She blinked a few times, and then a small smile crept up her mouth. “A dog? With me? You want to get a dog with me?”
“Too domestic?” His brows furrowed.
She shook her head furiously. He loosened his fingers, sliding his hands from behind his head toward her waist, but she caught his wrists in a startlingly strong grip. He laughed, but she held firm.
“Did you want something?” She pinned his hands overhead, nipping the corner of his mouth and sliding her body along his length.
She was wet. So wet. He groaned, arching his hips. “You know what I want.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” She pulled back with a sly grin. “It’s your turn to beg.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The gardens on the south hill of the castle provided her favorite view of the red-roofed Malá Strana district. On a clear day, the long stone walkway of the garden on the ramparts was the perfect place to watch the sparkle of the river winding its way through the center of the city. Today the sky was hazy with the kind of gauzy air that presaged rain. Pools of slate-gray clouds driven on a cold wind blanketed the horizon, dappling the sunlight over the city. The walkway led into the Garden of Eden, once the private retreat of an archduke. The gardens were also close to the buildings, an option she had taken into consideration when she accepted the invitation for a walk.
“I should have died,” Nix said.
Isela paused as he navigated an uneven piece of pavement. She’d learned the hard way not to interfere. He’d recovered some weight and a good amount of muscle tone. He used a cane, but long walks took enormous effort. The physical therapist Isela had brought in from the Academy called his recovery nothing short of miraculous.
“Dante thinks it was the improper transformation into this body that may have saved me,” he went on. “My link with it brought me back. Well, what’s left of me.”
Isela looked away, her eyes on the thawing city. The air held the damp promise of rain. She could not shake the guilt, the sense of wrongness that he was somehow forever trapped in this human body when he had once been so much more.
“I may not be what I once was, but enough of me remains to be of value. I have my memories, centuries of knowledge.”
“Even if you didn’t,” Isela said firmly, “you would still be valuable. Just by being.”
“You aren’t like the others.” He shook his head. “You are kind first. Your heart is soft.”
Isela gave a wan half smile. “Gregor says it is my weakness.”
“As you might say, it takes one to know one,” Nix said. “Building armor is just one way to live with it.”
“But not the only way.”
“Not the only way,” he echoed. “Another is to remain open.”
“Vulnerable.”
“A different kind of strength.”
They paused before the tree Isela had named Her Majesty. At four hundred years old, the yew tree with its stately crown of evergreen branches earned a moment of respectful admiration. She let her eyes wander the twisted red bark. Her physical vulnerability had almost killed Dory, but the part of her that was still human-hearted had found a way to bring him back. Maybe there was truth to Nix’s words. She considered the nascent connection to her new guard. It was like a healing wound, and the temptation to prod it was too great to resist.
Everything okay, Is?
Shoot, she had been too obvious. Yeah, sorry. Don’t mind me.
His mental laugh was as good as the real thing. Then quit yanking my string, lady.
She smiled.
“So what will you do next,” she asked, changing the subject.
“Azrael no longer sees the kernel of death in me,” he said. “But what magic I have left is a shadow. In my true form, I was hunted every day of my life. Now I am valueless to those who would try to use me. It will be strange not to have to hide.”
“Your bond of sanctuary has been absolved.” She’d done that as soon as Dante confirmed there was no threat to him. “Where will you go?”
Nix hesitated for the first time. He drew himself up to his full height, and she had to look up to see the solemn, determined expression on his face.
“I’m told that you have begun the formation of your own Aegis.”
Isela laughed, rubbing the phantom ache in her ribs. “That was an accident. I’m still trying to talk Dory out of it. I am no necromancer, Nix.”
“The power of gods runs in your veins.”
His face looked so hopeful it broke her heart. The first drops of rain darkened the ground at their feet. She shook the loose folds of the wrap around her shoulders, drawing the resulting hood over her head. It was a useless effort. They were a ten-minute shuffle from the doors to the castle at Nix’s pace. They would be drenched in a few moments.
“I could be an asset to you,” he said in a long rush. “You need an ally—information, history, background—I can provide it. Azrael’s libraries are a resource, but it will take centuries to learn how to access them fully. And with Dante accompanying Gus to Suramérica for the time being… Well, I can help you.”
She couldn’t speak.
His words tapered off, and his gaze drifted to his feet. “I understand. What would you want with the embers of a once-great creature?”
She put her hand over his on the grip of his cane, squeezing lightly. “Nix, you are still a great creature.”
Defeat creased his brow. “Thank you for not laughing at me.”
“What could I offer you that’s better than freedom?”
“I want only to be of service. And the books—access to the books.”
Isela rubbed her forehead. A phoenix. “You have that. Azrael would let you stay if you asked.”
“Necromancers respect those who serve. They don’t suffer hangers-on.”
“You can hardly stand up,” Isela said after a moment. “Let’s get you inside.”
She started for the door, Dory, a little help here?
She looked back when she realized he wasn’t following her. “It’s not a no. It’s just… a maybe.”
Dory scooped up the recovering man in one arm, threw a blanket over her head, and they fled the incoming storm.
