The child’s eyes fluttered open, a faint smile on her lips. “My guardians said you’d come for me.”
“And I did,” Lara murmured back. “You are safe now, sleep.”
The girl relaxed in Lara’s arms, her head nestled against the Maere’s broad shoulder as she disappeared from sight. Lara looked back at me, a tenderness in those icy eyes that defied everything I thought I understood about what she did. She didn’t kill those parapsychs out of rage; she did it for the same reason I did anything. For the same reason Verona did: devotion.
Her devotion was just bigger than mine or Verona’s. Lara Achilles saw a vision of what we could be, not what we were. The hope in her eyes nearly choked me. I tore my eyes away from the Angel, shame roiling within me for all I could not be for my people.
“Clear,” Ember said, before glancing back at me. Outside,Eryx had pulled a van around to the front of the house. There was no way this hadn’t all been caught on CCTV, but he and Av piled the bodies of the guards and the torturer into the van. Rhiannon Brontë pulled our people off the garden gate, gently closing their eyes, her lips moving in silent prayer to Tanith.
These Maere surprised me. I knew I’d been wrong not to talk with Ember all those years ago when we suspected Lara of the murders. But now I saw that I’d underestimated them all. That I’d seen them as Authority collaborators, when what they truly were was the hairline between us and the entities of power that wanted nothing more than to suck our people dry and discard them.
Ember Verona had held that line alone for twenty years.
No wonder she was tired.
Lara Achilles walked out of the safe house, the little medium in her arms. As she walked down the steps, I knew why they called her the Angel. There was a nobility in her countenance I hadn’t seen in centuries. I stood next to Ember as Lara spoke to Rhiannon in the garden.
“Thank you,” I murmured, watching the two warrior women speak to one another.
My brother stepped forward, and vaguely I heard him ask how Lara had known what to say to make the girl invisible. Lara’s tight smile told me the words were a secret she’d kept for a long time. “I have always said it to the ones I helped. I did not realize it would make her invisible tonight.”
Lux. She’d known that Lara would be here, that they would come. I cursed the Seer silently, but it wasn’t her fault. Visions were tricky things. Sometimes, if the subject knew what was to happen, it changed things too quickly. All too often, a Seer’s visions were useless.
Av and Eryx stared at the Maere the spirits had called the Angel with awe in their eyes. For the briefest of moments, I understood what the world had once been, what the Maere andthe Trinity were before the Authority—and before the Consulate.
There was no way for me to say if it was better. I hadn’t lived quite so long as all that. The Consulate was formed hundreds of years before my birth. History told us that those had been dark days. But history was written by the Authority. Written by those who hated us. Roman’s accounting of it had been that those were halcyon days, but I knew better than to wholly believe in his nostalgia for the days he was King.
Ember’s frown interrupted my rumination. I was far too attuned to her moods and when she spoke, all other thoughts flew out of my mind. “Don’t thank me just yet. We need your help.” My heart beat faster as she held out a hand to me, her back straightening and her shoulders rolling back, as she spoke the simple ancient words. “You are called, Ares Necroline. Will you answer?”
The past I’d just been imagining melted into the present, the days of knights and kings reborn. My hand went around her forearm as I sank to one knee in front of her, a chill going through me as I bent my head. The feel of her long fingers wrapping around my forearm was so delicious as to be distracting, but took nothing from the solemnity of this moment.
Whatever happened here tonight, it was bigger than anything the Necroline Dynasty could handle on its own. I knew what Ember Verona would ask, and I would gladly pledge all my aid. Orphium needed its Maere back.
So I spoke the ancient response without hesitation. “Your call is answered. The Necroline Dynasty pledges fealty to the Orphium Maere. Use us as you will.”
CHAPTER 16
EMBER
Ares Necroline’shand slipped from my forearm so slowly it sent heat lashing through my veins. His pledge felt as though it wasn’t just to the Orphium Maere’s leader, but to me, personally. The thought was ridiculous. Of course, he hadn’t pledged a thing tome. I was, technically, above him in the chain of command.
He was simply doing what he was required to.
Obeying me.
Not that he had ever done so, in all the years I’d known him. I brushed the thought aside, trying to calm the breath that pushed through my lungs, which threatened to heave as evidence of the desire that mounted inappropriately at the base of my spine, seeping into lower, more intimate places.
Rhiannon walked towards the bottom of the garden gate. She held her phone to her ear. I hadn’t heard it ring or vibrate, but somehow, she’d known to answer it. Her face was grave.The Consulate.
She called up to us. “We need to go. The Authority is sending a team for cleanup.”
“Was this sanctioned?” I asked. It was frustrating that theConsulate called her and not me, but that was the way of things.
Rhiannon shook her head first, then shrugged. “They say no, but…”
I nodded. We were never going to get an honest answer about that. It had been a silly question. All I wanted was one hundred years of sleep and a thousand percent less bullshit. But here we were, right back in the thick of things.
Ares held an arm out, indicating that I should pass by him to get to the front door. As I slipped past him, my fingers grazed his, unintentionally, but time slowed regardless of my intention. The world stopped as his hand flexed, as though to open for mine. As though he might lace his fingers through my own, and bring them to his lips. Like a knight kissing his Lady’s hand.
