Page 23

Gathering Our Allies

“He’s staring at you again,” Pella leans over to whisper, not so softly, in my ear.

I don’t need to look to see what she means. She’s talking about Reven.

I can feel his gaze on me like a physical touch. What my heart wants to believe is that he’s remembering, or intrigued, or feeling something. Anything. It’s been three days, and at least he’s stopped glowering at everyone, keeping it to only a frown here or there. And he does watch me. I take that as progress. So maybe…

But it’s more likely that he’s studying me. All of us.

The days have been taken up with preparations for taking back Oaesys. That’s why we’re standing here, still hidden in the Crimson Desert, today. Gathering all our allies together for one final run through of the plans.

Every single night, I’ve offered to spend time alone with Reven, just to talk, answer questions, or, honestly, so I could simply be with him. He’s said no each time, and walking away from him has been so damn hard.

“He’s just making sure I don’t run off with his Shadows,” I say to Pella.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Tziah lift her gaze to the sky as if seeking patience there.

Even Horus, positioned off to the side but close enough to put himself between me and the portal, gives the tiniest shake of his head.

“Uh-uh,” Pella says. “I accidentally brushed against him when I walked past to get to you, and suspicious is not what that man was feeling.”

The sand I’ve been playing with while we wait for the next appointed time to bring the last group through drops to the ground in a hiss that draws eyes.

Pella snickers into her hand and Tziah has to button her lips shut so she doesn’t let sound out with her own laugh. A small movement has me glancing to my right to find Reven frowning at me. He lifts a single eyebrow in question.

I’m not sure if he’s asking if there’s something wrong with my power, if he caught what Pella said and is taunting me, or if he’s wondering why I looked his way. All three are equally viable.

A spark of mischief left over from the days when I was his ignites. “She said you’re staring at me again,” I call across to him.

He stills, then twitches a shoulder. “Given what you carry, someone should be keeping an eye on you.”

Ouch.

“You are really bad at flirting,” Pella murmurs.

“And you’re a pain in my ass.”

She pokes at my pile of sand with the toe of her booted foot. “At least I’m not trying to drown you anymore.”

Like she did when we were kids, she means.

“Lucky, lucky me.”

A shadow passes overhead, and several Wanderers around us sort of duck. On a cloudless day like this I don’t blame them, but it’s just Bene. Or maybe that’s even more reason for their caution. He’s full-size at the moment, watching over everything from up above.

Meanwhile, Cain and his father aren’t far away, already escorting the group that came through before this to a different side canyon where we’re all gathering. He and Cainis look like they’re in a stand-off with the way their shoulders are pulled back and the glares passing between them.

I catch Pella’s eye and hitch my chin in that direction. “Anything I should be worried about?”

She studies them long enough that I have to deliberately keep from tensing. “Cain would tell you if there was,” she says. But her softly muttered, “I would, too,” takes away some of the reassurance.

The brush of a hand against my arm tells me Tabra has come over. She was standing with Cainis earlier.

A bead of sweat is tracking its way down my left temple from lingering in the sun and having just built yet another portal. No doubt the special dress they trussed me up in—layers of black gossamer material with embroidered black silk flowers following the scalloped edges—is unattractively damp.

Meanwhile, Tabra, dressed the same but in blue with a diadem of copper and lapis lazuli in her braided hair, looks princess perfect. Did Grandmother teach her how to not sweat? Why didn’t I get that lesson?

“Oh my goodness, Meren,” Tabra murmurs. “The way he looks at you.”

“ See ,” Pella hisses. She is the least subtle person I’ve ever met. “Tabra sees it, too.”

“If Achlys stared at me like that, I’m pretty sure I’d soak my underclothes.”

Goddess give me strength.

“If Achlys stared at you like that, you could do something about it.”

Tabra moves around to where she’s facing me. “It’s still him , Meren,” she insists, keeping her tone soft.

Other than Tziah, Pella, and maybe Horus, no one else should hear. “I know that.”

She’s not finished. “He loves you, he just doesn’t remember.”

I’m trying very hard to hold onto that. “I can’t force him.”

She nods slowly. “It’s obvious he wants you—”

“Even if he doesn’t want to want you,” Pella fills in.

I twist my lips together. “You’d know something about that.”

Meaning Hakan, of course. I can’t quite figure the two of them out.

