East of Ecstasy (Hearts of the Anemo)

  The contraction eased off, and Megan squeezed his hand. And, aw, gods, it was a pitiful little squeeze. “He can’t come by himself,” she said, her gaze so sad it stomped the broken pieces of Owen’s heart into dust. “You’re going to have to…take him out, Owen.”

  Take him? Owen frowned. “Megan, I don’t—”

  “Cut him out,” she whispered, her voice breaking.

  Horror washed hot as the sun over Owen, making him break out in a sweat and pant for breath. Aching from the center of his soul, he shook his head, his mouth open but no words coming out.

  “You have to,” Megan said.

  “No, angel, no. I…no.”

  Megan paled impossibly more as another contraction gripped her body. She screamed and arched, her hand threatening to crush his now, but Owen didn’t care. He would bear every bit of this experience if he could. Gods, he remembered his terror during her first delivery. But even though Teddy had been a larger-than-usual baby, Megan had come through it like a champ, leaving him even more awed at her strength and bravery. And Boreas had teased Owen mercilessly for his pacing and worrying.

  “Oh, oh God, Megan. Don’t push. Try not to push,” Anna said. The shaking hand she laid on Megan’s knee was shiny with bright-red blood. “I don’t know what to do, but I think she’s right.”

  Owen couldn’t imagine doing as Megan asked. Bad enough that the attack had stressed her body into an early labor, but to kill her with his own hands? No. Never. He might as well bury the blade in his own chest.

  His brain scrambling for a solution, Owen looked across the room where he found Chrys and Laney standing in the door. Chrysander wore possibly the most serious expression Owen had ever seen on his face, and it was like a steel knife in his windpipe, a suffocating agony. “Get Zeph,” Owen said. “Please, get Zeph.”

  Chrys nodded and disappeared.

  “Just hang on, angel. Help is on the way,” Owen said, stroking her sweaty blond curls back from her forehead. “Okay?”

  Megan blinked lazily. “No time.” Her eyes struggled to focus on his face. “If you don’t get…baby out…both die.” Her eyebrows raised in a plea. “Save our son.”

  Owen shook his head. “Megan, you are my life, I can’t—”

  She raised her hand, and it swayed as though it took a mountain of effort to lift it to his face. As she pressed three fingers to his lips, tears dripped from the corners of her eyes. “And you are my true north, Owen Winters. My…true north. Always.” Her hand dropped lifelessly to the bed.

  “Megan!” Owen said, grasping her face in his hands. Her eyes rolled back. Grasping her shoulders, he shook her as gently as he could. “Megan, don’t you leave me!”

  “Oh, God, there’s so much blood,” Anna cried.

  “No, no, no.” He tilted his head to the ceiling and screamed, “Zephyros!”

  Two fast heartbeats later, Chrysander returned to the room looking stricken. And alone.

  “Where’s Zeph?” Owen rasped, his hope crashing to the floor.

  “In the middle of ascending to the god of storms and keeper of the winds,” Chrys said, his voice like gravel.

  “What?” Ella said, leaning around the doorjamb but keeping a quieter Teddy out of the line of sight. Tisiphone lurched from her position against the wall.

  “Oh, uh, Aeolus…during the battle…” Chrys shook his head. Gasps rose up from the women at the news. Tisiphone disappeared.

  Owen’s gaze drifted back to Megan. He was going to lose her, too? Grief and rage and despair welled up inside him until Owen was sure his skin would burst.

  Ella blanched. “Zephyros—”

  “Is drained, but fine. He’ll be restored after the ascension, but it’ll take a while.” Owen stared, his brain almost refusing to process the news. For a moment, Chrys stared at the ground, almost defeated. And then the god of the South Wind raised his gaze and held out a knife. “From the kitchen. I, uh, sterilized it,” he said, his voice so full of pained sympathy that Owen felt as if he were drowning.

  And Owen had thought his heart beat fast and hard before. Now he was almost dizzy. “Chrysander, no.”

  Chrys walked around the bottom of the bed to Owen and knelt. Hand on his shoulder, Chrys said, “Save one of them before it’s too late.”

  Tears falling now, Owen shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Owen—”

  “Could you do it?” Owen yelled.

