Ash moved up beside her, his eyes scanning the surrounding soldiers.
“You shouldn’t have told him you used the Sahar,” he whispered.
“He already knew someone had used it,” she whispered back. “How else was I supposed to keep him from killing you?”
She knew what Ash was getting at; her ability to use the Sahar was too dangerous for Miysis to ignore. Even if he didn’t need her to use the Sahar for him like Samael did, he wouldn’t want her free to be used against him. And the easiest way to prevent that was to kill her. She really didn’t want to believe Miysis could do that; he wasn’t a monster like Samael. But he was no angel either.
Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do except hold the Sahar hostage and wait until they reached the Consulate.
After that, all bets were off.
CHAPTER 16
PIPER stood in the kitchen at the Consulate. The huge pot of chicken soup on the stove in front of her was beginning to steam. She stirred it idly, trying hard to push away the weird sense of disconnect that made it feel as though she were dreaming.
At the island counter behind her, Ash sat on a bar stool, his head pillowed on his folded arms. His armor-like vest was hooked on a chair while Seiya scrubbed at the shallow, claw-like scratches on his lower back. Gauze pads and rolls of bandages were scattered across the granite. Seiya was a better healer than Ash, but in his exhausted state, it was safer to let scratches and minor injuries heal naturally. Healing by magic was very draining on the victim; it forced the body’s natural healing rhythms into overdrive. Seiya didn’t want to put even more strain on Ash’s body, especially since Vejovis hadn’t thought Ash could handle more healing.
Lyre stood beside Ash, holding his shirt out of the way while Seiya worked. His eyes were shadowed, his jaw tense. His gaze flicked from Ash, to Seiya, to the kitchen doorway in a slow repeating circuit. Every few minutes, he’d let his gaze linger on Seiya, his shock at her existence touching his expression before tension replaced it.
The exchange of the Sahar had gone smoothly. Piper hadn’t been a fan of giving it up after everything she’d gone through over it, but she didn’t want to keep it either. It was evil. And it belonged to the Ra family anyway. They could worry about it.
She’d been apprehensive about Miysis and what he would do once he had it, but he didn’t seem to have any ulterior motives or plans—for now.
She stirred the soup, worrying her lower lip with her teeth as she eyed Ash. She could see all his ribs and count every bump of his spine. He needed to get out of the Consulate and go into hiding before Miysis changed his mind—or before Samael caught up to them. But he didn’t have the strength to run again, and if she were honest, neither did she. They were stuck where they were until, at the least, they could get some sleep.
Lyre glanced up, meeting her eyes. He’d been at the Consulate since Raum had kidnapped her, waiting for any word on her fate. Her father had been waiting too. Their reunion had been brief and awkward. His relief over her return had been tainted by his fury at Ash. It had taken some convincing before he’d believed Raum had abducted her and not Ash. Uncle Calder wasn’t at the Consulate; he was in the city searching for leads on her whereabouts—unlike Quinn, who didn’t appear to have done anything.
He had already rejoined the ongoing meeting in the Consulate’s largest conference room. The Consul Board of Directors had come to discuss what had happened at the Amity Gala; the poisonings had killed seven prominent Overworld daemons, as well as four of their human supporters. Quinn was leading the meeting, which was apparently far more important than hearing the whole story of his daughter’s abduction and escape.
“Is the soup ready?” Seiya asked, cocking her hip as she appraised her bandaged brother. “At this rate, we’ll have to pour it down his throat.”
Ash growled something unintelligible.
“I think so,” Piper said. She stuck her head over the edge of the pot and got a face full of scalding steam. The soup was starting to bubble. “Two minutes. Lyre, want to get the bowls?”
“Anything my lady desires,” he said extravagantly. As he stepped to the counter beside her, he cast her a sideways look and smirked. “Anything she desires.”
She rolled her eyes. “I missed you too, Lyre.” She lifted her wooden spoon threateningly. “But don’t think that’ll get you anywhere.”
He sighed. He heaved four bowls out of the cupboard with exaggerated effort and turned toward the island—then went abruptly still. Piper whipped around.
