She actually looked thoughtful for a moment, turning from him and inspecting the melting ice in the bottom of her glass. “I . . . saw something. Scried something, to be exact.”
Nigel’s brow lowered.
“It was during that final class period, when you were trying to keep me alive. We had already opened our minds to the Sight, and when I hovered in that space between life and death, the opening widened a hundredfold. I saw things such as I had never dared to dream. Power. Dire Power. Great explosions of pure force, ripped from one reality to the next. And Jastira herself, manifested in a form so great, so glowing—a goddess-like creature. I realized then that I must, indeed, worship her. Not as you and the Brotherhood did, with all your masculine fawning and lusting, mingled with your not-so-secret hatred.” She shook her head, her teeth flashing in a brief smile that was almost soft, almost gentle. “In her, I beheld the true Feminine Ideal. Power beyond that of man and mortality. The power of creation itself.”
Her eyes flashed to meet Nigel’s, swift as two arrows shot to the mark. “But I also saw the moment when she was to be cast down. When she would face off against a Dark Sorcerer, her male counterpart. And he would betray her just at the moment when she was to achieve her Great Glory.” She breathed out slowly. “I saw it all, Grimm. Her fall and the consequences thereof. I saw sorcerers rounded up and marked with the heptagram. I saw the great magic-users of our day driven into hiding, hunted down like animals. And then, even as you forcedyour air into my lungs, and I found myself poised on the very brink of death, I heard her voice. Jastira. Speaking to me from beyond the bounds of Time and Space.”
“What did she say?” Nigel asked in a low whisper.
“She said I was to save her. That I was uniquely chosen to bring about her liberation from the prison into which you were to cast her. But I could not do so from within the society of Nocturnus. I could not be what my goddess needed unless I separated myself from any association with sorcery. The Shadowbane Lady would need an ally who rubbed elbows with all the Authorities of Plym, who could gain access to information and records. Who could move and manipulate and make things happen with impunity. Oh, I saw it all! She revealed it to me, in a great and ecstatic vision!”
She closed her eyes, as though reliving those moments of ecstasy right then and there, seated at the bar of The Ugly Mug. She pressed a bejeweled hand to her breast, breathing in and out in great gasps.
The moment passed, however, and she lowered her hand and shook her head. “Then I woke,” she said. “Brought back to life by you—the very man who would destroy my goddess, though I did not know it then. I left Belfany University the very next day, my course set before me, my mission fixed in my heart. And I’ve never once looked back.”
“So you got your hooks into Mr. Anguish and stepped into politics by way of matrimony.”
“Not immediately. It took rather more maneuvering than that.” Calista snorted softly. “But eventually, yes. And I helped found thel’mauvas,which gave me all the clout and credibility I needed. I even fostered a dalliance with old Sirus Breckenstock. You remember him, don’t you?”
Nigel felt all the blood drain from his face. He did know that name. And, hearing it spoken, he found himself castback to that dark period of time following Jastira’s fall: a time of imprisonment and finger-screws and other forms of torturous interrogation. The bilious face of old Breckenstock featured prominently in all the worst of those memories—a man determined to wrest the secret of Garden from Nigel’s lips at whatever cost.
“Yes,” Nigel whispered. He nodded, his head suddenly heavy between his shoulders.
Calista leaned toward him again, placing her lips close to his ear. “He whispered your name to me on his pillow one night. Told me something of the doings in the dungeons of Ironclad Fortress. Told me how you wouldn’t break, but how everyoneknewyou kept the secret of your father’s Great Work. Somewhere. Somehow.” She allowed her lower lip to brush his earlobe briefly before drawing back a little ways and looking at him hard with her cold gaze. “Did you know I am the one who talked Breckenstock into releasing you?”
His eyeballs swiveled sharply in their sockets. “What?”
She batted her lashes like a consummate flirt, even as her voice darkened. “You didn’treallythink they would have just let the Grimshade Lord go with nothing but a heptagram tattoo and a warning to do better. You were scheduled for execution, Grimm. Drawing and quartering is such a medieval way to die, but still perfectly legal when it comes to Dark Sorcerers gone bad.” She settled back in her seat, her body languid, her eyes sharp. “Ispared your life.Iconvinced Breckenstock that you were nothing more than a patsy in Jastira’s schemes. I even convinced him that the Infinite Dynamo was probably her work, not yours, that you were always such a weak little mage and could never have concocted a spell of such tremendous—”
Nigel stood upright, his feet coming down hard from the barstool. A black cloud welled up from deep inside him, the darkest sorcerer-self rising up in a billowing storm of fury. “TheInfinite Dynamo wasmine,”he snarled. “Jastira never dreamed of harnessing power like that! Not until I came along and showed her the way.”
Calista grinned. “No need to get in a fuss, Grimm. Remember, if the Authorities of Plym had believed all that, you would be gruesomely dead long ago.”
It was unreasonable—he knew it. But the truth was, part of him would rather be dead than have the validity of his work so utterly discounted. He had been well on his way to making his name and his discoveries the greatest of the age, the greatest ofallages, perhaps. All sorcery and sorcerous studies which came after would have been entirely based onhisresearch,hisfindings,hisdiscoveries. The magnificent tome he had been in the middle of writing—The Grimm Theory—should have become the basis of a whole new school of academic research.
Ah! He could see it, how it would all play out! Universities named in his honor, apostles devoted to his every word like he was some sort of demigod. History itself would pivot on the point of his very existence. In the end, he would have eclipsed Jastira herself. She had been so fixated on the idea of immortality, but Nigel hadn’t cared about any of that.Thiswas the true immortality he craved. And it had been so, so, so close. So nearly within his grasp, only to be stripped away from him at the last, when he could have . . . he might have . . .
His mind shuddered to a sudden stop. The next moment, it filled with a flare of memory so potent, so powerful, Nigel gasped out loud: memory of a small, too-thin body wrapped close in his arms. Weeping into his chest.
Luna.
What had his ambition cost her? Indirectly, perhaps, and yet so profoundly. Her life, her world, was utterly turned upside down, all because of his choices, his decisions. And not her world alone. Though Jastira carried most of the blame, Nigelhad walked hand-in-hand with her every step of the way, leaving destruction in their wake as they pursued their dark plans, each fueling the fire of the other’s ambition. Luna was one of only hundreds of thousands of people whose lives he had torn apart.
If anyone had asked, Nigel would have told them his goals were entirely altruistic. The Infinite Dynamo, after all, once stabilized and replicated, would benefit humanity for ages to come.
But it was the pursuit of glory alone which had driven him ever deeper, ever darker.
He drew a slow breath, closing his eyes. Then he said, “You should have used your influence to get a better gift from your lover, Calista. My life isn’t worth much. To anyone.”
“No,” she agreed coldly, “it isn’t. But your garden is.”
“Garden was destroyed in the altercation with Jastira.”
“Your brother seems to think otherwise.”
“My brother is an idiot.”
“Granted. But he’s proven a valuable source of information, even from Phrigidos. He mentioned your flower shop, as you know. He mentioned as well something about your . . . shop girl.” Calista tilted her face back, eyeing the thaumatic lamps hanging overhead, and tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Now, what was her name?Luna,was it? Luna Talbot.”
