by White, Gwynn
“Don’t look at me.” Coit held up his hands as if warding me off. “I’d wish for more wishes.”
“I haven’t been here long enough to learn much about magical language,” Rafe said. “Not more than I knew from fairy tales back home. It sounds…well, sound, to me.”
I turned to face the djinni. He was watching me with a slight twinkle in his eyes. I hoped that didn’t mean I had just done something really stupid.
“Is that your wish?” he asked.
I sent tendrils of my own magic questing out trying to trace any possible lines of a misspelling. But the Rift made tracing out futures an uncertain endeavor at best. In the end, I simply had to trust that my instinct to protect the children was the right one.
I nodded once, firmly. “That is my wish.”
The djinni half-closed his eyes, waved one hand lazily in a circle, and brought his hand out with a flourish.
All the children, Fatima, and Byron, disappeared in the blink of an eye.
“Holy shit.” Coit shook his head and stared around, turning around to look around him.
My stomach sank. For the djinni to have given in that easily, I must’ve missed something. There must have been something terrible he could have done to the children despite my careful wording.
Truth be told, I could think of several things myself, now that I was no longer under pressure.
“Where did you send them?” I asked Zehr.
He pursed his lips as he stared down at me. “First, tell me this: what benefit did you gain by using one of your wishes for the children?”
I blinked in confusion and shook my head. “None.”
“Absolutely no benefit to you whatsoever?”
“Well, I suppose I get the benefit of not being guilt-ridden over the deaths of half a dozen children on my watch. I suppose that counts for something.”
The djinni’s frown stayed in place, but he waved his hand in the air and snapped once. An image hovered in the air before us for just a moment: the children and adults piling into the boat we’d left down by the river, then pushing off the embankment and into the water.
Safe.
“Was that real?” Rafe asked, subdued.
“Absolutely,” the djinni replied—and although I wasn’t certain why, I believed him completely.
I nodded. “Thank you.” I turned to the others. “Ready?”
They both nodded.
“Good. Then let’s move.”
We all headed toward the exit that would lead us out and deeper into the heart of the city, toward the Temple and the Rift.
19
Why are you with us?”
I sat down next to Rafe after we’d made camp that evening in yet another abandoned building. “I mean, really? What are you going to the Rift for?”
He glanced over at the other men as they worked to set up a campfire. “I can’t go home.” He opened his hands as he looked down his body, gesturing to himself. “Not like this. As far as I know, there aren’t really any werewolves in London in my part of the Riftverse. If I go home, I’m a monster.”
“You’re a monster here,” I pointed out. “Where you are doesn’t change your nature.”
“No, but it can change how I perceive it.” Again, he glanced around our makeshift campsite. “Here, I have a purpose. It might not be much of one—but I’m a….” He paused. “I’m like a coyote on the border back home—they’re the ones who help people get out of one country and into another one, help them try to find a better life. I’m like that. I get people to the Rift, I get them away from the Rift, I move them past guards and gangs, I take them where they want to go. Sometimes, I help them find what they want to be.”
“And is that enough?”
He shrugged. “I can’t go home. I will never see my family again, never spend time with my friends from before. Not while I’m like this. The very least I can find it in my heart to do is help other people get back to their homes, their families.”
I reached out and hooked my pinky with his.
“Whatever happens on our quest, if I survive, you’ll always have a place with me,” I said.
“I don’t know if I could stay away from you if I tried.” The words sounded harsher than his tone made them seem. He smiled gently as he gazed into my eyes. “For as long as the Rift is here, I will help people find it, help them escape it. But in between those times, it would be nice to have a home to come back to.”
I nodded. “Always.”
He leaned down and butterflied a gentle kiss across my lips.
That’s when I realized something about our small group.
We are all Rift-cursed.
There was something important in that awareness—something I needed to hold on to. But the voice of the Rift echoing underneath the night sounds of this destroyed city held its whisper against my skull, and I could not think beyond it.
Cursedcursedcursedcursed.
Even when I didn’t hear the words, I could hear the echoes of it hammering against my skull.
The closer we got to the Rift, the more the words writhed in my brain, like tiny parasites eating their way through from the inside out.
I pressed the heels of my hands to my forehead and moaned.
“Are you ill?” Azar asked, brushing his heated fingertips across my temples. I hadn’t seen him move toward me, and yet there he was, taking over smoothly as Rafe moved away from me to check on the rest of our camp.
Warmth from his hands soaked into my skin, calming the pounding in my head.
“That feels heavenly,” I whispered.
His laugh was quiet. “That’s a word I hear only rarely used to describe my kind,” he said.
“You should hear it more often.” I leaned onto his shoulder and he wrapped his arm around me, his inherent heat warding off evening chill.
The Rift whispered to me, telling me what I needed to do.
It whispered to Azar, too, I think.
I could almost hear his thoughts as I stood up and slipped away from the camp.
