Take care what desires you mold your life and reign to, princess, the aya had said to her beside the bath that day. Even if the yoraya were real, only someone with many enemies could ever hope to achieve it, and that isnt what we are anymore. We have more important work to do than fight.
Work, yes. The work that was the shape of their livesand the thief of it. Not that anyone thanks us, Scarab had replied. She had been a small child then, and more intrigued by stories of warfare than the Stelians
solemn duty.
Because no one knows. We dont do it for thanks, or for the rest of Eretz, though they benefit as well. We do it for our own survival, and because no one else can.
She may have stuck her tongue out at her aya that day, but as she grew up, she had taken the words to heart. She had even, recently, declined a tempting invitation of enemyhood from the fool emperor Joram. She might have had a harp string of him, but instead she had only sent a basket of fruit, and now he was dead anywayat this maguss hand, if the stories were trueand it was as it should be.
She didnt want enemies. She didnt want a yoraya , or war. At least, so Scarab tried to convince herself, though in truthand in secretthere was a voice within her that called out for those things.
It filled her with dread, but it thrilled her, too, and her dark excitement was the most dreadful thing of all.
Scarab did not perform ez vash . Realizing she was trying to prove herself to Carnassial, she rebelled against the ideait was he who must prove himself to her and besides, she wished to see this maguss face and touch his life, to know who he was before she killed him. It was no small thing to draw down sirithar . It was no good thing, but it was without doubt a great thing, and she would know how he had done it when all knowledge of magic in the so-called Empire of Seraphim was lost.
So instead of slashing the thread of his life, Scarab reached for it with her anima , and touched it.
And gasped.
It was a very small gasp, but it was enough to make him turn.
Scarab. Carnassials sending was sheathed in urgency. Do it.
But she didnt, because now she knew. She had touched his life and knew what he was before she even saw his face, and then she did see his face and so did Carnassial, and though he did not gasp, Scarab felt the ripples of his shock as they merged with her own.
The magus called Beasts Bane, who drew down sirithar and so could not be permitted to live, and who was a bastard and a warrior and a father-slayer, was also, impossibly, Stelian. His eyes were firethey were searching the empty air where Scarab stood unseenand that was enough to know for a certainty, but she knew something more about him, which she pushed, fumblingly, toward Carnassial in the simplest of sendingsno sense or feeling, just words.
She sent it to the others, too, who were out in the caverns and passages trying to form an understanding of what was happening in this place. She sent it to Spectral and Reave, that is, but caught herself before releasing, so abruptly and inadequately, this news to Nightingale, to whom it would mean very much.
Scarab waited, breath held, as the magus scanned the air where she stood. And though she knew he couldnt see her, she read his certainty of her presence in the steadiness of his gaze, and his reaction was another surprise in a layering of surprises.
Confronted with the certainty of an invisible presence before him, he showed no alarm. His expression didnt harden, but softened and thenconfounding Scarab to her corehe smiled. It was a smile of such pure pleasure and gladness, such breath-catching, unabashed happiness and light, that Scarab, who was a queen, young and beautiful, and had been smiled at by many a man, flushed to be the focus of it.
Except, of course, that she wasnt.
When he spoke, his voice was low and sweet and rough with love. Karou? Are you there?
Scarab flushed deeper and was glad of invisibility, and glad shed pushed Carnassial back from her mind a moment earlier so that he couldnt feel the flare of heat this strangers smile had sparked in her.
His beautyit was of the sort that made you fall very still and conserve your awe like a held breath. His power was part of itthe raw, wild musk of sirithar , forbidden and damning; just to breathe him in was an indulgencebut it was his happiness that pierced, so intense that she experienced it as much with her heart as with her eyes.
Godstars. She had never felt happiness like what she saw in him in that moment, and she was sure shed never inspired it, either. Her first night with Carnassial in the spring, when the rituals and dance had ended and they had at last been left alone, she had felt his hunger and delight before he even touched her. It had felt like something real then, but, quite suddenly, it didnt anymore.
This look was so much more than that, and the pierce became an ache as Scarab wondered: Who was it for?
Sendings pulsed back to her from Reave and Spectral, and from