Dancer's Flame (Grace Bloods Book 2)

by Jasmine Silvera

  Mine. Mine has been taken from me. Burn it to the ground.

  The director and her bodyguard hesitated as they emerged from the Academy doors behind Dante. The bodyguard thrust her behind him at the sight of Azrael. Dante hurried into the gap between Azrael and the others, his fingers splayed in the building of a protection geas to those he stood before.

  “Hey, old man, stand down,” Dante said, his voice level. His compulsion geas was a fly on the flank of a bull. “You don’t mean to do this.”

  Azrael forced himself to meet his progeny’s eyes, wavering. Dante didn’t flinch.

  “We have the elixir,” Dante said. “There’s a chance.”

  A chance. Hope blossomed against the screaming tumult of the voice, and he used it to build a wall, drowning out the roaring fury. He managed a nod that did not contain the threat of violence. Dante stood down. Azrael took Isela, schooling himself to a gentleness that the rage did not want to allow.

  Azrael did not speak. Instead, he closed his eyes again, felt for Dante’s presence, and then triggered his new power.

  They materialized in the heart of Azrael’s aedis. Dante dropped to one knee, his breath coming hard. “That was quite a ride.”

  The door opened and the phoenix fluttered in, trailed by Tyler. When his eyes settled on Isela, he gave an avian squawk of alarm. He was still thin but clean-shaven with close-cropped hair, his resemblance to the family Azrael had met in Stary clear.

  Dante groped his way to a standing position before Azrael could unleash his fury. “I called him. He may be able to help.”

  Nix, Isela had named him, looked at him as though for the first time. The bird’s eyes returned to Isela as he opened and closed his mouth without a sound. His mouth worked over words silently.

  “She bears the one who betrayed them, no?” he blurted finally. “Ended their reign here. It’s tied to her now.”

  “Then we sever the connection,” Azrael said with the certainty that he would take Isela, god or no, damn the consequences. Mortality would be a small price to pay for her return. The voice inside was unleashed without her and gaining control. “Let the gods deal with their own.”

  The phoenix cocked this head, considering. “The thread that connects them is not so easily broken now.”

  “Azrael, she died that night.” Dante shook his head slowly. “Without the god—”

  The god had been the only thing that kept her from crossing over. How it had done it, none of them knew. The bird chittered to itself, shaking its shoulders and neck as though to ruffle feathers it no longer had. Irritated, Azrael was about to tell it to be still or ask Dante to take it away when it met his eyes and spoke again.

  Nix lifted his head, scenting something, and nodded to Tyler. The undead man handed the flask gingerly to Dante.

  The phoenix spoke. “I can help you bring her back.”

  Dante coaxed Azrael to release Isela. “You need to prepare. I have a feeling that where you’re going, you’ll leave your body behind.”

  He was right. And a soulless necromancer’s body was a vulnerable, dangerous thing, even temporarily. He would need to prevent anything from trying to slip into him while he was absent. And plant the seed of destruction in the flesh if he did not return. It was a curious thing, he considered, the willingness to leave everything. How little it all meant in the end. He began to gather the materials to protect himself, and those around him, in his absence. Dante thumbed through a set of grimoires, discarding most and leaving open a few containing spells he might need. Azrael scanned quickly, already half forming geasa and intention as he went. He grafted one onto another, feeling the wards in the walls surge as he called power to him.

  He needed to bind whatever opening the phoenix would create and keep anything from being drawn in or out. Salt would do. He laid Isela down on the floor. She would be cold. Tyler was there before he could ask with blankets. He wadded one up under her head, spreading the other over her body. Dancing had drained her again; she seemed thinner and washed out, her rich skin faded. Cracks had appeared in the facade of her skin, but instead of the veins of gold, the cracks revealed only darkness.

  Azrael shook himself. He had to focus on his craft. It was the only way to save her. He laid out the circle in salt, then passed a hand over it, leaving bright yellow flames dancing in its wake as his wards carved lines in the solid line of white. Dante was there with the lapis and ash to mark the four directions. The phoenix stepped into the circle and sat cross-legged beside Isela. He chanted something that sounded like birdsong. Azrael recognized the words after a moment. It was the spell Róisín had created to tap into the vein the gods used to travel between worlds.

