“Thank you,” Geena said. She closed her eyes and caught a momentary stab of surprise from Nico—or from Volpe, perhaps—and then they held hands and started breathing together.
She breathed in once, deeply, and Nico did the same. She smelled the dust of old bones.
On the second breath, Geena felt a staggering attention focusing on her, as if everyone in Venice had stopped what they were doing and were thinking of her, and her alone. She gasped and tasted Nico’s expelled breath as well, heard his own gasp, and squeezed back when he clasped her hands.
They breathed in together for the third time.
Her beating heart settled. Calmness descended. She felt Nico shaking, just for a second, but enough to force her eyes open. Looking down at the skull on the ground between them she saw nothing different. She held on while Nico calmed more slowly than she had, his shoulders slumping, and he seemed to lessen before her, shrinking down into something …
Into something she knew. He was becoming Nico again, and the realization struck her that, over the past few days, Volpe had changed her lover so much. Can he ever really recover from that? she wondered, squeezing his hands. Can he ever be himself again?
She stood and Nico stood with her, his eyes still squeezed shut. She raised one foot and brought it down on the skull, the old fractures snapping under the impact, bone fragments and teeth scattering around her feet.
The room gasped. Nico’s eyes snapped open, and they were fixed directly on Geena. Shock froze the moment for them both. In her mind, and through the unique link she had with Nico, she felt a widening of perception, and an expansion of knowledge. She knew the city like never before—its shape and quirks, its people and places, those that lived good lives, and those not so good—and for a moment she and Nico felt as if the city was inside them, not the other way around.
We are both the new Oracles, she thought, and she heard that idea echoed in Nico’s voice.
She paused for a measureless instant before stepping in close and hugging him to her. Breathing him in. Holding him tight.
The Chamber of Ten is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Spectra Mass Market Original
Copyright © 2010 by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Spectra, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52167-5
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