Jade’s legs gave out on her at that, and she found herself sitting in a puddle of meltwater, gaping as the Nightkeepers charged up the hallway toward her, most of them armed, all of them coming to defend Skywatch against . . . her. She started to laugh, tried to swallow it, and ended up emitting a ridiculous hiccup that had Sasha’s expression going to one of pure worry.
Before her friend could go into healer mode, Jade waved to fend her off. “No, I’m fine, really. Better than fine. I’m sorry about the door, though. And the walls. And the windows.” She looked around her at the growing melt, cringing at the destruction, then, when she remembered what the archive had looked like, wailed, “And the books!” They were all scanned into the digital system, but still.
“Jade!” Michael gripped her shoulder and gave her a none-too-gentle shake. “Was Iago here? Did something happen with one of the artifacts?”
“No.” The hysterical laughter threatened to burble up again. “Something happened with me. I did it, all of it. I finally wrote a spell. Or manipulated it, at least.” As she watched, a huge blob of slush let go of the ceiling and fell down the back of Michael’s neck.
“Gah!” He straightened abruptly, pawing at his nape, then scowled when the others laughed at him. He glared around. “Can we get out of here and continue this someplace dry?”
“I’d suggest the great room,” a new voice broke in, “but the furniture’s gone . . . along with most of the floor, and what looks like part of the gym downstairs.” Strike made his way through the crowd. Dressed in full black-on-black combat gear and wearing a loaded weapons belt, he was even more intimidating than usual. He glared around, not immediately locking on Jade. “What in the hell is going on here? We have rules about experimenting, you know. As in fucking don’t unless you’re in the training hall, where you can’t destroy too much expensive stuff.”
Jade closed her eyes as her brief amusement fled. She was starting to shake now, with a combination of reaction and what she suspected was going to be a hell of a postmagic crash. “I did it. It was all my fault. I was looking at the fireball spell in the Idiot’s Guide, and it morphed into something else in front of my eyes. I recited what I saw and . . .” She trailed off, opened her eyes, and looked around, seeing a few faces missing. Including Lucius’s and Shandi’s. Fresh worry clutched at her. “Did I hurt anyone?”
The king shook his head. “We got lucky.” From the sudden satisfied glint in his eyes, she got the feeling he wasn’t entirely unhappy with what had just happened. He reached down and, before she knew what was happening, he had hauled her vertical and was leading her along the hallway, where their feet squished on the meltwater-soaked runner. “The great room was empty. Jox was in the kitchen, but he ducked behind the breakfast bar when the leading edge hit. The power was dissipating as it came, so by the time it reached the kitchen it was down to a spring frost and a couple inches of snow.”
That dry rundown didn’t even come close to prep-ping Jade for the sight that confronted her when she stepped through the arched doorway with the others crowding behind her.
The sitting area was demolished. Jagged, frozen chunks of what might have been the comfy chairs and assorted pillows were scattered across the space, which was draped with sharp-edged splashes of crystalline ice and drifts of snow. The sliders had blown out and snow drifted onto the pool deck, where it melted pretty much the second it hit the sun-baked deck. A large, dark shape lurked in the pool, leviathanesque. She was pretty sure it was the couch.
Holy. Shit.
Jade knotted her fingers together, her stomach churning as it had right before the magic, only more in an I’m-going-to-vomit way. “I’m so sorry.” She directed the apology at Jox, who had overseen the renovations and always did his level best to keep the mansion clean and comfortable for everyone. “Gods. I’m sorry.”
The winikin’s expression bordered on wild. “Ice,” he said faintly. “There’s no such thing as an ice spell.”
“There is now.” She glanced at her scribe’s mark. “I think I just made it up. Or my talent did.”
“Just like that?” Strike snapped his fingers. “No warning?”
At that moment, Lucius appeared from the direction of the cottages, moving fast, his eyes hard and hot. He hesitated at the sight of the melting snowdrifts and the submerged sofa, then strode through into the ruined main room. His eyes swept the crowd and settled on her, then skimmed past. His aggressive stance eased. “I take it we’re not under attack?”
