Lili St Crow - Reckoning

“I promise.” He sounded sure, at least.

“Do you swear ?” So I was five years old again. So what?

“I swear. I . . .” He tensed, and I felt him swallow convulsively, too. “I’ve got to be worth you, Dru. I’ve got to get strong, so nobody can use me like that again.”

“Please.” There was nothing else I could say. “Graves. Please . . .”

But when he stepped back, I let him go. It tore inside me, way down deep where all the worst hurts settle. He took another step back, the gravel crunching, and when I finally looked back up at him, it was a shock to see.

The tears trickled down his cheeks. His eyes were red-rimmed, but his jaw was set. He opened his mouth, shut it. Opened it again, and what came out shocked me even more.

“I love you. Okay? I promise.” Another step back, his green gaze holding mine. “Hey.” His throat worked, like he was catching the words halfway and pulling them back. “Dru. What’s that short for, anyway?”

I actually felt my heart break. It cracked right in half, and a sobbing little laugh that sounded like a cry came out. Got caught at the back of my palate, right where the bloodhunger lived. I forced it down.

“I’ll tell you when you come back,” I managed. It was all I could say.

I guess it must have been the right thing. Because he turned on one heel and headed back for the open passenger door, head up, stepping like he was walking on quicksand or something that might throw him at any moment.

He grabbed the door. But just before he got in, he looked back over his shoulder, and that soundless flash of communication passed between us.

Once, in Dad’s truck in a snowstorm, I’d clung to him. Because we were both wrecked, and when you’re wrecked, the only thing you can do is hold onto whatever you can.

Hold on hard .

We were still shipwrecked, Graves and me. But that look told me everything. He was still holding on. As hard as he could.

It just wasn’t enough.

He ducked down, the door slammed, and the brake lights flashed. There was a pause, but then the SUVs rolled away, bumping up onto the paved drive. Two cars meant guards. He’d probably get wherever he needed to safely.

I stood there and watched as they receded down the Schola’s long driveway. The trees arched over, leafdapple shade like water pouring over the cars, and my fingers itched. For the first time in a long time I wanted to draw, and I knew exactly what I’d draw. I’d try to capture the way the leaves held the sunlight, the red of the brake lights crimson dots, like fangmarks.

What I couldn’t draw was the way my heart finished cracking and fell, and the feeling that took its place in my chest. A kind of emptiness, like a church in the middle of the week, full of murmuring space.

Sometimes you do grow up in an instant. I think that was the first moment I started thinking like an adult.

And I hated it.

Hiro laid apair of my sneakers on the table right in front of me, his jaw set and his dark gaze level. His face might have been carved from caramel wood, and he winced a little if he moved too quickly.

I didn’t want to think about it.

“I don’t get it.” I sat, numb all over, in the high-backed wooden chair, my arms crossed defensively. “Why do I have to do this?”

“They’re envoys,” Bruce said again, patiently, his dark eyes worried. He magnanimously refused to note that my face was tear-streaked and I was visibly shaking. “The Maharaj wish to see you—”

“So they can have another crack at hexing me to death? Or poisoning me? I don’t think so.” I pulled more tightly into myself, leaning forward a little. The long mirror-shiny table in the Council room was just the same; the silver samovar glinting against the wall where food was usually arranged looked like an old friend. “Can’t you just talk to them? Like, you’re the one who’s really in charge. I’m just a figurehead.” And it’s probably a lot safer for everyone that way too. You know what the hell you’re doing. Mostly .

Bruce spread his hands. It was the first time I’d ever seen him in a white button-down that was less than perfectly pressed. His dark hair was messy, and his proud Middle Eastern face was about as close to haggard as a model-attractive djamphir could get. “They think you may be . . . one of theirs. Or related, somehow.”

“Great.” If I hugged myself any harder I was going to crack in half. “I don’t give a good goddamn what they—”

“Milady.” Hiro, softly and respectfully. But the single word cut through what I’d planned on saying. “Please. Listen.”

I wiped at my cheeks with the flat of my right hand. The rock in my throat didn’t get any smaller, no matter how many times I tried to force it down. “Fine.” I sounded ungracious, to say the least.

“Thank you.” He stood, slim and straight, his gray silk high-collared shirt unwrinkled and his eyes, as well, shadowed with exhaustion. It was the first time I’d seen that, either on him or on Bruce, and I suddenly wondered where the rest of the Council was. “Milady, you are able to do . . . certain things svetocha are not traditionally able to do. We were unsure where these talents came from; the djinni -children may believe you have some strain of their blood from your . . . human . . . side.” He took a deep breath, half-flinching again like his ribs pained him. “The Maharaj have severe prohibitions against harming a female who can use their particular sorceries. The fact that you were attacked, that you were harmed, creates a very large problem for them. A . . . debt, if you will. And that debt is a way we may pressure them into abandoning their former neutrality against, as well as their recent alliance with, the nosferat . This is an opportunity. One that is exceedingly rare, one we must press, and one we must ask you to accede to.”

I killed Sergej. Isn’t that enough? I shook my head. A single curl fell in my face, bounced. “I don’t want to talk to them.” Leave me alone. Jesus .

“You are the only one they will speak to, Milady. Especially since Reynard is . . .” A single shrug. Hiro was economical with his body language. Just one of those things that told you he was older, as djamphir go.

Way older.

“Christophe?” A sick thump in the pit of my stomach. I hadn’t even asked about him. “What’s wrong with Christophe?”

“Nothing.” Bruce almost twitched. “He’s simply resting. But he is unavailable.”

I fixed him with a glare. “What’s wrong with him? Did it . . . did I hurt him? The blood, did it—”

“He’s resting . He’s survived worse.” Bruce sighed. It wasn’t a Dylan-worthy sigh, but it was close. Dylan had been a world-champion patient-suffering sigh-er. “Milady. Dru. Please . A formal alliance with the Maharaj—not just a truce—will save lives. Djamphir lives, wulfen lives, and that means human lives as well. I know your loup-garou has left—”

It was like a pinch on a fresh bruise. “Don’t talk about him.” I gingerly uncurled my arms. Reached for my sneakers, suddenly glad it was Hiro who had gone up and gotten them. I didn’t feel like I could face Nat right now. “How come the Maharaj think I’m . . .” I let the question trail off. Two great Houses , Sergej hissed in my memory, and I shuddered.

Great. Djamphir were part sucker, and now they were thinking I was part something else. Where was the human part of me supposed to fit, I wondered?

“Because you killed one of your attackers with his own sorcery.” Bruce grasped the back of a chair—the one just to my left, the one Christophe sometimes sat in at Council meetings. When he wasn’t up pacing the room like a caged animal. “And later, something about a smokedog, a kuttee , sent to track you. I do not know the whole, Dru. They will not speak unless it is to you. You are our hope.”