The Talon & the Blade

by Jasmine Silvera

  And yet.

  “I will dress now,” he said, standing before her and smelling of shaving cream and soap. “You will…”

  Two perfect creases on either side of the base of his abdomen and the long line of downy soft hair south of his navel disappeared into the crisp white towel wrapped around his hips. She was starting to feel better. She wanted to taste him.

  She gripped the cane with one hand to keep her fingers from trembling. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  His mouth formed a grim line. “If you need me?”

  “My windpipe is healed,” she said wryly. “I’ll shout.”

  He did not laugh. “If you crack your head open on the floor—”

  “O ye of little faith,” she said, crossing the bathroom to the counter in careful steps. “Better go sharpen your sword while you’re at it. I’ll be back in the sparring room in no time.”

  The ache in her hips had dulled under hot water, but now it crawled back up her spine to her shoulder blades. Soon her head would hurt enough to force her to draw the curtains and lie down. But she refused to allow herself to surrender to it. To give up one moment of standing like this, with him.

  She wanted to retreat under the scrutiny of his gaze. He saw her, clearer than anyone had since she was mortal. Still he nodded, accepting her effort, and showed his teeth again. “That’s the advantage of soul steel: it never dulls. But it is missing its sheath.”

  The man could light a fire with those ice-blue eyes.

  When the door closed behind him, she sank into a seat on the bench meant for storing towels. She pinched her mouth shut to avoid gasping and pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets and tried to pretend the tears were only from the pain.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  In the dark, Gregor navigated the suite by memory. He’d been gone most of the day. It had taken all his willpower to leave her alone. But after three weeks she hardly needed the cane, and she could use it as a bokken when needed. In a few days, she would no longer need that. Her blades lay on the kitchen table on their cushion of silk, the whetting stone close by. She was preparing herself.

  As he knew he should be.

  Instead, he slipped into the bathroom and closed the door before turning on the light, then shucking off sweat pants and the soaked T-shirt. She’d had a shower before bed; he could smell the lilac-and-honey scent of her shampoo, and the tiles were damp with her presence. He stepped under the hot water, feeling hours of sweat shed from his skin.

  Delaying his departure to help Raymond maintain stability during the cleanup had been reason enough for Azrael. And Gregor had taken on security detail and enforcement work until Ana’s recovery was certain. But Ana had already begun to take briefings from her staff. He would be redundant, and necromancers never tolerated those not avowed to them in their service for long. Taking Raymond’s vow again was out of the question.

  Gregor gave Ana his heart, in no uncertain terms, but with so many conditions, he didn’t fault her lack of reply. He wanted to say Come with me. Stay by my side and we’ll carve a space for us in all this madness, or at least if we fall we’ll be together.

  But no matter what he felt for her, she chose to serve Raymond. The necromancer had saved her life, given her purpose. Gregor envied her conviction, her loyalty, even as he must leave her behind. And one day, whether a year from now or five hundred, she would be cast as a die by her master, and she would fall. The ache in his chest made breathing difficult when he focused on it for too long.

  He pounded his chest with one fist, distracting himself with the physical pain of a rib splitting under the force. He bowed his head and willed himself back to the cold calculation that had guided him for so long. Like an old suit, it no longer fit. His heart strained for the freedom it had discovered. There was so much more to living now. He found himself ravening for it all.

  She stirred when he slid in beside her, molding herself to him. Her toes tickled his shins. “You smell like lilacs.”

  “I’ve run out of shampoo,” he said. “Rest now.”

  She squirmed. “I’ve had nothing but rest for weeks. I’m going to go insane if you tell me to rest one more time.”

  Unable to resist, he grinned in the darkness. “You should—”

  Her hand slapped over his mouth. The contact was electric. He parted his lips, tasting the skin before his teeth closed on the fleshy pad of her palm. The shiver running through her brought her skin into more intimate contact with him. His body responded, as it always did, but he released her hand and stroked the back of one shoulder blade with his fingertips.

  For three weeks she had allowed him to deny her advances. This time she turned to him, forcing him onto his back. When her thigh slid over his hips, wet heat against him, he bit his mouth and groaned.

  He gripped her hips in restraint.

  She pressed her lips over his. “Stop blocking me, Sticks, or I swear to the gods I will brain you with my cane.”

  Despite threats of violence, they joined in incremental slowness.

  He was right. She was probably not ready for this. But now that they’d embarked, he refused to rush and she refused to turn back. She let herself go in his hands. The long sweep of pleasure and release robbed her of everything but breath for a few moments of eternity.

  Sated, she rested her head on his chest, listening to the racing thump of his heart. She smiled, enjoying her effect on him. He settled her against him, soothing the skin along her spine with his fingertips.

  His voice drifted in the darkness, so quiet she went still in an effort to hear him better. “I will come for you, Ana. Whenever you need me. No matter what it means to Raymond or Azrael. I swear it.”

  It took me too long to understand the mistake I’d made, trying to force her to leave her home.

