They better not get near it.
Im acting like I have an endgame that I just havent shared with them, but I dont know how long that will hold. I was never in his inner circle. What if he told them his plans, and this secrecy looks wrong to them? As for this problem He lifted his hands to his head and drew in a sharp breath at the contact of injury to injury. What would the Wolf do? He would do nothing. He would give the seraphim no one, and stare them down for asking.
Youre right. The image came to Karou easily, of the contempt the Wolf would hold in his eyes, facing his foes. Of course, he really would be orchestrating a slaughter.
Yes. But this is our tactic, in all of this: to begin believably, where he would, but not follow where he would take it. Im giving the angels no one, and no apology. Its a chimaera matter, and thats the end of it.
And if it happens again? Karou asked.
Ill see that it doesnt. Simple, heavy, full of threat and regret.
Karou knew that Ziri wanted no such responsibility, but she remembered his words in the airWe will fight for our world to the last echo of our soulsand the way hed stood between two blooded armies and held them apart, and she didnt doubt that he could rise to any occasion. Okay, she said, and that was the end of it.
A silence unspooled between them, and with the matter decided, the quality of alone changed. They were two tired people standing in the flickering dark, a tangle of feelings and fearslove, trust, hesitation, sorrow.
We should get back, Karou said, though she wished she could give Ziri his peace for a while longer. The seraphim will be waiting.
He nodded, and followed her to the door. Your hair is wet, he said.
There are baths, she told him, opening the door, remembering that he wouldnt know that.
I cant say that doesnt sound good. He indicated the blood-caked fur of his feet, his raw-meat hands. There was the wound where his head had smashed the cave floor, too. She stepped closer to him, reached up to touch it; he winced. A good goose egg had risen under the dark, crusted blood.
Ouch, she said. Are you having any dizziness?
No. Just throbbing. Its fine. He was scrutinizing her face in return. Youre looking a lot better.
She touched her cheek, realizing the pain had gone. The swelling, too. She touched her torn earlobe and found that the flesh had knit itself together. What?
With a little gasp, she remembered. The water, she said. It came back to her like a dream fragment. It has some healing properties.
Really? Ziri looked down at his raw hands again. Can you show me the way?
Um. Karou paused awkwardly. I would, but Zuzana and Mik are in there. She blushed. It was possible that Zuzana and Mik were too tired to act like Zuzana and Mik, but with the restorative waters, it was likely that her friends would be making use of their hour of solitude, in, um, Zuzana-and-Mik fashion.
Ziri was not slow to take her meaning. He blushed, too, and the humanity that flooded his cold, perfect features was extraordinary. Ziri wore this body so much more beautifully than Thiago had.
Ill wait, he said with a low, embarrassed laugh, avoiding Karous eyes, and she laughed, too.
And there they were, in the doorway, blushing, laughing their embarrassed laughs, and standing too closeher hand drawn back from his brow but her body still curved toward hiswhen someone came around the bend in the passage and stopped dead.
Dear gods and stardust , Karou wanted to yell. Are you kidding me?
Because of course, of course, it was Akiva. The wind music had drowned out his footsteps. He was not ten feet away, and as skilled as he was at concealing those flares of sudden feeling,
he did not entirely succeed in concealing this one.
A jerk of disbelief in his halt, a creep of color across his cheeks. Even, Karou was sure, an unguarded intake of breath. On stoic Akiva, these small signs were equivalent to reeling from a slap.
Karou stepped away from the Wolf, but she couldnt undo the picture they had made in that second. Shed felt her own flare of feeling at the sight of Akiva, but doubted that he could have detected it in her laughing, blushing face, and now, to make matters worse, there was the guilt of discovery, as if she had been caught in some betrayal.
Laughing and blushing with the White Wolf? As far as he knew, it was betrayal.
Akiva. The pull to fly to him was its own kind of gravity, but it was only her heart that moved. Her feet stayed rooted, heavy and guilty.
Akivas voice was cold and quick. Weve selected a representative council. You might do the same. He paused, and on his face played the reverse process as that on the Wolfs. As he stood looking at the pair of them, his humanity retreated, and he was as Karou had first seen him in Marrakesh: soul-dead. Were ready when you are.
Whenever youre done blushing by torchlight with the White Wolf.
And he turned on his heel and was gone before they could reply.
Wait, said Karou, but her voice came out weak, and if he heard her over the wind music, he didnt turn back. We could tell him , she thought. We could have told him the truth. But the opportunity was lost, and it was as though he took the air with him. For a long second, she couldnt breathe, and when she did, she tried her best to make it sound measured and normal.