“Good book?” she said, drawing his attention before her thought process ran any further aground on itself.
His head came up, though it took him a second to pull himself out of the written world and refocus on her. When he did, his lips curved in a long, slow smile. “Not as useful as I would’ve liked.” He flashed her the cover as he closed the book and set it aside; it was one of the histories of the star bloodline that she had skimmed through earlier and bypassed as being too superficial to be of any real use. “You look better.”
“I’m not covered in frost and wearing soaked jeans and an expression of terror, you mean.” Even saying it brought a burst of pride laced with deeper, less sure emotions.
“Something like that.” He took her hand, idly turning it so they could both see her forearm, where the scribe’s mark was unchanged, even though everything was different. “Big day.”
“Yeah.” The grin felt like it lit her from the inside out. “I’ve got magic.”
“I never doubted it.”
They sat like that for a moment, and Jade found her thoughts going not to the magic, but to what had happened just before she cast the spell. “I talked to Shandi again. She told me more about what happened right before the massacre.”
“More about your mother?”
“Not directly.” Before she realized she was going to, that she needed to, she was telling him about Shandi’s revelation, how it explained so much, yet didn’t give her any options. The words spilled out of her, tumbling over one another. “I’m not responsible for the will of the gods,” she finished, “and I can’t undo the bond between us. Or maybe I could, but to what end? Denny and Samxel are gone, just like my parents are gone. Shandi—” She broke off, frustrated. “I don’t know what to say to her. She’s been harboring a grudge for twenty-six years. It seems inane somehow to say that I’m sorry for her loss. More, if you ask me what I really think, it’s that she needs to grow up and get over it already. It wasn’t my fault, and blaming me for it is . . . pointless.”
“Shandi’s not stupid. I have a feeling she knows that.”
Jade looked up at him. “Meaning?”
“Maybe it stopped being about you a long time ago and became the thing that keeps her going from day to day,” he suggested. “And maybe she even realizes that herself, but is afraid to let it go, afraid to let herself care for you, knowing what the future might hold for all of us.”
“That’s . . .” Jade trailed off, thought for a moment, then finished, “. . . not the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Shit. Give me a minute here.” Needing to make a mental shift, she pulled herself up to sit cross- legged in the bed, with the sheet pulled over her legs. Pressing her fingertips to her temples, she said, “You’re right. She lost her family to war; it’s possible that she doesn’t want to run the risk of living through that sort of loss again. Although I’d like to point out that unless the Nightkeepers
win
the war, she wouldn’t have long to grieve, because we’re all going to be wiped out in thirty or so months.” Her stomach knotted on the thought, which suddenly seemed far more real than it had before.
His expression went grim. “Even if the Xibalbans and
Banol Kax
are defeated and the cycle of time restarts, there are going to be casualties. It’s only natural that we’re going to worry about each other more and more as time passes, and that we’re going to want to see the people we care about stay safe.”
Hope—her own personal demon—stirred to life within her. “Are you saying you’d rather I stay safely back behind the lines?” She didn’t want to have that debate . . . but she thought she wouldn’t mind hearing him make the pitch.
“We’re talking about you and Shandi.”
“Right.” Her heart took a little slide in her chest, though, warning that her emotions were far too close to the surface. In the space of a few days, she’d taken a lover who threatened to become too important to her. She’d been to hell and back, had her worldview shifted, and met her mother, though she hadn’t recognized it at the time. And now she’d found her magic. She supposed it was understandable that her normal defenses would be down. But that didn’t mean she was going to cave to the first hint of pressure. She was through being that woman.
She snagged a piece of French toast off the tray and took a bite, both because she was starving and to buy herself a moment before she said, “You think I should . . . what? Stay in the background because it’ll make her feel more secure? That’d be an illusion and you know it. Furthermore, it’s bullshit.” She didn’t know when or how, but she suddenly realized she’d come back around to the idea of wanting to fight. Or maybe she did know. Maybe it was the moment she’d accidentally leveled a showroom’s worth of furniture with ice magic. If that wasn’t a fighter’s talent, she didn’t know what was.
An image flashed in her mind’s eye: that of a dark-haired baby with clenched fists and a scowl on her face.
“That’s not what I’m saying at all.” Lucius paused, considering. Finally, he said, “There were a last few lines in the journal, at the very bottom, that I haven’t told anyone about. I felt like they were a private message between the journalist and the next Prophet, so I kept them to myself. Now that we know who the journalist was, I think maybe they
were
a message, but not for me. I think she may have meant it for you.”