  Dante joined Azrael with the flask. He looked troubled. “If the gods found a way through to claim her, it means the wall has been breached.”

  Azrael nodded.

  “Tariq is not… able,” Dante said quietly. “And Gus is still on her way.” Dante hesitated. “The coven?”

  Azrael shook his head. He would not risk Isela’s family. They too would be drained from the spell to protect the city. He could bear it alone. “Hold the aedis, Dante. You can do that.”

  “Of course.”

  “If necessary.” Azrael left the words unspoken. Dante was strong enough to trigger the self-destruction spell.

  Dante nodded. “Good luck, old man.”

  “You and I know too much to believe in luck,” Azrael said regretfully.

  “Nevertheless.”

  “It should be soon,” Nix murmured.

  Azrael stepped into the circle. “Close it behind us.”

  Azrael sat on Isela’s other side and unscrewed the cap of Gregor’s whiskey flask. He offered it to Nix. The bird dripped three drops onto Isela’s lips, then sipped before reluctantly handing the flask back to Azrael. Tears of joy slipped from his closed eyelids. Azrael drew a big pull, bracing himself. Dante caught the flask, spilling only a few drops as he hurried to cap it.

  “Get out now.”

  The phoenix’s eyes had gone to flame. Dante backed out, grabbing for the salt. Azrael laid a hand on Isela’s. His other reached out. The phoenix clasped it. The bird inside the man arched. Feathers of light spread behind him, throwing off a rainbow of colors that coalesced to a bright white light that even Azrael cast his eyes away from.

  A sucking wind pulled at Dante. He laid down the salt. The circle sealed at a single-word command, the wards etching themselves on the seal, and the wind vanished abruptly. The three bodies inside were still.

  It could have been hours or a few heartbeats. The god had left them, and the fire dimmed in the hearth, but the sense of timelessness struck Isela.

  I turned my back on them all, Gold said. I betrayed my kind when I helped yours.

  Isela tossed a bit of bark into the embers. It flared and burned without sound. You saved my world.

  I’m a traitor. It was foolish to hope they’d forget about me in all this.

  Gods don’t forget. And they don’t forgive. Memory hit Isela again in a wave. Had it only been a few days since Gold said something similar? It felt like a lifetime ago. And now.

  I wanted to become a better dancer, Gold said.

  Isela snorted. I wanted you to kick Gregor’s ass.

  Isela heard a god in her own laugh, and the warmth that spread through her replaced the absence of heat from the fireplace. I just hate having it out of our hands. I don’t trust the Old Lion.

  Gold agreed. Any bargain he makes will favor him. And if there’s a price, we’ll pay it.

  One of the dying logs in the fire broke, sending showers of sparks dancing on the rug. A few threads of the rug smoked, but there was no scent.

  You’re thinking of your dad.

  Isela started. I forgot you could do that; read my mind.

  I tried not to, Gold said. I know how much you value your privacy. You fought with Azrael over it. You think of your father every day. You miss him, but you still love him. You and your family. Even the young ones
will grow up knowing his name.

  Isela would have wept if she had been in her own body. A breath later, rose-gold heat rushed to her eyes and the sensation of tears raced down her cheeks.

  You do that too, Gold said. Cry. It’s beautiful. Gods don’t mourn, Issy. When we’re gone, it’s as though we never existed. We don’t tell stories of each other. They will crush me and I’ll be forgotten. Nothing.

  Isela wiped her face out of habit, unsurprised to find her hands dry. Nothing, or being hunted as long as there’s an inkling of your consciousness in the universe, eh? Doesn’t give us a lot of options.

  Gold’s silence deepened to a stillness so great Isela wondered if she was still there. When she spoke at last, her voice trembled. What if there was a way. What if there’s no me to hunt? What if there’s just… you?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Azrael materialized with a weight on his shoulder that cast light over the darkness around him.

