She saw the impact and for a moment was sure it had worked. He stumbled slightly, his face going blank for a second as the ammunition she’d used hit home.
Jonathan.
But to her shock, not only did he resist the energy, he took hold of it and threw it back at her.
She should have known that he would get some measure of empathy from her and David, but she hadn’t realized it would be so strong. Being able to sense emotion was far more common than being able to use it as a weapon. A wave of pain struck the Queen, and she cried out and fell backward as her mind filled with image after image:
David’s death, Faith bound to barrels of explosives, Jenny and Marianne . . .
Miranda fought with all her strength not to collapse beneath the onslaught. No one had ever used empathy against her before, so she’d never fully realized the kind of damage it caused. Despair and fear clawed at her heart. She had to drop onto one of the low brick walls that divided the roof into sections, breathing hard, holding up her shields with everything she had.
But even though Deven had turned the power back on her, it did what she had needed it to do; he had faltered, and that lapse in attention was sufficient to give David a second’s advantage. His sword got past Deven’s defenses just once, but it was enough.
Blood splattered all over the roof as a laceration opened Deven’s midsection, just below the ribs. He staggered back, his sword clattering to the ground.
It wasn’t a grave wound, just a bloody one that had to hurt like hell—no worse than the one he’d given Nico.
David stood still and watched him, expressionless. When he spoke, though, his voice was anything but impassive. “Please, Deven . . . come inside. There isn’t much time . . . just let us help you. I know how much this hurts—”
Pale eyes full of cold fury lifted to David’s face. “Do you?”
Miranda came forward to stand by her Prime. “I do.”
Deven shook his head. She could feel him trying to speed the wound’s healing, but he was still weak and could only stop the bleeding. His words were halting, dragged out of him by anger. “No, you don’t. That was different . . . he didn’t choose to abandon you—he came back from the dead for you.”
She noticed, with the part of her mind that was petrified of the rising sun, that the stone in Deven’s Signet was green again. Another part of her mind felt the air shifting, the hair on the back of her neck standing up, her skin tingling . . .
“Jonathan wanted you to live,” she said, ignoring the change in the air. “He didn’t abandon you. He knew he was going to die and he made sure you could survive without him.”
“I didn’t want to survive without him,” Deven snapped. “He
knew
that. He was the only thing keeping me going for years—I couldn’t die because of him. But now . . . now there’s no one keeping me here. I’m free to do what I should have done hundreds of years ago . . . free to die as I should have before Eladra ever turned me.”
“If you die, we’re all dead,” David reminded him desperately. “We need you. Without you we can’t win.”
“Do you really think I care?” Deven almost laughed. “Do you think that has any meaning to me now? We’re already done for, David. The Circle will never be whole . . . I’ll never be whole. There will never be anyone who can fill that emptiness.”
“Yes, there will.”
Miranda turned toward the voice. She had felt the portal building, but not its opening; they were both too focused on Deven.
Nico stepped out onto the roof calmly and joined them. Ashen, his clothes soaked with his own blood, he had somehow found the strength to come here even lying wounded on the floor—scraping together every remaining remnant of his power for a one-way trip.
“Ah, yes, my offspring,” Deven said with loathing in his eyes. “Here to take Jonathan’s place, to step in as if you could ever be his equal.”
“I do not want to replace him,” Nico replied. He started to list sideways, and Miranda moved closer and caught his arm; he leaned on her heavily as he spoke. “Nor could I. But there is a hole in the Circle that must be filled.”
“Well, now there will be two holes,” Deven corrected. And even through his anger, she could hear it: Emotion was seeping back in through his defenses. She could feel him fighting it. He was trying not to break down, and failing; Miranda’s heart broke for him. She wanted more than anything to put her arms around him.
There were centuries of loss, a dozen lifetimes of wandering alone in the dark, in his words as he told Nico, “I don’t care what you have planned. I don’t want you . . . and I don’t want to live. I won’t take another life with me . . . I’ve already taken too many. But now I’m free, and I can set this right. Please . . . just go inside. This is what I want.” He turned pleading eyes on David. “Just let me go . . . David, it’s time for you to let me go.”
