Fantasy. Even if they made it to “forever,” it wouldn’t be paradise, but a war-ravaged world with much to learn and unlearn. Work to do and pain to tithe and… and… And cake, Karou thought with defiance. There could be life, around the edges. Akiva every day, in work and in pain, yes, but in love, too.
Cake as a way of life.
And she did turn her face, and she did press her lips to Akiva’s palm, and she felt a shudder go through him and knew that the distance between them was far less than this arm span of physical space. How easy to tip into it and lose herself in a small and temporary paradise…
“Do you remember?” he asked, and his voice was hoarse. “This is the beginning.” And his touch traced down her cheek and down her neck, and it was fire and magic, kindling every atom of her. His fingertips stopped at her clavicle and his palm came down to rest, light as a shawl of hummingbird-moths, against her heart.
“Of course I do,” she said, as hoarse as he was.
“Then give me your hand.” He reached for it and she gave it. He drew it toward himself, and Karou’s eyes were on the V of his neckline, the triangle of his chest, and already in her mind she was sliding her hand under the fabric to rest her palm against his heart.…
Stop.
Distantly, she recognized the danger and resisted, curling her hand into a fist. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Trust me,” he said. His half-hesitation had melted away when her lips touched his palm, and now there was only the intensity, and the pull—as if, at this distance, their magnets had engaged and could only be wrenched apart by the most committed resistance. Karou’s resistance was not committed. She wanted to touch Akiva like she wanted to breathe. So she let him guide her hand, and when her knuckles brushed his collar, she took over her own part in reenacting the memory—“We are the beginning.”—uncurling her fingers and slipping them under the edge of the fabric to his chest. Akiva’s chest. Akiva’s skin. It was alive under her fingertips and she wanted to follow them with her lips. Her desire was mind-melting, and that was why it took her a long, delirious beat, her hand—her palm—full against his skin, to understand.
Her touch didn’t hurt him.
With wonder in her voice, she asked, “Akiva… how?”
His hand covered hers and held it against him, and she felt the heat in her hamsa as she always did in the presence of seraphim, a prickling sensation, but Akiva didn’t flinch or recoil or tremble. He smiled. The arm span between them had shortened—from the length of his arm to the length of hers, and he shortened it further, leaning toward her, bowing his head and twisting as he whispered, “Magic,” and showed her what he had done.
On the back of his neck was a mark that Karou knew had not been there before. It was low, half-hidden by his collar, but she could see what it was: an eye. A closed eye. His own magic to counteract Brimstone’s. It wasn’t indigo like a hamsa; it wasn’t a tattoo, but a scar. “When did you do this?” she asked.
“Tonight.”
She traced the fine raised lines of flesh with her fingertip. “It’s already healed.”
He nodded, settling back and raising his head again. And though Karou had begun to get an inkling of what Akiva might be capable of, it still astonished her. The fact that he had scarred and healed himself in a matter of hours was extraordinary, but it was nothing next to the magic it made. He had effectively negated the chimaera’s most powerful weapon—after resurrection, that is, if that could be counted a weapon. Maybe it should have terrified her, but right now, terror wasn’t what Karou was feeling.
“I can touch you,” she marveled, and she couldn’t—or at least didn’t—resist the urge to further prove it by sliding her palm over the hot-smooth terrain of his chest until she felt as if she were holding his heartbeat in her hand.
“As much as you want,” he said, and there was a trembling in him, but it wasn’t from pain.
Skin and forever made for a potent combination, and the real reason Akiva had conjured this magic was as good as forgotten, and so was everything else outside the pulse of their two heartbeats—
—until it turned up at the door.
An unlikelier sight could scarcely have been imagined: shoulder-to-shoulder and dripping wet, stalking through passages with silent purpose and crossing from chimaera domain into seraph by way of a straight shot across the main cavern where nearly everyone was gathered… Thiago and Liraz, dragging the corpse of Ten behind them.
Every voice ceased. Mik had set down his violin some time earlier and was lying with his head in Zuzana’s lap until her gasp served to lurch him upright.
Issa had reared high on her coil and looked more than ever like a serpent goddess from some ancient temple, and all around them the chimaera host were rising or half rising, alert and ready to fight should they be called upon. But they weren’t. The pair marched past, eyes fixed ahead and expressions matching grim, and were gone again, passing by the seraph guard at the far door without a pause or a word of explanation.
Finding Akiva’s door still closed, Liraz gave a chuff of derision and didn’t knock but only crashed it open and glared at the sight that greeted them. Akiva and Karou, eyes bleary with desire, facing each other on a stone slab and touching, hands to hearts.
Some would say that Ellai—goddess of assassins and secret lovers—had been afoot this night, gliding through the passages, busy at mischief and narrow salvation. A few moments one side or the other and Liraz might be dead, or Karou and Akiva caught in a deeper compromise than a bleary-eyed desire fugue with their hands to each other’s hearts. Another moment, and they might have kissed.
But Ellai was a fickle patroness and had failed them—spectacularly—before. Karou didn’t believe in gods anymore, and when the door crashed open, there were only Liraz and the Wolf to blame for it.
“Well,” Liraz said, her voice as dry as the rest of her was not. “At least you still have your clothes on.”
And thank god for that, thought Karou, snatching her hand out of Akiva’s shirt. Instantly she felt the chill of the chamber. How quickly her body adjusted to Akiva’s temperature and made everything else seem cold by contrast. It took a few blinks for her daze to clear, to register the details of wet clothing plastered to skin and the plink of drips, not to mention the waft of sulfur.
Ziri had taken Liraz to bathe at the thermal pools? Well, that was… weird. Fully clothed? Okay, that was less weird than the alternative, but it was all just too weird, and then the Wolf hefted something across the threshold and everything came into focus.