by C. I. Black
“Ivy.” He didn’t know what he was going to say or do, but he had to do something. If she did know Grey was in contact with Nero, he couldn’t let her tell Regis or even Tobias.
She slowed by a narrow passage that branched off the main hall, but she didn’t look back at him.
“Ivy.” He staggered closer. Mother, his chest hurt. The gunshot wound might have stopped bleeding by now, but the internal injuries were still healing and could take a few days, depending on how serious they were. “Ivy.”
She glanced back, but her gaze was unfocused as if she couldn’t see him or was looking at something else. Her aura pulsed, not as brilliant as when she’d first activated her magic, but still stronger than before. A dimness he hadn’t realized had been there melted in the center of his vision, the Handmaiden’s hall billowed back into clarity, and the few memories he had of being there didn’t flood in. Just like when he’d been near Ivy before.
He inched a step away. The hall dimmed, like a movie mostly drained of color.
A step forward. Technicolor returned.
He bit back a growl. Yeah, he’d known she righted his unbalanced soul. If he was being honest with himself, he’d known the moment he’d met her. But now it was clear it wasn’t just her — her calm, her newness, his lack of memories of her — that burned away the fog threatening to consume him. It was something about her magic — especially when she was using it — that swept it all away and righted whatever that something was that lay unstable within him.
Except she was Tobias’s agent, she still had an obligation to her prince, and Grey had no idea if she was considered as valuable as Capri. Only a few other drakes could do what Capri did and those drakes were on the other Clean Teams protecting dragonkind. Was Ivy’s magic just as valuable? He had to assume yes. It was dangerous to assume no.
Which still didn’t deal with the issue of what memories she’d seen from his clothes.
He couldn’t let her return to Court, and he sure as hell couldn’t keep her to solve his memory problem. She wasn’t some pet he could keep locked up, and if Nero learned she endangered his unsanctioned coterie, he’d kill her and to hell with trying to save her soul from the universal ether.
And if Nero didn’t kill her, Diablo would. That drake had no qualms with killing, especially to protect dragonkind, and Grey didn’t doubt he wouldn’t have a second thought about killing to protect his coterie.
Shit.
God damned fucking shit.
In the blink of an eye, the day had gone from bad to terrible, and he had no idea what he was going to do with Ivy. He couldn’t tell her the truth. Not until he had a plan. And he couldn’t let her return to Court.
Ivy frowned, her gaze still unfocused. She brushed two fingers over a sigil carved into the side of a nearby bookshelf, then headed down the narrow aisle, deeper into the Handmaiden’s maze.
He followed her around a corner to a nook crowded with leather-bound books.
His first priority was to get his hands on her cell phone and disable it without her knowing, then keep her focused on this mess with Jet. With luck, that would buy him time to figure out what the hell he was going to do with her.
Her attention jumped to an empty podium. She gasped then turned back to the shelves.
“She ripped out a page,” she said as she drew out one of the books.
“She what?” Who what? His mind stuttered, still caught on the problem of Ivy and what she now knew, then jumped to Jet. Then the book.
Hot rage snapped through him. “She ripped out a page!”
Ivy’s frown deepened. Her aura flared and a tremble swept through her. “I’m trying to see if the room knows what’s in the book—”
Her aura exploded in a sudden blinding flare. She gasped and jerked away from the shelf, bumping into Grey. The room burst into focus and the weight of his memories — a weight he hadn’t fully realized had returned — vanished.
His arm snaked around her waist, drawing her against his chest, before he realized what he was doing. Heat and calm flooded him. The fog was gone, and the urge to hold her tighter and never let go filled him. He needed her, wanted her, craved her soul-deep with a desire that went beyond soothing his memories. It went straight to the core of his being.
A shiver curled up his spine, a low tremble that rumbled through him. The urge to brush his lips against her jaw, to kiss her — fully kiss her, not the whisper of lips from before — clawed inside him.
