by Zoë Archer
“I thought the geminus was gone.”
“Chaos breeds wherever it goes, and even when it has moved on, the turmoil continues.” His scowl was bitter—and directed at himself. “Oxford is a powder keg. One spark is all it needs to explode. And wherever the geminus goes next, whatever village or town or city, the same thing will happen. That’s precisely what it wants. Madness. Literal pandemonium.”
She eyed the saddled horse. “When do we leave?”
“Immediately. But I don’t bloody know where to go.” He slammed his fist into the stall’s wooden partition.
The horse snorted in alarm. Zora edged back. It was a large animal, and she knew full well the kind of damage an errant hoof could cause. Whit was a large animal, too, just as unpredictable, and even more dangerous.
“You and the geminus, you’re bound together somehow.”
“Ever since we switched places.” His voice was tight. “Except I cannot feel it now.”
“The ... what did you call it ... bearing compass. The one within you that draws you to wherever the geminus may be. What Livia was trying to create with her spell.” She held his gaze. “Try that compass now so we can track the geminus.”
“It isn’t here,” he said through clenched teeth.
“But it’s somewhere.” At his silence, she pressed, “Don’t fight your link to the geminus.”
He scowled. “If I let it go, give it free rein, it will take over. I’ll be lost.”
“You won’t.” But she was not so certain as she pretended.
“And if I hurt you—”
“I can protect myself.” She glanced down at her hands. “What I did before, in that garden, that was nothing.”
He stalked out of the stall, with Zora close behind him. They faced one another in the main chamber of the stable, the musky smell of horse, leather, and hay all around them.
She moved quickly, drawing Whit’s sword from its scabbard. The hiss of metal slid through the stable, cold and purposeful.
His expression tight, he stared at the blade she now held.
“I’m not giving the geminus a chance to swing this at me again,” she said.
With the tip of his finger, he guided the sword’s point upward, making it ready. “Use this if I do anything to hurt you.”
She prayed it did not come to that, but she nodded. He shut his eyes and exhaled, long and slow. Tension left his long body in a wave. He appeared to reach inside himself, searching.
She watched him, carefully, cautiously. This needed to work, yet she also feared its success.
For several breaths, nothing happened as Whit stood, eyes closed, silent, reaching through unseen space for the bond between himself and his dark half. To Zora, every moment felt a painful eternity. What might happen? Could she truly hurt Whit, if she had to?
A horse kicked the door of its stall. She jumped, almost dropping her weapon. The other horses shifted restlessly, nickering in apprehension.
Whit opened his eyes. He smiled at her.
She secured her grip on the sword, readying to strike.
The geminus was back.
For all the darkness within himself, the difference between Whit and the geminus was stark—the difference between the night sky and the pitch-black depths of a bottomless chasm.
It took a step toward her. She held the sword higher, pointed at the creature’s chest. But it was still Whit’s chest. His heart beating in his chest.
The geminus eyed the sword. “A fine welcome for an old friend.” It pressed one of its fingertips to the sharp tip until a trickle of crimson ran down its finger.
“Stop,” she said, for the creature wounded Whit as much as itself.
Surprisingly, it did, then wiped its finger down the front of its waistcoat, staining the doeskin with a band of blood. The geminus glanced around the stable with a grimace of distaste.
“There’s nothing here but animals. Hardly worth my time.” Then its gaze returned to Zora, chilling her. “But you, my child, are a delightful prize. My master will be pleased.”
“I’ll sooner drag this”—she hefted the sword—“across my own throat.”
The geminus clicked its tongue at the gesture. “Either way, a threat is eliminated.”
She seized this bit of information for the advantage it was. “So I am a threat to Wafodu guero.”
“Are we to play chess now? Strategies and gambits?” The creature shrugged. “Well may you try, but no matter your cleverness, there’s truly nothing to you but an ignorant Gypsy girl. Whereas I have my master’s unfathomable experience and knowledge.” Its smile turned cutting. “The advantage will always belong to me and my master.”
It stepped closer, and Zora angled the tip of the sword against its chest, holding it back.
“Tell me where you are,” she said.
“In this repulsive stable. Wherever it is.”
“Where were you before?” she demanded through clenched teeth.
“So you may undo my beautiful work?” Despite the sword’s keen top, the geminus moved yet closer, its expression cold and hungry. “I rather like it here. Wherever we are. The company is vastly entertaining.”
It would not stop at the threat of the sword. She held tight to the hilt, keeping the blade up, feeling the solid resistance of the geminus’s chest. Whit’s chest. If the creature came any nearer, she would have to either stab it—stab Whit—or flee.
The creature saw her hesitation, and smiled again. It pressed still closer. The sword’s cutting tip pierced the doeskin waistcoat and shirt, but the sharp metal hadn’t yet punctured the flesh beneath. The geminus kept its gaze locked with hers.
Her palms grew damp. In a moment, she would have to do it. Stab the creature. She wanted Whit back from wherever he had gone.
“Whit,” she said.
The geminus stopped in its advance, its expression hardening into an icy mask.
