“Try!”
“I know I can’t.”
“Do something!” she screamed in his face.
He jerked away with a snarl. He ripped the dragon mask off, giving her a brief glimpse of his eyes, black with rage and desolation, before he smashed the delicate ornament on the cement roof at his feet. He turned away from her, motions jerky with suppressed violence. The air crackled with power. Piper backed away, teeth clenched with desperation even as she gave him room to regain control. The blinking lights of the helicopter shrank in the distance—too far to chase, too fast to catch, impossible to track.
“It’s gone,” she whispered. She looked at her hands, knuckles bruised from her fights. All for nothing.
The Sahar was gone.
CHAPTER 12
THEY stood on the roof in silence. There was nothing to say.
She was a fool. An idiot. A stupid girl blinded by a handsome face and charming smile. Micah, that lying bastard, had gotten the better of her twice. If only she hadn’t let herself hope. If only she’d walked away as soon as she’d recognized him, told him to take his apology and shove it. Instead, she’d clung to the insecure, naïve hope that maybe he’d cared about her after all.
She swallowed a bitter laugh. Cared about her? Never. He’d just been a wolf hunting the most well-guarded lamb.
“Someone must’ve hired him,” Lyre muttered. Piper started—it had been silent for so long. Ash didn’t move, standing a few feet away, his back to them, his shoulders rigid with tension. Every few seconds, he would flex them like a weight was crushing him and he couldn’t find a bearable way to hold it.
“What?” she asked dully.
“Someone must’ve known about your past with him, so they hired him to find you. Who better to track you down than someone who knew you and could get close to you?” He laughed bitterly. “And the last person anyone would expect to be hiring out. Fucking mercenary.”
She choked on the tearful apology trying to claw out of her throat. Apologizing wouldn’t fix anything, and if she were Lyre, she would never forgive such a stupid mistake. No point in asking.
“Someone with money,” Lyre went on, scrubbing a hand through his hair with unnecessary force. “Not just anyone can hire a helicopter. Must be one of the warlords.”
Piper grimaced. Warlord was another term for the heads of the ruling daemon families.
Lyre was silent for a moment. “We’re fucked.”
Giving up on composure, Piper sank to a crouch and pressed her face against her knees. The tears finally broke through her self-control, streaming silently down her face. They would be fugitives for the rest of their lives, and those lives would be short. Ambitious daemons had barely had a chance to start hunting them. Soon, they wouldn’t be able to walk down a street without being targeted by Stone-hunting daemons. And that wasn’t even taking into consideration the prefects. If caught, they would be thrown in prison and left to rot. Without the Sahar, there was no way to clear their names.
An arm settled over her shoulders.
“Shh,” Lyre whispered. “Come on, Piper, it’s not over yet. We can still track down those Gaian bastards and get your dad back. He’ll be able to help us.”
She shook her head. Yes, they could save her father—only to condemn him to the same fate as her. The whole world would think he was a mass-murderer. She couldn’t clear his name either. His whole career, his entire life’s work, was nothing but ashes now.
“It’s all my fault,” she whimpered. “I’m so sorry.”
“Shh, no, it’s all our faults, Piper,” Lyre said gently. “Me and Ash were right there and didn’t notice anything. Micah is a slippery bastard.”
A tiny sob scraped her throat. She swallowed it convulsively and tried to wipe her tears. They kept falling, as ceaseless as rain. Everything ruined. Everything gone. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. How could she have screwed it all up so badly?
Black boots appeared in front of her. Knowing her daemon companions could tell she was crying anyway, she looked up. Ash stood in front of her, cloaked in shadows. He was unnaturally still, his expression blank as stone. Her breath caught as she waited for him to move, speak, something.
His hands clenched. Unclenched. Then, to her bewilderment, he began yanking at the braid on the side of his head where the red tie was woven. He pulled at his hair until the silk strip came free. He held it in one fist, hand balled up tight, then extended it toward her. Automatically she held out her hand, palm up.
