Yield the Night (22 page)

Piper scowled but didn’t argue. Put that way, she could kind of understand where Seiya was coming from. The girl didn’t know any other life than one where she had to destroy her enemies before they destroyed her—not that that made trying to kill Piper okay. And even if Seiya hadn’t made her fall, it was Seiya’s fault that Ash didn’t catch her.

“So what does Ash need to do?” she asked again.

Lyre sighed as though he’d hoped she’d forgotten. “Isn’t it obvious? He can’t be around you and Seiya at the same time. As soon as we’re out of the Overworld, he needs to take Seiya far away from you. He’s talking to her now. If he can convince her to calm down until we’re out of here, you might live to see Earth again.”

Piper’s heart squeezed. Ash was going to leave her. He was going to take Seiya and leave again. The memory of his kiss, its slow burning intensity, rose in her mind. The hoarse pain in his voice when he’d promise not to leave her as she lay dying. The look in his eyes when he’d woken and seen she was alive.

And he was planning to walk away ... again.

Her hands clenched around fistfuls of Lyre’s shirt. Rejection lanced her, leaving burning lacerations across her heart even as she berated herself for such a reaction. What choice did Ash have? Nothing he said could change Seiya’s mind; if she had to betray Ash to protect him, she would. He had to leave for Piper’s safety. Piper didn’t expect, and would never ask, him to abandon his sister to stay with her. Of course not. She would be furious with him if he tried. What did he owe Piper over his flesh and blood sister?

Again, the memory of that kiss filled her mind.

She tugged Lyre’s shoulder. “I can walk now.”

He loosened his arms, letting her slide down. She landed on her feet and steadied after a moment of wobbly weakness. Stretching her arms over her head, she leaned back until her back popped.

“Mmm,” Lyre purred. “You should do that again.”

She dropped her arms, blinking, then realized her shirt was hanging open, baring a long strip of her stomach. She grabbed the bottom ends of her shirt and tied them in a knot, hiding half of her stomach. Nothing she could do about the rest.

“That’s a good look too. Or you could just take it off.”

“Not happening.”

He gave a long-suffering sigh.

She fell in step beside him, trying to ignore the sight of Ash and Seiya conversing ahead. Ash was still bent toward her, and he gestured angrily as he spoke. Seiya flipped her ponytail over her shoulder and made an equally irate gesture in Piper’s general direction. Looking away from them, Piper silently took in the forest around her. High above, the thick canopy of leaves blocked the remaining sunlight, covering the forest floor in shadows, but it wasn’t entirely dark. Scattered throughout the trees, those azure pods with the deadly tendrils glowed faintly in the dim light. Tiny insects, glowing their own shades of purple and violet, fluttered around the glowing orbs, drawn by the light.

The roots of the huge trees crawled along the forest floor, creating barriers across the path and bridges that arched over them. She was amazed she’d slept as long as she had, given how the path went up, over, under, and around the twisting roots, some as thick around as her shoulders. The pale moss she’d seen before was everywhere here, and though it didn’t quite glow, it shimmered in the faint light. This was a forest that would never truly be dark.

As they climbed over a gnarled cluster of roots, she looked at Lyre again. “So you guys think that the ryujin wants me for the Sahar?”

“Is there
any
part of our conversation you didn’t eavesdrop on?”

She shrugged. “Don’t have private conversations while I’m right there then.”

He scowled. She smiled.

Rolling his eyes, he shoved his hands into his pockets. “We’re just guessing. I really don’t see how the ryujin could know about that. They don’t have spies or communication channels outside of their territory—not from what I understand, anyway.”

“Huh.” The ryujin’s comment about waiting until she was ready didn’t offer any clues either.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Still kind of tired, but not too bad.” She glanced at the sky, looking for the glow of the sun above the tree line. The forest seemed to go on forever all around them, with shadows stretching across their pathway. She frowned.

“If this territory is so dangerous, why are there walking paths?”

“I wondered the same thing,” Lyre said. “Koen said there are a few brave smugglers who’d rather risk the ryujin than pay the Ra taxes for transporting goods across their border.”

“Must be some serious taxes. I wonder what the Ra territory is like.”

“A lot less wild than this one, I imagine.”