“Not an intentional one,” Leah answered dryly. “Jade was just about to tell us about when and how her powers started coming online. Because I’m guessing this wasn’t the first clue.”
Jade winced. “Yes and no. There was one other time, but I convinced myself it was nothing.”
“This,” Sven said, “is clearly something.” Patience elbowed him into silence.
Flushing, Jade sketched a brief summary of what she’d felt when she’d brought herself out of the barrier, and how she’d glanced at a supposedly gibberish text and seen a blessing instead. “I didn’t mention it before because I was convinced the magic had come from the Vennie nahwal, or that maybe she had tried to jump-start my talent and failed because my magic is simply too weak.”
“Apparently that’s not the case.” Despite the fact that he was standing ankle-deep in the melting mess and most of the living room was gone, Strike’s eyes gleamed. “Congratulations, Jade. You’re a scribe.”
“Yeah.” She grinned up at him. “I am.” Her smile felt foolish, though, and his image was a little watery around the edges, filtered as it was through unshed tears. “I also think I’m about to pass out.”
She didn’t, but it was pretty close.
Sasha and Michael propped her up and got her to her suite; she waved off the offer of an IV—she’d far rather pig out, thanks—but nodded floppily when Jox called after them that he’d have Shandi bring food. She would’ve warned him that Shandi was mad at her, but lacked the strength. Besides, given that Jox was the royal winikin, he probably already knew what was going on, and why. He’d already shown, though, that he wouldn’t interfere in a winikin’s relationship with his or her charge. Each winikin was chosen for a reason, even if that reason wasn’t immediately obvious. The gods move in mysterious ways, Jade thought woozily.
Once she was in bed, Sasha shooed Michael away and helped Jade undress and drag on an oversize T-shirt. Jade was asleep before Sasha pulled the curtains.
She awoke sometime later to the sight of French toast and OJ on a tray at her bedside table . . . and beyond that, Lucius sitting in the chair where she typically dumped her clean laundry. He was reading.
He didn’t realize right away that she was awake, giving her a few seconds to simply watch him. In her mind’s eye, the moment kaleidoscoped to the many times they’d read together in the archive, working separately but together, each of them in their old guises. Now, as he frowned down at the text—which was newly water-damaged, she saw with an inner wince—she found his single-minded, almost fanatical concentration arousing, in large part because she now knew that he brought that same level of intensity to lovemaking. Sex, she reminded herself. Sex, not lovemaking. Keep your own rules straight. Still, the sight heated her blood and tightened her skin despite the tug of lingering fatigue.
“Good book?” she said, drawing his attention before her thought process ran any further aground on itself.
His head came up, though it took him a second to pull himself out of the written world and refocus on her. When he did, his lips curved in a long, slow smile. “Not as useful as I would’ve liked.” He flashed her the cover as he closed the book and set it aside; it was one of the histories of the star bloodline that she had skimmed through earlier and bypassed as being too superficial to be of any real use. “You look better.”
“I’m not covered in frost and wearing soaked jeans and an expression of terror, you mean.” Even saying it brought a burst of pride laced with deeper, less sure emotion
s.
“Something like that.” He took her hand, idly turning it so they could both see her forearm, where the scribe’s mark was unchanged, even though everything was different. “Big day.”
“Yeah.” The grin felt like it lit her from the inside out. “I’ve got magic.”
“I never doubted it.”
They sat like that for a moment, and Jade found her thoughts going not to the magic, but to what had happened just before she cast the spell. “I talked to Shandi again. She told me more about what happened right before the massacre.”
“More about your mother?”
“Not directly.” Before she realized she was going to, that she needed to, she was telling him about Shandi’s revelation, how it explained so much, yet didn’t give her any options. The words spilled out of her, tumbling over one another. “I’m not responsible for the will of the gods,” she finished, “and I can’t undo the bond between us. Or maybe I could, but to what end? Denny and Samxel are gone, just like my parents are gone. Shandi—” She broke off, frustrated. “I don’t know what to say to her. She’s been harboring a grudge for twenty-six years. It seems inane somehow to say that I’m sorry for her loss. More, if you ask me what I really think, it’s that she needs to grow up and get over it already. It wasn’t my fault, and blaming me for it is . . . pointless.”
