Gameboard of the Gods (Age of X #1)(79)
Author: Richelle Mead

“I’m surprised you didn’t give him the apple just for that. He sounds like a kindred spirit.”

“I didn’t get a chance to mull it over,” said Justin, though he had the first genuine smile she’d seen since they got back. “Because then the smoky guy scoffed and said that he could do that and more, that he’d give me more women than I’d know what to do with.”

“I assume you told him the impossibility of that,” Mae interjected.

“You’re on a roll here, aren’t you? Never thought I’d have a heckler while I was pouring out my heart and soul.”

“Okay, sorry.” She had to remind herself of all that was at stake.

“The old guy said I’d only need one woman, and that the one he’d send me would mirror me in light and shadow, that I’d know her by a crown of stars and—” Justin faltered for a moment and then cleared his throat. “He said she’d be carved of fire and ice, that she’d scorch me in my bed and live and die for me outside of it.”

Mae would have accused him of embellishing the story, but with his memory, he was probably reciting the flowery words verbatim.

Justin took a deep breath. “I ended up giving him the apple.”

“Because you’re a romantic at heart?”

“Because of what he said next. He told me he could also save my life. And even though I was in the dream, I suddenly realized the room I was sleeping in was on fire. He took the apple and said, ‘Follow the ravens.’ I woke up in a burning room.”

Now they were back to the arson story. “And you escaped.”

He met her gaze. “You ever been in a room that’s on fire? Been surrounded by flames? It was so hot. Probably hotter than the woman who was going to scorch me in bed. The heat smothered me, and I was choking on smoke. I couldn’t see anything but sheets of fire. Pieces of the roof were starting to collapse…and that’s when I saw them. The ravens.”

“The ravens?”

“Yup. Two big black birds, hovering in the air. They flew over to a corner of the room, and I followed them. I don’t know. Maybe I just didn’t have any other choice. And there, I saw that part of the wall had collapsed and that there was a small opening to the outside. Mae, you have to believe me. I couldn’t see that spot from the bed. There was no way I could’ve known about it without those birds.” His eyes suddenly became wide and desperate.

“I believe you,” she said, not sure if she did.

That seemed to satisfy him, but he still looked anxious and frantic as he dove into the old memories. “I managed to get out of it, though my shirt caught on fire. I had to kind of flounder around to put it out on the ground, but I managed. Got a few burns in the process. I saw a specialist later who was able to fix most of them up without scarring—except this one.”

Justin unbuttoned his shirt and opened it to show her the side of his torso. Mae moved over beside him to look at a spot he pointed to just below his rib cage. There was a scar there, but it was barely visible, just a small mark of raised skin nearly the same color as the rest of him. She wasn’t even sure she would’ve seen it if she wasn’t looking for it. It was only a few centimeters long. Without thinking, she touched it with her fingertip and traced its odd shape. They weren’t perfectly straight, but she could make out a vertical line that had two shorter lines extending from its top at a downward diagonal. It reminded her of a slanting F. He tensed at her touch, and without thinking, she splayed her fingers and rested her palm on his skin. It was warm and smooth, and a jolt of memories went through her. She jerked back.

“Sorry.”

“No problem.” He buttoned the shirt back up.

There was a weird moment of awkwardness between them, and she tried to remember the narrative. “So you made it out of the fire?”

“Not exactly.” He fell back into the stride of his story. “It was just as bad outside. We were by some woods, and it was almost impossible to make anything out. It was the middle of the night, and there was no moon, like in the dream. The smoke didn’t help. There was more light near the front of the inn, but that’s where most of those zealots were. Apparently they’d had more followers than we realized in the initial arrest. I started moving blindly into the woods, but one of them saw me and yelled for his colleagues. I ran but couldn’t see where I was going and could hear them approaching. That’s when I started following the ravens.”

“The ones who showed you the opening in the wall.”

“Yes. It was weird too—and not just because I was following two birds that had appeared out of nowhere. I mean, it was dark out, and they were black, but somehow I knew where they were going. They took me through this crazy convoluted path in the woods, finding openings in the trees I never could have seen on my own. I lost the pursuit, and after what seemed like forever, I emerged out near this road…just as some police and fire trucks were coming by. And the ravens vanished.”

Mae didn’t know what to make of the raven part, but the rest was certainly amazing. “You got lucky.”

He nodded. “Very. They got me back to civilization and caught the remaining members. Bruno—my security guy—got fired. I went back to the office and wrote up the report on what had happened. I didn’t say anything about the dream…but I did mention the ravens.”

Mae couldn’t respond. Bad enough for a servitor to harbor beliefs in the supernatural. But to write them up in an official report?

“I described how they’d led me places I couldn’t have known about and how they appeared and disappeared out of thin air. I didn’t even try to find a reason for it. I just wrote, ‘Perhaps there are supernatural forces in the world we can’t rule out.’ Cornelia wrote those same words on her note in Panama.”

Mae made the connection. “The letter I delivered.”

“Yup. It was Cornelia’s sign that the offer to come back was authentic. She wasn’t very happy about it at the time of the report, though. You wouldn’t believe all the shit I got from others. A servitor acknowledging something supernatural in an official report. My whole job is to show that stuff is make-believe and that those who subscribe to it are deluded. They berated me to redact it. They threw all sorts of theories at me, about how I’d mistaken things in the dark or that the ravens were just products of my subconscious showing me things I already knew. It would’ve been easy to delete it too. One line, Mae. One line, and it would’ve all gone away. But I just couldn’t do it.”