Someone up ahead whistled. Ash and Seiya had joined Miysis and his men, who’d stopped where the trail curved to the northwest. Piper and Lyre broke into jogs at the same time, rushing to catch up. As they joined the others, Piper accidentally caught Seiya’s eye. The draconian girl looked at her coldly, but her expression was unreadable. Swallowing hard, Piper turned to Miysis.

“Vejovis’s cabin is about half a mile northeast of here through the forest,” he said quietly, green eyes glinting in the dim light. “There’s no trail, but Koen went ahead and scouted the surrounding area. There are signs of multiple people entering and exiting the cabin.”

“What?” Piper shook her head. “Why would there be other people here? Isn’t the location of his home a secret?”

“It is.”

“Could it be some ryujin?” Lyre asked.

“Ryujin don’t wear boots.”

A long moment of silence as they all looked at one another.

“It could be a trap,” Miysis finally said. “We’ll have to approach carefully. Koen and—”

“Me,” Ash interjected.

“Koen and
Ash
will go in while the rest of us wait here. Koen will give a signal if it’s safe to approach.”

Ash and Koen nodded to each other, quickly signaled their intended directions, and split up, disappearing into the trees. Piper squinted through the foliage but couldn’t make anything out. Vejovis’s home was well hidden. She bit her lip. If Samael had found it, the healer might have gone somewhere else to hide and they would never find him in time.

They stood in tense silence. The minutes ticked by. Piper pointedly ignored Seiya, feeling the girl’s icy glare burning the back of her head every minute or two. Ash was taking risks again for Piper, volunteering to scope out a possibly booby-trapped cabin; Seiya’s anger saturated the air.

Piper was just about ready to demand they go look themselves when Ash and Koen appeared out of the trees, Ash a step behind the Ra daemon. There was no one else with them.

“Well?” Miysis asked tersely.

Piper stared at Ash, his eyes black and jaw clenched.

Koen answered, his voice heavy.

“Vejovis was there. He’s dead.”

CHAPTER
16

P
IPER
sat on a thick, moss-covered root, her face in her hands. Lyre sat beside her, a hand on her shoulder. Ash leaned against a nearby tree, staring off in the darkness as his jaw flexed.

Dead. Of all the possible outcomes in their search for Vejovis, that was one she hadn’t considered. Vejovis was a legend. Immortal, or close to it. He’d probably been around at least as long as the Sahar had. He couldn’t be dead.

Koen had explained that they’d found the interior of the cabin destroyed by a fierce struggle. Vejovis’s body had been sprawled in the main room, showing distinct signs of brutal violence, and he’d been dead for at least three weeks. Ash had refused to let her anywhere near the cabin to confirm for herself. Not that she wanted to see the body, but she just couldn’t believe that Vejovis had been murdered. His home hadn’t been as safe from Hades assassins as he’d thought.

Although she hadn’t known Vejovis well, sorrow still weighed on her. But far more prevalent was the choking, twisting anxiety that bordered on panic. Vejovis had been her best chance at resealing her magic. Possibly her only chance. The rune spider’s venom would wear off within the next day, and the horrific pain would return. The seizures would begin shortly after. Maybe another few days before the seizures did permanent damage. She would be dead within a week.

“Miysis is going to call in his best healers,” Lyre murmured. “They’ll be able to help, I’m sure. Maybe not fix your magic, but at least delay it until we find a solution.”

Piper nodded numbly, glancing toward the unseen cabin. Miysis and his men were digging a grave to lay Vejovis to rest with dignity. Well, Miysis’s
men
were digging. Miysis was probably supervising. He wasn’t the manual labor type.

“We’ll figure something out,” Lyre went on, the comforting words ruined by the note of desperation in his voice. “We’ll get you through this.”

She nodded again. Ash didn’t move, his jaw clenching and unclenching. It had to be driving him crazy that there was nothing he could do to help her. He couldn’t even fly her back to the ley line to get her home faster; her next best bet was Miysis’s healers, so beating Miysis back wouldn’t do her any good.

