Skykeepers

responsibilities to the magic and the war, meaning that sometimes personal desire had to take a backseat to necessity.

But still, that didn’t excuse what Ambrose had done during that last solstice ceremony she’d been with him. The memories of that terrifying night had crowded far too close as she’d prepared for the bloodline ritual.

“What’s wrong?” Michael asked, watching her carefully. When she didn’t answer right away, he let go of her hand, but didn’t move away. “You can talk to me.”

Then why can’t you talk to me ? she nearly asked, but knew there was no point. She should wave him off, say she was fine. But instead she found herself answering. “I left Ambrose because he almost killed me.”

Michael went very still, his eyes intent on hers. “Tell me.”

It was easier than she would have thought to get started, even though she’d never told the story to another living soul. Only she and Ambrose had known what happened that night. “It was the winter solstice when I was almost eighteen. He . . .” She faltered, remembering the fear and pain, and the crushing sense of betrayal. “It was one of his bad times. Knowing what I know now, he must not have realized the barrier was sealed, the magic non-functional. Every cardinal day during my childhood, we blooded our palms and enacted the proper rituals. When I was thirteen, right after I hit puberty in earnest, he put me through the talent ceremony, then got pissed when it didn’t work. After that, I balked, and started trying to talk him into getting help.” She paused, her lips twitching without humor.

“I thought maybe he’d get better if I proved to him that the Nightkeepers didn’t exist. It didn’t work.”

“Your bloodline must be a stubborn one.”

She snorted, and her chest loosened with the realization that Ambrose really was in her past. The knowledge made it easier to go on. “That last time, he didn’t give me a choice. He locked us both in the ritual chamber, which wasn’t unusual. But this time . . .” She faltered. Okay, maybe it wasn’t easy after all. “He held me down and tied my wrists and ankles.” She flashed on a circular room with torches and incense, and a wooden cross in the center of the floor. No, she thought, wrong ceremony .

That was Iago, not Ambrose. “He must’ve figured if a little blood was good, lots would be better, because he opened my wrists and let me bleed out into a bowl filled with oil. The last thing I remember was the smell of my own blood burning.”

“Son of a bitch,” Michael grated. His body had gone hard and tight, his face to stone.

She didn’t meet his eyes. Couldn’t. “I don’t know if he meant to sacrifice me and lost his nerve, or if it was a bloodletting that got out of hand. I woke up in the hospital, where everyone acted like I had tried to kill myself. Because, of course, that was what he’d told them.”

At the time, she’d felt pathetic. Now, she just felt . . . tired. Drained.

She’d known how much that past ceremony had been overshadowing her preparation for today’s ritual. What she hadn’t realized was that telling Michael about it would ease the tension. Or not ease, she realized as he muttered a vile curse. Instead it seemed that he’d taken her tension into himself. His body was rigid, his expression locked. And the anger she’d glimpsed before was full-force in his eyes.

Her transient sense of peace quickly became a hard fist of nerves. “Michael?”

He closed his eyes, as though he didn’t want her to see what was inside him as he said, “I wish the bastard weren’t dead. Because then I could kill him for you.”

Sasha took a step back before she was aware of moving.

She should be horrified, she knew, and part of her was. More, she was scared by the intensity of his words, the dead-flat delivery that suggested he meant every word, and was fully capable of carrying out the threat without hesitation. The rational part of her said she should close the door between them and call one of the other magi for help. Maybe all of them.

Another part of her, though, saw that he’d gone very pale, that he didn’t look like himself anymore.

His high cheekbones stood out in stark relief, and the dark shadows of his sunken eyes looked like sockets. She could have been staring at a skull for all the life she saw in him at that moment. The memory of what Ambrose had done to her, so close to the surface of her mind, told her to get the hell away from Michael, that he wasn’t the man she’d thought him. But the stronger woman, the one who was increasingly coming out in her at Skywatch, had her standing her ground and reaching out to him.

He flinched. “Don’t touch me.” But his voice sounded desperate, as though he longed for her touch.

So she ignored the mad anger in his eyes, in his face, and closed the gap between them, and framed his haggard face between her palms. “He’s gone,” she said simply. “He can’t hurt me anymore.”

“But I can,” he rasped. It sounded more like a plea than a warning, and he dropped his forehead to hers.

“You won’t,” she said, not sure where the certainty came from, not sure she could trust it. “Not today. Today you’re going to watch over me. You’re going to protect me.”

A long shudder racked his body and something shifted in the air around them, a sense of some watching presence leaving, though not going far. She didn’t track the sensation, focusing instead on Michael, who raised his hands and gripped her wrists where she still cupped his stubbled jaw in her palms. Instead of pushing her away, as she half expected him to do, he held her in place. They stood a moment, their foreheads pressed together, leaning on each other. And she felt, for those brief few seconds, the same connection she’d found with him in the sacred chamber—a sense of being whole.

Being home.

Unfortunately, she knew it wouldn’t last long. Whatever was within him, whatever was between them, it was far from resolved.

With a final squeeze of her wrists, he broke the almost-embrace and stepped away. His eyes, when they met hers, were back to those of the man she knew, clear and very serious. “The next time you see me like that, promise me you’ll run away.”

She lifted her chin. “No.” Tell me what’s going on , she wanted to scream, but didn’t bother, because she knew he wouldn’t. “Promise me you’ll talk to someone. If not me, then Jade. Or Tomas.”

His eyes flickered with an emotion she couldn’t define. “I can’t,” he said softly, but his words were laced with regret.

“Then we’re at an impasse.” Making herself be strong and stand apart when she wanted to cling, or maybe shake him until his teeth rattled and she knocked loose some damned sense from his stubborn skull, she shrugged her blue robe tighter around her, smoothing the heavy fabric. “Come on. Let’s do this.”

Without waiting for his answer, she swept out of her suite and headed for the sacred room where the ritual would take place.

The bigger spells and important ceremonies had previously been held in the altar room beneath Chichen Itza, but with the secret tunnels beneath the ancient city now gone, and no luck so far in identifying another intersection, the magi were left with the smaller ritual room at Skywatch, a temple typically used for weddings, funerals, and naming ceremonies. Now, out of necessity, it was being pressed into service for heavier-duty magic.

Sasha hesitated at the entrance to the circular room, where torches lit the carved walls and the chac-

mool altar, and soft curls of copan-scented smoke curled from stone braziers. The scene was like a pastiche of memories, combining the filter-blurred sensory images of the torture she’d endured at Iago’s hands with the hotter, more immediate memories of being with Michael. Or with the other version of Michael—the edgier, sharper one she’d dreamed of the night before.

He touched her arm. “You okay?”

Shifting away so his hand fell to his side, she nodded. “I will be.”

The large, man-shaped chac-mool sat at one point of the compass, and torches were affixed at the others. The altar itself was set atop a large slab of cement that was tinted the red-gold of the Nightkeepers and the gods. Jox had told her that the cement had been mixed with the ashes of hundreds of magi,