20
He chased after me, following my scent like it was his destiny. I was an obsession for him right now, and all Azar could think about was catching up to me.
His desire was visceral, instinctual, carnal, and it blazed out of him in waves of heat as he slipped into his fire-demon form, leaving his clothes in an untidy pile on the ground behind him.
But I was already gone, racing toward the one place I knew we could be entirely alone.
He finally caught up with me just as I was slowing down near the ruins of the building we’d stopped in the night before. He shifted back into his human form seamlessly, though it seemed like he never stopped moving towards me.
He stood before me, desire rolling off him in waves so hot I could see them shimmering in the air.
His lips met mine in a heated kiss, and soon, his hand was buried in my hair while his other arm pulled me closer. My own arms twined around his neck, my heart quickening in my chest, beating violently against my rib cage.
I managed to break free for a moment, just to catch my breath.
“You know what this means, right? You’ll be bound to me. Like the wolf.”
“Yes.” His voice raspy with need, Azar nodded in response and I reached for him, pulling him in to kiss me again.
I realized my hands were shaking as I touched him. In that moment, I was convinced I’d never been so frenzied, so overwhelmingly desperate to be with someone before.
I didn’t know if it was my own desire or the Rift’s.
Or maybe both.
But I didn’t care.
Now, with no reason to hold back, we were free to tear into each other.
Sex with a fire-demon—it was something I’d never considered.
I should have.
God, it was hot.
Both metaphorically and physically.
Everywhere he touched me, he left red marks on my pale skin—not hot enough to blister, but enough to remind me he�
�d been there.
His lips burned a path down my neck, his tongue flicking against the hollow at the base of my throat. I tilted my head back against the wall to give him even more access.
When he moved back up toward my mouth, I moaned at the loss of his heat on my neck. He captured my lips with his, swallowing the sound. His tongue swirled in my mouth, filling it with the steam of our kiss.
When he pulled away enough to gaze at me for a moment, his irises flashed orange, flames dancing behind them, carefully restrained to keep from hurting me, even as he pressed every part of his body against me.
Holding his gaze with mine, I pushed him back gently, giving myself enough room to unbutton my shirt and shrug it off, then drop my pants and kick them to one side.
The fire-demon’s eyes glowed.
“You are beautiful,” he said, his accent thicker with passion.
“As are you.” His slender height was strong, muscled.
With one hand, I reached out and touched his chest. It should have scorched my hand from the heat rolling off him, but it simply tingled, sending chills racing up through my arm and down into that magical core of me—the part of me that I’d shared so far with only Rafe.
But I knew, instinctively, that Azar’s touch would not burn away Rafe’s connection to me. That bond could not be destroyed by fire.
I had a space for each of them.
Almost reverently, Azar reached out to touch my cheek, his hands setting the passion smoldering within me ablaze.
The wall behind me was cool and slightly rough against my bare back, a contrast to the burning fire-demon before me.
Then he let the demon out—not enough to hurt me, not enough to burn.
But enough to almost make me wish for that—to wish for the power of fire to burn me to ashes, that I might rise again like a phoenix.
At the thought, the sound of the Rift echoed through me, opening me up to Azar’s fire, even as it opened him, and we both lost control.
I lost track of the magical threads burning through me, as the power flew apart, searing us together.
Afterward, I realized my body glowed with a slight orange light—the flame of our connection flickering beneath my skin.
“You’re mine,” I whispered.
“I am,” he said, his voice contented.
“And I will never let you be hurt, if I can do anything to help it.”
Azar laughed lightly and kissed me again. “I believe you.”
For a moment, the Rift was quiet within me.
No one made any comments when we returned to the campsite. But when I spooled a line of magic back into my hand, I could see threads of power tying me to both Rafe and Azar.
And from the way they both nodded when I glanced at them, they recognized the connections, too.
As I closed my eyes that night, the Rift flowed through me like a whisper rather than a hammer.
But I knew its voice would grow louder, more insistent, the longer I tried to ignore it.
You must have them all, it whispered to me.
All four.
21
We should have the genie just, like, wish us to the Rift,” Coit complained as we broke camp that next morning.
Even I had to admit that the thought was tempting. But I knew we couldn’t use my wishes once the djinni had made his discontent with his bondage clear.
Sure, we could get him to grant us another wish or even two.
But the magical debt we would incur would be much worse than anything we now faced.
The Rift would make sure of that. I knew it as surely as I knew that Rafe and Azar were mine, that I could draw upon their power when it came time to use my own magic.
With a grim expression, Zehr made to follow us back into the ruined streets of Brochan City.
I paused, biting my lip. “Wait, everyone.” The four men I traveled with stopped, drawing back in toward the shelter we’d used the night before.
Turning to Zehr, I took his hands in mine, gazing deep into his eyes. “Zehr, I set you free from your bondage.”
