In the pursuit of Elizaveta Hua’s artifact, Fahriye Budak must make a new ally: Lussadh al-Kattan, the dangerous and beautiful prodigal scion of a house of seers.
By Benjanun Sriduangkaew and Devi Lacroix
Elizaveta picks up the phone on the third ring. “Yes, Inspector.”
She does not press: any headway on the sword? She sounds even, unhurried, glad to be taking a social call if that’s what I’m making. Unfortunately, I have something else in mind. “I’ve got a succubus on the loose.”
A few seconds of silence. “A succubus,” she repeats. “You could provide a little context.”
“Work.” Too curt. “That is, I’ve got a case on my hand. Succubus serial killing.”
“Oh, that’s the norm. People underestimate how bloodthirsty they are; actually one of the least controllable sort of demons, and prone to draining their summoners dry so the summoner may not exert command. Probably has seized control of it own anchor, and it’ll be absorbing magic to become more powerful. What’s the body count up to?”
“Eighteen in two weeks.” Succubi are a popular choice for apprentices with more libido than sense. Then they discover how wrong they are, and it becomes everyone else’s problem.
“She’ll be well-fed.” Elizaveta’s voice makes this sound like she’s reading a mild weather report. “The basics still hold, though. Remove whatever anchors her to the world, and she’ll be sent scurrying home. What else do you need?”
Guilt gnaws at me. “A magic handwave to make all this go away.” I sigh. “If I pull this off, I may have found someone who can help me find the sword, too—she is an al-Kattan.”
“A seer?” Then she chuckles, soft. “You’re making friends in high society.”
“It’s not that. We, ah, arrested her as a suspect.”
“Her family hasn’t demanded her immediate release? They’re not without connections.”
The exact idea has occurred to me. “She works for a mercenary company.”
I can nearly hear Elizaveta sitting up straight. “Lussadh al-Kattan? The prodigal scion?”
“I think so?” I had no idea she was so famous in Elizaveta’s stratum. Notorious. Either one.
“She is not just a seer. She is the seer, the best talent her family has produced in several generations, with the single flaw that she has not taken up the mantle. Youthful wildness, one supposes.” Elizaveta clicks her tongue. “Yes, with her help, you’d be able to track Nuawa for certain. Give me half an hour or so and I’ll get back to you.”
Exactly thirty minutes later, my desk bursts into flame.
Or rather, black fire has manifested and is etching letters into a piece of paper. Which miraculously survives, once the fire has gone out. What remains behind hurts my eyes to look at. I draw up a protective ward, and that doesn’t help much. Under the script is a little message, more normal and less agonizing on the optic nerve: This is half of her True Name. I trust you will make good use of it, and trust moreover that you will keep yourself safe.
A True Name, just like that. Well, demons are her specialty.
The rest is a matter of locating the succubus: easy, now that I have the True Name, albeit partial. I don’t try to read it aloud—even sounding it out in my brain is painful enough; I don’t have the necessary training for this.
I visit the colonel—under house arrest—and let her know that I’ve tracked the succubus down to a shopping arcade in the heart of the city. “It’s convenient when work keeps you close to home,” I tell her. “I’ve got the authority to take you with me.”
“Very flattered to be an S&C accessory.” Her look turns shrewd. “This branch must have exceedingly good specialists. Succubi aren’t easy to find, and here you’ve managed it in less than forty-eight hours.”
“We’d best get going, Colonel.” I absolutely do not want this woman to become too inquisitive about me.
It’s high noon when we arrive at the arcade, not that the time or amount of sunlight matters when you’re hunting a demon. The entry leads to a square beneath a high glass roof, with shops facing inward and walkways overhead. Flowers froth from planters and storefronts—a bridal boutique, a corner cafe, a stationery shop. It’s crowded: a long line for the cafe’s takeaways, their cronuts evidently being wildly popular.
“If we see her,” Lussadh says, voice low in my ear, “I’ll be able to tell.”
The sight Elizaveta told me about; it really must be extraordinary too, because the seers I’ve known would need more than a look to tell a disguised demon apart from a human. “A question. Does the succubus know your face?”