“Low blow,” she grumbles in a much less amused voice.

“The man hardly leaves your side. Please tell me you’ve at least—”

She shoots a quick glance over her shoulder to where the man in question stands off by himself, arms crossed. “None of your business.”

All three of us swing our startled gazes her way. “You have !” I say.

“Shhhh…” She gives my shoulder a shove. “People are looking.”

I’m not through with her yet. “How did you… I mean, without getting zapped?”

No one can touch Hakan without warning him. I saw a sand rat brush up against him once and the thing screamed like a mountain banshee, fur standing straight up on end, then keeled over, dead at his feet.

“Let’s just say he can control it when he knows he has to,” Pella says in a low voice, shifting on her feet as she glances over her shoulder, probably making sure he’s not within hearing range.

“Control it?” I ask, teasing now, because thank the goddess we’re not talking about me. “Or control it. If you know what I mean.”

Tziah’s shoulders shake, and Tabra at least manages to keep her laugh quiet.

“I think everyone in earshot knows what you mean,” Pella grumbles, red seeping into her cheeks.

I have never seen Pella blush.

I laugh, and as I do, I glance up and my heart flips over. Because Reven is watching me, but this time I finally see what the others must have.

Interest.

Not wanting exactly, but the curiosity I thought I maybe saw a flicker of yesterday. That’s something.

Tabra tugs on my sleeve and points to a small sundial on the ground at my feet. “It’s almost time!”

This is the last group we’re bringing, and where they’re coming from is the most dangerous location. “Maybe you should go with Cain—”

“It’s Achlys,” she says.

At least her hands don’t light up. With Scoria, who was helping her maintain control, gone, she’s been struggling. Not as much as before, but still. “What does it matter if you have your reunion here or safely not here?”

Tabra puts on her patient face. The one that gets every other sucker to do exactly what she wants. “Meren…even if things get perilous, you are not going to get in the way of me doing my part. Right? And I mean not just today.”

Nope. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to work. I’m supposed to be the one at risk—”

“That’s our family’s old ways,” she insists, stepping in closer, voice tight. “Ways that didn’t work. Time for new ways.”

I shake my head. Protecting Tabra has been ingrained in me from the second I was born.

“Sissy…” She’s insistent, not letting this go.

Damn. “I will try.”

“Not just try—”

I grit my teeth. “Fine.”

“Good.” She grins. “You won’t be anywhere near me during the invasion, so it should be easy.”

I roll my eyes. “Brat.”

She perks up, giving a little bounce. “Me? Really? That’s fun.”

“Fun?”

“I never got to be the brat before. I might give it a whirl.” Then she leans closer. “And he’s still staring like he can’t make himself stop.”

Pella and Tziah both turn to look. Blatantly.

My skin tightens, prickling with awareness, heat flushing up my neck. I don’t want Reven to stop. I want his hands on my skin, his lips claiming mine. I want to feel him everywhere . He’s right here, with me, and so far away I want to scream.

I can do this without Reven. That’s not the problem. I’ve been doing this without him since Eidolon took him away. But that doesn’t mean I like to.

That’s a problem for later. I’ll try again tonight.

For now, I check the Shadows, but they’re minding their manners. Or, more particularly, given who is about to come through my portal, I have them locked down tighter than the coffers under the Arydian palace.

I send my power into the glass and picture the sister portal all the way across Aryd. Not one of the known portals in the Arydian temples, though.

This one is mine. One I made and set there.

The portal flashes like lightning strikes, coming in and out in rapid blinks in a way I’ve never seen a portal do before. Ever. Then, for a split second, it settles and the glass shows me a different place. Somewhere on a high peak looking out over lush, flower-blanketed mountains. And a woman. She stands right in front of the glass, staring at me with wide cobalt blue eyes and deep red hair twisted up on top of her head. Except she’s pale, her eyes sunk into her skull, cheek bones prominent because of her emaciated form.

Nothing about this—the lands, the woman, her style of clothing—is familiar. I’ve never seen this place. Given how portals work, how is this possible?

Immediately, Horus draws his bow, arrow trained on her.

She takes a jerking step toward me. “Wait—”

Reven grabs me around the waist and yanks me away from the portal. Immediately, it changes back to blood-red glass.

