“I’m keeping Soren,” Sword said, “till I know what to do with him.”
“It’s not your decision, Sword. It’s his.”
“Like hells,” Sword protested. “I can mimic any magic I touch. I don’t even know how many powers I have right now—immortality, fire, warding, regeneration. I was able to absorb a Traveler’s power, for Host’s sake. This body isn’t just a Patrean throwback—if they had incubi this powerful, they would have won the war easily.
“He’s more like a fuck-you weapon that you unleash when you’ve already lost the war. And the first thing this kid is going to do when he wakes up is bolt. The next thing he’s going to do is feed on whatever mages he can get his soft, delicate hands on.”
“Is he more dangerous than I am?” Maddox inquired.
“Maybe,” Sword said evenly. “This magic isn’t supposed to exist. Say what you want about Achelon, but after he killed all the immortal wizard kings during the Long Night, life got a lot simpler. You can’t even understand how crazy it was. In Sarn, humans were slaves to their creations. The Patreans were so obsessed with physiological perfection they weren’t even human anymore.”
“And the Macerians?” Maddox asked.
Sword finished his brandy. “Point is, all those shit weasels got exactly what they deserved.”
Maddox held the bottle of brandy in his hand. Only a splash remained. “Except Archea. They got off easy.”
Sword chucked. “Archea was a joke. Literally, the whole floating island was raised by some Academy students as a graduation prank. They stayed out of the arms race after that. Sure, they had slaves and an epically shit bench on their arena team, but they never crossed the line of using humans for experiments.”
Maddox set down his glass. It showed soot marks where it had touched his lips. “I wanted to go to the Academy more than anything.” He recalled that fateful day he had inscribed the Seal of Vitae. He imagined the accolades he would have received and the lectures he would have given to auditoriums filled with the brightest, most eager minds in Creation. The loss of that dream left a gaping empty hole in his life.
His existence stretched out before him, like a barren road without end or destination.
Titus, with his brawny tattooed arm, set another bottle down in front of Maddox. “Did you see the Archean sky ship parked above Baash?” Titus had clearly been eavesdropping.
“The fuck’s it doing in Baash?” Sword asked. It was a valid question. Baash had temples but no institutions of arcane learning or trade guilds.
Titus shrugged. “Maybe you should ask them.”
“I’ll get right on that,” Maddox slurred as he poured himself two fingers from the new bottle. It might have been cheaper to buy the bar outright than run up his tab with credit notes from the Bank of the Coral Throne. He fished in his pockets for an imperial credit script before realizing they had burned up in the fire. “I’ll have to get you later.”
Titus shrugged. “That’s fine. This one’s courtesy of the Bamoran woman back there. Maybe she likes scrawny wizards?”
Sword’s hand clamped down on Maddox’s shoulder. “Maddox. You may want to take that drink before you turn around…”
Maddox didn’t like the sound of that one bit. He turned slowly to where Sword was looking. Maddox’s blood ran hot with anger. There she was, the woman who had violated his mind, sitting comfortably at a table. Daphne’s face had some new scars, and she wore black leather like an Inquisitor. She raised a wine glass, a self-satisfied smirk plastered across her face.
Maddox was out of his seat before he even knew what he was doing. He moved so quickly the stool clattered against the bar. “You,” he said in low, measured tones, “need to get the fuck out of here. Now.”
“Maddox,” Daphne cooed. “It brought me no pleasure doing what I felt I needed to do. But you yourself admitted you were a danger. I’m glad to see you were able to recover. We need to talk about Heath.”
“Give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you.” Maddox’s voice trembled. “No, give me sixty reasons in ascending order of importance.”
“You’re not my mission anymore, Maddox,” Daphne said. “I’m on a crusade against the people responsible for destroying our home, drowning our friends, and leaving Rivern defenseless. The Backwash is gone. All of those people dead, including your aunt Cara. Your father’s alchemy shop is
erased
.”
