seeking out the broken places, probing, testing...
He snapped back, and yet another emotion flashed across his face that I had never seen before. At least not on him.
Jealousy.
Carefully, deliberately, Armaeus pushed me away, creating more space between us. “I meant what I said to you, Miss Wilde, when we first met.” His voice had taken on a dangerous edge, his eyes once again glittering. “Do you remember my words, precisely?”
I floundered for a response, out of my depth. “That I was irresponsible?”
As I watched, his face cleared of all emotion, returning to his coolly civil mask. When he spoke again, his words were quiet. Detached. “That when you want me, truly want me, then I will be waiting for you. But I will not have you turn to me when your mind and your heart are filled with confusion over someone else.” With a smooth, graceful motion, he regained his feet.
Wait, what? I scrambled upright too. “What are you talking about?”
“You should know that your concerns over Detective Rooks are unfounded. He has no carnal interest in Dixie Quinn.” Cool eyes flicked over me. “At least, not anymore.”
Embarrassment shot through me. “I don’t care about who his—how do you know that?”
“We’ve already ascertained that there are very few minds that are not completely open to me, in all ways. Except yours.”
“It’s kind of rude.”
“You’re not curious?” Armaeus lifted his brows, the frost of his anger shimmering between us. “You don’t wish to know what the innermost thoughts are of those who are thinking about you at this very moment?”
Yes. “No!” I scowled at him. “You’d really suck to play hide-and-seek with.”
“You do want to know.”
“Not from you I don’t.”
“Very wise.” His smile had turned hard. “The value that I bring to you is not one that is born of trust. You have other options for that, if trust is truly what you seek.”
“I know I’m little more than a science experiment to you,” I spat, my filter completely shredded at this point. “You’ve never told me anything unless it could help you meet your own selfish ends.”
Armaeus’s laugh was scoffing. “You are a part of my selfish ends, make no mistake. And I will not rest until I understand everything about you.” He peered at me, then nodded once. “Very well, Miss Wilde. Though you cannot bring yourself to ask, I will show one piece of what you truly seek, when all the distractions are cleared away.”
He held up a staying hand when I unconsciously moved toward him.
“No. Do not touch me. I will not have you confuse this for anything more than what it is.” His gaze went distant, piercing me through. “Look . See.”
Something in his voice would not be denied. I stared into his gaze and saw beyond the eerie dark gold eyes, into the wealth of knowledge and history that was hidden there. And I saw more.
A blue dragon, trapped on a field of red.
Staring back at me.
The unearthly power of the creature stretched toward me, but I was wrong, I realized suddenly. Llyr wasn’t staring at me, exactly. It was staring at something between us. The barest shadow of a robed figure, holding aloft a—
“You pierce the veil so easily…” Armaeus murmured. “You see so much.”
I blinked at his voice, the image slipping away. “Who’s in there? Who is that with the dragon. The man… He’s in robes of some sort?”
The image nagged at me, even as it faded. A shadowed figure…a wavering light. Then the connection closed completely, and Armaeus’s cold, dark eyes once again held mine. And I could recall nothing but the dragon. Llyr.
My head throbbed again, not painfully, but I held my hand up to it to ensure my brains weren’t falling out with the blast of knowing I’d just received. The essence of a god who’d once walked this world and nearly destroyed it. “Llyr. What is that, Welsh? The only Welsh god of that name I’ve heard of is nowhere near that powerful.”
“That’s by careful design.” Armaeus loomed over me. He was darker, more intense. He swelled with a power that wasn’t fully his own, I knew. But that didn’t make it any less effective. “Llyr in many ways was the founder of the original Council. We were built to balance his abilities.”
I stared at him, finally refocusing. “You threw him off the planet, Armaeus. That doesn’t seem super ‘balanced.’”
“It was not supposed to escalate to that. But when he resisted our attempts to constrain his power, he unleashed the forces of the elements. Mortals were caught in the balance, drowning beneath the waves he stirred.”