But that would only make the rest of the day harder. Whatever he was going to do with her, however he was going to protect Nero and Anaea and all the other members of his new, unexpected coterie, would be God-damned harder if he kissed her.
He shoved away from her, dragging the fog of his memories around him, desperate to forget how much he wanted to embrace her again.
“Did I hurt you?” she asked, her arms wrapped tight around her. “Sometimes my magic is hard to control. The memories fight back or—” She pursed her lips, her wide-eyed gaze locked on his. “Or in this case, they try to show me everything at once. It can be… difficult.”
“Yeah.” Don’t reach for her. Don’t reach.
Her eyes flashed wide. “I hurt you?”
“No.” He was going to end up hurting himself when all was said and done. There was no good way to deal with her. “I meant, I get it. Memories can be difficult.”
She shifted, and everything within him begged for her to draw closer. Just one more step. That would bring her within reach and burn away all of his darkness, all those difficult memories. Just once more. Just—
Jeez. No. Don’t even get started.
He drew back and leaned against the shelf behind him, hoping the move looked nonchalant and not desperate. “Did you see what was on the page?”
“Sure.” She grabbed the book, set it on the podium, and opened it. “Except I can’t read whatever this is.”
He had to move to see the page. For a split second, he contemplated staying where he was — as far away from her as possible, given the circumstances — but that wouldn’t deal with the problem of Jet and whatever she was after, and if he was being honest with himself, it wouldn’t help him deal with Ivy.
Maybe if he glanced at the page he’d recognize the book and be able to remember it. Knowing what page Jet had taken would be a fantastic break.
Ivy flipped to the middle of the book and brushed her fingers along the ragged remains of the torn page. “I can’t believe she’d just rip out a page. Out of one of the Handmaiden’s books.”
Neither could Grey. “But if she didn’t want anyone else to have access to whatever was on it, the only way to guarantee no one else got it was to take it.” Except Grey might remember it.
He drew in a breath to steel himself, but that only stabbed pain through him and made his two steps closer more a stagger than a walk. Ancient Cantonese covered the top half of the page, while the bottom half had numbers that didn’t appear to be in any order except that they were at least a hundred numbers apart and always increased. Beside them were notes, either “not ready” or “changing” jotted beside them.
He didn’t recognize the visible page, which meant the Handmaiden had never asked him to read this book. Wonderful. “How are your art skills? Can you reproduce the missing page?”
“Could I—?” Ivy frowned. Her aura flared, revealing a hint of the power he knew lay within her, then returned to normal. “It’s hard to focus on just it. There’s some emotion attached to Jet ripping it out, but there are other, stronger emotions in this nook that are tied to other memories that keep pulling me away.”
“So that’s a no.” Which meant he had to hope what was left would give some clue about what Jet — or rather her employer — was after.
Ivy growled and jerked away from the book. “I have to report this.” She pulled a cell phone from the front pocket of her purse and turned it on.
”Wait.” He couldn’t let her call Tobias. “Wouldn’t it be better to tell Tobias exa
ctly what Jet was after?”
“You know someone who can translate that?” She sounded too happy about the idea of avoiding her boss. Of course, maybe it wasn’t Tobias she wanted to avoid.
“I’m older than I look.” And after a couple hundred years, he’d discovered that learning things was a clear advantage for him among other dragons — and it was easy, with his earth magic that he couldn’t turn off and made him remember everything. He could read, write, and speak every major language on the planet, along with a few obscure and now dead ones.
“I didn’t want to say,” Ivy said. “You know… about your age.”
“It’s only human women who worry about their age.” Although he’d give up everything to be new and young like Ivy, without the press of thousands of bad memories threatening to consume him.
He shoved that thought back. There wasn’t anything he could do about it right now. Maybe this search for something in the Handmaiden’s possession would help him find her. Maybe the Mother would be kind and Anaea would gain some control over her sorcerer’s magic.
And maybe he could convince Ivy to stay with him.
