Page 58

We hadn’t timed it very well.

There were seven hours to kill before we could drop Farron off at the warehouse Dacien had specified, and it wasn’t like we could go home and nap while he slept off the drug cocktail in the parking garage beneath Kara’s apartment.

I tried Dacien multiple times, through the cufflinks then Kara’s phone, but he didn’t answer. Maybe he expected me to try and wriggle out of the deal, but the wasted hours grated. Less than twenty-nine left before Moreau’s deadline.

With nothing better to do, Iyoni drove us out west, into the hills over New Providence, ironically not far from where Dacien lived.

Kara and I glanced at each other, saying nothing, probably both wondering if we could just take Farron straight to the gothic mansion of parental torture and drop him off by the fountain.

But that wouldn’t have gone down well, and I was pretty sure I’d already pissed Dacien off enough.

We pulled off the road and sat among the trees, passing time with stilted chatter that flared and fizzled. Every so often, one of us checked Farron was still out and still breathing. I stripped him of his wand, sword, vest, and ring, and confirmed he had nothing else that gave off aether.

I kept refreshing the news on my phone, expecting to see more disasters or at least commentary on Firth’s searches. But nothing.

Night finally fell. After a couple more hours of tense waiting, we headed to the docks.

At least my phone had stayed quiet. No frantic calls about our presence at PPAC, or the drug order I’d authorized. If Farron had been missed, the news hadn’t yet reached me.

The warehouse Dacien had chosen wasn’t far from the supe ambush we’d responded to a week earlier—back when the world hadn’t known there was a new warlock among them.

Before I’d met Moreau, before the bomb, before Washington had threatened me and the celestials had sent their Arbiter. Before I’d bonded Iyoni.

Busy week.

Farron stirred as we drove, and Kara had moved into the back, ready to nimbus-up and thump him in the head if it was necessary.

Her cheek had swelled where he’d struck her, but her accelerated healing had reduced it back down to a purple and green bruise.

If Farron needed a top-up on his sedative delivered physically, Kara should be the one to give it to him.

The warehouse shutters rolled up as our van approached, and Iyoni took the invitation and drove us in. It was dark inside, but the headlights shone through a mostly empty space, a few crates stacked around the periphery.

The shutters closed, the lights came on, and Dacien appeared with them.

“Have you got him, Xan?”

I climbed out of the vehicle before I replied, taking in Dacien in his smoking jacket and polished loafers, Virelle standing a short way back in a black leather catsuit, and the half-dozen goons that flanked them both, wearing suits and grim expressions.

“Yeah, we’ve got him.”

I pulled open the van’s side door and Kara jumped out. Iyoni walked around to stand on my other side.

Her presence had an immediate effect.

Dacien staggered back a step, his expression thunderous. His nimbus flared up, darker than Kara’s and tinged with red.

It was the cue for the guards to react, threat or no threat. They closed ranks on Virelle, eyes turning everywhere as their own nimbuses manifested in shades of gray. They reached inside their jackets, pulling everything from machine pistols to wands to a shadowy sword.

With no clearer threat, every weapon was pointed our way.

Kara’s nimbus flashed up too, her horns curling back, her whip appearing in her hand.

She took a pace forward, putting herself between me and her father’s men.

Iyoni’s shield shimmered silver, wrapping around her like a second skin, her sword of light in a two-handed grip, the blade vertical and poised before her face.

“You bring her here?” Dacien gasped, his composure frayed, his outrage barely suppressed. “You dare ?”

One of the guards twitched, his weapon pointed at me, and it was instinctual to draw from both bonds. A black nimbus and a silver shimmer fused around me, swirling like liquid marble, and with the blend came a rush of power.

Yes, I dared. Why shouldn’t I?

All that raw aether begging to be released. No one to stop me.

My shield coalesced, sounds dulling, the world turning gray.

I raised a hand, light forming in my palm, the temptation to unleash destruction almost overwhelming.

This was how it started—rage, power, revenge.

I could obliterate all his guards and they wouldn’t be able to touch me.

I would have Dacien on his knees, begging for my mercy.

Fair justice for what he represented and all he’d done—to me, to Kara, to the countless innocent lives he’d destroyed in his pursuit of wealth and power.

“Stop!” The cry rang out.

If it had been Dacien, I wouldn’t have hesitated. But it wasn’t: it was Virelle.