The air trickled out of Jade’s lungs.
Oh, Vennie
. “What did it say?”
“I may be flubbing a word or two here, but the gist was: ‘Magic isn’t what’s going to save the world. Love is. So find someone to love, and tell them so. Better yet, show them your love by making them happy rather than miserable. Don’t be an idiot like I was.’ ”
Jade’s eyes filled. “She was talking about Joshua.”
“And you.”
“Maybe. Probably. And I’m sure she meant it at the time.” But an aching hollow opened up beneath her diaphragm.
Lucius tilted his head as he looked at her. She halfway expected him to hug her, soothe her. And a large part of her would’ve welcomed it, for too many reasons. He didn’t touch her, though, beyond the hand he still held. Instead, he said, “It wasn’t your fault the gods chose Shandi . . . and it wasn’t your mother’s fault she was seventeen.”
“I know that. Of course I know that. It’s just . . .” She paused, trying to sort through her thoughts. Finally, she said, “It’s like there are two versions of her inside my head now, two different thought chains pertaining to her. On one hand, I pity her. I picture this spoiled, ego-driven kid who wasn’t much different from half the teenagers I’ve ever met. My heart hurts at the thought of her being so alone, isolated from both her own family and her in- laws, convinced that she’d been chosen as the next Prophet but the others couldn’t see it. How can I blame her for that? We’re doing the same thing now, trying to interpret the will of the gods from old prophecies and and a few scattered clues. When I think of her going through the library spell alone, it makes me so sad for her. And then, when she came back out and tried to go home . . .” She trailed off as the hollowness inside her turned to an ache. “I want to weep for that child. I want to thank her for her sacrifice, and promise her that we won’t let her down. But at the same time, I’m so damned
angry
at her. I hate knowing that she took on adult responsibilities—a husband, a baby—and bailed when things stopped being fun. I saw too much of that in the outside world.” Exhaling, she stared at her free hand, which had formed a fist. “And I hate that I’m seeing my father as a victim. I don’t know him, but I know the type.” She had counseled people like him over and over again, albeit mostly women. “I don’t . . . Shit, I don’t know. I hate being inconsistent when it comes to her, but I can’t seem to stop myself from pitying the girl I think of as Vennie while resenting the person who was my mother, when her only sin, really, is not matching up to the image in my head.” She glanced at Lucius, expecting him to look baffled—or worse, concerned for her mental health.
Instead, he nodded. “I get that, I think. It’s Nightkeeper versus human. On one hand, she was following the writs, putting the greater good ahead of her family, and you know you should respect her, maybe even celebrate her, for that sacrifice. But on the other hand,
you’re
the family she left behind, which has to hurt. What’s more, everything you’re being told now suggests that this wasn’t a onetime thing; it was another in a long line of grandstanding stunts, which devalues the whole family thing even further. But you know what?”
She met his eyes, feeling somehow chastised yet relieved. “None of it matters worth a damn, because knowing about the past doesn’t change who I am. I’m not my mother or father, and I’m not Shandi. I’m me.”
“That’s right. And you’re a strong, wonderful woman anyone should be proud to have as a daughter. . . .”
If she hadn’t known him so well, she would’ve assumed he’d finished his thought. Because she did know him, though, she tipped her head. “And?”
Say it
.
Tell me you’re proud to be with me, that there’s more here than just the sex magic
.
But instead, he rose to his feet. “And I’m proud of you for the iceball stunt, regardless of the property damage.” He lifted a shoulder. “It looks like we both got what we wanted, doesn’t it?”
She tried to see past his guarded expression, but couldn’t. Or maybe there wasn’t anything more to see? For a moment, she was tempted to ask him point-blank where he saw the two of them going, whether it was more for him than magic and fringe benefits. But she didn’t dare. If he’d been the same man as before, she might have, but he was different now, more independent and far harder to read. And what if he didn’t share her feelings? Skywatch was a small place, and her running to the university wasn’t an option anymore. Not with her talent starting to show itself. So instead of pushing him, or revealing herself, she nodded and found a faint smile. “Yeah. We got what we wanted.”
Something flashed across his expression, there and gone too quickly for her to parse. He said only, “Maybe I’ll see you later?”
Recognizing that “later” had become their shorthand for “are we still on for sex?” she nodded. “Yeah. See you later.” But her throat tightened on the words. And when he was gone, she burrowed back into bed . . . and pulled the covers over her head.
