Dancer's Flame (Grace Bloods Book 2)

by Jasmine Silvera

  “You… gods.” He spat the word with mockery. “Were going to destroy the world. You had to be stopped.”

  “Humans and their dancing.” The old man studied Azrael knowingly. “Can you blame us?”

  Under the scrutiny of those eyes, the sense of familiarity nearly overwhelmed him. He did not back down, nor did he look away, even though that gaze burned through him with challenge.

  “Ah, you are her son,” he said, and Azrael had the image of his mother flash in his mind. “Even more than you are mine. For the moment.”

  Azrael’s heart surged, but his head held firm to reason. The growing sense of dread banked. His mother’s heart, the warrior, beat in his chest, even if it pumped the blood of this thing through his veins. He must always remember that. The phoenix made an impatient sound from its perch.

  “I had been prepared to bargain with them,” the Old Lion said. “Or attempt to, but your consort and her companion have come up with an interesting solution. A loophole. I’m curious to see if it works.”

  “Isela can’t survive in her world without me.” The god rose. “But nothing of either of us will survive in any world if they get their hands on me.” A great shudder wracked her body. “Human grief has taught me that even the dead leave something behind.”

  She stepped close to Azrael, and he remembered the night in the garden. Gone was the reckless confidence of a deity. She reached up, touching her own face—Isela’s face—as if it were a strange new territory.

  He caught her wrist. “What do you mean to do, god? I would know the risk to my consort.”

  “The only risk to me is if you don’t make it back.” Isela’s voice again. Curious how it changed between them. The voice itself was the same, but the tone, the cadence, gave it away. She dropped her voice to its lowest register. “Can you trust me in those moments, that I do what is best for us and to explain later?”

  His own words. In spite of everything, a wry smile rose in response. Even through this, she was Isela—irreverent, unafraid, hopeful. He stepped closer to her, taking her face in his hands. The gold fingertips curled around his wrists, locking him in place. The gold was cool to his touch as Isela never would be. He wanted her back. Whatever it took. The phoenix flapped its wings and fixed him with a piercing look.

  “I trust you, Isela,” he murmured.

  A great shudder wracked her body, and her eyes sealed shut. A sound escaped her that Azrael thought might have contained a clenched sob. “Kiss me.”

  Azrael’s gaze flew from her face to the Old Lion.

  The entity looked amused. “Forgotten how?”

  The phoenix screamed and the humor left the god’s face.

  “Now or lose it all,” the Old Lion said with dreadful certainty.

  Azrael turned back to the face staring into his expectantly. He lowered his head. With his eyes shut, he could pretend, almost, that this was Isela. Her lips touched his with a tingle of power. Out of habit, he took her mouth with the soft, sucking pressure that usually made Isela melt into his chest. Instead, the god stiffened and the tingle became sharp, painful needles of energy.

  “Don’t let go, boy.”

  Azrael let the kiss linger even as the needles became pain. At the sudden release of pressure, he opened his mouth, stepping backward with a shout. Collapsed on the rug at his feet was the husk of the god. It folded on itself like shed skin. The once vibrant wings grew gray and brittle before his eyes. His ribs strained to contain the thing swelling in his chest, pressing outward painfully against his skin.

  “She’s there now.” The Old Lion tapped the center of his chest. “What’s left of her. And all of your mate. Now go. I will hold them for as long as I can.”

  The phoenix didn’t need to be told twice. It launched itself skyward, and the tent dissolved around them. Azrael wanted to hesitate, sensing this would be the last time he ever laid eyes on the entity that claimed to have sired him. The Old Lion stood in the middle of the dissolving world and laughed.

  The sound raised the hairs on Azrael’s body.

  He fled.

  Azrael didn’t look back until they were safely through the tear in the wall. In the void, explosions of light left bright spots on his retinas and booming noise sent concussive blasts through the distance.

  The phoenix hovered, squawking a command. We have to leave now, he urged, fearful eyes glancing toward the ruckus in the distance.

  Azrael shook his head. “I have to seal that tear.”

