by AnonYMous
Ozias came here to reopen old wounds. To refresh the pain that justified his cruelty. Here was a man who’d pinpointed the exact source of his own rage—and refused to understand why so many of his people hated him.
All of a sudden, she didn’t care what had happened during the coup. She didn’t need the answers only Ozias could provide. She wanted him dead. She should have killed him when she’d first had the chance and she wouldn’t let this one go by. Consequences be damned.
But before she could draw her small knife, an image appeared before her mind’s eye with unnatural vividness. She saw a woman, perhaps thirty, wearing a man’s loose trousers and tunic, with a sleek short haircut and a fine belt of gold chain looped round and round her waist.
The woman in the vision was older than Alma and more confident than she’d ever been, but she knew she was looking at herself.
The vision expanded. Alma saw herself standing in the shadow of a burning building, chaos all around her. People ran from the flames, shouted in confusion, brandished weapons. She saw herself face to face with Ozias. And then she saw Prince Cyrus in the distance, clawing at the guards trying to hustle him away to safety, frantic as he watched the confrontation unfold.
Oh.
The image dissolved as abruptly as it had arrived, but Alma understood. She understood what she’d realized for the first time on the night of the coup, the flash of insight that had warped her spell, and she understood what the dead king and queen were trying to tell her.
Ozias watching his parents die had led to Driss watching his parents die which had led her on an epic quest to kill Ozias—and if she succeeded, the burden of vengeance would simply pass on to his son, Cyrus.
She’d be back where she’d started. A year ago. Seven years ago. Forty years ago. The cycle of violence wouldn’t end, it would repeat itself.
“What if you’re right?” she wondered aloud, finding her way back to the conversation. Ozias was right about one thing, after all: she’d never cared about his feelings. No doubt she’d have behaved differently if she had. And, presumably, vice versa. “Would you like to find out?”
Ozias’s brows twitched. “Right about what?”
“You should understand.” Alma squeezed as much magic as she could into a voice that was no longer quite her own. Her throat burned. “You should set the example.”
“Wait.” Ozias raised his hand, palm out.
“You should understand what we feel,” Alma pressed on. “All the pain you cause. You should feel it just like we do.”
Ozias reared back, but it was too late. She’d caught him.
And then more words came—not her own anymore. She could never have spoken so formally, so precisely. “When the crown commands an injustice, you will feel it. You, your heirs, all those who seize the throne by force or compact . . .”
A curse. Ozias’s own parents had stirred from their graves to curse him.
Ozias made a choking noise and reached for his throat. His eyes bulged, pain contorting his handsome face. Some poor Tenemi citizen, somewhere, had to be dying. Strangled or hung, and Ozias fought for breath right along with him.
How long would it take for Ozias to make his own soldiers stand down? Days? Weeks? He would experience hundreds of deaths before he secured a reprieve. It would be a miracle if he didn’t go mad in the meantime. This curse was no mercy.
What had she done?
Ozias listed to one side, propped himself up on his palm. In the distance, the guards noticed his struggling and broke into a run.
“Alma!” called an anxious voice.
Startled out of her trance, Alma jerked around to see Driss standing just beyond the boundary of the grave. He wore a familiar jauntily tied headscarf, shabby workman’s clothing and a set of fingerless gloves. The beard and the cane were gone.
The old man on the raft had been . . . Driss? In disguise?
“You have to jump the fence,” Driss said. “I’m not going in there.”
Alma stared blankly at the decorative wrought-iron fence, hardly two feet high, that surrounded the graves.
“Hurry!”
Her legs trembled so badly that she almost collapsed on her first step. But she steadied herself and made it over the small fence. Driss wrapped an arm around her waist, the gesture almost as familiar to her by now as it must be to him.
Behind them, Ozias made an awful animal noise.
Driss’s eyes widened. “What did you do to him?”
“I . . .” How could she explain?
“Nevermind.” Driss dragged her toward the open country. “Tell me later.”
Driss guided her straight to the copse of trees where she’d left the caretaker. He was just where she’d left him, struggling and cursing at their approach. The horse nipping at the grass a few feet away, however, was new.
“We’re not bringing this guy with us, are we?” Alma asked.
“No.” Driss removed the hobble from the horse. “Some of the guards will have to stop for Ozias, to tend him. Some of them will peel away to follow us. We’ll lose a few more while they deal with the caretaker.”
“Where did you get the horse?”
Driss vaulted into the saddle. The hand he held out for her didn’t waver, but suspicion shadowed his gaze. “Questions later.”
Alma took his hand and let him swing her up behind him. She hugged her body tightly against his, wrapping her arms around his waist. Most nobles rode from childhood on. She’d never sat a horse in her life, so she hung on tight.
Driss made a strange noise. He touched her linked hands, briefly, and then dug his heels into the horse’s flanks. The animal lunged forward, moving quickly from a walk to a trot and then a canter, eating up the miles. They didn’t stop for hours, and then only to water the horse at a fast-running stream.
The horse bent its neck to drink. Alma forced herself to move, trying to walk out the ache in her thighs. The heat of the day had begun to wane but the sun wouldn’t set for a few hours. Frogs croaked from their hiding places in the clumps of pussywillow clustered along the muddy banks and long-legged waterfowl patrolled the shallows, on the hunt.
