Taking a deep breath, he dragged himself to his feet and stood opposite her. But he was talking to all of them when he said, “I want to make two things very clear first. Last night, I swore my fealty to Strike. He is my king, and not only would I never do anything to challenge that, I flipping can′t.” Once in place, the fealty magic wouldn’t allow an oath-bound mage to harm the king.
Strike nodded. “That’s true. In fact, it was right after he swore his oath that Anna woke up.” His eyes narrowed. “I thought you swore the oath for Reese’s sake.”
“I did.” He said it to her, urged her inwardly to believe it, but the wariness was back in her eyes. Risking it, he took her hands, holding them tight as he said, “That’s the second thing I need to say—I promise you that everything I’ve done has been to stop history from repeating itself. I swear it on my soul and my bloodline.”
Her lips trembled. “Okay. Now you’re scaring me.” She didn’t pull away . . . but she didn’t acknowledge his promise either.
Letting go of her, he jammed his hands in his pockets. When he realized he was unconsciously searching for the star demon, he put his hands behind his back and locked them there. Then, focusing on Strike, he said, “The artifacts, when activated properly, will transfer the Nightkeepers’ fealty oaths to the wielder of the serpent staff . . . who must be a member of my bloodline.”
“Son. Of. A. Bitch,” Strike growled. “You want the fucking throne, Mendez?” Behind him, shock and bitter anger raced through the others.
“I took the oath,” he repeated. But that didn’t stop several of the faces around him from resetting in the familiar mistrustful lines. He had told himself to expect it, that it wouldn’t matter as long as he knew he had done his best to make the right call. But it hurt. And the pain in Reese’s eyes nearly did him in.
“You told me it was a weapon.” Her face had drained of color and her knuckles were white where she was still gripping her .38.
“I told you that assembling the artifacts would blow things up. It will, just not the way I implied.”
Her eyes burned into his. “That’s not good enough.”
“It gets worse.” He took a deep breath. “According to Keban, Iago is—or believes he is—descended from the bloodline. If he manages to activate the staff during the solstice and our fealty oaths transfer to him . . .” The oath couldn’t force the magi to act against their natures, but the contradictory impulses could paralyze them, leaving them vulnerable to the makol.
“Motherfucker,” Strike grated. “If we had been on this from the beginning—”
“I know.” But Dez held up a hand. “Let me finish. Then you can decide what to do with me.” When the king sent him a clenched-jaw nod, he took a deep breath, locked eyes with Reese, and said, “For years I told myself that Keban was nuts, that he’d brought me up to lead an army that hadn’t ever existed . . . but then, during the Triad magic, Anntah said it, too. There’s a secret prophecy that’s been handed down through certain serpent lineages . . . It says that in the end, the last serpent must kill his rival and take the throne.” When the mutters died down, he finished: “Yeah . . . Keban raised me to kill Strike and take over.”
“Over my dead body.” That came from Leah, but the glares said the others were right there with her. The two royal advisers, Nate and Alexis, looked like they wanted to fly him up into thin-air territory and let him drop.
“I can’t kill Strike,” he reminded them all. “I took the oath.”
“You’re a Triad mage,” Reese said. “The rules don’t necessarily apply to you.”
“That one does.” He wished she hadn’t been the one to bring that up, but at the same time, if she was arguing with him, she hadn’t shut down completely. He hoped. “Think about it. I didn’t make any move to track down the artifacts until I got Keban’s note, and then only to destroy them.”
“So you say.”
He palmed his knife and held it out. “I’ll swear it in blood if you want.”
“You’d just tweak the wording.” She pushed the stone blade aside and strode past him, headed for the main gate.
Dez started after her, then stopped and looked back, torn. His relationship with the Nightkeepers was crucial . . . but so was what was happening between him and Reese.
“Go on,” said Strike. “We need to discuss this anyway.” And by “we” he meant “everybody in the compound except you.”
Every fiber of Dez’s body told him to go after her. But he stood his ground and held his king’s eyes. “For the record, the biggest reason I didn’t come clean about the serpent staff and the prophecy is because you guys are doing something important here. And I wanted a chance to be part of something good for a change.”
Strike’s expression didn’t change. “Well, I guess you fucked that up.”
“Yeah. Guess I did.” And, as he turned on his heel and headed after Reese, he hoped to hell he hadn’t just destroyed that part of his life, too.
Reese’s heart hammered thickly, jamming her throat. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, didn’t want to think, because if she did she would have to admit that she had bought into him again. Which hadn’t been stupid-brave, it had just been stupid. She knew him, knew what he was capable of. And she’d fallen under his spell anyway.
“Reese, damn it!” He caught up with her on the covered pathway leading back into the mansion, grabbed her uninjured arm.
She spun on him, teeth bared, free hand going for her pistol. But then she stopped, refusing to give him the fight he wanted. In a low, measured voice, she said, “Let me go.”
“I can’t.” The two words were stark. His eyes bore into hers. “I’m sorry, Reese. I’m so fucking sorry it happened like this. I was going to tell you this morning, I swear. Hell, I should have told you everything that morning in the hotel, but I knew what you would think, and I wanted us to get to know each other again first.”
Her throat closed at the raw regret in his tone, which made her want to think that this, finally, was the truth. He was going to tell you everything this morning, her inner nineteen-year-old said, but he didn’t get a chance. But her older, wiser self knew he’d had plenty of chances. “Let. Me. Go.”
He tightened his grip. “No. Not until you’ve listened for a damn minute.”
“That would’ve worked better last night. Or this morning. Or any other time before you got your ass caught out.”
“Ever since I woke up from that coma and saw what was going on here at Skywatch, I’ve been hoping—praying—that it wasn’t a real prophecy.” He was talking fast now, as if trying to get it all in before she walked away. “The serpent bloodline is full of arrogance and ambition, but not seers. I thought the serpent prophecy might just have been wishful thinking that had morphed into something more than that over time. But once I got Keban’s letter and saw the tape from the museum, I realized it might be for real. That’s why I took off from Skywatch, and why I kept trying to chase you off.”
“So I wouldn’t catch on.”
“No, damn it, so I would have the room to maneuver without worrying about flattening you in the process.” He shook her slightly. “For gods’ sake I don’t want the damn throne. I’ve done everything I can think of to keep it from coming down to this. Don’t you get it? This isn’t what I want.”
She twisted free of his grip. “You’ve made your choices. Now I get to make mine.”
His expression tightened. “Before you do, consider this: Anna’s prophecy, or vision, or whatever mentioned ‘the prophecies,’ plural. What do you want to bet that the serpent prophecy is one of the ones she mentioned?”
“So?”
“The team is going to need your help figuring that out, finding Iago’s mountain, and a thousand other things between now and the end date.”