wanted to badly, and yet he’d been so wrapped up in being a Deacon, he’d missed the chance.
“Are you—” Nynnia’s gaze narrowed, even as her breath began to come in shallow pants that were echoed by his own. “Are you a virgin?”
Sometimes telepathy was a double-edged sword—but Merrick had only become used to it between Sorcha and himself. Whatever gifts the Ehtia had meant that very few of his surface thoughts were sacrosanct.
Nynnia blushed. “I am sorry—you are broadcasting so loudly.”
A chuckle rolled through his body. “Well, it is at the top of my concerns right now. I don’t have much experience, but I am not quite a virgin. I just don’t want to disappoint you.”
Her teeth nibbled along the line of his neck, rising toward his ear, and suddenly those concerns melted away. Nynnia puled back and licked her lips. “A handsome young man, travels back through time to find me, and beds me on my last day in this realm? How could you disappoint me?” Her voice was low, husky and laced with raw desire.
Warmth was stealing through Merrick, warmth that needed to be fulfilled, yet he couldn’t help it. One tiny thought ran like a dark streak through this moment of utter bliss. “I want more. I want the woman I love forever.”
She could have replied something trite. She could have leapt off him, offended. Instead, Nynnia only smiled sadly and kissed him.
Yes, Merrick realized, he might only have this moment with her, but only a few hours of his time before this, she had been dead. It would be churlish to diminish the delight of finding her alive and in his embrace. He would not sully this gift.
Deacon Chambers put aside all those nagging fears and doubts and plunged into the moment. Soon enough she would be gone. Soon enough they would all be gone.
The Rossin’s roar faded even as Sorcha screamed after him—a sound that echoed the pain inside her—a confused mix of loss and anger. The geistlord was still as he had been when first she had encountered him, and even worse, she remembered how it had felt to
As she ran to the window and watched the elegant, massive creature bound off the edge of the terrace, she nearly forgot to snuff out the rune burning on her Gauntlet.
The great lion was beautiful, terrifying, destructive, and it had just carried Raed away. Yet, for an instant she stood there, quite forgetting the mess that the geistlord had just made.
By the Bones, she thought to herself, I am
A burbling cry behind her made the Deacon spin on her heel. Lady Lisah was sobbing, spluttering, her eyes wide as blood trickled from her mouth—scarlet red against her pale skin. Unable to speak, her hand was spread and stretched toward Sorcha. Only minutes before they had been adversaries—now they were just people.
The Deacon dropped to her knees, stripped off her Gauntlets, and clenched the dying woman’s hand tightly in her own fist; that which had been so beautiful, flawless and cosseted was torn and gaping. Too much was now outside that should be inside.
Sorcha didn’t know how powerful the healers were here in Chioma—so perhaps there was still hope. Blood bubbled and ran through her fingers as Sorcha pressed down on the wound, trying to stop it from gushing. It was warm and sticky, but the worst of it was the desperate look in Lisah’s eyes—as if the Deacon could save her.
Sorcha whispered to her—foolish, impossible things that were becoming more so. It had been a long time since she’d comforted the dying. That first year when the Emperor landed at Arkaym she had experienced it quite enough. And now, looking down at this beautiful woman whom she had so easily judged as vapid, Sorcha thought of those young Initiates they had lost. Certainly she had hoped to never be in this position again.
Desperately she pushed down harder. “Listen, Lisah. Help will be here soon—don’t give up.” The younger woman’s mouth worked as her face grew paler. She was trying to say something, but there was no air in her lungs—only blood.
Then she spasmed, gouts of her life pumping over Sorcha’s hand. Lisah’s gaze went from full of life lazed and empty in a split second—so quick that Sorcha could not have said when it was she had gone. Her beautiful bright blue eyes were now surround by scarlet drops she coughed up.
Unable to save the poor woman, Sorcha opened her Center and waited. She might have failed to protect the innocent women of the harem, but she watched as their shades gathered and made sure no geist took them on this side. Their souls swirled, confused by the abrupt severance from their bodies—and that was why most shades stayed in the human world. Sorcha would not let these women suffer that fate.
Slipping her Gauntlets over her blood-drenched hands, she pressed them down against the cooling flesh of Lisah. The rune-clad leather would not hold the blood, and without Merrick, the added presence of it would help make the connection easier.
“I’m sorry,” Sorcha whispered as she opened Tryrei, the peephole to the Otherside. What they would find there she could not say, but it was the way souls had to pass for any chance of peace. The tiny gold light pierced reality, and the souls drifted toward it.
Maybe there were gods waiting for them as some said—she wished she could believe that. Maybe it was a place of trial before they could be reborn. It wasn’t her place to say, but at least the slain women would not be condemned to walk the earth repeating the moments of their death.
Sorcha watched them go and then closed her fist around the rune. These were not the first people she had been unable to save—and would likely not be the last, either.
With a soft sigh the Deacon leaned over and closed Lisah’s eyes, smearing blood on her face but at least giving her an illusion of peace.
It was at that moment that the eunuch guards shoved open the door. For a minute Sorcha stared at them as they took in the room. Books scattered around the room, shelves pushed over, three women’s bodies dismembered, and there she was sitting in the middle of it all—covered in blood and gore.
Deacons were considered necessary—yet it was not unheard of for them to go suddenly and spectacularly mad. The hospital at the Mother Abbey had a whole ward devoted to the care and restriction of such poor creatures. In all the Empire there was no more dangerous madman than a Deacon.
Then Sorcha realized how it looked to these new arrivals. She had asked to see these women; she had demanded they be alone. The Chiomese guards might have respect for the Deacons of their own realm, but she was a stranger—a stranger wearing her gauntlets and bathed in the blood of the Prince’s women.
The rifles in the guards’ hands spun and were quickly raised to their shoulders. The tallest eunuch, the one who had brought in the women to see her, bared his teeth at her, his brow darkening like a thundercloud. These women were his charges, so she knew he was not going to stop and ask questions.
These men had been bearing the shame of deaths all around them for weeks—and now they had a very convenient target to blame. One dead Deacon would make a handy scapegoat to drag before their Prince. Dead would be preferable to alive.
Without a single word of protest, Sorcha sprang to her feet, leapt over Lisah’s body, and ran toward the inner wall. Unlike the Rossin, she couldn’t survive a jump through the window—but fleeing into the city was a very good idea. She was not about to take her chances with the guards or even the Prince—who surely, with the deaths of his women, would be considerably less gracious.
“Fire!” the chief eunuch bellowed, and the Deacon dived as bullets spat over the chaotic scene. Luckily, the opportunities for these guards to shoot at anything must have been few.
With her Gauntlet outspread and Voishem blazing on its palm before her, Sorcha leapt through the wall. It was a most inelegant use of her training.
The sound of bullets spitting against the hardened mud was the last thing she heard as she phased through the wall and tumbled onto the other side. In this situation she had no time to find somewhere to wash off the blood and think. Sorcha knew she had to keep using Voishem until she was beyond the palace and into the city.
The Deacon dared not stop running, knowing that soon enough the whole city would be in an uproar, looking for the stranger who had gone mad and slain women of the Prince’s harem. Already she could faintly hear the palace alarm bell ringing. While in the grasp of Voishem, everything was dim and out of sync with her eyes. People were reduced to gray shadows, and the palace itself looked more like an artist’s sketch than something real.
Sorcha knew she had to find the Rossin and stop his rampage at all costs—there simply was no one else who