“Shandi’s not stupid. I have a feeling she knows that.”
Jade looked up at him. “Meaning?”
“Maybe it stopped being about you a long time ago and became the thing that keeps her going from day to day,” he suggested. “And maybe she even realizes that herself, but is afraid to let it go, afraid to let herself care for you, knowing what the future might hold for all of us.”
“That’s . . .” Jade trailed off, thought for a moment, then finished, “. . . not the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Shit. Give me a minute here.” Needing to make a mental shift, she pulled herself up to sit cross- legged in the bed, with the sheet pulled over her legs. Pressing her fingertips to her temples, she said, “You’re right. She lost her family to war; it’s possible that she doesn’t want to run the risk of living through that sort of loss again. Although I’d like to point out that unless the Nightkeepers win the war, she wouldn’t have long to grieve, because we’re all going to be wiped out in thirty or so months.” Her stomach knotted on the thought, which suddenly seemed far more real than it had before.
His expression went grim. “Even if the Xibalbans and Banol Kax are defeated and the cycle of time restarts, there are going to be casualties. It’s only natural that we’re going to worry about each other more and more as time passes, and that we’re going to want to see the people we care about stay safe.”
Hope—her own personal demon—stirred to life within her. “Are you saying you’d rather I stay safely back behind the lines?” She didn’t want to have that debate . . . but she thought she wouldn’t mind hearing him make the pitch.
“We’re talking about you and Shandi.”
“Right.” Her heart took a little slide in her chest, though, warning that her emotions were far too close to the surface. In the space of a few days, she’d taken a lover who threatened to become too important to her. She’d been to hell and back, had her worldview shifted, and met her mother, though she hadn’t recognized it at the time. And now she’d found her magic. She supposed it was understandable that her normal defenses would be down. But that didn’t mean she was going to cave to the first hint of pressure. She was through being that woman.
She snagged a piece of French toast off the tray and took a bite, both because she was starving and to buy herself a moment before she said, “You think I should . . . what? Stay in the background because it’ll make her feel more secure? That’d be an illusion and you know it. Furthermore, it’s bullshit.” She didn’t know when or how, but she suddenly realized she’d come back around to the idea of wanting to fight. Or maybe she did know. Maybe it was the moment she’d accidentally leveled a showroom’s worth of furniture with ice magic. If that wasn’t a fighter’s talent, she didn’t know what was.
An image flashed in her mind’s eye: that of a dark-haired baby with clenched fists and a scowl on her face.
“That’s not what I’m saying at all.” Lucius paused, considering. Finally, he said, “There were a last few lines in the journal, at the very bottom, that I haven’t told anyone about. I felt like they were a private message between the journalist and the next Prophet, so I kept them to myself. Now that we know who the journalist was, I think maybe they were a message, but not for me. I think she may have meant it for you.”
The air trickled out of Jade’s lungs. Oh, Vennie. “What did it say?”
“I may be flubbing a word or two here, but the gist was: ‘Magic isn’t what’s going to save the world. Love is. So find someone to love, and tell them so. Better yet, show them your love by making them happy rather than miserable. Don’t be an idiot like I was.’ ”
Jade’s eyes filled. “She was talking about Joshua.”
“And you.”
“Maybe. Probably. And I’m sure she meant it at the time.” But an aching hollow opened up beneath her diaphragm.
Lucius tilted his head as he looked at her. She halfway expected him to hug her, soothe her. And a large part of her would’ve welcomed it, for too many reasons. He didn’t touch her, though, beyond the hand he still held. Instead, he said, “It wasn’t your fault the gods chose Shandi . . . and it wasn’t your mother’s fault she was seventeen.”