Nope. Bad dragon. Not an option.
“The Handmaiden’s books are written in a mix of Sumerian, Cantonese, Latin, Hebrew, and Greek. She sometimes asks me to read them.”
“Why would she do that?”
He’d been asking himself that question for centuries now. “In case of a fire. I don’t know.”
“Did she ask you to read this book?” She frowned. “Except you wouldn’t have asked if I could reproduce the page if you had.”
And she was smart, too.
Keeping her from Tobias just became more difficult. If he wasn’t careful, she’d figure out what he was doing before he’d figured out what to do with her.
“So what does it say?”
The page started halfway through a sentence. “—this key to find the pieces. Place the pieces of the glyph on the podium, and after the spell’s six-quarter day duration is complete, they and the spell will be joined.”
Ivy leaned closer, drawing a heated shiver through Grey. “Pieces to what?”
“I fear dragonkind isn’t ready,” Grey read, “for the power adding the two coin pieces to the medallion would bring.” A chill replaced the heat. “They are infants again, reborn in these human bodies. The power to control the whole rebirth spell is too dangerous for one dragon to have.”
“Holy Mother! Did that say what I think it said?” Ivy asked.
“That there’s a way for someone other than the Handmaiden to cast the rebirth spell?” The chill sank into his bones. Controlling the rebirth spell opened the doors to a coup where dragons died but no souls were lost.
His dread deepened, churning into a hard stone. It meant Regis could punish with impunity. It didn’t matter that this could be another way for Grey to find peace. He was the only dragon who wanted his soul stripped back to its essential core. For everyone else, rebirth was a death sentence, one Regis had liberally used before the Handmaiden had left.
CHAPTER 13
Servius sat on a long stone bench at the back of a deserted temple to the Mother in one of the abandoned levels of Court. The magic that illuminated all of Court’s rooms and halls also ensured they were dust- and cobweb-free, which made this out-of-the-way space a perfect place to meet Jet. No one came here any more, and even if someone did walk down these empty halls, there wouldn’t be any footprints. As well, this was still a temple to the dragon goddess, the Mother of All, and while most drakes worshiped at their coterie’s temple, it wasn’t unheard of for drakes to find solace in some of the small public groves and nooks scattered throughout Court.
He snorted and glared at the statue of the Mother dragon at the front of the room. There were statues like it or little carvings of Her scattered throughout Court. They weren’t in-your-face obvious and out in the open, but they were there, always ready to be noticed in the most unexpected places. It was as if the Handmaiden hadn’t wanted dragonkind to forget Her or what She’d sacrificed.
As if any drake could forget. Certainly not any drake old enough to remember the Great Scourge could forget that horrible fall from the sky and the death of so many of them in the blink of an eye.
The Mother statue sat back on Her haunches with Her wings outstretched. When the Handmaiden had found and built Court with her magic, creating a safe haven for all of dragonkind, Servius had thought these statues — the ones with the Mother with Her wings outstretched — meant She was going to wrap them around Her children and protect them like She’d protected them by sacrificing Herself to save their souls.
But now it looked more like She was trying to get the hell out of there and was trapped, frozen in stone, unable to flee.
Just like so many drakes, particularly the young ones, the ones reborn without a memory of the Scourge. They didn’t have the weight of that terrible time clinging to their spirits and many didn’t understand why the dragon laws were as restrictive as they were.
They certainly didn’t understand why Regis was tightening an already iron grasp on dragon society. So they escaped to the human world, pretending it didn’t affect them and hoping Regis wouldn’t notice.
A part of Servius yearned to join them. Hell, even the Handmaiden had left, which indicated just how bad things had become. But fleeing wasn’t the right choice. Standing up, taking control, and fixing the problem. That was the only way.
Except without the medallion to save dragon souls from dissolving into the universal ether and without the Handmaiden to rebirth those souls into new vessels, no dragon could wrest control from Regis. Not without diminishing their already diminished numbers.
