Nynnia moved over to Sorcha’s side. “My father and I will wait here while you attempt this madness.”
The Deacon felt a heat kindle in her stomach. “Just what I was about to say. We wouldn’t want you to get in the way.” She arched her eyebrow as a warning that she was prepared to say so much more.
The young woman glared back. “Indeed. If you do not return, we will need to take on the Murashev instead.”
Merrick reached across and squeezed her hand. “We will be fine. It won’t come to that.”
It was quite impressive, really, how completely Nynnia had enamored the young man. That was the problem with the novitiate; too many young people coming out of it with no real world experience.
She glanced at Raed for a second. Whatever they had was different. The level of physical passion was unexpected but not dangerous—what gave her pause were the gentler feelings that she dared not examine right now. The Pretender whispered to Aachon, instructing him to stay with Nynnia. The first mate, whose dark eyes bored into Sorcha’s, nodded as if completely compliant, but she wasn’t fooled. Like Kolya, he was the type to give way and then flow back like water.
The Pretender came over to their little huddle. “Aachon has agreed to take the crew—and you and your father, Nynnia—to a bolt-hole he knows here in Vermillion. A little pub in Dyer’s Lane called the Red Flag. But if we’re not back by morning, I can’t guarantee what he will do.”
“It won’t matter.” Merrick took a deep breath and turned in that subconscious way that all Deacons had, in the direction of the Mother Abbey. “Trying to enter the Abbey as outlaws—if we’re not back by morning, we’re dead anyway.”
Sorcha let out a little laugh. “Entering the Abbey as rogues, indeed. Dead might be the best we can hope for.”
Across the Bond she felt Merrick’s surge of interest. He was fingering his Strop and looking at her with something better than fear and excitement. The boy had an idea, and by the look of it . . . it wasn’t going to be the type she’d enjoy. He hugged Nynnia tight, even dropping a kiss on her lips.
Sorcha grimaced, but said nothing. It was strange for her to feel such dislike and have it tinged with the overflow of his emotions. It was enough to give a person a stomach complaint.
Still, once the little band had left them on the street corner, she was impressed with her partner’s ability to snap back to the matter at hand. When it was just the three of them, she was much more comfortable.
“So, you have an idea, Merrick,” Sorcha whispered. “Some brilliant plan to break into our own damn Abbey—full of Sensitives who will pick us up the moment we set foot in it?”
“You’re really not going to like it at all. I thought of it, and I don’t like it.”
Once he had explained it, she knew that he was, in fact, underestimating how little she would like it. Even Raed turned pale at what Merrick suggested. “I . . . I can’t do that, Sorcha.”
Her partner coughed a little and withdrew around the corner. She touched the Pretender’s face, running her thumb along his lip line. He kissed her fingertips, and the sensation ran down deep inside her. Beautiful man, even in this dire moment, she couldn’t help reacting to him. “You gave your life into my hands, Raed—now I am giving you mine. I trust you too, you know.”
The Pretender pulled her in close and kissed her. “I won’t let you down,” he whispered against her lips.
It was he who found them the donkey and the cart in a quiet knackers’ yard, and liberated the poor creature. The Abbey was in the final deepest curl of the city; only a mile from the gates to the castle, yet a small town to itself. It had no defenses like the Emperor’s residence. It needed none. However, there was still a lay clergy guard. Raed pulled up his hood, smeared mud on his face and hid his saber in the hay on the back of the small cart.
Sorcha and Merrick, meanwhile, prepared themselves. Taking her Gauntlets from her belt, she shoved them inside her shirt and buckled the belt tight around them. Her partner, however, held his Strop in one hand. Light was already flickering in the deeply etched runes.
She knew what he was thinking; not just because her thoughts ran across a similar vein, but because his were actually echoing in her own. I’m afraid. By the Bones.
Her own throat was tight. The white walls that surrounded the Abbey had once been protective, but now they seemed so very similar to those that she had been forced to breach at the Priory. Everyone within had to be considered an enemy, at least until she and Merrick could explain themselves to Hastler.
“Do we really need to do this, Sorcha?” Raed whispered. She understood what remained unsaid. Do you really need me to do this to you?
A knot of tension cramped her neck while her stomach clenched like it had been punched. “Yes . . . When the Conclave begins hunting us, there will be no other choice. We need to see the Arch Abbot—he is the only one with enough influence to sort this mess out.” She looked up into his hazel eyes and let her admission out. “And I need you to help me.” The word “need” was not one she was familiar with.
Raed nodded but his voice was rough. “By the Blood, this feels very, very wrong.”
“This whole thing has been wrong.” She kissed the palm of his hand. “Except for you.”
Merrick coughed. “We better get this done, before I lose my nerve altogether.”
“Of course.” Sorcha nodded and scrambled up into the back of the cart among the straw. Merrick took his place next to her, looking young, vulnerable and frightened—yet he was more than that.
Sorcha looked him full in the face, not letting a single ounce of fear or doubt reflect in hers. “I’m not just trusting Raed, you know.”
“But I have only read about this,” he said quietly, looking at the Strop resting in his hands. “I can’t be sure—”
“Yes, you can be.”
The Bond sang, determination ringing along it from each of them, amplifying and building like an infinity knot. This was the pinnacle of partnership, the type of strength that she had never felt with Kolya. Merrick trusted in her more completely in two weeks than her husband had done in all their years. With a little smile, Sorcha lay back in the straw.
Merrick put on the Strop, tying it around his eyes quickly and summoning up the Rune of Sight. Through the Bond, the world grew more beautiful than she could have ever imagined; the circling wheel of stars directly over Sorcha’s head flared like a thousand multicolored fireworks. The silent street filled with a siren sound of distant bells that at this hour certainly couldn’t be real. The scent, honeysuckle and jasmine, flooded every portion of her brain. It was also the last thing she was aware of.
Merrick claimed his power, and pulled them into the Otherside.
Raed felt the racing of his own heart as the Deacons’ stopped. Merrick had dropped inelegantly, but Sorcha—as she did with everything—had taken control; choosing how she lay, hands resting lightly against her thighs with her head tilted slightly upward toward the sky. Her face was soft and had a gentle smile on it as if she’d fallen asleep in his arms. The Strop over her partner’s eyes had gone dark. Raed took it off gingerly and tucked it into his own pouch, pushing the young man’s eyelids shut. Merrick looked even younger than he had a right to be—almost a child. Raed draped Sorcha’s cloak over the two of them. It was easier to pretend there was something else in the cart that way.
He let a ragged breath escape him. “How very odd—now I get to collect someone else’s bounty.”
As he led the donkey toward the gates of the Mother Abbey, he felt like he was in some weird nightmare; striding toward the institution that not only supported his enemy but housed the husband of his lover. These were two things that should have had him racing in the opposite direction. However, considering he was the living one right now, it would have been worse than rude to walk away.