Intrigued.
At the moment that their eyes met, Karou cocked her head to one side, a sudden birdlike motion. She didn’t smile, but there was an open warmth in her look that seemed to reach out toward Liraz.
Who wanted to send it right back at her on the end of an arrow.
And then, simply, Karou tucked her face against her knees and settled in to sleep. Liraz didn’t know what to do with herself, caught in the act. Back away? Burn everyone?
Well, maybe not that.
In the end, she stayed where she was.
But by the time the chimaera host was awakened and Akiva’s return made known—with good news: the Misbegotten promise was given—Liraz was up, and no one knew what she’d done but Karou. Liraz thought of warning her not to tell anyone, but feared that caring that much about it just broached a whole new level of vulnerability and gave Karou even more power over her, so she didn’t. But she did glare at her.
“Thank you,” Akiva said quietly when they had a moment by themselves.
“For what?” Liraz demanded, squinting at him as if he might somehow know how she’d passed the last hours.
He shrugged. “For staying here. Keeping the peace. It couldn’t have been fun.”
“It wasn’t,” she said, “and don’t thank me. I might be the first one to draw my sword, once I have backup.”
Akiva wasn’t fooled. “Mm hmm,” he said, suppressing a smile. “Hamsas?”
“No,” she grudgingly admitted. “Not a touch.”
His brows went up in surprise. “Amazing.”
It was amazing. Liraz grimaced, remembering her absurd anger about it—what did they mean, leaving her in peace like that? It was odd, though. It was off. But saying so would just sound foolish, and maybe it was. Akiva looked hopeful. Liraz hadn’t seen him look like that… ever. It squeezed her heart—a bad and good feeling. How could a feeling be both bad and good? Akiva was happy; that was the good. Hazael should be here; that was the bad.
“Did you tell them?” she asked Akiva. “About Haz?” She was strumming at the bad ache in an effort to blot out the good.
Akiva nodded, and she saw with a mixture of guilt and petty triumph—but mostly guilt—that she’d blotted out his hopeful look, too, lacing it with pain. “Can you imagine how much easier this would all be, if he were here?”
Instead of me, thought Liraz, though she knew that wasn’t what Akiva meant. She meant it, though. Maybe she’d been acting on Hazael’s behalf in the night, sharing her fire, but it was feeble compared to what he would have brought to this bizarre communion of beasts and angels. Laughter and helpless grins, a swift breaking down of barriers. No one could hold out long against Haz. Her own gift, she thought with an inward shudder, was very different, and unwelcome in the future they were trying to build. All she was good at was killing.
For so long it had been a source of pride and boasting, and though the pride was gone, she would wear her boasts forever. Her sleeves were pushed all the way down, as they always were now, hiding the truth of her tally—the awful truth that it wasn’t just her hands that were marked. She might have shoved her hands in the chimaera’s faces back at the kasbah, but she hadn’t flaunted the full and terrible truth.
The campfire tattoos, the columns of five-counts—each one made up of four fine lines with a strike-through—were not confined to her hands. Up her arms they climbed, giving her flesh the look of black lace. No one else had a count like hers. No one.
It ended at the elbows, frittering away in one incomplete count: two fine lines that were the last two kills she’d had the stomach to record. Before Loramendi.
Loramendi.
She’d been having a recurring dream since then, in which, possessed of the belief that they would grow back clean, she… cut her arms off.
Just how she accomplished this, the dream never made clear. Oh, the first arm was easy, sure. The second was the puzzle her mind skipped blithely over.
How, exactly, does one cut off both of her own arms?
The point was, they didn’t grow back. Or at least, she always woke up before they could. She would lie there blinking, and she could never get back to sleep until she imagined an ending, one in which the fountaining blood from her stumps arranged itself into growth—bone, flesh, fingers—solidifying until she was whole again. Whole, and also unmarked.
A clean start.
A fantasy.
She’d never told anyone but Hazael, who had diverted her for a half hour after by trying to solve the puzzle of dual self-arm-severing, ending up sprawled on his back and declaring it impossible. She hadn’t told Akiva because, well, he wasn’t there. After Loramendi, he had left them, and even though he’d come back, he was in a world of his own. Take right now, for example. He was looking past Liraz, and she didn’t have to follow his gaze to know at whom. He was staring; she snapped her fingers in front of his eyes.
“A little subtlety, brother? The chimaera will take it out on her if they think there’s still something between you two. Haven’t you heard what they call her?”
“What?” He looked genuinely surprised. “No. What do they call her?”
“Angel-lover.”
She saw his eyes brighten, and rolled her own. “Don’t look happy. It doesn’t mean she loves you. It only means they don’t trust her.” She was scolding him as if she were the one who understood these things—or cared. What little Liraz knew of feelings was more than enough, thank you, but… well, she wasn’t going to go talking about it or anything, but there was something in the good half of this ache in her heart that made her want to curl her wings around it and guard it from the cold.
ARRIVAL + 18 HOURS
15
FAMILIAR TERROR
Eliza didn’t sleep the night of the Arrival. She could feel the dream perched on her shoulder, and knew what would happen if she did, but that wasn’t the primary reason. No one was sleeping. The world had been stirred by a hot poker, and sparks of crazy were flying. The news in the wake of the angel’s address was a horror show of riots and sectarian violence, Rapture cult vigils and mass baptisms, looting and suicide pacts and—oh hell—animal sacrifice. There were also, of course, the all-night Armageddon theme parties, the drunk frat boys in demon costumes pissing off rooftops, the women offering themselves up to have the angels’ babies.