  Doubt rose in him. It had taken an entire allegiance to create that wall, and it had drained them all for months. The show for humanity had been just that—illusion intended to cow them into obedience. It had taken weeks before any of them could do more than simple zombifying. How much power had he spent coming here? Hadn’t he told Isela just a few weeks ago that energy was not unlimited, that it could be tapped dry as any well. What then?

  He steeled himself. He had Róisín’s power, and ambrosia lighting up his veins. It was just a tear, not the entire wall. He would do this. Or he would expend himself here trying. “Go now.”

  The bird turned as if to obey. It looked up at the wall. Then it turned to Azrael with flames in its eyes.

  “Go.” Azrael barked.

  The phoenix’s wings snapped open with a pop of flame and a force that sent Azrael hurtling backward. Azrael instinctively curled himself into a ball to prepare for a hard landing that never came. He righted himself, floating to his feet.

  She gave me her protection, the phoenix said, flying into the wall. Tell her we are even.

  The scream of the phoenix, its long-arrested transformation finally released, dropped Azrael to his knees. He tumbled backward in the blast of energy that followed. When he could scrabble upright and open his eyes again, a gout of flame burst through the wall. As it subsided, the wall stood as it once had, a solid patchwork of cobbles in a rainbow of colors. Where the tear had been was a patch of iridescent gold, rippling with a wave of colors from the glowing red of deepest embers to the indigo blue of hot flame.

  Nix was gone.

  Azrael turned his back on the land of the gods.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “He’s back.” Dante’s voice broke the silence. Time stretched on after Azrael and the phoenix crossed over for Isela. Sometime during the night, the witches arrived without notice, coming to sit beside their mates, a larger circle around the necromancer’s. The high priestess stationed herself at Azrael’s head, as though she could will him her strength by proximity. She refused to listen to Dante’s words of caution about what might go wrong.

  The Aegis returned from the city first, taking up sentry positions. Gus and Gregor thundered in next, still reeking of undead. Gus swore and tried to broach the circle, but the salt and geas held.

  “Old fool,” she swore, blinking furiously.

  “Perhaps you should see to our brother,” Dante advised her sagely. “Tariq sustained great damage tonight.”

  They all gasped when the phoenix slumped to the floor with a burst of power. Wind and flames, iridescent lines of blue and violet whipped the air into a frenzy though it left the figures unharmed. The walls of the circle rose, visible now with the force of containing the maelstrom within.

  The high priestess saw it too. “Phoenix fire.”

  At last, Azrael’s fingers twitched. His eyelids bounced and rose. He rolled onto his side with the groan of an animal that had been run to the point of exhaustion. Other than the wind whipping her hair against her face and neck, Isela remained still. Azrael moved as if bearing a great weight, and when Dante closed his eyes again, he could see the enormous gathering of power in his chest. The glowing mass of golden embers pulsed with his heartbeat, shedding sparks and flames.

  When he wavered, the room held its collective breath. Then he laid a hand on Isela’s cheek, angling her face just so, and pressed his lips to hers. Dante closed his eyes again, watching the light shatter in his chest, flowing eagerly up his body and into Isela. Her back a
rched and her hands splayed with fingers wide. It was not comfortable, this kiss, but he held firm until the last bit of gold had faded from his chest. It moved through Isela, not gathering as it had in Azrael but spreading from her toes to her crown. The kernel of death vanished.

  The salt broke, scattering as Azrael fell and the last of the phoenix fire washed the room in flickering shades of blue and orange. The high priestess caught his head before it could strike the floor.

  When he looked up, she smiled. “Welcome back.”

  Isela stirred.

  Isela rolled onto her elbows, her breath labored as she met his eyes.

  Azrael propped them both upright, and for a moment there was just the warm feeling of her breath on his collar and the familiar, welcome scent of her sweat and hair. But he wasn’t the only one who had been waiting. He let his arms fall enough so that she could see her family, knowing when she did she would be theirs.

  “Mom? What are you doing here?”