Miranda looked over at David, expecting him to respond, but before he could say anything, he drew an astonished breath, his eyes widening, staring at Deven. Miranda followed his gaze and her heart froze in her chest.
“Nico . . .” She spoke quietly. “I thought you didn’t have time to make the new bond.”
Nico, too, was staring in obvious disbelief. “I did not.”
Deven seemed to finally notice their expressions and followed their eyes. He let out a strangled cry of denial.
His Signet was flashing.
“No,” he whispered. “No, no . . . no . . .” What strength he had left failed him. Slowly, shaking, he went to his knees in front of them, shaking his head.
Nico stepped closer to him, reaching into his robe for something. He lifted an object from his pocket, reverently, and held it flat in both hands so that they could all see it.
Jonathan’s Signet.
Its stone was healed . . . and it had come back to life, its emerald light rekindled, pulsing in exact rhythm with its mate.
Miranda couldn’t speak—neither could anyone else. But she turned her eyes to Deven, and saw his face . . . saw him lose all his fight, lose everything.
His eyes closed and his head bowed as he realized what it meant.
That one moment of freedom had been taken from him. He had lost his only chance. It had come down to the same decision as always: let the rising sun reduce him to ash and murder the one bound to him, or go on living . . . unable to shed the weight of centuries that it seemed would never end.
And in spite of everything, even in the face of the hollow, deathless years to come, there was still only one choice.
He stood, nearly falling over several times but ignoring their offers of help. Deven wavered on his feet, then steeled himself and took the half-dozen steps to the Elf. Without saying anything or looking Nico in the face, he took Jonathan’s Signet and fastened it with shaking hands around Nico’s neck.
The two stones began to pulse faster, and then to shine steadily. Miranda could feel it—both of them opening up fully, that circuit Nico had so carefully created in Deven splitting and joining seamlessly, on its own, the way Primes and Consorts had come together for hundreds of years.
Miranda understood, though understanding didn’t make it any less heartrending. Dea ex machina: In the end, Persephone had taken the burden of forcing a bond on Deven out of Nico’s hands. It was her will, not theirs, that made two into one . . . and thus the matter was settled.
Pairing was supposed to be a joyous thing; often born out of what seemed from the outside like love at first sight, the realization of having found one’s chosen, perfect partner always inspired at least a moment of bewildered, incandescent happiness. Even the vilest Prime could know that feeling if he ever found his Consort.
Nico felt it. She could see it in his eyes. But he wisely held back his reaction, for an emotional outburst might be enough to shatter what little was left of his new Prime into a thousand jagged shards . . . shards that Nico would have to somehow put back together again if he wanted them both to live. One impossible task at a time was quite enough.
Deven didn’t meet Nico’s eyes. He just crossed his arms protectively over his middle, where the wound from David’s sword was still closing, and walked away, back to the door and out of the rising ghost of morning.
Twenty
“All right,” David said, “here’s the deal. I refuse to let three quarters of the country descend into anarchy. I understand your concern, but your opinions are inconsequential to me. If I decide I want the entire Shadow World, I’ll have it, and there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop me.”
The rest of the Council were stunned into silence, except for Tanaka—there was a particular breathing pattern the Japanese Prime had that meant he was secretly laughing. Tanaka had been the one to broker this phone call, a last chance for the Council to coax David back into their fold, but David was fairly sure Tanaka had mostly done it to amuse himself. It was a well-established fact that once David Solomon made up his mind there was no swaying him.
“But Lord Prime, please try to see it our way,” said Central America. “This consolidation of power appears rather threatening from the outside. The U.S. is vast—no one Signet can control that large a population.”
“Hide and watch,” David responded. “Prime Olivia is firmly in command of the East. As soon as Prime Deven has recovered and is ready to reassume power in the West, I will gladly surrender it. Right at this moment, however, the South, West, Midwest, and Mideast are all under my control. And if you should grow careless, Alvarez, Downing—I’ll cheerfully take Mexico and Canada, too. If any of you had listened to me when Morningstar first appeared, you might not be hiding in your Havens watching those of us with balls and brains save the world. Now, if you’ll excuse me, that’s enough of this nonsense for one night.”
