Falling Light (Game of Shadows #2)(72)

Echoes of their raging fights still played in her memory. Even now sometimes in dreams they got in each other’s face and cut loose in screaming matches fit to wake the dead.

How many times had she told him? Ask, don’t take. Give back sometimes. When are you going to grow up? Why do you have to destroy everything you touch? The hell’s the matter with you?

She made Michael tell her the details of what had happened when they had gone after Jerry and the boy. Then, for a wonder, she got him to agree to let her talk to Mary alone.

She couldn’t believe he had given in. It wasn’t from anything clever she had done. He had flared and snorted like a highbred stallion gearing up for a kick-ass fight, just as she’d known he would, and utter exhaustion had seeped into her old bones. She wondered if she had the energy to take any more.

For a mercy, he had seen it in her face and curbed his temper. Much to her surprise she found herself out the door and looking for the other idiot.

Give back sometimes. Oh, Lord.

She found Mary kneeling in the vegetable garden, and she shuffled near to see what the young woman was doing. This far north, the growing season had not truly set in, but the land on the island loved to produce. Mary was weeding the garden in the early afternoon light.

The younger woman said, “It seems like the more I recover of my memories, the more I’ve been calling on God. I wasn’t a particularly religious or spiritual person before this week. Did our people believe in God?”

“Some did,” Astra grunted. She shrugged, though Mary didn’t see it. “Some didn’t. Maybe you’ve just had a bad time and need to hang on to something bigger than yourself.”

“Is that why you call on a Creator?”

“Guilty as charged,” she said.

Mary’s head came up and her red-rimmed eyes were hot. “I just want to know one thing. If God exists, how could he have created something like the Deceiver?”

Astra exhaled in a silent snort. This was why she was neither a philosopher nor a poet. She didn’t have the goddamn time. Acid corroded her words. “That is not a new or original question. Believe me, it has been asked countless times before.”

Mary’s expression hardened. “I don’t give a damn about new or original, or what somebody else has asked. These are my questions.”

Astra rubbed her face and sighed. “How we got placed in this universe is beside the point. The real questions are, what are we going to do about it? How do we live our lives? How do we die our deaths? We are all creators. We are responsible for creating our own identities, our own realities. You can’t blame the Deceiver on the Creator. He wasn’t victimized by an immutable nature that some deity inflicted on him. He didn’t have to become the person he became. He made choices. He and I could have balanced each other in half a dozen different ways. He could have been . . .” Her throat locked. She had to force herself to go on. “He could have been the highest Prince of our people. Instead he became our worst criminal.”

Mary ground the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Why didn’t we destroy him when we had him imprisoned?”

Astra’s gaze was steady. She said, “Because destroying him would have meant destroying me. Our ruling council decided instead to imprison him. From that point on, every murder, every atrocity he committed is on my shoulders as well as his.”

Mary’s hands fell away. “How can you say that? You just said he’s responsible for his own choices, his own crimes.”

“True, but we had already discovered the extent of his crimes at home,” Astra said. “And we had him imprisoned. Then we made a choice. We didn’t destroy him because I didn’t want to die, and the council didn’t want to kill me. We wimped out. I won’t make that mistake again. There have been too many Northside Restaurants, too many gas ovens and beheadings, and famines, and political assassinations and wars. This poor world has enough to deal with without the Deceiver adding to its burdens. You have to understand something. Destroying him is worth everything we’ve paid, everything that we will pay. Never forget, he is doing do everything in his power to destroy us too.”

Mary sat back on her heels, and her eyes went wide. “I thought when one twin died, the other one did too. Can he survive if you’re destroyed?”

“I think so. Probably,” Astra said. “He wants to badly enough. He did something to alter us when he escaped and came to this world. As a group, we all changed something of our nature when we followed him to become at least partly human. We are literally no longer the people we once were.”

She watched as Mary slowly shook her head, her gaze unfocused. “What really happened to Ariel and Uriel? He told me that he destroyed one, and the other just unraveled.”

“I think he was able to destroy them both, partly because one didn’t want to survive without the other. That mattered more to them than why we came here.” She paused, then repeated with slow emphasis, “It’s all about choices.”

“Whatever you’re trying to say to me now, I wish you would just say it.” Mary’s voice turned weary.

“I’m trying to say that we’re still making choices right now that will affect the outcome of this struggle.” Passion made Astra’s voice shrill. “We need all of our dedication focused on winning this battle. Remember the sacrifice you made when you chose to come to this world. That sacrifice is still relevant and necessary. Destroying the Deceiver is not just worth my life. It’s worth all of our lives.”