Once Dead, Twice Shy

"I'm not the rising dark timekeeper," I said as Nakita pulled me back a step. "I'm the rising light. That's why I want to trade Kairos his amulet for my body. Ron, he's got my body. I can go back to the way I was! Tell him I can break my hold on his amulet." My gaze darted to Kairos, seeing his disbelief. "I can! I've done it before! Ron, tell him! Tell him I'm the rising light timekeeper!"

But Ron was looking at the ground, scaring me.

With a false ease, Kairos poured amber liquid into a crystal cup, sipping it lightly before setting it down. "Still don't have it all?" he said. "You were fated to be my student, Madison; why else would I scythe you? Ron can't take you now even if he wanted to. He's been teaching the rising light timekeeper for over a year."

What the… My frantic gaze went to Ron, reading in his downcast expression that Kairos was telling the truth. "You son of a dead puppy," I whispered. "You knew? You're teaching someone else? Is that why you passed me off to Barnabas?"

Ron winced. He came forward a step, and Nakita pulled me back two. Disgusted, I shook Nakita's hold off me and stood upright in the new day under my own power. The dark reaper faced the sun and knelt with her sword upon one knee and her head bowed—she looked like she was praying, hair hiding her face as a soft, eerie keening came from her.

"I did it for mankind, Madison," Ron said persuasively. "You could stop the wrongful deaths if I could get you to align yourself with me. Think of it! A dark timekeeper who believed in choice? There'd be no more scythes, no more lives cut short. Kairos would be bereft of power, leaving only peace behind as you took his place."

"Why would she align herself with you?!" Kairos exclaimed. "You hid her from the seraphs behind allegations and investigations, denied her existence from those who would have righted things. It was your own actions that forced the truth of her existence from where we'd both hidden it so we could fight over her like dogs over scraps. You whispered false truths into her ear until her choices were the ones you wanted. You passed her instruction off to a reaper , giving him a task you knew he couldn't manage while you tutored the one fated to replace you, intending to leave Madison bereft of skills in case the truth should come out and she took my place, safely ignorant and at a disadvantage." Kairos turned to me, disgust in his eyes. "And you let him."

My head moved back and forth in denial. I hadn't known. How could I?

I jumped when Nakita was suddenly at my side, the gentle touch of her wings brushing me. Her sword was gone, and I stared at her, seeing her confusion, knowing what she was feeling, since I was feeling it myself: betrayal, dismay, fear.

"At least I didn't try to kill her," Ron muttered.

"No, you kept her ignorant."

"I'm the one who saved her!" Ron shouted back.

"You didn't save me," I said, lips barely moving. "I died. Remember?"

The light breeze coming up from the beach lifted my hair to make the purple tips tickle my cheek. I tried to understand. It didn't make sense. I could not be the rising dark timekeeper. I didn't believe in fate.

Ron started forward, and I jerked out of my fog. "Stop!" I shouted, gripping my amulet with my other hand outstretched, and he halted, stymied.

"The seraphs fated Madison to take your place?" Nakita said, her voice cracking. "You sent me to kill the one who would be my master? The next who would uphold seraph will?"

Kairos frowned at her. "She wouldn't be your new master if you would let me destroy her soul. With her gone, I will live forever, able to claim a place at a higher court." Kairos pulled himself into a proud stance. "I will be immortal. Immortal, Nakita!" he said, his expression becoming fervent as he gestured, almost knocking over his cup. "It would be enough to shift the tides of time to our favor forever. Imagine it!"

"You promised to help me," Nakita whispered, her voice softer than the wind.

Kairos glanced at her in annoyance, but his eyes narrowed as he realized the threat she was. "Give me your amulet," he said, holding out his hand, and when she didn't, he strode forward, anger and dominance in his movement.

I stifled a gasp when Nakita shoved me behind her, and my feet scrambled to keep me upright. There was a sharp ping that seemed to make the new sunlight shiver, and when I looked, Nakita's amulet was in Kairos's hand and he was striding to the nearby table. He had made her helpless. Crap. Now what?

"I'm still your master, you ignorant angel," he said as Nakita's source of power clinked upon the table; then his smile chilled me to the bone. "Now. Madison. About your body."

Oh, God. He had my body. He could destroy my soul. Ron stood unmoving, not that I expected anything from him.

Nakita dropped to a knee before Kairos, her face pale and a ribbon of moisture slipping from her eye. "You said you could make me well," she said, grief clear in her tone. "I don't want to be afraid."

Despite my own fear, pity rose through me. She was fallen, an angel doubly betrayed. The innocence of a wild thing of power given knowledge of death.

"You promised, Kairos," Nakita said softly as tears slipped from her and she wiped them away, shock showing briefly at their presence. "I suffered black wings eating my memory. Memory is all I have. I believed you. You sent me to kill her because you fear death?"

"I will be immortal!" Kairos shouted, his anger bursting forth. "How can you presume to know what it's like to fear death? You've existed since time began and will until it ends!"

Nakita stood, the air shimmering where her wings would be. "I know now what it's like to fear death, but I still live by seraph will," she said, her voice shaking. "I live by it, and you will die by it."

Kairos smirked, fingering her amulet on the table. "How, Nakita? You belong to me."

But then she pulled from her belt a white rock, bound by black wire and laced on a simple black cord. It didn't look like the amulet I had returned to her in the woods, and Kairos shook his head as if it meant nothing—until she rubbed a thumb across it and what looked like salt fell away to show a simple black stone glowing with infinity. It was the stone I'd returned to her in the woods. As if I had been her keeper. I'd stained it with my tears—gifting her with a symbol of my grief and an atonement for having broken the purity of her existence.

Nakita's hand fisted about it. "I accept you," she said to me, though her frightening grimace was for Kairos.

"No!" I shrieked, reaching out when the glint of her sword flashed a pure black. Nakita leaped forward to send her blade cleanly through Kairos.

Ron took several steps forward, crying out in dismay, but it was too late. It was done.

Kairos looked at his unmarked middle, blinking when he brought his gaze up, fixing first on the violet stone, then her eyes. "You've failed us," he whispered, and then he collapsed.

Nakita reached out and caught him gently, almost lovingly, as she eased the dark timekeeper to the polished floor. "Fate, Kairos," Nakita whispered, crying as her hands slid from him, and she closed his eyes so they wouldn't look to the heavens. "The seraphs fated her taking your place. Your span was done. There is no failure. There is only change."

"Oh my God!" I shouted, terrified as I stood there. "You killed him! How could you…? He's dead!"

Ron made a sound of regret, and I spun to him, frightened. If Kairos was dead, then that meant—"He's not dead," I babbled. "Tell me he's not dead."

"He's gone," Ron said, and I danced back when Nakita was suddenly before me, kneeling and offering me her sword.

"Nakita, no!" I cried out, panicked.

"My lady," she insisted, pain in her fragile expression. "I am flawed."