Ilona Andrews - Magic Binds

I looked at Curran.

“I can take the chart,” he offered.

“Thank you.” I looked at Roman. “I do all this and you stop bugging me?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a deal.”

“Excellent.” He rubbed his hands, looking every inch an evil pagan priest. “I love it when everything comes together.”

THE RECORDING OF the writing on my body was done. The cake would have alternating tiers; the first would be chocolate cake with a white chocolate mousse filling and white chocolate buttercream, and the second would be white chocolate with raspberry mousse and white chocolate frosting. They told me I could have whatever I wanted, and if it was the last cake I would ever eat, I wanted it to be as chocolate as it could get.

The colors were green, pink, and lavender, because when I closed my eyes and thought of a happy place, I saw the Water Gardens with lotuses blooming in the water. I told Roman that I wanted wildflowers for my bouquet. He dutifully wrote it down.

“Thank you,” I told Saiman, as he packed away Dave Miller’s things.

“We’re even,” he said.

“We are.”

He nodded and left.

Roman left too, taking Mary Louise with him. I dismissed Ascanio for the day after we put the desks back where they belonged and then waited for him to be out of earshot.

“He’s gone,” Curran told me.

I laid the drawings out on the floor.

My aunt appeared before me and looked at the pages.

She frowned. “This is the high dialect. The language of kings. Why would he . . . Switch these two around for me.”

I moved the two sheets she pointed at.

My aunt peered at the drawings. We waited.

“Moron.” Erra rolled her head back and laughed. “Oh, that sentimental fool! This is what happens when a man is thinking with his dick.”

Curran and I looked at each other.

“It’s a poem. A beautiful, exquisite love poem to your mother and you, written in the old tongue, in the high dialect, and fit for a king. The scholars of Shinar would weep from sheer joy and the poets would murder themselves out of jealousy. He tells your mother she is his life, his sun, his stars, the life-bringing light of his universe. I’d translate for you but your language is too clunky. He goes on about all the sacrifices he would make for her and how much he adores his beloved and how you are the ultimate expression of their love.”

“He still killed her,” I said.

“Yes, he did. Lovesick or not, he’s still your father.” She shook her head. “He inscribed all this on you while you were in the womb. The skill required to accomplish this without injuring the child and with such perfection . . . Your father truly was the jewel of our age. He is a horror, but still a jewel. Here is the important part.”

My aunt pointed down at the piece of paper.

“ And all the princes of the land would kiss the earth beneath her feet— that would be you —and should she fall, I will fall with her, for we are as one, and the despair would dry the spring of life within me. Do you understand? You are bound together. He can’t kill you. If he does, he will die with you.”

My brain screeched to a halt. There was no way.

Curran laughed.

The two of us looked at him.

“It’s not funny,” I told him.

“It’s hilarious.”

“Will you cut it out?” I sat down in my chair, trying to process things. My brain was having real difficulties digesting this.

Curran’s grin was vicious. “I’ve been wondering why the hell he invested all that time into Hugh and then threw him away. Hugh almost killed you. Your dad was sitting in his Swan Palace feeling himself inch toward death’s door as you died of exposure, and he got so scared, he got rid of Hugh so it wouldn’t happen again. It was a knee-jerk reaction.”

“This can’t be right. I almost died more times than I can remember.”

“No, you’ve been hurt more times than you can remember,” Curran said. “Mishmar was the closest you’ve come to a physical death. Nasrin didn’t think you would make it. She told me to make my peace.”

“I almost bled to death in a cage when the rakshasas grabbed me.”

“No. You passed out, but Doolittle said there was a solid chance of recovery from the start. Mishmar was the worst.”

“Is that what you do?” Erra asked. “You keep track of the times she almost dies?”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to find yourself some shapeshifter heifer and have a litter of kittens, rather than deal with all this?”

I thought we were over this.

“Well, if I’m banging a heifer, technically the kids would have an equal chance of being calves and kittens,” Curran said. “So it might be a litter or a small herd.”

“If Curran and I have a litter of kittens, will you babysit?”

Erra stared at me like I had slapped her.

“They will be very cute kittens,” Curran said.

I smiled at the City Eater. “Meow, meow.”

“You won’t have any kittens if my brother is allowed to roam free,” Erra snarled. “You came to me, remember that.”

“If I kill myself, will he die?”

“You’re not killing yourself,” Curran said.

“You can’t tell me what to do.”

He leaned toward me, his eyes full of gold. His voice was a snarl. “This is me telling you: you are not killing yourself.”

“Shut up, both of you.” Erra frowned. “If this were done in the old age, yes, he would die. In this age, I don’t know. The magic is weaker and his will to live is very strong. If you were killed while he’s outside his land, he would have a harder time dealing with it.”

“So it’s not a guarantee?” I asked

“No.”

“But it would hurt him?”

“Yes.”

“I know he tried to kill me in the womb but failed. He says he changed his mind. He probably changed his mind because he started to feel the side effects of trying to snuff me out.”

“If he dies, will she die?” Curran looked at Erra.

“Yes. Probably. Her magic has the potential to be as strong as his, but she’s untrained. It depends on where he is and where she is and if the magic is up. He’s stronger on the land he claimed, and she’s stronger in her territory. Her chances of survival are higher here.”

“So we can’t kill him?” Curran asked.

“Not if you want her to live.”

Curran swore.

I looked at Erra. “How then? How do I stop him?”

“One thing at a time,” Erra said. “First, we fight the battle, then we win the war.”

THE GUILD CALLED, and Curran popped over there “for a few minutes.” Erra retreated back into her blade. She wouldn’t admit it, but manifesting tired her out. She’d make a short appearance and vanish.

I sat alone in Cutting Edge. Nobody called with emergencies or dire predictions. I left the front door open and a nice breeze blew through it, ruffling the papers on Julie’s desk. Derek’s desk was always spartan, Ascanio’s was a collection of carefully color-coded folders, but Julie’s workspace was a mess of stickies, loose notebook pages, and pieces of paper with odd scribblings on them, sometimes in English, sometimes in Greek, or Mandarin, or Latin. A weirdly shaped white rock pinned down a stack of notecards; a smooth polished pebble the color of pure sapphire—it might have been the real thing for all I knew—lay next to a chunk of green glass, hopefully not from the Glass Menagerie; a little blue flower bloomed in a small clay pot next to a dagger . . .

I needed to go home and practice to control my land. Erra had some exercises I needed to do. But I wanted to sit here for another minute.

I had never wanted any of the war, power, land . . . I just wanted this, a small business where I chose which jobs I took and helped people. This office was my Water Gardens. I made a piss-poor princess of Shinar, but I was an excellent Kate of Atlanta.