Beasts Bane, crusading for beasts? mused Balieros, leveling a long, speculative look across the cavern, and giving a small smile. And strangely fold the hours as the end draws near.
Strangely fold the hours. It was a line from a song. All the soldiers knew it. Not exactly hopeful, but appropriate in the context of that scream of magic. As the end draws near. The end.
Karou couldnt help herself. She looked at Akiva again. He still wasnt looking back, and it was enough to make her believe that he never would again.
Here they were in the Kirin caves. It was the eve of battle. Theyd brought their armies together, which in itself could be counted an unimaginable triumph, but nothing was as theyd dreamt it. They werent side by side. They couldnt even look at each other.
Karous heartbeat was playing tricks on her, surging and then shying, like a creature trapped within her. Akiva was surrounded by his own kind, and she was here, with hers, and it seemed that all that was binding them together anymore was a common enemy and the sweet, pure threads of music.
Mik sat on a stone, head bent over his violin, and his song sounded different here than it had in the kasbah. There, it had floated up into the sky. Here, it echoed.
Here, it was trapped, like Karous heartbeat.
She felt Zuzanas head settle on her shoulder. Issa was on her other side, placid and watchful, and the Wolf was stretched out before her, propped up on his elbows by the fire. He looked relaxed. Still elegant, still exquisite, but absent cruelty, absent menace, as if his stolen bodys default expressions were slowly being changed from within. Karou could see the first inklings of a greater beauty beginning to emerge, and she thought of Brimstones art meeting Ziris soul. It was nothing to do with Thiago now. That monster was gone forever, and if anyone could purge the taint of him, it was Ziri.
Hed better be careful, though, and not relax too much. Karou took a quick survey of the encircling host, alert especially for Lisseths unblinking watchfulness. But she didnt see Lisseth. There was Nisk, but not his partner, and Nisk was only staring into the fire.
Karou felt the Wolfs eyes on her, but didnt return his look. Her gaze felt a magnetic pullacross the cavern to Akiva. Akiva, Akiva. One more time, she would let herself look. With held breath and, it seemed, a held heartbeat, she made herself pause. It was like an old childhood game of superstition when, exhaling, she thought: If he doesnt look back this time, Ive lost him.
And the possibility brought on an echo of the earlier despair. A candle flame extinguished by a scream.
She lifted her eyes and looked across the cavern. And
living fire. That was what his eyes were like, greeting hers: a fuse that seared the air between them. He was looking at her. And as far away as he was, and with so much between themchimaera, seraphim, all the living, all the deadit felt like touch, that look.
Like the rays of the sun.
They looked at each other. They looked, and anyone might notice. Anyone might see. Angel-lover. Beast-lover.
Let them see.
It was madness and abandon, but after everything else, Karou couldnt make herself care enough to look away. Akivas eyes were heat and light, and she wanted to stay there forever. Tomorrow, the apocalypse. Tonight, the sun.
And finally it was Akiva who broke their gaze. He stood up and quietly spoke to the angels around him, and when he wove his way out of the cavern, lingering a moment in the tall, arched entrance, he didnt look her way again, but Karou still understood. He wanted her to follow him.
She couldnt, of course. Shed be seen. The forward caves were Misbegotten domain,
and though Lisseth might not be presentwhere was she?there were plenty of other chimaera here keeping an eye on her.
But she had to try. She couldnt bear the thought of Akiva waiting for her and waiting for her. It felt like a last chance.
Im going to get some sleep, she said, rising, yawningit started out fake and quickly became realand left the cavern by the opposite door as Akiva, the one that led back down to the village.
But as soon as she was out of view, she glamoured herself invisible and passed right back through the cavern, unseen and drifting in a quiet glide over the assembled heads of two armies, her heart pounding, to find Akiva.
29
A DREAM COME TRUE
Things can be different, Karou had told Ziri just before the war council. Thats the whole point.
Was that the point? To build a world in which she could have her lover? Seeing the look that passed between her and Akiva across the cavern, Ziri wondered if that was what hed given up his own life for.
For all of us, shed said.
For him, too? What could be different for him? Hed be free of this body someday, in resurrection or evanescence, one way or the other. There was always that to look forward to.
He watched Akiva leave and was unsurprised when, a short while later, Karou left, too. Separately, and by different doors, but he had no doubt that they would find each other. He thought back to the Warlords ball, all those years ago, and what hed witnessed then. Hed been just a boy, but it had been as plain as moonlight to him: the way Madrigals dancing body had curved away from the Wolfs but toward the strangers. And even if the full, heady complexity of adult intrigues had been a mystery to him, hed gotten a sense of ithis first, like a hint of fragrance, exotic, intoxicating frightening.