Shady Lady

salty sweat. I was afraid of taking them off; I might not be able to jam them back on my feet again.

In late afternoon, I stumbled behind Kel into a clearing. This was allegedly our destination, but I couldn’t see anything here that could be considered a clue. I spun in a slow circle. Dirt, rocks, vines. The trees rustled overhead, conjuring images of snakes slithering across the branches. Despite the heat, I shivered.

“We’re safe enough here,” he said, reading my body language.

Yeah, but for how long? These amulets functioned for a limited time, and then we’d flash back onto Montoya’s radar. If we were still out here in the middle of nowhere . . . Well, I could imagine few things worse. Fear prickled through me. Maybe Montoya had hired Escobar to take care of me; maybe this was an elaborate trap planned by two criminal minds.

Too late for second thoughts. I’m here.

I knelt and started going over the ground close up. There had to be something. While he stood guard, I crawled around for a good ten minutes, trying to hide how much my feet were bothering me. Near the western edge of the trees, I uncovered a clay statue, nearly hidden in the bush. The icon had markings on its feet.

“Our first clue?” Kel asked.

“I’m thinking so.” But I couldn’t read the symbols, nor did I recognize them. “This mean anything to you?”

He dropped down beside me. “Native writing.”

“Thanks,” I said dryly. “Could be Quechua or Aymara, I guess, but there are a bunch of aboriginal languages.” Some of them were even extinct, which would make our task complicated.

“Can you handle it?” he asked.

“That was going to be my next move.” I laid my scarred left palm against the statue and it felt cool, quiet. Not so much as a ripple. “Nobody’s touched it enough to make an impression. What now?”

I was sure that was our clue, but without our being able to read the markings, it was impossible to say where we should go. The map gave no hint—the trail stopped here.

“We may as well make camp. I’ll look at your feet.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not. I smell blood.”

A reflexive flinch surprised me, but I didn’t argue further. In the jungle, infection could set in if you weren’t careful, and I hadn’t been taking care of myself. I hoped if I ignored the problem, it would go away. No such luck.

Instead of arguing, I settled in the shadow of the trees, beside the clay statue, and unlaced my boots enough to slip them off. My heels stung like hell, and once I had the boots off, I saw the stains on my socks. I’d felt the warm trickle, of course, but I hoped it was the blisters popping. I took a deep breath to brace myself to remove the socks as well; it felt like I’d lost an inch of skin. I chanced a look, and damn. What a mess.

Instead of chiding me, Kel went to work cleaning my wounds. His hands were warm and sure. Such silent care summoned images of holy men who had been directed to go forth and tend to the lowest among them.

“Thank you,” I said when he was finished, though it seemed inadequate—as if I should not have permitted the attention.

“I am here to bear your pain, my blood for yours.” Sunlight filtering through the leaves shaded his face, but I thought I saw a glimmer of regret. For what, I couldn’t say.

“I’m pretty sure that’s a bad bargain. Nalleli seemed to think yours is valuable.”

“It is.” There was no false modesty in his tone, only intensity and purpose.

I wished I knew more about him.

I started to move away but he motioned me to stillness. Right, my feet were raw and they needed bandaging. He produced a knife and made a small cut across his palm. Too late I realized he’d meant it literally— I am here to bear your pain, my blood for yours. I tried to recoil, but he held me still, sealing the trickling wound against the worst of the damage.

A glorious heat filled me, as if I could fly, or simply float away. My whole body felt weightless and blasted with irresistible euphoria. Once, I’d done a little E, and this was a thousand times more powerful. I laughed—and the sound swirled into endless echoes. A distant roar came back, and I giggled over that too. Boneless, I didn’t struggle when he treated my other foot. The fizzing in my brain increased until the whole world sparkled, as if through a diamond rain.

“I’ll heal your arm too. Too much risk of infection out here.”

“That’s nice,” I mumbled.

The roaring got louder, or maybe it was my heart. I could feel him inside me, seeping into my cells with that fierce heat. Kel turned his face away from me and then he sprang to his feet.

“Stay here. Don’t move.”

Well, where would I go? Disjointed noise spun all around me, and I tried to track his movement, but he slipped and slid in a dazzling display of pyrotechnics. I blinked, trying to force the colors to die down, but no matter how I looked at him, I saw his body edged in silver and gold, crowned in a white light. But he hid darkness in his core, a tiny little knot of sorrow.

Wait—is he fighting? It was an animal, but so smeared in red I couldn’t see. Images overlaid my vision, transparent and only half realized. More light. More shadow. Every tree and rock gained new dimension, as if I could see in a spectrum of color to which I’d been blind before. My eyes hurt with it, so I closed them and dropped my head on my knees. The world needed to stop now.

I felt his hands on my shoulders and I jerked. Not in pain, but because the power of him swam inside me. Before, I had no idea how strange he was—how alien—and now he felt too big to be crouched beside me, a force of nature rather than a person. He glowed like a sun.

“It will wear off soon.”

Blindly I reached out and fisted my hands in his shirt. There was no spark, reinforcing the fact that he wasn’t just a gifted human. “What did you do to me?”

“Just breathe.”

“You had wings,” I whispered. “Two of those scars on your back—you had wings once, raven dark, inky blue. When you flew, people crossed themselves and hid in their homes.”

Because I had hold of him, I felt the shudder that ran through him. “Now there is proof you are born of ancient kings. You saw too much. Such a small amount of my blood should not affect you so.”

“There’s no taking back what you’ve given me, Kelethiel.”

A low growl slid from him. “That name must not be spoken.”

“Keleth—”

He sealed his hand over my mouth, silencing me. “Name me not, unless you mean to bind or banish me.”

Some devil prompted me. I did the one thing I was sure would make him recoil: I moved my mouth in the faintest whisper of a kiss. He tasted of salt and copper, the hint of the blood he’d sacrificed for me lingering on his skin. My lips burned, his power seeping in through the dry cracks.

He did not withdraw, merely stared at me through narrowed eyes, as if I had transformed into a dangerous creature. His shoulders tensed, but he appeared to be appraising me in a way I could not measure. And then he moved his hand in increments of millimeters. Maybe it wasn’t his intention, but his withdrawal became a sweet torment of fingertips dragging over sensitive skin. I had never received a kiss that stirred me more than that furtive, forbidden caress.

It’s the blood, I told myself. Not him. He’s like a powerful mushroom or an exotic toad. He can’t help the effect.

His mien grew stern. “Are you yourself again?”

Ah. So that was how we were going to play it. My mind must’ve been addled for me to take such liberties with God’s Hand. More fool me, because my heart thumped at his proximity, kindled by the traces of fierce magick in the air. He crackled like a fire, all leashed power and restraint.

“I am. Your secret is safe with me,” I assured him quietly.

He lowered himself to the ground beside me, beside the clay statue, and his head went down, hunched shoulders indicating weight I could not see. For those terrible moments where I’d glimpsed him from the inside out,