You had your chance to understand. You did not take it.
He whipped around. He had forgotten about Morrighan. She was standing barely a foot away. Her signature was suddenly overpowering. Musk. Frangipani. Curiosity. Intense excitement. Powerful chemicals rushing through her brain, sparking a reaction inside his own mind as well.
Death's fingerprint is in our DNA. It sets our fate. The grave is journey's end for all of us. But the memory palace-oh, Gabriel. The memory palace transforms the journey from drudgery to ecstasy. Once you've tasted the rush of the memory palace, the ordinary life is a withered flower.
A part of him realized that she desperately wanted him to comprehend the magnificence of her creation.
He gestured at the gigantic stone walls with their enigmatic symbols. "Was this worth killing for?"
Is becoming a magician not worth everything?
She placed her hand on his shoulder and drew even closer. He could feel the heat from her body. A small, shameful part of his mind was reacting to her physical closeness. Her thigh brushing his. The soft swell of her breasts. The pale skin accentuated by the bruise of the Monas: a rough kiss made visible. The urge to touch his fingers to that highly erotic bruise was overwhelming.
"No." He tried to move away from her. "Minnaloushe-"
Minnaloushe? As if the name were a foreign word and she was inquiring as to its meaning. She tightened her grip on his shoulder. Minnaloushe was faint of heart. But you and I are the same: we crave the thrill. We ache for it.
We crave the thrill. She understood him well. For him too, risk had always been the ultimate turn-on. And risk had its rewards. In his own life risk had usually paid off. But if he miscalculated this time…
He looked into her blue eyes and knew he was looking death in the face. She was lethal.
Behind her shoulder he could see the doors lined up. One of those doors was the entrance to Pandora's box. If it opened, he would probably not survive the onslaught.
He pushed the thought aside. Time to act.
Deliberately he placed one hand against her breast. Her skin was as soft as he had imagined it would be. He placed his other hand behind her head and drew her face to his. His fingers moved inside her hair, loosening it so that it fell to her shoulders in a dusky cloud. As he touched his lips to hers, her eyes remained open, locked with his. Blue pools fringed by inky lashes. They told him nothing.
He tightened his grip in her hair. "You are insane."
I know. A ripple of amusement from her. Exciting, isn't it?
Pain shot through his lip. She had bitten him. He tasted blood.
He pressed his fingers against her breast with such force, he knew he was hurting the tender flesh. But her mouth softened and he could feel her tongue moving gently. Her breath was sweet. Gabriel. She whispered his name like an incantation. Gabriel.
An incantation. A spell. But he had his own spell. It was time to set it free.
He placed one hand against the small of her back and the other around her shoulders and drew her to him even more firmly. She did not resist. For the first time her eyes closed, shuttered by a languorous sweep of lashes.
Her body so soft, so slack, but a rippling coming from deep within her. A slow smile crossed her face.
He struggled to focus. Concentrate, Gabriel. It is time to remember. Remember…
When I entered the House of Blood and Air
I saw the dusky portal
I saw the princes of the dark dwelling
The fragments of text floated through his mind. Minnaloushe's magic code.
I saw men of arms buried in black graves and my name is…
Morrighan's eyes flew open and he felt her mind snap back in alarm. NO!
He tightened his grip on her shoulders. "What is your name, Morrighan?"
She was shaking her head back and forth.
"Say it!"
Twenty-two. The word left her lips in a moan. My name is twenty-two.
You breathe your name In my ashen ear And pen secrets on my soul I am the whore and the saint 1 am the wife and the virgin And my name is…
She lifted her hand and her nails raked fire across his cheek. Without hesitation he slapped her across the face and slammed her body against the wall. The breath left her lips in a painful gasp.
"Say it!"
He had never seen such hate in anyone's eyes. She was trying to fight the compulsion; he could see the muscles in her throat contracting. But the words left her mouth as if of their own volition.
Seven. My name is seven.
Almost finished. Only a few more lines…
Like the speckled wolf I will travel by your side Like the charcoal crow I will wing the soil
She was weeping and her crying was silent and fierce. Snail smears glistened on her cheeks. She collapsed in his arms, deadweight, and as he let her go, she sank to her knees. Her head was bowed, the black hair parted, and he glimpsed the nape of her neck, vulnerable. Reaching down, he cupped his hand under her chin, twisting her face around. She looked at him with drowned eyes.
Please, Gabriel. Don't do this. It's not too late. You can still take my hand and we can travel together. Forget about… her… You used to love me too. Don't you remember?
She stared at him with those blue eyes, and images of their summer together spooled through his memory. Morrighan, her lovely mouth aglow, smiling at him as they dance at Minnaloushe's birthday. Morrighan sitting in the peacock armchair, her eyes closed as she listens to the notes of a violin. Morrighan working in the garden. Her dress is bunched up above her knees; there are dark patches of sweat under her arms and her thin blouse is clinging to her breasts. She is humming underneath her breath. She is happy.
But then another image. Morrighan standing in a window, framed like an object on display, her eyes dispassionate. Behind her shoulder the curve of a staircase…
He stepped back from the woman at his feet. As the last lines of Minnaloushe's spell slotted into his memory, Morrighan's lips pulled away from her teeth. Pink tongue glistening. Eyes like space. Her hair black seaweed.
Speak not, I
Dead are my lips, my cut lips
But my name, my whole perfect name is…
Her lips moved painfully:
My name is Eldaah.
It was over. He closed his eyes briefly.
The next moment she screamed. It felt like a steel needle lobbed into his brain. One of the doors flew open. An avalanche of information rushed through the opening with a sickening roar. It swept him off his feet as though he were a matchstick in the path of a hurricane.
He had become a fleck of dust in a storm of blinding movement and was being propelled forward with such unimaginable force- with such speed-that the objects he encountered along the way dissolved into a demented visual landscape: chaotic, dissonant, like a reel of film edited by a mind no longer sane.
Images beautiful and profane stared at him from the chaos. A figure, its spine encircled by the sinuous form of a snake, flashed briefly past him, followed by a boy dressed in flowing robes, a book to his chest, one finger against his lips as if admonishing Gabriel to silence. A child, its chest ripped open, was cradling its pulsing heart in its own two hands. Gabriel stretched out his hands toward the child, but the next moment it had disappeared and he was teetering on the edge of a precipice, and far down below him was an entire city submerged under ice, and he could hear the voices of angels screaming. Birds fell from the air with crushed beaks and torn wings.