In her belly: a flutter of winged things shaking themselves fervently to life.
It brought a flush to her cheeks. The temerity of butterflies to trouble her now. What was she, some giddy girl to swoon at beauty?
“Beauty,” Brimstone had scoffed once. “Humans are fools for it. As helpless as moths who hurl themselves at fire.”
Karou would not be a moth. For the moments that they circled each other, she reminded herself that though the seraph wouldn’t fight her now, he had spilled her blood before. He had left her scarred. Worse, he had burned the portals and left her alone.
She put on her anger like armor and attacked him again, surging at him in the air, and for a few minutes she was able to fool herself that she was a match for him, that she could… what? Kill him? She was barely even trying to use her knife. She didn’t want to kill him.
What did she want? What did he want?
And then he grabbed her hands and in one smooth movement disarmed her and disabused her of any notion she might have had that she was winning. He pressed her palms together so she couldn’t lash out with her hamsas again — up close she saw that his neck was welted white where she had touched him — and he was so strong, she couldn’t break free. His hands were warm and enclosed hers completely. Her magic was trapped in her palms, one tattoo hot against the other, and her knife had fallen to the street below. She was caught. She experienced a frantic moment, remembering the way he had stood over her in Morocco, the deadness of his expression. But it wasn’t dead now. Far from it.
He might have been someone else entirely, his look was so full of feeling. What feeling? Pain. He glistened with a fever sheen. His face bore the strain of endured agony, and his breathing was uneven. But that wasn’t all. He blazed with intensity, leaning toward Karou in the air, looking, looking, alive with a searing, wide-eyed searching.
His touch, his heat, his gaze washed over her and, in an instant, it was not butterflies she felt. That was small, the flutterings of a giddy girl.
This new thing that sprang up between them, it was… astral. It reshaped the air, and it was in her, too — a warming and softening, a pull—and for that moment, her hands in his, Karou felt as powerless as starlight tugged toward the sun in the huge, strange warp of space. She fought against it, trying to get away.
His voice low and hoarse, the angel said, “I’m not going to hurt you. What happened before, I’m sorry. Please believe me, Karou. I didn’t come here to hurt you.”
She startled at the sound of her name and stopped struggling. How did he know her name? “Why did you come?”
On his face, a helpless look. He said again, “I don’t know,” and this time it didn’t strike her as funny. “Just… just to talk,” he said. “To try to understand this… this…” He fumbled for words and trailed away, at a loss, but Karou thought she knew what he meant, because she was trying to understand it, too.
“I can’t withstand more of your magic,” he said, and she was aware again of his strain. She had really hurt him. As she should, she told herself. He was her enemy. The heat in her hands told her that. Her scars told it, and her severed life. But her body wasn’t listening. It was focused on the contact of their skin, his hands on hers.
“But I won’t hold you,” he said. “If you want to hurt me, it’s no more than I deserve.”
He released her. His heat deserted her and the night rushed between them, colder than it had been before.
Clasping her hamsas in her fists, Karou backed away, barely aware that she was still floating.
Holy. What was that?
Remotely, she was conscious that she was flying in plain view of a gathered mass of people, and that more gawkers were coming in droves, as if the tourist route of Karlova had been diverted into this side channel. She sensed their pointing and amazement, saw the camera flashes, heard the shouts, but it was all muted muted muted, like it was playing on a screen, less real than the moment she was living.
She was on the cusp of something ineffable. When the seraph had held her hands, and when he had let her go, it was as if she had been filled and didn’t realize it until he pulled away and the absence rushed back in. It pounded inside her now, cold and aching, void and wanting—wanting—and a desperate part of her had to be stilled from darting forward to grab his hands again. Wary of the extraordinary compulsion beating in her, she forced herself to resist. It was like fighting a tide, and in the fight was the same terror: of being swept into deep water, beyond all safety.
Karou panicked.
When the angel made as if to move toward her, she threw up her hands between them, both hands at once, and at close range. His eyes went wide and he faltered in the air, a breach in his perfect grace. Karou’s breath caught. He tried to steady himself on the lintel of a fourth-story window, and failed.
His eyes rolled back and he dropped a few feet, sending up sparks. Was he losing consciousness? Karou spoke around a tight constriction in her throat. “Are you okay?”
But he wasn’t, and he fell.
Akiva was dimly aware that he was no longer in the air. Beneath him, stone. In flashes he saw faces peering at him. Consciousness strobed. Voices in languages he couldn’t understand, and at the edge of sight: blue. Karou was there. A roar rose up in his ears and he forced himself upright, and the roar was… applause.
Karou, her back to him, dropped a theatrical curtsy. With a flourish she plucked her knife from where it had embedded itself between cobbles, and sheathed it in her boot. She peered over her shoulder at him, seeming relieved to see him conscious, and then stepped back and… took his hand. Carefully, just her fingertips in his, so her marks wouldn’t burn him. She helped him stand, and said, low in his ear, “Bow.”
“What?”
“Just take a bow, okay? Let them think this was a performance. It’ll be easier to get away. Leave them trying to figure out how we did it.”
He gave an approximation of a bow and the applause thundered.
“Can you walk?” Karou asked.
He nodded.
It still wasn’t easy getting away. People stood in their way, wanting to talk to them. Karou spoke; he didn’t know what was said, didn’t understand the language, but her answers were clipped. The onlookers were awed and delighted — except one of them, a young man in a tall hat who glared at Akiva and tried to take Karou’s elbow. His proprietary air stirred old wrath in Akiva and made him want to throw the human into a wall, but Karou didn’t need his intervention. She brushed the man aside and led Akiva out of the crowd. Her fingers were still in his; they were cool and small, and he was sorry when, turning a corner into a plaza of empty market stalls, she pulled away.
“Are you okay?” she asked, putting distance between them.
He steadied himself against a wall in the shadows beneath an awning. “Not that I didn’t deserve it,” he said. “But I feel as though an army has marched over me.”
She paced, anxious energy fairly vibrating in her. “Razgut said you were looking for me. Why?”
“Razgut?” Akiva was startled. “But I thought he was—”