Reap the Shadows (Steel & Stone Book 4)

  Piper turned to face the woman. “How can I control it? If Lyre hadn’t snapped me out of it ...”

  “Why worry?” she replied casually. “Your allies are more powerful than you are; you pose little danger to them. Use the bloodlust. Own your rage.”

  “I don’t want to kill anyone.”

  “Why not? Everyone kills to survive. Those who do not are weak.”

  Piper shook her head. Natania didn’t get why Piper wouldn’t want to kill, and besides that, her reasoning was faulty. Ash might be more powerful than Piper but not when she had the Sahar. She shuddered to think of the damage she could do if her daemon bloodlust and the hatred of the Sahar combined inside her.

  She pressed both hands to the windowsill, fighting another wave of self-loathing. She’d had no choice but to unleash her daemon blood to survive her magic, but in a way, it felt like the Void had torn away who she really was. The person who had emerged wasn’t the same. She might look identical—when she didn’t look daemon—but inside, she barely recognized herself.

  “This is who you always were,” Natania said. “Your power was merely sleeping. Since you were but a child, you have had the mien of power but no ability to stand on it. Now you can. Embrace it.”

  Piper shook her head. She’d never been a killer. She’d dedicated her life to being a Consul—a peacekeeper.

  Natania rose from her chair and drifted toward the center of the room, trailing her fingers along a stone wall. “You should never have let him protect you from the first. He sees you not as his equal.”

  Piper looked up, pulled out of her thoughts. “What?”

  “Your moon. His desire to protect you is a double-edged sword.”

  Narrowing her eyes, Piper watched the woman trace one of the carvings in the wall.

  “You felt it, did you not?” Natania asked, her voice dropping into a malevolent murmur. Her silver eyes flashed across Piper. “You felt the driving urge to destroy the weak. Until he sees you as an equal, always there is the chance he will turn from protector to predator ... and destroy you.”

  She swept her blond hair away from her shoulders. “This is how I survived my lovers. They saw me not as a ward or damsel, but as a partner. I stood beside them, between them, but never behind them. As such, their instincts could not turn.”

  Piper folded her arms, suppressing a shiver at Natania’s words. “Nyrtaroth might have been like that, but Ash isn’t. I faced him when he was completely shaded out of his mind and he didn’t kill me.”

  “But he hunted you.”

  “And then he ... well, you know,” she said, blushing at the memory of him pinning her to the wall, his hot mouth on her throat. “That wasn’t killing me either.”

  Natania laughed coldly. “Your heart races passionately at the memory but you are a naïve child. You were still his prey, but of a different kind. Consider this: If you had not been open to his advances, what do you imagine would have happened?”

  Piper went still, goosebumps erupting up her arms.

  “Your moon will stop protecting you only when you no longer need protection—when you are his equal in strength. Until he makes that decision—if he makes it—he will protect you or resent you for denying him that. It is your choice. But know that until that moment, he is a danger to you.”

  “I’ll never be as strong as him,” she replied flatly. “It’s impossible, unless you’re counting the Sahar.”

  “There are many breeds and shades of strength, foolish child. Magic and brawn are but two.”

  Piper let out a long breath, blowing her bangs away from her face. If Natania wasn’t referring to magical prowess or physical strength—obviously, Piper would always come in at a distant second to a daemon like Ash for those—the woman must have meant some sort of internal strength. Piper had always thought of herself as a strong person but Natania seemed to disagree. Was there something about her that came across as weak to Ash as well?

  Shaking her head slightly, she pushed those thoughts aside. She had no idea how much of what Natania said was genuinely helpful and how much was lies and manipulation. Maybe all of it.

  “Will my magic always burn up daemon spells?” she asked, changing the subject.

  Natania shrugged. “No.”

  “No?”

  “It will depend on the spell type. Shields, generally, yes. Others? Perhaps. It depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “How the spell is constructed. Your abysmal knowledge of magic will make the distinction impossible for you to determine.”