  The remains of the circle scattered under the force of their reunion. Gregor took one look at the flying tufts of wolf pelt and beat a hasty retreat.

  “I’m fine,” Isela assured Bebe, though her eyes found Azrael’s and told a different story. “Yes, it’s changed. I’m not sure yet how, or exactly what. But I feel it too.”

  Azrael turned his attention to Dante as he examined the phoenix.

  Isela’s hand slipped over his. “Is he—?”

  “Not dead.” Azrael shook his head, unable to find the kernel of death in him.

  Dante sighed. “But not quite alive either. He’s breathing, and his heart is pumping. But there doesn’t appear to be anyone home.”

  “He sacrificed himself,” she said, a note of grief in her voice.

  Azrael slid an arm around her. “He was returning a favor.”

  “We’ll look after him,” Dante promised. “He may—Things may change in the next few days.”

  Wise, Azrael thought of Dante’s amendment. Azrael vowed that the phoenix’s physical form would not be kept indefinitely, languishing until it wasted away to nothing. He owed Nix and the old matriarch that.

  Isela rested her cheek on his shoulder, and suddenly he wanted everyone to be gone so that he could have her all to himself. He was tired. So tired. The noise of the relieved, anxious minds in the room pressed on him, and his defenses were too spent to form a solid block. He wanted nothing more than to drag Isela to their bed and sleep for a year.

  He looked away from Isela to see Bebe watching him. A knowing smile lifted the darkness from her eyes as she began to herd the rest of the coven toward the door. At her final glance back, Azrael thanked her with a little nod. Azrael checked in with Gregor for a report on the city, and Gus for Tariq’s status. Gregor cheerfully informed him that Lysippe was on her way back, promising to brief her fully on her arrival. Isela sat in the chair beside Nix’s gurney where she had been holding vigil. Someone had draped a blanket over her shoulders to ward off the aedis’s natural chill. Azrael gathered her, blanket and all, in his arms and started walking.

  He didn’t stop until they were behind the doors of their bedroom and the world shut out behind them. When he set her down, she extended her arms above her head in one of those long, full-body stretches, allowing the blanket to slide off her and pool at her feet. The sight of her lean lines framed in the dim light banished his need to sleep.

  She gasped when he cupped her breasts, rolling the peaks of her nipples between his fingers. The intake of breath became a purr when he touched his lips to the skin at the base of her neck. He bared his teeth, scraping lightly, and she shuddered hard enough to press her backside into his groin. The delicious pressure made sparks fly behind his closed eyelids and he groaned.

  “You need sleep,” he reminded himself.

  “I know what will help me get there fast,” she said huskily.

  “Are you saying I put you to sleep?” His teeth closed over the muscle in her neck, pinching enough to make her whimper.

  “Quit twisting my words and take off my clothes,” she growled.

  He laughed, loving the way goose bumps sprang up over her skin when his hand skimmed her arms, and complied. When their mouths met again, it was with the pleasant exchange of tongues and laughter. He launched her onto the bed, shedding his clothes on his way to join her. He slid his body onto hers, enjoying the way her legs parted to cradle him comfortably against her hips. He rocked his hips once, twice, to feel her response before seeking her mouth again. This time her fingers came between their lips.

  When he looked into her eyes, gold irises flecked with the reflection of phoenix fire met his.

  “Azrael,” she breathed.

  “Mmm?” He stroked the underside of her breast with his fingertip.

  “When you…”

  Unused to her hesitation, he slid an elbow under himself so that he could look down fully into her face.

  “You kissed her.”

  Azrael wanted to laugh but bit it back with all his might. Was that what was on her mind? He curled a strand of hair behind her ear and feathered his mouth across her cheek. “It meant nothing. Just the Old Lion’s way of screwing with us.”

  She relaxed her head against the pillow, but her eyes did not lose the intense expression. “I know that. Do you honestly think I’m jealous?”

  Azrael let a chuckle escape, tapping her chin with his index finger. “She is a god, you know.”

