Skykeepers

She did, though part of her had wanted to hide in the darkness behind her eyelids.

Their gazes caught and held, and a dangerous, treacherous warmth kindled in her chest, warning her that this wasn’t just sex, couldn’t be, at least not for her. And a piece of her had to believe it wasn’t just sex for him, either. The look in his eyes, the open pride in his face, his total focus on her—that had to be more, had to be the same sort of connection she’d felt that first time, that she felt now.

Then he thrust within her and she arched on a cry of pleasure, of completion. The orgasm echoes that had left her flesh soft and pleased now reversed themselves and drew inward, coiling tight around the point where he invaded her, possessed her, drove her up and over another wave of orgasm, then followed her over the crest with a cry that might’ve been her name, might’ve been something else.

They came together, wrapped in each other, hearts hammering in unison, bodies shuddering. Sasha pressed her face against his hot throat, feeling his pulse against her cheek, feeling him throb within her. The humming melody became a song, familiar and lovely, but she didn’t need the music or the magic to know that this was it for her, that he was what she’d been meant to find, that despite—or perhaps because of—their mismatches, they were a match. It was fate, she thought, riding high on the buzz of pleasure and the magic she was only just beginning to touch. Destiny. And if that was the case, she thought, she was in deep shit, because she had a feeling Michael didn’t want to be anybody’s destiny. Not even his own.

Don’t, she told herself, derailing the negative thought train before it could fully form. Don’t make this more—or less—than it is. For once in your life, just enjoy the moment.

So she did. She enjoyed the moment that he eased away and kissed her again, enjoyed the moment when those kisses became more, when casual caresses gained purpose, when postcoital bliss morphed to foreplay almost without transition. And she enjoyed the moment he came deep inside her, not just because she was locked in the throes of her own long, shuddering orgasm, but because this time she was sure he called her name.

Later, much later that night, after they’d turned to each other a third time and were wrung limp with pleasure, she said softly, “Promise me one thing?”

“What?” To her surprise, he sounded more curious than wary.

“Promise me you won’t go into the scorpion spell alone. Promise you’ll tell me, or if you can’t tell me for some reason, you’ll tell Strike. Or Jox. One of the three of us.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Okay, yeah. I promise.” Then he leaned in and kissed her again, and again. Then he loved her again. And in that moment, she felt that she’d come home, at least for a while.

CHAPTER TWENTY

In the week leading up to the winter solstice, the magi prepared for their singular purpose: get the library scroll from the First Father’s tomb and call the Prophet.

Rabbit did his damnedest to talk Strike into letting him try the scorpion spell too, but the plan was vetoed when the royal council decided it would be far better to wait until after the Nightkeepers secured the library. Gods willing, there would be a better option contained within it.

Rabbit was pissed, but as far as Michael could tell, that had as much to do with Myrinne’s deciding to stay on campus a few extra days past the beginning of the holiday break as it did with the king’s decision regarding the spell. There seemed to be more trouble in paradise, but when Michael had asked after her, he’d gotten his head bitten off. He hadn’t followed up, figuring Rabbit deserved his privacy if that was what he wanted. Besides, he didn’t think the younger mage would appreciate his opinion of Myrinne, which started with, “She’s not,” and ended with, “that into you.”

Michael and Sasha, on the other hand, were very into each other. It was the perfect setup, as far as he was concerned; they took each day as it came, enjoying each other without reservation, but also without expectation. Each morning, though, he awoke determined to have another day with her. And then another. He thought she was coming to trust him, reveled when she let down her guard and let herself hold onto him an extra moment, or lean on him for power or help.

When they weren’t in bed together, they worked together, along with the others, working out what plans they could for the solstice. The three-year countdown was bearing down on them freight-train fast. The only thing they knew for certain was that Iago wanted him and Sasha at Paxil Mountain. The question was: Which was the better option, using them as bait to lure him into a trap, or sequestering them safely away at Skywatch? As far as Michael was concerned, the answer was obvious: she stayed at Skywatch and he went to the temple in case there was a fight. Splitting them up would make it harder for Iago to grab them both.

“Or you could stay here and I could go to the temple,” Sasha had pointed out. “I know the site better than you do.”

In the end, it was decided that they would both go to the temple, not the least because the winikin didn’t want him left behind if the other magi were out in the field. A storeroom wasn’t going to be able to hold him if the Other used the power of the solstice to break through. With that decision made, they turned their attention to planning for the actual solstice ceremony. In going over what Ambrose had told Sasha, Jade locked onto the word “conduit.” Ambrose had said the scroll would summon the Prophet, but that the solstice was required for the formation of some kind of conduit. The original assumption was that the Prophet was a sort of guiding spirit, and the spell would open some sort of portal leading to the library, maybe because it had been hidden within the barrier, much as Skywatch had been for so many years. That, however, wasn’t quite right, according to the archivist’s research.

“We were correct in guessing that the library was tucked into the barrier,” Jade said during one of the daily planning sessions Strike had instituted. “But this spell isn’t reversible like the one that hid Skywatch, or that we believe Iago has used to hide his hellmouth. There’s no way to bring the library back to earth. Instead, we need to . . . deputize someone as a go-between, I guess you could say. This person, the Prophet, becomes a conduit capable of channeling the necessary information.” Which sounded simple enough, but Michael heard the reservation in her voice.

“What’s the catch?” he asked.

“It’s a soul spell. As in, it requires the soul of a magic user to be destroyed; the magic animates the shell, using it as a golem of sorts. That golem is the Prophet.” Jade paused. “It’s the only Nightkeeper spell I’ve come across that requires an actual human sacrifice. More, the victim’s soul doesn’t go to Xibalba, the sky, or even Mictlan. It’s destroyed. There’s no afterlife, no nothing. In the case of a Nightkeeper, the person’s experiences aren’t even added to the bloodline nahwal’s collected wisdom.

They quite simply end.”

Beneath the table, Michael had felt Sasha’s foot press against his in support as the others pointedly avoided looking at him.

“Does the sacrifice need to be one of us?” he asked, keeping his voice expressionless.

“Any magic user will do,” she’d answered, “although that remains a small pool: one of us, or one of the Xibalbans.”

“I’m in favor of door number two,” he muttered. In a way he was relieved, though. It seemed logical that the gods would use the Mictlan as the executioner for a soul-spell sacrifice. Although there was no joy in the thought of killing anyone, even a red-robe, in ritual sacrifice, it seemed better than some of the alternatives he could imagine as the Mictlan’s target. But in the days that followed, the Mictlan talent didn’t activate; there was no hint of his victim’s identity.

So the residents of Skywatch waited, and they studied, and they prepared. And each night, Michael and Sasha met in his suite or hers, or once out by the pool, where the temperature might have dipped down into the forties but the solar-heated water steamed wisps of fog into the night. Each night they loved each other, and slept in each other’s arms, and pretended everything was okay, even though they both knew it wasn’t. They were waiting . . . waiting for the library, for the target, for something to happen.

By the night prior to the solstice, Michael had worn himself raw inside trying to run contingencies in his head and figure out what he would do when he got his target.

He awoke near midnight, almost at the threshold of the solstice day. Even before he was fully conscious, he