“What if . . .” Lucius began as though echoing her thoughts, then paused a moment before continuing. “What if the prophecy was, let’s say, interrupted? What if the original child of prophecy became unsuitable for the full foretelling?”
Michael shifted and sent him a narrow look. “Don’t be a pussy. Say it.”
In the past, Lucius might have—probably would have—backed down or turned things aside with a joke. Now he met the other man’s glare. “Fine. What if becoming your fiancée—and functionally your mate—has made Sasha unsuitable to be a Godkeeper? You and she balance each other out as the ch’ulel and Mictlan, life versus death. Giving her more power as a Godkeeper could tip that balance . .
. or it could increase your magic to an equal degree. It’s possible that some power source—if not the sky gods, then maybe even the doctrine of balance itself—doesn’t want to put so much power into a single couple.”
Jade’s throat went tight and strange as her mind jumped from Lucius’s hypothesis to its corollary—
namely that she might have become the focus of the prophecy when Sasha became unsuitable as a Godkeeper. She didn’t look at Shandi, didn’t need to. She knew what the winikin would say: Don’t overreach yourself, Jade. You’re just a harvester.
Swallowing hard, she pointed out, “The doctrine of balance isn’t an entity; it doesn’t have opinions.” As far as they knew, the doctrine, which was routinely mentioned in the archive but never really defined, was more a pattern of thought, the belief among their ancestors that the universe was not only cyclical, but sought balance within those cycles.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Lucius replied elliptically, his gaze catching and holding hers, making her, for a moment, feel like they were the only two people in the room. “But it sure seems as though you and I may have inherited the last part of the triad prophecy.”
CHAPTER NINE
Lucius found himself on the receiving end of a long, considering look from Strike. After a moment the king said, “Since you don’t seem inclined to eat, you ready to tell us about the library?” It wasn’t really a question.
Lucius nodded. “To put it bluntly, it’s not going to be the resource you’d hoped for. Or rather . . . not the way I can use it.”
Strike’s face tightened, though he didn’t look all that surprised. “Go on.”
“When I zapped in, the air was dry, it was pitch-dark, and I was naked. . . .” Lucius told them everything, exactly the way it had happened. He described the library itself, how he figured out the Ouija board deal, and how he used it to find the notebook. He recited as much of the text as he could from memory, including the massive buzz-kill about how he could enter the library only once more safely, and then only if he found his own magic. Which he didn’t have. He left out the last little bit, though, the part about love. He figured that had been a message just for him.
As he spoke, he watched the faces around him fall from hope to confusion, and from there to dismay. In Jade’s expression, he saw a soft, sad emotion alongside the others, this one directed at him.
But where before he would have labeled it pity and resented the hell out of it, now he recognized it as sympathy from someone who knew what it felt like to want to be more than her ancestry suggested she should be, more than the people around her assumed she was capable of being. She knew, or at least could come pretty close to guessing, what it had meant to him to be chosen, albeit accidentally, to be the Prophet. He’d dreamed of the library, of the adventure, of finally being a part of things. And now .
. . nothing. He’d glimpsed the library’s glory, only to have it taken away from him again, in a cosmic backhanded slap of you’re not good enough. Apparently, despite his new and improved physique, he was still Runt Hunt at his core. And boy, didn’t that just suck?
Continuing, he told them about his strength fading, and his inadvertent discovery of his predecessor entombed at the far corner of the library. “She wore the marks of the star bloodline, a warrior, and a mated woman . . . and based on her use of language and the way she spiral-bound the book like a modern notebook, I’d say she lived in the past few decades.” He turned up his palms. “Beyond that, we’ll need to do some digging to try to figure out who she was . . . and what happened to her.”
He fell silent, aware that he’d been talking for a long time with no interruptions. The faces that had been hopeful, confused, and dismayed were now slightly glazed, most wearing expressions he recognized from his lectures as the fugue the human brain tended to slide into when given too much information at one time, or being asked to change too many preconceptions all at once. He thought it was a combination of the two in this case. Gods knew he was feeling almost numb from everything that had happened in the past day. Two days. Whatever. He’d been to hell and back, been to the library and back. And he’d been with Jade.
“There’s a book about the star bloodline in the archive,” Jade said after a moment. “It was in one of the boxes of books Jox had salvaged from the private suites before the big renovation. I just scanned and cataloged it without really reading it because . . . well”—she lifted a shoulder—“it didn’t seem all that relevant, since none of us are of the bloodline. I’ll go back through and read it, see if there’s anything pertinent.”
Strike nodded. “While you’re at it, run some searches on the star bloodline, the keepers of the library, that sort of thing.” He looked from her to Lucius and back. “Tomorrow. Right now, you two both look like you need some major downtime.”
Until Strike mentioned it, Lucius hadn’t been fully aware of the exhaustion hovering at the edges of his consciousness. The second he noticed the fatigue, though, it was all over: The world grayed out and he suddenly could’ve napped quite comfortably in the straight-backed chair. Postmagic crash, he thought. Huh. He was too tired even to worry about looking weak, or to fend off Michael and Brandt when they each took a side of him, got him on his feet, and headed him toward the sliders leading out.
It was all he could do to crane his head around, catch Jade’s eye, and see that she looked tired and sad, but otherwise okay. He flashed back on what she’d said to him earlier, in his cottage, and the way she’d kissed him. And in the back of his mind, he couldn’t help hearing the journalist’s words, spoken now in a woman’s voice: Find someone to love . . . and tell them so. It was tempting . . . and a proven recipe for disaster.
“No, thanks,” he muttered under his breath. “Been there, done that, doesn’t work for me.” For now, and maybe for the long haul, he was far better off alone.
Strike had been right on target, Jade realized. She was seriously strung-out and needed some downtime. But as she pushed through the door into her suite, instead of the place making her feel at home and inviting her to turn it all off for a while, the small apartment made her feel jumpy and out of sorts. Or maybe the problem wasn’t with the place. Maybe it was with her.
Like most of the other three-room apartments, hers had a kitchen nook and seating area opening off the mansion hallway, with doors on the far wall leading to a bathroom and bedroom. Unlike the others, though, hers was a corner room and had a bonus: a set of sliders leading to a private balcony that offered a heck of a view of the canyon wall as it rose to meet the horizon beyond. Soon after her arrival at Skywatch, she’d redecorated the suite from the bland faux-Southwestern nondecor it had started with, to a kitschy blend of colors and styles that appealed to her. The end result was part feng shui, part Zen, part hey-that’s-cool impulse buy. The walls were painted a soothing blue-gray, the wall-to-wall had been replaced with eco-friendly bamboo, and the comfy furniture was covered in calm, natural-fiber pastels. A trickling water feature burbled in the corner near the sliders, powered not by electricity, but by sunlight and condensation.