“I’ve not tussled with her yet, so no.”
The way she says that. “You’ve fought demons before.”
“Among other things.” Her shoulders ripple. “You’re one of the few people I’ve ever met taller than I am. Usually I’m the biggest, most intimidating person in the room.”
In all my life, save a period in adolescence when everything was embarrassing, I’ve never been self-conscious of my size. “I can’t tell if you’re trying to insult me.”
“No, no.” She precedes me onto the second floor. “I rather like it.”
We mingle with the shoppers and diners, making our way past people carrying bubble tea and egg waffles. The air is fragranced so pleasantly, you’d never think a demon is here. Out of habit I search for the note that does not belong, like the frangipani and citrus in Lussadh’s home. In a place like this, though, any scent could emanate from cologne, laundry detergent, cigarette smoke. I have the unmistakable sense that I’m being watched, at that.
A minute after we’ve walked past a specialty tea shop, the colonel leans close and says, “The tea shop salesgirl, the one with the red ribbon in her hair.”
We keep moving, making another circuit of the floor. Already I’m calculating the collateral damage—how many civilians in the shop itself, in the immediate radius. Whether the destruction will leave this building. “You know spells of banishment, I assume.”
“After a fashion.” She opens her coat, showing me the long knife strapped to her thigh. “Don’t worry about it.”
The blade had better be extremely enchanted.
Normally we’d clear the civilians out—well, I would clear the civilians out; most of my colleagues wouldn’t bother. A dozen non-practitioners dead is of little account, and even a handful of dead mages is just another day in the life of an S&C officer. There have been incidents in isolated locations where all civilians were simply wiped out along with whatever we were containing at the time; Mount Nicholson nearly became one of those.
There’s no option to declare an emergency and get rid of the crowds here, in any case. It might have been better if we had come here near the arcade’s closing.
Both of us step into the tea shop. The succubus is one of the two sales girls, with the other preoccupied at the cash register. Lucky us. She swans toward us, ribbons glimmering in her hair like garnets, her mouth glistening like thawing pomegranates. “Can I help you?”
We let her go on about fifty types of tea, tisanes, kombucha, and a breakdown of caffeine content. To her credit, Lussadh is good at it, carrying the small talk—making a good pretense at being a true enthusiast for all things tea—until the other customers have thinned out.
Lussadh gives me a glance. I give her a nod.
Her blade flashes out of its sheath, moving fast. A microsecond in which the succubus widens her eyes and then she’s up in the air, her form limned in black light. Porcelain and glass jars roll off and shatter.
I draw my gun. And then I take a deep breath and snap out the succubus’ True Name. My lip violently splits.
Incomplete as it is, it only manages to stagger her. But it does buy the colonel enough time to lunge and swipe with the blade—not at the demon, but at the empty air around her.
The succubus snarls. The noise burns my eardrums. “You!” she screams at Lussadh. “How did you do that?”
Lussadh grins, reversing her grip on the blade, the tip now pointing upward. Her eyes have gone blue-green, inhumanly bright. “Don’t worry about it. Do that again, Inspector.”
I open my mouth. The succubus slams into me and carries me into the far wall.
Agony blooms. Claws rake across my chest, across the arms I’ve brought up to shield my face; I’ve lost my gun.
In the next moment, something seizes the succubus and hurls her into a shelf of tea. Tins dent and collapse, rolling onto the floor. Shadows blacken the shop, growing, growing…
Blood in my mouth, I manage to yell the True Name a second time.
The colonel strikes at the same instant, her knife clawing at what appears to be nothing, and yet it resists her blade. She keeps at it, her jaw set, leaning into the blow and sawing hard.
My tongue feels like it’s about to split. I repeat the succubus’ name anyway.
Lussadh’s blade cuts through.
The succubus dissolves with a scream. A moment later, the shadow retreats.
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
“I cut the succubus’ anchoring,” the colonel explains to me, once we’ve returned to the privacy of her house and she has given me first aid—she has elixirs and enchanted dressings on hand, and minor restorative spells.