  Ana’s breath stopped, trapped in her throat. She propped herself up on one elbow. In the darkness she saw him in a way she thought no one had in a long time. The long, stern lines of his refined face and eyes the color of a battlefield sky. Swirling curls of emerald over the glowing light of his soul.

  A soul bound to a necromancer in service didn’t leave the body. Rather, the power of the necromancer they’d chosen encircled them, like an ethereal armor. Through the sparkling emerald, his life force shone through, as wild and bright and fierce as the eyes that did not look away from her face, even in the darkness.

  Cradled in his gaze, she felt parts of her long dormant stirring. Fetters she’d believed tied fast shook off their knots and unfurled hope like a vast sail.

  The fingers of her free hand slid into the wild black and silver of his hair, and she lowered her lips to his. For all the heat between them, the kiss was a tender benediction. When the soft searing pull of his mouth released, she spoke into the darkness between them, her hand settling over the beat of his heart. “I see you, Gregor Schwarz.”

  “I trust that you do,” he said, “Ana Gozen.”

  He kissed her again, a longer, lingering, more thorough exploration of what moved between them. When her breath left her in a soft sigh, he pulled her head back to his chest.

  “You know, in the old days, before politics and alliances,” she murmured, “when a man and a woman took to bed, after three nights they were considered married.”

  His laugh sent tremors through his rib cage below her ear.

  “I’m not sure the first time counts.”

  “Technically,” she asked, earning another laugh. “And I’m not sure how to account for the time we lost in Seattle.”

  His arms tightened around her, sending waves of delicious pressure from skin to skin. “By my count, this is night three.”

  Against expectation, when she closed her eyes, she slept.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  My name is Ana Gozen, and that is no longer the lie. It never had been.

  Ana’s cane tapped out a rhythm on the polished floors. It should have been comforting, regular as a metronome. But the closer she got to Raymond, t
he more it reminded her of the countdown on a bomb.

  Emotion battered her like surf on a rocky shore, leaving her belly a churning mass of foam-capped confusion. She could no more slow the hammering of her heart than speed her healing.

  When Gregor had asked, on rising, what her day held, she had been proud of the ease in the way the words left her throat.

  “Catching up on reports.” She’d leaned into the curve of his palm on her cheek. “Physical therapy. A nap. You?”

  “Raymond asked me to look in on a group of moirai in the fashion district,” he said. “He’d like to relocate them if possible. Too many humans who buy from them have been dying.”

  Her brows rose. A simple cleanup job, something hardly worthy of the attention of a hunter like Gregor. But it would keep him busy most of the day. Which gave her the time she needed.

  She waited until the guardhouse confirmed the Audi had left the compound before making a call to Raymond. “I need to see you.”

  His answer had been immediate. “I’m available for you anytime, Ana. You know that.”

  For a moment she wondered at the outcome of this meeting. Perhaps she should have waited for Gregor. But this was between her and Raymond. At least this way Gregor would never know she’d tried. He wouldn’t ask her to come with him and she wouldn’t offer to leave. He wouldn’t risk himself in a battle he didn’t know she’d lost.

  “Please have a seat,” Raymond said as the doors closed behind them with the same tug of his power that had opened them.

  “I’ll stand,” she said but rested her cane on a chair before his desk and set her fingers on the chairback.

  Raymond nodded, leaning on the edge of his desk. Five feet divided them, but it felt like an ocean.

  He had never been the most powerful of the Allegiance, and he had fought his way to ascendance with as much cunning as claw. He held his hand close and moved when he bore the least possible risk. Only those driven foolish with pride would begrudge a scavenger. Apex predators went extinct all the time. Scavengers survived. They had that in common at least.

  As a child, the way had been impressed on her as a path to a life beyond what birth would have allowed—into the life of a warrior whose greatest gift was the death he could give to his master. In the most ancient times, a samurai earned rank and title through proving themselves. In a child’s mind, she’d equated that as blind obedience. Loyalty first and always. Order. Duty. Respect.

  But beneath the code and the duty lay an instinct to survive. It had always been in her; it was what her teacher had seen long ago when she’d taken Ana under her tutelage. She learned and conditioned her body and mind to the path before her.

  Let them underestimate you. It will be their last mistake.

  Standing before Raymond now, knowledge knit together in her bones and her fear fell away. To follow the way was to understand the only thing under her control was effort, to give up concern for outcome. It was not the same as being willing to surrender her life to another’s whim.

  The lie she had mistaken for her identity fell away. She wanted to live. Not just survive. And if she could not do that, then she would not do either. Whether he accepted or denied her request, she would never belong to him again.

  Raymond watched her, his inscrutable obsidian eyes on her with all the focus of a raven examining a puzzle it hadn’t yet solved.

  “You came to see me,” she said, watching the flash of surprise disappear under his mask of implacable calm. “Why didn’t you stay?”

  “I had no reason to,” he said, angling his body away from her to look out the window. “Your progress exceeded the healer’s expectations. I confirmed it. That seemed enough.”

