Ash to Embers (Courting Shadows) (44 page)

"We do," she said.

His fucking leg hurt. "That the Royal We, cupcake?"

There was a sharp bark of masculine laughter from somewhere on the street.

"Pretty sure if you're talking shit already you'll survive," Tian said. Her voice had come from somewhere over to his right.

He closed his eyes and grinned, ignoring the nagging reminder from his conscience that she wasn't meant for him. He noted that the blood loss was giving him the spins. "Wanna be my nursemaid?"

"No."

No hesitation.

"I don't either, Acho," cut in another voice. "But it looks like I'm all you've got."

Xavier turned his head enough to watch Avery, Virgil, and the human pick their way through the debris. All three looked worse for wear, not that he had any room to talk. Loren though, read as considerably less mangled than the last time Xavier remembered seeing him. No doubt Virgil had a hand in that.

"You guys do realized we're gonna be up to our asses in pixie debt once they clean this up, right?" Avery asked, punting a misshapen metallic mass out of his way. The thing might have been a scooter once upon a time, but it was damn hard to tell now.

"Don't bother asking them," Royal said phasing into view. "Half the country was in whiteout conditions. Forty minutes of snow and the idiots think it's the end of days."

-Where the fuck have you been?-

*That's not your concern.*

-Bullshit it's not. Look at you.-

Royal winced. He looked more shaken than Xavier had ever seen him.

"Where's Ceyla?" the human asked. The illusion of serenity the kid had going might have been believable if he hadn't been mad dogging Royal for all he was worth.

"Smart enough to stay away from me right now."

The fact that Royal had answered Loren at all was undeniable proof of how distracted he was in the first place. His aura was lit up like a thunder cloud illuminating the jade green streaks all over his body.

"Holy shit," Xavier said under his breath.

Kid had some serious intuition for a mundane. Then again, it didn't take a rocket scientist.

-What did you do?-

Royal didn't answer right away and Xavier had a moment of panic. Virgil took advantage of his momentary preoccupation, stuck two fingers down into the wound on his thigh, and started digging around. Xavier roared and grabbed the healer's meaty wrist hard enough to bend the bones.

"Give me a minute," he forced out through clenched teeth.

-Answer me, motherfucker.-

*Something I shouldn't have.*

Oh, yeah, that was fucking great.

"You don't have a minute, man," Virgil told him. "That's obsidian in there and the muscles are trying to reknit over the top of it. You wanna walk, you'll quit bitching and lay there while I get it out."

Xavier shut his mouth and let go of Virgil's wrist, slumping back to the ground to await the inevitable onslaught of round two. He didn't have to wait long. He squeezed his eyes shut and focused on the conversation around him, willing himself to stay conscious.

"If you put your hands on her..."

"You'll do what, Dinner? Bleed on me?"

"Quit calling me dinner, dickhead."

"Ceyla's fine," Sio said. "Better than you at least," the guy amended, directing the last half of the statement at Royal.

"To presume that you know anything about me would be a mistake," Royal said.

"I don't doubt it, but that doesn't change the fact that some things, the kind you'd never say out loud, I do know because I think I can hear them."

Xavier opened his eyes. It took a minute for the statement to sink in. Hell, it took a least a couple and the street was silent in the wake of it. Even Virgil had frozen three fingers deep into the meat of Xavier's mangled thigh. Royal blinked and turned without a word. He headed for the ravaged entrance to Tian's house, and disappeared inside.

-You leaving?-

*No, I thought I'd redecorate.*

The raven-haired female stood, watching Sio with a pensive expression.

"My lord," she said, working her way around the phrase as if she were trying it on for size, "to be Gifted with dominion over Silence and Shadow is a heavy thing. You would be the first in existence to boast a pairing of power that rivals Air and Darkness. I believe after what you have done here today it is no coincidence. My sword is sworn to the true crown and it is yours." She dropped into a low curtsy. The blue/black feathers of her garment pooled around her feet like living silk. "As a caution...there are those in the courts who will not take kindly to the naming of a mongrel as your consort. Marked or no, our Goddess has been absent centuries. In fact, there has not been a chosen Avatar in a millennium. Many will not accept a Breed in such an exalted position regardless of what the truth may be."

