Yield the Night (32 page)

It was all her fault. Seiya had been right all along.

Her entire body trembled as the inner anguish built up. The quiet stillness of the ryujin city pressed in on her, suffocating. Biting the insides of her cheeks, she lay down beside Ash, careful of his wing, and pressed her face against his neck. She now fully understood Seiya’s commitment to Ash that he would never have to bleed for her again.

She lost track of time as she lay beside him, holding him close. Minutes slowly passed as she listened to his heartbeat. Thoughts whispered through her mind, taunting her. When Ash had been stabbed, she’d felt as though the knives had pierced her own chest. When he’d stopped breathing, she’d felt her own heart stutter and struggle. The thought of losing him had scared her more than her own impending death from her magic had.

Perhaps it was time to admit that her feelings for him ran deeper than mere attraction.

Slowly, as if in a dream, she rose up on one elbow to look down at him. Her eyes traced his face, alien but so familiar. She lightly touched his jaw, emotion rising up inside her until she couldn’t breathe. What kind of fool was she? She could deny it all she wanted, but deep down, she knew the truth. He wasn’t just a friend. He wasn’t just an infatuation.

Trepidation bordering on panic slid through her. If she acknowledged it, his ability to hurt her would increase tenfold. She knew what rejection could do to her. She knew that pain, and her feelings for Micah had been the blind, foolish obsession of a teenager. She couldn’t imagine ever risking her life for the incubus, even when she’d thought he was the only thing that mattered in the world.

Ash had done so much more than capture her heart. He’d changed the very landscape of her soul.

Heart beating hard, she pressed her hand against the side of his face. She didn’t know if his feelings matched hers. She wasn’t sure if it even mattered. All she knew was that she would do anything to keep him alive—even if that meant doing the very thing Seiya had been demanding all along.

Even if that meant letting him go.

Her hand trembled against his cheek. Slowly, she leaned down until her lips hovered just over his. His warm, slow breath brushed across her skin. She closed her eyes, fighting to contain the rush of emotion within her. She couldn’t tell him. He couldn’t know. It would make everything more difficult. Seiya had said it, hadn’t she? What future could she and Ash have together? But she couldn’t hold it in.

Her lips brushed across his as she whispered the forbidden words.

“I love you.”

Tenderness laced with pain twisted inside her. She pushed away, climbing to her feet and clenching her hands against the tremble in her fingers. The first and last time she would say those words to him. Her feelings were her own problem. He’d almost died protecting her too many times already. She wouldn’t ask that of him again. She wouldn’t allow it again.

She paused in the midst of taking a step toward the door and glanced back. Her heart squeezed. She knelt again and reached for the braid alongside his head. With fumbling fingers, she loosened the plait and slid the strip of blue material from his hair. Clutching it in one hand, she rose and strode for the door. As she pushed the curtain aside, she couldn’t stop herself from looking back one last time.

Hazy grey eyes stared at her.

She blinked hard—and saw he was still deep in the healing sleep. Taking a deep breath against the rush of alarm that he’d somehow woken up, she dismissed her overactive imagination—fueled by longing—and slipped silently out of the room, leaving him to his recovery.

As she walked away, she vowed that she, too, would never let him bleed for her again.

CHAPTER 23

P
IPER
crouched on the edge of the path, a hundred foot plummet a few inches from her toes. The Kyo Kawa Valley stretched before her in the dim light of dusk. Glowing blue orbs dotted the landscape like scattered stars.

She closed her eyes, letting the breeze caress her face as she inhaled the quiet scent of this world. The ryujin territory was dangerous, beautiful, mysterious. In a way that the Underworld hadn’t touched her, something about this world drew her. Maybe it was all in her head. Maybe it went down to her bones.

Behind her, the ley line flowed past, shivering across her senses. Somewhere farther down the path, Ash’s blood smeared the stones.

She let out a long breath. It had been over five days since Miysis’s betrayal. For five days, she’d stayed in the ryujin city to make sure Ash’s healing continued. Two days ago, he’d developed a lung infection, which he was still fighting. He hadn’t woken up properly since he’d fallen off the cliff and out of her sight.

