Arcana Rising (The Arcana Chronicles Book 5) (20 page)

At my expression, she sighed, as if I’d just exhausted her. Again. She no longer hid her disappointment. “You read the origin of the Arcana?”

“I’d already heard the story from Aric.” He’d told me and Jack on the way to the Lovers. The three of us had shared a bottle of whiskey while sitting around a fire. When I’d passed out, Jack and Aric had finished it together. In a different time and place, they might have been friends.

“How strange that Death has been teaching you,” she said. “I would expect him to be a miser with his knowledge.”

“Oh, in general, he’s still tightfisted with it.” Yes, my recovery had distracted him from translating the Lovers’ chronicles, but he’d already gotten a start on them. He could’ve divulged
some
tidbit from those pages.

“Did he tell you about Tar Ro?”

I nodded. “It was a sacred realm as big as a thousand kingdoms. In the first game, twenty-two players were sent there to fight.”

“Think of Tar Ro as an arena”—like Sol’s Olympus?—“with deities in the stands. Why do you think the gods would end their amusement? Would you stop the Super Bowl because one athlete didn’t want to play?”

The gods sounded like dicks—not exactly the types to care if their “amusement” caused an apocalypse. Except . . . “If they consume prayers, how many people are feeding them right now? Does Demeter receive prayers for a good crop? There are no crops. What about Aphrodite? Few people are thinking about love after the Flash. A death deity? Who prays over the dead anymore? Most survivors leave their fallen on the side of the road.”

If I’d gone to a funeral for every friend or loved one who’d died since the night of the Flash, I would have attended more than a dozen.

“This is not for you to question,” Gran said, steel in her tone. “Your purpose is to follow the rules of the gods. Anything else is blasphemy.”

Aric had said, “I was twice a blasphemer.” I was one as well. And I’d been punished. “I plan to follow the rules with Richter. Tell me how to defeat him.”

“Death has killed him before. Your best play is to seduce your protector into bringing you the Emperor’s head. We can hope both will fall in the clash.”

My fists balled. Inside, I primal-screamed. “That’s it?” I was getting nowhere with her.

“Until you fully embrace your viciousness, you have no chance against the Emperor. I can’t teach you to develop powers you don’t yet possess.”

Not the first time she’d told me that. Another impasse.

Maybe I should dig for information about my parents. She was my last link to Mom, and even to my dad. “Gran, what was Mom like as a girl?”

“Stubborn. Refusing to believe what was right before her eyes! Like
you
.”

I was proud to be like my mother. “What about my dad? Mom used to talk about him a lot, but over time I heard less and less.”

“David Greene was kind, and he had a sense of humor. He made your mother laugh.”

That was all Gran could muster up? “Did you not like him?”

“He wasn’t a big believer in Tarot. Humor aside, he was a very practical man. From
New England
,” she added, as if that explained everything. “I’d been wearing Karen down about the Arcana—until she met him. Before I knew it, your mother was pregnant. Even then, I sensed you were
the
Empress.”

“He didn’t want us to live up north?”

“David planned to move there.” Her gaze went distant. “To move
you
—the great Empress—away from her Haven.” That must have gone over well. “In the end, I convinced them not to go.”

My dad had disappeared in the Basin just two years after I was born. If he’d insisted on moving north, would he still be alive? Or would he have been—at least until the Flash? I might have grown up with a father. “He died so young.” Twenty-nine.

She nodded. “That man only adored one thing as much as Karen: you.”

Mom had told me he’d doted on me—

My head snapped up. I sensed something outside: energy, a faint thrumming. Circe was here—just down the mountain. Had she come to visit her ally Death? Were they together right now? If so, I would
drop in
on their members-only meeting. “I’ll be back.” I rose and headed toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

I paused in the doorway. “To visit the river.”

Gran blinked at me. “Why are you so sure you’re coming back?”

With a lantern in hand, I made my way toward the water. My breaths were puffs of smoke in the chilly, dark night. The storm had waned, rain drizzling on and off.

I pulled my poncho hood over my hair—

Aric emerged from the mist, his tall frame outlined by a flickering gas lamp. He wore all black, his tailored garments highlighting his powerful body. His pale hair was tousled and longer than he usually kept it.

I stutter-stepped at the mere sight of him.

He was heading from the river back to the castle. As he neared, I noticed he looked weary, his gaze filled with shadows.

With pain.

Which called to mind my dreams of him. Over this week, my nightmares had come less frequently, making way for dream-memories of the last game, when I’d been known as Phyta. Aric had pursued me then, had eventually revealed that I’d married—then betrayed—him in a past life. Realizing how badly he’d ached for a companion, I’d begun to seduce him, all the while planning to kill him. . . .

Each morning here I would wake, shamed by my behavior—and rocked by his loneliness. Rocked by his fragile hope of a future with me.

Never slowing his pace, he intoned, “Empress.”

“Hey. What were you doing down there?”

“Visiting my ally.” As I’d suspected.

I frowned when he passed right by me. To his back, I asked, “You’ve been talking to Circe?”

Without turning, he said, “As I often do.”

When I hurried ahead to block his path, he exhaled an impatient breath. “What do you want?”

This close, I caught a thread of his addictive scent. Hints of sandalwood and pine, two trees, made my lids grow heavy. In the lamplight, his face was hypnotically gorgeous.

But my attraction to him was more than physical. Endless epochs seemed to tie me to him. A bone-deep connection that endured.

If past Empresses hadn’t been raised from birth to hate him, they would have fallen for him.
I
would have fallen for him. “How long will we go on like this, Aric?”

Finally, interest lit his amber eyes. “What is the alternative? Tell me what has changed.”

