World Weaver (The Devany Miller Series Book 4) (11 page)

I felt myself blush again. He made me sound impossibly heroic, when I was only a scared girl pretending to have her shit together. “Thank you.”

He caught my mouth with his, the kiss as warm and loving as his words. When he pulled away, he rubbed his thumb over my bottom lip. “I know what you are to me. It’s up to you to find out what you are to yourself. And when you figure that out, I hope I have a place beside you still.”

He didn’t give me a chance to disagree, to make promises I might not be able to keep. Instead, he saturated me with his heat and his love and I drank it in, praying I would end up being the person he thought I was.

NINE

We woke early that morning and joined Mina, Liam, and many other Wydlings for breakfast. I filled Liam in on my plans and we sat together holding each other desperately, praying in our own ways that we’d have Bethany back soon.

“How long is it going to take?”

“We’re going in on the tide, which rolls in tomorrow night. We’re going today to finish our plans, make backup plans.”

He nodded, his face solemn. “Just you guys?”

“Well, Krosh, me, an airship captain, and an assassin.”

His eyes widened and some of the fear fled his gaze, as I’d hoped. “No way.”

I described the airships I’d seen on my first trip to Bayladdy, and told him about the sidewalks with their colorful mosaics, and the gleaming metal that clad many of the houses there.

“Can we go sometime? Please?”

“Yeah.” Heck, maybe I’d wrangle a ride from Zephyrinia down the road. It could be a family vacation.

After filling up on fat sausages and flatcakes with berry syrup on them, Krosh and I hooked to Bayladdy. We had a whole other day to kill before the tide, so we took the time to explore the city. It really was unlike any place I’d ever been. There were underground markets and sky markets both. I preferred the air markets, though the platforms bounced rather alarmingly in the wind currents. Clinging to the rails, I gazed out over the skydocks and ships moored there, looking for Zephyrinia’s ship. What had she called it? Right. The
Lady free.

Its wooden rails gleamed in the bright morning sun and the deck bustled with activity. The sailors—were they sailors?—shouted at one another and a few took to the ropes. One woman in particular shimmied upward like a monkey, her arms and legs both working as she rose faster than I could ever dream of climbing. Higher still loomed the giant bladders, stretching impossibly wide and casting shadows over the shops down by the water.

I opened my Magic Eye and the ship lit up in glittery blues and greens. The gasbags were coated in purples as deep as bruises and as light as lilacs. Everything pulsed and vibrated, as if the ship were taking in air and letting it out in great gusts. On the front of the ship, carved in ornate letters, was the ship’s name
.
The vessel was much like the captain herself: a vibrant, living ball of energy that commanded attention.

I wore my scarf again to hide my face and had to grip the fabric under my chin as we wandered the docks.

No other ships captured my imagination as thoroughly as Zephyrinia’s, though one made my skin crawl looking at it. Its hull looked burnt, as if it had been built from wood used in a campfire. Its gasbag reeked with muddy grey energy and the ship’s magic oozed into the air like oil leaking from a drum.

“Let’s go,” I said when one of the sailors on the ship spotted us. His eyes were bright and he gestured lewdly, shouting something we were too far away to hear. Thankfully.

We made our way across town and ate sandwiches sold out of a handcart. The bread was crusty, the fish unlike anything I’d ever eaten. A red sauce that tasted of the sea soaked into the bread and bled through the paper the sandwich was wrapped in. We ate under the awning of a book shop, my back to the sidewalk to hide my face as I gorged myself.

When we’d finished eating, we walked hand in hand around the neighborhood where Arsinua held my daughter, picking out potential escape routes the witch might take to run from me and we could take to run from her.

There was so much potential for disaster, and thinking about all the possibilities made me want to cry. Or smash into the place and take my daughter by force, damn the consequences.

“We will get her out,” Krosh said, his gaze on the inn Bethy had shown me while I was in her head.

