more without even realizing it. Which was dumb, because she damn well knew better.
She and Carlos might have gotten closer in the years after her mom died, when they’d had only each other left, but all that had changed when the barrier reactivated and Jox called the Nightkeepers home, and any sense of family loyalty her father had picked up in the outside world had disappeared. Whatever warmth might have remained between them after that had been dealt a death blow when she left Skywatch, and then slaughtered utterly when she returned, took over the winikin, and refused to force the rebels into the traditional mold. He hadn’t been able to deal with that, hadn’t even tried.
Doesn’t matter, she told herself. What mattered was that she needed to stop wishing things were different and just work with what she had. Neither of them would change, and both of them thought they were right. In that sense, they were both doing the best jobs they knew how under the circumstances.
It sucked, but she needed to find a way to work with it. And she didn’t have much time.
Taking a deep breath, she said, “Fine. Here’s the deal. I’m calling a meeting to announce that Zane and Lora are gone—and why—and that Sven is stepping in as my coleader.”
“You’ll lose the winikin.” He said it flatly, as if it were a foregone conclusion.
“Not if I have the support of some key people.”
“And I’m one of them.”
“I have JT and Natalie on board. They’ll help sway the more moderate rebels. If you stand up for me, the older generation will follow.” She hoped.
“They’ll think it’s only because I’m your father.”
She smiled with zero humor. “Bullshit.”
He scowled, but relented slightly with, “You’ll want to tell them what happened with Zane, and about the cave and your mark, and everything that happened yesterday too. There are rumors flying like a bitch, and they’ll get you in more trouble than the truth.”
“I know. I’m going to lay it all out there. If they know what’s going on, they’ll make the right choice, especially if I’ve got the support of people they trust.” Fingers crossed. “So… can I count on you to back me up on this one?”
He hesitated, then pushed away from the counter, brushed past her, and headed for the second bedroom of his suite, which had been her room when they first came to Skywatch, but was now an office, with zero evidence that she’d ever been there. A desk drawer rasped open and then slid shut, and she heard the sound of a pencil scratching on paper, an archaic noise that made her think of childhood and essay tests.
She was being tested, all right, but she waited him out, and eventually the pencil scratches stopped and he emerged from the office, holding out an index card. “For you.”
“What is it?” She met him halfway, took the card, and skimmed the lines of text. Her blood chilled and a shimmy took root in her stomach at the sight of unfamiliar words that somehow struck a chord. “Some sort of spell? What—” She broke off, realizing what it was, what it had to be—one of the few spells granted to the winikin, and the only one she knew for certain Carlos had used: the binding spell that gave a winikin the aj winikin glyph, officially marking them as a servant to their bound bloodline. She would have dropped it, but couldn’t make her fingers move. “You want me to fully bind myself to Sven?”
“I want you to swear that you’ll be his winikin, but not his lover.”
“You…” The air leaked from her on a vicious hiss. She wanted to lash out at him, but knew that wouldn’t make a dent. Logic might, though, and she still needed to get his support somehow. Not this way, though. There had to be another. “You’d risk going against the nahwal’s message?”
“It said you needed to join, but didn’t specify how. The aj winikin bond is the obvious answer.” He plucked the index card from her fingers, folded it once, and tucked it into her jacket pocket.
She swatted at his hand, but the damn thing was, he had a point. The magic had come through the bloodline mark… or had it? “Zane said there was mage blood in the coyote winikin. What if the magic is coming through that connection instead. What if…” She trailed off and pressed her lips together, not wanting to say it aloud. Words like “mates” and “destiny” didn’t have any place in her and Sven’s relationship… but that didn’t mean she was going to give up that relationship to buy her father’s vote, especially when every instinct she possessed said not to.
Her father looked disgusted. “You’re reaching, saying anything you can to keep him as your lover.”
“And you’d do anything to stop us, wouldn’t you?” She breathed past the tightness in her throat, her chest. “Why is that, really? Is it because you see it as your failure as a winikin, or is there some real reason you don’t want us to be together?” As a woman and a daughter she was trying not to care. But as the leader of the winikin, she had to ask.
His face hardened. “You risk him, risk tainting his magic.”
“Bull. His magic is stronger when we’re together. Ask him yourself.”
“He needs to focus. Sex is a distraction.”
She couldn’t argue that one, because she was coming to learn that it certainly was—especially the way Sven did it. But she shook her head and drummed up a weak smile, trying to defuse things a little. “By your logic, nobody here should be getting any until the zero date. Good luck selling that idea.”
His expression shifted, but not to one of amusement. Instead, he looked almost wistful. “Can’t you trust me to know what’s right?”
And for a moment, she saw him as he used to be, back when the four of them had sat around the card table as a family, betting chores and pretzels. Back then, she might have gone along with anything he said, thrilled to be included. But that was a long time ago. “Your version of ‘right’ is outdated.”
“Perhaps. But everything I know, everything I’ve experienced in twice as many years, says that you’re talking yourself into this, and that’s going to get you in trouble.” He paused, and for a second she thought she might be getting somewhere. But then he said, “If you two are meant to be together, truly meant, then your feelings will still be the same three months from now. If you take the mark, stay out of his bed, and fight the war, you’ll have the winikin behind you.”
Her stomach knotted into a tight ball, and she didn’t want to look too closely at the reasons why. “But —”
“I’ll support you as Sven’s winikin… but not his lover. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
If she hadn’t been convinced that her and Sven’s relationship was connected in some way with the gods and the war, she might have taken the deal… at least she wanted to think she would have. But it wasn’t; it couldn’t be. So she shook her head. “No deal.” She was going to have to win over the winikin without her father’s support. She headed for the door, saying over her shoulder, “Meeting’s in the training hall in an hour.”
He didn’t call her back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
From the shelter of the cacao grove, Sven watched the winikin file into the training hall. Mac sat on his haunches nearby, with a confused whine ghosting in the back of his throat, not getting why they were hiding from the good guys.
“It’s complicated,” Sven said, because he didn’t think there were enough thought-glyphs in the world to cover what was going on in his head.
He didn’t want to go in there alone and cause a scene, but he hadn’t been able to make himself wait up at the mansion for Cara. And that was a problem—while part of the twitchiness had come from knowing that she was talking to Carlos, the rest came courtesy of a familiar itch that said, Get out, get moving, get some distance. And although for a long time he had embraced that itch, now he wished he could take a damn pill and get rid of it. Or maybe a spray or something. A bug bomb. Whatever.
He didn’t want the restlessness. More, it worried him that he’d awakened that morning from a bright, vivid dream of running through a closely growing rain forest, searching, always searching, though he didn’t know what he sought. Part of the time in the dream he’d been himself, but the rest of the time he’d had four legs and tough- padded feet that flew across the soft earth.
He’d had the same sort of visions in the weeks leading up to Mac’s finding him and the two of them
