A soft drip on the water clock, and he drew her close, sliding an arm under her knees to lift her onto his lap. He exhaled like a man who’d come home.
“When?”
She held him tight. “Tomorrow night.”
Kadra surveyed the exterior of his morgue where he and Sarai were to meet Noceo that night. The building had a singular entrance and exit, sans balconies or ledges. The ice room was too small for him to call down a bolt if things went awry, but Noceo would be in excellent distance of his blade, and Sarai’s rather ruthless hands.
Satisfied, he walked onward, crossing the street toward his mount when a shock of pale hair materialized at his shoulder. He slanted a narrow-eyed glance at the Bridger.
Dalvia flinched and gripped the post to which he had tied his mount’s reins as a shield between them. “He’ll come. He thinks Sarai wants to join him.”
Pained eyes, pale cheeks, throat flexing and swallowing.Regret. It bit him too, locking jaws around the cavity of his chest as he wondered what this woman could have been.
“I never thought I’d say this.” She seemed to wrestle with the words. “But I might have gotten a great deal wrong. I’m glad one of us survived properly.”
“I believe I failed to give you the chance to change,” he said somberly. “If it were Sarai, she wouldn’t have accepted your refusal. She would have dragged you out of that manor by the hair even if you’d betrayed her to Clevsin.”
A startled laugh erupted from Dalvia. “She would, but I don’t think it matters.” This time her smile was genuine. “I was loathe to extend othersthe chance to change, so this probably serves me right. I craved true freedom too dearly.”
“True freedom doesn’t exist.” He dryly indicated the black birrus and mask shielding his face despite him being Magus Supreme. “I tried to impress this on Noceo once, but there is more to power than might. My right-hand man,” he smiled faintly and corrected himself, “my closest friend, Gaius, doesn’t have any power to his name. But when the day comes, he will have the finest grave Edessa has seen. One that will bewilder future generations for how ordinary they will judge him. Yet, he will have been a powerful man. Not because he saved my life and Sarai’s at the Aequitas, but because when I was a fifteen-year-old iudex straight from the Academiae, he carried himself with honor and wanted nothing to do with corruption. Unlike my name, his is unimpeachable. That is also power.”
Dalvia swallowed. “I’m sorry that I nearly made you lose him.”
“I know.” He couldn’t summon anger. She would pay for her crimes. “Noceo won’t succeed. He’ll crumble and take you with him.”
“I know.” Upturned mouth. Downturned eyes still avoiding his.Grief. “I guessed as much from the start when he insisted that a coup was possible. Yet, I had to hope. Or nothing would have meaning.”
Love and resentment. Hope and fear. It wasn’t merely salvation that she had sought but understanding and a power that could finally give her peace.
Wind blew down the streets of Edessa to part the air between them. “The offer to leave remains. Sarai cares.”
“A dangerous thing for a woman in power,” Dalvia said half to herself. “But my course is set. I’ll see you, Drenevan.”
He inclined his head as she walked past him. A portal split the air several yards away. He spared a fleeting look for the past. Then, he walked across the street.
Midnight found her in Kadra’s morgue. The Lugens’ examining tables were quiet at this hour, few willing to work into the night or with the dead these days.
She soundlessly went down the flight of stairs at the back toward the door at the end of the hall where Kadra placed the victims of cold cases in his Quarter on ice to preserve their corpses until he could ascertain a culprit. It scraped open, loosing a frigid blast. Moonlight rolled in like fog from square windows by the ceiling. An unmoving patch of shadow at the back of the room was all that spoke to Kadra’s presence.
Hands locked behind her, Sarai leaned against the opposite wall, trying to quell her roiling stomach when she caught footsteps on the landing. Soft taps approached the door. It parted, and Noceo emerged.
Anger and whispers of remembered fear sank teeth into her bones, pumping her full of venom. For the last few hours, she had wondered if her hate would override her pity when she saw him again. Apparently, she held both in equal quantity.
“If this is a trap, I would advise against it, Death-Summoner.” Dark hair coiffed back, gray-green robes immaculate, he looked like a Naaduir of winter and ice.
“I never had your flair for it,” she said into the quiet.
He jerked before turning unerringly in the direction of her voice. Silver eyes found hers and gleamed. “Well?” he murmured smoothly. “Are you finally here to ask me for power?”
She laughed, emerging from the shadows. “I don’t think yours would serve me well. Edessa hates you.”
“They’ll grow used to me once they realize that I’m not going anywhere.”
“From drugmaker to ruler.” An empty smile bled across her face. “Would you have chosen the same if life had taken a different turn?”
Noceo cast her a surprised look that he quickly veiled with insouciance. “Why do you ask? Trying to see if things would have been different had Drenevan kept his word?”
“Perhaps.”I need to know what happened the night of their escape.Only that would tell her if there was any hope for this man.