  He could not look at it directly; the bright swirling light left flickering after burned at the corners of his eyes when he tried. “Nix?”

  I am here. Follow the thread. Time is short.

  Azrael turned his head and there it was—the thinnest twist of gold, no thicker than a strand of silk. He started running, and the weight launched from his shoulder, lighting the way over an uneven terrain as barren as an alien world. A bird the size of a peacock. He cast a glance over his shoulder to orient himself and stumbled in surprise.

  The wall that bound the gods from humanity was not a physical thing in any sense of the word, but he knew each necromancer saw a different manifestation of it. To some it was the woven strands of a blanket, others saw a wall of spikes or blades. Perhaps it was the city he’d chosen as his home that made his vision of it a cobblestone wall, intricately patterned interlocking blocks of power. He recognized his own emerald squares, knit with blues and reds, turquoise, yellows, golds and browns. Except for a ragged hole where the squares had gone black with decay. The thread disappeared into that tear, and it felt like a threat and a promise.

  The gods were not through—not yet. Their attention was occupied elsewhere. Azrael turned to the thread, wrapping it with both hands. “We don’t have time for this.”

  Azrael—no. The phoenix’s warning came too late. Azrael felt the snap of his body vanishing from one place, but without the corresponding pop of arrival in another.

  Instead, he was suspended, whirling and thrashing weightlessly in space. He felt the bird beside him. It fared better, glowing wings flaring to hold it in place.

  Out of the void came a deafening roar. Azrael would have covered his ears if a force stronger than his own will hadn’t restrained him. The rage boiled again in him, and he felt himself roaring back. Soundless fury rolled off his skin in waves of power, only to be swallowed up by the void, leaving him spent against the encroaching force.

  One moment nothing, then it was simply there. Like a thunderstorm without rain, it roiled before him.

  The dark, swirling mass blinked at him with eyes of sparking embers. He could see brightness in it, contained like raging fireflies in a smoky bottle. It whirled, enormous and all-encompassing, the pulsing of a heartbeat of the universe itself.

  My son.

  “Come now,” the man said as the air around them re-formed into a tent not unlike the one he had grown up in.

  Azrael reached through time to memories long buried. Exactly like his foremother’s tent. Though they had stopped being fully nomadic generations before, the home was designed to be broken down and easily transported—from the thick felted walls to the ornate rugs that could be rolled in a matter of moments. He knew every rug, every wall hanging, all the foldable tables and chairs, the drums and weapons and blankets.

  The phoenix dropped out of the air onto a perch reserved for his eldest sister’s hawk, its colors subdued to human visible shades of the rainbow. It fluffed and sleeked feathers in an ombré of shades from the deepest ember red to the hottest blue-white flame.

  “A fitting companion for a son of mine,” the voice said again. “Wings of destruction and promise. Death and life without break.”

  Azrael spun as the entity shaped as a man approached, his every move leonine and graceful and dreadfully familiar. An Old Lion.

  Azrael cast his gaze around the room, looking for a weapon, and froze. A golden woman, the mirror image of Isela, sat in one of the chairs by the fire. An enormous pair of monarch wings cascaded down her back and lay in a crumpled mess on the floor behind her. Her hands dangled between her knees. She looked up, defeated. Azrael bristled and felt the power come cracking to his fingertips like the faithful, silky-coated hound that had followed him until its last breath. Azrael moved between the entity and his consort’s god.

  When I say run, go, follow the phoenix back—

  “Stop, Azrael.” Isela’s voice halted him. She wasn’t defeated; she was resigned. “We don’t have time. They’re coming for me. Her. Us. And you need to hear what he has to say.”

  The man inclined his head regally as he took a seat in the familiar chair that he had never occupied in Azrael’s childhood. “She’s right, of course. I am your ally in this.”

  “Who are you?”

  “We have very little time for questions and answers, boy,” the Old Lion said. “Best to skip the obvious ones.”