Miysis stood in the kitchen doorway.
Everyone tensed except for Ash, who was possibly asleep. Piper didn’t like the way the Ra daemon’s attention lingered on Ash, taking in the draconian’s bared, abused torso. Seiya noticed his stare and tugged Ash’s shirt down.
Miysis’s gaze lifted from Ash to Piper. “Do you have enough for one more?” he asked, nodding toward the pot of soup.
Her eyes narrowed. “I suppose.”
She tried to hide her nervousness as Miysis calmly sat at the table. She turned back to the pot of soup and started ladling it out. As the others sat around the table with their bowls, Piper poked Ash in the side until he snarled and sat up. It took several more pokes to get him off the stool and into his chair at the table. He stared at his bowl. Then he picked up his spoon and started eating with robotic intensity. He pointedly ignored Miysis—some kind of power play, she suspected.
Across the table, Miysis swirled his spoon around in the bowl. He looked out of place in his uniform. His was gold with red accents, opposite to his soldiers’. The style was elaborate but equally military; he looked ready to leap onto a horse and lead a cavalry into battle. He tasted his soup before casually lowering his spoon. Judging by the fact that he didn’t make a “yuck” face, his diplomatic mien was in full force. Piper deliberately slurped a big spoonful.
“What do you want?” she asked impatiently. “You have the Sahar.”
His expression went cool and impassive. He abandoned any pretense of eating and pushed his bowl away. “I need to know exactly how you escaped.”
“You already know. Your spies told you.”
“I only know what they could discern from outside Asphodel, not what went on inside the estate.”
“What does it matter? You have what you want.”
He watched her silently, weighing her with his cool, jaguar stare.
“He thinks it’s a trick,” Ash rumbled unexpectedly. “Or a trap.”
When Piper looked at him, he shrugged and slid out of his chair, limping to the stove to refill his bowl.
Piper turned back to Miysis, staring at him incredulously.
“You look so shocked,” the Ra daemon said with a note of bitterness. “You underestimate Samael’s duplicity. You’re right: I got exactly what I wanted, which makes me even more suspicious. Why let you escape with the Sahar after all the effort he went through to get it? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Samael didn’t let me escape with the Sahar.” Her hands clenched angrily. His assumption belittled all her suffering. She took a calming breath, smoothing out her expression.
“I’ll tell you how we got away,” she said, “if you tell me exactly how the Sahar works.”
He tensed a tiny bit.
“You know the trick to using it, don’t you?” she pressed. “You were so sure I couldn’t use it. You must know something about how it works.”
“No one knows how it works.”
She smiled. “Liiiiiaaarr,” she chimed in a singsong voice.
Lyre snickered into his soup.
Shadows slid across Miysis’s eyes. He didn’t look amused. “My family has been guarding the Sahar’s secrets for five centuries. I’m not about to share them.”
“Fine. You can leave then.”
Miysis’s expression went even colder. His words came out in a low, melodic croon. “You will tell me how you escaped with the Sahar or I will force you to tell me.”
She froze under
his black stare, caught in its power—almost as powerful as Samael’s. Terror slid through her on a wave of memories filled with the Hades Warlord’s crushing gaze.
“Brave words,” Ash said into the silence. His voice slid under Piper’s skin, banishing the memories of Samael. “Very brave words for a daemon in a dampening collar.”
Miysis’s lips curled in a soundless snarl as his attention turned to Ash, who looked back with black eyes, all signs of exhaustion erased from his posture.
“Samael kidnapped me because I can use the Sahar,” she said. “But I don’t know how I’m doing it or why. I need to know.”
Miysis’s jaw clenched as he considered her. He glanced around the room and lifted a hand in a sharp gesture. Magic raced through the air like an electric charge. The atmosphere popped like a vacuum seal releasing.
Ash’s eyebrows rose. “Sealing the room? I see you’re finding ways around that collar.”
Miysis stretched a hand toward Piper. “I will tell you nothing unless you agree to be bound to silence.”
She nodded, taking his hand. Magic raced up her arm, making her gasp. Miysis did the same to Ash, Lyre, and Seiya. The draconian girl gave the Ra a long, hard stare before taking his hand.