With a flick of his wrist, he let the silk fall from his hand, one end still tangled in his fingers. The other end dropped and landed with a solid little thump in her palm. The end of it was rolled around something small and heavy. Ash pulled the tie up and the hidden object slid out with a sibilant whisper.
As soon as it hit her palm, Piper knew what it was.
The Sahar.
The real Sahar.
And in that same moment, she realized it had been a long time since she’d held the real Sahar.
It was too heavy for its size as though something much larger had been compacted down into that tiny silver oval. It shimmered, lit from within, magnetic and entrancing. As she felt its strangeness radiating into her skin, she knew she’d only touched the real Sahar once before, the very first time she’d taken it out of the ring box in her bedroom.
She stared for so long that by the time she looked up, Ash was almost finished braiding the red silk back into his hair. Beneath her numb shock, emotion was beginning to stir. But not happiness. Not relief, not even surprise. She would feel all those things later.
Right now, it was horror building inside her—horror that was slowly crystallizing into fury.
The draconian didn’t meet her stare. His face in shadow, he looked above her head, his features stiff and cold. Defensive.
“You gave me a fake.” She didn’t recognize her own voice, the soft, sliding tones lined in ice. “When did you switch them?” she asked slowly. “The first day,” she answered herself. After their narrow escape from the prefects and long morning driving through the city, the ring box hadn’t quite been tucked in her shirt when she awoke. Ash had re-braided his hair—after hiding the real Sahar, close and safe where no one could steal it short of scalping him.
She rose to her feet, facing the draconian. He looked back at her, hiding in shadows. She wanted to see his face. She wanted to see guilt.
“You stole the Sahar from me. You stole it the first time I slept.” He’d even warned her, hadn’t he? His parting words before she went to sleep—Keep the Stone close.
“Piper,” Lyre interjected quickly, standing as well. “This is a good thing. We have the Sahar. Ash protected it for—”
“For us?” she finished sharply. Ash didn’t move, didn’t flinch under her hateful glare. “Don’t be stupid, Lyre. He was protecting it for himself. It was perfect, wasn’t it, Ash?” she mocked. “By the time anyone realized mine was a fake, the trail would be so muddled, no one would be able to trace the real Sahar back to you. You’d get it all to yourself—just what every daemon wants.”
Lyre glanced between them again, anxiety rolling off him. “Piper—” he tried again.
“Why are you defending him?” She rounded on the incubus. “He betrayed us!”
“He saved the Sahar,” Lyre yelled back. “So what if he was going to keep the real thing? It all would have worked out in the end!”
“What about my father?” she shouted back. “When it was discovered as a fake, he’d be accused of swapping the Sahar before the Gaians stole it. The Hades and Ra families will go to war. He’ll be ruined!”
Lyre looked panicked. His gaze jerked from Ash and back to her. “Some things are more important than careers,” he mumbled.
“Like what?” she asked acidly. She whipped back to the silent draconian. “What’s worth ruining my father’s life for, Ash?” She shook her head, feeling like she was shattering inside. “You’re a selfish coward. A thieving, lying coward. My father
knew you were bad news. He knew—”
She froze as the truth slammed into her. A tremor ran through her body. Rage erupted inside her, boiling up, ready to escape.
“It was you.” Her hands shook and her stomach twisted. “You were the reason Father took the real Sahar out of the vault before the meeting. When you came to the Consulate, he knew you were after it. He swapped it with his own fake to be safe. You—God, how could I have been so stupid?” She shrieked a mad laugh. “You told me yourself, the day after! You were able to guess what had happened in the vault because you’d already been inside it. You’d already tried to steal the Sahar, but you recognized the fake.”
“Piper—” Lyre began, doubt heavy in his voice.
“You already had a fake,” Piper went on, right over Lyre. She stared the draconian down, waiting for him to react, to deny it, to confess, to do something. “Why else would you have a perfect fake stone ready to go? You broke into the vault early, intending to leave your fake behind while you made off with the real one. Then, when the ambassadors came to get the Sahar and everyone realized it wasn’t the real one, they’d blame my father. They’d accuse him.” Her rage crested and broke. “You were going to frame my father!” she screamed. Tears spilled down her cheeks. “I trusted you!”