When Alma turned back to retrace her steps, she found Driss watching her with his arms crossed over his chest.
Apparently, it was time to talk.
“Thanks for saving me.” She paused for a beat. “Again.”
He was not amused. “I wouldn’t have had to if you hadn’t run.”
She lifted her chin, stung. “You didn’t have to at all.”
“I was worried. You’re not yourself and—”
“Stop telling me to be someone else!” she snapped. “Every time I start to think you’re talking to me”—she stabbed two fingers into her sternum, hard enough to hurt—“seeing me, you tell me to change. Well, the Alma you knew is gone. She’s never coming back.”
A flash of pain twisted his features before his expression hardened. “You’re right. The Alma I know would have done anything to return to her people. She wouldn’t have left us and run straight to Ozias.”
“Wrong. That’s exactly what she did. On the night of the coup, she ran straight to Ozias. Don’t you wonder what happened?”
He hesitated. “I know what happened.”
“You must have heard the rumors that she was a traitor.”
“Lies.”
“I wasn’t so sure.”
Driss’s posture changed. His arms unfolded; his expression emptied. “I don’t believe you.”
“No, she—” Alma changed directions. “Did you know Prince Cyrus looks like you?”
“What?”
“And he was with his father during the coup.”
“What does this have to do with anything?”
“At the shrine, Ozias kept saying that nobody understood what he’d been through, losing his parents so young.”
Driss snorted.
“He said that if we understood, we could never be so cruel.”
“He’s a hypocrite,” Dri
ss said flatly.
“He is. But Alma wasn’t. When she saw Cyrus on the night of the coup, when she realized he’d be a witness to his father’s death, she remembered you. You look so much alike—and she’d held you while you cried. You told me that, remember? You told me it changed her whole life.”
“So?”
“So she couldn’t do to Cyrus what Ozias did to you,” said Alma. “And if she couldn’t kill Ozias, if it wasn’t right to kill him, then she’d spent years trying to do the wrong thing. She wanted them back.”
“That’s . . .” Driss reached out and touched her arm. “She wanted them back?”
“Enough to make this”—Alma gestured to herself—“happen.”
He swallowed, spoke roughly. “And now you want nothing to do with the rebellion.”
“Driss,” Alma said quietly. “I think the rebellion is over.”
His breath caught. “Over?”
Alma nodded.
He glanced to the south, toward the Great Way. “What happened back there?”
Alma told him about the curse. “I don’t know if anyone can survive so much pain without going mad,” she finished. “But it will change him. He’ll have to soften, won’t he?”
“I don’t know.” Driss furrowed his brows. “I hope so.”
“This has to be better than starting over, again and again.”
He shut his eyes and took a deep breath, exhaled long and slow, his whole body sagging as his chest contracted. “Word and wish. You did it, Alma.” He gave her a small, bittersweet smile. “I always knew you would.”
“Honestly, I don’t know if Tenem will survive the curse. The country might weaken and fall.” She took his hand, threaded her fingers through his, and squeezed. “But Driss? Whatever happens, I’m with you.”
He squeezed back and before she knew it he’d tugged her close and wrapped his arms around her. He held on tight, rubbing his cheek against her hair, his breathing uneven.
She stroked his back, soothing herself as much as him. She could feel his desperation, the fear behind his pursuit through the caves, his old man disguise. But he was so strong.
He let go of her slowly. His arms loosened, then fell to his sides and they were standing chest to chest, eye to eye, their breaths in sync. Driss licked his lips. His cheeks hollowed. And Alma rose up on tiptoes to kiss him.
His lips were soft as rose petals.
Driss jerked back. A blush stained his cheeks to a deep ruddy red and he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “We should get going.”
Chapter 8
Ben joined them a few days later. Driss had sent him a message before he’d followed Alma into the tunnels. The giant opened his arms to Alma without question, lifting her a foot in the air as he hugged her. The details of what had happened—how their plans had derailed, why she’d run away—didn’t matter to him.
Alma had blinked back tears. She’d never had such friends. She’d never even hoped to.
They traveled as a trio, passing through a country that was transforming around them. Soldiers had retreated into their garrisons, public whippings and executions had ceased. Nobody knew why and explanations were not forthcoming.
The rebel stronghold was tucked into the mountains that marked the northern border of Tenem, stone huts scattered seemingly at random amidst the dense cedar forest. A crowd gathered around to greet them, calling greetings, reaching out to shake Driss’s hand or clap Ben’s back.
Nobody knew what to make of Alma.
Driss cut the outpouring short. “We need to talk.”
Driss, Ben, and a half-dozen strangers who greeted Alma like an old friend gathered in a clearing, rough-hewn chairs arranged in a circle around a campfire, the canopies of the thick-trunked cedars interlacing overhead.
The more military-minded rebels were eager to go on the attack. “Ozias’s soldiers have withdrawn,” they insisted. “This is our chance. We have to move.”
Alma wondered who else had come to the same conclusion—gangs, factions, avaricious neighboring countries—and her heart sank.
