“The blocks didn’t work,” Rabbit continued. “Iago got everything. He knows what I know about Ix’s death, the Triad spell, Anna and Mendez being chosen, how Brandt is linked to Cabrakan. . . .” He trailed off and looked at Patience, eyes hollow. “Once he realized you and Brandt killed Ix, he focused on you guys. He pulled everything he could about you. . . . I’m not sure what he got out of me, but he has to have seen the twins.”
“The—,” she began, then broke off when the oxygen drained out of her lungs. She wasn’t even aware that she’d started swaying until Brandt grabbed her arm to keep her from going down. “No,” she whispered, leaning on him. When he started to say something, though, she held up a hand to stop him, and then pushed away to stand on her own when she repeated, louder: “No.”
Rabbit looked suddenly eighteen again. “I’m sorry—”
“I mean ‘no’ as in ‘I’m not going to let this screw me up,’” she interrupted. “The whole point of having Hannah and Woody take them away was so nobody—not even Iago or the Banol Kax themselves—could find them if our enemies learned of their existences, right?” Strike had even gone so far as to have Rabbit use his mind-bending to make it impossible for a teleporter to lock on to any of them. They were off the grid. Safe. Please, gods, let them be safe, she thought, knowing she was beyond lucky that Rabbit didn’t know the one vital clue that Iago could have used to find them.
“She’s right,” Brandt said, stepping up beside her so their fingertips brushed. “How much does it really matter that Iago knows who was chosen for the Triad? I’m already watching my back, and the other two are protected. He wants a piece of me and Patience because we killed Ix? Well, we want a piece of him right back. As for the intersection, we won the first round of that fight.” He gestured to the tunnel entrance. “So I vote we get down there and see about protecting our newest asset.”
Sven’s eyes fired. “Hell, yeah. Let’s—” A roaring boom cut him off as a violent explosion detonated beneath them. The ground shuddered and bucked, sending Patience reeling. She grabbed on to Brandt, screaming as a huge gout of debris erupted from the pyramid’s doorway in a giant shotgun blast of dust and shrapnel.
There was no time for a shield spell. Brandt turned them so he took the brunt; she felt the impacts shuddering through him, and cried out when pain slashed across her upper arm on one side, her calf on the other. A series of crashes followed the first detonation, sounding like the earth was tearing itself apart.
As the noise faded, the others started shouting questions and raging at their enemy, but Patience couldn’t make out words over the low-throated rumble of stone and earth resettling itself, and the ringing in her ears.
Heart hammering, she pushed away from Brandt, took two steps in the direction of the pyramid, and stopped dead.
“No!” The word ripped from her throat in a scream. She pressed the back of one hand to her mouth, tears flowing at the sight of a huge pile of rubble where the pyramid had been.
It had collapsed in and down, toppling into the deep, circular depression that had appeared behind and under it. Their cave.
“He planted a second bomb,” she said numbly. Her own voice sounded strange in her ears, though the ringing had subsided.
Brandt gripped her hand, squeezing hard, his eyes dark with anger. But then he tugged her away from the wreckage to where the others were gathering. “Come on. We need to get our asses out of here and regroup.”
He was right. The chameleon shield had held through the blast, but the humans would be incoming, rushing to see the damage that they would undoubtedly blame on one of the miniquakes that were part of Cabrakan’s warm-up act. And the magi were banged up: She had deep cuts on her arm and leg.
Brandt was favoring one side of his torso, his face drawn in pain; Sven was cradling his arm; the rest of their teammates were variously bloody and battered. Not to mention that they were all starting to sag with postmagic fatigue.
Patience stared at the rubble for a long, yearning moment, not wanting to believe that the beautiful blue-green lagoon, with the flowered vines and the pretty white beach where she and Brandt had first made love together, where they made sense together, was gone. But it was.
After a long moment, she turned away and headed to join the others. And she didn’t let herself look back.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Skywatch When Patience had finally resigned herself to the twins being gone, one of the few things that had helped was knowing that Hannah and Woody were taking care of them, raising them. But when the banged-up team materialized back at Skywatch and the other winikin descended on their charges, she would’ve given almost anything for Hannah to be there too.
Then Patience would have had someone to fuss over her, someone who would be focused on helping her bounce back as quickly as possible, with no other agenda beyond that. And although part of her beating the depression had involved being responsible for her own well-being, just then she would’ve given a body part to duck that load for an hour or two.
Sighing, she dropped onto the nearest couch and let the chaos of fragmented explanations and winikin -led triage flow around her. She would get up in a minute, she thought. Already, her accelerated healing powers were dulling the pain of the cuts on her shoulder and leg, expelling the debris, and knitting the flesh. But right now, she didn’t want to have to take care of herself.
“What do you say we head for the suite, so we can get cleaned up and survey the damage in peace?”
It took a moment for Brandt’s words to penetrate the cottony numbness that surrounded her, another moment for her to focus on him.
He was leaning over her, holding out a hand that was crusted with blood, dust, and ash, as was the rest of him. His hair stuck up in gluey clumps, and blood seeped from a cut above one eyebrow, but she was struck by the way those red-rimmed eyes were entirely focused on her. She saw grief and anger in him, and frustration that Iago had beaten them and destroyed the cave.
But she didn’t see the hated distance, the detachment. He was still there, totally with her in the moment. They were back at Skywatch . . . but he still had gold in his eyes.
Hope fluttered in her chest, cautiously unfurling. Had El Rey changed things between them after all?
She didn’t know. What she did know was that, just then, she needed someone to fuss over her, and he was offering.
Putting her hand in his, she said, “Lead the way.”
He pulled her to her feet and they set off toward the residential wing, leaning on each other.
“You two want some help?” Jox called across the great room.
Patience smiled at the royal winikin, but shook her head. “No, thanks. We can take care of each other.” And for the first time in a long, long time it didn’t feel like that was wishful thinking.
Two hours later, the residents of Skywatch gathered in the great room. Michael was there, having left Mendez, still zonked out in one of the basement storerooms and guarded by Carlos and a double-
barreled shotgun loaded with jadeshot. Sasha was there too; Strike had ’ported her back to the compound so she could quick-heal Sven’s busted arm, Brandt’s cracked ribs, and a few other blast injuries, and also to give her a break from watching over Anna, whose condition was stubbornly unchanging. Nate and Alexis, posing as members of the extended family, had taken over at the hospital.