My phone vibrated my back pocket and I stood, fishing it out of my jeans and turning away from Mari. “Dom? What is it?” It had been years since I’d heard from him—my older brother, my mentor, my best friend—years since he’d given up on my blackened soul. He’d never said as much, but I’d seen it in his eyes the last time we parted.
“Are you busy?” His familiar accent sounded foreign to my ears.
“No, I’m free. Just finished a hunt.” I walked away from Gerald’s body, toward the kitchen, liking the idea of putting the island between me and the evidence of what I’d just done. There was silence on the other line. “Dom? Is everything alright?”
“More than alright, little sister. She’s back. Lex—” His voice was thick with emotion. “She just woke up a few minutes ago, and … Kat, she’s really back.”
“Holy shit,” I said against my fingers. Mei had claimed to have learned during her travels through time that the twins would be able to heal Lex when they were sixteen years old, once their sheuts reached maturity and they gained full mastery of their powers, allowing them to repair her fractured ba. Sixteen years—had it really been that long already?
“I think it is past time that you returned.”
I stared up at the apartment’s popcorn ceiling, blinking away the sting of tears. “I can’t keep doing this, anyway. It’s become … it’s just not the same. It doesn’t feel right anymore.”
“Even more reason to give up the fight.”
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “I’ll catch the next tube.” The gravity tubes would be faster than a plane, even if they were insanely expensive. My funders had insanely deep pockets. “I’m near Reykjavík, so it’ll take me, what, like five hours to get back to the Seattle station?”
“Let me know when you’re scheduled to arrive,” Dom said. “I’ll have a car waiting.”
“Will do.” I ended the call.
“You can’t go,” Mari said, stalking toward me. “We’re not done yet. There are still seventeen more names—”
I drew my sword and pointed the crystalline blade at her, stopping her in her tracks. I was the better fighter. We both knew it. I didn’t have the crutch of a sheut to lean on; it was just me and my sword.
Dagger still in hand, Mari planted her fists on her hips. “My mom said the future wouldn’t be safe until we finished, and the Senate agreed that it’s our mission to wipe every single potential rogue off the face of the earth.”
I looked at her for a fraction of a second longer, then strolled past her to the front door. “Fuck the Senate.”
I twisted the doorknob, yanking the front door open and not caring when the knob slammed against the inside wall. The sky was dark outside, the stars winking in and out of sight as thin clouds passed by.
“But—but you can’t leave me. You swore you’d get vengeance for your mom.”
I paused on the landing just outside the apartment and sheathed my sword. “The last five have been deserters, not rogues,” I said over my shoulder. “And not a single one of those names left on the list have been identified as rogues. My vengeance is done. Whatever you do now, that’s for your vendetta. Don’t put that shit on me.”
“You—traitor! Coward!”
I only saw one way to respond. I raised my right hand high overhead and gave Mari the finger. And then I walked away.
50
Lex
I shifted in the lightly padded chair so I was leaning forward, elbows on the edge of Nik’s bed and chin resting on my palms. He was in a room that was connected to the lab in the basement of the main house on Bainbridge, much as I’d been.
“I’m so sorry,” I told the man stretched out under the covers. His face wasn’t peaceful, as though he were sleeping. Rather, he appeared locked in a constant internal battle. And then there were his eyes, open but unseeing. One iris was Nik’s natural, pale blue, the other an unearthly opalescent white. For the past sixteen years, he’d been trapped in At-qed, the prolonged hypometabolic state our physical bodies slipped into when our bas were off, sifting through the echoes in the At.
Except Nik’s pseudo At-qed state didn’t make sense, not really. His ba wasn’t anywhere in the At; we’d looked high and low. The At itself was a strange place now, a misaligned echo of an alternative timeline—one where Kat died shortly after I was yanked into the past and Mei was dead and gone. But that didn’t explain why we couldn’t find Nik or Re somewhere on that higher plane, despite his body being stuck in what was very clearly a state of At-qed. So where were they?