  A part of her that sometimes believed Raymond cared about her well-being or her happiness drew up at the confirmation otherwise. She remembered laughing around campfires at getting the upper hand on a group of arrogant outlaws who assumed an old man and a girl would be easy pickings. Later, standing at his back as he assumed his place in the Allegiance and took over his section of the world, she had felt a measure of pride and accomplishment.

  She had seen him take and discard more lovers than she could count. She’d vowed she would never be among them. But they might have been friends, comrades, if only… She folded her hands on the back of her chair and met his gaze.

  “I have served you for one hundred and twenty years,” she began without tremor or rancor. “I am grateful for the gifts you have given. But now I must request release. My contract—”

  “Your contract has been fulfilled a dozen times.” Raymond turned his back to her. “You were indispensable on the island. But I am strong enough to withstand challengers now. You are free to go.”

  A wave of anger crested over all the other emotion unleashed in the past weeks. She took a breath, then another. She had gotten what she wanted. The prudent thing to do would be to go. But the part of her content with survival had vanished. The warrior in her spoke instead.

  “I’ll have your vow that Gregor and I will be free to leave without molestation from your house,” she said. “Magical or otherwise.”

  Raymond half turned, revealing a three-quarters profile of his face. He smiled in the knife-edge sort of way that presaged danger for anyone on the receiving end. “So you have chosen Mr. Schwarz.”

  “If that’s what you think this is about, you don’t understand me at all.” Ana shook her head with a little huff. “I will have your word that Amelia and the Kwih-dich-chuh-ahtx will bear no retribution for their part in this.”

  His brows rose. “I always suspected Amelia Gray would not be so biddable. She grew up in your shadow.”

  She almost smiled. “You should see them more. They miss you.”

  His face shuttered.

  “In exchange,” Raymond began.

  Her heart stuttered. Would he remove her gift now, leave her in this half-healed state, or mortal? She hadn’t considered what he would take in exchange.

  “Your gifts, such as they have been given, are yours to keep. Death has forgotten your name, but be careful, you will no longer draw from me for healing. And you will keep the secrets of my past. As long as you live.”

  “Agreed,” Ana said, proud that her voice did not shake.

  Raymond nodded, looking back over his ocean.

  “Your vow, Lord Nightfeather.”

  “You have it,” he said after a moment, sealing the split between them once and for all.

  The connection loosened in her chest, sliding away. She hadn’t realized how heavy his constant contact had been. Freed, she turned away, gathered her cane, and prepared to leave.

  His words stopped her at the door. “I never imagined love would undo you, Ana.”

  “It hasn’t,” she replied. “It pieced me back together.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Gregor said, circling her with his guard up.

  She raised a brow. “Are you afraid of me, Sticks?”

  Today she carried the naganata like an extension of her arm, the only concession to her still less than optimal strength and speed. He kept his distance from the wide sweep of the bladed staff. He slipped forward, light strikes before sliding back out again, unscathed. Barely.

  Her brow slid higher. “Testing me?”

  She struck and he moved sideways, losing a swatch of his shirt over his rib cage to the edge of her wicked blade.

  “You were right,” she said, and for a moment the distraction of her words stilled him.

  He waited to see where she would take them.

  “In the car,” she elaborated. “About being blinded by duty.”

  She feinted, and he met the real blow that followed. This time she withdrew.

  “Dual forces are always pulling on us,” she said. “Order and chaos. Duty and desire.”

  His blood was up, his nostrils flaring and heart pounding with the promise of crossing blades with her. He enjoyed it marginally less than sharing her be
d.

  “The way makes much of duty. It gives a code of values: the debt of obligation one can never hope to repay. It is a way back to humanity for those of us who have had to step onto the path of war. The value of all over self.”

  Sweat beaded on her hairline and cheeks from exertion.

  “But we also have desires that must be defended, protected, fought for, even when they conflict with duty. The right wrong.”

  He grunted, fending off a surprisingly strong attack.

  She had him on the defense. “Do you still offer your heart?”

  She must have read the answer in his face. Her eyes lit and a little smile softened the hard line of her mouth.

  “My obligation to Raymond has been fulfilled,” she said. “It’s time I see to my own desire. My duty to self.”

  She disarmed him, pinning him to the floor with the blade against his throat. She withdrew, blade up.

  “That’s twice, you know,” she said, scowling at him as she leaned on the staff, panting a little.

  Gregor kicked the staff out from under her, sweeping the blade free as he rolled. He cradled her landing with his body, drawing her to the floor beneath him. He couldn’t stop sweeping her face with his gaze, searching for confirmation.

  “I spoke to Azrael,” she said and returned his glare. “Don’t look at me that way. You earned it for going to Raymond behind my back.”

  Gregor waited, hope beating its wings hard against his rib cage. “What did he say?”

  “That Gregor’s mate would always be welcome,” she said and gave a little laugh. “He seemed to indicate there might be a role for me there.”

  Gregor rested his head against her collarbones. He suddenly understood the human urge to thank an unseen god for an uncounted-upon favor.

  “I have a few things to see to here,” she said, hesitating. “And a stop to make on the way, but I hoped…”

  He could not speak. He knew he must, and soon, but for the moment his voice had abandoned him.