I don’t know what to respond to first—what we just saw or the way he’s still holding onto me. My body definitely wants to lean into his touch. The first he’s initiated since we got him back.

Wait.

Protective.

He’s being protective .

Of me.

That’s how it started the first time—his caring for me. At least I think it did. He’d wanted to keep me safe.

A memory rushes at me. I see us caged on icy ground in Tyndra, me straddling his lap as we pretended for Eidolon’s soldiers—who had no idea who they’d actually caught—that we were bondmates and couldn’t keep our hands off each other. And that’s when Reven had confessed that keeping me safe, protecting me, made the Shadows worse for him.

I can feel the bone-deep cold held off by his warmth below and around me, can picture the way Reven went still as stone when a soldier approached, eyes closed, not even breathing.

Before a Shadow had rippled across his face.

“I’m okay.”

He doesn’t let go. “You take too many chances with those blasted things inside you.”

My heart dips. But no, that doesn’t fit, either. That was reflex. Maybe his heart remembers, or his body, even if his mind doesn’t. “The Shadows are all you care about?”

“Of course.”

I snort. “Liar.”

He gives a tiny growl, maybe warning, maybe irritation.

“Where was that?” Tabra asks in a shaken voice, jerking me out of the small moment where it was just him and me. “I don’t remember anywhere that looks like that.”

Get it together and focus, Meren .

“She saw both of you,” Reven points out.

She did. She saw us and might have recognized us. Although…where in Nova was she? Nowhere I recognized. But that doesn’t matter. What does is she saw.

Damn the stars. We have to move our timeline up. Otherwise, we risk whoever that was running off to tell someone what she saw.

We can’t do nothing. I go to slip out of Reven’s hold. He resists almost reflexively, and just for a second, before he lets me go, I remember what it feels like to be hauled up against him when he wanted me.

“He’s never going to love you again.”

Seven hells. Emotions always make my control slip a bit. I haven’t had time to master as much control as I need.

Trying not keep my mind on the task, I slap my hand to the glass and try again, picturing the flowers and the mountains. Maybe we can stop her. Instead, I get the original location—my portal in Aryd. A solitary man with a short gray beard and a shiny bald head is waiting.

A man whose jaw drops as he takes in me and Tabra standing together. His gaze moves on to Reven behind me, and the man visibly swallows before taking in the rest of the people with us.

Our head vizier, Ishaf Andore, was a young man when our grandmother took the throne, with no idea that Omma, who was Grandmother’s twin, even existed. He knew our parents before their deaths. He’s known Tabra—and sort of me—since we were babies.

This is the first time he’s seen us side by side, and he’s only been informed of there being two of us for a short time. I can imagine it’s a bit of a mind bender.

“Remarkable,” he says, more to himself.

Tabra and I exchange a smile.

He shakes his head. “I was told you were twins, and that you’ve been switching places on us all your lives, but…” Another shake. “Which is which?” His gaze lands on the signet ring I wear on my pinkie before moving to Tabra’s empty hand, and he beams at her. “You must be Mereneith.”

Tabra shakes her head and pulls a long, thin chain from around her neck to show him her matching signet ring. Ever since our fight in Tropikis when the Wanderers and Vanished alike all bowed to me, she’s refused to wear it.

I’m working on changing her mind.

Tabra tucks it away and then, if anything, her posture turns more regal, though I don’t see how she adjusts specifically to achieve that effect. Omma definitely never got me to do that.

Ishaf’s face creases with a smile, making it difficult to see his dark eyes under the droop of his lids. “Queen Tabra.”

She gives a nod of her head.

Ishaf turns to me and his smile fades to something more like regret. He steps through the portal onto the rough, burnt-red ground and crosses slowly to stand in front of me, studying my face. “I wish I had known,” he says quietly, just to me. “I could have helped you, domina.”

To be called that word by him when it’s actually meant for me…

I don’t know why that, combined with his soft admonishment, sets off a longing in me for something that could never have been, thickening my throat. I shake my head. “No one but the princesses and queens who are twins, not even the generations in between, have known for a thousand years. It was just our way.”

Understanding seems to ease the regret still tugging his lips down into his jowls. “Well,” he says. “I guess I’ll just have to get to know you as you now, won’t I?”

I have always liked and respected Ishaf. “I would like that.”