“If I’d known this would happen—that Re would lose it and you’d be a prisoner in your own body …” Sighing, I closed my eyes, squeezing out the tear that had been lingering in my lower lashes for minutes. “If I’d known, Nik, I would’ve warned you about it before you offered yourself to him.”
“No, you wouldn’t have.”
I straightened and twisted around in the chair to see Kat standing in the doorway. My eyes widened and my lips parted as I sucked in a startled breath. The woman standing there was barely recognizable as the girl I’d known nearly two decades ago.
She still looked eighteen, her body slim and curves slight. Her dark hair had been bleached and cut short, the longest layers barely reaching past her chin. She wore fitted jeans tucked into worn, black combat boots that laced halfway up her calves, a cropped black tank top that revealed a couple inches of her toned midriff, and a fitted red leather jacket. Designs had been inked into her skin on the backs of her hands, her neck, and on what I could see of her abdomen.
But those were just the physical changes. Her once-soft brown eyes were darker, harder. The gleam in her eyes made the outfit and tattoos seem right, whereas the Kat I’d known would’ve looked like she was wearing a costume. Just another reminder that while to me it felt like not even a year had passed, the world had gone on for much longer around me.
“You wouldn’t have warned him,” she said, leaning a shoulder against the doorframe. “You had a mission, Lex—saving the universe—and warning Nik was a risk you wouldn’t have taken.” She pushed off the doorframe and walked into the room, gait easy and somehow restrained. “There’s no reason to feel guilty. He knew what he was doing.” She sat on the opposite side of the bed, her eyes locked on Nik’s tensed face. I wasn’t sure she was really talking to me anymore.
I watched her as she stared at Nik, not a hint of what she was feeling showing up on her face. She was so very different …
“I hear you’ve been busy,” I said. My eyes slid to the sword hilt peeking up from behind her shoulder. “How’s the sword been working out?”
She looked at me, a flash of surprise knocking down nearly two decades of walls for a fraction of a second. She blinked, and her guarded mask returned. “I forgot it was yours. Mei dropped it off at the shop years ago. Do you want it back?”
I shook my head, smiling to myself. “It saved my life a time or two, but I’m sure you’re much better with it than I am.” I shrugged. “Besides, what use would I have for it now? But you—”
“I’m done working as the Senate’s assassin,” she said, eyes sliding back to Nik’s face. “It’s changed me … too much already. I need to stop while there’s still anything of me left.”
“Oh thank God,” I said in one quick exhale.
Kat looked at me, that startled expression cracking through the mask once more.
“I mean, I was determined to be supportive and everything, but all I could think about was your mom and how pissed she’d have been if I didn’t try to talk you out of this assassin gig.”
Kat stared at me for long seconds, her expression unreadable. Until, between one heartbeat and the next, the corner of her mouth quirked upward. “She sure could throw a fit, couldn’t she?”
I smiled, glad to see that there was still something of my sweet little half-sister in there after all. Older sister now, I supposed. “Sometimes when I remember her,” I said, “my mind gives her red hair—it just fits her persona
lity so well.”
Kat chuckled under her breath, but a few seconds later, her expression sobered, and her gaze wandered back to Nik. “She’s why I did it in the first place, you know.” She glanced at me, just for a moment. “Revenge and all that …”
I nodded. “Dom filled me in.”
Kat rolled her eyes, and I suppressed the urge to grin. “I’m sure his recap was filled with sighs of disappointment.”
“No …” Confused, I shook my head, eyes narrowed. “He seemed pretty damn proud, actually. Worried and guilty, too, but mostly just proud.”
“Really?” Hope flashed in Kat’s eyes. This close, I could see that though the brown of her irises had darkened to a nearly black color—likely a result of her Nejeret traits manifesting completely—there were bright specks of gold scattered throughout.
I smiled at her, laughing softly. “Really.”
“Oh, well, um …” She stood and started sidestepping her way around the bed. “I should find him … say hi.”
“You really should.”