“I know that. Of course I know that. It’s just . . .” She paused, trying to sort through her thoughts. Finally, she said, “It’s like there are two versions of her inside my head now, two different thought chains pertaining to her. On one hand, I pity her. I picture this spoiled, ego-driven kid who wasn’t much different from half the teenagers I’ve ever met. My heart hurts at the thought of her being so alone, isolated from both her own family and her in- laws, convinced that she’d been chosen as the next Prophet but the others couldn’t see it. How can I blame her for that? We’re doing the same thing now, trying to interpret the will of the gods from old prophecies and and a few scattered clues. When I think of her going through the library spell alone, it makes me so sad for her. And then, when she came back out and tried to go home . . .” She trailed off as the hollowness inside her turned to an ache. “I want to weep for that child. I want to thank her for her sacrifice, and promise her that we won’t let her down. But at the same time, I’m so damned angry at her. I hate knowing that she took on adult responsibilities—a husband, a baby—and bailed when things stopped being fun. I saw too much of that in the outside world.” Exhaling, she stared at her free hand, which had formed a fist. “And I hate that I’m seeing my father as a victim. I don’t know him, but I know the type.” She had counseled people like him over and over again, albeit mostly women. “I don’t . . . Shit, I don’t know. I hate being inconsistent when it comes to her, but I can’t seem to stop myself from pitying the girl I think of as Vennie while resenting the person who was my mother, when her only sin, really, is not matching up to the image in my head.” She glanced at Lucius, expecting him to look baffled—or worse, concerned for her mental health.
Instead, he nodded. “I get that, I think. It’s Nightkeeper versus human. On one hand, she was following the writs, putting the greater good ahead of her family, and you know you should respect her, maybe even celebrate her, for that sacrifice. But on the other hand, you’re the family she left behind, which has to hurt. What’s more, everything you’re being told now suggests that this wasn’t a onetime thing; it was another in a long line of grandstanding stunts, which devalues the whole family thing even further. But you know what?”
She met his eyes, feeling somehow chastised yet relieved. “None of it matters worth a damn, because knowing about the past doesn’t change who I am. I’m not my mother or father, and I’m not Shandi. I’m me.”
“That’s right. And you’re a strong, wonderful woman
anyone should be proud to have as a daughter. . . .”
If she hadn’t known him so well, she would’ve assumed he’d finished his thought. Because she did know him, though, she tipped her head. “And?” Say it. Tell me you’re proud to be with me, that there’s more here than just the sex magic.
But instead, he rose to his feet. “And I’m proud of you for the iceball stunt, regardless of the property damage.” He lifted a shoulder. “It looks like we both got what we wanted, doesn’t it?”
She tried to see past his guarded expression, but couldn’t. Or maybe there wasn’t anything more to see? For a moment, she was tempted to ask him point-blank where he saw the two of them going, whether it was more for him than magic and fringe benefits. But she didn’t dare. If he’d been the same man as before, she might have, but he was different now, more independent and far harder to read. And what if he didn’t share her feelings? Skywatch was a small place, and her running to the university wasn’t an option anymore. Not with her talent starting to show itself. So instead of pushing him, or revealing herself, she nodded and found a faint smile. “Yeah. We got what we wanted.”
Something flashed across his expression, there and gone too quickly for her to parse. He said only, “Maybe I’ll see you later?”
Recognizing that “later” had become their shorthand for “are we still on for sex?” she nodded. “Yeah. See you later.” But her throat tightened on the words. And when he was gone, she burrowed back into bed . . . and pulled the covers over her head.
Lucius stalked back to his cottage, telling himself he’d done the right thing. He’d wanted to prod her into reconciling—or at least trying to reconcile—with her winikin. What was more, he’d managed to keep the conversation away from their relationship, which had become a suddenly thorny problem, and in a way he never would’ve anticipated.
He’d sensed the shift in her the previous morning, had known when things had gone from lust-only to tenderness, from “that feels good” to “what are you feeling?” A year ago, maybe even a few months ago, that would’ve had him doing cartwheels through the busted-up great room. Now, though, he didn’t know what to do with it. Did he care about her? Absolutely. But the more time he spent around the mated mage pairs, and the more recent events had forced him to think about family ties, the more he realized that in the past he’d done crushes and affection, occasionally even loyalty, but not love.
Final Prophecy 04: Demonkeepers Page 19