Days of Blood & Starlight

78 The Angel And The Wolf

“Visitors, Karou? I didn’t know you were having a party.”

Oh, that voice, the calm and disdain, the hint of amusement. Karou couldn’t make herself look at him. Life in those pale eyes, strength in those clawed hands. It was wrong, so wrong. And she had done it. Her bile rose; she could have fallen to her knees to retch all over again.

“I didn’t, either.”

It was the only way, she told herself, but her trembling intensified as she struggled to stifle it. She fixed on a point behind him, but the shifting forms of Lisseth and Nisk filled the corridor, and she didn’t want to look at them, either. She would never forget or forgive the coldness of their faces when she had come limping back from the pit, blood-drenched and shaking, in shock, trailing behind Thiago.

As for Thiago himself…

He entered the room. She could hear the dig of his claws in the dirt floor and she could smell the musk scent of him, but she still couldn’t look at him. He was a blurred white presence in her peripheral vision, crossing the room to face the angels from her side. From her side, as if they were together in this.

And… they were.

She had made a choice. To deserve Brimstone’s belief in her and the name he had given her. To work for the salvation—and resurrection—of her people, by any means necessary, by any means. And Thiago was necessary. The chimaera followed him. This was the only way, but that didn’t make it any easier to stand beside him and feel the weight of Akiva’s stare, and when she turned to him—she had to look somewhere—to see the loathing and confusion on his face, and the incredulity. As if he couldn’t believe she would suffer the nearness of this monster.

I am a monster, too, she wanted to tell him. I am a chimaera, and I will do what I have to do for my people.

Such false courage. Her expression was defiance, but it was pinned in place. The fire of Akiva’s eyes had always been like a fuse that set the air alight between them. Now was no different. She burned, but it was with shame to be facing him from the Wolf’s side. The angel and the Wolf, together in a room. It seemed to her now that she had always been headed toward this moment, and here it was: The angel and the Wolf faced each other, and Akiva was red-eyed, gray-faced, broken and sick and grief-stricken, and she… she stood beside the Wolf, as if the pair of them were lord and lady of this bloody rebellion.

It’s not what you think, she could have told Akiva.

It’s worse.

But she said nothing. He would get no explanations or apologies from her. She forced herself to turn. To Thiago. She hadn’t set eyes on him since they returned from the pit. She made herself look at him now. If she couldn’t do that much, what chance was there for all that lay ahead?

She looked.

The Wolf was the Wolf, imperious and breath-catching, a work of Brimstone’s highest art. He wasn’t his usual impeccable self, which was no surprise considering the past day and a half. His sleeves were pushed up, bunched and wrinkled over his tanned and muscled forearms, and Ten’s attention to her master’s hair appeared to have slipped. It had been gathered back by hasty hands and tied in a white knot. Some strands had escaped, and when he pushed them back it was with a flicker of impatience. As for that hated, handsome face, it bore scratches from Karou’s nails, but the wound where her blade had slid up under his chin, that was sealed and mended as if it had never been. It had been an easy fix, nothing like Ziri’s hands or even his smile; only a few layers of tissue to draw back together along a tiny slit. Karou could scarcely have killed him more cleanly if she’d planned to bring him back to life, and she’d had pain in plenty for the tithe.

It was his eyes, oh god, it was his eyes that were hardest to look at. Life in those pale eyes.

We’re all just vessels, after all.

Behind her own eyes came the sting of tears and she looked down. She didn’t know what to do with herself. She hugged her bruised arms to her body and cast wildly about for something to say. Angels in her room, one of them dead and one of them Akiva; here was a pretty predicament.

It had been only a space of seconds since the Wolf entered. His stillness and silence did not yet ring strange, but soon they would.

If Liraz hadn’t screamed, Karou would have helped the angels get away. She would have burned incense to cover their scent. She owed Akiva that much and more. No one would have needed to know they had ever been here. But it was too late for that. Now Thiago would have to do something about them, and—Karou had seen it in his eyes in that brief glance—he was at an even greater loss than she was.

His course of action should have been clear; he had dealt with Akiva before: tortured him, punished him not only for being a seraph but for being Madrigal’s choice, and everyone close to him knew how he hungered to finish what he had started. The White Wolf should have been laughing now; he should have been drunk on his bloody delight.

But he wasn’t.

Because, of course—of course, of course—he wasn’t really the White Wolf.