“Enjoy it while it lasts, darling. I assure you, we’ll be seeing each other soon.”
I blew him a kiss. “Try not to starve to death while I’m gone.”
Chapter 18
I stood at the crest of a modest hill, overlooking a place where I didn’t belong, whose dirty secrets and defeated titans were contained by the last rays of a setting sun. A city stolen and held by serpents drunk on bottomless greed. A place mired in painful memory second only to the twisted wood at my back.
I stood on a path never walked but wasn’t alone. Flush with power that wasn’tcompletelymine by right, yet could never be taken from me again. With a woman whose allegiance I wouldn’t bet on, and a parasite I could trust to be exactly himself, for the bond couldn’t lie.
Not anymore.
Not toeitherof us.
Alicia cleared her throat. “I still canna believe you did that, lass.” She laughed, brilliant green eyes twinkling above cheeks flushed with passion and adrenaline, both. “Just walked into that room and”—she clapped her hands—“poof!Told Marco to sleep, mid-thrust. Will say,” she added, one slender brow raised, “you could’ve waited for a girl to finish, but I canna complain overmuch.” She cupped her hands around her mouth, and took a deep breath. “Fuck the Empire!” she bellowed, voice echoing without strength enough to carry. “Fuck it long and hard and dry!”
I snorted. Traced my ring of Glaith and iron with pointed claw, then shielded my eyes against the rising wind.
“Oh,” she said, and reached into her pack of stolen supplies. “Nicked this for you. I know you might not be able t’use it, but”—she handed me Asher’s sidearm—“worth a try. Worth studyin’ their inferior technology, if nothin’ else.”
At my touch, the sleek metal hesitated. Denying my unwarranted claim to ownership and rejecting my ki as it had on the frontlines.
But I would not be refused.
Never again.
Not with the power of three at my disposal andcertainlynot with a perfect bond linking me to its former owner. It was nothing to slip inside, to race through our shared wealth of ki and dig until I found the source of Elite destruction tied to his wrist.
Blinding, violet light burst from my curled fist. Trembling, but obedient. Ready and waiting for my command no matter the strength of his hatred howling at the back of my mind. Neither the vibrant green of my bonded, furious Elite, nor the electric blue of Alicia’s shields—the blue that had been my mark, once.
This was something… in-between.
Something new.
I banished the ki with a thought.
“Goddess…” Alicia whistled. “Spare the fool who thinks t’cross the Lady Wildcat.”
Lips crinkled around a confident smirk, I tossed her the weapon.
“By my count,” she said, catching it one-handed and tucking it away in her pack, “we can be at the Canodill Pass in two weeks. Less, if we just so ‘appened to be fortunate enough t’pass through that haunted wood without angerin’ its Mistress…”
I didn’t react past clenched jaw. Didn’t turn away from what had been the Eloran city of Liyas, or acknowledge that she’d spoken. Wasn’t sure I was… ready, in spite of all my power.
“What d’you say, lass? Shall we go home?”
Ididturn, then. Avoided her eye and looked to the place I’d once called home. A place I’d stained black around the edges, twisting it to suit the lies I told myself. Until the Grandmother had been so corrupted I couldn’t untangle ugly truth from the myths.
From my own fucking delusional legends of grandeur and destiny.
Alicia touched my elbow, then withdrew. “Mila?”
What right did I have to lay claim to something as pure as the Grandmother?
“Come now, lass. Call that glorious beasty you love so much, and let’s go before Marco wakes up and cuts the captain free.”
Swallowing the painful lump, I clenched my fists. Sunkherclaws into my palms and shook my head. “She won’t recognize me. Not now.”
“You’re not so changed,” Alicia said, forcing me to look into those sparkling green depths. “A little quieter, perhaps. A touch of wisdom ‘round the eyes, but not so different that she’ll forget the scent o’your love, yeah?”