“Cara?” Maddox felt something catch in his throat. Cara had done her best to protect Maddox from his father. She was the one who had Maddox sent to the Lyceum, one of the few good things to ever happen to him.
“They need to be eliminated. All of them,” Daphne said firmly.
“Satryn paid for that in blood,” Sword said.
Daphne rolled her eyes. “But what about the next person to take the mantle of Tempest? Jessa may seem sincere now, but treachery runs deep in the blood of Stormlords. Iridissa raised her daughter to be a weapon. She planned this attack for decades. What’s to say that Jessa isn’t just the final stage of the conquest? Or the next generation? We cannot risk our security.”
“Then make better security, you batshit fanatic,” Maddox said hotly. “The towers of Rivern fell because no one expected the attack to come from inside the warded cell. It should have been obvious that Satryn’s power could reach outside the boundaries when she received her power from her brother. How was that possible if she was cut off? The Invocari were stupid. That kind of attack will never, ever happen again.”
“Heath is working with the Proteans,” Daphne said.
Sword groaned. “Just leave already, Daphne. No one is buying your horseshit.”
“Wait.” Maddox peered at her. “How do you even know what those are?”
Daphne tapped the side of her head. “I met one, and she nearly killed me. I had to consult the bestiary, but she was incredibly strong and healed herself instantly. Sound familiar?”
Sword and Maddox looked at each other. Even with soot smeared all over his face, Soren’s body was a gorgeous sight to behold.
Sword asked, “Why would he be doing that?”
“Heath was one of my best Inquisitors,” Daphne said. “He would use any resource at his disposal to achieve his objective, but I kept him on a tight leash. And now that he’s become a Stormlord, he’s a mad dog. He’ll kill anyone who gets in his way without a second thought. When an agent goes too far, it’s the responsibility of the Inquisition to put him down.”
“Like Esme?” Maddox asked. “The problems in Rivern started a long time before Satryn, and your precious agent was at the center of it.”
“I regret the role my negligence played in the affair.” Daphne cast her eyes downward. “There are many things I would have done differently, and I will atone for that for the rest of my life. But right here and right now, the only thing I can offer the dead is justice.”
Maddox said. “On behalf of everyone who died in Rivern, myself included many times, we don’t want your justice, or anything from you. I’m half tempted not to drink this brandy.” He looked back at the bottle he had left at the bar.
“Let’s just find Heath together,” Daphne offered. “We can ask him what he’s doing and why. If you’re satisfied with his explanation, I give you my solemn oath on Ohan’s will that I will walk away. You already know he isn’t the same man you knew in Rivern.”
Sword walked over and put his hand on her shoulder. “Actually, Daphne, I could use your help.”
Her eyes fluttered as Sword slid his hand up the nape of her neck and started massaging it. He bent down, cradled her head, and kissed her passionately on the mouth. Maddox felt like he was going to throw up as he stood there awkwardly gaping at the public display of affection that went on for entirely too long.
Sword pulled away and let her head drop to the table.
“Did you kill her?” Maddox whispered.
“I wouldn’t lose sleep if I did,” Sword said, nonchalantly hoisting her body up and slinging her arm over his broad shoulders. “We should get cleaned up and find Heath.”
“I didn’t see anything,” Titus said from behind the bar as he started to polish Maddox’s forgotten glass.
***
Daphne wasn’t dead, just very deeply asleep and drained of her Light. Sword used her power to sober up Maddox on the way to their apartment at Freedom House. It was a strange feeling going from pleasantly sloshed to uncomfortably lucid in the span of seconds. He also noted that his throat and burns felt better.
Sword took off her abraevium chain and used it to secure her to the sturdiest armchair in the room while Maddox carried buckets down to the fountain to top off the bath. He did it in a couple of trips and politely shooed the staff who offered to carry water for him. He placed his hands in the bathwater, which instantly filled with inky clouds of ash. His Fire Seal heated the bath until it was steaming.
“I’ll go first,” Maddox said. “You watch her.”
