She might be projecting a calm exterior—she was doing her best, anyway—but inwardly she was scrambling to keep up with herself, with the new skills she was learning, and the new confidence—and insecurities—they brought. She’d come to Skywatch a victim, and in less than a month had become a princess and a top-notch mage; she’d found her family, and had found some forgiveness for Ambrose, and the hope that he could forgive her, as well. And she’d found and lost a lover. That piece weighed on her, despite her best efforts to just walk away from it.
She glanced up, looking for Michael, knowing she would find him nearby, not too close, but never far away, either. True to his word, he’d insisted on partnering with her during what they’d come to call the temple raid. He might not want to be with her—or not enough to get past his inner shit—but he seemed bound and determined to protect her. Part of her thought she should’ve turned him down, maybe replacing him with Sven, who along with Jade had become her friend, filling some of the empty hours when the mated pairs were off doing mated things. But Michael had had refused to let another mage take his place. Period. And to be honest, she hadn’t argued too hard. She liked Sven, but he was a bit of a lightweight still. If she had to have any of the magi at her back, she’d take Michael despite their problems, because she knew that once he’d committed to a course of action, there was no swaying him, for better or worse.
So they would go in together, but not together. Story of her life.
“Okay, people,” Strike said as he appeared in the arched doorway leading from the royal wing. “It’s time.”
The Nightkeepers would all ’port to Ambrose’s old campsite, save for Jade, who offered nothing in the way of fighting skills, and Anna, who had gone back to Austin. Thanks to a sizable donation from the Nightkeeper Fund, which had repaired the dorm and bought them amnesty, Rabbit and Myrinne had also returned to school, wearing even stronger mental filters than before. However, because Red-
Boar had once used his mind-bending talent to wrest Anna’s consciousness away from the demi-
The young man had arrived sullen and dark visaged, muttered something about having a fight with Myrinne, and promptly disappeared in the direction of his cottage. Sasha had gone to see if he was okay, but he’d ignored her knock and she hadn’t pushed it. Now he lifted his hand in a gesture she thought was part acknowledgment, part apology.
She nodded and felt a little less alone, while thinking inwardly that if her least complicated ally was a loose cannon with a penchant for torching real estate, she was in trouble.
At the thought of allies, she tried very hard not to look at Michael. She was all too aware of him, though. He wore the same outfit he’d had on when he’d rescued her, when he’d made love to her that one time. She tried to tell herself it meant nothing, that those were his combat clothes. Still, her own slick black fight wear chafed in the face of sensory memories that came all too easily.
“Link up,” Strike ordered. The magi formed a circle, cut their palms, joined hands, and jacked in.
Standing between Strike and Michael, Sasha was all but overwhelmed by maleness and magic, and by the sharp difference between the two men. Trumpets and silence. Yet it was the stillness within Michael that compelled her, making her want to sink inside him and give him music.
And that wasn’t what she was supposed to be thinking of, she reminded herself.
Strike summoned his magic from the uplink, found the travel thread linking them to the campsite, and sent them into the barrier. The world went gray-green around Sasha, and Skywatch disappeared.
All around the clearing, the trees rose to impossible-seeming heights, lush and verdant and singing with life. And it wasn’t just the plants and creatures that were singing, she realized after a moment; the red-gold magic had come alive at the base of her brain, singing that quiet martial theme, suggesting there was a source of power nearby. But that stood to reason; Anna had revealed that Ambrose’s campsite was a place of power in its own right. The natural clearing, which was almost perfectly circular, had once been a cenote, one of the caved-in sinkholes that the ancients had used as both a water source and a place of sacrifice, believing the circular openings to be among the earthly entrances to Xibalba. Those sacrifices, mostly offerings of food, pottery, or small carvings called eccentrics, had remained at the bottom of the cenote even after the area ceased being inhabited by Maya or Nightkeepers. Over time, layers of leaves and debris had covered the sinkhole, eventually capping it over entirely. Now it was simply a clearing in the rain forest, with a subterranean waterway running beneath, and a cluster of offerings that gave off a background hum of magic by their very nature as sacrifices.
“Anna and Red-Boar reburied Ambrose over here,” Strike said, gesturing her over to one edge of the clearing. The magi had moved him from his original spot atop the cenote to a place at the edge of the clearing. That way, if archaeologists ever found and excavated the cenote to get at the sacrificial relics within, they wouldn’t find the newer corpse.
The spot Strike indicated looked like all the others, but when Sasha reached it, the air felt different — thicker, and faintly expectant. “Hello, Ambrose,” she said, stumbling a little over his name, which brought the image of the demi-
This was the first time she had been outside the blood-ward surrounding Skywatch since her escape.
Unsure whether Iago would be monitoring them, and whether he would try to ’port in and snatch her, the Nightkeepers were on alert. Rabbit, especially, was keeping himself attuned to any influx of dark magic.
Even on high alert, though, the magi made quick work of the exhumation, taking turns between digging and standing watch. Sasha looked away as Strike and Nate wrapped Ambrose’s headless corpse in the sheets they’d brought with them for the purpose, then with a blue plastic tarp, for the sake of practicality. The tarp crinkled as they hefted the corpse out of the hole and set it off to the side of the clearing. Then they moved aside, giving Sasha a moment.
Aware that Michael stood close behind her, Sasha stared down at the wrapped bundle. When she’d first set out to retrieve her father’s remains, she’d pictured what she’d say or do when she found him.
But none of what she had imagined seemed appropriate now. Not when she was hoping that she’d soon be facing his ghost, trying to get through its madness. So in the end, she said only, “I owe you my life.
I promise I’ll do my best to ease your death.”
She didn’t watch as Strike ’ported the body back to Skywatch, didn’t turn back until she heard the pop of air that signaled his return. At Strike’s inquiring look, she shook her head. “No sign of him.”
Strike nodded. “Then let’s go ghost hunting.”
Still jacked into the barrier, the magi formed a line. Michael took the lead, hacking through the forest growth with powerful slashes from a sharp-bladed, bone-handled machete that he held with easy, deadly familiarity. Sasha followed close behind him, with Strike and Leah behind her. The two other mated couples formed the middle, with Rabbit and Sven forming the firepower-heavy rear guard. Sasha’s position in the line forced her to watch the bunch and flow of Michael’s muscles beneath his dark tank and body armor, the powerful flex of his legs as he led them toward the temple.
Heat pooled in her belly. She told herself to look away, that she was just making herself crazy. But at the same time, the heat within served to intensify the buzz of magic. So instead of pretending not to watch him, she let herself appreciate the aesthetics instead. And if that brought an ache beneath her heart, that was her problem, her pain.