Hinote had assured her that Ash would fully recover with a bit more time. She had to believe him.

She’d waited as long as she could. With nothing but Hinote’s assertion that Ash would be okay, she’d thanked the ryujin for their kindness. Hinote had promised to care for Ash like his own family until he was well again. It was the best she could hope for.

The time for waiting was over.

She rose to her feet. Lyre and Seiya hadn’t returned since going through the ley line five days ago. Considering the speed with which Miysis’s backup force had arrived, it was entirely possible he’d had an ambush waiting for them on Earth. Piper had no idea if Lyre and Seiya were alive, but if they were, she wouldn’t abandon them.

She stretched her arms out in front of her. Each forearm was wrapped in pale leather that shimmered in the soft dusk light—dragon scale. The armguards were magic resistant and nearly impenetrable, a gift from Hinote. Beneath the left one, the Sahar lay against the skin of her inner wrist. Her torso was clad in a halter top of dragon scale like the other ryujin women wore, and she’d already recovered her boots and pants from the trail. She wore both despite the discomfort. It wouldn’t be a problem for long.

The tentacle-like appendages drifted around her thighs. She’d finally learned what they were called: dairokkan. As Ash had surmised, they weren’t tentacles at all, but sensory organs that allowed her to sense water currents as well as the strange, sentient elemental power within the river. Hinote hadn’t been able to explain very well what that power was, and she knew almost nothing about elemental magic.

She let out a long breath and slipped a hand into her pocket. She pulled out the strip of blue material she’d taken from Ash’s hair. Sliding it through her fingers, she hardened her resolve.

As much as it burned her to admit it, Seiya was right. Piper hadn’t been strong enough, and her weakness had nearly gotten him killed. She hadn’t learned when he’d almost died after the fight at the medical center so many months ago. She hadn’t learned when he’d been tortured in front of her. She hadn’t learned when Samael had used her to poison him.

He’d almost died for her selfishness. She hadn’t
needed
him to accompany her to the Overworld, but despite the obvious danger, she’d let him come for her own comfort. She’d even let him come knowing Miysis couldn’t be trusted—and she’d been right. The Ra heir had obviously planned to eliminate Ash the moment Piper completed, or broke, her side of their agreement.

She couldn’t count on Ash anymore. She couldn’t ask for his help anymore. Next time there wouldn’t be a team of the best healers in any of the worlds standing by to save him. Next time they wouldn’t be so lucky. Next time he would die. She couldn’t let that happen.

If she really loved him, she wouldn’t put him at risk again. How could she justify that? Until she was as strong as Seiya, until she was so strong that she didn’t need Ash’s protection, she had no business being near him. No matter what she said, he
would
try to protect her if they were together.

She was done letting other people risk their lives for her. She was done letting Ash bleed for her. She would fight her own battles from now on.

Jaw tight, she pulled the second item from her pocket: the narrow leather band Ash had given her, imbued with a tracking spell. Selecting a blue-tinted rock from the path, she tied the material around it, then wrapped the belt over top that. Weighing it in her hand, she drew her arm back and hurled it as hard as she could into the gorge. The rock plummeted out of sight.

Turning her back on the valley, she took a moment to just breathe. It was time to go.

She stepped closer to the ley line. Although it had been days since the Ra ambush, she didn’t dare go back to the same spot where Miysis had taken them through the ley line on Earth. Lyre and Seiya had gone that way and hadn’t been seen since. It could easily be a trap; Miysis would surely be watching for her.

She needed to come out of a different Earth ley line, but there was only one other she knew of. Two months ago, she, Ash, and Seiya had used it to return to Earth from the Underworld. It would work equally well from the Overworld to Earth, so that’s the line she would use.

Her only experience with the Void had been a single step out of it; she hadn’t tried to travel anywhere. But she couldn’t wait for Ash to wake up and coach her, and the ryujin had no advice to offer her on interworld travel. She would have to wing it.