  “I would hate it, but if it was Laney’s dying wish…”

  Owen dropped his head in his hands, the losses of the past few days swamping him in a maelstrom of inescapable grief. Boreas. Aeolus. Tabitha. Megan.

  “Okay, Owen,” Chrys said, and then he rose, ordered Anna to pull Megan’s feet downward, and pushed the blankets aside to bare Megan’s belly. The blade was against her skin before Owen’s brain had caught up with what he intended to do.

  “Wait!” he said. “Just in case…I can…let me numb her.” Chrys gave a tight nod. Leaning over the love of his life, Owen blew the North Wind across her belly until the skin turned ice cold. Well, colder. Choking on a sob, Owen sat back, grasped Megan’s hand, and pulled it to his lips.

  Chrys slowly sliced the blade across the lowest part of her stomach. Owen moaned as a ribbon of bright red bloomed over her skin, which Chrys probed with his fingers and the blade until he made an opening through which the baby’s bottom was just visible.

  “Oh my God, Chrys, you’re doing it,” Anna said from between Megan’s legs, her breath shuddering. In the doorway, Laney and Ella cried silently. Teddy had blessedly fallen asleep against Ella’s chest.

  Owen watched all this as if floating outside his body. Sound came to him as if through a long tunnel. Looking down at the slender hand he held, Owen turned it over and pressed two fingers to the veins at the top of her wrist.

  For long moments, the only sound he heard was his own pulse whooshing behind his ears. No matter how he moved his fingers, he couldn’t find a pulse.

  Megan was gone.

  His angel. The one who had brought him back to life. Who had given him a reason to live. Gone.

  Slowly, Chrys pulled the baby through the cut in Megan’s abdomen with Anna’s help. The child was almost purple in color. Chrys unlooped the umbilical cord from around Owen’s son’s neck, and that’s when Owen snapped back into his body.

  Panicked, grief-stricken words filled the room in a second wave as Chrys cleared the baby’s mouth and tried to restart his heart—first by patting him, then by massaging his tiny chest over his heart, and then by pouring the healing warmth of the South Wind into the baby’s body. Owen might’ve objected to the latter, given that the boy was a child of the North, but it was so obviously, heartbreakingly clear that the baby was gone that Owen thought it couldn’t possibly hurt to try.

  “Come on, come on,” Chrys said, nearly panting.

  “There’s no… Chrys, there’s no aura,” Laney said, her voice so filled with grief and apology that it made Owen a little insane.

  Gone.

  In one night. Aeolus. Megan. And their son—Athan. Short for Athanasius, which Megan had picked because it meant “eternal life.”

  What a horrible cruel joke that was now, when Athan would never live at all.

  …

  Devlin watched in horrified wonder as Aeolus transferred his power to Zephyros. At Aeolus’s rasping instruction, the pair lay side by side on the floor in the center of the compass rose, facing each other, with Devlin kneeling by their heads. Aeolus was so close to death that Zeph, weak as he was, had to hold Aeolus’s hand to his chest, while Devlin held the other hand to Zeph’s forehead.

  As Aeolus telepathically recited an oath, Zephyros repeated a few lines at a time in the ancient language, out loud. Light and color and whirls of power slowly lifted up out of Aeolus and settled into Zeph, the latter’s body arching and seizing as one by one the transferred powers took hold and sank into Zeph’s chest.

  “I accept the power, the privileges, and the du
ties of Ruler of Storms and Master of the Winds,” Zeph continued in the ancient language. “I will be a fair and faithful master and will never favor one wind over another. I will seek balance in all things and protect all which has been entrusted unto me to the best of my ability. From this moment until I am no more.”

  Aeolus’s eyes blinked open, a dull, lifeless green. When his hands slipped to the floor, a skeleton key much like the one in Devlin’s pocket appeared in one of Aeolus’s palms. “Your lantern,” he rasped to Zeph, eyes momentarily angling toward the ceiling. “Always know…you…are worthy.” And then he was gone.

  The ache. The surprise. The inability to draw breath. It was like being punched in the heart. The first to ever believe in him. And one of the only. Devlin felt Aeolus’s loss as acutely as if the god had been his father and raised him from birth. Certainly, he’d shown Devlin more care in the short months they’d been working together than Eurus ever had. And now he was gone.

