Jake just wanted. He was a chaotic mix of fear, elation, and desire, but I had a feeling that was him normally. He didn’t get the long faces and sad air. Luc would come back, he was sure of that. We were together, finally, something that had been broken in Jake, perhaps since birth, healing. He could feel every single one of our beats inside him, including Luc’s. We would make beautiful music together, always. I smiled at that, getting something sweet from him when everyone else felt pain, so I just improvised a little with the tune that beat he carried, adding some little flourishes, and a great wave of love hit me in response.
And Liam. Always the hardest to unpack, he was a swirl of emotion—fear, anger, relief, need. I got the feeling this was a constant for him that was only amplified by what had happened. It played over in his mind, every blow struck, the only reprieve for him when Rutherglen had him on the floor, a foot on the chair pushing into his neck. Only then did blessed self-preservation trump the lot of it, the geas relenting because if he didn’t survive, then we wouldn’t.
I wanted to pull away from his mind, the brutalisation of our group on rotation making my gut twist. This was just re-traumatisation. So I reached out, speaking to the geas directly. I showed it that being together, recovering, moving past this in our time was the answer it sought.
The result was quite dramatic, the calming of his mind letting mine do the same, which was perhaps why this slipped out.
“You knew this would happen.”
I felt the spike of fear as I said the words, when every eye turned his way, the brief flare of anger and then the heavy greyness of resignation. He straightened, his jaw tipping up in what I had come to feel was a typical Liam ‘fuck you’ look.
“Not all of it. I sure as fuck wouldn’t have boned you in the club bathroom if I had any idea Jimmy was gonna pull that shit. I just knew the sky father had plans. The first time he spoke to me through Luc was when he was dreaming. I was sitting down, going through the set list for Donington, and he said my name. Wasn’t Luc. They have completely different voices and speech patterns. He told me about Kira, about how it’d all go down.”
“And how will it go down?” I asked, snapping out the words.
“You know, Kira. She’s already told you, when we opened this place. The trials will happen, you’ll ascend, and then you’ll fight him.”
“Luc?” My voice faltered on that, Aen’s hand wrapping tighter around my arm at the sound of it.
He nodded, and then I saw it. The single fucking tear forming in one steel blue eye, blinked away before it could fall.
“I can’t…just sit around waiting for fate’s axe to fall. What rides me, it pushes me with every breath to make sure we’re all OK and together. When I’ve got a fucking god telling me about his plans for us, I listened, if only for the fucking hubris of trying to work out a way to circumvent them.” His eyes flicked around the room, shuttering down as if the sight of us hurt him. “It’s not gonna help things at all, but I did it for you, for all of you.”
“The sentinels need to be involved,” Mark said. “If you want advice on how to take down an avatar, they’re the ones to talk to.”
“Not an avatar,” I said, stroking a hand through Aen’s hair. “Lucas.”
Chapter 32
I lay in the quiet of our room in Aragide with my consorts for some time. Food and drinks were delivered, blood washed away, and even Marlow didn’t complain when I shrouded myself in sweats. Aen and I showered together, the boys in the other, and when I washed her, she cried in my arms. I held her, just bore witness to what was happening with no fucking clue as to how to help, until it finally stopped. She washed away the evidence under the shower head.
“They died, when Johnno crushed the estate,” was all she would say, her voice harsh as the crack of a whip.
“Good.”
“Good.” She nodded and pulled on sweats too.
We collapsed onto the bed, wrapped up tight in each other, but no one but me touched Aen. Sleep took a ridiculously long time to come, but it did. I waited until everyone’s breathing had evened out for some time before I slipped out from under them and left the room.
The murals and artwork of Aragide had been replaced by a long span of mirrors on both sides of the corridors, ones that reflected a drab and washed out Kira, then something much darker.
Show me you, as you looked when you walked the earth, I said.
My hair went to black, falling now in tight waves, a great mane of it, some plaited together into neat cornrows that ended in beads of copper and amber. They clacked when we walked. My face and skin changed, deepening to ebony, my lips full, mobile, my teeth so white against it when I smiled. And my eyes were a pupil-less sea of black. I stopped, taking in the filmy, dark purple, toga like garment that draped across a form taller and stronger than mine.
So this is you.
This is me.
Not a crow’s wing or a clacking pile of bones, just a girl.
Just a girl in love, just like you.
Aramka.
Aramka, she repeated with a nod.
He was in the training room when we opened the door, because of course he was. We didn’t let the door fall completely closed, not wanting to interrupt the balletic display. Duke moved through the room in a series of strikes and kicks that looked as much about dancing as fighting. His body was still a picture of feline strength, every muscle picked out in the low light as he went, clad only in a loose pair of cotton pants. Sweat gleamed on his skin. Kick, wheel, strike, block, slide. Across the room he went, a whirlwind of power.
“So you’ve finally decided to come?”
Rey appeared at my shoulder.
“Everything happens when it’s supposed to. You know that,” we said.
“Mother keep me, I’ll never understand what you two do. I just get to bear witness to the chaos that you create together.”
He nodded to me, then left, so that there was only him and me.
We crossed to the floor on silent feet, yet when we came close enough to hear the tiny grunts he made with each swipe, he spun around.
“You,” he said.
There was so much in that word—longing, desire, fear, hatred, resignation. We stared finally into implacable eyes that just saw, no longer reacting.
“Me. Always me, aramka?”
“Always you.”
The words were torn from him, his calm broken as he stormed towards us, ready to tug us into his arms, against his body. I knew what his mouth would taste like, I could feel it on my tongue, even though we’d never kissed.
I backed away, but she dropped into a fighting stance, Duke shaking his head and doing the same. Then we moved.
I’d felt sparring with Aen was as much about flirting, and this seemed the same. Sparring it was, but in a way that meant our blows only just missed, slicing through the space closest to each other’s bodies, making the other person feel our passing. We’d done this before, I realised, the memories coming much more clearly now.
We were moving across the sandy flagstones of a palace or a temple, the moon shining through the domed glass roof our only source of light. He was not this Duke, my Duke, the pants replaced by a similar purple tunic, the edges embroidered with gold, his hair close cropped still, but… There was an expressiveness in his eyes that he’d lost somehow over the millennia, keeping everything locked down, being whatever was needed, until now. When he caught us around the waist, when we moved a fraction of a second too late, when he tugged us to his body, his grin was as wild as his eyes.