Isela found Azrael in the study. She shook the rain from her hood and dropped it back over her shoulders. Thunder made the stone walls tremble. Nix hadn’t stopped talking until she dropped him off at his new quarters in the castle. He was a fount of information. That could be incredibly useful.
But create an Aegis of her own? Neither witch nor necromancer, she was in some ways greater, in others less. Gus had already taught her a few small combat geasa, and she spent three days a week with one of the coven. Could she make undead? She shuddered.
She slowed at the sound of voices. Azrael wasn’t alone. She should have checked. Just another way she’d failed to use the powers she understood in the simplest ways. How was she ever going to learn how to use ones she hadn’t yet tapped?
She started back the way she came on tiptoe when she heard her name. “This concerns you. You should stay.”
She made one more attempt to dust the rain from her shoulders before walking into the circle of firelight illuminated by the enormous hearth and lamps. She understood why he had forgone electricity as soon as she saw his companion.
She hadn’t seen Tariq since the night of the city’s defense. When she’d asked, Azrael assured her he recovered. The niggling worry that Azrael might be keeping them apart for other reasons came in her quiet moments, but she refused to humor it. What had the Aegis told him of the moment in the square?
Tariq sat in the chair on the other side of Azrael’s great desk. He looked as if he’d aged twenty years. Deep lines around his mouth and eyes carved fissures in his sun-bleached ochre skin. Streaks of silver raced from his temples into the dark length of his hair. But even more troubling was what lay beneath the surface. Energy roiled, fractured and bruised in places like rotted fruit. Something powerful had touched him—corrupted him.
“Tariq—”
She did her best to hide her shock, but his eyes fell away from her first. She looked to Azrael, unable to contain the alarm she felt.
Was this from defending the city?
Azrael’s careful pause chilled her. No, Isela.
“Light of my master’s eye.” The melodious resonance of his voice was now a ragged scratch. “I beg your forgiveness.”
The formality where there had once been none was a painful distance between them. Isela’s next thought made her stomach turn. Did you… punish him?
How little you think of me.
She wanted to cry but wasn’t sure whether from knowing she still doubted her lover or the sight of her broken friend. Azrael the lover. Azrael the monster. Every time she thought she could accept the dichotomy, something happened to unseat her understanding of the world. It raised the anxious tension in her chest that made her want to move, to dance, to run. She set her hand on Azrael’s shoulder, holding her ground. You told him to protect me and the god—
Azrael shook his head, but he took a breath and she felt his calm wash over him, steadying her. He spoke to Tariq. “Since I can’t disabuse you of the notion you’ve fixed in your stubborn head, I’m going to let her try. Tell her, Tariq.”
The broken necromancer closed his eyes, bowing his head. “My master, please, I beg you.”
Isela forced herself to stay at Azrael’s side. Her fingers dug into his shoulder. He covered her hand with his own, and the rock lodged beneath her heart eased so she could breathe again.
His dull eyes climbed slowly. A roiling darkness splintered the bronze irises. Isela refused to look away from the pain in them. “When the god came, I failed my vow to you.”
“Gods save me.” Azrael slammed his fist down on the desk. Isela jumped. Tariq did not flinch. “That is not what I meant, you self-righteous fool.”
Isela put her back to Tariq to stare her lover in the eye. What she saw startled her—grief. It slackened his cheeks, made his mouth weary and cold.
“You tell me then,” she said quietly. “Since he cannot.”
“That night, he put himself between my sire,” Azrael said, “and you.”
Isela’s vision went dark as she was flooded by memory. The sensation of being ripped in two, split from her body and yanked away from the world. She sat down hard on the edge of the desk, recognizing the darkness in Tariq now. She’d seen it that night in the waves of clouds and sparking red light. Tariq had gone up against the Old Lion and he’d lost. Whatever the entity had done to him had corrupted his power.
“That thing… even my god feared it,” she said, hearing the tears roughing her own voice. At the last moment there had been a tug, a tiny pull on her. She remembered seeing the thin gold line unspooling behind them as the black mass dragged her out of the world. She confronted Tariq when she could breathe again. “You made the thread. So Azrael could follow.”
Tariq would not look at her. Azrael confirmed it when his progeny was silent. “Even as he was being torn apart from the inside out.”
Isela flung herself off the edge of the desk, going to her knees beside Tariq’s chair. She took his hand in her own, holding it even when he tried to pull away.
“You look at me,” she commanded.
With effort he obeyed.
“You did what you could. It could have destroyed you.”
He turned his face away from her. “It did not fail, lady.”
“Then you must keep fighting,” she said.
He shook his head once. “I failed.”
She took his cheek in her hand, turning that grayed, gaunt face to her. He closed his eyes, sank his cheek into her palm as if it were a cool cloth. Isela’s mind spun with the understanding that she was losing him. As surely as he had watched her being ripped from the world by Azrael’s sire, he was now being pulled away from her. Slowly and painfully.
What will happen if he cannot defeat it?
Azrael’s face was grim, full of a desperation she had never seen. I’ll destroy him myself before I see that happen.
Isela’s heart tripped unsteadily in its rhythm. You have to help him.
