was gray and dark overhead. The wind whipped his bloody and torn clothes and his sweat-soaked hair stuck to his face. He dragged his fingers through it and then gazed out over the skyline.
He offered me a hand and I took it, unsteady on my feet at first and my arm still burning and completely useless. “Why am I still conscious?”
“Because you were connected to me,” he said quietly. Too quietly. “You had hold of my hand.”
“What’s wrong with your voice? Are you hur—?” But the answer came to me even as he started to respond.
“I’m controlling my tone. We’re not very good at it. Can’t keep it up for long …”
The voice-mod was gone. There was nothing adjusting his natural tone. But I didn’t care. I was in too much pain to care. Maybe even in too much pain to be affected much by Hank’s voice. And if not, then, so what? I’d be enamored with him to the point of forgetting I hurt so much. “Talk all you want,” I muttered as we picked our way over the bodies, heading toward the agate sarcophagus. “Maybe it’ll take the pain away. My arm hurts like hell.”
That was an understatement. It hurt everywhere, but my arm overshadowed everything else. It burned, pulsed in an angry, red, infected beat. I glanced down at it. From the tips of my fingers to my shoulder, my skin was pink from the burn and covered in faint blue script.
I approached the sarcophagus, eyes scanning the area. “Where is the sword?”
He turned. “What sword?”
“The one I used to kill Llyran.” I glanced over to a pile of ash coating a large pool of blood. “I believe that’s him.”
A soft whistle blew through Hank’s lips. “Uh, Madigan?”
“What?”
“Did you see what’s in the sarcophagus?”
“No. I just remember grabbing the sword and swinging.”
I joined him at the agate tomb, taking careful steps since my legs were bruised and stiff. At the edge, I braced myself, expecting to see some kind of dried-up remnant of a First One. And then I looked.
“Oh, hell,” I breathed.
Hank’s hand tightened on my elbow as I swayed. Flawless, porcelain skin. The most perfect face you could ever conceive. Small, straight nose, finely curved nostrils. Lips just as full as my own, but hers were wider and stained red. Black, arched brows. And thick black lashes fanned out against high cheekbones. Glossy black hair. Body wearing a thin linen gown, so simple and fine you could almost see right through it.
Her hands gripped the hilt of the sword, holding it between her small breasts as though I’d never taken it from her.
But what stunned us into silence, what made the breath whoosh out of my lungs and leave me forgetting to breathe again, were the black wings on which she lay.
Fucking
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I finally found my voice.
“That’s a …” Hank began and then stopped as though the idea was too ridiculous to mention.
But I knew. I knew her voice had whispered through my mind in the warehouse where she was kept, and was the source of the beautiful language I heard when I looked at Solomon’s ring and cried over Brim. “Yeah,” I said, swallowing, “I think that’s Ahkneri, the star … a First One.”
I let the weight of those words sink in.
“Shit.” Hank swiped his fingers through his hair. “Well, what the hell are we going to do with her?”
Wind gusted behind us, making me hold on to the edge of the sarcophagus as I pivoted to find Pendaran standing there in nymph form, bloodied and bruised, a huge gash in his shoulder. “We hide her,” he said, walking up to stand beside me and gazing down into the tomb with an unreadable expression. “Grigori cannot have her.”
“You didn’t kill him?” I asked.
“No, but it will be a while before he can start looking for her.”
“You’re right,” I said. “We can’t turn the body over to the ITF. If anyone knew she existed … No one can know. She’s proof that the myths are true. The Sons of Dawn won’t stop, they’ll keep coming, keep trying, keep killing innocent people to awaken her.”
Hank cursed. “Maybe we should destroy it.”
“No,” Pendaran said immediately.
Dizziness made me reach for the rim again to steady myself as the voice inside of my head cried, a distant lament that weaved through my mind and wrapped around my heart. No. Couldn’t destroy …
Flashes hit me then. Fast and sudden, stealing my vision until all I could see were ancient memories bursting in my mind. Sobbing. Painted temple. Columns that rose three stories high. Sun-baked landscape, and the flash of daylight on a river beyond. The dream-like image of this divine woman, on her knees, begging before the flowing white gown of another as tears of sorrow ran down her face. But it was her emotions—the grief, the heart torn into something that was no longer salvageable—that closed my throat and brought tears to the surface. What had happened to her?
“Hell,” I swore, throat thick. “We have to keep her safe.” I shook my head, trying to get the sense of her gratitude out of my mind.
“She’s dead, for all we know, Charlie,” Hank said.
“She’s not dead.” I bit the inside of my cheek, Llyran’s words echoing in my head. “You guys do know that she has the power to rid the city of darkness.”
For a moment no one spoke.
Then the Druid spoke up. “We’ll find another way. What’s forty square miles of darkness to an all-out war? I can live with it. Anyone can go outside of the city for sunlight …”
“Besides,” Hank said, “we’d have no idea what she’d do if she woke …”
“She wouldn’t hurt us.”
“Oh, what, are you channeling First Ones now?”
I gave him a sideways frown. “I realize the lunacy of what I’m about to say, but”—
Hank’s bark of disbelief made me wince. “You have lost your mind. I knew one day it would happen, I did, but this … This is pure, certifiable, only-Charlie-could-do-this insanity. You
“I have another idea,” Pendaran said quietly.
Thirty minutes later, after the chief had been called to round up the jinn and bring Hank a new voice-mod, the nymphs were trickling back to the Grove, and Orin had turned the Old Lore over to Pendaran. Hank and I stood at the edge of Clara Meer Lake and watched the Druid King emerge from the depths, much like the first time we’d seen him only a few days earlier. Only this time he’d whispered the command to manifest clothes onto his tattooed body.
I stared at the water for a long time, my good hand resting on Brim’s back as he leaned against me, and my other cradled against my stomach, still uncertain about the decision to hide Ahkneri in the lake. “You sure she won’t get cold or wet or—”
“For the tenth time, I’m sure. It’s warm down there. That lid is a perfect seal. And she’s not submersed in the water, but in one of the largest caves within the lake. The agate, and the depth, plus the bedrock should be enough to mask her from even the most sensitive hunter.”
“Only the three of us know,” I said, looking at Pen and then Hank. “And it needs to stay that way.”
They both nodded. I returned to stare at the lake and the reflection of the cityscape on its surface, the lights twinkling and blinking in the soft ripples. Even the lights of Helios Tower shown atop the water.
“And you’ll return the Old Lore back to the Hall of Records once you’re done with it,” I said, repeating what we’d already agreed upon. Pendaran knew I was placing an enormous amount of trust in him. He’d placed his trust in me during the fight with Llyran, and I had to believe that he’d abide by his word.
“As soon as we study it. If there is a ritual that disperses darkness, we’ll copy it, and return the original to Elysia.”
“If you have any trouble with the script,” I said, with an ache starting in my chest, “you should talk to Aaron.