I sprawl on her couch. Quite worse for the wear and exhausted, though she has promised the cut across my chest won’t scar. “How is that possible?” Because I know what I saw wasn’t conventional banishment.
She tosses me a bloodied ribbon, the one the succubus wore in her hair. “The summoner bound the demon to this, and I…” Lussadh sips from her glass of lavender lemonade, iced and radiating cold. “I shouldn’t be telling this to an S&C officer.”
Yet she is going to, anyway. “But?”
“I would appreciate it if you can keep this confidential. It’s not a fact I publicize.” Her smile is thin. “Though some of my relatives know, and they have no doubt bragged here and there, the better to glorify our name and cover up the… never mind. My sight is quite specialized. I’m able to see the usual, past some disguises and glamor, but I can also see the threads that bind an existence, that hold it together.”
I rub at my eyes. Tentatively I drink from the cold water she’s poured for me—she joked about offering me tea, but I’m not in the mood. “That is not usual.” She appears to be suggesting she can nullify all sorts of thaumaturgy. Familiars, demons… celestial beings.
She shrugs. “It isn’t.”
Left unspoken is the fact that most powerful mages would simply kill Lussadh, were knowledge of her abilities to become widespread—too much uncertainty, too much security risk. For all its fluidity, mage society relies on certain tenets being inviolable.
“Were you the one who threw her off me, too?” I ask.
Lussadh blinks and sets down her tall glass. “No, I thought that was you.”
I trust moreover that you will keep yourself safe. It wouldn’t be the first time Elizaveta has intervened, and I should find it overbearing. Yet instead I am touched: she has invested so much time, so much care, as no other has ever done for me. And is it so terrible to have someone look out for you? Is it so awful that a mighty warlock, so singular and severe, shows me both her tenderness and her protection?
“Ah,” I say slowly, weighing the decision to reciprocate with a secret of my own. “I would appreciate it if you can keep this confidential. It’s not a fact I publicize, either. But I have a powerful patron invested in my longevity.”
“The fragment of the True Name, too,” she murmurs. “It must be nice to have a powerful patron. I should get me one of those.”
When it becomes obvious I will not elaborate further, the colonel says, “My company will take care of the summoner, per the contract—and it seems only fair, since you bloodied yourself in my place. My subordinates are on it as we speak. Not much to it; they’re a minor warlock who probably thought a succubus would provide… something different.”
“Right.” Just as well. We’ve successfully contained the succubus, which is the extent of my purview.
“The frangipani and citrus,” she goes on, “is just my cologne, by the way. Your colleagues decided it was evidence of demonic rites.”
“Ah.” I nod, conceding. “That is mortifying.”
“You admit aloud your organization isn’t infallible. That’s the rarest of traits.” Lussadh laughs, the timbre rich. “What kind of scent do you like? I think you’d suit something with sandalwood.”
“I don’t wear any.” My eyes drift shut. I am completely worn out, even if my injuries have been healed. There are places on me which remain raw and tender, new-made tissue sealing over the old.
“Shame. I should take you shopping for it, or gift you a little something.”
My eyes snap back open. “Colonel, are you flirting with me?”
Her grin flashes perfect, white teeth. “I was wondering when you’d notice.”
“I’m not usually this dense.” That comment about my height. Well, it’s not as if I have sworn myself in marital pledge to Elizaveta. Except… “Normally, I’d ask if you’re free for dinner or lunch, or a drink.”
She inclines her head, inviting me to elaborate.
“I’m… seeing someone at the moment.” I clear my throat, awkward. “It’s complicated.”
“Your mysterious patron? Well, never you mind. Your secret is safe with me, but do pass along my thanks. As for our book club—it would have been nicer to handle over dinner, but I will somehow manage.” She tops off her lemonade, and with it cools her line of more personal inquiry. “The volume, if you will.”
I pass over the cloth satchel I brought with me; Lussadh carefully unwraps it to reveal the Liber Juratus Honorii, as promised. She pulls on a pair of gloves next, carefully turns the pages with a set of tweezers; satisfied, she sets it aside. “A remarkable find.”