Miysis leaned back in his chair, surveying them before he spoke.
“Five hundred years ago, my ancestor Maahes created the Sahar, but he didn’t do it alone.” He exhaled. “His collaborator was Nyrtaroth.”
Piper’s mouth fell open.
“Nyrtaroth?” Lyre blurted. “The Nyrtaroth? As in the last warlord of the draconians?”
Miysis nodded tightly. “Maahes and Nyrtaroth created the Sahar together. They were both extremely skilled in magic, but neither could have done it alone.”
Nyrtaroth was infamous for inciting the Taroths’ final war with the Hades family. With a five-hundred-year-old reputation as a merciless leader and murderer, Nyrtaroth hadn’t struck Piper as the intellectual type. She would never have guessed that he’d been involved in the Sahar’s creation. Creating such a complex magical object would have required shrewd creativity and genius-level intelligence.
“Maahes’s intent,” Miysis continued, “was to create a power that would keep the Hades family in check. Nyrtaroth seemed to share his philosophy, though his later actions suggest he had more active intentions for the Stone.”
“What do you mean?” Piper asked.
Ash pushed his empty bowl away. “Nyrtaroth used the Sahar to level an entire town in a single attack, killing 500 people.”
Miysis’s stare snapped to Ash. “How do you know that?”
“Why wouldn’t I know the reason the Hades family destroyed my people?”
“You aren’t a Taroth, whatever your name is,” Miysis said flatly. “The Taroths are extinct. It’s a documented fact that the bloodline has died out.”
Ash shrugged. “What everyone likes to forget is that though the Taroths may be gone, draconians are not. We haven’t forgotten our history.”
Piper rubbed a hand over her face. She already knew the Stone had been used to destroy an entire town, but she’d had no idea Nyrtaroth had been the one to wield it. Her history books only referenced Nyrtaroth committing a terrible crime against the Hades family but not what the crime had been.
“Why did he do it?” she asked.
“Most of the Hades family was in that town,” Miysis said. “Nyrtaroth decided the best way to make sure he killed them was to kill everyone.”
Ash turned to Piper, his somber stare meeting hers. “Or maybe he too had difficulty controlling the Sahar,” he murmured for her ears only.
Piper tensed. Had that attack not only been the first recorded use of the Sahar, but the first time Nyrtaroth had used the Stone? Had he, like Piper, not known about the vicious bloodlust that filled the Stone and infected its user? That would mean Nyrtaroth hadn’t meant to destroy the town; the whole Taroth family had died because of one miscalculation.
Miysis interrupted her thoughts. “Overworld and Underworld daemons can’t work closely together. Maahes and Nyrtaroth knew what a rare thing it was for them to collaborate in concord. So they made that the Sahar’s safeguard.”
“What do you mean?” Ash asked.
“The Sahar can be used by anyone, but it can only be triggered by two daemons working in harmony: an Overworld daemon and an Underworld daemon. Unless it’s first triggered, no one can commune with it.”
Piper’s head spun with understanding.
Lyre whistled. “So neither you nor Ash can use it alone, but together you can?”
“No.” Miysis regarded Ash with disdain. “The two daemons must have a harmonious relationship. That’s why the safeguard is so effective. Even if you know the secret, the chances of creating the proper circumstances are extremely slim.”
“So it takes two to open the Sahar,” Ash said. “Then what?”
“The Stone’s power migrates to the dominant of the two daemons.” Miysis’s face hardened. “That’s why Nyrtaroth wielded the Sahar instead of Maahes.”
He sounded distinctly offended by the idea.
Ash turned to Piper. She stared at him. So when she and Ash had both been touching the Sahar, the power had shifted to him because he was the dominant one. Made sense. But the question was whether the power had transferred to Ash because she was “in harmony” with him, or because she, not being two physically separate daemons, could transfer the power to anyone who touched the Stone while she was communing with it.
“I don’t get it,” Ash told her. “But it looks like you do.”
