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He’d only allowed me to come up here by myself after I’d managed a show of thorns from a body vine. I’d disguised how difficult that power outlay had been. “He’s in the garage working on sabotaged vehicles.” Paul’s doing.
“Must be weird being back here with the boss.”
“It is, sometimes.” As Aric and I worked side by side, cleaning up the messes left by Paul and reclaiming the castle, we behaved more like colleagues than a married couple. We were overly attentive and polite to each other, saying nothing of importance.
But back in our room . . . we were helplessly drawn to each other. He stole glances at my body and caught me looking plenty too. Sometimes I’d stare at his arms and imagine his comforting embrace. I missed him.
Yet I’d tucked the amber wedding ring in my drawer—because I wasn’t ready to let go of Jack.
Lark’s falcon gave a low cry from her perch. The wind today grounded her from scouting, not that Lark looked up for it.
I nodded at the beautiful bird, with its inquisitive eyes and snowy feathers. “You’ve never told me her name.”
“Taka. In Japanese, it means hawk, which she isn’t, but I liked the sound of it.” Lark studied my face with a gaze as penetrating as Taka’s. “You look like shit, unclean one. Aren’t you supposed to be all smiles?”
“I think that’s only in the movies.” This pregnancy kept me too nervous to smile much.
“You still having nightmares about us attacking you and all?”
“You know about those?” She raised her brows. Oh yeah, she’d been spying on us. “I’ve had a few.”
“Me too,” Lark murmured. “I dream about . . . about burning Finn. Can’t stop seeing that in my head.”
How horrific. “I’m so sorry.”
She pointed to the Magician’s icon on my hand, the ouroboros, and whispered, “Infinity.”
I nodded. “Infinity.” The symbol marked both of their cards.
“I’m glad you wear his icon. Not Paul.” She flashed her growing fangs. “He killed Finn twice. Once with poison and then again when he mind-warped me into cremating Finn’s body.”
“So you couldn’t resurrect him.” I recalled the sparrow she’d revived through faunagenesis. It had been blank-eyed and haunting. Had her grizzly? I hadn’t paid attention to its eyes—was too focused on its yawning maw looming over Kentarch’s truck as we escaped the castle. “Are humans even in your wheelhouse?”
Lark’s irises pulsed red. “We’re all animals at heart.”
After seeing what was left of humanity out on the road, I couldn’t argue with that. “Where are Finn’s ashes?” Surely a tooth or something remained. Not that I wanted Lark to resurrect him. As much as I’d cared about the Magician, I had seen Pet Sematary.
“Paul scooped them up, put them in a canister, and made me send one of my wolves out to the coast to break it open at the shore.” Her eyes watered, tears spilling. “The love of my life is gone. Obliterated.”
I reached across the bed to hold her hand. “You’ll see Finn again in your next life.”
“Unless you stop the game. When Finn lived, I wanted that more than anything. Not now.” She pulled her hand back. “What if you ruin our reincarnation?”
“You know the odds are against that,” I said, hedging.
A fox kit hopped up on the bed and snuggled into Lark’s lap. She absently stroked its silky fur with her beclawed fingers while it blinked sleepily.
Such an innocent creature compared to the grizzly Lark had sicced on us. “We need to discuss that supernatural bear. If Kentarch hadn’t shown up, I’d be dead.”
“You know Paul forced me to attack you.”
“He wasn’t in control of you when you resurrected it. Are there others?”
“Nah, Eves.”
I raised my brows.
“No! I have to bleed into it, and it takes a lot out of me, okay? And I only did it because Poseida’s moat put me on edge. I know you don’t believe me, but the Priestess did eat my tiger.”
Circe confirmed that. I studied the prints on Lark’s coverlet.
“Just like you guys ate my lion.”
I glanced up with a huff. “We didn’t have a choice, but you did with that grizzly. Why was it so big? Because you resurrected it?” It’d stood as tall as Ogen at his worst.
She shook her head. “No, at first it was normal. But once I fed it some of my blood, it got bigger. A lot bigger. Like my wolves.”
“Jesus, Lark.”
“I just wanted to protect myself, and then Finn.” Her eyes watered more. “Great job I did. I got him killed. If I’d been able to let him go . . .”
“Look, none of us could have predicted the Hanged Man, and Finn wouldn’t have lasted out in the Ash. You gave him happiness at the very end,” I assured her. “The night before he died, we had a talk, and he told me he was happier than he’d ever been.”