“It was a gift.” Lest the colonel conclude my patron also responsible, I elaborate: “I once fought a forest spirit in the Siberian taiga for three days and three nights—a menk who I killed again and again, only for it to rise with each new dawn.”
Lussadh shifts forward in her seat, eyes bright, genuinely interested. “On campaign, I’ve tussled with more than one local legend.”
“Well, it stayed dead after the third day. The local village was elated, swore up and down that I could have the son or daughter of my choice to take as a bride. Instead, I accepted that book as my recompense.”
“It is remarkable where lost volumes can be uncovered. There was this one time—well, never mind. If I start talking, I won’t stop. The women in my unit tell me that I should have become a professor, believe it or not. Imagine the absurdity.”
“You have a sharp eye, and certainly have the voice for it.” I am tired; I should never have said something like that.
“And here I thought you were spoken for, Inspector Budak.” Another sip of lemonade. “But this volume, the story behind its acquisition—this sounds personal, like it means a lot to you.”
“The thing I am hunting means more,” I say, too frank.
“About that. Let us see what you want, and what I can answer—if you are satisfied, then I’ll take possession of the volume.”
From my jacket pocket I pull the shards Elizaveta gave me—wood, twisted metal, the scorched gemstone. “It’s a sword of some sort, I am led to believe. These are fragments of its sheath and the reliquary that contained it.” A pause. “Does the name Nuawa mean anything to you?”
“I should,” Lussadh says, after an unnaturally long and pregnant pause, “ask you to leave and never speak of this again.” She stands, picks up the Liber Juratus Honorii, and walks it over to a shelf, where she slides it into place: whatever she tells me of the sword is worth this volume.
“The being Nuawa,” she begins, “roams free in the world—or at least, some part of it is. A few years ago I encountered an entity of white, ceaseless fire. My unit and I successfully suppressed it, if only momentarily. I would find out later that other mages, other mercenaries, have encountered this entity too—with increasing frequency over the years, I might add. All agree it is from a realm unknown to us. One told me the Christians would call that world heaven, and Nuawa an angel of the Old Testament. Destructive, if you’re not familiar, with a few eyes too many.”
“Why hasn’t anyone reported it to S&C?”
She gives me a look. “So they can be put away in chains, accused of having conjured the thing? No, the places this thing frequents are battlefields, sites of ruin, great bloodlettings—the sorts of charnel houses where law and order have broken down and where none want S&C involved.”
A niggle of intuition comes to me. “Is it looking for something?”
“It hunts through the dark places of the earth, shining its light on the strong and the bloodthirsty, promising them endless riches and puissance. Always asking the same thing.”
My mouth turns dry as I anticipate what Lussadh will say.
“When I fought it, it entreated me thus.” Her voice takes on an affected tone: “Where are the scions of the house of Hua? Bring me to the Huas, and all this world’s gold will be yours.”
I begin to understand why it is so urgent to Elizaveta. “Did anyone take it up on its offer?”
“And provoke the most powerful woman in the world? In any case, it would seem that none who have accepted its bargain have lived for long—consumed by its fire, no doubt. So it keeps hunting.”
She comes to my couch, seating herself. I relocate my legs to make room. “But Elizaveta Hua is your patron, yes?”
It’s not like I didn’t give her the clues; natural that the colonel would put them together. My pursuit of Nuawa couldn’t have made it more obvious.
I must blanch, or grimace, or do something with my face that isn’t emotionless stoicism. But Lussadh doesn’t gloat that she has uncovered my life’s secret, doesn’t give me a coy look. Instead, she relaxes into the couch with a groan, rubbing her temples with one hand. It is, I imagine, the exact reaction a mercenary commander has when she realizes a contract or an obligation is far larger and far more dangerous than she was led to believe.
Eventually she stands up, rustles around in a cabinet for a decanter of whiskey and two glasses, comes back with a finger for each of us. “The warlock of her age, huh?”