“Both my parents are haemons,” she explained. “I inherited magic genes from both of them. I should have died but a healer sealed away my magic when I was a child.”
Comprehension lit his eyes. “So you must have an Underworld bloodline and an Overworld one.”
She nodded. “Seems like it.”
“Yes,” Miysis breathed. “That would explain it perfectly. You are probably the only hybrid haemon in the world. Female children born from two haemons always die in childhood.”
“Wow, Piper,” Lyre said. “You’re one of a kind.”
She shrugged, grimacing. She’d rather be a normal haemon with nice, normal magic.
“Samael knows you can use the Sahar but not why.” Miysis frowned. “He couldn’t possibly have guessed the truth without knowing your history, and even then . . .”
He trailed off and pulled a cell phone from his pocket. It buzzed loudly with an incoming call. He flipped it open.
“Yes?” A pause. “What?” he barked. “Wait. I’m coming.”
He snapped the phone shut and stood. “A scout just arrived from the Underworld with a report. I will be back for your account of your escape later.”
The air popped as he released his spell against eavesdroppers. Before Piper could even reply, he marched out of the kitchen. She blinked at the empty doorway.
“Well, that was interesting,” Lyre said, stretching in his seat. He jumped up energetically and grabbed Ash’s arm. Ash barely had a chance to look surprised before Lyre hauled the draconian out of his chair. Ash staggered gracelessly and Lyre pulled his arm over his shoulders. “Come on, mate. Let’s get you into a shower before you fall asleep. And don’t tell me you can skip the shower. You need it.”
Ash huffed but didn’t argue as Lyre steered him toward the door.
“You can go clean up too,” Piper told Seiya. “There are four bathrooms upstairs. Take your pick.”
“Upstairs?” Seiya repeated, familiar with the no-daemons-upstairs rule of Consulates.
Piper glanced pointedly in the direction of the meeting room. “I think the upper level will be a little safer.”
Seiya nodded and left the kitchen, leaving Piper by herself. She sighed and began tidying up, thinking over what Miysis had revealed. Exhaustion dragged at her as she piled the bowls in the sink. Though a hot shower and her warm bed beckoned, there was one other thing on her mind—a nagging worry that had been gro
wing stronger for days. Sleep could wait awhile longer.
She headed out of the kitchen and, pausing to kick off the too-small hiking boots, padded toward the other end of the manor. Across the hall from the Head Consul’s office was a large library of neatly shelved books. Piper closed the door quietly behind her and sighed again as she surveyed the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling shelves.
When the door to the library opened again, she’d been sitting at the table in the center of the room for nearly an hour. A stack of books sat beside her. She looked up from the index of the heavy volume in front of her.
Lyre strolled into the room, inexplicably soaked but cheerful.
“Here you are,” he said. “Been looking all over. I thought it was a little soon for Miysis to have snatched you.”
She stifled a yawn. “Did you get Ash tucked in?”
“Yep.” He flashed a grin. “He finally ran out of steam and half passed out in the shower, but I got him sorted out and into bed. Uh, your bed, actually.”
She blinked. “My bed?”
He leaned one hip on the table and smiled sheepishly. “Seiya said you said to stay upstairs but there are only four furnished rooms upstairs: Your father’s, which I wasn’t touching. Your uncle’s, which Seiya took since he’s not here right now. One guest room, which I’ve been using. And then your room.”
“Why didn’t you give Ash your room?” she asked pointedly.
“Because,” he said, smile shifting into something wickedly sultry, “I’d much rather share a bed with you than Ash.”
She watched the gold in his eyes shift to a shadowy bronze, then turned back to her book.
“That’s too bad,” she said casually. “Now, when I lock you out of your room so I can sleep, you’ll have to camp out on the sofa.”
He was silent. She looked up to find him studying her with narrowed eyes far too close to black.
“What?” she asked sharply, not liking the way he was looking at her, like a wolf watching a rabbit.
He smiled, the sense of danger vanishing.
“Whatchya reading?” He leaned over for a look. “The Encyclopedia of Preternatural? Sounds like ideal bedtime reading but I wouldn’t’ve thought you’d need any help falling asleep.”