Yet still the power called to me, begging to be used. I flexed my hand, pointing at the guard who’d raised his weapon.

“Stop now!” Virelle cried again. “Stand down. All of you.”

The guards hesitated, watching me warily, but their obedience outweighed their fear, and their weapons lowered.

“Xan,” Iyoni said quietly. Her sword was held loosely, pointed down, and she reached out one hand to me. “Don’t. It will consume you.”

“Master?” Kara asked, trepidation in her eyes. “Please?”

The power suffused me, but something wasn’t right.

I shook my head and lowered my hand. I didn’t stop drawing on both bonds, but I eased up.

My shield remained, shifting like white ink on black oil, reflecting the combined powers of Kara and Iyoni, and coloring my vision with a muted gray.

Yet the feeling of god-like invulnerability faded, and my mind sharpened, as if the last few moments had been witnessed through a fog.

Kara took a step toward me. “We’re here,” she said, the words barely a breath, just for my ears. “We’re with you.”

Her emerald green eyes shone as she held my gaze, and a tentative smile played with her lips. I blinked, breath catching, and the urge to burn everything receded a little further.

Virelle pushed her way through the guards, passing Dacien who watched me with fear in his eyes. She walked right up to me, pausing only in the last few feet, her eyes flicking to her daughter, then back to me.

“You bonded a celestial,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

“You’re not a warlock.”

I’d reached that conclusion myself. “No.”

“You’re … you’re an Aetherborn.”

The word left her lips in a breath of awe and disbelief, her eyes alight with avarice. She took a step closer but Kara’s chin came up, something in her expression making her mother hesitate and take a pace back.

Virelle held my gaze for a second longer, then she spun, the movement graceful and fluid.

She flung out both hands, strands of smoky aether flying from her fingers.

They wrapped around the guards’ necks, multiple loops constricting as one, like snakes made of shadows.

The guards clutched at their throats, eyes wide in horror.

One tried to raise his wand, but his neck snapped like a branch breaking in the forest, and in the time it took to draw a breath, all six of them were dead.

“He’s an Aetherborn,” Virelle said to Dacien, as if it explained her actions. She turned back to me. “Better with no witnesses.”

Kara’s gaze flicked to the bodies, then to me. Unease passed through her eyes, but she said nothing.

Virelle showed no emotion after killing her own people.

Six lives, snuffed out just because of who I was.

I looked at the dead guards with revulsion and horror, but that wasn’t the worst of it—to my shame, part of me was grateful.

Virelle was right: I didn’t yet know what I was, but I knew it wasn’t something I wanted shared.

When being a warlock had already caused so many problems, how much worse would it be for the world to discover I was an Aetherborn?

Whatever the hell that was.

Dacien raised a hand, pointing an accusing finger at Iyoni. “She’s a celestial.”

“Not so simple, my love,” Virelle replied. “She’s bonded to him. She’s more his than theirs.”

Dacien narrowed his eyes at me, his sharp mind assessing. But for now, he was deferring to Virelle.

I focused on her. “What’s an Aetherborn?”

She turned to me, her lips curling in a playful smile. “You are,” she said, the words full of seduction.

“Yes … I gathered,” I said, feeling sick. I glanced at the dead guards again. “Elaborate for me?”

“First, tell me: who are your parents?”

I shifted from one foot to the other. Dacien stood watching, arms crossed over his chest, suspicion in his eyes.

Virelle waited, head tilted in curiosity, her catsuit melding to her body in a way that highlighted every curve.

It wasn’t an image I wanted of Kara’s mother, and I quickly averted my eyes.

“I don’t know,” I admitted at last. “They didn’t hang around too long.”

“Such a shame,” Virelle said, her tone smoky and flirtatious, completely at odds with her words. She took a pace closer.

“Mother,” Kara said warningly.

Virelle laughed, a light sound. “But he’s so irresistible, my dear! So much”—she closed her eyes and gave a small hum of pleasure—“ power .”

“You can gauge power?” I asked before I could stop myself. I’d never met anyone else who had that ability.

She laughed again. “No, my dear. No one can do that. But I sense something . You positively reek of aether.”

She might not be able to, but I could. I focused on myself, wondering what she could sense.

My power had soared, far higher than my usual levels.

But then I was pulling from both Iyoni and Kara.

In the past, had I checked while I’d been actively drawing from them?

I didn’t think I had. I was well above midrange now.