“Yes.” I want to say more, that Elizaveta is more than her fame, that she is—complex, exquisite, incomparable. For some reason, I think this woman I just met would understand.
“For how long?” Lussadh’s tone is precisely that of an old friend learning her compatriot has been in trouble for far longer than anyone realized.
“Twenty years, give or take. I, uh—in my first year on the job, I saved her children, and we started to see each other on and off.”
She smirks at me. “So are you secretly the step-mom to the next generation of Huas?”
I flinch away in shock. “No, not at all. We’ve kept this very secret, even from her family.”
“Why?” I stare at her like she has spouted gibberish, trying to parse the question. She repeats herself. “Why? If you’re keeping it secret at her request, that’s one thing. But from her reputation, she’s a woman who does what she wants, damn the consequences—and from the little I’ve interacted with you, I suspect she’s respecting your comfort level and your professional obligations.”
I think again of our conversation in the ryokan. Of my cowardice, of my inability to face how I feel—about Elizaveta, about Sealing and Containment. About myself, and what I want from my life.
“Have you at least told her you love her?”
“I—that’s a remarkably personal question, for someone I just met.” I flush red.
“I’m invested in this soap opera now. And—holy shit, you haven’t!” She laughs at my misfortune.
“Liz hasn’t said it, either!” My blush deepens when I realize I’ve used the diminutive of Elizaveta’s name; tiredness and the alcohol are conspiring to loosen my tongue. “Maybe she has her doubts, or maybe she’s just using me. I don’t know.”
“Stupid, useless lesbians, I swear to the gods.” The humor dies, and the colonel slips back to a more serious demeanor. “I will give you a list of Nuawa’s appearances in the last few years,” she says, after a long stare at the spine of her new book. “Will put pins on a map for you, even, and do my best to describe my own encounter with the thing. I don’t know whether this is the information you were looking for, but I hope you’ll find it worth the trade. And—”
She takes a long, good look at me. “Your personal matters are safe with me. You’ve treated me fairly and been a true comrade in battle. In all ways, Inspector Budak, you’ve proven yourself admirable.” She downs her drink with a slight flush. “But as your new friend—sort this matter with Elizaveta Hua. Twenty years is a long time to wait for the next chapter of your life to start.”
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
With this much information, I’d be a sorry excuse for a tracker if I can’t find the sword. The entity itself may roam; the sword is a static object. And, by and by, I locate it far beneath the Etchmiadzin Cathedral.
Elizaveta and I meet in another ramen bar, Kyoto this time. We eat, and then stand outside where she erects a veil of secrecy around us.
“Vagharshapat, Armenia,” I tell her and hand her the milky quartz. “I assume whatever underground vault where it is kept shall be warded against scrying. This stone will help guide you, like a compass. I will have to get a few days’ leave, but it shouldn’t be a big deal; I just sorted out a difficult case with a succubus.”
She watches the snow drift. “And this creature, it’s been out and about. Asking after my family.”
“Well, yes. But—”
“If anything happens to me,” she says, her tone as calm as ever, “I’d appreciate it if you could look out for my daughters. They’re grown, of course, but a parent always worries. Olesya and Viveca are both too proud to ask for help.”
“Nothing will happen to you, Elizaveta.” Panic pulls at my guts, so I turn toward humor and concrete plans. “So, the leave. If they give me trouble, I’ll just quit.”
Elizaveta regards me with a pained look.
I shrug, the most nonchalant way I can express the most momentous decision. “I’ve done a lot of soul searching these past weeks. Talked with a friend, even. And I realized S&C isn’t the place I want to spend the rest of my life. I want—well, we can talk about it once we’ve dealt with Nuawa. How many days should I ask for?”
“None. I’m going alone.” Her hand snaps out, closing around my wrist. “Do not follow me. Do not insist. I bind you, Fahriye Budak; you may not enter the city of Vagharshapat by means of flesh or the etheric, in person or in sending. Should ill fate befall me, you are not to exact vengeance or investigate.”
The utterance of a True Name gains power with knowledge, with intimate familiarity. I open my mouth but no sound comes out. The pressure of her geas wraps around my thoughts, noose-tight.
