The god was offering her a choice, she realized: the sun or the jun tan? Godkeeper or mate?
She looked up at the firebird, her eyes blurring with tears. Even knowing that her choice might cost them a Godkeeper, she said without hesitation, “I choose to be his mate. Magic isn’t the answer. Love is.” And although he might already be gone, the sudden warmth that curled around her heart told her that it was the right answer for her.
“Ho-ly shit,” someone said from behind her. She didn’t know who.
The firebird dipped its head—in acknowledgment, she thought. It touched her again with its wing, and the jun tan firmed in place, stark and black on her forearm. Then the god swept its opposite wing toward Lucius’s motionless body. Sasha knelt beside him, trying to keep his body going in the absence of its soul.
Jade’s heart shuddered as a white shimmer coalesced from the sky and drifted down toward him.
She told herself not to hope, but she couldn’t stop the hot, hard anticipation from forming as the vapor settled over him, sank into him.
For a moment, nothing happened. Her world contracted, started to crumble around her.
And then he began to breathe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Joy exploded through Jade. Hardly daring to hope, to believe, she lunged up and ran to Lucius, choking on her sobs. He groaned and rolled toward her, then sat partway up and reached for her. She dropped to her knees, her tears finally breaking free as his arms closed around her, strong and sure. “I love you,” she said, the words muffled against the side of his face. “Gods, I love you.” Then he was kissing her, and she was kissing him back, and the world settled into a new, better shape around her.
When they parted, Lucius looked past her, and his eyes went wide. And it was his turn to say, “Ho-ly shit.”
The firebird was bowing down in front of Sasha. Michael stood at her side.
Another hot wave flashed through Jade, this time one of relief. She hadn’t cost the magi a Godkeeper, after all. “She was meant to be Godkeeper to Kinich Ahau all along,” she said softly, although she suspected that when she and Sasha had jointly fulfilled the triad prophecy, they had both become equal candidates for the honor.
Lucius seemed to follow her thoughts, because he lined up his forearm next to hers. On his inner wrist he wore a jun tan to match hers . . . and the quatrefoil hellmark had turned black. “Thank you,” he rasped, in a voice that had started out that of a stranger and become that of her mate.
She looked at their marks. Despite the hot, hard joy that raced through her at the sight of the jun tan, she shook her head in pretend rue. “Shandi is going to kick my ass.”
“First she’ll thank the gods that you made it home safely. Then, yeah, she might kick your ass.”
They grinned at each other. He stood, his strength returning quickly, and helped her up. As they headed toward the others, hand in hand, power flashed red-gold, there was a thunder-loud clap, and the firebird sprang aloft as Sasha and Michael embraced, leaning into each other.
Kinich Ahau gained altitude, winging into the sky. As the god rose higher and higher, flames limned the red feathers and trailed from the beat of its wings. Then, suddenly, white-hot light flashed. And the god was gone.
“We did it,” Jade said, not quite ready to believe, though Lucius’s fingers were tightly threaded through hers. But then she stared up at the sky in dismay. “I thought winning the game would send us home. Why are we still here?”
“Because it’s my job to get us home,” Lucius said. “The magic inside me originally belonged to Cizin. When its soul was torn away from mine, I somehow kept hold of that one piece of the demon’s power. You know how we’ve theorized that different makol have different skill sets? Well, I think Cizin was capable of forming temporary roads through the barrier. But you were right that I couldn’t touch the power until I got to the point where nothing else mattered . . . which happened when Akhenaton tried to possess you.” He caressed her cheek. “I’d rather live forever in the in-between than have you go through that.”
She wanted to close her eyes and lean into his touch. Instead, she poked him in the stomach. He let out a surprised “oof” as she got in his face. “You’d better consider yourself lucky you fought off Akhenaton. If you hadn’t, I would’ve had to find a way to get to the in-between myself, because, starting now, I don’t intend to live without you.”
His lips tipped up. “Yeah. I got that.” He turned to Strike. “I think this is going to take both of us.
That first night, I think I called the road magic without really specifying a destination; at first Kinich Ahau’s need drew us to Xibalba. Then I called the magic a second time to get us out of there, but I still didn’t have a real destination in mind. In the absence of Cizin’s magic, I suspect the library magic would have drawn me straight to the library. As it is”—he turned his palms up—“if we can combine your ’port targeting with my ability to form a conduit through the barrier, we may have gained more than just a new Godkeeper and two new mated pairs just now.”
Startled, Jade looked at Sasha’s wrist, where she too wore a new jun tan. Curious, Jade craned to pick out Rabbit in the crowd. Face set and angry, he deliberately looked away, but turned his forearm toward her. He wore no jun tan, and his hellmark remained bloodred. Her heart ached for him.
“When I used the road magic previously,” Lucius said, “Jade’s and my bodies stayed safely back at Skywatch. This time we all came down here body and soul, via the hellroad. Problem is, the solstice is past and the hellroad is sealed, or close to it.”
Sven glanced at his heavy-duty diver’s watch. “Shit. He’s right.”
Lucius held out his still-bleeding palm to Strike. “You can move bodies on earth. I can move spirits between planes. You want to see if between the two of us we can get our collective asses home?”
“Fuck, yeah.”
The men linked hands as the others nicked their palms and joined up in a circle, linked by blood and magic. Jade kept hold of Lucius’s hand, with Michael on her other side, which seemed fitting somehow.
“Everyone think about Skywatch,” Lucius said. “The magic needs a destination.”
“We should”— all think of the same spot, Jade started to say, but she was cut off midword when the magic triggered unexpectedly, the power leaping from zero to ninety in no time flat. She heard Lucius yell something but missed what he said; his magic roared in her head, masculine and commanding, blending now with Strike’s red-gold teleporter’s talent. The power grabbed them, snatching them out of the canyon in an instant. She saw a flash of dark, ominous shadows moving toward the “I”-shaped ball court; then it was gone. Xibalba was gone. And still they moved up, accelerating, the universe moving past them in a blur that wasn’t gray-green, wasn’t black, wasn’t any real color at all. Then, in the blur, she saw an image: a teenager’s face, smiling at her. “You’re so much smarter than I was,” the nahwal’s voice said. “So much braver than I. You fought for him.”
Jade gaped even as truth and joy sang through her. “You died trying to save us. That’s as brave as it gets.”
“If I had truly been brave, I wouldn’t have gone into the library that last time. I would have stayed.
I would have found you . . . somehow.”
Jade’s heart took a long, slow roll in her chest. What would it have been like to have her mother with her growing up? To have another senior mage alive when they returned to Skywatch? But she shook her head. “I don’t blame you.”