She turned away, unable to stand his stillness, his impregnable lack of reaction. “Father knew,” she choked. “He made me promise to keep you upstairs while they moved the Sahar. So you couldn’t make another try for it.” Her lip curled. “It must have made your day when you found out I had the real Sahar all along. I never should have told you. You betrayed the Consulate, you betrayed my family, and you betrayed us.”
Silence.
Lyre stared at the cement rooftop between his feet, his face twisted with unhappiness. Disappointment even. Not like he was surprised, but like he’d hoped for better.
Piper turned around again. Ash looked back at her, his face cold, mask-like, exactly like the photo from his profile page.
“Say something,” she demanded flatly.
“Like what?” His toneless, silky voice sent a shiver down her spine. “You’ve said it all, haven’t you? You have the whole story already. No need to consider the other side of it.”
“Tell me the other side then,” she shot back. Hope—weak, blinding hope, like with Micah—rose in her. This time she quashed it. What could possibly excuse Ash’s behavior? He was a thief. A lying, cheating, heartless thief.
He went unnaturally still again, a black statue in the shadows, as he hung on an answer. Then he made a rasp of disgust in the back of his throat and turned his face away.
“You have two options,” he said. “Take the Sahar and do whatever the hell you want with it. Try to save yourself, your father, whatever. Or we follow through with the original plan.”
She clenched her teeth against the fury exploding in her. Screaming at him wouldn’t force an answer out of him. He probably didn’t want to admit there was no other side to the story. He’d wanted the Stone, and he’d done whatever it took to get it no matter who he had to betray. It was what any daemon would’ve done. Daemons weren’t human. You couldn’t expect them to hold things like integrity and trust at the same level of importance as a real person.
“I don’t trust you,” she said flatly. “I’m not doing anything that involves you. Just leave now.”
“Piper—” Lyre muttered.
“Go with him then!” For some reason, it was easier to unleash her writhing emotions on Lyre instead of Ash. Looking at him hurt. Burned. Made her ache with all the shattered pieces inside where trust had been. “If you can still defend him, even now, then go with him. Let him lie to you and betray you some more.”
“Piper,” he snapped. “Get a grip!”
“A grip?” she shouted back, incensed.
“Yeah! You’re not thinking clearly. So Ash stole the Sahar—exactly what every daemon this side of the universe wants. And yeah, I think he’s an asshole right now. I’m pretty fucking pissed off too, but I also want to live to be angry tomorrow—and maybe even next month or next year. The only way that will happen is if we work together to get ourselves out of this.” He lowered his voice. “You know we can’t do it without Ash.”
She ground her teeth, refusing to admit it. The burning pain of betrayal seared her, worse than when Micah had walked out on her after she told him she’d loved him. She’d trusted Micah with her heart. Ash, she’d trusted with her life.
Opening her fist, she looked at the Sahar. It glimmered in the faint city lights, pulsing with power. She remembered, mere hours ago, Ash telling Lilith with flawless sincerity that he hadn’t stolen it. She snorted mirthlessly. What a liar.
“Fine,” she snapped. “Fine, we’ll do it your way, Ash. But if you so much as look at the Sahar—”
“You’ll what?” The demand came out in a hiss. Piper jerked back a step, shocked to see his eyes had flashed to black. He smiled, showing his teeth. “You’ll do what, exactly, Piper? Hate me more? Do not forget I gave you the Sahar and I can take it back at any moment.” His stare was ebony ice, daring her to challenge him.
She was frozen under his glare like a rabbit caught in a hawk’s sight. Forcing her spine straight, she bared her teeth right back at him.
“Why don’t you then?” she burst out, furious at him all the more for frightening her. “Take it, then.” She thrust her fist at him, the Stone clenched painfully tight in her fingers. “Take it and go do whatever it is you want it for. Will unlimited power make you happy, Ash?” she sneered. “Make up for all the friendships you betrayed?”
