the horror of the pit and the shovel and what she had had to do, and… and the lie she was now forced to live. She wanted to do this. A tick on her knuckle for a life saved instead of taken.
“I can’t preserve this body,” she said. “It’s too late. And I can’t make him look the same, either.” Maybe Brimstone would have known how to conjure those fiery wings, but they were far beyond her. “He won’t be a seraph anymore.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Akiva said. She met his eyes, his red, red eyes, and she wanted to do this for him. “As long as he is himself,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”
Her words were met with a silence that was like sinking.
Sinking.
“We didn’t… we didn’t have one.” Liraz. Whispering. “We brought him
Akiva was hoarse. “It’s only been a day. Karou. Please.” As if it were a matter of persuading her.
They didn’t understand. How could they? She had never told Akiva how it worked, how tenuous the soul’s connection grew after death, or how easily it could be cast adrift if it was not contained. She had never told him, and now there was nothing in the air or aura of this dead angel—soldier, killer, beloved brother—no impression of light or laughter to go along with those blue eyes and laugh lines, no stir of any kind to brush against her senses and tell her who he was because… he
She looked up. She forced herself to meet Akiva’s red eyes and Liraz’s so they would see and understand her sorrow.
And know that Hazael’s soul was lost.
77
To Live
It was her sorrow that undid Akiva. One look and he knew. Hazael was gone.
Akiva didn’t have the strength to restrain her. She couldn’t have much strength left, either. Even after the sickness of the hamsas, she had borne most of Hazael’s weight on the long journey here—and for what, all for nothing—and sometimes
What had he done in Astrae?
He didn’t know. He had known only the thrum in his skull and the gathering, the pressure, the pressure, and he had grabbed Liraz and held her to him, fallen on Hazael and held him, too, and the blast when it came—from
They had brought Hazael to a field and he was already dead. But what is death? Akiva had thought of Karou. Of course he had.
But not in their language, and not for them.
Liraz lunged at Karou and Akiva reached after her but he was too slow. She hit Karou and slammed her backward. There was a chair lying on its side. They went down. Karou cried out in pain.
Liraz found air. “You’re lying!” she screamed.
Akiva was moving, but it was like wading through darkness; the serpent-woman was faster—the serpent- woman was Issa, he knew her from Karou’s drawings. She must have been the one in the thurible.
And Liraz was screaming.
Whatever Karou might have decided to do with them, it was out of her hands now. “Just save him!” Liraz screamed at her and the sound was terrible, it was raw and so loud, and Akiva imagined eyes snapping open all over the kasbah.
Issa was strong where Liraz was weak and broken. The serpent-woman threw her off Karou, thrust her back to Akiva; she could have killed her, her serpents could have sunk fangs into his sister’s flesh, but they didn’t. Issa shoved her to Akiva and he caught her. Liraz struggled, but sobs broke her and she collapsed in his arms. “No no no,” she was saying over and over. “He can’t be gone, he can’t, not him.” He held her and sank with her back down beside their brother’s body, and he cradled her while she sobbed. Each sob was like a tempest racking her rigid form, seizing her, shaking her. Akiva had never even seen her cry before, and this was beyond crying. He held her, weeping, too, and looked over the top of her head to where Issa was helping Karou to the edge of the bed.
He saw the gingerness of her movements, the pain on her face, the
And here he was again: alive while others died. Oh, black fatigue. He just wanted to close his eyes.
And then, at the door, a knock. Karou snapped to face it. A guttural female voice demanded, “Karou? What’s happening in there?”
When Karou snapped back toward him there was still the sorrow in her eyes, but dismay was distorting it, and distress. She wiped away her tears with the back of her hand and struggled to her feet. Her face contorted with pain from the effort—what had he done to her, that… animal?—and she seemed to want to say something, but there was no time because the door was opening. Liraz lifted her head, her sobs trailing away as she came back to herself and realized what she had done.
She was alert, her face white around her wet, red eyes. She reached for Hazael’s rigid hand and gripped it. The grief left her face, resignation settling her features into an unnatural calm.
Akiva understood that she was ready to die.
He knew he had no right to be horrified—he’d been fighting the same feeling for so long—but he was horrified anyway, and he felt himself caught in a spiral of helplessness. At the tugging edge of blackness, trapped once more in the enemy stronghold, a profound new urgency arose. He was
He wanted to live. He wanted to finish what he had finally started, all these years too late. He wanted to remake the world. With Karou, with Karou.
But he didn’t think that was going to happen.
The first figure through the door was Thiago’s she-wolf lieutenant. Slinking bestial creature, she went into a hunch and growled at her first sight of the angels. But Akiva didn’t even look at her, because behind her, paused on the threshold, cheeks scored by scabbed gouges that confirmed his worst suspicions, was the White Wolf.