I didn’t know! I glanced down as I tried to string words together and noticed his gloved hands were clenched. Words left my lips: “You want to touch me.” He’d once told me it was a luxury he’d always savor. I gazed up. Unable to help myself, I reached for his proud face.

But he caught my wrist in his strong hand, his eyes growing cold as the night. “And since when has it mattered what
I
want?” Releasing me, he strode away.

I stared after him long after he’d disappeared in the mist. Miserable and confused, I trudged down to the river.

Was the water level even higher than the last time I was here? A blanket of fog covered the calm surface. At the bank, I raised my lantern. “Circe?” I called. “Where are you?”

Water in the shape of a hand waved, then collapsed in a splash. She couldn’t even hold that small form?

My earlier anger toward her faded. She might not have been avoiding me; she could’ve been too weak for a long chat. Especially if she’d been talking to Aric a lot.

“You can hear me?” I asked.

A slight ripple. Then a murmured: “I hear. Hail Tar Ro.”

“Hail Tar Ro to you.” I tried out one of my new powers—sensing seeds latent in the dirt—but found none, so I slashed my thumb with a claw and grew some grass along the bank. I set the lantern down and pulled my poncho under me to sit. “Thank you for saving my life.”

“You assume I did, Evie Greene?”

“Okay. Then thank you for not killing me outright. Maybe you did it for Death? You two seem tight.”

“Hmm.”

“He was just here, huh?” No answer. Anyway . . . “Your tidal wave was mind-blowing.”

“An afterthought. Soon I will show the game a
reckoning
.” Softening her tone, she said, “I regret that I couldn’t save all those mortals. Your mortal. The Fortune Card avoided flying over rivers on her approach. By the time she and Richter crossed over water, I was too late.”

The tourniquet twisted, and I barely showed a reaction at all.

“I wonder how they knew of my powers,” Circe said. “Their lines don’t chronicle.”

“Would the Sun know?”

“Possibly. He learns much from his Bagmen. I heard about your run-in with them. Becoming food must have been . . . unpleasant.”

Unpleasant? Would I ever get over those slurping sounds, those grueling bites? That was one memory I wish I could forget. I told myself I shouldn’t fear them now that I’d seen their worst. I’d survived an attack—without any long-term effects.

Possibly.

Circe asked, “Still think we can stop the game?”

I shrugged. Every now and then, I would feel a silly glimmer of hope, but mostly I didn’t. The game demanded blood. I would give it the Emperor’s.

And then? And then? And then?

“I told you we needed to kill Richter.”

I was taking my lumps with her and with Aric. “I’m listening now. Do you have a plan?”

“Enemies almighty must replenish.” She’d called us that before. “Unless you intend to take your grandmother’s advice to send the Endless Knight after him.” At my raised brows, Circe added, “I told you, whispers flow down to me like water.” Had she heard Gran’s hate-filled murmurs as well? “Your grandmother sounds . . . intense.”

Yep.
“And paranoid.” I sprouted a few dandelions among the blades of grass.

“Can you blame her? Your chronicles tell her to be. History does as well—your line is notorious for its aggressive Tarasovas and chroniclers.” In a wry tone, she said, “Turning budding young Empresses into serial killers since time immemorial.”

Arcana humor? In my present state, I almost had the urge to laugh. “I’d thought she might help me stop the game, or save the earth, or get rid of my powers. Stupid, huh?”

“Necessary. She was your grail. We all seek things that attract us to a particular hunting ground.”

What was it Matthew had told me?
We follow MacGuffins.

“Often the grail is love,” she said. “The Magician and Fauna run headlong for each other, or try to. The Moon became the Archangel’s grail for a time, and she followed your mortal.”

Right to the very end. I wondered if Circe had heard
my
frantic mutterings.

“Kentarch searches for his beloved wife.”

“You know the Centurion?” I asked. “Where is he?”

She sighed, and mist rose from the river’s surface. “I don’t think the Centurion—my ally over many games—would want the Empress to know.”

Fair enough. “Why do you never ally with the Fool?”
Empress is my friend.

“Can’t you answer that question as well as I, Evie Greene?”

“Because he’s more untrustworthy than most.”

“Do you know the word
fathomable
? It means
measurable
, in the sense of
depth
.
Fathomable
is an ancient word because man has been trying in vain to know the depths of my ocean domain for thousands of years.” She paused, then said, “The Fool’s powers are
un
fathomable even to me.”

I felt as if I’d just received a warning.
“Death said Matthew can fight.”

She repeated in a whisper,
“Unfathomable.”

I swallowed. “Do you know where he is?”

“Not near a body of water at present.”

Thanks for narrowing it down.
“What’s your grail?”

“It’s secret. But know that it won’t lure me to land.
You
won’t.”

At her words, a memory from one game arose:

“Why would you ever surface?” I asked her. “You are invincible in the sea.”

“You seduced me here, sister almighty.”

“I did?”

“Like you, I’m a sociable creature. It is my weakness. Yet my abyss is unutterably lonely and echoing. From a distance, I watch exciting events unfold, but I am held apart. I see the ways of men and women, but don’t experience love. I hear mortals sharing laughter. But I share nothing. I’m drawn to you because we are kindred. Together we experience
life
.”

I couldn’t comprehend the Priestess’s reasoning. “But the vulnerabilities . . .”

“I am cursed. To truly live, I must make myself vulnerable and trust. Death isn’t the only one who risks everything just to feel. . . .”

“I’m not trying to get you on land,” I said firmly. “You need to stay put.”

“Hmm.”

Starting to hate it when she said
hmm
. “What’s the Emperor’s grail?”