"I don't want her as my consort. I want her as my wife," Sio said.

Tian shoved her hair back with shaking hands and crouched down as if she were going to be sick. Xavier was certain if she didn't vomit all over the road he would. At least he could pawn the cause off on the ghastly flesh wound he'd suffered. It sounded better than the truth.

Sio turned to Tian, knelt on the fractured pavement, and lifted a hand as if he were about to touch her face. Thinking better of it, the bastard pulled back before grazing her skin. "You never answered my question, Tian. I want to be yours. Forever, if you'll still have me."

God, she looked so lost. Tian glanced up at Eamon, who inclined his head and dropped to one knee. "Avatar."

The inked assassin also returned to the ground. He held his left fist behind his back and planted the right one, facing forward, into the pavement. Xavier had expected an expression only a mother could love from the guy, but the grin splitting that stone cold mug was dazzling.

"Avatar," the assassin rumbled, inclining his head.

"Forever," Sio said.

"Forever," Tian answered, meeting Sio's gaze with her own. "Le mo ghrása mise agus liomsa mo ghrá. I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine."

Xavier gritted his teeth and looked around desperate for a distraction. There was none to be found. Every fucking being within eyeshot was kneeling. "I don't know what anyone else thinks," he said, "but I vote for getting rid of the bodies before the sun comes up."

He dropped his head back on the ground, closed his eyes, and thought about disintegrating into the concrete. Yup, denial was the only damn thing that was going to keep his head above water after tonight. Lucky he was an expert.

****

Two days. It had been two days since Brenwyn could remember keeping anything down. It had been a full week since Mab had ripped her beating heart out of her chest, and the bitch still had him. Whether Jay's sanity was still intact was anyone's guess and she had no idea if she'd done enough to get him back.

Goddess turned.

The cruel irony was, that when the relationship had started she hadn't contemplated the possibility that Jayson Clemmons would be worth any lingering emotion, let alone love. At the time he'd been useful and human, a combination which made him an ideal prospect for keeping tabs on Sio. That was it. It was simple. Ten years later it wasn't, and somewhere over the course of that eye blink, Jay had become the family she loved above life itself, and Sio, who was brilliant, gorgeous beyond all reason, funny, and kind, had been like a brother to them both. Ten years, that had been based on a lie. Ten years, and she'd betrayed them all.

Brenwyn tipped her head against the smooth lacquer finish of the kitchen cabinet door behind her. The brass handle dug into her back, but she was too despondent to move. She couldn't will herself off of the floor. She'd been down here since yesterday when the magnitude of what she'd done had caught up to her. The high road had been easy when she was on the right side of Mab's affections and the killers had done what they were supposed to. She'd never intended to be one of them, and Jay was never going to forgive her if he found out what she'd done. Brenwyn prayed to Danu that he was still intact enough to care.

The knot of dread was so big and so tight she couldn't breathe around it. Life would have been easier if she'd been born a sociopath, but sweet mother, even Tian, who was a bonafide legend where sociopathic behavior was concerned, had looked terrified when she realized that Sio'd been shot.

Betrayer.

Brenwyn choked and took a proactive swipe at her eyes with the back of her left hand. It stunk like gunpowder and came away streaked with the kind of heavy duty eye makeup that swore up, down, and sideways it was waterproof. It wasn't. Minimizing the aftermath wouldn't change anything. The rifle was still on her bed where she'd dropped it. Sio's blood was still on her hands.

The single pane windows of the apartment rattled in reproach and the sudden awareness of Sio's continued existence flared like a lit match. A cold chill followed the unseen wave of power as it swept over the city bearing the news. That he'd been so well concealed meant that he'd been warded or that he nearly had died, which wasn't possible given his current beacon.