“Whit,” she said again. She had summoned him once before. He had told her, upon his return, that somehow she had brought him back.
Her arms shook, yet she forced her mind free, searching for him like a loosed bird seeking warmer climes before the onset of winter. The strangest sensation: she knew herself to be standing in the inn’s stable, holding the geminus at bay with a sword, the sounds of agitated horses all around. Yet she was also winging across the darkness, a place that was felt rather than seen. He appeared as a gleam in that darkness, something bright and sharp, and she sped toward that brightness, calling his name. Whit. Whit.
And then ... an answer. His voice, formless, soundless, but resonating within her. Here. Zora, I am here.
She reached out with an invisible hand. Return with me.
It is very dark here. I am lost.
I’ll guide you back.
She was suspended in these twin moments. In the stable with the geminus. In a veiled landscape with Whit. And she was afraid, but not afraid. For she felt Whit slide his hand into hers, his brightness joined with hers, and they sped back so quickly that her head spun.
Then she was only in the stable. Dizzy, but there. And facing her was Whit.
He glanced down at the sword, a gasp away from piercing his flesh. She shoved it into a nearby hay bale.
Ashen, drawn, he sank to his knees. She did the same, bracing his bowed shoulders when he would have fallen forward. Relief weakened her legs.
He drew a breath, and then another. Gradually, color returned to his cheeks, and his eyes lost their glazed cast. His shoulders straightened. Slowly, his hand came up to touch the hole in his waistcoat. Fury carved his face into something brutal.
“You never hurt me,” she said quickly. “It never got the chance.”
“The next time,” he rasped, “do not hesitate. Not for a moment.”
“It wasn’t necessary. I brought you back.” And she thanked the heavens for it.
“What if you hadn’t?”
“But I did.”
“If it happens again, I command you to use the s
aber against me.”
She shot to her feet. Her relief turned to fury, both fed by the same river of emotion. “Command me? If you think you can order me around like one of your gorgio lackeys, then you can go to Hell.”
He rose to standing, slower than her, his movements stiff and without his usual grace. “I will never mistake you for a lackey. As for going to Hell”—he lifted his marked shoulder—“that has already been arranged.”
“You aren’t being dragged off by demons,” she countered.
“Not yet.” He retrieved his coat and slowly pulled it on.
She was torn between pulling him into her arms and kicking him. Instead, she watched as, with an exhausted groan, he undid the tie binding his queue and dragged his fingers through his hair. Whatever the process for switching places with the geminus was like, it had to be grueling. Only veteran soldiers moved as wearily.
Still, with his hair loose about his shoulders, he was everything alluring and dangerous. And the more time she spent in his company, the less she could resist him.
He was not bent on seduction at the moment, drained by his ordeal.
“Come into the inn,” she said. “Warm up by the fire and have some wine.”
“Wine, I’ll take. But I cannot go inside yet.” He rubbed his forehead as though it ached. “All those people.”
She understood. Quickly, she left the stable and crossed the now-deserted yard to reach the inn. Ignoring the stares from the men in the taproom, she walked up to the counter.
“Wine,” she said to the publican. “And quickly.” Before the man could object, she twisted one of the coins from her necklace and slid it across the battered counter. The coin was worth far more than a glass of wine, or even the full decanter the publican gave her in exchange. She plucked an empty glass from behind the counter, and, heedless of the gawking taproom patrons, strode back out to the stables.
She found Whit still there, though his hands were braced against the wall and his head was hung low in weariness. He looked up at her approach.
“I’m still not your lackey,” she said as she poured him some wine.
“I still don’t think of you as one.” He took the offered glass and she watched his throat work as he took several deep swallows of wine. “My thanks.”
Very strange. She had always hated waiting upon the men of her band, fetching them food or drink or tobacco for their pipes. Her resentment had not lifted during her brief time as a married woman—she had still brought and carried, only she had added a husband to her duties. The men sat around the fire, laughing, telling stories, while the females attended to them, refilling cups, bringing plates of roast mutton. It smacked of male laziness, and a belief that men’s leisure held greater value than women’s work.
Her feelings had not changed in the intervening years. She did not want to be a man’s servant. Yet what she just did for Whit felt very different. It wasn’t serving; it was balance. He saw to her, protected her, and she did the same for him. A rare equality. And as she watched him revive with a glass of wine that she had provided, an unfamiliar tenderness unfurled within her, as unexpected as meadowsweet growing in a barren plain.
“I felt it.” Hard satisfaction honed his voice, weary as it was. “The geminus. North of here.”
Having direction and a goal pleased her. She wanted to hurt the geminus, as it hurt so many others—especially Whit. “We’ll lay a trap for the whoreson. Force it to reveal the location of its vault.”
“Force. That implies some level of violence.”
“It does.”
His brow rose, either from her language or from her eagerness to make the geminus suffer. “On whose account are you so bloodthirsty?”
“Does it matter, when the results are the same?”
He studied the bottom of his glass, swirling the film of wine collected there. “I wonder now if there is any shade but gray.”
“I am Grey,” she said.
“Neither of us would have survived this long if you weren’t.”
