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It was a sensation in the spine, like she’d gotten just before the Dominion ambush. There was something she was missing.
Yes. Akiva.That’s what she was missing.
He should be here.
She tried to be reasonable. She’d only been here five seconds; he would come around the corner any second.
But he didn’t.
Of course, of course. Did you really think you could have happiness?
Karou’s pulse hammered faster and her breathing shallowed, but it was panic barely contained, this time, not desire.
Akiva didn’t come.
Karou’s torch sputtered and died, and she had no seraph fire to light her passage back. She had to feel her way in darkness, clutching her unbroken wishbone to her heart.
79
LEGENDS
“Look.”
Ziri saw the stormhunter before Liraz did. He didn’t point, only breathed the word, not wanting to send it veering in the opposite direction. The creatures could sense the smallest movements from impossible distances. In fact, it was a marvel that it was flying this near them.
It was flying towardthem.
Liraz did look, and Ziri was caught as much by the play of starlight over the fine planes and curves of her face as by the sight of a stormhunter on a direct path for them. More, in fact, and easily. He watched her watch it, and drew wonder from her wonder.
Until she said, eyes narrowing, “Something’s wrong.”
He turned, and saw that in the moment that he’d been looking at Liraz, the creature had veered aside, and was no longer on a course for them. It was still distant, and for a beat he didn’t see what it was that had alarmed Liraz. It was gliding, tilting on an updraft. It looked glorious.
Ziri squinted. “Is that—?”
“Yes.”
Liraz’s voice was tense, and for good reason. This was an anomaly akin to… well, akin to a Kirin and a Misbegotten going for a starlight fly together. Strange, Ziri thought, was going to have to try harder in the future. Still, it wasstrange.
It was the unmistakable shimmer of seraph wings.
His first thought was that an angel was hunting it, somehow pursuing it. But nothing in the ma
“Have you ever heard of that happening?” he asked.
Liraz gave a small laugh, barely a breath. “No. I know Joram wanted one for his trophy room. It was a sport, for a while. Every lickspittle lord and lady in the Empire hoped to bring him one, with no luck, and some died trying, and finally he had to call in hunters, trappers. The best. And do you know how many they got?”
It was the most she’d spoken since he found her in the entrance cavern, so disarmingly tongue-tied, and again Ziri found himself pulled to watch her, half forgetting the stormhunter and the mystery of a seraph flying at its side. “How many?” he asked.
“None.”
“I’m glad.”
“Me, too.”
He realized, with a pang of deep sorrow, that though she was directly upwind of him, and the spice scent of her was as bright to his senses as a color, he could no longer detect the other—the secret perfume, so fragile, that hid within it. He had breathed it while carrying her in his arms, but his Kirin senses were duller than the Wolf’s had been, and it was lost to him now. Well, he would always remember that it was there. That was something. Being the Wolf had given him that, at least.
They held their position and watched in silence as the stormhunter went on tilting and wheeling, the angel keeping pace with it, sometimes pulling ahead, sometimes falling behind.
“Come on,” said Liraz, when it began to put distance between them, heading north. “Let’s follow them.”
They did, and saw that their path was erratic, carrying them near to cliff faces where the wind fu
They watched the stormhunter come, and it was very near before Ziri realized that the figure flying along with it was not its only company. There were figures riding it. He hadn’t noticed them before because, not being seraphim, they didn’t give off light.
“Is that—?” he began, dumbfounded.
“I think it is,” breathed Liraz.
It was. And, catching sight of Liraz and Ziri, they gave sharp cries in their strange human language. Ziri could, of course, not understand what they said, but the note of victory was plain, as was the pure, delirious joy.
And who could blame them for it? Mik and Zuzana had tamed a stormhunter. They were going to be legends.
80
A CHOICE
Akiva didn’t know what was happening to him. He was in the bath cavern, heart pounding, waiting for Karou.
And then he wasn’t.
Time stuttered.
“There is the past, and there is the future,” he had said to his brothers and sisters not long ago. “The present is never more than the single second dividing one from the other.”
He’d been wrong. There was onlythe present, and it was infinite. The past and the future were just blinders we wore so that infinity wouldn’t drive us mad.
What was happening to him?
He had lost awareness of his body. He was inside that realm of mind, the private universe, the infinite sphere of himself where he went to work magic, but he hadn’t come here of his own accord, and couldn’t rise back out.
Had he beenput here?
There was a sense of presence. A feeling that voices were passing just out of reach. He couldn’t hear them. He only felt them as ripples skimming at the surface of his awareness. As the drag of fingers on the far side of silk. They were in discord.
Energies vied. Not his own.
His own was coiled, clenched. This was what he knew, this was allhe knew: He was not where he needed to be. Karou would come and he wouldn’t be there. Perhaps it had happened already. Time had come unspooled. Had it been ten minutes? Hours? It didn’t matter. Focus. There was only the present. You had only to open your eyes in the right direction to be whenever you wished.
But there were an infinite number of directions and no compass, and it didn’t matter because Akiva couldn’t open his eyes. He was pressed deep. Contained. This was being done to him.
He was not where he needed to be. He was taken. The impotence of it, and at a moment when his hope had been so full he couldn’t contain it. To be crushed down now and robbed of will, when Karou was waiting for him, when they had finally come to a moment that could be just theirs. It was unbearable.
So Akiva didn’t bear it. He pushed.
At once, the thunder. Thunder as a weapon, thunder in his head. He recoiled from it, but not for long. Thunder is sound, not barrier. If that was all that was holding him, then he wasn’t truly held. He gathered every fiber of his strength into a silent roar and pushed, and it exploded in him, merciless, but he was explosive, too, and unflinching.