She inhaled one more breath of Overworld air, trying to slow her speeding heart rate. Then she wrapped her mind in a barrier of magic as she had last time, visualized where she wanted to go, and stepped into the ley line. Magic rushed over her, sliding across her skin like an unseen river.

She could sense the Void, out of sight but not out of reach.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she stepped into the shrieking, shattering darkness.

. . .

She hadn’t properly appreciated the strength of her daemon body until it was gone.

Her muscles felt limp and feeble with each trudging step. She walked listlessly through the balmy evening shadows, following a long-abandoned road. Plant life had destroyed the pavement, leaving nothing but treacherous chunks of concrete hidden in the grass. She vaguely recalled this road from last time, when she’d followed the dark silhouette of Ash’s back through the night. It could have been a completely different road, she supposed, but based on the setting sun, she was at least going in the right direction.

She lifted her hands as she walked, studying her familiar, human fingernails. When she’d come out of the ley line, she’d been human again, forced back into her usual form by Earth’s magic. She had no idea if she could switch to her daemon glamour the way a daemon could drop his human glamour. She missed her shimmering scales and extra strength, but she was also relieved to be herself again.

The only thing left of her trip to the Overworld was her magic. She could still sense the difference between her two magics even though she was once again blind to the supernatural forces. Even if she never shifted back into her daemon form, she could keep her magic under control. There were many things that might still kill her, but her magic wasn’t one of them.

As she plodded steadily toward the distant city, loneliness closed around her like a suffocating cloak. The last time she’d made this journey, she’d been with Ash. She’d just helped him escape a living hell, having just escaped it herself. She’d been closer to him than ever before. Now he felt a million miles away—a world away. Unreachable and untouchable.

With effort, she put him out of her mind and focused on the problems at hand. To start, she would find out what had happened to Lyre and Seiya. They would be with Ash and safe if it hadn’t been for her. She had to believe they were alive. Maybe they were on the run and hadn’t been able to make it back to the Overworld? Maybe they’d returned and had left again when they couldn’t find Piper and Ash? Either way, she would find out for sure.

She hadn’t forgotten about Miysis either. Hatred boiled inside her at the thought of him. Although she relished the idea of revenge, she didn’t plan to go looking for him; that would probably be suicide. But if he crossed her path again, she wouldn’t hold back.

As she walked, the condition of the highway gradually improved until it was mostly level. The sun crept lower, edging toward the horizon. She marched methodically around a wide bend in the road. As she came around the corner, her steps slowed then stopped.

Devastation spread out before her.

To her right was a piece of a highway ramp, jutting fifteen feet into the air. Memories engulfed her: the gritty air in her mouth, the deafening sounds of explosions, the drifting clouds of dust. She remembered climbing on top of that ramp to peer, horrified, at the battle before her, trying to identify where her father was amidst the Hades forces.

It took her a long moment to make her body move again. She walked numbly, eyes travelling across the rubble and debris, the scorched concrete, the craters from magical explosions. Here and there, dark stains formed haphazard patterns across the ground. Another flashback hit her: her astride the Underworld horse, slamming her dagger into a daemon’s throat.

Clenching her shaking hands, she forced herself to keep going. Slowly, she walked through the battlefield, memories assaulting her senses. She should have realized she would encounter this place; she’d come out the same ley line as Samael’s small army and was following the same path toward the Consulate they would have travelled two months ago.

Her steps carried her to the crest of a hill. Spreading out beyond it was nothing but a hundred yards of flattened ground covered by a layer of fist-sized concrete chunks and charred bits of tree. In her mind, the explosion of ebony power eclipsed the world again—Ash’s attack with the Sahar. Over a hundred daemons had died there.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Again, she could see him. Black eyes, empty of everything but rage, lost in the Sahar’s power. Then the black had shrunk and vanished, and wide grey eyes had stared at her.

Then he’d crushed her in his arms and kissed her as though the only thing in the world that mattered to him was holding her close.

She opened her eyes, angrily brushing away an escaped tear. Turning her back on the destruction, she crossed the last of the area at a fast walk and found the overgrown highway on the other side. Putting the ghosts of the battleground out of her mind, she focused on walking.