Page 16

“The God of the Sea didn’t see fit to fashion a proper spirit for the giants. He animated them with a half-soul easily turned to wickedness.” – Esther Weil, Renowned Folklorist

A fter the feast that night, we gathered as a coven in the lounge car. I took my sister’s pretty pocket pistol apart and wished I had a more efficient way to help renew my spirit. Movement in the shadows caught my peripheral view, and the scent of earthy leather and woodsy cedar filled my nose. I closed my eyes, relieved.

“Asher,” I whispered.

He was there a moment later, filling up the chair across from me, perfectly groomed, not a single snowy hair out of place. He set to putting the mess of pistol parts to rights, neatly ordering them.

“Trouble,” he greeted.

“Traitor,” I said fondly.

I was glad to see him, and it could have been my imagination, but the way his magic enthusiastically reached for me had me thinking that just maybe he was equally pleased. And that made me feel . . . things I’d rather not dwell on.

“News on Bram?” Ruchel demanded, lowering her book written by the first air coven. “His rotten tax at the clock tower is going to start off another war that will get us all killed.”

“Bram is not in the Otherworld currently,” he said. “I’ve been searching for him for days, and I’m certain of it. But it wasn’t all for nothing. I caught a conversation between his favorite lieutenants. The god king sent him to the Upper Realm on a mission. It’s unclear when he’ll return. When he comes back, he’s expected to have a massive number of new recruits with him, all sworn to him and Alrick. They’re hoping to overwhelm the red-hooded fools en masse.”

If Bram was the son of the god king, that put Alrick very high on the list of divine suspects responsible for Lisbeth’s death. Although, that would also put any god wanting to interfere with Alrick’s plotting to have his son on the crow throne high as well. I sighed. I needed to talk to Bram again, but with his abilities, I wasn’t certain how wise that was.

Darkness crept across the windows, the temperature dropped, lights flickered, and the lounge emptied.

“Is the Old One feeling curious again?” I asked, holding my ground out of defiance more than respect.

“No,” he said, his lip tugging up at the corner into a crooked grin that had no right to be so pretty. “That was me. I wanted to talk to you alone for a moment.”

Then he went quiet, staring at me in that way that made me feel seen through. Muscles low in my belly quivered.

The weight of his gaze pulled me from my project. I sat the frame of the pistol down. “What are you doing?”

“I got distracted trying to decide whether your eyes are brown or hazel.”

My stomach swooped. “What the devil for?”

“I don’t know.” A furrow deepened between his brows. “Seemed like an excellent use of my time.”

“No,” I said. Briefly my mind went blank before I settled on glaring at him. “You are not flirting with me.”

“Is that an observation or a command?”

“Both,” I ground out.

He raised an ashen brow at me. “Why am I not allowed to flirt with you?”

“Because . . . Because I . . .” I expected the words to come to me easily, but there I was, gaping like a suffocating fish. He was making me think of all those thoughts I’d rather not dwell on.

His grin grew, and my face heated.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes, granting myself a reprieve from the bottomless black gaze that had distracted me from sense. I shook my head until something sprang loose. “It’s self-preservation, of course. How many times have you plotted my demise? How many times have I thought about yours?”

His lips quirked. “You thought about me?”

Speech failed me for the second time that day. I should have just given up, but we had much to discuss. He’d been gone ages, it felt like. I picked up the frame of the pocket pistol and momentarily forgot how to put it back together.

What was he doing trying to flirt with me? Now I couldn’t remember important things like plotting and escape and . . . the names and order of pistol parts . . .

“Nott came to see me,” I said, a burst of intelligence blossoming briefly between my ears amidst the mess he’d created. “He wanted me to kill his sister in exchange for use of his sigil. Whatever you said to him, you probably shouldn’t have. I told him no unequivocally.”

Asher rubbed the space between his eyes. “I’ve known Nott a very long time. Put him out of your mind, and I’ll deal with him.”

Put him out of my mind? He said that so casually, like the act was simple. There were a great many things I would have liked to put out of my mind at that moment. Like flirting. And the scent of him, and his smoky voice curling around me. And eye colors.

And his knee which bumped mine under the table and then just rested there.

Did he like my eyes? Is that what he was saying?