  Zephyros reached out a shaking hand and gently pushed Aeolus’s eyelids closed, then he grasped the key in his fist. Suddenly, his eyes flared a brilliant royal blue. Wind whipped around his body in a translucent and preternaturally lit whirl, lifting Zeph off the floor until he was fully upright over the center of the compass rose.

  On his knees, Devlin watched as the swirling funnel lifted Zephyros higher and higher, until he was almost to the ceiling. And then a dark lantern descended from the ornate ceiling. Bright light lit the whole room for a moment, and then Zeph deposited it inside the golden container, which now glowed with his divine energy—the energy of the new storm god and ruler of the winds. Devlin longed for Anna’s strength here beside him.

  Now that their transition was complete, various matters demanded Zephyros’s immediate attention. For he was now master of them all. Several of the lesser Anemoi had been badly injured and Chrys’s quick visit had revealed that Owen’s wife was in some kind of grave distress. And now that the West Wind had no master, freeing Alastor became all the more important.

  As the lantern settled back in its vault in the ceiling, the preternatural storm lowered Zeph to the floor. When his boots hit the tile, the light and wind disappeared.

  Devlin rose to a single knee and bowed his head. “My lord.”

  Zeph crossed the room, a sad, harsh expression on his face, but rejuvenated and stronger than before. “Thank you, Devlin,” he said, voice gritty with grief. In his hand, he manifested a blanket, and together they gently covered Aeolus’s still body.

  “Wait. Let me…”

  Devlin tracked the voice to find Tisiphone standing near the doorway. Sadness washed through him in another crushing wave. He exchanged glances with Zephyros, who nodded.

  Tisiphone was beside them in an instant. “I will take him home,” she whispered. “And see him off on the ferry to the Elysian Fields.”

  Zeph squeezed her shoulder. “I know he would like that.”

  Folding the blanket back, Tisiphone leaned over Aeolus’s body and stroked his face. While they watched, the pair disappeared. And the sharp tearing sensation in Devlin’s chest told him they’d taken a piece of his heart with them.

  “You have the key to the East Wind?” he asked, voice cracking. Devlin nodded. “Then it’s your turn next.”

  A sharp, masculine scream cut through the stillness.

  With one meeting of their gazes, the gods reached an understanding, dematerialized, and went in search of the source of the sound. It led inside Owen’s apartment—

  Where an enormous griffin lay guarding an interior door. The eagle head lifted and tilted when they entered. After everything that’d happened today, Devlin was amazed something could surprise him, but seeing this magnificent creature did. Was this what Laney and Anna had described before? Seth? Devlin asked, his gaze taking in the multiple wounds the griffin had clearly taken in battle.

  Yes, the man replied at the same time that the creature gave a small, agonized cry, its feathered head settling back on its paws.

  “Thank you for watching out for them,” Devlin said.

  The griffin gave a single nod of its great head.

  In the bedroom, the scent of metallic blood was sharp on the air. And, oh, gods, Devlin was not even a little prepared for the sight that greeted him.

  Megan, pale and still as death, pooled blood visible around and through the covers. On the floor beside her, Owen knelt rocking a baby in his arms, a baby who wasn’t crying, wasn’t moving, and definitely wasn’t pink with life.

  Devlin’s gaze jumped to Anna, sitting at the foot of the bed, hands stained red. Heart in his throat, Devlin was next to her in an instant, pleading with his gaze for a sign that she was okay. Looking up, she nodded and lost the battle against her tears. Devlin pulled her to her feet and embraced her against his chest, beyond glad to have her in his arms again. He stroked her hair and beat back the guilt he felt over his relief that Annalise was safe when Megan lay dead before him.

  Zephyros gasped as he pulled Ella into his arms, careful not to wake a black-haired little boy she held whom Devlin had never seen before. “Gods in heaven,” he said, hand to his mouth.

  The weight of Aeolus’s death on his shoulders left Devlin absolutely stunned as he tried to process these new losses. He hadn’t known Megan well, but above the other Anemoi, Owen had most given Devlin the benefit of the doubt. And, oh, gods, losing his wife and child just days after he’d lost his father? Devlin’s heart broke for Owen, particularly as the god’s expression was stricken with a pained grief so intense that it was honestly hard to look at.

