Fevered Star (Between Earth and Sky, #2)(12)

His eyes widened, and she knew exactly what he was thinking. He already considered her foolish. She could not stop the laugh that escaped her lips, sharp and slightly hysterical, because he was right. She was a fool. An exasperatingly naive, overly trusting, and entirely lucky fool. The memory of her naivete in believing she could convince the other priests to do better, to be better by virtue alone, was almost comical now but no worse than what had truly happened. She would never have characterized her betrayal as luck, but what else could it be? She had survived, and they had not. A fool’s blessing disguised as a curse.

Denaochi was staring at her as if she were mad.

Very possibly, Brother. Very possibly.

He shrugged. “Time will tell which of us is right. In the meanwhile, there are beds here, and water to wash yourself. Why don’t you rest? Afterward, I’ll take you to Zataya. We will devise a way to survive the storm. We have already beaten the odds.”

She did not argue. All she wanted was to clean the grave dirt and witch’s blood from her body and sleep. She rubbed at the warm place over her chest. She wanted an answer to that, too.

He stood and held out his hand, the one missing three fingers. She took it and held on tight. No longer angry, only grateful she was not alone.





CHAPTER 5


CITY OF TOVA (DISTRICT OF TITIDI)

YEAR 1 OF THE CROW

There are no tides more treacherous than those of the heart.

—Teek saying



“Xiala, come back to bed,” Aishe said, her voice still thick with sleep. “There’s nothing to see out there.”

“A moment,” Xiala said from her perch at the window.

It was a pleasant view across the canyons of Tova at sunrise, or so Aishe had informed her. In the time she had stayed in this room with the Water Strider girl, the sun had not risen, so Xiala could not confirm it for herself. Instead, the sun had hovered on the horizon like a bloated mango, casting only enough light to shadow the city in an eerie perpetual twilight. She knew who was responsible for this impossible sun, if not how he had done it, and despite the fear the unnatural sky roused in her, all she could think about was seeing him again.

“You’re not going to find him staring out the window,” Aishe said, her voice soft with sympathy.

“I know.” And yet she could not stop her eyes from searching the streets below her.

People scuttled quickly between buildings, huddled against the winter and the darkness. The bridge that led to Sun Rock stood empty, swaying in the violent winds that had rocked the city since solstice. And there was Sun Rock itself, visible in the far distance, the last place she knew with a certainty he had been.

Aishe came to her, wearing only a long sleeping shirt. She wrapped her arms around Xiala and kissed the place behind her ear that she knew Xiala liked. Xiala smiled half-heartedly as the woman continued to lay a track of kisses down her neck. One arm held her close as if she were a rabbit who might bolt, while her free hand wandered. She traced fingernails down Xiala’s upper arm, before cupping her breast and running a thumb across her nipple. It was a question, and Xiala tried her best to answer. She closed her eyes and forced herself to relax into Aishe’s embrace, but it was useless. Her gaze was drawn back outside to the perpetual twilight and to Sun Rock, seeking the impossible.

Aishe halted her seduction with a resigned sigh, defeated. Xiala hadn’t always been so apathetic to Aishe’s touch. In the hours after the solstice Convergence, they had found each other on the streets of Titidi. Desperate to put Serapio’s death behind her, Xiala had fucked the girl against an alley wall as the world fell to chaos around them. They had done it again in Aishe’s rooms in the early hours before dawn, with an urgency that Xiala had to admit was driven more by desperation than by lust. And when the sun had failed to rise, they found themselves entwined again, this time more in fear than anything else.

By afternoon, the clamor that had filled the streets the night before had fallen into stunned silence, as if the whole city held its breath and waited for the end of the world. But the world did not end, and they eventually roused themselves to find food. Aishe had taken her to the house terrace, where they found Tyode and Zash. The brothers told them the accounts of what had happened on Sun Rock under the shadowed sun.

“More than two-thirds of the priesthood dead,” Zash whispered, as the four of them huddled over bowls of cold beans. “Every Society head dead. Oracle, Healing, Historical, even Knives. Laid out in a row like some sort of sacrifice.”

“It had to be him.” Tyode’s voice was filled with an awe that bordered on admiration. “Who else could do it? Defeat the Knives and half a dozen Golden Eagle Shields before the clans scattered.”

“Don’t sound so happy about it,” Aishe hissed at her brother. “We brought him here, didn’t we? Eyes will turn back to us when people find out.” She shuddered and made a sign to ward off evil.

“They won’t find out,” Tyode protested, but his tone was subdued. “And if they did, we’re innocent. We didn’t know what he had planned.”

Xiala had known, but she had kept her mouth shut, and she kept her mouth shut now again.

“Do you really think they’ll care about the details?” Zash’s gaze cut to Xiala and then away, as if embarrassed. “We knew he was an Odohaa assassin. He practically told us he was going to kill the priests.”