White Heart of Justice (22 page)

“I have one more thing to tell you.”

Instantly, I stiffened but then he lowered his body so that he was lying next to me. He propped his head up with one hand and reached around behind my head with the other one. He rubbed my cheek with his thumb for a moment. He was either trying to convince himself to do whatever it was he was going to do next, or he was trying to etch the scene before him into his memory forever.

Finally, he pulled me close.

His eyes gleamed with Angel light but his features reflected something much softer—an emotion I didn't dare name, even in my own mind. Facing my own death was scary enough. Having someone else . . . well, feel
that
way about me so soon after breaking it off with Ari frightened me even more.

Because if I lived, I'd have to acknowledge what I saw shining in Rafe's eyes. And it wasn't just Angel light.

But Rafe wasn't going to wait.

“I don't want to lose you,” he said, cradling my head in his hand. “And it's not just because I swore an oath to protect you.”

He brought his mouth down on mine, deepening his kiss almost immediately. I reached up and clasped my hands behind his neck, arching my back and pressing up against him. I realized I was long past the point when I should have realized that Rafe could, depending on the circumstances, elicit nearly every emotion from me: aggravation, amusement, safety, fear, and now, most unabashedly, lust and longing. My fingertips brushed the nape of his neck and then plunged into his lionish mane, grabbing whole fistfuls of it. It felt like Virtus' pelt, wild and rough on top, but with an undercoat that was soft as silk. Rafe groaned, broke off the kiss, and shifted his mouth so that it was near my ear.

“Noon, do you have any idea how
madly
”—he pressed his lips against the skin just behind my ear—“
deeply
”—I shivered as he moved his mouth slowly down my neck—“
fiercely
”—he kissed the spot on my throat where my pulse beat wildly—“
ridiculously
in love with you I am?”

I shook my head slowly. It was getting hard to breathe again, but somehow I didn't think it was the arrow tip next to my heart. I was pretty sure it was something much less tangible
inside
my heart.

A few minutes later, it occurred to me that Rafe might be trying to distract me from my original purpose. So, much as what we were doing was infinitely more pleasurable than what we needed to do next,
requisita ante desideria
—
needs before wants
and all that. I gave Rafe a last lingering kiss and stood up. Wrapping his cloak around me for warmth, I walked over to our pile of gear and rustled through it. After a few moments of poking around, I finally found what I was looking for: a long, sharp knife and a small pair of pincers. I held the knife up, examining it in the iridescent Angel light. Its edges sparked and its surface flashed, looking very much like the blade was made of sapphire instead of steel. It would do nicely. I held up the pincers next—and that's when I started to lose my nerve.

Imagining what I wanted Rafe to do with those pincers, and knowing that I wanted him to do it in the next five minutes, nearly undid me. I started to feel light-headed and weak. My legs started shaking and my breathing became even more difficult. I stumbled over to Rafe, nearly falling in his lap. I pressed the tools into his palm and rolled over onto my back, squeezing my eyes shut.

“Volo tecum vivere, volo autem tecum mori,”
I whispered.
I want to live with you, but I am willing to die with you.
“Please don't make me wait any longer.”

I heard Rafe exhale sharply but he did as I asked. He lifted his cloak off me. I felt a rush of cool air, the soft touch of his hands and then the tip of the blade pressing against my chest. He murmured a series of unfamiliar words and the haze of a spell slipped over me. Just before I lost consciousness, I felt a searing sting as Rafe pierced my skin and thrust the knife straight toward my heart.

Chapter 20

T
he stone floor beneath Rafe's cloak felt like a block of ice. My body shook and my teeth chattered. I saw only darkness. I heard only breathing. I felt thirsty and tired, but somehow cleansed. I lit a fireball, looked down at my chest, and realized that
cleansed
probably wasn't the best choice of words. Dried blood was everywhere. It was impossible to tell if I still bore my old scar, a darker mark, or just a new wound because the whole area was splattered with what looked like black ink. But, for the first time in over a week, I felt like myself again.

I glanced at Rafe, who was sleeping on the floor next to me. Or at least, I hoped he was. For one panicked second, I had the most horrifying thought: that Rafe might have somehow traded his life for mine. My fireball flickered and went out. My hands reached for him in the renewed dark as I pressed my cheek to his chest and my finger to his pulse. He was alive, thank Luck and all his legions.

But what was wrong with him? Why didn't he wake?

I shook him again, this time more violently. His hand slipped from his chest to the floor and his fingers uncurled. There, in the palm of his hand, was a tiny iron spur.
The arrow tip.

It was instinct only, but suddenly I thought I knew why Rafe wasn't waking up. In all the time I'd worked with him, I'd never seen him lose his
potentia
. But I think pulling the arrow tip out of my chest without killing me had finally tapped all his reserves. And, if I had to guess, I'd say the cursed arrow tip was now preventing him from regaining his
potentia
, similar to the way it had leached waning magic from me.