Others wanted to disband, to go home. They had lives to return to, children to worry about.
In the end, neither of those groups prevailed. After hours of talking in circles, they decided to wait and see. The rebels might still have a role to play in the new Tenem.
That evening, Alma entered for the first time a cabin that she’d apparently built with her own hands. It was full of keepsakes from events she didn’t remember, arranged to suit habits she’d never acquired. She wandered through the four small rooms, collecting all the mementos in a basket to give away. Someone else might want them.
A knock at the door pulled her out of her strange mood. She wondered what anyone could want from her at this late hour. To her surprise, Driss waited on the stoop. He’d been skittish and distant ever since the kiss. Apparently she’d misread all those odd moments; he really had been repulsed.
But she stepped aside so he could enter. She’d meant what she said: come what may, she was with him. After all he’d done for her, she couldn’t find it in herself to be bitter.
He surveyed the newly-stripped room, expression opaque.
“Do you mind?” Alma asked.
“No.” His dark eyes glittered. “It’s . . . easier this way.”
“Easier to do what?” Alma asked, baffled.
He brushed his fingers over her cheek, hesitant. “Something that wouldn’t have been possible before.”
Alma jerked away from the touch. “Don’t. Look, you don’t need to—we’re fine. All right?”
“Let me try.”
Alma rolled her eyes. “If you have to use the world try—”
He darted close and touched his lips to hers. A feather light touch, just a brief sensation of softness and warmth. Then another, and another, as he walked her back to the wall, crowding close so she could feel his heat, smell the spice of his soap.
“I’m sorry. I should have talked to you but I don’t—it’s so strange to want this.” His nose pressed a cold spot by her ear. When Alma gasped, he nipped at her neck and then soothed the bite with his tongue. “Every time I look at you—and then I can’t believe what I’m thinking.”
Her eyelids fluttered shut. “Don’t stop.”
“I won’t.” He kissed her full on the mouth, licking at the seam of her lips. “Alma, I have loved you in so many different ways. At first you took care of me. Then you were a friend, an ally, a partner.” His hands settled at her waist, kneading, before sliding up to cup her breasts. After a brief, reverent pause he added, “But I think I like this best.”
As they staggered toward the bedroom, leaving a trail of clothes behind, Alma forgot about all the uncertainties. The what-ifs and worst-case scenarios that had played in her mind since she’d met Ozias at the shrine. One thing seemed certain: no matter how fate twisted and turned, she and Driss belonged together. Their chance encounter, years ago, had sparked a friendship that had changed the country. Now that the sparks were flying between them, the possibilities were endless.
A CLEAR VIEW OF YOU
As a child, Kate had one dream: to escape her mother’s deluded hippie commune and live in the real world, where mature adults know that magic isn’t real. But the real world also has its downsides—like rent, student loans, and a cutthroat job market.
Happily, Kate is uniquely qualified for one in-demand position: psychic. Of course, she’s as fake as the rest of them, but nobody plays a fortune-teller as convincingly as a girl raised by a would-be witch. If only Kate’s newest client weren’t so perceptive . . . and attractive. If only crystal balls didn’t have the habit of lighting up in his presence.
Magic isn’t real, right? Kate is about to find out otherwise . . .
Chapter 1
Monday afternoon at five o’clock was not a good time to pick up chips and a sports drink. The line to the cashier felt like the front of a war zone. The enemy—armed with shopping carts, crying children, and cell phones—w
as making a last-minute siege.
If I’d known, I would have just gone to the 7-11, Kate thought. Sometimes she wished she were a real psychic, instead of a fake one. Things would be so much easier.
She sighed and shifted her weight. The giant thermometer on the wall read ninety-one degrees—a record for late November. On the wall behind the checkout counter, a giant plastic turkey squawked Season’s Greetings! Overhead, a Christmas soundtrack was piping in through the sound system. Crappy speakers. Frank Sinatra sounded like Betty Boop. God, she was hungover.
Some stiff in a suit rolled his cart right over her toe. She yelped and turned to glare, but he was already elbowing his way through the next line, completely oblivious. She transferred her glare to her shoes. Birkenstocks. Symbol of all she loathed. Given the choice, she’d be in heels. But after her little argument with Luna last week, she knew better than to show up at work in civilian gear. Her boss’s patience was stretched thin. One more screw-up, and Kate would be back in the unemployment line—and worse yet, out on the street. She was already late on this month’s rent.
Is that why you blew thirty bucks at the bar last night?
She found herself chewing a nail. There went her manicure. Annoyed, she started to push her hands into the back pockets of her jeans—and realized too late she wasn’t wearing any. Dozens of little bells burst off her floor-length skirt, plummeting and jingling to the floor.
People turned to look. One middle-aged woman did a double take, then smirked.
Kate frowned. So what? She was dressed as a New Age hippie; no big deal. This was Berkeley, after all. Some people didn’t wear any clothes.
The guy behind her tapped her shoulder. “Aren’t you that girl?”
She looked at him. “What? No. What girl?”
“Oh.” He shifted his weight, clearly embarrassed. “Sorry. Never mind.”