  Piper rolled her eyes. “Helpful.”

  Natania lifted her eyebrows. “I will teach you something helpful then.”

  “Oh? Like what?”

  “Several times, daemons have incapacitated you with spells that impair movement or consciousness. Sleep spells, paralysis spells, and so on.”

  Piper grimaced. “Yeah.”

  “If you act quickly, you can destroy those spells before they claim you.”

  “I can?”

  “Your magic burns theirs away. Combine both brands of your fire and pulse them through your body, and his spell will be consumed. But a warning.”

  “What?”

  “It will hurt.”

  “It will?”

  “You remember the pain of the headaches?”

  “Of course.”

  “Imagine that—throughout your body.”

  Piper shuddered.

  Natania smirked. “Pain is fleeting but death is not.”

  Piper’s eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you do that when Maahes put that spell on you, before they killed you?”

  Natania’s eyes flashed to silver, rage transforming her face. “He knew of my ability. He constructed his spell precisely to thwart me. Only he, the most gifted of spell weavers, could have done such a thing.”

  The walls of the room wavered. Natania spun to the window, her skirts flaring out from the jarring movement. The air shimmered and shivered as the dream began to dissolve. Piper felt sleep pulling at her.

  Natania stood with her back stiff and shoulders hunched from the agony of a betrayal five centuries ago. Sometimes Piper hated Natania for her insanity, cruelty, and manipulation. Other times, she ached with sympathy for the terrible betrayal the woman had endured for so long, all alone. It wasn’t enough that her lovers had killed her for ambition; they had also condemned her to relive it every moment for all eternity.

  Darkness closed over her and she returned to her dreamless sleep with relief.

  . . .

  Piper sat in the shade of a scraggily tree, staring at nothing. She’d woken in the late afternoon, haunted by memories of her discussion with Natania and vague dreams of being hunted through the dark. She’d made sure Ash and the others got some food from the Consuls’ stores, dodged her father’s request to talk to her, and retreated to the yard behind the church for some peace and quiet.

  She picked up a handful of dried leaves and let them fall from her palm, watching them flutter one by one to the ground. She felt a lot like a tree in autumn: all her hopes and dreams, desires and comforts, drying up and falling away one by one until all that remained was the bare bones of her soul. She wasn’t sure how much she liked her bare-bones self.

  Her brief meeting with the daemons in the sanctuary had been awkward as hell. She didn’t know how to act around Ash anymore and his cold looks hurt more than she could say. He was still furious with her. Seiya had stared at her almost the entire time with a strange expression on her face, one Piper had no idea how to interpret. She was still expecting Seiya to gloat that she’d been right all along about Piper being dangerous to Ash—or that Seiya would outright try to kill her for almost getting Ash stabbed to death.

  Kiev, at least, had been happy to see her. He was pretty cheerful, considering where he’d grown up. Lyre, too, had greeted her pleasantly. She wanted to talk to him but not in front of the others, and between Ash and Seiya, she hadn’t wanted to stick around long enough to ask h
im for a private word.

  She sighed. She would have to speak to her father soon. He wouldn’t be as easy to talk to as Uncle Calder and she wasn’t sure she should even bother discussing the future of the Consulates with him. She should probably leave that to Calder.

  “Hey, Piper.”

  She looked up. Melonie and Lee, with Jerome and Randy in tow, were crossing the yard toward her. She suppressed a grimace.

  “Hey,” she said neutrally when they drew near.

  Melonie dropped down beside her, smiling. “Glad to see you’re up! Calder said you didn’t get back until this morning.”

  “With a bunch of daemons,” Randy muttered.

  Piper ignored him. “I had to take care of something last night.”

  “Um, about that ...” Melonie shifted uncomfortably. “We heard Lexa talking to Drew last night. No one seems to know anything about ... this stuff. You’ve been leaving by yourself every day since you got here, and now all these daemons show up. We’re concerned.”

