“Just because we no longer serve or guard the portals does not mean we are free from them.”
Another statement that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
God, I thought, dropping my head onto my hands. Why in hell didn’t someone wake me? Surely this couldn’t be happening. Surely it couldn’t be real.
But it was. And it was a nightmare from which there was no escape. I very much suspected that not even death would help me. After all, beings who could unravel the threads of humanity could command a being to life as easily as they could kill.
“What about the device in my heart? What are you going to do to that?”
“Little more than mute its power and make it a less tangible presence. Hieu will still sense it, but only because he already knows it exists within you.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Do what you have to.” My voice was flat but not truly steady. It couldn’t be when I was all too aware of what was about to happen. “It’s not like I can do much to stop you anyway.”
“That is refreshingly compliant of you.”
I snorted. “Fighting you bastards didn’t achieve a whole lot the last couple of times, did it?”
“No, but it is in your nature to fight regardless of the wisdom of such an action. We were expecting nothing less.”
“Which just goes to prove that even those of us with thick heads get sick of constantly knocking ourselves out against brick walls.” I rubbed my arms, and felt a flicker of warmth run through my fingers. I glanced down. The Dušan’s eyes glowed with deep, angry fire. She might not be able to react against whatever the Raziq were about to do, but she was here, with me, and they could neither remove nor alter her. And suddenly I didn’t feel so alone.
“Then let us proceed.”
As she spoke, dark energy began to swirl around me. I braced myself, expecting the worst, but this time was very different from the last. Maybe it was simply a matter of accepting rather than fighting, but it didn’t rip through my body, tearing me apart cell by cell, until every atom felt like it was on fire and screaming in agony. This was more like a slip into Aedh form. The energy wove through me like a summer storm, powerful and yet oddly warm, numbing pain and dulling sensation as it invaded every muscle, every cell, breaking them down and tearing them apart, until my flesh no longer existed and I became one with the air. Until I held no substance, no form, and was little more than thousands of tiny particles floating aimlessly in the air.
Then I felt it.
A sharpness, like a knife being inserted into flesh. Pain rippled through my being, a burn that got fiercer, brighter, sharper. Silver flickered across the edges of awareness. The foreign line of particles was finer than a hair, but bright, shining, and cold. They wove through the tapestry of my being, stitching themselves to me and forever altering what I was.
Then the dark energy began putting me back together, piece by piece, until I was again on the stone, quivering and shaking and gasping for air.
For several minutes I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t say anything. The change into Aedh might not have been of my choosing, but it still affected me exactly the same.
In some way, that was a comfort. They may have altered strands of my DNA, but I was still reacting as I always had. At least for the moment.
My skin rippled as the Dušan crawled around my forearm, her claws creating tiny pinholes into my skin with each movement. I glanced down at her, and her head whipped around, her gaze meeting mine. There was displeasure and anger rather than concern in those dark violet depths.
I rested my fingertips against her gleaming body, gaining some measure of calm from her warm presence in my skin, then glanced up to the shimmer that was Malin and the other Raziq.
“Now what?”
“Now we return you and wait for your father to contact you.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Have no doubt that he will. Hieu wants those keys as much as we do.”
“Only he doesn’t want to basically destroy humanity by permanently shutting the gates.”
“No,” she agreed. “What Hieu wants would be far worse.”
Trepidation crawled through me. Her words all but echoed my earlier fears. “And what are his motives?”
“Dictatorship over all realms.”
“As in heaven, hell, and earth?”
“Yes.”
Fuck. Which didn’t really seem an adequate response to that bit of news.
Of course, given who was relating it, maybe I should be taking it with a grain of salt. They wanted my help to capture him, after all, and maybe imparting this bit of mind-blowing news was little more than an extension of their revised plans.
“Believe what you want,” Malin said. “It is not important to us.”
And with that, the dark energy swept around me again, shifting me from flesh to Aedh in the blink of an eye. It didn’t re-form me in Stane’s bed, but somewhere dark, cold, and wet.
