Faith Hunter - Host

Oh, yeah. All I had left was the plan. The wind caught my loose hair and plucked it from the braid, blowing strands across my face. I twisted them all back into the queue in irritation. What a mess. What a horrid mess. People were going to die. People I loved. And it was going to be my fault.

S top. Stop right there.”

Lucas. Drat. I heaved a deep breath, trying to cleanse away sudden nervous irritation, and turned to him. I would rather face down a dozen devil spawn than my ex when he was ticked off. Lucas was rounding the corner onto Upper Street, moving in a jerky, hurried motion that signified anger, ruffled feathers—No wait, that would be Thadd. I grinned and relaxed a bit, waiting for him.

“I don’t think it’s funny,” he said long before he reached me.

The words rang down the street and I raised my brows at his tone. He was jealous. My lips widened as I watched my ex-husband approach. He was beautiful, black-haired, blue-eyed, limber and slender, with the musculature of the tested and well-practiced runner.

My heart turned over in my chest. Seraph stones. I still loved the cheat.

“What were you doing in his room?” he demanded.

“I’m pretty sure it was an experiment,” I said.

Confused at what seemed an improbable answer, Lucas stopped, blowing puffy clouds of breath like mine. The clouds met between us and merged. I stepped back, not liking the symbolism. I might love him, but I’d never go back to him.

“What kind of experiment?”

“To see if mage-heat could be stopped by the amulet Zadkiel gave me.”

“So? You had to kiss him?”

I let the smile grow. “Yeah. I did. And it worked. Mage-heat died.”

“Meaning that you…” He stopped whatever he was about to say and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. It was the frustrated action of a little boy, and I was certain he had no idea he looked so adorable. The smile left my face at the thought. Lucas Stanhope was not—not—adorable. He was a cheat and a heartbreaker.

“Meaning you didn’t have sex with him?” he said, half question, half declaration.

“I didn’t.”

When I said nothing further, he moved up beside me and we resumed walking toward the store. And the consulate. Criminy. The consulate. Can I make my life any more complicated? A silence built between us broken only by the wind whistling through the town and higher in the mountains and by the crunch of our boots.

Lucas started to speak once and bit down on the words. I waited. “Where do I stand?” he asked at last. “With you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You put me in the position of consort in the consulate. That announced to the world that we have a relationship, that we share a child. But afterward you left and went to another man. Where does that leave me? Consort or not?”

I watched my boot toes as they emerged beneath the cloak with each step. Left, right, left. I might die tonight. Or he might. The whole town might. I owed him honesty at the least. Kindness at the best. “I love you, Lucas. I think I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you.”

When he touched my arm I shook him off, fighting the bitterness that welled up in me, tightening my throat, making words difficult to speak. “But I can’t trust you. Because you can’t help but look at any and every female you pass. You can’t help but come on to them, flirt with them, and make sure they fall in love with you.” I heard the long-repressed hostility in my voice but was incapable of controlling it, and I held up my palm when he tried to interrupt. “It’s your nature, Lucas. You’d seduce and sleep with my twin if she were around.”

“You keep bringing up the past,” he said. “I’m different now. I really am.”

I looked at him, sadness welling up like water between the rocks of old anger. “I was pretty busy at the consulate meeting. A little overwhelmed. But I had a moment to notice you noticing Romona Benson.”

Lucas had the grace to flush. But at least he didn’t deny it. “Is that why you went and ‘experimented’ with my cousin? Who has wings, for crying out loud. Wings.” When I didn’t answer, Lucas put out a hand again, touching only my cloak, turning me to him. He looked bewildered and, at the sight, I wanted to give in, wanted to bring him back and comfort him. I crossed my arms instead, knowing it was a protective gesture, knowing he would know that.

“I remember how you looked in his bedroom, in his bed. You looked all tousled and beautiful, the way you looked with me, when we were married. And I could have killed him.” He held out his hands, flexing them into fists, and a fearful wonder touched his voice. “I wanted to kill him. My own cousin. With freaking wings.”

My resentment eased, leaving my heart just a bit lighter in spite of all the danger and uncertainty in my life. “Yeah, well. That’s what the experiment was for, I guess, to see if kylen and mages can be in the same place without causing mage-heat. It worked.”

We stopped at the entrance to Thorn’s Gems and I looked sidelong at him. In mage-sight, Lucas glowed with a nonhuman energy pattern, a bright blue aura. Beneath his skin, blood coursed in veins and arteries, blood that throbbed and flowed in a rich, royal blue configuration. Totally not human. I said, “He’s going to be my champard. Thadd is.”

Lucas’ mouth turned down hard. “I’ve been reading about the duties of champards. They include sex.”

“Sometimes,” I agreed gently, “for some mages.”

“And you’re going to make him your champard?”

“At dusk. In the sigil in the street. But I’m not making him mine for mating. I’m making him a champard so he can be part of the plan I worked out. So I can protect him.”

“And me? Us?”

I opened the door to the shop and stepped inside. The heat within blasted my face after the cold of the street, and I stopped in the doorway, my back to him. “You divorced me, Lucas. There is no us.” I closed the door, closing him out of my life, closing him into the cold.

Standing in my tattered dobok, I stood with my back against the kitchen counter and ate a huge bowl of oatmeal, needing the carbs and the sugar. I usually hoarded the sugar, doling it out in drips and drabs, but this time I had put as much as I wanted on the hot cereal. If I died tonight, why leave a perfectly good sweet uneaten?

Spooning in the oatmeal, I stared at my loft, the one place in the world that was mine. I had bought and paid for the building. I had decorated the apartment to my tastes and mine only, surrounding myself with the greens and taupes and teals I liked best. I loved this place. I never wanted to leave it. But for weeks, it had seemed as if I might have to leave it at any moment. I was always saying goodbye to my life.

Full, I set the dishes in the sink, unwashed. Stripping, leaving my clothes in a pile on the loft floor, I filled the silver bowl with charged stones and dumped them onto the bed, dropped down, curled around them, and pulled the comforter over me. I fell into a dreamless sleep. When I woke, it was after four, a dull afternoon light glowing softly through the windows, predicting the storm brewing. I was refreshed in a way I hadn’t been in a long time.

I rose and took a hot shower to loosen muscles that had stiffened in sleep, and added several drops of eucalyptus oil to a rag I draped over the rail. The medicinal scent in the warm wet atmosphere cleared my head, and I inspected my body in the writhing steam. The soles of my feet were paler and thicker now, not the bright shade of thin, healing skin. My calves and shins were healed over, my knuckles and the backs of my hands were the bright white of scar tissue. My throat was one solid scar. Other scars crisscrossed my body. Ugly. My side, however, was worse—a black ring with a hot, red, central depression. It looked infected, though it didn’t hurt. In mage-sight it was even darker, swirling a sickly mustard yellow.