“Are my eyes brown or hazel?” I echoed, and then I scoffed. “Aren’t you supposed to be a poet? You’re always writing verses. Surely you could do better than that.”

The creases at the corners of his eyes crinkled. “You’re flirting back now.”

“I . . . Not on purpose.” My lashes lowered. I pressed my lips together, fighting back a smile and losing.

Maybe it was a little on purpose. I don’t know. I was greatly out of practice with such things.

Another burst of intelligence came to me. I scooted to the edge of my seat. Now both of my knees were touching his . . . and I didn’t dislike it. “I need you to let me read your poems.”

He snorted.

“I’m serious,” I told him. “Replenishing my energy is . . . complicated. I need to recuperate, and I need to do it sooner rather than later. Especially after that visit from Nott.”

“He’s just having fun with you. Don’t let him get in your head. I still think we can convince Nott to help us, no sororicide necessary. He has no allegiance to any god but himself. He’s our best bet.”

“Then we still have the problem of my energy. I haven’t read verses in Frian in ages,” I said, and he squirmed in his seat. “Let me read something of yours. It would be a tremendous help.”

He pushed a hand through his hair sheepishly. “Not if you don’t like them, it won’t.”

“How long have you been writing? Centuries, at least? Surely you’ve some talent after all this time.”

He rolled his eyes at me. “If I let you, are you going to keep flirting with me?”

“I . . .” My mind stuttered to a standstill. “I don’t know?” The statement came out sounding like a foolish question.

His smile grew into something sly and wolfish. I had to squeeze my eyes shut for a second. The backs of my lids were safer to look at than his celestial face when it was being smug.

“I let you see inside my mind,” I rumbled. “Why can’t I get a peek inside yours?”

That got him. He pulled a journal out of his shadows, something older and more battered than the one he usually wrote in. He handed it to me. When I tried to grab it, he hung on to his end. “If it doesn’t work for you . . . if you don’t like them, I’d rather not hear the details of it.”

“The bullet I shot into your chest is fine,” I teased, “but you can’t handle me criticizing your writing?”

“Exactly,” he said, and his grin went crooked.

My thumb grazed against his over the leather of the case, a gentle reassurance, and he released his journal into my care.

* * *

That night, I found Emma waiting for me in my cabin.

“Can I help you?” I asked her as I slid my compartment door shut behind me.

Emma rubbed her hands down her arms, one leg crossed over the other. Her foot bobbed impatiently. “I need you to promise me something.”

“I’ll try,” I said cautiously.

“I can hear you lot whispering sometimes. I don’t have all the details, but I know you’re up to something.”

“Emma, if you think we mean you or Liesel harm—”

“I don’t think that,” she said, crossing her arms over her middle. “If I did, we’d have left you for another coven already. The Guardians are recruiting everyone who will listen, you know?”

“I know.”

“And as far as I’m concerned, you and that Bram warlock, well, you’re just the same as—”

“We’re not the same,” I bit out. “I’m not some handpicked puppet of a god who wants yet another throne all for himself. When I speak, you never have to wonder whether every convincing word out of my mouth is the truth or mind magic.”

Emma lowered her chin, a gentle acquiescence. “Similar, then, only he admits what he is, at least. But you and the others, you hoard secrets like a mole hoards worms for winter.”

Maybe now was finally the time to put the truth out there and see what Emma did with it. I scooted closer to her, boots shuffling along the bone floor. Sometimes at night when I couldn’t fall asleep, I’d rehearse what to say should this situation finally present itself. “Look, Emma, I . . .”

She raised her hand, and I fell silent. “Hoard your secrets, if you want. Just promise me I’m not making the wrong choice keeping this blood vow you forced on all of us. I don’t much care what happens to me. I know I earned my place in the games. But my sister didn’t. Promise me, Maven, come what may, you’ll get Liesel out of the Otherworld.”

I met her gaze head-on, and an icy shade of determined blue lit her irises.

“I promise,” I whispered, and immediately I regretted it, because when had I ever successfully saved anyone? And I hoped to the Crone herself that I wasn’t lying. That’s what I wanted for all of us. Freedom. And the guilty god dead.

Emma got up and left without another word.

From the comfort of my bed, I readied Asher’s journal and began to read. It took a moment for me to get back into the flow of the language my first coven had made in my name. Soon I was sailing along, inhaling Asher’s words.

