Page 38 of Property of Prophet

He’s quiet for a moment. The silence has weight and is ancient and calibrating.

“You don’t remember everything,” he says. His voice has a quality to it that’s slightly too resonant and still. Stolen grace rattling in a vessel it doesn’t fit. “But you’ve remembered enough by now. You know what you were.”

I say nothing.

“She’s been keeping you.” His attention moves to Lily, briefly, the way someone’s attention moves to a piece of furniture they’re deciding about. “You fell for breaking the rules, brother. And you’ve already started breaking them again.” His head tilts at an angle a human neck can manage but would never choose. “Touching her will cost you the same thing as Tessa did. I’d have thought the lesson would take.”

The name ‘Tessa’ finds something real in my chest. It opens something I don’t have time to look at, but I file it.

“I’m not here for conflict.” His voice shifts into something that might be warmth, if warmth came from the same direction as cold. “I’m here with an offer. Come willingly. Give what remains of the grace, what little Heaven left you, and it ends. The hunting. The pain in your hands every morning. The weight of having been something enormous and becoming this small.” He opens his hands, palms out. The gesture has been learned. “Peace. No more running. No more bleeding for a world that didn’t ask for you. You’ll feel nothing. And nothing is better than what you have.”

I’m quiet for a moment, letting him believe the offer is working.

Then I pull everything I have.

I pull everything I have left. What remains of my grace tears out of me.

Calix recoils, his form loses resolution at the edges, and then he steps back between the trees, and the dark takes him.

The light goes out.

My knees hit the porch boards.

I don’t lose consciousness.

But the grace is gone.

Not reduced, gone.

My hands are shaking against the boards. The ache in my joints, which has been a low, permanent background since the fall, has moved into a different category.

I hear her cross the porch. I feel Lily’s hands, one at my arm, one at my shoulder. Firm, certain, already assessing. “I’ve got you,” she says.

I don’t argue, letting Lily take the weight.

She gets me inside. It isn’t graceful. It’s half my effort and half hers, and by the time she’s lowered me into the chair nearest the stove, my vision has narrowed to what’s directly in front of me. Lily kneels with her hands on my knees and looks at my face, not at me, not yet, at the clinical data my face is producing. I meet her eyes because the alternative is letting them close.

Bear presses himself against the side of the chair and goes still. He’s only a dog. He gives off heat and stays there.

After a moment, Lily’s hands stop moving, and she looks at me properly. Her face is the same precise, composed face it always is. Her eyes are not. “We need help,” she says.

“I know.”

“I have a sat phone.”

“Good.”

She holds my gaze for another beat, long enough to confirm I’m still tracking. I keep my eyes on hers and let her see it.

Then she reaches up, briefly, and puts her hand flat against my jaw. It’s the same gesture I made on the porch, given back.

Lily stands and goes for the phone.

Chapter Thirteen

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Lily