Dreams of Gods & Monsters(116)
Author: Laini Taylor

It was the most she’d spoken since he found her in the entrance cavern, so disarmingly tongue-tied, and again Ziri found himself pulled to watch her, half forgetting the stormhunter and the mystery of a seraph flying at its side. “How many?” he asked.

“None.”

“I’m glad.”

“Me, too.”

He realized, with a pang of deep sorrow, that though she was directly upwind of him, and the spice scent of her was as bright to his senses as a color, he could no longer detect the other—the secret perfume, so fragile, that hid within it. He had breathed it while carrying her in his arms, but his Kirin senses were duller than the Wolf’s had been, and it was lost to him now. Well, he would always remember that it was there. That was something. Being the Wolf had given him that, at least.

They held their position and watched in silence as the stormhunter went on tilting and wheeling, the angel keeping pace with it, sometimes pulling ahead, sometimes falling behind.

“Come on,” said Liraz, when it began to put distance between them, heading north. “Let’s follow them.”

They did, and saw that their path was erratic, carrying them near to cliff faces where the wind funneled and charged, and then up to circle around a minor peak, threading through a terrain of clouds. Eventually they spun and headed, once more, toward Liraz and Ziri.

They watched the stormhunter come, and it was very near before Ziri realized that the figure flying along with it was not its only company. There were figures riding it. He hadn’t noticed them before because, not being seraphim, they didn’t give off light.

“Is that—?” he began, dumbfounded.

“I think it is,” breathed Liraz.

It was. And, catching sight of Liraz and Ziri, they gave sharp cries in their strange human language. Ziri could, of course, not understand what they said, but the note of victory was plain, as was the pure, delirious joy.

And who could blame them for it? Mik and Zuzana had tamed a stormhunter. They were going to be legends.

80

A CHOICE

Akiva didn’t know what was happening to him. He was in the bath cavern, heart pounding, waiting for Karou.

And then he wasn’t.

Time stuttered.

“There is the past, and there is the future,” he had said to his brothers and sisters not long ago. “The present is never more than the single second dividing one from the other.”

He’d been wrong. There was only the present, and it was infinite. The past and the future were just blinders we wore so that infinity wouldn’t drive us mad.

What was happening to him?

He had lost awareness of his body. He was inside that realm of mind, the private universe, the infinite sphere of himself where he went to work magic, but he hadn’t come here of his own accord, and couldn’t rise back out.

Had he been put here?

There was a sense of presence. A feeling that voices were passing just out of reach. He couldn’t hear them. He only felt them as ripples skimming at the surface of his awareness. As the drag of fingers on the far side of silk. They were in discord.

Energies vied. Not his own.

His own was coiled, clenched. This was what he knew, this was all he knew: He was not where he needed to be. Karou would come and he wouldn’t be there. Perhaps it had happened already. Time had come unspooled. Had it been ten minutes? Hours? It didn’t matter. Focus. There was only the present. You had only to open your eyes in the right direction to be whenever you wished.

But there were an infinite number of directions and no compass, and it didn’t matter because Akiva couldn’t open his eyes. He was pressed deep. Contained. This was being done to him.

He was not where he needed to be. He was taken. The impotence of it, and at a moment when his hope had been so full he couldn’t contain it. To be crushed down now and robbed of will, when Karou was waiting for him, when they had finally come to a moment that could be just theirs. It was unbearable.

So Akiva didn’t bear it. He pushed.

At once, the thunder. Thunder as a weapon, thunder in his head. He recoiled from it, but not for long. Thunder is sound, not barrier. If that was all that was holding him, then he wasn’t truly held. He gathered every fiber of his strength into a silent roar and pushed, and it exploded in him, merciless, but he was explosive, too, and unflinching.

And he was through it, past it, into silence and the aftershock colors of his violent passage, and… his self. He felt himself. His edges where they pressed on rock. He was lying on the ground, and it was not into silence that he had spilled, but only into a pause between voices, the air taut with the tug of their discord.

“It’s the wrong way.”

It was a woman’s voice, strange to him, its inflections softer than the Seraphic he knew, though not altogether unfamiliar.

“We’ve wasted enough time here.” Sharper, this voice, and younger. Also a woman. “Should I have let him keep his appointment? Do you think it would be easier for him to leave after having his taste of her?”

“His taste? He’s in love, Scarab. You must let him choose.”

“There is no choice.”

“There is. You’re making it.”

“By letting him live? I should think you’d be glad.”

“I am.” A sigh. “But it must be his decision, can’t you see that? Or he’ll always be your enemy.”

“Don’t tempt me, old woman. Do you know what I could do with an enemy like that?”

Another silence fell and echoed, dissonant with shock. Akiva understood that they were speaking of him, but that was all he understood. What choice? What enemy?

Scarab, the one was called. There was something there. Something he should know.

When the other spoke, her voice was thin, rising out of the pit of her shock. “Make a harp string of him, is that what you mean? Is that what you would do with my grandson?”

Grandson. Only for a moment, hearing this, did Akiva think, It isn’t me, then, that they’re discussing. He was no one’s grandson. He was a bastard. He was—

“Only if I had to.”

“How could you possibly have to?” This came out as a cry. “It’s a dark thing that you’ve begun, Scarab. You must end it. That isn’t who we are. We’re not warriors—”

“We should be.”

Concussions of shock.

“We were,” continued Scarab. There was a tone of stubbornness in her, and the willfulness of youth clashing with age. “And we will be again.”