  “Concerned?” Piper’s eyes narrowed. “About me or about what I’ve been up to?”

  “Both,” Jerome said, his voice hardening. “We want to know whose side you’re really on.”

  “Whose side?” She looked incredulously between them. “Do you really think there are only two sides here?”

  “Piper,” Melonie interjected, her tone gentle. “You have to admit it looks rather ... strange ... from our position. We know you have a lot going on—things we don’t know about. We’d really like for you to share with us so we not only know what’s going on, but so we can maybe help you.”

  Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, she struggled to stay patient. At least they weren’t asking about her using magic at the Styx. In all the chaos, they must not have seen her cast any spells.

  “You can’t help,” she told them, “and it’s nothing you need to worry about.”

  Jerome folded his arms. “We still need to know what’s going on.”

  Melonie gave a tiny, awkward nod, looking even more distressed than before.

  “Are you guys serious?” Piper demanded.

  “Damn right we are,” Randy snapped.

  “So you think, what? That I’m secretly in cohorts with the enemy or something?”

  “We have no idea,” Lee said in his quiet voice. “That’s the problem.”

  Piper stood, no longer comfortable with them towering over her. Melonie jumped up too, wringing her hands together.

  “Try to see this from our perspective,” Lee continued. “You’ve been acting really weird and you’ve gone missing—several times. We have no idea what’s been going on. We don’t want to think the worst of you but it’s hard not to. Can you please just give us an idea of what all this is about?”

  “Look.” Piper planted her hands on her hips. “None of us has solid ground to stand on right now. Between the Consulates and the Gaians, we don’t know who is trustworthy and who isn’t—but you don’t need to waste your time worrying about me. You’re better off keeping your heads down and focusing on what’s going on here.”

  Randy pushed Lee aside. “That’s not an answer. You just keep dodging questions every time anyone asks, don’t you? Maybe you won’t tell us anything because you just want to feel important.”

  She opened her mouth angrily.

  “Or maybe,” he sneered, stepping closer, getting in her face, “you think you’re super special because an incubus thinks you’re good enough to screw.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Or are you sleeping with that draconian? You sure seemed into him when you got to the church last night.”

  Piper’s hand flashed out before Randy could even flinch. She grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, yanked him around, and slammed his back into the tree. Her lips pulled back from her teeth in a snarl as she got in his face.

  “I don’t have the energy for this bullshit. You know absolutely nothing about me or about them. If you ever talk that kind of garbage again, I will drag your sorry ass straight to them and see what they have to say about it.”

  Randy shoved her away and she stepped back before the others decided to get involved. Backing away from all of them, she shook her head in disgust.

  “Piper ...” Melonie began hesitantly.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” Piper snapped.

  She strode away from them, hands and teeth clenched tight. Her heart was pounding, her fury veined with hurt. Did they really think she was some kind of traitor just because she was spending time with daemons? They didn’t know anything about what was going on yet they were happy to jump to the absolute worst conclusion. Maybe they didn’t get along very well but she still deserved the benefit of the doubt, didn’t she?

  She yanked open the door to the church and almost walked straight into Lyre.

  “Oh,” she said. “Where did you come from?”

  “Hey there, beautiful.” His lips curved in his trademark half-smile. “I was just looking for you.”

  “Oh yeah?” She gestured behind her at the empty street. “Why don’t we go for a walk?”

  His smile widened. “Whatever my lady desires.”

  Squashing an answering smile so as to not encourage his flirtation too much, she let him lead the way toward the sidewalk. They strolled up the street in companionable silence and she let her eyes travel over him. He’d cleaned up since his rescue from the Ra family. His pale blond hair was clean and back to its usual sexy tousle. He must have charmed some clean clothes from one of the Consuls, because he was now wearing jeans and a t-shirt—not the best fit, but good enough.