“Whoa, whoa. Waves. Do not even.”
“There are records of a great flood in almost every culture with a written record, Miss Wilde. Surely you do not think they were all fabrications?”
“Well, no, but I don’t recall the part where a giant blue dragon flapped his wings and caused the waters of the Earth to rise. I would have remembered that.”
Armaeus shrugged, but his energy did not dissipate. “Why now?” I asked. When he didn’t speak, I prodded. “All of this. Llyr. SANCTUS. Why is everything happening so quickly?”
“SANCTUS, in one form or another, has been emerging for centuries. Over the past few years, however, they have expanded their operations dramatically. Through a power not of their own making, they are shifting the balance of magic. When that balance is upset, the veil between the worlds grows inconsistent. Where it is weak, Llyr is strong. And he can’t be allowed back into this world.” He held up a hand to forestall my question. “The ‘magic’ of Llyr isn’t magic. It’s domination and force. It is not a power that allows anything else to exist. The darkest of your dark practitioners that you rail against, those creatures who feed upon the weakest of the Connected, who drink in their power and exploit them… They would be his most minor foot soldiers.”
I nodded. I’d seen Llyr, experienced his strength. I knew Armaeus was right. “So that’s why you wanted to show him to SANCTUS before, you know…I barged in?”
He shrugged. “In part. SANCTUS could easily destroy the Connecteds of limited power, bolstering the dark practitioners until they destroyed all that was light. The trouble with that scenario, however, is that dark magic alone would remain. And a world built solely on dark magic is more unstable than a world slightly unbalanced. The veil would weaken. Fall away.”
“You fought him, didn’t you.” I stared at him. “You’ve confronted Llyr before.”
He met my gaze, his eyes too cool. Too distant. “Llyr was banished from earth long before I—”
“Not then. After. That’s why you’re so determined to keep him contained. Something happened and he almost broke through a second time. Except you fought him. Kept him trapped beyond the veil.” I felt the force of rightness to my words, their truths winging through me. “I’m right, aren’t I? And to make that happen…you gave up something. Somethi
ng important.”
Armaeus’s words, when they came, were bleak. And barely a whisper. “The balance must be preserved. The world must remain whole.”
A cold fear pierced my heart, but I held his gaze. What had he sacrificed to keep magic in the world? What would he give up to maintain its balance?
Who was the Magician, really?
“Could you… Can you show me, then?” I whispered. “What you feel, what you see? What this balance looks like, in a world filled with magic?”
Armaeus went still for a long moment. “Why?”
I didn’t trust myself to explain that. Not yet. Not ever, most likely. “Humor me.”
Without speaking, the Magician moved to stand behind me, his arms crossing over my body, pulling me close. The act was strangely intimate—not sexual, exactly, but deeply, utterly personal. He bent his head until his lips grazed the crown of my head. “Do not close your eyes, Miss Wilde. See ever out, not in. Understand?”
“Sure.” I was surprised at how my voice trembled, but the world had taken on a new cast. As I stood in Armaeus’s embrace, it was no longer the vivid neons and floodlights of Vegas’s Strip, but layers, endless layers of energy, dancing and weaving. Some wavelengths were wobbly, some were strong, some dark, some light. It was a silent orchestra of power, and it was all moving for me.
“Who would you see, what would you see?” Armaeus’s words were quiet, almost soundless. “What is the energy that is the true driver of the world?”
“Possibility,” I whispered.
“Possibility. Mortals of pure potential, stretched to their finest purpose. Like you have been stretched. Like I would stretch you again and again, for you to grow in your abilities, protect whom you would protect, and for you to be who you were truly meant to be. To claim your birthright.” His breath hushed over my hair. “If you would but accept that it is yours to claim.”
Mine to claim?
When I would have instinctively moved to escape, to flee, his body held me still.
“Look and see, Sara,” Armaeus murmured, and my whole world filled with his words. “See and know. Where is your strength, what is your future? What lies in wait for you, ready for you to grasp?”