Jessica Andersen - Dawnkeepers

When they finally pulled apart, Rabbit said, “What about Myrinne?”

Strike grimaced. “As king, I can’t accept her running around here, never mind being set free, without some sort of assurances.” When Rabbit started to protest, he held up a hand. “As a man, though, I can’t overlook the fact that I brought Leah here under very similar circumstances.”

“With the exception that I wasn’t raised by a witch or held prisoner by the enemy for any great length of time,” Leah put in, laying it out flat. “Sorry, Rabbit, but we just can’t have her here without some sort of oversight.”

“I won’t have her blood-bound,” Rabbit said. “Not to me, and not to anyone else. If that’s your answer, then we’re out of here.” He paused, expression darkening. “And if you think you can stop me, just try it.”

Anna didn’t like the way Strike got big at Rabbit’s tone, didn’t like the idea of picking a fight she wasn’t entirely sure the Nightkeepers were going to win, so she stepped between them, turning her back on Rabbit and facing Strike squarely. She looked him in the eye and said, “I’ll take responsibility for her.”

Which was more than promising to babysit. Even without the blood-bond, if a Nightkeeper claimed a human, the mage was responsible for—and liable for—the human’s actions, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, same as with a bond-servant.

If Myrinne betrayed the Nightkeepers, Anna would be punished as a traitor; if she killed one of them, Anna would be sacrificed in return. The same was true for Lucius, but the blood-bond allowed her a degree of control over him. Without the blood-bond she would have no magical leverage over Myrinne, no recourse if the girl attempted to escape, or worse. Which meant Anna was essentially hooking her safety to the behavior of a witch’s brat she’d barely spoken to.

The world seemed to freeze for a second as her rational side screeched, What in the flying hell are you doing?

She was repaying her debt to Red-Boar by doing what was necessary to keep his son within Skywatch, within the reach of magi who could—hopefully—help him deal with whatever Iago had done to him. Whatever else that meant in terms of her own life and freedom, she’d deal. She was, whether she liked it or not, her father’s daughter, heir to the jaguar bloodline, whose members were notorious for making decisions based on emotion. Damn it.

Strike’s eyes searched hers. “Are you sure?”

She was aware of Rabbit holding his breath behind her, aware of a flash of hope coming from him.

Within that flash, that emotion, a fragment of a vision broke through, showing her Rabbit and Myrinne hand in hand, running along a beaten snow trail. The vision was from the previous night, she knew, but the Rabbit she saw in the vision was no teen, no boy. Tall, strong, and purposeful, wielding his magic out of necessity rather than anger, he was a man, a Nightkeeper protecting the woman he’d chosen as his mate, even if he didn’t fully recognize the connection yet, or believe in it.

“Yes,” she said clearly. “I’m sure.” If having Myrinne to lean on, to protect, would help Rabbit find the man the Nightkeepers needed him to be, then it was worth the risk.

Or so she told herself.

Strike glanced at Jox, then at Nate and Alexis. “Arguments?”

“Numerous,” Alexis said dryly. “But none on this particular matter. Fact is, the options are pretty much all equally risky, and this is the one that’ll keep the Nightkeepers intact.”

“Agreed,” Nate said without looking at her.

Sitting on the other side of Strike, Jox nodded. “I’ll do what I can to help,” he said to Anna.

Knowing the royal winikin as well as she did, she could tell he hated the added exposure she was piling onto herself, but knew it was the only and best option within a culture where both debt and responsibility were weighty matters.

“Then it’s settled,” she said, pushing the words past a sudden tightness in her throat. She sat back down and waited until Strike and Rabbit had done the same before she said to Rabbit, “Okay. Myrinne described her experiences to Leah pretty thoroughly, but I think it’d be good if you start from the beginning and walk us through what happened, what you learned from Iago.”

“There’s a second archive,” Rabbit said quietly, looking at his knuckles, which had gone white with fisted tension. “A library. I found out that much.”

Anna’s breath froze in her lungs, and the world seemed to contract to just the two of them as she whispered, “Iago has it?”

“No. Not as of last night, anyway. He used my powers to . . . question a woman.” Rabbit’s tone and the disgusted twist to his lips made the word “question” into a curse. “He kept asking her where her father hid the stuff.”

The connection sparked on a gasp, and Anna blurted, “Sasha!”

“Did she tell him where to find the library?” Nate asked quickly, his eyes going dark and intent.

Rabbit shook his head. “No. Her mind is super-strong.” He paused. “It was, anyway.”

Anna went still. “Why do you say that?”

“She was linked to Iago when I reversed his mind-bend and tried to fry his cortex.”

Horror gathered in Anna’s gut, alongside despair that they might’ve already lost their next-best chance at finding the library, and the woman Lucius had sought for reasons she didn’t yet understand but wasn’t willing to ignore. “Is she dead?”

“She was breathing when I left her. They both were.” He looked to Strike. “I can take you back there.”

The king nodded and stood. “Let’s go.” But they returned within twenty minutes, empty-handed.

Sasha and Iago were gone.

Lucius didn’t know where he was, didn’t know how to get back to where he was supposed to be. At times he wasn’t even sure he knew where he was supposed to be, only that it wasn’t where he was, so he kept walking, even though he didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

His legs ached, but the road he traveled along never changed. The surface was smooth-packed dirt unmarked by tire tracks or hoofprints, though he occasionally saw the tracks of other pedestrians, always headed in the direction he was going, never the other way. On either side of the road, rocky, gray-brown plains stretched out to join somewhere in the distance with a gray-brown sky that held no clouds. There was only gray-brown everywhere, and the road that stretched out in front of him and behind him.

A part of him wondered if he’d died, if this was the journey the Maya spoke of, where the dead traveled through Xibalba to be sorted according to their actions in life. Those who died a violent death went straight to the sky, while everyone else had to meet a series of underworld challenges, and cross a river whose overlord needed to be paid with the jade pebbles buried over the eyes of the dead.

So far, though, Lucius hadn’t been challenged by anything worse than boredom, nor did he remember dying, and he had to imagine that wasn’t the sort of thing a guy forgot. Last thing he remembered was—

Oh, shit. Calling Anna for help as the green haze descended on him. Had he gone makol ? Had the Nightkeepers sacrificed him while he’d been caught up in the Day-Glo fugue?

Amidst a strange sort of calm that had him continuing onward instead of freaking out and running screaming into the distance—or just standing still and screaming—he found he didn’t blame Anna and the others if that was what they’d decided. Risk was risk, and one grad student’s life didn’t matter much when balanced against the dozen Nightkeepers who needed to save the world. If he’d gone makol and put the Nightkeepers in danger, then they’d done what they’d needed to do.