He blinked at me. “You don’t have that power.”
My lips tilted up in a slight smile. “I’ve been rehearsing this one.” The Rift whispered its approval through me. “Zehr, I wish for your complete freedom from the bondage that has kept you tied to the lamp and to those who would compel wishes from you.”
“You have two more wishes,” he said warily. “Are you certain this is the wish you make?”
“I am.”
His hands fell away to his sides, as if freed from invisible bonds. He stared at them blankly for a moment.
“I can go?” he asked, sounding stunned.
I dropped my pack to the ground and pulled the lamp out of it. Without its connection to Zehr’s magical geas, it no longer sparkled and drew me to it.
But Zehr did. His blue skin flickered with magic, its pull as strong as the bottle’s had been before.
“Here,” I said, handing the lamp to him. “You may go where you will. Where you wish.”
“And if I do not stay with you, how can I repay my debt to you?”
I tilted my head and studied him for a long moment. Then I shrugged. “That’s for you to decide. As far as I’m concerned, there is no debt.” I closed my eyes and spun a tiny thread of magic around us, testing. “The magic is satisfied.” I opened my eyes. “Whether or not you will ever be content that you’ve done enough? That’s up to you.”
Zehr stared at the ornate lamp in his hands, and then, with one sudden motion, he dashed it to the ground, where it shattered into a million pieces.
He rolled his hand in front of him in a bow almost as elaborate as the lamp had been. “I give you my gratitude willingly—and for as long as we should travel together, until our paths diverge, I give you my loyalty and protection.”
His words blew through me like a blast of air blowing away old dust, picking up the thread of connection and carrying it aloft to him, where he made another of his complex hand gestures and drew it into himself.
“And thus I join your quest,” he said quietly.
I simply nodded and struck out again.
The entire thing couldn’t have taken more than a moment or two—and yet it shook me, bound me, held me as tightly as the sexual connections I had made with Rafe and Azar.
Not all love is physical, the Rift whispered to me.
So we traveled through that shattered city, over crushed buildings, across the derelict cityscape toward the Rift.
Always toward the Rift, as if it exerted its own gravity, drawing us ever closer.
Until finally, we reached it—a gaping hole in the world.
Part III
Spirit
22
I didn’t quite have the nerve to enter the church immediately, however.
I heard the Rift whispering to me, its meaning lost in the repetition of words, of power undefined and incomplete.
Love, desire, hate, need, trust.
Although it still offered an entrance, the building no longer contained the Rift. That hole in the world erupted in power, blowing the roof away. I imagined flying apart in the shower of shingles and rock.
Now, the Rift arced up and away, like a white, sparking rainbow that never landed.
We weren’t the only ones there.
The power it shot out misted down, as well. There were pilgrims who came simply to walk through that mist, determined to take away some of its power.
And sometimes the Rift allowed it.
All around the church, people gathered in small groups.
I began to truly understand the things the Rift had been whispering to me.
“The slavers don’t often get this close,” Rafe said as I came to a stop about ten feet from the door.
“No,” Zehr said. “The Rift considers all pilgrims its own. Sometimes a slaver will grow bold and begin taking victims from near Rift’s End. But that doesn’t last long.”
I glanced up at the djinni
. “What does the Rift do?”
His pale blue, aristocratic face turned grim. “I’ve seen it destroy men, explode them with a single lash of its power. I’ve also seen it lift them up and take them in, sucking them through to who knows what universe.”
That certainly squared with my sense of the Rift. It was a jealous God, petty and capricious and desiring to be worshiped and loved. Anyone who came to its shores hoping to profit from the pain of others without making an appropriate sacrifice to the Rift was likely to find himself at the mercy of the Rift’s wrath.
That Zehr’s reminder of that came at the moment we arrived seemed like some kind of divine providence. I took two steps toward the entrance of the church, my entourage of men following me. When I stopped they stepped up to flank me in a protective semicircle, two to each side.
And I fell in.
I moved through Rift-dreams, dipping in and out of them faster and faster, no longer even sure who I was in any of them.
23
Trade winds. That’s what I remembered from the guidebook I had ordered from my favorite online bookstore. Part of what made the climate so hospitable was the mild temperature, aided by year-round trade winds cooling down the West Indies island. Rummaging around inside the oversized beach bag I was using as a carry-all, I pulled the book out, flipping once again through its already dog-eared and worn pages.
Trade winds were part of what had made the island such a popular colonial shipping point, too. As much as I looked forward to visiting the old sugar mills that dotted the island, my stomach turned at the thought of the slavery that had both produced and stemmed from the sugar cane trade.
The quality of the silence surrounding me made Ava look up from the book. The driver was gone.
Bathroom break, maybe?
Not here, the Rift whispered to me.
No. Move on, I agreed.
24
Ever since that one night three years ago, Jane’s motto had apparently been the farther away the better, at least when it came to me.