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I held her hand as we listened to a long-winded elder deliver a speech. He was the dogcatcher Evie’s mom had planned to set her up with after the Flash. Nice guy, but verbose.
I’d just taken the podium when I spotted someone pushing through the audience. A protester? My deputies went on the alert. Then four more men at different spots in the crowd tossed off their cloaks, raising automatic rifles. Pointed at Evie—
“Hail the Hierophant!” they yelled.
I dove for her, covering her just as bullets ripped through the night.
Bystanders screamed, running in terror. Guards encircled us, but Evie had already lashed out at the gunmen with her body vines, leaving behind carnage on the ground.
“Ugh, Jackson Deveaux!” she snapped, pale and shaken from using her powers. “How many times do I have to tell you never to shield me? Regenerate here, remember?”
“Didn’t want you to have to.” I knew how much pain it’d bring her.
Speaking of pain . . . I rolled off her, and we both glanced down.
Damn it.
The Empress
“Jack??” Five bullet holes riddled his torso, blood gushing.
I tamped down my panic long enough to muster an anticoagulant into my claws.
He didn’t seem to feel it when I injected him, but I had to bite back a scream.
“Why . . . why would you cover me?” I wadded up my scarf to stem the flow from the worst wound. Over my shoulder, I yelled, “Get a doctor!” His deputies were already running to find one.
“Can’t help it. Got to protect you to my dying breath.”
It would be his dying breath. Crimson covered the stage around us. The blood from one wound was darker. We couldn’t fix a fatal liver injury. When we met gazes, I knew that he knew.
His expression was sheepish. “Stepped in it now, me.”
Didn’t mean I wouldn’t try to save him. “We’re going to fight this! You have never backed down from a fight—don’t start now.”
“Heh.” A ghost of a smile. “Been on borrowed time since I was a kid. I lived every day with you like it was my last, but those last days kept rolling over. Got more than three decades of last days with you.”
Blood poured. Pushing past my agony, I injected him again. And again. “We can do anything together! You told me that. You proved that. So fight.”
He dug into his pocket, pulling free the red ribbon. He tried to hand it to me. “For Dominija.”
“Do not give me that!” Tears welled. “You’re not leaving me! You wouldn’t.”
“I should’ve let you go. So selfish.”
“No, I wanted every second with you! I love you so much, Jack.” My tears spilled uncontrollably, and that seemed to cause him more pain than his wounds.
“No crying over ole Jack, bébé. We got to talk about you. You can’t win. Promise me.” Even as he was dying, his thoughts were on me. “Swear you’ll follow me. It’s the only way to be sure.”
“J-just don’t leave me.”
“I mean it! Doan think about the kids or coo-yôn. Think of yourself. You’ve got to end it.” He gripped my nape to draw me closer. “Promets-moi.” His voice grew weaker, his skin cooling. His life was leaving him.
My breaths turned to sobs. “I-I promise.”
As my hair made a veil around our faces, he rasped, “My God, woman, I’m goan to miss you.” Jackson Daniel Deveaux’s last words: “Ah, peekôn . . . it was always you.”
55
The Empress
One week later . . .
We’d buried Jack beside Aric, an oak growing above each grave.
Today I lay in the filtered sun beneath those trees. I wore the red ribbon around my wrist. The material was faded and worn—but strong enough for a tourniquet.
Still, I was sinking toward Circe’s abyss, the only place I could see to go. And hadn’t I promised Jack?
Tee opened the cemetery gate with a worried look. He should be worried.
Mama isn’t well, kid. Losing Jack was like losing a part of my body that would never regenerate.
Tee approached me with the gentle steps of one nearing a wild animal. “We need to talk.” He glanced at Jack’s marker, then Aric’s, then back at me.
“Of course.” He’d decided to move his family to Haven. I think Kent was planning to return for good too. Clo as well? I couldn’t remember exactly. The last week had been a haze.
“You wrote in your chronicles that I once turned you away from a dark path. I want to again.”
He didn’t understand. Without Jack, every moment was torment.
Tee read my apprehension. “Dad was the bedrock of this family, and we’ve lost him too early. Mom, we need you now.” He held out his hand to help me stand.
I didn’t take it. “You’ll all be fine. Jack and I taught you everything you need to know.”
His brows drew together. “What about justice?”
“I believe the gunmen paid with their lives.” I still felt that outlay of my powers. “I sentenced them to being smears.”
