Bathe with Karou.
Heat followed the thought, which, for a wonder, met with no instant barrier of guilt and self-denial. He was so accustomed to running into it that its absence was surreal. It was like rounding a corner one has rounded a thousand times, and finding, instead of the wall one knows is there, an open expanse of sky.
Freedom.
And if they werent there yet, Akiva was at least free now to dream, and that in itself was a very great thing.
Karou forgave him.
She loved him.
And they were parting again, and he hadnt kissed her, and neither of these things was all right. Even if they hadnt had to hide their feelings from two armies, and even if they might yet have stolen a moment alone, Akiva had a soldiers superstition about good-byes. You didnt say them. They were bad luck, and a good-bye kiss was just another form of good-bye. A kiss of beginning shouldnt be a kiss in parting. They would have to wait for it.
The passage curved into an alcove, where a channel of frigid water spilled from the rough wall, running along at waist height for several meters in a trough before vanishing again into the rock. Like so many of the marvels of these caves, it seemed natural but probably wasnt. Akiva shrugged out of his sword harness and hung it from a spur of rock, then stripped off his shirt.
He cupped the cold water and brought it to his face. Handful after handful, to his face, neck, chest, and shoulders. He dunked his head into it and straightened, feeling it vaporize against the heat of his skin as it ran down in rivulets between the joints of his wings.
He had agreed to Karous plan because it was sound. It was clever, and its risks were far less than the previous plans had been, and, if it worked, the threat of Jael to the human world truly would radically diminish, like a hurricane downgraded to a gust. There would still be Eretz to worry about, but there had always been Eretz to worry about, and they would have prevented their enemy from acquiring, as Karou termed them, weapons of mass destruction.
Liraz may have mocked her in the first war council, suggesting they simply ask Jael to leave, but that, in essence, was the plan: to ask him to please take his army and go home, without what he came for, thank you, and good night.
Of course, it was the inducement that was the crux of the plan. It was simple and brilliantit was not pleaseand Akiva didnt doubt that Karou and Liraz could pull it off. They were both formidable, but they were also the two people he cared most about in the world worlds and he just wanted to carry them safely forward to the future he imagined, in which no ones life was at stake and the hardest decision of any given day might be what to eat for breakfast, or where to make love.
Liraz was right, Akiva thought. He was preoccupied by bliss. He wasnt expecting to have another moment alone with Karou for some time, so when he heard a stir behind himit sounded like a soft intake of breathhe spun, a surge in his pulse, expecting to see her.
And saw no one.
He smiled. He could feel a presence before him as surely as he had heard a breath. She had come glamoured again, and that meant she had come unobserved. Whatever hed told himself just minutes agohow a kiss of beginning should not being a kiss in partinghis resolve couldnt survive the surge of hope. He needed it. It felt unfinished, the understanding that had passed between them, hands to hearts. He didnt think he could feel sure of his happiness, or breathe at full depth again, until and again, astonishingly, there was no barrier of guilt to greet the hope, but only the open expanse of possibilities before them until he kissed her. Superstition be damned.
Karou? he said, smiling. Are you there? He waited for her to materialize, ready to catch her in his arms the instant she did. He could do that now. At least, when no one was around.
But she didnt materialize.
And then, abruptly, the presencethere was a presenceregistered as unfamiliar, even hostile, and there was something else. A feeling came over himcame into himand Akiva experienced an entirely newfound awareness of of his own life as a discrete entity. A single shining tensity in a warp of many, tangible and vulnerable. A chill gripped him.
Karou? Is that you? he asked again, though he knew it was not.
And then he heard footsteps out in the passage, and
in a trice Karou did enter. She wasnt glamoured, but plainly visibleand plainly radiantand as she drew to a faltering halt, blushing to catch him half-dressed, he saw by her smile that she had indeed come with the same hope that had bloomed in him an instant earlier.
Hi, she said, voice soft, eyes wide. Her hope was reaching for his, but Akiva felt something else reaching for it, too, and for his life. It was threat and menace. It was invisible.
And it was in the alcove with them.
38
AN EXCELLENT ACCIDENT OF STARDUST
In Morocco, Eliza woke with a start. She wasnt screaming, or even on the verge of screaming. In fact, she wasnt afraid at all, and that was rather a nice surprise. She had given in to sleep, knowing that she mustsleep deprivation can actually kill youand had hoped that either a) the dream might, miraculously, leave her alone, or b) the walls of this place would prove thick enough to muffle her screams.