Once again I walked over to our pile of gear, but this time I pulled out a small dagger. I walked back over to Rafe, crouched down beside him, and used the tip of the blade to push the arrowhead off his palm. It fell harmlessly to the floor and Rafe's hand twitched. A moment later he arched his back and gasped for air. I placed my hand on his forehead. His skin was warm and dry. His breathing became easier and, though it was hard to tell by the light of my flame, I thought his color had improved too. Hopefully, all he would need now was rest. I lowered my fireball closer to the arrow tip and squinted at it.

The words were so small, I could barely see them. But I was familiar enough with the saying to recognize it.

SUFFOCA IGNEM

Smother the fire.

Haljan legend said that, during the last moments of Armageddon, Lucifer's final battle strategy had been to pierce the Angel's front line with fire. But, midrally, he was struck down with the lance that killed him. His rallying cry?
Aduro Velum! Burn the veil!

The Angels' response?
Suffoca Ignem!

Since then the Angels' final battle cry had been infrequently used as a curse spell against waning magic users. Its use was considered highly illegal. Whoever had cast this spell into the arrow tip not only knew their history (which ruled out no one; every Angel knew their history) but they also were unafraid of using grand, arcane, unorthodox spells (which narrowed the list down to only one Angel that I knew of—Peter Aster).

I sank to the ground, rubbing the spot where the arrow had pierced my chest. In my other hand, my fireball glowed soft and steady. Peter had betrayed my trust two semesters ago by threatening me with Ari's death in exchange for my promise to marry him, but I'd
never
—even after seeing how livid Peter was during this semester's oath ceremony—thought he'd try to kill me. If the thought didn't make me so sad, I might have made a joke about Heaven having no rage like love turned to hatred or Halja having no fury like a man scorned.

But Peter hadn't really loved me. He'd loved my family connections. And he'd loved the idea that, if he could find a way to reverse my magic, it would be further evidence of his already considerable spellcasting skills. My throat hurt and I marveled that Peter of all people could still make me want to cry. This was just additional proof that I could spend an infinite amount of time perfecting my magical and physical strength, but I was still just as soft and weak on the inside as I was when I'd first enrolled at St. Luck's.

I swiped a hand across my wet cheek and then raised the dagger up and brought the blade crashing down on the arrow tip. There was a brief spark of violet light and a pop that sounded like a firecracker. An acrid, bitter smell filled the air as I lifted the blade. Beneath it, the arrow tip now had a hole in it. The words of the spell were marred but not completely obliterated.

I flexed my signature. It felt good—strong, healthy, and supple once again. I could detect no trace of the poisonous feel of the
Suffoca Ignem
curse in it. So I blasted the broken arrow tip with waning magic, smelting it into a shapeless blob of glowing iron. When it cooled, I would tuck it into my pocket—as a reminder that Luck offered no guarantees. That even old friends could become enemies.

I glanced over at Rafe then, struck by a sudden urge to kiss him. To seal our friendship. To make it so that
we
might never end up as enemies.

If I kissed him, would he wake?

How many legends spoke of kissing cures for sleeping people? At least a few . . .

I pressed my lips against his, willing him to wake up, almost expecting it. But he slumbered on. Crae Ibeimorth's lover's cure came to mind next, but instead of convincing me to use a bucket of ice-cold water on Rafe, it convinced me to use one on myself. So I gathered up my bloody cloak and made my way out of the bailey gaol's tiny dungeon and over to the winding set of stairs leading farther down to the underground spring.

I had to duck and crouch the whole way down. At the bottom, I found an old wall sconce to set my fireball in and stepped over to the tub. Considering that it might have been used for torture instead of washing, I wasn't too disappointed to see that the spring's once forceful flow had, over the centuries, dwindled to a trickle. I doubted I could have settled in for a nice relaxing soak in an area that may have been used for dunking and trials by drowning.

The spring's manmade stone basin was nearly dry. But there was one spot near the back where a small stream of water burbled up before disappearing back down into the cracks of the basin once again.

Even though I'd said I never wanted to swim in a perennial healing spring again, I found myself feeling extraordinarily grateful to have the water from one available for washing up. I spent the next hour or so scrubbing the blood and muck off me and my clothes. All the while, I thought about what Rafe had said earlier—that he was “madly . . . deeply . . . fiercely . . . ridiculously” in love with me. It scared me, but maybe not quite as much as the first time someone had said that to me.

When Ari had first told me he loved me.

