White Heart of Justice (18 page)

Chapter 16

I
f I'd had qualms about kissing Rafe, they were completely dashed by the experience of it. I'd been worried that it wouldn't feel right, that I wouldn't be capable of enjoying kissing anyone else but Ari. I'd been worried that, if the kiss felt “off” somehow, our friendship would never be the same. I'd been worried that, because I'd viewed Rafe as only a friend for so long, it would be impossible—beyond a theoretical
what if?
—to consider taking my feelings to the next level. But when Rafe moved one of his hands to the middle of my back, splaying his fingers and pressing me closer to him, it felt both soothing and invigorating. It felt a little bit like jumping into Demeter's perennial magic spring had—thoroughly healing, yet dangerously unpredictable. I worked my hands around to the back of his head and ran them through his crazy, wild, windblown hair. He groaned as my fingers caught on some of the more snarled pieces and he moved his hands down to my rear. Catching my upper lip gently between his teeth, he quickly let go and then hoisted me up onto the edge of the desk. I rested my hands on his shoulders and wrapped my legs around his waist.

Rafe's hands rested lightly on my thighs. I doubted he knew what effect his touch was having on me because he couldn't sense my emotions in my signature. In a way, it was freeing. But it also reminded me that I needed to work harder to make sure he knew how I felt. I ran my hands over his chest, surprised and pleased by how hard and defined his muscles felt, even underneath the bulky wool sweater he had on. Even better though was the look in Rafe's eyes as I did it. I realized then that describing Rafe's gaze as “slightly smoldering” was about as accurate as describing dynamite as “slightly charged.”

I slipped my hands up underneath his sweater and the tunic he had on beneath it, but before my fingertips grazed anything more than the skin at his waistline, he grabbed my hands with his.

“Remember how I told you back in Maize that I didn't want anything unsaid between us? That I wanted to start off right and tell you everything in the beginning?”

I tensed and slid my hands out of his grip. He let me, but didn't move from where he was standing. His face lost its smoldering look and he replaced it with a more serious one I didn't care for. Seeing
serious
on Rafe's face made me nervous, especially after what we'd just been doing. I unclasped my legs from around his waist and leaned back on the desk, with my hands behind me now.

“And I told you I didn't care,” I said. “About the memory you have of Ari's. Or that your brother was a drakon. Those things don't change how I feel.”

He nodded, but the sinking feeling in my stomach told me those details were just the beginning. But Rafe didn't tell me the rest of the story. At least, not right away.

Instead, he took off his silver bracelet again. The one with the name “Bhereg” and the date “9-2-92” etched on its back. Rafe had been six years old when he'd accidentally tripped on his family's weathered pier and dropped his baby brother into the Lethe. Even though it was an accident, I knew Rafe blamed himself for Bhereg's death, as much as if he'd held Bhereg under the water to drown.

I looked up from the bracelet suddenly, meeting Rafe's gaze.
Oh, Luck. Is that what Rafe wanted to tell me? That his brother's drowning wasn't really an accident?
But my mind rejected that thought almost as soon as it had formed. While no Angel family would welcome a drakon in their midst, I couldn't imagine anyone intentionally drowning one at birth. And Rafe had only been six. He couldn't have done something like that.

Right?

With growing horror though, I remembered that Rafe had first taken an interest in me at a public execution last semester. At the time, he'd seemed obnoxiously obsessed with whether or not I could, or would, kill a demon in cold blood.

Ice started spreading through my veins. It felt as if someone had taken a hollow pin full of snow and plunged it deep into my heart.
Had the drowning been an accident or was that just how I'd chosen to interpret things?
I wanted to know now as desperately as I didn't.

Rafe's face was dark and unreadable. I'd never seen him look this way. As I'd done only a few minutes earlier, he placed his bracelet in the larger bowl on the Sanguine Scales.

“Four hundred and eighty grains, huh?”

Rafe picked up the weight I'd found before that nearly matched the weight of the bracelet. His voice had an edge to it that I hadn't heard in a long time—since the night I'd tried to give him the memory of Bhereg's funeral back. But Rafe's mercurial feelings about Bhereg and the way he'd died made no sense. If the drowning
hadn't
been an accident, why did Rafe wear a silver bracelet with Bhereg's name etched on it and the date he died? Rafe had even told me that he'd given his brother his name. That didn't sound like something a cold-blooded killer would do. But Rafe's expression made it clear that there was more to the story of Bhereg's death than I'd first understood.

“Unfortunately,” Rafe said, pointing to the bracelet, “the memory attached to this weighs a lot more than four hundred and eighty grains.”

He set the weight back in the tray and picked up the knife.

“Rafe, put the knife down. Just tell me what happened. You can't use the Sanguine Scales to weigh anything other than ordinary things. They won't work—or worse, they will and who knows what will happen?”

He gave me a sardonic smile, but I could tell his scorn was self-directed.

“I'm going to tell you about the memory I have. Because I want you to know
exactly
what led to that other memory of mine that
you
now have—the one of Bhereg's funeral.”

He pricked his ring finger with the knife and a bright red spot of blood welled on his fingertip.

“Then you can let me know whether you're interested in granting more wishes or meting out justice.”

He reached for my hand.

Part of me wanted to refuse to give it to him. I was terrified of what I was about to hear. And terrified of possibly invoking the aberrant magic of the Sanguine Scales. But looking away, or refusing to listen, would have been as impossible as refusing to hear my own judgment.

Rafe took my hand and wrapped it around his, squeezing. A few drops of his blood spilled into the bowl. I wrenched my hand free then, but not before I felt the magic of the scales gathering. Its rapacious hunger made my hair stand on end.