  Isela let out a breath that could have been annoyance, a laugh, or a bit of both.

  “Was.” Azrael corrected her, sliding his nose against the skin below her ear until she shivered.

  “She’s gone,” Isela said, her expression turning speculative. “I mean, I can’t feel her like before. Like I was possessed.”

  She sounded sad. Azrael sighed and rolled onto his side, dragging her thigh over his hip to keep them locked together.

  “She didn’t give up everything,” Azrael said, sliding a fingertip down the centerline of her chest to rest on her breastbone. “She’s not gone.”

  He tapped his finger twice, lightly.

  “Not entirely,” she agreed. “But whatever was there that was her will, her desire, is missing.”

  “That troubles you,” he surmised at the look on her face.

  “I don’t know why. I should be glad. No more voice in my head, no more strange pulls toward things that I can’t explain.”

  He growled, nipped at the line of her jaw.

  “I can explain that pull.” She laughed, shifting her hips against his before her mood darkened again. “But it’s just me now. No god.”

  Azrael flipped onto his back, dragging her on top of him. His fingers worked down the corded muscle along her spine, settled over the curve of her hips. At least if they were going to have this nonsense conversation, he could do it while making the most of their proximity.

  She hesitated. “Are you sure that’s going to be enough… for you?”

  “More than enough,” he muttered, squeezing the plump flesh.

  She thumped him on the chest with a fist that packed a surprising punch. “Don’t mock.”

  “I’m not,” he said, kneading the long lines of her thighs. “I chose you before you chose her. I will always choose you, Isela. This is home.”

  “I chose her to come back to you.” She stacked her palms on his chest over his heartbeat, settling her chin there with a long exhale.

  His lips and breath caressed her brow when he spoke. “Now you have the powers. And the immortality. You have your own head back, all of it. I don’t think it could be any more resolved.”

  Isela made a soft sound, resting her ear on the back of her stacked hands. Azrael sighed, threading his fingers through the hairs at the base of her neck. Resolutely he began removing the last of the pins from her hair, spreading the coils over her back and enjoying the way they sprang back at the first chance.

  “She gave me a parting gift, you know,” she said finally.

  Azrael raised his he
ad. The skin on his neck prickled with a prescience of trouble. “What gift?”

  “She said it was a surprise.” Isela frowned. “That I’d know… when it came. But the way she said it.” She paused. “I don’t like surprises.”

  It was Azrael’s turn to let a thoughtful sound escape. He paused, stroking her hair for just a moment, thinking of the voice that had gone quiet since Isela and her god had become one. But for how long? “Whatever it is, we handle it, Isela. Together.”

  She looked at him finally, and the warmth in her eyes softened whatever tension had built in his chest. She stretched upward, dragging her skin along his in the most agonizing pleasure of his night so far. She planted a kiss on his lower lip. With the junction of her thighs resting treacherously close to the head of his cock, the temptation was excruciating. He waited.

  “Do you think the Old Lion was telling the truth?” she asked, rocking away from him. “About who—what—he is to you.”

  Azrael interlaced his hands behind his head, letting his elbows splay wide. He released a breath before speaking. “My sire? Why lie? He has nothing to gain by claiming me after so long. It gives me every reason to hate him actually.”

  “Sire,” she mused. “That sounds so—”

  “We are their attempt to breed stronger bodies for themselves.”

  “It’s not exactly parent-of-the-year stuff,” she agreed.

  “Calling him father seems a bit…”

  “Silly?”

  He stared down his nose at her. “An overstatement.”

  She sat up, straddling his hips. He thanked two thousand years for the ability to have a rational conversation in spite of the pressure building in his groin.

  “You’re the son of one of the oldest gods there is. At least according to Mr. Humble Brag ‘I watched the universe be born.’ And I’m the first successful vessel of a god. That’s got to mean something.”

  “It means,” Azrael drawled, “that the Allegiance is going to have every reason to want to destroy me, and the gods are going to have every reason to try to get to you. So. At least the next few hundred years won’t be boring. What do you think about getting a dog?”