He turned. Sword was standing there, already stripped of his clothes. The fading sky through the windows framed his naked glory. His bare chest was smooth and unsullied where his jerkin had been. The straps of his sandals left white lines in the thick ash covering his skin. He was at full mast.
“Sword?” Maddox stammered.
Without making a sound, Sword put his arms around Maddox’s waist to help him out of his shirt. Maddox was getting turned on as Sword pressed himself closer and traced his fingers over the seals on Maddox’s chest. He knew it was an incubus thing, but in a moment, he wouldn’t care.
Maddox pushed back and nearly fell ass first into the bathtub. “This is too fucked up. We can’t do this. You’re like my—” There wasn’t a word for people who had been as intimately connected as Sword and Maddox.
Sword reached out and took Maddox’s hand. “I’ve been inside you before. Get in the tub.”
Maddox sighed and unbuckled his belt, letting his charred trousers drop to the floor. He felt inadequate standing in front of Soren’s perfectly sculpted athletic physique. Maddox had some muscle, but he’d always been a bookworm with skinny legs.
He dipped himself into the water, and it turned black. Candles spurted to life in the various wall shrines for the gods of cleanliness. Sword dropped a chalky tablet in the bath that smelled of sandalwood and myrrh. He took a sponge and dipped it in the water, squeezing it over Maddox’s head. He closed his eyes as the warmth of the water cleaned the grime from his face.
Sword washed Maddox, and for the next hour, they bathed together, pressed against one another. It was the only time in Maddox’s life anyone had ever shown him tender affection, and if he wasn’t so turned on, he might have been moved to emotion.
“I wish I could do more with you,” Sword whispered in Maddox’s ear. “But I don’t know what will happen. These incubus abilities are difficult to control the stronger I get.”
Sword was right; the Patrean Fathers had designed Soren’s beauty as a weapon. Maddox’s mind wandered to uneasy thoughts of what other empires of the Second Era had sent against the Patreans. Maddox grunted in frustration and finished himself in the filthy black bathwater.
They toweled off as the water spiraled down the drain. The sponge looked like a lump of coal, and the tub was a grimy catastrophe. They were about as clean as one could expect from marinating in polluted water for an hour. But at least they smelled nice.
Maddox smelled something else. A fragrance, floral but indefinably sublime, wafted into the bathroom. It was the perfect smell, if such a thing existed, as if the Guides themselves had created mankind’s noses just to experience this one sensation. He charged into the living area, towel held against his privates.
Daphne stood, hand on hip, a black rag held over her nose and mouth. Her restraints hung loosely around the overstuffed chair. “I didn’t figure Heath for the sentimental type, but look, he kept the flower I gave him.”
Maddox saw the century orchid too late to react. He fell to the floor before he could even retort. His muscles didn’t respond, and his vision grew blurry.
He heard Sword drop and bang against the tub in the bathroom and then the click of Daphne’s boots. “Tell Heath that if he wants his Sword back, he can meet me at our favorite bookstore. He’ll know where it is.”
Maddox died, but the scent of the flower would be something he’d remember forever. So beautiful.
T
WENTY-
S
EVEN
Skin Deep
H
EATH
Chimera:
Refers to any creature composed of the parts of multiple creatures. They were battlefield scavengers in the Patrean wars, harvesting tissues from the recently dead with surgical precision and using it to heal the injured or add to their own bodies.
There are very few left as the art of creating them has been lost. Their masters are long dead, but they will occasionally harvest to repair their bodies. There have been no confirmed reports of them attacking the living.
They are extremely strong and difficult to kill, possessing multiple vital organs and having a non-standard anatomy. Fire works best.
They could, by some accounts, reproduce, but we have no evidence of this happening.
—
THE INQUISITION BESTIARY
HEATH AWOKE FROM
some waking dream to find Lyta shaking him violently. Her face was etched with worry, and something haunted showed in her expression. Gently, he raised his hands and placed them on her arms to calm her. “Lyta? What’s going on?”