Whatever Old Lion did to him will prey on what he cannot forgive in himself. Tariq has always owned more than his share of responsibility. It’s what keeps him from ascending. In this, he must save himself.
Isela tried anyway. “I forgive you, Tariq. But I would never have forgiven myself if you had been lost that night. You and Gus and Dante are Azrael’s family. Do you know how much you mean to us?”
“I am not worthy of that honor, lady.”
For a long moment there was nothing but this impasse, the sense they were on an irrevocable course toward tragedy. At last Azrael rose from his seat with a deep sigh.
“I refuse to forgive you,” he said quietly. “And in failing in your task, you owe me your life.”
Tariq looked up, resolute. This was what he’d wanted all along—permission to quit fighting and for Azrael to exact a final punishment. She started to speak, but Azrael gripped her hand for silence. She remembered the vows they had made to each other and held her tongue.
“I accept, my lord,” Tariq said.
Azrael’s eyes lit on Isela, the heat gone from the silver. Silver was the color of ice, she thought suddenly, and Azrael was as capable of as much coldness as heat. Still, she trusted him.
He spoke slowly. “My consort’s defenses will need a captain. As her Aegis is… incomplete at best, Tariq Yilmaz, I am assigning the responsibility to you.”
Isela’s jaw fell.
Tariq sucked in a hard breath. “But master—”
“Is your life not mine to command?” Azrael boomed.
Tariq bowed his head.
“You will not fail me a second time. Understood?”
Tariq shifted his weight forward as if to stand. Isela went with him, reaching out a hand to lend support. Instead, he took her fingertips and slid down to one knee at her feet. “I am yours, lady. I will earn your grace again.”
Isela met Azrael’s eyes over the bowed head. The skin stretched taut over his cheeks, and his lips as pressed together in a tight line. The silver of his eyes shone with a fierce and desperate light.
“Gregor will see to your permanent quarters,” Azrael said. “You are dismissed.”
When he was gone Azrael turned to the fire. His back was to her. With the light behind him, she could only see the silhouette of his body, but she knew him well enough to understand what she saw.
“You’ll call me cruel,” he said after a long moment.
Isela took a hard breath. “You told me once you could be a monster. That you would be a monster to protect yours.”
Azrael’s head snapped up, and she felt his attention take the edge of a honed blade. She let the air leave her lungs, taking with it any resistance or reluctance.
“I think you’ll do whatever it takes to keep him alive,” she said firmly. “And I think you’ll use what he feels for me to do it. No matter how much pain it causes him when he understands I can never be his.”
She watched his shoulders rise with an enormous breath, skin crackling with heat.
“You’ll save his life even if it breaks his heart,” she said, crossing the room to stand at his back. She laid her hand between his shoulder blades, nestling left toward the beating of his heart.
Azrael exhaled. His head hung heavy and she slid her fingertips up his neck, threading through the short hairs at the base. She rested her forehead against his shoulder blade.
“And I will help you,” she whispered. “Because I can’t bear what it will do to you if you lose him. It appears I, too, can be a monster when needed.”
His fingers slid down her free arm to her hand. He pulled it around his chest, drawing her to him. Pinned between his heart and his hand, her palm vibrated with their contact.
“Forgive me, consort,” he murmured, “for underestimating you.”
“Don’t do it again,” she said, feeling we
ary and overwhelmed. “Now, about this Aegis—”
“It’s customary for a consort to have his or her own set of guardians and trusted advisors. As the consort is often another necromancer, the Aegis serves both purposes.”
“But your Aegis—”
“Will provide you physical protection,” he said, interlacing their fingers. “You will have much to learn as consort. It would not be bad to begin with a necromancer, a scientist, and what’s left of a phoenix as your council.”
She looked up, surprised he knew of Nix. “Wait, a scientist?”
“Dr. Sato attempted a circumspect inquiry regarding an adjustment to the terms of his contract yesterday,” Azrael said. The smile crept into his voice at his next words. “I will warn you, he needs much work when it comes to following orders.”
Isela stepped out of Divya’s inner office, shaking hands with the director before Divya pulled her into a hug.
“We’re looking forward to seeing you at the start of the new term,” Divya said. “Professor Vogel.”
Niles met her at the door. “I’ll see you out.”
“No need,” Isela said.
“It would be my pleasure.”
The halls were full of dancers when they should have been clear. At Niles’s stern expression a path opened, but murmurs of her name—excitement tinged with doubt and, in some cases, a little fear followed her.
“I wanted to thank you, Miss Vogel,” he said quietly. “After the news, I’d never seen the director so—”
Isela knew the feeling. The necromancers would continue to provide some response to the petitions, but for all intents and purposes, godsdancing was dead. The academies would gradually transition to schools for formal dance traditions. Many wouldn’t survive.
Isela suggested that some godsdancers might be trained for another purpose. Those with the blood of gods—not powerful enough to be witches or necromancers—might be able to use their talent as she had to find humans and Others in trouble. Part of her teaching at the Academy would be seeking those special dancers out. Gradually they would be introduced to the world of the Others. And then work with Azrael’s Aegis to form teams, much like the pack had.
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