Air whooshed at the front of the room, and Jet stepped through a gate to stand between the first row of benches and the dragon statue. Blood stained her neck and she held her arm close to her side as if it hurt.
“I got the page, but the Handmaiden’s man and a green drake were there.” Jet pulled a folded piece of paper from the inside of her jacket and handed it to Servius.
“We knew Tobias or Grey would discover the Handmaiden’s chambers.” Although it surprised Servius that the discovery had been made so quickly. He’d been counting on at least a day before anyone found the mess Jet had been told to leave and at least half a day — better a whole day — more for them to think about going to the Handmaiden’s private residence. A part of Servius had been hoping the Handmaiden hadn’t told either drake about her private abode in the Himalayas, but given how long Grey had served her, that hope was unlikely. What he’d really hoped was that the mess would have been blamed on the fractious sect of the Divine Mother who protested the Handmaiden’s presence, claiming she was trying to get dragonkind to worship her instead of the Mother of All.
That had been the real hope. Dragon society wasn’t going to hold together much longer and someone needed to take Regis’s throne, forcing Servius to rush the creation of the magic lockpicking spell. But that meant the spell broke the Handmaiden’s doors and the break-in became obvious. Redirection to the sect was the best plan. Or at least it had been. “The green drake had to be one of Tobias’s agents.”
“Yeah, well, she could see through my illusions, and she shot me.”
“You’re lucky Grey didn’t take your head.” Grey’s overdeveloped sense of duty was probably the only thing that had saved Jet. For over a thousand years, Grey and Hunter had fought side by side in every human conflict they could find, as if their beasts couldn’t be contained within their frail human vessels. Even if Grey wasn’t the fastest-healing drake around, all those years of combat experience counted for a lot. If he’d actually gotten a vessel with more earth magic than just free gating, he could have seriously challenged Hunter for the position of royal assassin — not that the silver drake would have ever challenged Hunter. He had stood by, and was still standing by, the red drake, even now that Hunter had become the prince’s number one enemy.
“He’s lucky I didn’t tak
e his head.” Jet shrugged and winced.
Servius cocked an eyebrow. Grey hadn’t been alive for as long as he had because he was easily defeated.
“Next time I’m taking out that green drake first. That’ll solve my problem with Grey.”
“If you did your job right, there won’t be a next time.” Servius opened the page Jet had handed him and read it.
God damn it. He bit back a growl and Jet inched back a step. The coin was in two pieces and the key to finding both of them was in the ekas in Seville.
He’d wanted the location of the coin, not some treasure hunt, but that wasn’t how the Handmaiden worked. He’d spent enough time in her employ, stealing her spells and useful tidbits of information, like the coin, before he’d resigned and Grey had taken his place, to know there wasn’t anything straightforward about the Handmaiden.
He jerked his attention to Jet. “There won’t be a next time, correct? You didn’t let them see this page and they don’t know what I’m after.”
“They didn’t and they don’t. As instructed, I didn’t disturb anything in her secret residence, and I returned the book to where I found it. With a place that big, it would take years—” Jet huffed. “It would take hundreds of years for them to find the book with the missing page. And even then, they’d have no way of knowing what was on that page.”
“Good. Did you read it?”
“My ancient Cantonese is a little rusty, but it looks like the coin is in pieces and those pieces are hidden. Step one to finding them is to go to the ekas in Seville.”
“Are you healed enough to go?” When he’d looked into Jet before hiring her, he’d discovered she was efficiently deadly at her job, and even though she wasn’t a rapid healer, she wasn’t detrimentally slow, either. And while she might still underestimate Grey in the future, if she didn’t encounter him again, Servius’s plans would proceed without issue.
Jet rolled her shoulders back and straightened her arm. “Yep, the break is all fixed, but I’ll have to use the gate anchor to get there.” She shrugged and stepped back, making space to form her free gate and leave Court. “I’ve never been to Seville before.”