Four dead, and she’d barely known their names, when the league needed every man and woman it had.
Well, not every woman.
She staggered away from the destruction. Others had taken breaks away from the birnenston to give their teshuva a chance to refresh, so no one paid attention. Thankfully, the tenebrae that had escaped their glass enclosure hadn’t returned, though the anguish must have been tempting. Despite their much-vaunted control over their emotions, the talyan almost shimmered with the waves of their fury and grief.
Maybe the pain was so bad even the malice wanted no part of it.
Maybe the malice were smarter than her.
Not far beyond the scattered glass and wood, she found the crumpled remnants of the float-plane wings. She swayed, dripping blood from her fingertips. The divot she and Jonah had kicked up where they hit the ground looked like a shallow grave.
No Corvus, of course. But, really, even if she returned now with her anklet in hand, or around her ankle, actually, could she redeem the talyan sacrifice?
Was this how Jonah had felt when he lost his hand?
To live and fight was to salvage their souls. Anything else—even death itself—was unacceptable. At least she understood him now.
Now that it was too late.
A yellow glimmer caught her gaze, and the first ray of sunlight filtered through the trees just as Corvus stepped into view.
“Come to me, alone, tonight,” he said. “I have no fight with your friends.”
Jonah had told her and told her not to scream or swear. So for once, she took his advice and just stared at Corvus with numb fatigue. “Can’t you just kill me here?”
His smile was as gentle as sinking into deep water when the last breath was gone. “No.”
“Nim!”
She turned her sun-blinded eyes—damn it, were those tears again?—toward Jonah’s call.
He bounded out of the woods, someone’s borrowed spear half raised in his good hand. Since it was only half raised, he must not have seen Corvus. But his blue eyes were narrowed in suspicion, so she wasn’t entirely off the hook.
She smiled grimly to herself. Off the hook? Oh, she so wasn’t off the hook.
Jonah was beyond wrecked, she knew, that he took her smile at face value and let the sword drop to his side. “Don’t sneak off.”
“I didn’t get far.” She thought she shouldn’t bother denying the “sneak” part. “Just wanted to marvel at our miraculous survival.”
He prodded the ruined wings with the butt of the spear. “Too bad Corvus survived too.”
“Yeah. And took the anklet with him.”
“We’ll get it back.” He wasn’t so weary that he didn’t recognize the incredulous look she shot him. He shrugged one shoulder. “We must.”
No matter what. If she wanted to marvel, here was another opportunity. Not a miracle, but horror. After what had just happened, he was ready to go again. If Corvus walked out from between the trees, Jonah would fight.
She spun on her heel and strode toward the other talyan. The prickle of tiny hairs rising on the back of her neck spread down both arms. Corvus was watching them go. He wanted her alone.
Well, hadn’t she always been that? Until Jonah.
She kept her pace brisk until they cleared the knot of trees, then slowed to match her steps to his. “Thanks for saving my ass.”
“Thanks for saving mine.”
“Remember you said that,” she murmured.
The talyan were draining the last of the ferales they’d incapacitated during the fight. As the orange caution lights went out in the snapping-turtle eyes, the husks clattered apart.
“Ashes to dust to mud.” Sera flung down the last husk. It shattered in a spray of shell and bone and glass shards. “And gone.”
Archer touched the small of her back, and she whirled with demon speed. Nim took a worried breath, but the other woman threw herself into her mate’s arms.
Across the clearing, Ecco ripped apart the chain-link fence. Four white-bound forms lay in the grass, and Nim averted her gaze as the talyan lifted their dead brethren with gentle strength. Haji looked almost as white as they helped him into the truck, their encouraging whispers too soft for her demon to hear.
“Don’t,” Jonah said softly.
“Don’t what?” Don’t curse. Don’t scream. Don’t touch. Don’t die.
“You’re thinking that it should’ve been you.”
She tried to make her face as smooth as glass, but there wasn’t much inspiration in the rubble. Inside, she felt as torn. “You can’t read my mind.”
“Not even necessary, since everyone here feels the same.”
“It wasn’t their fuckup, losing the anklet.”
“You’re part of the league now. Fuckup for one, fuckup for all.” His weary smile invited her to tease him.
She couldn’t. They had made her one of them—one for all—and look what had happened to them.
Demon possessed they might be, and doomed to fight from the shadows, but they had twisted their darkness into something that looked a helluva lot like light. And love.
If only she could have seen that earlier. If only she could have seen it in herself.
When she didn’t answer, Jonah’s smile turned brittle, but he reached for her and drew her into his arms. “After I lost my hand, I thought I had nothing more to offer. I thought I’d never be anything but an ugly reminder. But I was wrong.” He pulled away a little to look down at her. “I won’t say you’re my reason for living. I won’t burden you with that again. But you make living . . . good.” He kissed her temple, and his gentleness—more shattering than anything else that night—made her close her eyes. “We’ll get through this.”
“I know you will.” She’d make damn sure of that.
CHAPTER 25
In the end, she didn’t even have to be particularly sneaky.
Jonah, Jilly, and a handful of others had volunteered to take the fallen talyan to the league’s burial ground down south.
“It’s quiet down there, empty,” he told Nim from the shower. “No people means no tenebrae. Just grass and sky.”
She sat on the tile floor, her arms wrapped around her knees. She’d lost the impetus to unlace her mudsoaked sneakers. This was the last straw for them, she decided morosely. Even though the canvas was black, the filth was so ingrained, the shoes couldn’t be saved. “How long will you be gone?”
“Just for the day. It’s a long drive, but we’ll come right back. One promise we make is to bury the dead before the decades of immortality catch up with the corpse. And then we carry on the fight.”
When she didn’t answer, he poked his head out around the curtain. “Get in while the water’s hot. I won’t bother you.”
“I don’t mind being hot and bothered.” She gave up on the laces and toed off the shoes before stripping. She slid into the shower next to him. “If you’re not still mad at me for going with Fane.”
“I’m furious.” But his hand smoothing lather over her shoulder belied his words. “Just don’t do it again.”
She rested her forehead against his chest. “I won’t go anywhere with the angel-man,” she promised. How easy was that?
He took a small step back, as far as the shower allowed, and tipped her head up to stare into her eyes.
Oops, had she sounded too accommodating?
But his gaze was soft. “Are you still mad at me?”
“For what?”
“For being an idiot?”
“Oh. Well, if I held that against every man . . .”
“Not every man. Me.” He brushed his thumb along her bottom lip. “I want to be your only man.”
“You are,” she whispered.
“I want you, Nim, as I’ve never wanted anything. Not for the fight, not for the teshuva or myself. For you. I love you.”