  Azrael’s mind spun, dredging up old memories of his mother’s face when she refused questions about his sire, her past. In the end he asked the only question that mattered. “Why?”

  “Help you?” The old man’s head angled. “Or why now?”

  Azrael folded his arms over his chest. “Pick one. Two thousand years. Now you claim me?”

  “Two thousand years,” the Old Lion said mockingly. “I watched this universe be born, boy. Your years are a blink of my eye.”

  “My ally,” Azrael snarled. “Prove it.”

  The flash of white teeth startled him.

  “Now that is my son.” The smile became a weapon, bladed and cruel. He paused, considering his answer. “That foolish redhead created an opening, baited her hook, and thought she could control the beast that came. There are others that would see your bharya torn into pieces and cast into the oblivion. What better way to keep her from getting into their hands than to take her myself?”

  Azrael thought of the trickster. Older than the sun and the moon, life and death.

  The man nodded, and Azrael had the distinctly discomfiting feeling that for the first time in centuries, someone had read his mind. “The humans had their gods, and we took their forms. Or did the humans fashion their gods after us?”

  “It’s true then,” Azrael said, hearing the tremor at the edge of his voice. “Necromancers and witches are your children…”

  “So you call yourselves.” The arched brow rose mockingly.

  “What are we then?”

  “An experiment.”

  At Azrael’s silence, he went on. “Mortal life has always been enticing to us. Even the strongest of us must claim a human vessel to play in their world. But their flesh is so frail. It burns out quickly with the burden of carrying all that we are. Your kind—and the witches—came out of an attempt to breed with humans to create stronger vessels for ourselves. Witches diluted their blood through mixing with humans again. We put our hopes in your line. You had our longevity—when you survived your powers—and some of our strength. Yet our attempts to claim you failed. When we tried to force the matter— Well, the results were damned disappointing.”

  He crossed his arms and he took them in. “But your bharya is something of a conundrum, the first of our blood to successfully become a vessel. Twice now she’s nearly burned out the human shell, and you have kept her alive, as it were. Perhaps we were wrong to give up on the witches’ line.”

  Azrael thought himself old beyond time. But for the first time he glimpsed a larger playing field. The gods thought of humans as playthings and pets and had indulged them like children but without a
parent’s sense of preservation for their offspring. Was this callous disregard inevitable in necromancers as they aged? “An experiment.”

  He shrugged nonchalantly. “Others want what can be claimed now. I play the long game. It appears I still have pieces on the board.”

  “Pieces.”

  “Few of the original gods remain,” he said. “My offspring, naturally, will not be like others. Your mother was outstanding among mortals. Blood of witches, no doubt. You are unique, the only one of my get to survive the gift I’ve given. You are the closest to becoming.”

  “Becoming what?”

  Again the smile, this time sly. “That is the question, isn’t it? I’ve an interest in seeing if you continue to survive my gift.”

  “Survive?”

  “Your powers are growing, are they not?” Again the wicked look of knowing in the silver depths that mirrored his own.

  Dread curled tendrils around his rib cage, creeping up his throat. He had told himself the voice wasn’t real, that it wasn’t part of him. But what if he was wrong? What if the voice inside, reptilian and cold, was not an invader but his own? No power came without price. He’d already grown attached to it, the ability to simply be wherever he wished to be. Could he give it up now, even if he wanted to? Would that be enough to stop it?

  The Old Lion vanished, reappearing behind Isela. “And now we’re back to your bharya. She has had a curious effect on you, hasn’t she? Quieting the voice in your head, helping you regain control. I wonder if she will be able to save you from yourself.”

  “So you’re helping us—”

  “Because if I don’t, neither of you have a chance. And we’re back to the same old boring routine. I do hate to be bored. She can feel them,” Old Lion said with a hint of menace. “Your gods. She knows their intent. Don’t you, my girl?”

  Gold eyes looked up at him and hatred slid away to cold fear.

  “Isela had nothing to do with that,” Azrael said.

  “Collateral damage.” The man shook his head. “It’s the little one they’re after.”