  Sympathy and red-hot vengeance welled up inside Devlin’s chest. More losses at the hands of his father. Again. He gripped the key in his pocket—it ended today.

  Devlin didn’t know what to do, what to say, or how really even to act. So he gave Anna a last squeeze, settled onto a knee, and bowed his head in respect. She knelt next to him, her hand tangling tightly with his. And for once in his life, touch was the thing that held him together, that made it possible to weather this horrible moment.

  Amid cries and whimpers and shuddered breaths, the others all followed their lead until seven of the world’s most powerful beings knelt to pay their respects to the two weakest among them.

  A rattle. There again. Devlin’s gaze whipped up, searching for the source of the odd tinkling noise. He traded glances with Zeph and Chrys on either side of him, and their expressions said they’d also heard it, but Devlin couldn’t figure it out.

  Tink, tink, tink.

  Devlin cut his gaze to the dresser. But what—

  Tink, tink, tinktinktink.

  Inside an ornate lidded jar, something started to move, to spin, to throw off a silvery white light. It grew brighter and brighter as the objects inside the jar spun faster and faster. The jar vibrated and danced on the wooden surface as if there were an earthquake, but everything else was still.

  What now? Devlin thought, suspicion and wonder filling him in equal parts.

  “Owen, buddy,” Chrys said, tapping the god of the North Wind on the shoulder. He’d been so far into himself, he was the only one in the room who hadn’t heard the noise and wasn’t staring slack-jawed at the spinning lights. “Owen?” Chrys squeezed his shoulder.

  Slowly, Owen lifted his face, his expression beyond gutted, his eyes lifeless and dull. For a long minute, he didn’t seem to know why Chrys had called his name. And then he finally checked back in and noticed what everyone else was looking at.

  It was like someone had turned a light switch on. Owen’s eyes snapped to attention, his expression morphed into something skeptical and disbelieving, color returned in slow degrees to his cheeks. “You’re seeing that, too?” he said in a reed-thin voice.

  “Yeah, man,” Chrys said. “We see it. We all see it.”

  Staring at the jar, Zeph said, “Isn’t that…aren’t those—”

  “Boreas’s snowflakes,” Owen said. “The ones from his lantern.”

  Prickles ran over Devlin’s scalp. A
s if the snowflakes possessed some conscious awareness, speaking about them made them spin faster and faster until they gave off a high-pitched hum against the side of the glass.

  I cannot change everything that I wrought, came Thanatos’s voice from somewhere above them. But I’m holding two souls in my hands right now and I hear the call of another who would like to give you a last gift.

  Zeph, Chrys, and Devlin all shifted toward Owen as he rose to his feet, still cradling his son in his arms.

  He licked his lips and shook his head. “This isn’t possible,” he said. “I don’t…I couldn’t stand—”

  Believe. The single word made the breath catch in more than one throat. The voice was deep and formal, but affectionate, too. Devlin’s throat went tight as Owen’s expression shifted to something resembling soul-deep awe.

  Owen tilted his face toward the ceiling. “Boreas?” After a moment, Owen’s gaze dropped to the jar and he darted around to the far side of the bed, everyone rising and making way for him. Gently resting the baby on the bed, Owen grasped the jar in shaking hands and lifted it until the lights flashed across his face. Devlin squinted against the intensity as Owen removed the lid.

  Three blurs of twinkling silver light shot out of the glass and spun around the ceiling of the room. The temperature plummeted and the air smelled cold and crisp, like a winter day after a fresh snowfall. It had been many years since Devlin had had more than a passing interaction with the former Supreme God of the North Wind, but even he recognized the god’s presence in the form of his scent, his cold, his silvery light. Which explained why Zephyros and Chrysander, shivering next to Devlin in the whirling cold, wore expressions of pure, joyous awe.

  Lay your son with his mother, Owen. I do not have much time.

  Kneeling on the bed, Owen moved the baby into the crook of Megan’s arm. He caressed Megan’s pale cheek with the knuckles of his shaking hand, and the three of them made such a heartbreaking sight that Devlin pulled Anna into his arms. He couldn’t imagine the crushing grief losing her would bring, and he hadn’t been with Anna anywhere near as long as Owen was with Megan nor shared the bonds that parenthood created. But, gods, did he hope—for the first time in his life—he might have the chance.