World Weaver (The Devany Miller Series Book 4) (32 page)

“High enough to make anyone below us look like bugs.”

There weren’t any people below us, though, just the dark waters of the sea. After a while, we leaned into each other and gazed into the distant horizon, a deep curved blue that seemed as vast as the water underneath us. “Someday, we need to sail again.” I smiled at the thought of my bucket list that kept growing and growing. “We have a long list of things we need to do.”

“I like that you want to do them together.”

Was I ready? That was the question still between us. Would I stay with him? I wanted to, no question about that. I wouldn’t be doing him any favors if I did, though. I brought death and destruction wherever I went. Hell, I couldn’t even keep my own kids safe. Whatever was the opposite of a lucky rabbit’s foot, that was me.

Chicken that I was, I didn’t respond but to lean in and enjoy his warmth. All I did was take from him, didn’t I? Had I given him anything in return?

“Do you want me to tell you that I know you’ll stay? That I knew you were mine the first day we met?”

My breath hitched in my chest. ‘Yes,’ I thought. ‘I do want you to say that.’ Out loud, I said, “In my work, love at first sight is a red flag.”

He laughed and nipped gently at my neck with his teeth. “And have I raised other red flags for you?”

“No.” I turned in his arms so I could look him in the face. “Have I you?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“I’ve put you in danger numerous times. I’ve dragged you into messes that could have gotten you killed. My life is spiraling out of control. I may lose my job. I might get arrested. I got my husband murdered. My daughter kidnapped. Both kids taken from me. You sure you’re willing to keep me around, knowing what shit follows me?”

His eyes glittered in the dark. “Do you think that scares me?”

“It should.”

“It does not. I can handle anything that comes your way. This you can count on.”

Talking him out of me was harder than it should have been, but really, I wasn’t motivated to do so. He was my anchor as much as he was the anchor of his clan. I couldn’t imagine being without him, which probably meant that I had fallen in love with him. It was selfish of me.

Maybe I deserved Ty and the warped kind of love he could provide. I feared I didn’t deserve Kroshtuka. “You’re a smart guy and I trust you to know what you can and can’t handle.” Was that a yes?

He tipped his head and waited.

In for a penny … “When we get Bethany back, alive and well, and if you still want me, I’ll stay with you.” Panic filled me at the thought. At all that could go wrong. I tamped it down. Hard. “As long as Liam and Bethy are both cool with it.”

“Of course I’ll still want you. We still have to have our hunt.”

I snorted. “You and that damned hunt. I can’t turn into a Chythraul anymore, you know.”

“Good. I’ll win.”

“Oh, the hell you will, buddy. The hell you will.”

His kiss stopped any other argument I could think up and after a while, we found our way back to the cabin to enjoy our new relationship.

***

The next morning, Zephyrinia let Krosh and me be on deck at the prow where, “you shouldn’t get in too much trouble.” No one was ever still; there was always someone scrambling somewhere. It didn’t appear to be a matter of disorganization, either. There were things certain sailors needed to do and they did them with as much speed as they could muster.

The wind soon made a mess of my hair and I forced it back into a bun to keep it from getting so hopelessly tangled I’d never sort it out. Krosh had his pulled back as well and there we stood watch, me scanning the never-ending horizon with a sense of despair. However would we find one small ship in such a vast sky?

The woman who’d comforted me last night came over with our food. “Keep your spirits up. I ain’t never known my captain to lose something she put her mind to getting.” She nodded at me seriously, patted me again, and waddled away, her gait easy despite the pitch and yaw of the deck.

We spotted the
Sunset Marauder
right before noon. The change of mood on board was electric. Strange to know that everyone was working toward one goal: saving my daughter. It gave me more hope than I’d had in a long time. Even the warm wood under my fingers seemed to strain forward, as if the ship itself was alive and hungering to help.

Hell, what did I know? Maybe it was.

“There will be a fight,” Krosh said.

“Yeah. It worries me. Those pirates won’t have any care for my daughter’s life.”

“We have a whole crew experienced in airship fighting. They will engage the crew of the other ship. You and I go for Bethany. Whichever one of us is closest protects your daughter and the other takes out any who threaten her life.”

“Got it.” I would have to turn off my natural inclination to run to my daughter if she cried out. If Krosh got to her first, he would protect her from all harm. I had to trust that he was capable of doing it. At that point, my job would be ending the life of any pirate who got close. “We need to catch the captain and tell her our plan,” I said.

“I can do that if you wish.”

I jumped. Turned. Mal stood entirely too close, his hands behind his back. His stance was wide and braced to move with the roll of the ship. His eyes sparked with power and a deadly humor kept tightly checked. He could easily kill someone, but he held his magic tight to his skin as if he were afraid of what would happen if his grip slipped.

“Thank you.”

He inclined his head. “May I ask you some questions about what you are?”

I shrugged. “What do you want to know?” We had time and maybe the conversation would take my mind off the upcoming battle.

“I’m not sure what to ask,” he said, his brow furrowing.

I looped an arm around Krosh’s waist. “Maybe you should tell me how you were made. That might help me figure out what to tell you.”

He considered that. “The Priestesses of the Red Veil take pairs. Twins. There has to be two for the magic to work. One twin comes out broken and the other comes out a
sorcier sexe.
” His voice was low, sonorous. I leaned toward him, beckoned by the come hither in his voice.

“Comes out of what?”

“The temple. The initiation. I don’t remember much, you understand. It’s more impressions, feelings, rather than concrete memories. There was red smoke. Gage’s screaming. My screaming. They stripped us, cut us to make us bleed.” He shuddered, lost in the memories, his voice still as seductive as a siren’s song. “They poured potions and poisons down our throats. Oil. Water infused with herbs. Clotted blood.”