“I hope so.” It was as close as I could get to positivity. “I hope Arsinua gives her to me. I hope she doesn’t fight me.” I almost believed it when I said it, too, but there was that savage part of me that hoped dearly that Arsinua would give me an excuse to kill her.

That part scared me.

“What’s wrong?”

“Besides everything?” I shut my eyes. “Sorry. I just want this to be over. I want my daughter safe. I want everything to be okay. For the witches to stop their shit and the wild magic to fix itself and the world to be okay.” I wanted Ty to be healed, too, but didn’t say that one out loud, though I wasn’t sure why.

Kroshtuka wrapped his arms around me. “Let’s focus on your daughter. We can save the world when she’s home.”

What home? Where? I bit down on the questions, not able to answer them now. Later. There’d be time later. “I think I’m ready to go back to our room for the night.”

Back at the hotel, we curled together on the small bed. It wasn’t about passion. I needed comfort and Kroshtuka knew it, like he knew so many things. Maybe someday I would be jealous of how insightful he was, but now I enjoyed the benefits of his kindness. I fell asleep to the beat of his heart against my cheek.

***

A nightmare woke me, leaving me hot, sweaty, with a clogged nose and tear-streaked face. The adrenalin pumping through me told me I’d never get back to sleep, so I slipped out of bed, leaving Krosh to his dreams. I sank down into my Magic Eye, found my father’s lifeline and hooked to him. He was in bed asleep when I found him, the room he was in dark and close. “Dad?”

“What on earth are you doing here?”

“Sorry for barging in. I figured you’d want to be in on the plan to take down Arsinua.” I filled him in on what had happened in Bayladdy and my meeting with Zephyrinia and Mal.

“Do you trust them?”

I did, though it was weird saying so out loud. I had no basis for my trust beyond the Sky Captain’s desire to figure out how to help the man she so obviously loved.

“I’m in. Wait outside so I can get dressed, will you?”

I nodded and left the room, ending up in a brightly lit hallway that looked like every hotel hall ever. Dad slipped out soon after and I hooked him to the hotel room. Krosh was awake, stretching by the window as the sun came up over the horizon. I gave him a peck on the cheek and hook to the Slip to fill Ty in on the plans as well.

I’d followed Ty’s lifeline and ended up in his bedroom. He was sitting at a desk in the corner by the French doors that were open to receive the breeze. The view beyond was of an impeccably cared for English garden, which was ridiculous, because this was the Slip and they didn’t have gardens, English or otherwise.

I peered over his shoulder at the book he was reading. It was written in a language I didn’t understand, that didn’t even look Earthly. He laid it, spine up, on his belly and propped his feet on the desk. “Is it time?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Ah.” He didn’t say anything more than that and I frowned. “If you don’t come, you’ll miss our brother. Or, at the very least, our cousin.”

He raised his eyebrows. Not exactly the stunned silence I’d hoped for.

“Oh come on,” I said.

“Do tell.”

I rolled my eyes. “I shouldn’t.” But I couldn’t contain myself. “He’s a little bit of everything, like me. Like you too, I guess.”

“Ravana wasn’t able to make any more of us besides you and I.”

“Well, someone did. He doesn’t look exactly like us. He’s pieced together like Frankenstein’s monster,” I said, emphasizing the last word and he laughed. “And he’s a fricking ticking time bomb. Or lust bomb. I’m not sure.”

“He’s pieced together,” he said, obviously picking through his memories to solve the mystery that was Mal. “There are many Originators and Ravana kept me … occupied. If there was another Originator making things like us, Ravana would have known about it.” He lifted the book from his belly, slid a marker between the pages and closed it. “Perhaps you need to read her notes.”

“No way. I looked at that shit once and it was awful.”

“It might hold answers. And you need to be less squeamish if your Skriven are going to take you seriously.”

“I don’t need them to take me seriously.”