Rafe plucked the black feather out of the well. The hawk's feather. The one chosen by sinners who wanted to plead guilty. But seeing the black feather in Rafe's hand didn't look right. Whatever might have happened on the Sinclair pier nearly a quarter century ago, it wasn't fratricide. I knew it as surely as if my heart were the Sanguine Scales. I didn't need a damn copper bowl and a feather to judge how much honor Rafe had. He was a good person. I
knew
it.

I reached out, this time willingly, and placed my hand on Rafe's again.

“You chose the wrong feather,” I whispered. “But neither feather is guaranteed to judge the accused fairly. The scales can't be trusted
or
used.”

But Rafe shook my hand off, his jaw hardening.
Did he
want
to be punished? He seemed to have already judged himself.

“You don't know what I did, Noon, although you must have some idea from the memory you have of mine.”

“Some,” I said. “But I don't need to hear the details of what happened to know it was an accident. You need to let your guilt go.” Again, I tried to remove the black feather from his hand but he held fast.

“No,” he said in a dead tone. “It
wasn't
an accident. That's just what Valda told everyone.”

My hand stilled. Outside, the wind was more than whistling. In fact, it was starting to sound like the North-South Express was on its way here. Even this stone refuge seemed fragile under the onslaught of the increasing winds and threatening magic storm.

“I already told you Bhereg was a drakon,” Rafe said. “Who knows which demon caused his spawning? My mother claimed it was Estes himself.” He scoffed. “But how likely is that? More likely it was some other demon that Valda laid with in return for something of little value. The real value of whatever unholy union she'd gotten herself into was the resulting infant, but she only wanted to get rid of him, as quickly as possible. She told me if I didn't do it for her, she'd put me in the dunk tank or use the thumbscrews on me. I believed her.

“Even so, that's not what made me do it. I did it because, if I didn't, she would have. And if
she
did it, it would have been far less merciful and far more horrible.”

“So you drowned Bhereg?” I said frowning, my tone clearly disbelieving. All of my focus was now on Rafe's confession, not the scales.

Rafe nodded. “And unlike the
rogare
demon you executed last semester in the Shallows, Bhereg had done nothing wrong. His only sin was being born.”

Shocked, I let go of Rafe's hand. He moved it over toward the small bowl, holding the black feather suspended above it. I knew if he dropped the feather the magic of the scales would mete out whatever “justice” was due. I had myriad problems with what was happening, by far the most immediate was the fact that Rafe was about to invoke the spurious magic of the Sanguine Scales.

But before I could put a stop to his brinkmanship, Rafe said something even more shocking.

As before, when I'd learned something that should have been obvious to me sooner, I wondered how I'd missed it. How I had forgotten once again that, in Halja, Luck and life were more twisted than entwined. How Luck sometimes had a vicious sense of humor.

“I floated him out into the Lethe,” Rafe said. “I put Bhereg in a reed basket, cast a spell over him, and pushed him out into the water from the edge of our pier. The last time I saw him he was heading northeast with the current, a small, dark, wriggling basket set against the shining brilliance of the rising sun on the Lethe. That's why I named him Bhereg. It means burnished, like gold—or silver. Bhereg was a brief ‘shining brightness.'”

Rafe watched me closely. Waiting for a reaction. But my mind was skipping like a flat stone thrown across still water. My first coherent thought was that Rafe didn't want forgiveness. He wanted the opposite. He'd said grace was his specialty. He'd spent a lifetime punishing himself for his brother's death. And if Rafe had things his way, he'd spend the rest of his life punishing himself.

He held the black feather over the small bowl, twirling its end between his thumb and forefinger. All he had to do was drop it to get the punishment he thought he deserved.

Did he want me to argue with him? To try to convince him the drowning wasn't his fault? That he'd been forced to do it because his abusive and barbaric mother would have tortured him had he not? Did he want me to remind him that Valda would have done it regardless, and Bhereg's death then would have been far less kind? Maybe he did; maybe he didn't. But either way, it wouldn't matter. Rafe had judged his own actions a long time ago. He didn't need me or the Sanguine Scales to do it for him.

I guessed then that Rafe didn't intend to take our relationship beyond that first wished for kiss. Because anything beyond that would bring him too much joy, too much fulfillment. The joy and fulfillment that he believed he'd denied his drowned brother.

But it hadn't happened like that.

Rafe wasn't guilty. Not because he had an affirmative defense. But because the sin hadn't been committed. Bhereg hadn't died. He'd
lived
.

Rafe hadn't drowned his brother; he'd saved him.

How did I know? I nearly cursed Luck then and there. Because I knew that, through either Luck's guiding hand or Estes' divine intervention, Bhereg's reed basket hadn't sunk. Instead, it had traveled the width of the Lethe. Where it had been found by the one woman who had the will and magical makeup to raise a drakon child. A drakon she'd raised as a member of the Host. A drakon she'd raised as a hero among the Hyrkes he'd grown up with. A drakon who would later serve as executioner to the executive—and who would later fall in love with the executive's daughter.

Bhereg had lived and Joy Carmine had found him and named him Aristos.

Ari
was the half brother that Rafe thought he'd drowned.

But before I could tell Rafe that Bhereg's reed basket hadn't sank as he'd always thought, he dropped the black feather. It floated toward the bowl, its leisurely pace in direct contrast with the severity of its effect should it reach its intended destination. If the Sanguine Scales worked like waerwater or any other trial by ordeal—or, Luck forbid, as Joy Carmine thought they might—I didn't want Rafe to be subjected to its judgment or punishment. That wasn't the justice he deserved.