Kat spun around and jogged to the doorway, then headed to the right and was gone, only the sound of her boots on the polished tile floor lingering.
I shook my head. So very much had changed. But not everything.
***
“Oh God,” I said, panting and rolling onto my side to reach for the glass of water on the nightstand. “I think I’m dead. You killed me.” I gulped some water, then glanced at Marcus over my shoulder. “Death by pleasure … not a bad way to go.”
Marcus raised one eyebrow. “You look quite alive to me, Little Ivanov.” He grinned wickedly. “Shall I finish you off?”
I took another sip of water before setting the glass on the nightstand and easing back down to the bed, my back to Marcus. “I think I’d go into a regenerative coma,” I said, resting my head on my folded arm.
“Just one more time.” Marcus’s hand slid from my waist to the curve of my hip, his fingers tracing inward along the crease between my thigh and torso. “And then I promise I’m done … for now.” He teased my inner thigh with his fingertips.
I whimpered. “Marcus …” I thought I was asking him to stop, but my hips shifted seemingly of their own accord, and his fingers slid along my most sensitive places. I arched my back and sucked in a breath as a lightning bolt of pleasure zinged out to every nerve ending in my body.
Marcus’s body curved around me from behind, his lips finding my neck and his knee parting my legs. He entered me in one smooth thrust. The arch of my back deepened, and my eyes closed.
In that moment, I was capable of just one thing—feeling. Marcus’s arm slipping beneath me to curl around my body, his hand coming to rest on my neck, holding me in place. His lips hovering just behind my ear, his breaths hot and urgent. His hips rocking against me, and his fingertips caressing me in rhythm with his ever-deepening thrusts.
“I will … always … need you … just one … more … time …” With the final word, he extended tendrils of his ba into me, touching me deeper and filling me more completely with his soul than he ever could with his body.
I cried out, the sensation, the closeness, the pleasure overwhelming me until it was all that existed in the world. And when it faded, there was nothing but the quiet darkness of unconsciousness.
***
I blinked, drowsy and a little disoriented. “I fell asleep?” I said, rolling over so I was facing Marcus.
His lips twitched, curving into the tiniest of smiles. “My fault. I may have pushed you beyond your limits with that last little soul-touch.”
“I didn’t mind.” Heat suffused my chest, neck, and cheeks with the confession.
Marcus chuckled, the sound low and throaty, and raised his hand to brush his knuckles over my cheek and along my jawline. “We’ll have to ease up a bit, unless we’re going for the saturation point again. Not that I would be opposed to having another child.” His pitch lifted at the end, just a hint, turning his words into a question.
I rolled onto my back, exhaling a sigh, and stared up at the ceiling. “I’m not ready.” A quick glance was all I needed to catch his careful expression. “The twins … I know it’s been years for you, but it hasn’t even been a month for me. I just had them.”
“I understand,” he said. When I didn’t respond, Marcus turned my head with gentle fingertips on my jaw, making me look at him. “Truly, Lex, I do. Just know that when you’re ready to try again, I am, too.”
Tears welled in my eyes, and my chin trembled. Marcus’s arms were around me before the tears could break free, and he pulled me closer, pressing his lips against the top of my head.
“I love you,” I said against his chest. “I love you so much.”
“But not as much as I love you, Little Ivanov.”
I snorted softly. “You can’t know that.”
“Perhaps not …” There was a hint of laughter in his voice. “But I’ve loved you longer. You can’t argue with that.”
And he was right. I couldn’t.
51
Lex
“It’s a party, Lex.” My mom pinched my arm. “Parties are for smiles, not frowns.”
I gave her a sidelong look, the one she knew all too well from my teenage years. I’d been back for weeks, but it was still disorienting to see her now, a genuine grandmother and unequivocal old woman. The deep lines on her face, the droop of her eyelids, the sag of her jowls, even the sound of her voice … I’d become Rip van Winkle in the span of nine months—I’d gone away, only to return to find that the world had kept on turning, that the people I loved had kept on aging, without me.