The patient poet was talented. His centuries of careful practice hadn’t been wasted. The rapture he expressed toward life, his verses about creation, and his devotion to the craft of words left me breathless. At one point I just lay on my mattress, the journal open to the page I’d devoured twice resting over my heart, trying to absorb it all straight into my soul.

I read late into the night by a dimmed gaslight, renewing my spirit with every line.

The first time Asher knocked at the wall between our beds, I ignored him, too distracted by a poem about the stars and how they talked to each other. The second time, he was more incessant, and I knocked back.

“If you don’t say anything,” Asher grumbled into the vent, “then my mind will convince me you hate them all.”

“Your mind is not very nice.” Lying on my back, I grinned up at the ceiling. “But you told me not to say anything.”

“I told you not to say anything critical . If you’ve anything nice to say . . . well, that I’d prefer you shouted.” I could hear his smile in his voice.

“I’m not going to shout. People are sleeping.”

He sighed. “Fair enough . . . I’ll just . . . wait. Impatiently.”

I bit my lip, letting the quiet drag on, tormenting him a little for fishing. There was no way he didn’t know how talented he was. He would have to be the most obtuse reaper who ever reaped to be oblivious to such skill.

“It’s brilliant,” I admitted. “You’re brilliant. And it’s working. My spirit has never been higher. I feel like I could win in a footrace against a two-headed wolf-garm. I couldn’t—don’t ask me to try it—but it feels like I could.”

His shadows poured through the vent in a rapid rush, like steam bursting from a pipe. His sudden appearance knocked a chuckle out of me. He stood in my bedroom, stoic and still as usual. The only evidence of his pleasure was his mouth in a droll twist, but his magic gave him away. It pranced and danced and billowed between us.

“Your poems about the little girl,” I said, “the one with missing front teeth who made you play hide and seek in the back of the Schatten . . .” My throat went tight, and I had to clear it. “Those were my favorite.”

“Her smile made me feel like royalty,” he said, staring off, remembering her. “I’d have given her anything she wanted from that moment on. Absolutely anything. All she had to do was ask, but all she wanted was sweets and for me to tell her silly jokes until the train reached the end of the line.”

I hadn’t felt this renewed since Lisbeth was taken from me. Grateful, I gushed at him some more until a flush darkened his cheeks, his smile coy.

“I saw every thought in your head, and I liked them,” he said, and I caught myself reaching for the tendrils of his magic, encouraging them to twine around my hand, between my fingers. “You’re right. It’s only fair you get to have all of mine now too.”

He lined the back wall with his old journals, plucking them one at a time from his shadows and stacking them in neat rows like bricks. Thousands of years of thoughts and verses, all for me.

The intimacy of that, knowing every thought . . . The rush of the games didn’t allow for much pondering. Quiet moments were too few and far between, but it struck me then as remarkable that Asher now knew me better than anyone else in all the realms.

Even better than Lisbeth had.

My wicked thoughts had been on display beside the decent ones, pleasant memories and devastating tragedies all in a row for him to peruse . . . and all that knowledge had inspired him to flirt with me. The notion raised my spirits to bursting.

I tried to usher him out of my compartment after that, returning my attention to his journal. But he interrupted my reading, moving his body so close, his shadow fell over me.

I looked up at him and my heart squeezed. His gaze was soft and fixed on my face. “I’m usually a very patient man. There’s no reason to hurry because everything will come in its time. I pride myself on that,” he said, his voice in a low timbre that curled through me pleasantly. His magic did the same, coiling gently around my finger where it held my place on the page.

“I’ve noticed that about you,” I whispered, throat suddenly dry.

“But lately . . .” he murmured, and I felt the tension in his pause as a tightening in my belly. “I’m not as patient. You make me impatient , Trouble.”

I swallowed. “Impatient about your poems, you mean?” I asked, and I don’t know why I bothered. I didn’t believe for a second he was talking about his poems. Clearly, he was talking about . . . me? Oh no. Now he even had me thinking statements as foolish questions.

“Yes,” he drawled. His grin was as sarcastic as his tone. “Yes, I mean . . . my poems. But don’t worry about it, Trouble. I’ll keep waiting.”