Daughter of Smoke and Bone(60)

Oh god. Be that cat! she reminded herself. The one that stayed out of reach, and never—ever—purred. Sitting back, she composed her features in what she hoped was the human version of feline disdain. She gave him the gist of what she’d learned from the waitress, though she wasn’t sure he really understood about television, let alone the Internet. Or phones, for that matter. “Can you give me a minute?” she asked him, and she dialed Zuzana, who picked up on the first ring.

Her voice exploded in Karou’s ear. “Karou?”

“It’s me—”

“Oh my god! Are you all right? I saw you on the news. I saw him. I saw… Holy Jesus, Karou, do you realize that you were flying?”

“I know. Isn’t it awesome?”

“It is not awesome! Un-awesome! I thought you were dead somewhere.” She was on the edge of hysteria, and it took Karou a few minutes to calm her, all the while mindful of Akiva’s eyes on her, and trying to keep her feline cool.

“You’re really okay?” Zuzana asked. “He doesn’t have, like, a knife to your throat, forcing you to say you are?”

“He doesn’t even speak Czech,” Karou assured her, then gave her a quick rundown of the previous night, letting her know he hadn’t tried to hurt her—had gone to extremes of passiveness to not hurt her—and finishing with, “We, um, watched the sun rise from the top of the cathedral.”

“The hell? Was it a date?”

“No, it wasn’t a date. Honestly, I don’t know what it was. Is. I don’t know what he’s doing here….” Her voice faltered as she looked at him. It wasn’t just the smile, or the marks on his hands. She knew, somehow, that his right shoulder was a mass of scar tissue. He favored it; she’d seen that. That must be how she knew. Why, then, did she know what the scars looked like?

Felt like?

“Karou? Hello? Karou?”

Karou blinked and cleared her throat. It had happened again: her own name, floating right past, unconnected to herself. She sensed from Zuzana’s agitation that she had been missing in action for a few beats past any acceptable span of zoning out. “I’m here,” she said.

“Where? I keep asking you. Where are you?”

Karou had momentarily forgotten. “Um. Oh. The teahouse on Nerudova.”

“Sit. Stay. I’m coming there.”

“No, you’re not—”

“Yes, I am.”

“Zuze—”

“Karou. Don’t make me hurt you with my tiny fists.”

“Fine,” Karou relented. “Come on, then.”

Zuzana boarded with a widow aunt in Hradcˇany, not far away. “I’ll be there in ten,” she said.

Karou couldn’t resist telling her, “It’s faster if you fly.”

“Freak. Don’t you dare leave. And don’t let him leave, either. I have threats to deliver. Judgments to pass.”

“I don’t think he’s going anywhere,” said Karou, and she looked straight at Akiva as she said it, and he looked back, molten, and she knew it was true, but she didn’t know why.

He wasn’t human. He wasn’t even from her world. He was a soldier with scores of kills on his hands, and he was the enemy of her family. And yet, something tied them together, stronger than any of that, something with the power to conduct her blood and breath like a symphony, so that anything she did to fight against it felt like discord, like disharmony with her self.

As far back as she could remember, a phantom life had mocked her with its impenetrable “something else,” but now it was the opposite. Here, in the circle of Akiva’s presence, even as they spoke of war and siege and enduring enmity, she felt herself being drawn into the warm absoluteness and rightness of him, like he was both place and person and, contrary to all reason, exactly where she was supposed to be.





33





PREPOSTEROUS



“My tiny scary friend is coming here,” Karou told Akiva, drumming her fingers on the table.

“The one from the bridge.”

Karou recalled that he had been following her yesterday, and would have seen Zuzana perform. She nodded. “She knows about your world, a little. And she knows you tried to kill me, so…”

“Should I be afraid?” Akiva asked, and for a second Karou thought he was serious. He always looked so serious, but it was another hint of dry humor, like atop the cathedral when he had surprised her with his joke about pushing off bad dates.

“Terribly afraid,” she replied. “All cower before her. You’ll see.”

Her mug was empty, but she kept her palms on it, less now for fear of flashing magic at Akiva than to keep her hands from making any more unsanctioned sallies across the table to touch his. She should have been repelled by his hands with their death count, and she was, but not only. Side by side with the horror was… the pull.

She knew he felt it, too, that his hands were fighting their own battle not to reach for hers. He kept looking at her, and she kept blushing, and their conversation stuttered along until the door opened and Zuzana stomped in.

She came straight to the table and stood facing Akiva. She was fierce, ready to scold, but when she saw him, really saw him, she faltered. Her expression warred with itself—ferocity with awe—and awe won out. She cast a sidelong glance at Karou and said, in helpless amazement, “Oh, hell. Must. Mate. Immediately.”