Skykeepers

. I don’t know what you want. It’s like you’re two different people—the guy who rescued me, who made love to me, who kissed me just now . . . and then the guy who warns me off at the same time he’s tracking down an old lady and having her ship my herbs so I’ll have a piece of myself back.” She paused expectantly.

He ached for the girl whose father hadn’t known how to love anyone but the life he’d left behind, for the woman who’d sought answers for herself and found only pain and confusion. He hated knowing he was adding to that pain.

If I could find a way to make it work for us, I’d do it, he wanted to say. But he didn’t see any answers on the horizon, and he was losing hope that he ever would. So in the end, he said only, “I’m sorry, Sasha. I’m so damned sorry for all of it.”

She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, her mascaraed lashes were damp with tears. “Is that all you’re going to say?”

“It’s all I can say.” And that was the truth.

“Okay.” She swallowed hard, and nodded. “Okay. I guess that’s it, then.” She turned away without another word and headed back down the path with her spine straight and her shoulders unbowed.

He was the one who slumped and hung his head, wishing to hell he could go back in time and change the decisions he’d made, the things he’d done. She made him want to be a different, better man. But he’d wished for that a thousand times since his talent ceremony and it hadn’t happened yet.

He was who and what he was, and had had to find a way to make that work for the Nightkeepers, not the Xibalbans.

So, moving very deliberately, he replaced his earplugs and protective glasses and turned back to the counter, picking up the weapon that was still warm from her hand.

He sighted on the pop-ups she’d hit, expecting to see them blasted through the ’nads. But they weren’t. Each of the men was shot center mass, clean through the heart. The sight made him want to howl her name.

Instead, he very calmly, very methodically shot the rest of the targets to shit.

PART III FULL MOON

The moon is in opposition to the sun, meaning that it is large and bright in the sky. This night is associated with insomnia, insanity, and magic.

CHAPTER ELEVEN December 2 Full moon Three years and nineteen days until the zero date

Sasha had never before been aware of a full moon as anything more than a passing thought, as a pretty white circle in the night sky, brightening the darkness. But as the sun set on the night of her bloodline ceremony, she thought there was something different about this particular full moon, something different about her body. As she sat alone in her suite, waiting out the last hour before the ceremony, her skin felt too tight on her bones and her body temp flashed from hot to cold and back again. She didn’t know if the stirred-up feeling was nerves or the sensation of the Nightkeepers’ magic strengthening as the barrier thinned with the approach of the three-year solstice. Probably both. And honesty compelled her to admit, inwardly at least, that she was jittery about being one-on-one with Michael to the degree they would need for the ritual.

The king had declared that since the two of them had already proven that their magics were compatible, Michael would be the one to act as her main point of contact during the bloodline ceremony. Michael had argued —rather unflatteringly—against the plan, but had been overruled. The others would all be involved in the spell; she’d need all the power she could get, given that she was attempting a cardinal-day ritual on a noncardi nal day, one that wasn’t a solstice or equinox.

Michael would be her main point of contact, his power the conduit through which she would enter the barrier and gain her bloodline mark. More, they were hoping the additions they’d made to the traditional ritual would enable her to summon her bloodline nahwal. Assuming that Ambrose’s knowledge had been integrated into the nahwal, it might be able to tell her how to find the library.

That was the theory, anyway. And it all hinged on her ability to lean on Michael, his ability to boost her magic. But what if they’d lost that capacity?

She’d barely seen him since that afternoon out at the firing range, but she’d been acutely, achingly aware of him. That was her problem, she knew, her stupidity. But she wouldn’t let herself dwell on it.

Of all the things she’d taken away with her from the year of captivity with Iago, she’d gained a hard-

edged practicality, and the ability to slap a lid on her emotions when she needed to. She didn’t fall into fantasies of her old life anymore, didn’t let herself dream of a man who’d made it clear he didn’t want to be right for her, despite the apparent signs suggesting that the gods intended otherwise, or had at one point. For all they knew, Iago’s destruction of the skyroad had disrupted the gods’ plans on earth, and her and Michael’s destined pairing had been collateral damage.

A brisk knock sounded on the door of her suite, peremptory and forceful. Michael. Despite her best efforts to shield her heart, heat gathered in her core, alongside the nerves. “It’s open.”

He pushed the door inward, but didn’t step over the threshold. Instead, he stayed in the hall, framed in the doorway. He was wearing the same battle armor and fighting clothes he’d had on the first time she’d seen him, along with a floor-length black robe that had long, pointed sleeves and a line of black beadwork around its edges. He looked dark, sexy, and mysterious, and every inch the warrior-priest.

Damn him.

“It’s time,” he said. “You ready?”

She took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah.” She stood, instinctively smoothing down the set of black-on- black combat clothes she wore along with a robe that was similar to Michael’s in style, but in fabric that was the deep blue of a novitiate rather than the black of a mage. Jox had pulled the clothes from storage, where they had been locked since the massacre. She hadn’t asked who they’d belonged to, hadn’t wanted to know then. But now she found herself wondering who had worn the gear before her. Which made her think of the mother she’d never known. Who had she been? What had she been like? Why hadn’t she left Skywatch with Ambrose? Had losing her broken him, or had he been broken before that?

There were too many questions with too few answers, on too many levels, leaving Sasha feeling lost and cut adrift. Then again, she was quickly realizing she wasn’t that far behind the other magi in that regard. They had all come late to the magic, and were struggling in the absence of a solid knowledge base. And they were counting on her to fix that.

She hoped to hell she didn’t let them down.

She crossed the room to face Michael. His eyes were dark with emotion, with secrets, but he didn’t share either with her. Instead, he took her hand, lifted it to his lips, and pressed a kiss to her palm. “I’ll be right there with you. We all will.”

Shit, she thought. Leave it to him to be sweet when she needed it most. Bastard.

Fear of failure crowded close around her: fear of failing herself, failing her new friends, failing Michael . . . hell, even failing Ambrose more than she already had. Her feelings toward him remained complex, but they were softening some as she became more and more a part of Skywatch and began to understand that the writs guiding the Nightkeepers weren’t the same as the mores of modern humanity. The magi lived primarily for their