Ari's love for me had been nearly overpowering. Rafe's seemed safer. Maybe it was because he was my Guardian, so I associated him with safety instead of risk. I had a feeling that Rafe would try to protect me from all harm, both physical and emotional. In fact, he already seemed to be doing everything in his power to spare me emotional pain, from offering to stand aside if I chose to reconcile with Ari, to making sure he'd confessed to every dark secret he'd ever harbored that I could possibly object to. It seemed like every time Rafe thought of me in any sort of romantic way, he also thought of Ari though, which was disturbing on several levels. And it led me to wonder if Rafe really did love me. Or if his “madly, deeply, fiercely” feelings were simply the result of his possessing
Ari's
memory and feelings of falling in love with me.

I stopped scrubbing and stared at the bloody, burbling water.
Where
was
Ari now? Would we ever see him again? Did I want to?

I shook my head and started scrubbing again. Only two things were certain: Ari wasn't in the Verge and I didn't have to decide until later whether I would seek him out.

My current feelings were clear enough. A part of my heart would always belong to Ari (he was, in many ways, my true “first”), but I'd done the right thing in breaking it off with him. I didn't trust him (even though I knew his lie by omission hadn't been made with the intention of betraying me) and I'd needed some distance from him (already I felt more independent; I'd only thought of him 907 times during this race already).

As for Rafe, I cared for him, quite deeply. And I didn't want to hurt him. I wondered if there would ever come a time when Rafe and I threw caution to the wind and stopped trying to protect each other from everything all the time, but maybe that wasn't how our relationship was destined to be.

By the time I finished scrubbing, my skin nearly glowed . . . except for the spot above my heart. My demon mark had returned, much darker than before. Previously, it had looked like a small drop of spilled tea. Now it looked like a big splotch of spilled ink. It reminded me of Ari's mark and I couldn't help wondering if the magic
signare
Ari had put there last year was still there or not.

Upstairs in the bailey gaol's dungeon hallway, I got dressed. I walked over to the now cooled lump of iron that had once been an arrow tip lodged next to my heart. The words from the spell were now entirely erased and the iron piece had a smooth and melted appearance, although it still had a hole in it. I realized then that it was the iron “coin” with the hole in it that I'd seen under the water in Maize. On impulse, I raised it to my eye and peered through the hole, but everything appeared exactly the same. I yanked a few strands of my hair out. Instead of tucking the iron bit into my pocket, I tied it around my neck.

Rafe was still sleeping so I pulled out the tin box of letters. I carried it over to where Rafe lay sleeping and curled up next to him, wishing I had electricity to reread them with instead of flickering fire. This time, I started with the last one first.

9th day of Ghrun, 991 AA
Septembhel

To my successor—

My mule died at Tartarus' gatehouse. The guards refused to lend me a mount, although it should have been no surprise to me that miners are not as generous as Mederies. So I am left to wonder if the Ophanim will overtake me tomorrow as I cross the Fiddleback on foot.

My plan is to offer Orcus a strong room unlike any he has seen before, which I will build myself, in exchange for his keeping the White Heart safe within it. If he agrees, I will construct the vault deep within his mine, not his keep.

There's a new building technique that Orcus will be very interested in—it disguises an opening, instead of using a conventional door that opens and shuts. After construction is complete, gaining access to the room will be very difficult.

I trust that Orcus will take me up on my offer. He is the most avaricious demon there is. And Metatron designed a very special set of Sanguine Scales just for him, which I also carry. What demon would refuse a personalized set of sacrificial scales if it meant he could become
Album Cor Iustitiae's
eternal keeper?

KB

Postscript
27th day of Eis, 1002 AA

Eleven years in Tartarus building Orcus' strong room! Many days I wished the Ophanim had caught me on the Fiddleback before I'd been given sanctuary inside. Forget Tartarus. Forget the White Heart. Let no one disturb that final resting place. The sole reason I don't burn these letters is that they are the thread that holds the sword suspended . . .

At the bottom of the letter was a crudely drawn map. One of the passages had a circle drawn around it with a slash through it. I had to admit, if only to myself in the flickering light of my own fire, that I now doubted for the first time whether I was doing the right thing. But if I turned around now, Friedrich might not allow me to work with a Guardian again. And while Rafe might happily live life on the lam, I couldn't. And I could never be the cause of his doing so. If I turned around now, I wouldn't win the Laurel Crown or become this year's Laureate. I wouldn't get to choose where I worked next semester. The Council could force me to work for Adikia, the Patron Demon of Abuse, Injustice, and Oppression at the New Babylon Gaol. How long would I last in a residency where I was expected to torture people? Executing vile sinners to save innocents was one thing. Torture? Uh-uh. No way. Wouldn't do it. I actually would live life on the lam on my own to avoid
that
. Finally, if I turned around now, Brunus and Peter might find the White Heart. And there's no way I'd want people like Brunus and Peter wielding a sword with that kind of power. So, despite Bialas' creepy warning, I still wanted to race.

Besides, Brunus and Peter had Telesto and Brisaya and I wanted them back.

By the time I finished putting the letter away, Rafe was awake.