She wished they could leave. Just sitting here made her want to scream, but the last rays of sunlight were disappearing behind the mountains. According to Miysis, it was too dangerous to travel at night. The path was treacherous, and lighting their way would attract all sorts of unpleasant attention, from both the natural predators of the area and the ryujin. No one, not even Piper, trusted that a second encounter with the ryujin would go as well as the first. There was no way to know if the one ryujin she’d met had been the norm or an exception to the caste’s violent reputation. Miysis had decided they would camp among the trees for the night. Piper didn’t expect to sleep.

A little ways away, Seiya reclined against a tree, Zala in her lap. She’d taken Piper completely by surprise by saying how sorry she was that the healer wouldn’t be able to help her. Piper didn’t know whether she believed Seiya’s apparent sincerity.

She rubbed both hands over her face. So many emotions were jammed inside her that none of them could get out, leaving her outwardly calm while panic whirled around in her head. Her chances of survival had dropped to single digit percentages now. And the most painful wound of all came from knowing that it was her mother’s fault that she was probably going to die. She’d been planning to find her father and uncle as soon as she got back; they still thought she’d died in the Consulate explosion. But maybe it would be kinder to let them continue to believe that she was dead. She couldn’t even imagine their reactions to the news that she’d died because of her mother’s crazed ambitions.

The first tears welled in her eyes at the agony of the betrayal. She blinked them back.

“We should start planning,” Lyre said, still trying to hide his apprehension. “You know the names of these hybrid women, right Piper? I can search for records on them while you go to the Gaians for information.”

She pulled in a deep breath and let it out. “Yeah, there were three. Calanthe Nike—no, Nikas. And Raina ... G-something. Umm. Golkin? Glovin?”

“Golovkin?” Lyre guessed.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“And the third?”

“Um, Natania something. Natania ... Roth.”

She fell silent, staring at nothing. Natania. The name was familiar—really familiar. She tried to push away the spinning urgency so she could think. How did she know that name? It had seemed familiar when Mona had first mentioned it, but she’d had more important things on her mind at the time.

Natania
. She heard the name in her mind, spoken by a male voice like music, beautiful and crystalline.
Natania
. The name again, this time murmured by a voice like silk, deep and powerful.

And the connection she should have made when she’d first heard the name clicked.

“Oh,” she breathed, eyes wide.

“What?” Lyre demanded. Ash straightened, turning toward her.

“Uh—nothing. Nothing. I was just thinking. So, Natania Roth is the third one. Do any of the names sound familiar?”

Lyre shook his head. “I’m sure we can find something on them though.”

Piper rather doubted it. There hadn’t been a method for storing information since before the Third World War, but maybe daemons had their own record-keeping systems. She hoped so. Her thoughts returned to Natania and she bit her lip.

Miysis and Koen appeared from the shadows, stepping out from the trees and onto the trail. Koen was dirt-smudged but Miysis looked as perfect as ever—as she’d suspected.

“It’s done,” he said, green eyes catching the last of the sunlight. “Does anyone want to say some words?”

Piper shook her head. She didn’t know Vejovis well enough, and it wouldn’t feel right knowing she was far more upset that he couldn’t save her life than she was about him being dead. Maybe the ryujin would bless his grave, though she doubted it. Whatever his agreement with them had been, they hadn’t noticed—or hadn’t cared—about him being killed.

“We might as well set up camp here,” Koen said, his voice nearly as musical as Miysis’s. “There likely aren’t any better places nearby, and we’re far enough from the river, I think.”

Miysis nodded and Koen turned to the stack of packs that he and his fellow bodyguards had been carrying for the group. After passing out blankets and rations, he and Miysis sat on a mossy root, talking quietly about the journey back. The last light of the sun vanished, plunging the forest into even darker shadows with abrupt speed. The glow of the blue pods brightened noticeably, though the light was too dim to do more than create strange, swaying spots of light in the black forest.

Piper stared upward at the unseen treetops. The river murmured its song somewhere in the distance, and the breeze whispered through the leaves. The night was beautiful, peaceful, but she sat as tense as a pole, hands clamped between her knees.

Lyre shook out his blanket with a sigh. “Sleeping on the ground,” he grumbled. He cast a sideways glance at her and shifted closer until their hips touched. “It’ll probably be cold during the night. We should really share a blanket, just to be safe.”