A deep rumble vibrated from his chest and his arms flexed—a lot like he was fighting the urge to hit her. She took a hasty step back.
“Why did you give it back?” she asked, forcing her voice into a more neutral tone.
His jaw flexed. He glanced at Lyre, then back to her. “The Sahar does me no good if everyone thinks I stole it—”
“Which you did,” she muttered.
Before he could reply, his head turned. A rush of beating air broke the silence and Zwi swooped out of the darkness. She landed on her owner’s shoulder with flared wings, chattering and trilling. He listened attentively.
“Two teams of prefects with trackers are inside the club,” Ash said emotionlessly. “If we’re going to leave, it has to be now.”
“How do you know that?” she asked suspiciously.
“Zwi was keeping watch.”
“Zwi is an animal.”
“So are humans.”
She opened her mouth to retort, but Lyre stepped in front of her. “Let’s go then. Now.”
Ash jerked his head in a nod. “I’ll get a car and meet you one block east of here. Don’t be long.”
“But—” Piper began.
Ash turned toward the edge of the building. In one swift movement, he swung over the edge and dropped silently out of sight. She listened for a second, but didn’t hear him land three stories below. Breathing deeply, she clenched her hand around the Stone, purposefully squeezing until it hurt.
“Come on, Piper,” Lyre said.
She turned to the incubus, a little taken aback by the hostile stiffness of his profile. He didn’t quite look at her as he gestured toward the fire escape a ways down the south side of the roof.
“What’s your problem?” she snapped.
“What’s yours? You know what, Piper?” Anger sharpened the edges of his words. “I think sometimes people get desperate. And they do desperate things—sometimes the wrong thing. Maybe you should think about that for a while before you call the same daemon who almost died saving your life a coward again.”
He turned and walked away.
Piper blinked the tears back. It figured Lyre would take Ash’s side. Daemons always backed one another over a haemon or human. She remembered Ash’s incoherent apology when he’d been bleeding to death after the disastrous fight in the medical center. He’d felt guilt then—he’d known all along he was doing th
e wrong thing. A desperate thief was still a thief.
And being desperate didn’t make the consequences any less real.
. . .
The Gaian’s current meeting place was hidden in the last place anyone would expect—an old Consulate.
The very idea offended Piper. This Consulate had serviced the neighboring city until Quinn was appointed Head Consul. Not just any Consulate could accommodate the kind of traffic a Head Consulate got. A new one on the other side of the city had been built and this one had gotten less and less use over the following years. About a year ago, it had been shut down for good. She had visited it a number of times before it closed, but she’d also been to dozens of others and the particular interior layout of this one wasn’t springing to mind.
She, Lyre, and Ash crouched in the safety of the bushes right at the edge of the building’s overgrown front lawn. Consulates always had a large, treeless expanse around them to prevent people from sneaking too close. The house was a small, two-story mansion, fortified with steel in some places, marred by peeling paint in others. The barred windows glared brightly—it definitely wasn’t abandoned anymore.
Their plan was simple. They would sneak around back, scope out a likely looking window, and Ash would have Zwi scout the inside of the building. If her father and the Gaians were there, she, Ash, and Lyre would sneak in to rescue Quinn. They didn’t have a lot of time. The prefects who’d come into the Styx would be tracking them.
“Well?” Lyre asked in a whisper.
Ash shrugged. He’d barely spoken on the drive over. He was partway shaded and he either didn’t care or couldn’t control it. Either way, Piper had enough sense not to antagonize him anymore; she no longer trusted him about anything, including whether he would lash out at her. The scary thing was he could kill her so easily. All it would take was one shaded moment when she was standing too close. Considering he seemed at least as angry with her as she was with him, his control would be even more slippery.
She didn’t understand why he was so ticked off. Was he angry that she, unlike Lyre, hadn’t shrugged off his actions as “what any daemon would’ve done”? Had he thought she wouldn’t care or that she’d understand his ambitions? Did he think she should’ve forgiven him?