“He’s gone,” Lucas said calmly.
“Son of a bitch,” said Cullen. “Son of a bitch. She did it.”
“Lily?” Rule took her hand, searching her face. “Are you all right?”
She looked down at her belly. “I feel like I need to burp.”
FORTY-EIGHT
Two weeks later, in North Carolina
THE first time Lily had seen Leidolf Clanhome, it had been for a funeral. A young Leidolf clansman had died fighting a demon with her and Rule. That occasion had turned into an effort by the clan’s crazy-mean Rho to kill Rule by forcing the heirs’ portion of Leidolf’s mantle into him. That hadn’t worked out the way Victor wanted.
She was here for a funeral again. She and Rule were even in the same bedroom they’d been given that time. He refused to sleep in the former Rho’s room.
“I can’t believe she went into labor today,” Lily said, sliding her arms into the sleeves of the silk tee she’d settled on for the ceremony, then lifting them carefully so it slid over her head.
She could do that now. Get dressed, wash her hair, even wear her shoulder holster. She still had to be careful, but she could do all the normal stuff again.
“I don’t think she planned to,” Rule said. He’d just finished brushing his teeth and was stepping into his jeans. Lupi dressed very casually for this sort of thing. “But I wish we were there.”
“Not that she needs us.” Lily slid her feet into her flats. Lupi might be informal, but she couldn’t bring herself to wear athletic shoes to the firnam. “She’s got Nettie and Cullen.”
The full moon had come and gone without Lily feeling an urge to howl, much less discovering a knack for turning furry. First Cullen, then the Nokolai Rhej, had assured her she wouldn’t. She hadn’t told anyone how she felt about that, not even Rule. She barely admitted it to herself. Babysitting a mantle did not turn her into a lupus.
Turned out there was a precedent for what she’d done, though no one outside of Etorri and the Rhejes had known about it. Three thousand years ago it had been a Rhej, not a Chosen, who’d held the Etorri mantle within her for seventeen days before she found an Etorri lupus to carry it.
Lily might have to wait a lot longer than seventeen days. The only one who definitely carried enough of the Wythe founder’s bloodline was too young to Change, much less assume the mantle and leadership of his clan. Soon, though, Lily would go to Wythe Clanhome and meet the entire clan and give the mantle a chance to go where it was supposed to be.
She rubbed her belly, frowning at the ball of otherness lodged there.
Rule slipped an arm around her. “Still bothering you?”
“It’s like having a piece of spinach stuck between your teeth. Something’s stuck inside me that doesn’t belong.” She had a strong feeling she wasn’t supposed to poke at it the way she would a piece of spinach, however. She shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt, and the bennies are good.”
Like the healing. She didn’t heal as fast as lupi—Isen’s arm was fine now, as was his hard head—and they didn’t know if she’d heal completely. There was a big dent in her biceps where muscle was just gone, and no one knew if her silent passenger would make it grow back. But the wound had closed up really fast, no skin graft needed, and the bone was well on its way to being healed. She hadn’t even needed a cast—partly because of how fast it was healing, but also because of the way the surgeon had nailed things together.
Just the damn sling. Which she still used, at Nettie’s very firm instructions, every time she left the bedroom. Well, almost every time. Any time it started hurting, certainly, and whenever Rule saw her. Or really, since they’d been staying at Clanhome, every time anyone saw her. Nearly healed did not mean healed.
Lily put that arm—her right arm—around Rule and snuggled close. Her body hummed in approval. It was so good to want him again. For a while after the shooting, touch had brought comfort … but nothing more.
Plenty more now. Rule stroked her hair. She closed her eyes and savored the feel of him, and the way her body responded. She stretched up, cupped his head, and pulled it down to sample his toothpaste secondhand.
She kissed him slowly but thoroughly, pressed close enough to feel it when his heartbeat picked up. And pulled away. “I hear the drums.”
For a moment she thought he was going to tell her—as he had last night when they were supposed to go down to dinner with his Lu Nuncio—that he was Rho and could be late if he wanted. But this was nothing as trivial as a meal. He nodded and reached for her sling.
She let him help her into it. She gave her phone a regretful glance as they left. Cynna had called five hours ago, completely jazzed because she was having contractions. Rule had talked to Cullen about an hour ago. Nothing since.
Couldn’t take a phone to the firnam, though. They headed down the stairs, and together they walked outside into dusk.
The air was warm silk. A few trees had begun turning color. A breeze whispered through boughs and leaves, the wind singing softly to accompany the drums.
The drummers, like the rest of those attending the firnam, were in a grassy field a short walk from the house. There were four of them. Like all the lupi, they were shirtless. Lily had seen their drums earlier. All were old, handmade, with hide drumheads. One had been made in Austria over two hundred years ago, though the drumhead had been replaced a couple of times.
LeBron’s second son was one of the drummers. He took his father’s place. In Leidolf, this was a hereditary position. Lily walked slowly beside Rule and thought about a bright smile, a shaved head, and a man who wasn’t with them anymore.
They’d caught the bastard who shot him, though. Lily let that satisfaction ease the sting in her eyes. Sjorensen had kept the local homicide detective filled in on whatever the FBI had because the asshole in charge wouldn’t. Between them, that detective and Sjorensen had tracked him down the old-fashioned way: lots of knocking on doors, lots of interviewing, and finally a break. Adrian Huffstead had lawyered up and wasn’t talking. It wouldn’t help. The friend who’d driven the truck—a truck with vanity plates, for God’s sake—had flipped so fast, Sjorensen said, she never got to practice being the mean cop.
They had not caught the traitor who’d tried to kill Ruben. If Karonski even had a lead, she hadn’t heard about it.
Ruben was doing okay. Not back at work, but okay.
They hadn’t found Friar’s body. Calvin Brewster and a couple of the militia guys were still missing, too.
Lily wanted to believe Friar was dead. There didn’t seem to be any way he could have escaped the destruction of the cave system. But Cynna had tried to Find him—or his body—using hairs from his hairbrush. Her Gift was good up to about a hundred miles, but she got nothing.
Maybe his body was crushed beneath rock with a lot of quartz veining that blocked Cynna’s Gift. Maybe.
Arjenie had put in for a transfer to San Diego. Some of the files she used were not accessible outside the FBI building, but much of her work could be done long-distance. She and Benedict had just finished a visit with her family in Virginia, and she was now able to speak her sister’s name. Sam had removed the binding.
But her sister was gone. Dya had used Earth’s only gate, the one in D.C. It opened in Edge, where she could take another gate to reach her home. The news she had to bring her people couldn’t wait. Their lord was dead. He’d broken Queens’ Law. The repercussions for the Binai could be huge.
The firnam was held in a field much like Nokolai’s meeting field. Many people stood or sat in the grass—observers, not participants. Three dozen men formed a large circle around a generous pile of wood set on bare earth blackened by past fires. Lily and Rule moved to join them.