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He’d felt the same way earlier, when baby Helena had all but crawled into her arms, demanding her presence and attention. Sweet Jesus, what the f**k did this mean?
Marguerite said, “Obsidian flame. We are both obsidian flame, but Thorne’s power is different. Mine is meant to combine with Fiona’s—and there’s something more. Grace is the blue variety of obsidian flame.”
Alison whispered, “Oh, my God.”
Santiago asked, “Is all of this true?” He turned to Thorne. “Since you were gone, you have now become obsidian flame? What the f**k does it mean? And Grace, too, that gentle soul?”
Thorne rose to his feet and glanced at Santiago’s identified sword. “How about you put your weapon away.”
Santiago nodded. The sword vanished.
Thorne explained what had happened. Certainly not all of it, or that the breaking of the membrane had occurred when he and Marguerite were naked in his bedroom. “The truth is, I don’t know the meaning yet. I don’t know what value it will be to the war effort. It’s all too new for that.”
He met Marguerite’s gaze. She nodded in agreement, but she looked so serious.
“Right now,” he said, “we’re taking this whole thing one horrible minute at a time.”
A general rumble of understanding went through the couples who had already been through the enormous changes that came with the breh-hedden.
When the children are well-tended,
A society thrives.
—Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth
Chapter 20
Marguerite swayed and rubbed without thinking. The sleeping baby was a solid weight against her now. Still, she moved in a gentle comforting rhythm that must have been as old as time. It gave her as much solace and ease as no doubt it did the baby.
She glanced around the power-laden group, the warriors first, imprinting face to name and back again. She had never been in a room with so many muscle-packed men before.
But it struck her suddenly that she didn’t feel like she would have just a few days ago, on the hunt and so hungry for masculine attention she could have killed for it.
Being with Thorne had changed that somehow. Perhaps being inside his mind, perhaps fighting with him, maybe even essentially bringing him back from the dead when she busted his power open.
She had the weirdest sensation that she belonged here, among these people—something she had never felt in her entire life. Pieces of her past began clicking into place, even the way her father’s brutal concept of religion had forced her from that community forever. Even the way Grace’s friendship and her nonjudgmental nature had made her feel comfortable in the woman’s presence despite the fact that they were at opposite ends of the spiritual spectrum.
She felt the power around her as a living, breathing entity, as something that was unified while at the same time belonging to each individual separately. And she was part of that.
Thorne was part of that.
“Maybe you should tell everyone about Leto now,” she suggested.
He nodded then proceeded to relate everything, beginning with Grace having pulled Leto out of Moscow Two at the exact moment that Greaves had planned his demise. He spoke for a long time, about the hidden colony, about Diallo, even a little about his fight with Endelle. That part of his story brought a heavy silence to the room.
He pressed on. He expanded on Marguerite’s ability to reach pure vision with the help of the Seer Brynna, a vision that had led to yet another rescue not just of Leto but of Grace as well, since apparently Greaves had wanted her dead for interfering in his plans. Then he spoke of Grace as the blue variety of obsidian flame. Essentially the triad’s members were now accounted for, he added, though no one really had any idea what their joined power could mean for the war.
He only slowed down when he got to Leto’s revelations about the size of Greaves’s army. Marguerite almost blurted it out but thought better of it.
It was Luken who finally prompted him. “So, what exactly did Leto do on behalf of the f**king little peach?”
“He built his army. Two million strong.”
Marguerite glanced around the group. She heard faint hisses, a number of curses, then just a fearsome silence. The air in the room seemed to vibrate. When she glanced back at Thorne, she saw that it was coming from him.
What’s going on? she sent.
I’m angry.
Well, you’re almost glowing. You might want to calm down.
He laughed, but he put his forehead in his hand and rubbed the temples. He squeezed his eyes shut. Marguerite watched his shoulders rise in a deep breath until he let his hand fall away, opened his eyes, and said. “Leto had to do this in order to keep up the illusion. I don’t fault him. How can I? He believed he was acting in the interests of all Second Earth. If any of us had been approached by a Sixth ascender, would we have refused? No, of course not.
“At the same time, I want him to come back to us, but he’s not well. There’s a good chance he won’t survive his withdrawal from dying blood. He won’t take it again and for some reason he’s become very weak, almost at the point of death.
“Only Grace’s sustenance has kept him alive over the past twenty-four hours, but just barely.”
Santiago, still standing near Thorne, said, “But I thought it was impossible to die from a lack of dying blood, at least so soon. I thought you could starve to death, but that such a death would take months.”
“Not in Leto’s case, but we’re not sure why—unless…” Marguerite once more watched him take a deep breath. “Unless it’s because he’s caught in the breh-hedden.”
No one asked the who of it. News traveled fast among the warriors. Nor did anyone ask why it might be affecting Leto that way. The breh-hedden was no picnic.
The deep sigh she took lifted her shoulders and the baby with it. Helena shifted and sighed as well, but she remained in the heavy weight of sleep. Marguerite kept a slow gentle rub up and down her back like she’d seen Alison do.
“You okay with that, boss?” Luken asked. From the corner of her eye, she watched him push away from the doorjamb. He was big, this warrior, more muscled than any of the other men. “I mean, Grace is about the gentlest soul I’ve ever known. I never thought she’d hook up with a warrior.”
Thorne’s smile was crooked. “Well, she kind of put me in my place about it. She may be gentle and kind but she doesn’t lack spirit. Make no mistake about that. As for if I’m okay with it, no, of course not, because it’s one helluva rough ride and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone I loved.” But as his gaze made its way around the room, it landed on Marguerite. “The truth is, I’m beginning to think there is infinite wisdom in the breh-hedden. I don’t know of anyone who would have been strong enough to bring my obsidian power online, except for this woman.” He didn’t elaborate on how it all happened or that she’d all but brought him back from the dead.