I glance past him into the empty room that is hidden just off the catacombs of tombs in the palace-temple. Not where Tabra will be buried—she has a special place waiting for her in the Tomb of the Sovereigns out in the desert near Poileh—but minor ancestors, cousins, aunts, and uncles who never ruled are in urns tucked into alcoves lining the walls I can see. “The others?” I ask.

“We didn’t want to risk being caught meeting together.” Ishaf walks through to stand before us. “But many are waiting for our queens’ orders.”

A niggling thought, like a worm burrowing through my head, is impossible to ignore. “How is that possible? Many? Achlys hasn’t been with you long.”

How Tabra’s long-time personal servant hasn’t been recognized in the palace is still amazing to me.

“Don’t trust him,” a Shadow hisses and slithers around inside me.

Ishaf, meanwhile, smiles. “We have been waiting for our queen to return to us since the day Eidolon informed us you were taken.”

Beside me, Tabra gives a small, telling twitch. The most I’ve seen her break from her persona as queen since I first opened the portal to our allies. “Achlys?” she asks Ishaf. “Where—”

Ishaf pats her hand. “She is coming. She said she had one last thing to check.” He looks at me. “Is it possible to keep the portal here open for her?”

“No,” Reven says in a voice that brooks no argument. “That’s a risk too far.”

Ishaf, who knows all about Reven and Eidolon because Achlys told him, glances from him to me to Tabra, who has lost color in her face.

“You don’t really get a say right now,” I say to him under my breath.

Which, of course, makes him stiffen.

“I’ll stay on the capital side and wait for her.” Pella, who ignores a few spluttered protests from members of her zariphate, steps forward. “I’ve seen this side. I can bring her through.”

After a second, I nod, then wave a hand to indicate Ishaf should follow. “The rest of the gathering is this way.”

Tabra reluctantly follows me, glancing over her shoulder as we head toward that direction. Tziah takes her hand and that seems to help soothe her, the two of them moving ahead of me with Tabra less reluctant, though she keeps glancing back toward the portal.

The fine hairs on the back of my neck raise like I’m standing near Hakan, and I know Reven is following me.

“The way you acted when I first woke up, and the way the others are around us…” He says slowly as he comes alongside. “Were we in some kind of relationship?”

My feet just stop walking and I look directly at him.

I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, something about the woman in the strange lands that I opened a portal to, maybe. Definitely not that.

Suddenly all the watching takes on a different meaning. Not intrigue. He’s trying to solve a puzzle.

That’s all.

Disappointment drags at my feet as I make myself keep walking.

For a few steps I debate what exactly to tell him, especially about being bondmates. But we don’t have time and he’s holding himself so stiffly, I know our peace is still fragile. “We were,” is all I say.

He doesn’t say anything for a long minute as he keeps pace, and neither of us looks at the other. Then suddenly he takes a deep breath. “That was another person,” he says. “Even if it was me… I’m not that man anymore.”

“Told you,” the Shadows’ tiny voices call out in unison, hardly audible from where I have them held.

I drop my gaze to my feet. That hurts.

“Maybe,” I say. “But even if that’s true, that doesn’t mean we couldn’t be…friends…again. Don’t you think?”

“Maybe,” he says. “You have the Shadows under tight control.”

I have to blink at the sudden change in topic. “I try to.”

“But they slip out.”

I swing wide eyes up to his face. “You could tell?”

He gives a sharp nod.

I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing. “Could you…hear them?”

Reven stops walking so abruptly that I have to pull up sharply. “What?” I ask.

“They speak to you?” he demands.

He didn’t know? “Sometimes.”

He stares at me with an expression that is a wall of blankness to me, but I suspect he’s fighting a bit of a mental battle. Probably wondering if he could take the Shadows now.

“Do they do more than that?”

Yes…and no. “Not if I can help it.”

He frowns like he doesn’t like that answer.

“If they get out,” I tell him, “kill them. And if I turn dangerous…” I slide my gaze away from him, tracing a crack in the canyon wall. Would asking this of him be too much? Would it build trust? The thing is, without Scoria here, he’s the only one who might be able to help.

“Yes?” he demands.

No good choices, but the thing is, even without his memories, I trust Reven to make the right choice, and he might be the only one who can. I look him straight in the eyes. “Kill me.”