Sio's essence burned so brightly she could have found him from any continent on the globe with her eyes closed. Such was her gift, and her gift never led her astray. Relief bubbled up into so much adrenaline it made her teeth ache. The short lived surge turned to mindless dread at the apex of her emotional arc as the implication settled back into her bones.

His survival didn't negate the fact that she'd tried to kill him, or would again if given the chance. It didn't negate the fact that Jay's life would be forfeited if she didn't. Truly, the only thing that Sio's newfound fortitude did unequivocally ensure was that Mab, The Queen of Air and Darkness, was not going to take Brenwyn's failure well.

****

Tian sat on her bed and watched Sio brush his teeth in the bathroom...their bathroom.

Ours.

She turned the phrase over in her skull, examining it, wondering if it fit the way it was supposed to. It was a multifaceted phrase, that one. Tricky.

Sio leaned over the sink to spit out a mouthful of toothpaste. The easy domesticity of the act was surprisingly comforting. She watched the broad muscles of his bare back flex and shift under his tan. He caught her watching him in the mirror and grinned in that earth shattering way of his, intensifying the steady burn of her natural inclination.

"Is it strange claiming territory like that after so many years of not giving a shit?" he asked.

"That's not what I was thinking about."

"It was before."

The heat suffusing his languid movements and the condensation on the mirror said that he knew exactly what she'd been thinking about after. Tian shrugged, working around the lust towards an answer in the vicinity of honest. "After so many years of nothing, everything feels strange."

"I've recently learned that strange makes for a damn fine start."

He turned around, bracing himself against the marble counter top with both arms. A gleaming ribbon of pale scar tissue where Eamon had made the union official wound its way down Sio's left forearm, traveling over his hand, and around his index and ring fingers. The identical markings in her own skin pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

"You're in luck then. It's probably never going to get any more normal than this."

A soft breeze trailed in on the heels of the rising sun, entering through the hole left by the destruction of the picture window. It tangled itself in the long mass of her hair, carrying with it the wild scent of rich earth and orchids.

"I always did like that perfect stretch of calm before the storm," he said. The sight of him was perfect. The obsidian torc of the Unseelie crown was imprinted low around his throat where it had appeared during the battle with the wizards, but he didn't need it. Sio looked like a king anyway.

A surge of unmitigated joy from the Goddess blended into her own, and the brush of a thousand wings electrified her synapses.

"Here I thought you were hoping for a 'Fairy Tale' ending," Tian said.

Sio grinned with unrestrained delight. Wild tendrils of steam arced away from his skin, reaching out to her.

"Show me."

Eamon ran his tongue along the inner edge of his itching molars as he watched the Changeling King lay waste to a training bag with an unbroken rhythmic pummeling of fists the size of ham hocks.

"Explain to me again why you think I should give you my blood," Sio said. He landed a particularly violent jab that rained plaster onto the dark fabric of his shirt and kept going.

Eamon absorbed a frustrated sigh and made a placating gesture. The effect was diminished by the haphazard sloshing of the contents in the bottle he held. He paused, regarding the colorless swill before giving in to the urge to take a pull. The rot gut spirit sheered its way down his esophagus with the bitter kick of unrefined motor oil, bile, and human tampering. Its additional shortcoming was that it lacked the potency he would have preferred.

Sio put an end to his assault on the rapidly fraying hardware and gripped the chain that held the apparatus bolted into the ceiling. He leaned forward. "You were saying?"

"Your existence has been a grievous oversight. I would see dread suspicion broken or proved true." The words were barbed where they clawed at his gums. "I have made a most unforgivable miscalculation," Eamon continued, "that I would see corrected lest my already tarnished honor slide further to disgrace."

"It's killing you that you didn't know, isn't it?"

"I am displeased."

A gross understatement if ever there was one. Eamon took another casual swallow of bottled piss.

"That stuff doing anything?" Sio asked.

"I remain sober as a saint. Though after several bottles I no longer mind the lack of refinement or the grit in the distillation. Moonshine hasn't improved since prohibition."