Lips Touch: Three Times(46)
Author: Laini Taylor

It had taken Mihai thirteen cycles of hathra, thirteen souls interknit with his animus, for the ashes of his soul to gather again inside of him, bringing his memories with them, piece by piece. His human hosts were more than family to him. They were a new tribe spread through the world, in London and Astrakhan and Jaffna and New York and elsewhere. And as was he, they were a new creation.

They would live for centuries and die as humans, souls intact, and so would Esme.

As Mihai watched, her eyes began to change again. The pale blue turned cloudy and then darkened. She gave a convulsive shudder and a wrenching scream that wore on and on until her throat was raw, and then she lay still, her eyes open and glazed — and brown. Mihai stroked her cheek and whispered into her ear. Not magic whispers, not Druj words, but only an English lullaby.

And behind him, the Queen of the Druj slowly turned her head.

Mihai looked up at her. Their eyes met. "Mihai," she whispered.

"Mahzarin," he said. "My love." His voice trembled.

A look of confusion swept over her face. Her gaze dropped to Esme, still cradled in Mihai’s arms. When she looked back up at Mihai, there was only bewilderment in her eyes.

Mihai rose to his knees and laid Esme carefully on the floor. "My Queen, I have much to tell you," he said. He could hear the fear in his own voice.

She had always been a wild font of power, even back when she had been his wife and had borne Arzu and Lilya. There had never been a more powerful sorceress; without her, indeed, their immortality would never have been possible. There would never have been Druj. Mahzarin was the heresiarch who had unraveled the mysteries. She had created the new magic that had angered the old god. And, Mihai thought, she would eventually remember it. He feared she would have just enough humanity now to grieve for what she’d done — but not enough to love him.

The beasts had been silenced by Esme’s last terrible scream. Now, as Mahzarin stared at Mihai in confusion, one let out a long moan outside the door. Mahzarin rose to her feet in a fluid motion, as if she had not sat still for fourteen years. A great cloud of dust fanned from her silken robes and her black hair.

On the floor, Esme tried to sit up.

Mihai looked from girl to woman. Two lovely, frightened faces, as different as night and day, gold and ivory, joined forever now, even if they didn’t realize it yet. Esme made a small sound like a kitten might make. Mihai was between them. His soul strained toward Mahzarin. He wanted only to drink in the sight of her, but he knelt and grasped Esme in his arms and helped her to sit up.

Mahzarin saw the silver eyelids on the wall and she took in the rot. Beasts bellowed at the door and she swung toward it. Mihai saw that fury was building in her as her memories sifted themselves into a kind of order. Her lips went white. She swept past Mihai to the door. He held the key in his pocket but she didn’t need it. With one whispered word she blew it off its hinges and it clattered down over the end of the broken bridge and into the chasm, taking beasts down with it. Their long, falling cries grew distant. Others still clung to the spire. Their arms flailed into the open doorway.

Mihai watched, awed. Esme clenched her eyes shut and cowered against him. Mahzarin stood like a wrathful goddess and whispered another word, snarled it, and the beasts seemed to be torn off the spire by some huge invisible hand, plucked like spiders and dropped. They fell away into the blackness, wailing. Mahzarin went out onto the step and saw her devastated citadel spread before her. Beasts clung everywhere, starved and moaning, stone crumbling beneath their long white arms. Mahzarin’s breath came fast. Her eyes took on the glassy sheen of fever. "Mihai," she growled, baring her fangs, and swung around to face him.

But he was gone and so was Esme. In the shafts of light the dust of fourteen years was spinning from their departure. The tabernacle was empty.

The Queen of the Druj let out a terrible howl that echoed through Tajbel. Far off in the forest, some of her scattered animal subjects heard and rejoiced. On the cliff walls and the stone stalks of the spires, the beasts cowered. They remembered her, but dimly. Their hunger was stronger than their fear. They kept on coming. In a rage she faced them, and in her pain and confusion her power burst forth like a hurricane, sweeping away everything in its path.

SEVENTEEN Waiting

A few weeks later, Mihai and Mab crossed paths in Yazad’s L library. She was coming out, he was going in, and he drew aside to let her pass, noticing with an ache of remorse how she didn’t even seem to see him. She was like a sleepwalker these days, and the haunted look in her eyes reminded him of the child she had been in Tajbel when she was a pet without a name. "I’m sorry," he whispered to her back, but she didn’t seem to hear.

He continued into the library, pulling Esme’s severed red braid out of his pocket. The girl was sitting in a deep chair by a window, staring out. Mihai uncoiled the braid and dangled it in her line of sight until she came back from whatever daydream or memory she had been wandering in and blinked. "My hair," she said sadly.

"It took you fourteen years to grow this," he said. "And you just left it hanging from a chandelier? Careless."

"I’m not," she protested. "My mother –"

"I know. And if you turn around, I’ll put it back."

"Really?" she asked, looking up at him.

Mihai smiled and nodded. Esme sat forward and turned her back to him. She heard him whisper, felt the gentlest stirring at the nape of her neck, and then, all at once, the weight of her hair was restored so her head tilted back with the suddenness of it, like a scale at the market when apples are dropped in. She reached back and there was her braid as if it had never been cut. "I already forgot how heavy it is," she said, unamazed by this small gift of magic.

She had recently been told she would live for hundreds of years. She would be difficult to amaze from now on.

She asked, "Are you going to put my mother’s back too?"

Mihai shook his head, letting his gaze drift out the window. "She doesn’t want me to touch her," he said.

Esme was quiet, watching him. She realized she still saw him through the Druj Queen’s memories. She remembered the wintery kiss as if her own lips had touched his, and she remembered other things too, much less pleasant things, like the feeling of trespassing in her mother’s soul. Yazad was going to help her misplace those memories. Hypnotism, he had said, holding up a crystal on a silver chain and smiling in the twinkling way he had that made everything seem like a grand adventure.

"Well, thanks," she said, running her fingers down the braid that was now draped over her shoulder.