Ti’an seemed to concentrate on the two men for a moment, then she turned her head. For a moment she gazed at Grace, but her expression was dismissive. Then she bent again over Travis, turning his head, exposing the gleaming skin of his neck. She raised the knife.
Vani had just reached Nim and was picking her up. Larad and Farr weren’t moving. No one could do anything. No one but Grace. The power of the Weirding was all but gone; she had no magic. However, she had something better.
Fury.
“Get your bloody hands off of him, bitch!” spoke a hard voice, and Grace knew it for her own.
Ti’an’s nose wrinkled as she bared pointed teeth. She opened her mouth to scream again. However, Grace was already running. As the first siren‑like wail rose on the air, Grace gritted her teeth, ignoring the pain, and threw herself forward, up the steps of the dais.
The wail ceased as she crashed into Ti’an. The knife flew through the air, then skittered to a stop on the lowest step. Grace’s momentum carried her forward, so that she landed on top of the golden woman. It was like embracing a bronze statue that had just been broken out of its mold, still glowing with forge heat. Grace tried to pull away.
Slender arms and legs coiled around her. In an easy motion, Ti’an flipped her over. Air whooshed out of Grace as she landed hard, the sharp edge of a step cutting into her back. Ti’an straddled her, thighs squeezing Grace’s rib cage. Her delicate hands closed around Grace’s throat, crushing her windpipe. Ti’an’s face was impassive, like that of a golden sculpture; her breath was hot and metallic. Stars exploded in front of Grace’s eyes as Ti’an’s fingers tightened around her neck. . . .
Ti’an froze, her dark eyes going wide. Her mouth opened, but this time no siren call came out. Instead, dark fluid stained her lips.
“My love . . .” she gasped.
Then she slumped to one side and rolled down the steps of the dais.
Air rushed into Grace’s lungs, delicious and painful. After several ragged breaths, she managed to push herself up on one elbow. Ti’an’s body lay at the foot of the dais. The knife jutted from the center of her back. Already her golden skin was beginning to go dull.
“Are you all right, Grace?” said a gentle, familiar voice.
Grace looked up. Travis stood above her, his gray eyes concerned. Pain filled her–the good kind, the ache that let her know she was still alive.
Travis, she tried to say, but the word couldn’t escape her bruised throat.
“Don’t speak,” he said, as if she had the power to do so. He knelt, touching her cheek. “Thanks for coming after me again.”
She smiled and made a gesture with her hands, one that spoke as eloquently as any the mute man Sky had ever made. That’s what I do.
Then she wept as he held her in his arms.
42.
Travis cradled Grace gently as she pressed her face against his chest, sobbing. Strangely, he did not feel like weeping himself. Instead he felt alive, exhilarated.
By Olrig, you showed her!Jack Graystone’s voice crowed in his mind. Thought she could use your blood for her own ends. Well, she found herself on the other end of the knife!
“Shut up, Jack,” Travis growled under his breath.
“What?” Grace said, pushing back and wiping her cheeks.
Travis helped her up. “I said, ‘How’s Nim?’ ”
“She is well,” Vani said, approaching the dais, holding Nim by the hand. The girl walked beside the T’gol, pale‑faced, but apparently unharmed by whatever Ti’an’s scream had done to her.
Though unable to move, even to see, when he was lying on the dais, Travis had been aware of everything that had been taking place around him. The air of this place seemed to hum, transmitting everything that happened within its walls and carrying it to him in a way light and sound could not. He had his back to the two of them; all the same he knew Farr and Larad approached, faces haggard.
“She was sad,” Nim said, gazing down at Ti’an’s motionless body. “She was so sad, she wanted to hurt everybody.”
Grace knelt before the girl and brushed a dark curl from her face. “Why was she sad, Nim?”
The girl pointed to the shriveled mummy chained to the throne.
“Orъ,” Farr said, taking a step up the dais. “So he’s dead after all.”
“For a good long time, by the look of him,” Larad said, giving Ti’an’s body a wide berth.
Travis picked up his fallen serafiand shrugged it on. “She wanted to resurrect him.”
Grace stood, her expression startled. “Could she have?”
“She believed she could,” Vani said, gesturing to the golden bowl. “She would have caught your blood in that, and taken it to him.”
Travis moved up the dais, toward the mummy on the throne. When Ti’an had seduced him, he had fallen not only under her power, but under her thoughts as well. He had glimpsed her mind, as well as the single purpose that had consumed it.
“She recognized his blood flowing in me. She believed it had the power to restore him. I’m not certain if she was right.” He started to reach out toward one of the skeletal hands curled on the arm of the throne, then pulled back. “I’m not sure the single drop in me would have been enough. I think it would take far more to do it. But she was determined to try. She loved him. For three thousand years, ever since the fall of Morindu, she’s been waiting to bring him back to life. And now . . .”
“Now they are together,” Vani said, the words rueful. She knelt beside Ti’an’s body. The once‑golden skin was chalky now. “She was my ancestor. I am of the royal line of Morindu. I am descended of her and Orъ.”
“Perhaps that explains it then,” Farr said. He had been examining the mummy on the throne.
Vani looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“She was a nexus, just like Nim. That was how she could enter this place and guard Orъ in his slumber. I think when she screamed, when she was angry or alarmed enough, it . . . affected the flow of events. And I think it’s the same for Nim.”
Grace held a hand to her throat, wincing. “When they were both screaming like that, it felt like I was falling apart.”
“That’s because you were,” Farr said. Travis noticed he did not gaze at Grace. Instead, his dark eyes were on Vani. “We all were. We were being torn apart by the pull of infinite possibilities, of infinite fates. Each of us might have lived our lives in countless other ways. I think what we felt were those different lives intersecting, overlapping. And canceling one another out, like sound waves can cancel each other out if aligned properly.”
“Is that why they were both screaming?” Grace said. “To neutralize the other?” She looked at Nim, but the girl seemed suddenly shy and hung her head, letting her hair cover her face.
Travis wasn’t certain he completely understood all this, yet Farr’s words feltright. Only when Ti’an and Nim had screamed, it hadn’t affected him as it had the others. With Ti’an’s attention focused on Nim, her spell of seduction had lost its hold on Travis. He had been able to stand, take the knife in his hands, and use it against her. But why hadn’t he been affected by her scream like the rest of them?
“Only a dead man has no fate,” Grace murmured.