He had loved his family growing up, he supposed, in a love-but-not-like sort of way. Or had that been coexistence rather than love? His older brothers had tormented him, his father had cheered them on, his older sisters had put bows in his hair, and his mother had pitted them all against one another in a subtle battle of passive aggression he hadn’t recognized as such until he was well away from the whole mess. He’d escaped to UT, floundered a bit, then eventually found his place with Anna. He’d leaned on her, idolized her, and thought for a time that he loved her. But his feelings for her, like the brief flashes of affection from his few lovers, which he’d taken too far, too fast with scant encouragement, hadn’t been the sort of bone-deep emotion that had spurred Vennie to sacrifice herself so her husband and child might live, or that had embittered Shandi so deeply that she’d carried the fear and resentment with her for decades. He’d never felt that way. More, he didn’t think he wanted to, because wasn’t it really another form of possession? He didn’t want to have to think of someone else; he was just starting to figure out how to think of himself.
That was why he’d ducked Jade’s almost-offer just now. Always before, she had guarded herself so carefully, protected herself so fiercely. The last thing he wanted was to peel those layers back to find the woman within . . . and realize he was incapable of letting himself be equally vulnerable to her.
He wanted her. But he didn’t want to be owned by her. And that was what love translated to, wasn’t it? Ownership.
They could be friends. They could be friends with benefits. They could even be lovers. But he wasn’t interested in falling in love, not anymore. And for a guy who had always thought he was someone who fell too easily, that was a hell of a thing to figure out. Especially when he and Jade were finally lovers. Things were changing too fast around him, inside him, for him to make any sort of commitment. At least, he hoped that was what had happened, because he hated to think he’d been chasing something half his life, only to figure out that once he had it, he didn’t really want it after all.
“In a different lifetime,” he murmured, but didn’t bother continuing, because in another lifetime he and Jade never would have met. And it was this lifetime that they needed to make matter, and not just for their own sakes. Which was why, instead of turning around and heading back to her room, as so much of him was tempted to do, he let himself into his cottage and locked the door behind him, not so much to keep anyone out, but as a symbol, to let himself know he was staying there.
Everything was just as he’d left it when the big boom from the mansion had interrupted him: a garbage-bag tarp was spread in front of the TV, waiting for him to man up and do what needed to be done.
Sacrifice
. There
had
to be magic inside him. He wouldn’t have gotten into the library without it, regardless of the sex or the new moon. It was in there somewhere. He just had to get it out. The magi needed Kinich Ahau. They needed the Triad. They needed more from him than he’d given them so far.
Flipping on the TV, he woke his laptop, which projected another of the images he’d been studying. Similar to the one that had been on-screen the other night, this one showed a scene from the ritual ball game of the Maya, with masked, shielded players clustered around the ceremonial rubber ball that symbolized the sun. He hit the “back” arrow a couple of times, returning to the painting that had overseen his and Jade’s barrier transitions. He stared at the glyphs coming out of the musician’s conch-shell instrument, the ones that were supposed to be gibberish, but that Jade thought were something else.
“A blessing, huh?” He didn’t see it, but she’d certainly proven herself with the ice spell, so he’d give it a shot.
Seating himself cross-legged on the plastic, so he wouldn’t ruin the rug or upholstery, he palmed the butcher knife he’d lifted from the main kitchen. It was solid in his hand, and far sharper than the steak knife he’d used to offer himself to the
makol
almost exactly two years earlier. Turning his right hand palm up, he set the knife along the gnarled scar that followed his lifeline. Then he closed his fingers around the blade in a fist and yanked the knife free of it. Cool steel burned, then sang to pain as blood welled up, then dripped down. Taking a moment to review the questions he meant to ask if—or rather
when
—he made it back in, he focused on the painting and began to chant the nonsensical words formed by the musician’s glyphs, trying different tones and variations, mixing up the order of the symbols, all while seeking the power that had to be inside him somewhere.
Nothing happened.
In fact, nothing happened for long, long into the night. Grimly, he kept going, letting blood from different ceremonial spots on his body and working every spell fragment he’d absorbed during his months at Skywatch, knowing that he had failed at many things in his life, but he couldn’t afford to fail now. Jade’s mother might have been right about love being a key to winning the war; gods knew the magi drew their powers from one another. But he knew damned well that in this case, it wasn’t about love. It was about the magic. All he had to do was find it.