It was an unusual compliment, yet it pleased her. She did not think any man in her band would ever have praised her for her ferocity.
“An interrogation might not be required,” he noted. “The creature is the vault. When I became the geminus, I saw the chamber again. Behind a different door.”
She tried to make sense of this, as though he had given her one of the wrought-iron puzzles blacksmiths sold for extra coin.
“Wherever the creature is,” he continued, gaining strength, “that’s where we find the vault. Any door it wants—the door to a bedchamber, a granary, even a stable—whichever it picks leads to the vault of souls.”
“Opened only by the geminus.” What Whit proposed made a contrary kind of sense, which seemed exactly in keeping with how Wafodu guero’s minions might operate. She retrieved the glass from him and filled it, then took her own drink. Just as she had hoped, the wine helped steady her and sharpen her thoughts.
She glanced at Whit. He seemed deeply intrigued by the sight of her licking wine from her lips.
“Getting the geminus to open it for us,” she said. “That’s the trick.”
His slow smile intoxicated her far more than wine ever could. “If anyone has a storehouse of tricks, it will be a gambler and a Gypsy.”
In the public dining chamber, they bolted a hasty supper of bread, cold beef, and wedges of pale, buttery cheese, having little time for private dining rooms. Between Whit’s torn, bloody clothing and Zora being Romani, the other patrons gave them wide berth. She did not mind. At the least, it gave Whit some respite from the press of voices.
Whit frowned as the serving woman saw Zora and started. The tower of empty plates the gorgie carried toppled to the floor.
“Sorry, my lord.” The gorgie shot Zora a panicked glance from beneath her lashes. She gathered the fallen plates before scuttling off to the kitchen.
With their meal concluded, she and Whit went to gather their belongings. He left their room to settle their account. A few moments later, she also headed back down and felt a thrill of unease when she could not find him waiting for her. He was not in the dining room, nor his room, nor the stables.
The beginnings of panic curled around her spine as she stood outside in the yard. The geminus might have returned, or sent demons to attack. But there were no signs of a fight—not of the demonic variety—and she had heard nothing. Where was he?
She strained her ears for something, some clue. Behind her, someone opened a window to the taproom, letting out the thick smell of smoke and beer. The clattering sound of dice rolling across a floor caught her attention. Turning, she saw men crouched in a circle on the floor of the taproom. Dicing. Their eager eyes fixed on the little wooden pieces tumbling over dusty planks. From the sound of their shouts, the game was hazard.
And Whit hovered over them, a tall, sinister shadow. He looked like a wolf about to leap into a pen of goats. Nothing would be left but blood and bones.
She darted inside. Whit did not notice her standing beside him, no matter the number of times she said his name.
The men on the floor looked up, their hands arrested in the middle of their game. They eyed her with curiosity, but it was Whit who made them start in their buckled shoes.
“We’ve a journey ahead of us.” Urgency tightened her voice.
“One round,” he answered in a monotone. All that mattered were the dice. “I’ll play one round.”
She couldn’t tell if the hunger in his expression came from his connection to the geminus, or his own need for gambling. It did not matter. One round would inevitably lead to another, and another, until he would find himself so deep in the maze he could not find his way out.
A man saw the signet ring on Whit’s finger, and the fine quality of his clothes, despite their worn state. Used to reading the tiny expressions that flitted across faces, Zora saw the man assess Whit, no doubt thinking to himself, Rich pigeon ready to be plucked. “Join us, my lord?”
T
hese poor bastards, she thought. They have no idea what danger threatens them.
Before Whit could lower to a crouch, she bent down and scooped up the dice. She strode to the fire and made a show of casting the dice into the flames, but, in truth, all she threw were ashes. The dice had burned to nothing in her hand.
Shouts of displeasure and anger rose up from the men. She ignored them, her gaze fixed solely on Whit. He looked thunderous.
Boots heavy on the floor, he stalked toward her. She forced herself to remain where she stood, though her every instinct screamed for her to run. His hand gripped her wrist, iron tight, and he dragged her from the taproom. Cheers came from the men.
She tried to pull away, but his strength far surpassed hers, and all she accomplished was having her arm ache. The fire she kept within roiled through her, concentrating in her wrist. Burning him. Forcing him to release her. Yet he did not react to the burn at all and kept his grip tight around her.
He strode from the inn, hauling her behind him. She wondered if she had, at last, pushed him to his breaking point, if the need to gamble and the influence of the geminus trumped everything—including her.
They headed toward the stables. “Let go,” she said.
He swung around so quickly, she slammed into the hard wall of his chest, her hand trapped between them. His grip did not loosen, but his hot gaze moved over her face as if he were seeing it anew, as if, up to that moment, she had been a stranger to him, or disguised, and the disguise had fallen away and he recognized her at last.
Finally, he released her. Stared down at his burned hand, then up at her.
She stared back. The fevered glaze faded from his eyes.
“Solace or torment.” He tugged off the linen stock encircling his neck and wrapped it around his hand. “I cannot decide which you are.”
She checked to make sure the makeshift dressing was secure. “My family would say I’m your punishment.”