  Noticing her appraisal, he caught her eye and grinned suggestively. She quickly turned her gaze to the depressing scenery: the cracked and crumbling pavement, the struggling trees, the rampant weeds sprouting everywhere. She could taste the smoke in the air from the uncontrolled fires downtown. The air was hazy with it, shrouding the afternoon sun.

  “Enjoying your newfound freedom?” she asked playfully, looking back at him.

  He tilted his face toward the sky, smiling beatifically. “I’ve never before appreciated the beauty of the sun so much,” he murmured. His eyes turned to her and his smile became sultry. “Though your beauty is surely the most precious sight I’ve yet seen.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Tell me more about what happened. You’re back to your usual self but Seiya seems a little off to me.”

  He gave a small shrug as they passed a boarded up strip mall.

  “It was hard on both of us,” he said. “But Seiya has too much experience being locked in cages to bounce right back afterward.”

  Piper looked at him out of the corner of her eye, not sure how much she should press. “She seemed really concerned about you.”

  “I suppose you could say it was a bonding experience,” he said dryly. “We had a few heart to hearts while we were sitting in our dark cells. Speaking of which ...”

  She looked at him questioningly.

  “We talked about what happened in the Overworld when you fell in the river. She didn’t set the trap for you, and pulling Ash away before he could catch you was an accident.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You believe her?”

  “Yes,” he said calmly. “I truly do. As she told me, all she ever wanted was for you to go away. She never wanted you to get hurt.”

  “She threatened to kill me.”

  “I’m not saying she’s guiltless—she most definitely tried to frighten you and sabotage your relationship with Ash—but she didn’t try to kill you and I don’t think she ever would.” His eyes were solemn. “In Asphodel, caring about anyone but her brother was a deadly dangerous weakness. Letting go of the lessons she learned there is very difficult. She’s only just now daring to open up to anyone else.”

  “So she’s opening up to ... you?” she asked, eyebrows raised high.

  “Just a little,” he said with a crooked smile. “But I’m not really her type.”

  She eyed him, then g
ave a small shrug. She was pretty sure his better judgment outweighed his hormones; Ash mattered too much to him to risk their friendship on a fling with Seiya. As for Seiya being innocent of attempted murder, she would trust Lyre’s verdict. But that didn’t mean she was going to be stupid; it would be a while yet before she let her guard down around Seiya.

  She frowned. “If Seiya didn’t make me fall, who did? I don’t think it was an accident.”

  “Our working theory is that one of Miysis’s men set the trap but it was intended for me, not you. I was an obstacle he wanted out of the way.”

  She nodded slowly, considering his words. If he was right, it made sense. It would have looked like an accident and Piper would never have thought to suspect Miysis.

  “So how did you to escape? You mentioned something about your magic-dampening collar.”

  “I figured out how to get small amounts of magic through my collar,” he said, looking extremely satisfied. “Took me a week but I got it.”

  “How did that help you escape though, if it was only a small amount?”

  He waved a hand dismissively. “It was enough to trigger a few premade spells I had with me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to get us both out.”

  “Huh,” she muttered. “Well, I’m glad you got Seiya out before they could give her back to Samael.”

  “Me too.”

  She glanced at him as they came to a stop at an intersection. She wanted to ask him about these “premade spells” but there was another question she’d been dying to ask.

  “Seiya said that Maasehet Ra was selling you back to your family but then there were Hades reapers there to get you.”

  “Maasehet did say that when we spoke to her. I really don’t know what happened.” He smirked. “I can assure you that I am not related to any reapers.”

  Piper huffed a small laugh. “Yeah, you don’t really resemble a reaper.” She frowned. “But why would your family want to buy you in the first place?”

  He gave another shrug and randomly selected a direction to continue walking in. She couldn’t help but think he was avoiding her gaze as they headed up another street.

  “I would rather spare you the sordid details of my family life,” he said. “But I can say that we don’t really get along and I don’t especially want to know their reasons behind any sudden attempts to purchase me.”