David ran his finger along the screen, dumping Prime after Prime off the call until only he, Olivia, and Jacob were left.
“Do you think they’ll try to depose you?” Olivia asked.
“They’ll have their own problems soon enough,” David replied. “Even by my lowest estimate Morningstar has to number over a thousand by now. Besides, if they try anything, we can just have Cora use her Fireball Power on them.”
Jacob snorted. “Good thing she’s not in the room right now,” he said with a bit of chagrin. “She’s still trying to come to grips with it—she’d never killed anyone before. At the same time, though, she really wants to learn how to use it. I’ve been putting out feelers for a pyrokinetic to come train her. Believe it or not, they’re rare.”
“Are you sure she’ll be all right?” Olivia wanted to know, concern in her voice.
“She’s . . . determined,” Jacob said. “Ever since that night . . . something’s changed. It’s a good change—like all of a sudden she realized she has a right to defend what’s hers, and the tools to do it with. Cora likes structure, guidelines—once she has a set of defined steps to start from, she’ll work her way through it.”
There was a pause in conversation, as no one wanted to ask the obvious. Finally, David took pity on them.
“There’s nothing new to report here,” he said. “We have to be patient . . . it’s only been six weeks. Right now everything is still too new, too raw—you don’t get over losing a soul mate quickly, if ever. We just have to give it time and have hope.”
David watched the others hang up, thinking: They had to have hope. Most of the time that was all they had.
Deven had retreated so far into himself he hardly ever looked anyone in the eye. Most nights no one knew where he went, and he had shielded himself against Nico so strongly the Elf had a hard time sensing him at all. As David had said, too much had happened in too little time, and now that killing himself was no longer an option Deven had to learn to live again, in a world without his first soul mate, his husband, who had gone to his death knowingly and left Deven behind.
Nico had rebuilt the matrix around Deven’s mind, and that tiny bit of energy it took to keep it stable was one of the only forms of contact Deven allowed his Consort. Nico, for his part, was still trying to adjust to his new life in this strange new place, and though he was learning quickly—his English was even starting to pick up contractions and slang—David often saw him out in the gardens, touching the plants, sadness in his eyes, looking so lost. David remembered that handful of days that Miranda had blocked her Prime out and slept in the mistress suite, and the misery it had caused them both . . . and that hadn’t been nearly as strong as the shields Deven had slammed down between himself and Nico.
Deven’s recovery was up to Deven now, and Nico was the one who needed help. David, Miranda, and Stella had silently agreed to do whatever they could to keep him going.
In fact, one of the Prime’s intentions in coming to the workroom was to fetch the Codex. The pages of symbols still eluded them, and even a translation program based on one used by Army intelligence couldn’t crack it. Stella had mentioned that Nico knew something about runic alphabets from his magical studies. He might have some idea what the runes in the Codex meant, or at least what language they were in, and having a project would be good for him.
David logged out of the system and picked up the book, headed for the one place he knew he was almost certain to find the Elf.
It was an unseasonably warm night, cloudy, with the promise of a cold front the next afternoon. Outside the Haven the crickets and frogs held noisy court punctuated by the occasional objections of an owl. The paths were lit softly, and his eyes easily picked out the dark shape resting quietly on a cushioned chaise back among a bower of moonflowers.
David paused, stricken by the beauty of the tableau. Nico’s fine, silken hair fell all around and over the seat, one ear poking up through it; he had taken to wearing darker colors and tonight was in forest green, every inch an Elf down to his bare feet. But Elf though he was, he was something else, too, and it was written in the line of his body, the way his fingers curled on the cushion, even in the way he breathed. He didn’t seem so much like a deer now as a young wolf curled up in its den.
Strange . . . they had known the Elf for only a month and a half, and David had not wanted to like him when they met. By the time Nico had the Signet around his neck, though, they had all taken him into their fold without question . . . above and beyond any other urges the Elf might inspire—and there were plenty of those—there was just something about him that cried out to be loved. David wasn’t the only one who felt that way, either—in fact, the only person who didn’t was the person the Elf was bound to.