Gorge rose in my throat. My arm tightened around Krosh as he squeezed me.

“It went on forever, but when it was done, only a day had passed according to the Priestesses. Gage came out without his leg. Broken. Angry. I had my power.” His awareness slowly came back to the here and now. “It sits inside me, whispering to me. Most days now I can tune it out. When I’m holding the bituminous cock, I can’t hear it at all.”

I blinked. “Wait. There’s something inside you, whispering to you?”

He nodded, his gaze sharpening. “What do you know?”

“The Riders. The parasites that infect Wydlings through Dreams. Maybe there’s one inside you.”

“Perhaps I’m unfamiliar with the Rider, but don’t they take over their host?”

Krosh spoke up. “They do. In every case of infection that we know of, when the potential ripens into a Rider, the host dies. Essentially. The parasite takes over, keeping the body alive as it lays its eggs in the host’s gut.”

I curled my lip. That sounded like a B-rated horror movie. “Anyway, perhaps these priestesses change the Rider somehow. I don’t know. And that doesn’t explain why your aura looks Skriven.” I pondered the story he told. “Are you sure you don’t remember anything else in that red smoke? The passage of time—or lack of it—sounds like the Slip.”

“I don’t remember anything but the feelings of being torn apart and put back together again.”

I tucked my cheek against Krosh’s chest. “I think that these Priestesses give the twins up to an Originator. The Originator plays mad scientist: takes you apart, infects you with a Rider, pieces you back together and sends you down to ruin the world.”

Mal snorted softly, though his amusement didn’t show on his face. “I want it out.”

I glanced up at Krosh. His eyes shone with his sympathy for Mal. “I don’t know what it would do to you to take it out. It’s probably as much a part of you as your own brain is.”

I took a deep breath and eased open my Magic Eye, wanting to study him again. A pulsing red aura surrounded him, tendrils reaching for me, the tips curling like beckoning fingers. I shivered and resisted putting up a protection bubble. On a whim, I searched for his soul, that glimmering cord that connected most every living creature on Midia and Earth to their bodies.

Mal didn’t have a cord.

Well, crap.

“You need your soul.”

His shoulders slumped, defeat crawling over him. “Of course they took my soul. Why would they not?”

Krosh stepped forward, ready, I think, to catch Mal if he passed out. He didn’t look good. His face had gone pale and sweat was beaded on his forehead. When he saw Krosh hold out a hand, he waved him away. “It’s best not to touch me, especially when I’m not completely under control.”

“If you found it, I could put it back inside you.” Pretty sure I could, anyway. If not, I’d ask Ty or, if he wasn’t talking to me, Vasili.

“They broke me. Why would they leave anything good behind?”

Finally, I could give him good news. “Unless I’m terribly mistaken—which does happen too often to dismiss it—but if I’m right, your soul still exists out there somewhere. If it didn’t, you would have been summoned to the arena to fight the Originator who spawned you.”

“My soul is intact.” Slowly, the anger faded. “You’re certain?”

“On my honor.” I crossed my heart before I realized I was going to make the gesture. Then I said, “You want your soul back, you’re going to have to go bust some heads and find out where it’s hidden. You can be sure the monster who helped make you will do his or her damnedest to keep you from it, too.”

He held out his hand and I took it deliberately, matching his power with my own, exceeding it. Yeah, I showboated, so sue me. His eyes widened and he dropped his hand. “How do you keep it in check?”

“Who says I do?”

***

“Show off,” Krosh whispered after Mal left.

I laughed. “Yes. I have to feel badass every once in a while, don’t I?” We’d outlined the plan to Mal and he had taken it back to his captain. Outlining it made me realize how weak it was. Was simple a bad thing? Take over the ship, subdue the crew or toss whoever didn’t surrender overboard, and then hug my daughter for the first time in too long.

Easy peasy.

I dropped my head in my hands. “Oh god, everything is going to go wrong.”

“I’m sure some of it will go wrong. But we will get her back.”

“Are you tired of me yet?” I could have kicked myself for asking, but it slipped out before I had a chance to reign in my towering mound of insecurity.

“No. You need to dance, feel the drums move through your bones. It would help. “

“Is that why you do it? The People?”

He walked slowly to my left and I followed, walking to my right. “Yes. It connects us to our land and to each other. You know; you’ve felt it.”

I had. I’d lost myself in the dance many times and each time was a spiritual experience. He reversed and I did too, stamping my feet on the deck as I did. In my work as an advocate—work that felt one thousand years removed from what I was doing right now—we often did coping exercises with clients. Grounding was one of them. We’d stomp our feet, touch objects near us, take in colors one by one, smell our hair, taste the salt on our lips. It was all designed to remind a trauma survivor they were still anchored in their body. Dissociation of varying degrees could cause a victim to feel removed from themselves.

To dance was to connect bodily with the ground. To smell the smoke from the fires, to hear the drums and feel the vibrations in my bones. It was all designed to remind me, remind the dancer, that we were present in our bodies and also present on the earth.

“I have felt it.” I circled him, he circled me. “It also calls power.”

“Yes. And it can put us into a Dream. Every dance has its purpose.”

Our hands touched between us, palm to palm. “My days on Earth consist of commuting, math homework, soccer games and concerts, and nights oncall. I wish there were things like this that I’d grown up doing.” If Mom had lived, perhaps she would have taught me some of her clan’s traditions.

He grinned. “We will teach each other about the things we did as children. I’ve read many of your Earth books. I’d like to celebrate Christmas and get a tree full of presents.”

I snorted. I’d forgotten there was a big trade in Earth stuff on Midia. “Halloween is more fun.”

“Dressing up and going door to door for candy? I would love that. I had a Butterfinger once.” His eyes closed in remembered ecstasy. I hoped I’d managed to put that look on his face at least once. Damn it.