Born of Ashes (Guardians of Ascension #4)(97)
Author: Caris Roane

“Do you want to call her?”

“Yes.” He felt her nod against him.

He drew his Epic from the deep pocket of his kilt and handed it to Fiona. She sighed heavily as she put in Parisa’s number. She looked up at him. She had tears in her eyes.

“Hi, it’s me,” Fiona said. “No, everything’s fine. Better than fine.” She paused, drawing in another breath. “We got him, Parisa. We got the monster.”

Jean-Pierre was still holding his warrior phone next to his ear. Jeannie came back online. “You there?”

“Oui.”

“The doctor put the head in the crematorium personally. This boy is toast. He’s only waiting now for the rest of the corpse. Shall I take it?”

“I have a favor to ask.”

“Anything, duhuro.”

“The Militia Warriors have a different morgue, non?”

“That’s right. Are you thinking what I’m thinking you’re thinking?”

He smiled, a little. “That makes no sense to me. But I would like you to send the remainder of Rith’s body to a different morgue, to Militia HQ morgue. Will you do that?”

“With pleasure. Let me make the arrangements. Hold on.”

He looked down at Fiona, who held the phone loosely in her hand. Her shoulders shook. He turned into her and gathered her into his arms, though awkwardly because he still had his warrior phone pressed to his ear. She sobbed against his chest. With one eye on Rith’s remains, he held her tight.

At last, Jeannie came back on. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

“This will be a complete cleanup job. Close your peepers.” He warned Fiona then closed his eyes.

“Ready,” he said.

The flash of light behind his eyelids was blinding, but when he opened his eyes Rith, and all his blood, was just gone. “Thank you, Jeannie.”

“My pleasure. Call if you need me.”

He put his phone away. “It is over. At long last, it is over.”

Fiona pulled back to look up at him. Her face was streaked and her nose red but she had never looked more beautiful. She was alive and she was safe. “I asked Parisa to join us here.”

“And is she coming? Now?”

“Yes. Antony as well. Parisa was held captive here for three months and this was … my home, for over a century.”

“This is good,” Jean-Pierre said. “I suppose Alison would call this closure.”

Fiona offered a faint curve of her lips as she said, “Oui.”

Review the past,

Learn the lessons,

Forgive the self,

Forgive others,

Dwell in peace.

—Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth

Chapter 21

Fiona looked up at the kitchen ceiling. She had never heard rain on the house before, ever. Rith’s creation of mist had prevented the property from experiencing any extreme of weather.

A movement of air, and suddenly Parisa and Antony materialized. Because she still had her arm around Jean-Pierre, she felt his sudden tensing then release.

“Allô, Medichi. Parisa.”

Fiona put her fingers to her chin. Her lips quivered. There she was, the woman, her friend, who had made it possible for Fiona to have a new life. Her heart was suddenly so full, unbearably full, and more tears tracked down her cheeks.

“Fiona,” Parisa cried. “Is it true? Is it really true?”

Fiona nodded. “Yes, he’s dead.”

Parisa’s shoulders fell as she released a sigh. “Thank God. He can’t hurt anyone else. Ever.”

Fiona went to Parisa and took her in a tight embrace. Parisa held her equally as hard. All Fiona could think to say was “Thank you,” over and over.

Parisa responded, “Of course. Of course. Of course.”

Finally she drew back, folded tissues into her hands, and gave a couple to Fiona. She dabbed at her eyes and her face. “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. But I want to know everything about your life here. Would you be willing to share that with me?”

At first, Fiona thought it would be impossible, that she felt too much, that her wounds were still too raw. But after a moment’s consideration, she said, “If you’ll tell me about yours.”

“I want to do that,” Parisa said, nodding. “I think it would be a good thing … for both of us.”

So for the next hour, Fiona walked through the house with Parisa. She took her into the basement and told her stories about the women she’d known who had died there. Afterward, climbing the stairs, Parisa showed her the perfect bedroom in which she had lived out her three months of captivity.

“It hardly seems like anything,” Parisa said, “compared with what you went through.”

Fiona let her gaze drift over the four-poster bed and the silk quilted coverlet. “I think at least fifty of the slaves died before the three-month mark. Don’t minimize the time of your captivity. Slavery is slavery.”

Parisa looked at her. “Do you know what I think? I think I was brought here to make sure you got home. That’s what I think.”

“I would never wish such a fate on anyone, but I will always be grateful that I met you, no matter what the circumstances.”

Turning, she saw that the rain had stopped. In Burma, it was morning. Through the windows she could see that the sun sparkled on the wet feathery leaves of the tamarind tree.

“Come outside with me.”

She took Parisa out into the wet garden. For a long moment, they stood shoulder-to-shoulder and stared at the teak bench beneath the enormous old tree where they had met for the first time just five months ago.

“I sat there for hours,” Parisa said, “the first day of my abduction because Rith told me to. I was afraid to move, afraid to do anything. No one came to me, to talk to me, to tell me what was expected of me.

“When I went in search of Rith, he punished me for my disobedience, piercing my mind and inflicting pain, such pain. How easily he subdued me with that pain. I hated how completely passive I was all those months.”

“Try decades.”

Parisa took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “You weren’t passive the day I met you,” she said, smiling. “That day, you fought Rith. I always wondered, why that day?”

“I thought I told you.”

Parisa shook her head.

Fiona drew in a deep breath. “It was Carolyn’s birthday and I had thought her long dead. It never occurred to me that she might have ascended. But that day, the fact that I had been separated from my daughter, from both my children, from my husband, all that I knew as life in Boston, that I had been abducted and used for such a horrible reason—it all crashed down on me. Carolyn would have been a hundred and fifteen.” She smiled. “And so she is, but I still have you to thank for everything. Without you and Antony, I would still be here, in this place, serving up an elixir that sustains Greaves’s army.”