Or, in Grandma Suse’s case, had died. I was still having a hard time coping with that aspect of my new reality.
I glanced at my sister. She was sitting on a picnic blanket with her nearly grown son, Jackson, a future Nejeret, and her two younger kids, Bobby and Judy, named after her Nejeret husband’s parents who’d been killed by rogues over a decade ago. Jenny looked more like my mom than my mom did now, as strange as that may sound.
“It feels … I don’t know …” I scanned the yard.
We’d set up a grand barbecue and picnic on the back lawn. Everyone I loved was there, from my human family to the Nejerets who’d embraced and looked after them in my absence. Dominic and Kat were chatting animatedly, Kat showing him some parody of a sword fight with a half-eaten rib, and Neffe was sharing a picnic blanket with her current beaux, one of the former Kin. Marcus was locked in a deep discussion with my father at the barbecue, and Aset was in the center of the lawn with Tarset, teaching the soon-to-manifest young woman some ancient dance. I found the twins on the periphery of the merriment, heads bent together as they walked toward the main house.
“It just feels off somehow,” I said lamely.
“Perhaps your mind is still stuck in a pattern of expectant waiting broken only by intermittent moments of fight or flight,” Alexander suggested. He was sitting on the other side of my mom on the bench of our picnic table.
I watched the twins head into the house through the back door, then looked at my grandfather, frowning. “You’re probably right.” I leaned my head on my mom’s shoulder.
My mom slipped her arm around my waist and squeezed. “It’s so nice to have you back, sweetie. I can’t tell you how hard it’s been. Your father … for a while there, I wasn’t sure he’d pull through, but Syris and Susie helped. He’s always been a sucker for babies—and with Susie, it was almost like getting to raise you all over again.”
I smiled, a defense mechanism to fend off the sorrow I felt every time it hit me just how much I’d missed out on.
“She’s so curious, and they’re both so smart—the ‘wonder twins,’ Jenny calls them …”
As if on cue, Syris and Susie emerged through the back door. Susie led the way, what appeared to be a baseball held almost ceremoniously before her in her cupped hands.
I straightened, squinting more out of habit than any real need to see. My vision couldn�
�t really get any clearer. “What’s that in her hands?”
Behind her, Syris followed carrying a similar object, except his was black.
“Oh my God,” I breathed. “That’s the Apep orb.”
“Then the other must contain Re,” Marcus said, resting a hand on my shoulder.
I glanced up at him for a fraction of a second. I couldn’t bring myself to look away from the twins and what they were holding for longer than that. If the sphere Susie was holding contained Re, then …
“What about Nik?” I whispered.
Kat ran past the twins toward the house, Aset close on her heels. I felt torn, wanting to follow but needing to know what was going on with Syris and Susie and the two Netjer souls they were literally holding in the palms of their hands.
“I thought you said Apep was locked away in a safe wrapped in a layer of At and buried under a ton of cement,” I said to Marcus, not taking my eyes off my approaching children.
“It was.” Marcus’s voice was low, his tone even. He was pissed.
The other picnic-goers quieted and stared as the twins passed by, heading straight for us. But the twins—they only had eyes for Marcus and me.
“Don’t be cross, Daddy,” Susie said, a sweet smile coaxing out her shallow dimples. “We needed Apep’s ren … and Re’s. It’s time for us to take them home.” My teenage son and daughter stood side by side before us with contrasting expressions. Susie looked excited, eyes bright and color high in her cheeks. Syris, on the other hand, looked both anxious and worried. He looked like maybe, just maybe, he might be sick.
He looked like I felt. “Home?” I mouthed, my voice paralyzed.
“To the Netjer home universe,” Syris clarified.
I could feel my head slowly shaking back and forth and could do nothing to stop it.
“We have to go there anyway,” Susie said. “It’s the only way for us to learn more about what we are and what we can do.”
“You’re leaving?” I said numbly. But I’d only been back for a couple weeks. We’d barely had enough time to get to know each other.
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