She chuckled. “Was that a complaint?”
“Hell, no. It was—” He broke off at the sight of a light flashing on the nightstand. His armband. Someone had left a message in the past few minutes.
Reese followed his gaze, then looked over to where her transponder sat on the floor tangled with her discarded shirt. It, too, was blinking. “Guess they’re looking for us.” She glanced back at him. “You ready for this?”
He thought about it for a second, then nodded. “You know, I guess I am. Way more than I was yesterday afternoon, at any rate.” He caught her hand, kissed her knuckles . . . and stalled on what to say next. He wanted to thank her for coming after him, believing in him, taking him as he was; he wanted to tell her she was beautiful, smart, sassy, honorable, and on some levels way out of his league; he wanted to let her know that he was going to go into the next couple of days stronger because she was behind him, and that he was damned grateful for the chain of events—whether destiny or coincidence—that had brought her back into his life. But all those things wound up jammed together in his chest, so in the end, all he said was, “Cross your fingers that they don’t nail me with a Taser and pack my ass down in the basement.”
She winced. “Not funny.”
And not that far from possible, he thought ten minutes later as, showered and wearing fresh clothes, they headed to the main room together, holding hands.
The sunken great room was jammed with bodies, and everyone there looked up pretty much simultaneously when Dez and Reese came through the archway leading from the mage’s wing. He got the glares he was expecting, with a few notable exceptions: Leah was pale and unusually shaky; Rabbit was glowering, but not at him; and Sasha was looking at him with a hint of pleading, which didn’t make any sense. The decision wasn’t in his hands. It was the king’s call.
Strike was standing on the riser that ran the perimeter of the room and opened into the kitchen, leaning against the wall near the big-screen TV. When he saw them, he straightened and came over. He glanced at their joined hands, nodded fractionally, then tipped his head toward an empty love seat. “Have a seat and we’ll get started.”
Dez swallowed. “I have a few things I’d like to say.” Strike hesitated, expression guarded, and Dez’s gut knotted. “You already made your decision, didn’t you?”
“It’s not what you think.” The king pointed to the two-seater. “Chill. Sit. Listen. Some things have happened that . . . well, let’s just say the circumstances have changed.”
Dez glanced at Reese, who looked just as confused as he was. So they followed orders and sat. But it was evident that whatever they had missed, it was big. And from the looks being shot back and forth among the others, he and Reese weren’t the only ones in the dark on what was going to happen next.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Reese’s instincts were shrilling a major warning as Strike leaned a hip against the sofa where Leah was sitting, as though he wanted to be near her but couldn’t sit still. He looked serious and strung out, and she couldn’t quite squelch the thought that under the writs, the punishment for treason was execution. The Nightkeepers wouldn’t go there, would they? What would she do if they did? Visions of her and Dez shooting their way out of the compound locked horns with the memory of Strike’s sleep spell and Rabbit’s mind-bending. Would she wake up back in Denver and wonder why Fallon wasn’t speaking to her?
Dez reached for her hand, twined his fingers through hers, and held on tight.
After what felt like a long pause, Strike took a deep breath, and said, “There is something very wrong with me. I’m having brownouts, suffering from what I guess you could call psychic brain lesions . . . and yesterday, bringing everyone home from the highlands, I lost the teleport thread. If it hadn’t been for Leah and Rabbit propping me up with their magic, none of us would’ve made it back.”
That so wasn’t what Reese had been expecting to hear, that it took her a moment to process what he’d just said. The same thing seemed to be happening to most of the others, because there was a moment of absolute, blank silence broken only by the muffled sounds of Leah’s jeans and shirt against the sofa when she shifted to take Strike’s hand and press it to her face. A single tear leaked down her cheek.
It was Alexis who finally broke the silence. “I take it Sasha has checked you out?” She was sending the healer a “what the hell?” look, but Sasha was staring at her white-knuckled hands as Michael, himself grim-faced, whispered something into her ear.
“Both Sasha and Rabbit have done everything they can,” Strike said. “Lucius has scoured the library, and I’ve had all the relevant human-style scans we can think of. The scans came back clean; it was Rabbit who found the lesions. He’s done his best to put me back together, but it’s not holding.”
“There’s a shadow,” Sasha said without looking up. “It’s like a phantom blood-link or something. I can’t get a handle on it. Nothing I do makes any difference.” Strike started to say something, but she held up a hand. “I know, I know. It’s not my fault, I’m doing the best I can, blah, blah.” She looked up to glare, red-eyed, at him. “What I don’t get is why the gods gave me this talent but won’t let me heal my own big brother. My king.” She shook her head. “Godsdamn it, I fucking hate this.” And for her to drop an f-bomb was as unexpected as Leah crying, making everything suddenly very real.
A low murmur built as brains started to unfreeze. Reese glanced over at Dez and found him staring at Strike, eyes gone utterly hollow. And she got it: The serpent prophecy said that Dez had to kill his adversary to take the throne, and the prophecy needed to be fulfilled in order to keep Lord Vulture from arising. And Strike was sick. The blood drained from her head, leaving her dizzy as she flashed back: the gleam of a stone knife as it slashed an upturned throat, blood gouting . . . and that other Dez, the one the star demon had turned him into, watching with hot, satisfied eyes as the cobra de rey died beneath him.
She must’ve made some noise, because Dez looked at her. His fingers tightened on hers and his throat worked, but he didn’t say anything. And for the first time in the time she had known him, he looked terrified. But beneath the terror she thought she glimpsed something else . . . or rather someone else. And that made it even worse.
“It started with the dreams,” Strike said, then went on to describe being in his father′s perceptions during the Solstice Massacre. “The details changed over time, until it seemed more like it was me in the dream. The one thing that didn’t change, though, was this moment of realizing that I had it wrong, that when the thirteenth prophecy called for the last jaguar king to make the ‘ultimate sacrifice’ before the four-year threshold, it wasn’t talking about the king sacrificing his mate. It meant that he was supposed to . . . that I was supposed to sacrifice myself.”
Sasha made a low, broken noise and pressed her face into Michael’s arm. He shifted to hold her, hanging on tight. Leah sat there, still and white-faced, staring at the floor with the look of a woman who had argued herself sick on a point, and was gearing up for another round. Reese’s heart hurt for them, and for pale, pissed-off Rabbit, who would be truly orphaned without Strike. She hurt for Nate and Alexis, whose parents had been advisers to the prior king, and who had helped steer this one, to the extent he let himself be steered. And she hurt for all of the others, who were staring at Strike with expressions ranging from disbelief and anger to blank shock. She hadn’t yet begun to hurt for herself. She knew it was coming, but didn’t try to brace for it, because how could she buffer herself against something like this?