It was rain, I realized, after staring at it running down my arms. I was kneeling in the rain. Why the hell did they dump me in the middle of a storm? Because they didn’t want to risk a clash with Azriel, even with greater numbers on their side.
I sat back on my heels. The madman in my head was reacting less severely than usual, enabling me to at least look around without feeling like I was about to pass out.
Not only was I in the middle of a storm, but if the height of the moon was anything to go by, it was also the middle of the night. Obviously, I’d been in the hands of the Raziq for longer than I’d thought.
A heartbeat later, a hurricane hit, blasting my skin with heat. Azriel dropped onto his knees in front of me, his fingers cupping my cheek as his gaze met mine.
There was a whole lot of anger in those blue depths. A whole lot of guilt.
“I’m okay,” I whispered, wishing he’d just wrap his arms around me and hold me like he never intended to let go. It might be a lie, but it was one I suddenly needed, if only for a few minutes.
“You are changed.” The words came out tight.
“It didn’t hurt. Not this time.”
“That is not the point.”
No, I guess it wasn’t. And like the last time, it couldn’t be undone. Not by him, and certainly not by me.
“Just take me home, Azriel. Please.”
He swept us across the fields even before I’d finished speaking, but when we reappeared, it was in Stane’s room, not mine.
“But—”
“No,” he said, his voice sharp, almost vicious. “I allowed you to be taken once. I will not risk it a second time.”
And I, for one, wasn’t about to complain about that, even if I’d rather be home. I stepped back and rubbed my forehead wearily. “The Raziq won’t snatch me again.”
“I didn’t mean the Raziq.”
I stared at him blankly for several heartbeats, then fear struck anew and I began to shake again. God help me, with everything else that had happened, I’d forgotten about our faceless madman.
But he was still out there, still after me.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t cope. Damn it, why wouldn’t everyone just leave me the hell alone? Was that too much to goddamn ask?
Azriel caught my hands and tugged me into his embrace. I closed my eyes and leaned my cheek against his chest, listening to the rapid pounding of his heart. It felt like heaven. Like I was home.
“Leaving you alone was what caused you to fall into Raziq hands.” His breath tickled the back of my neck, ragged and warm. “That should not have happened, and I apologize.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” I lifted my face and met his gaze. And while I ached to brush my lips against his, any move in that direction had to come from him. He knew what I wanted. He’d always known.
“If I had been here—”
“You would have been dead.” Even saying the words had my stomach tightening. “I know you believe otherwise, but there were six of them, Azriel, and one of them was immensely powerful. She said her name was Malin.”
He closed his eyes for a moment and said something in his own language. And though I didn’t understand one word, I didn’t really need to, given the anger in his voice.
“Malin is the leader,” he said eventually. “She is the one your father betrayed when he stole the keys.”
“Then what she did to me was as much about revenge as the keys.” I hesitated, and suddenly realized I couldn’t actually remember what they’d done. “Damn it, are you able to un-erase my memory?”
“No. And it is better that you do not know.”
Which suggested he did. Frustration ran through me, but it was quickly forgotten when he brushed a fingertip down my cheek and rested it all too briefly on my lips. “But you are right about the revenge factor. Your father and Malin were lovers. Malin has commanded the Raziq for a very long time, and she is nearing the end of her life. She wanted to reproduce. Your father refused.”
“But I thought that when the Aedh were at the end of their life cycles, breeding wasn’t a matter of choice, but rather an imperative they couldn’t ignore.”
“That is true.”
“Then why did my father turn to my mother when he had the option of a full-blood Aedh to breed with?”
He shrugged. “Your father is an uncommonly powerful Aedh, and one who has long planned domination. It would not surprise me if he foresaw the current problems and created you as a means of working around the Raziq and finding the keys.”
“But if he’d known the keys would be lost, why the hell wouldn’t he just ensure that they weren’t?”
“Because there were other players involved, and Hieu could not control them all. And perhaps you were nothing more than just a backup plan.”
Well, that’s something every child wanted to hear—although when it came to my father, nothing should really surprise me. “How come you know so much about Hieu and Malin?”
“When one is a hunter, it helps to understand the prey.”