“Kira, you don’t know—”
“Did you know?” I asked, hating the way my voice cracked on the words. I hated the lack of surprise on his face more. “You did. All that talk about being on my side was…” I shook my head.
“I am on your side, Kira, but you said you wanted it all, so I respected that.”
I looked at him, blinked, unable to believe what he’d just said, and that memory, of being back on the bus, came roaring back.
“Tell me what you want, my sweet blooming flower, and I’ll give it to you.”
“I want it all.”
“So this is my fault,” I said, biting off the words. Better teeth than tears. “I did this, being a greedy little girl, and what? This is my punishment?”
“Not a punishment. You need to find—”
I raised a hand, stopping him mid-sentence. That immediate silence was a balm, soothing me as the reverberations of his words cut me anew. I dropped a hand to the spilled water, my finger trailing through the puddle, just making idle circles for a moment, then moving into a familiar pattern.
Circle, bisecting line, feathery shapes off the main line, slash. Ashanti’s eyes followed my finger, then flicked upwards when a rumble of thunder came from the distant horizon.
“Enough,” she said, putting her fingers into the water. “It’s well past time you were trained.” When she lifted her hand, all the spilled moisture had all been soaked up, but I’d be buggered if I knew how.
“And just who are you? To train me?” I asked as she got to her feet.
“I know you want answers—” she began.
And here it comes.
No, Kira, it’s not the right time. No, Kira, we can’t train you. No, Kira, we can’t explain why everyone is sniffing around you so much, what those crystals we pull from your skin are and why they look like diamonds. No, we can’t talk about the factions that come to court or even the process by which it’s created. No portal, no quintet, no lightning man. No nothing.
“We think you might be the latest incarnation of our goddess. You’re not at full power yet, which makes you weak and susceptible to influence, pressure. Even outright assassination, if the powerful can’t bring you to heel. I belong to the Sisterhood. We protect avatars like you, train them if they wish. Because they’re coming for you, Kira, one way or the other. We haven’t had an avatar ascend for a thousand years. We got close in the 1970s, but… Stay here with Aen until you can at least work out how to defend yourself. I’ll be back tomorrow, once you’ve had time to rest and eat.”
My mouth hung open as she got to her feet and went to Aen, each kissing the other on the cheek before she vanished.
3
I should want to photograph this, I thought. There was no impulse there, no need, just a habit deeply ingrained, making itself known but easily ignored.
The vista at Aen’s place was truly stunning. Fields full of wildflowers made for a colourful carpet far down the rise, a ring of white-capped mountains providing a wall behind it. Evergreen forests created large swathes of dark green by contrast, both in the valley and up the inclines. Little white clouds scudded across the seamless blue sky, which sat incongruously with the regular low rumble of thunder.
“That’s him, isn’t it?” I asked Aen as he put a cup of coffee in front of me. He seemed kinda flustered and pleased I was talking to him, but I wasn’t sure why. What else did I have to do? “The lightning man.”
“The sky father? Yes. He’s…closer here than anywhere else. Can’t come through though, but his influence is strong enough, even behind the barrier.”
“The barrier?”
“It's the thing that keeps the gods from intervening directly. They get power from our belief, our rituals, but they can’t…alter things to suit themselves, much to their eternal dismay.”
“And the goddess? What you think I am?”
“Goddesses have always been something different, had different restrictions.”
I snorted, then chuckled at that, shaking my head.
“That’s all you’re gonna give me? Her ways are multifaceted and mysterious,” I said in a ponderous voice, waving my hand through the air.
“Are you going to fixate on this, rather than that which has you vomiting with startling regularity? What have the petty little lords of Hartley done now?”
I straightened in my seat, the gentle light flooding in the window falling over my face. “You want to know? Surely you already do.”
“I didn’t keep tabs on you, my…Kira. I tried to intervene when I could, but you seemed determined to pursue the path you were on. And now you are bound to them.”
“Of course I am. That was the point, wasn’t it?” I leant forward, resting my elbows on my knees, liking the pinch of my bones sticking into my flesh. “They were pretty upfront about it all. Like, getting blowjobs from other chicks in front of me says fairly clearly, ‘I am not boyfriend material.’ I was just yet another dumb bitch that chose to look past that to what I wanted to see—that they were vulnerable, opening themselves to me, that they wanted me as much as I wanted them. That we had a connection.” I grinned my death’s head smile, not one fucking scrap of mirth in it. “Story as old as time. They were playing me for Rutherglen. There seemed to be some implication that he held something over them, the quintet thing. But Jen knew and Marlow knew and Vervain and Mark and… Fuck, let’s just go with everyone. And I was the silly little donkey being led around, kept entertained, my power siphoned off when needed.”
I closed my fist, feeling the bite of my nails in my skin and clenching tighter. The nails cut in, my hand trembling with the effort of holding it so damn tight, but that was a feeling I leaned into. Discomfort bled through to pain, which produced a couple of shining drops of red blood, and I watched them run down the side of my palm.
“Kira, love…”
“Don’t call me that. Never call me that,” I said, my head snapping up and my fingers releasing, the throb of the marks, the complaints of my muscles keeping me in my seat. I stared him down, into those green eyes that burned so fucking bright. He wanted so much, but they all did, with their sweet assassin eyes that showed their hearts on their sleeves but none of their mind’s machinations.
I got to my feet, glancing out at the rumbling storm building off in the far distance.
“What do I do until Ashanti comes for me?”
“Whatever you want to. I’d suggest eating, then sleeping.”
I nodded, something that tugged at the stiff muscles in my neck.
“Can I go outside?”
“Not yet. He is—”
“Got it.” I looked around the pretty house, with its views and shelves full of books, Scandi furniture and warm throws. I tossed the stone I’d formed in my palm down on the coffee table and was rewarded by a widening of his eyes, the crystalline surface marred by smears of my blood.
I walked back to the bedroom, feeling that all too familiar tension in my chest, my breath coming in harder and faster now that I was alone. Of course it did. When I wasn’t playing at being angry with Aen or talking to mysterious women, I had no fucking defences. My mind had no pretties to play with, so it dragged up the dark jewelled knives of my memories.