“Yes, you do. Not all of them are as enamored of your new way of ruling as Kali. They will continue to hunt for their souls so they can challenge you. You aren’t safe as long as you refuse to take your rightful place as Originator.”

“Why don’t you take it?”

“I’m not—”

“You’re just like me. Witch, Wydling, Ravana’s plaything. And you fit in here. I don’t. I never have. You can hold Ravana’s place as easily as I am, and Amara’s too. You, Ty.”

He shook his head, dropping his feet to the floor and standing. “You won the right. I have not. It might not matter to you, but it matters to the others, Devany. To the ones that plot against you, it matters a great deal.”

“I can’t live here. I have kids. A life. Things that don’t fit here. I will never fit in here, ever. Surely you know that.”

He touched my jaw and made me shiver. “We were made to be together. You took her place. Surely even you can see that fate has set you on this path. The more you fight, the more tangled you become. Let it happen. Accept it.”

“I can’t. One, I don’t believe in fate. Two, I refuse to be tied into something I never wanted in the first place.”

His eyes darkened. “You’ll let your world be destroyed?”

“Is that a threat?” When he didn’t answer, I stepped closer, getting in his face. “Do you know something I don’t know, but should?”

“There can be only one outcome if you deny your place as Originator.” His voice was low, his breath hot on my lips.

“Yeah? What is that?”

“Originators hold open the spaces between the worlds. If you fail in that duty, Devany, the spaces collapse and the worlds collide.”

In my head, Earth and Midia crashed like two cars in a freeway accident. Ty shook his head. “No. Stars will fall. Galaxies will collapse. Life itself will cease to be.”

He held me there, arrested by the picture he’d painted. Then I stepped back. “No. You’re lying. You’re lying because you want me in your bed. You want me to choose you over everything else in my family. That’s not happening Ty. It can’t. My life is larger than just one person. It has to be. I have kids. A father. A brother. Krosh. Friends. You’re asking me to confine myself to you. That’s impossible. I won’t do it.”

“Then you’ll watch your world burn.”

***

Despite our argument, Ty agreed to be backup, his anger stuffed behind his wry smile and half-lidded eyes. He wouldn’t go to the hotel to meet Mal, though, and I figured that was probably a good thing. No reason to upset the applecart when I was so close to getting Bethany back.

Dad was happily chatting up Zephyrinia and Mal. Kroshtuka ate a large plate of meat, so lightly cooked as to run pink when he bit into the flesh. The sight of all of them, the knowledge that Ty was nearby, made me happy. They were a team of people I could count on. I sat back and let them strategize, too on edge to be able to contribute anything worthwhile.

Would I have Bethany back in my arms by nightfall?

Would I have Arsinua’s blood on my hands?

Kroshtuka’s hand slipped into mine and gave me a squeeze, reminding me I wasn’t alone. “Your father wants to know if you would like to stay behind.”

“What? No. Absolutely not.”

“Honey,” Dad said, “you’ve been stressed to the limit for weeks now. It might be better if you stayed behind. Let us get her back for you.”

I wanted to snap at him, tell him to mind his own damn business, but his face looked as worn as mine felt. “Thanks, Dad, but I have to see this through to the end. Bethy is my daughter. I can’t let others risk their lives while I stay behind, twiddling my thumbs. Besides. I need to see her. I need to know she’s okay. Waiting, not knowing what was happening, would drive me crazy.”

He nodded and looked back at the rough map of the area Mal had sketched out for us. I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. ‘Just a few more hours, baby girl, and I will have you in my arms.’ I hoped to get into my daughter’s head one more time, to tell her I was on the way, but I couldn’t connect with her, and soon Krosh was pressing food into my hands.

“I’m not sure I can eat,” I said, the smell of the sandwich souring my stomach where the night before it had made it growl in anticipation. “After. I promise.”

He nodded and handed the sandwich over to my dad, who dug into it, having already eaten all of his. “Soon,” Krosh said.