Elizaveta draws close. She kisses me on the mouth, right in the street.
“I’m sorry, Fahriye.” Her voice, finally, fractures. “This duty is mine alone to bear: it is a Hua matter, and I’ll not have any other risk their life, you least of all. Nor do I want you to squander your life on avenging me. But I will go well-armed. I have every intention of succeeding.”
Her hand opens, letting go of my wrist. She draws a deep breath, standing at her full height, and for the first time she does not look commanding or imposing.
“I love you,” she says. “Remember that. You, Fahriye, you are the love of my life.”
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
She never comes back.
I would learn, later, that a rival mage felled her. It seems impossible—Elizaveta was the warlock of her age, the most powerful woman in the world. What could possibly harm her, when she is guarded by the most potent of demons, an entire retinue of them? In my mind, she is—was—a woman incapable of mistakes. Everything she did would be perfectly calculated, planned out. That she could be slain, that she might have made a misstep: I am unable to conceive of it.
Her secondborn is who delivers the news. Waltzing past all of S&C, right into my office. The same way her mother did, on that day.
I come in to find her standing by the window—my window. Her head twitches my way. “Hello, Inspector.”
Viveca Hua is a grown woman now, I register the fact with a distant shock. Taller than Elizaveta and, like her mother, she wears no apparent symbol of power: her bound demons are not visible at all. Most practitioners don their might ostentatiously, show their familiars as ethereal jewelry or puppets or sharp-toothed birds. Instead, should one pass Viveca in the street, most would believe her an ordinary young woman, if an elegantly dressed one. Blue-black skirt and blouse: the mourning color of her house, someone would later inform me.
“I trust that you have been well,” she goes on, because I’ve been mute.
“Pardon me, Ms. Hua. I was not expecting visitors.” Briefly I entertain the thought that she came here with hostile intention. That she learned of her mother’s affair with me, and is outraged that Elizaveta Hua would court an inspector of no pedigree. Ever since Elizaveta left me behind in Kyoto, I’ve been able to think of nothing else but her. And worse, there’s a memory gap. I know she said something important to me but I can’t remember what. A city in Armenia. A forbidden topic.
She meets my eyes. Her gaze is direct, though it lacks the deepening of Elizaveta’s. No flash of red that’d signal her pact to some demon, either. “I know something of your association with my mother.”
Ah. There it is. I lean against the door, deciding to make myself comfortable; the least I can have for an ugly confrontation. “Yes, Ms. Hua?”
“I think,” Viveca goes on, “she was very fond of you. As she was fond of few others. You see, Mother never chose a consort. Even casual partners she didn’t bother with.”
I have cottoned on to the past tense. But it doesn’t mean anything, at first; the possibility does not even occur to me. “Then I should be honored. She is a woman like no other.”
Viveca smooths her hand down her skirt. I notice, for the first time, the signs of strain around her eyes, the tension in her jaw. “I am the Hua warlock now, Inspector.”
Well, Elizaveta did say she was passing on the mantle soon. “Congratulations.”
Her fingers clench around the material of her dress. Her mouth opens and closes, and her body bends; I have the brief, horrifying thought that she is about to cry. “Inspector, my mother is dead.”
I make a noise. To her it must sound like I’m choking on my own breath. “That’s impossible. She is hardly that old.” But already I know Viveca is not saying that her mother expired of advanced age.
A brittle laugh. “It’s funny, but that’s what I thought too—that it is impossible, that she was immortal. All children think their mothers are immortal, don’t they? But I have more reasons than most. We tend to be long-lived; she should have gotten to see her grandchildren and then some. Not really fair, is it, Inspector?”
My hands close and open and close again. “She’s… she was…” I swallow. I cannot be a grief-stricken fool before her daughter, who must be mourning her more deeply than I can ever imagine. “Vagharshapat?” Armenia. The details are now returning, and with them comes the recollection of the geas, pressing upon my nerves like a razor blade.
Viveca studies me. “She must have confided much in you, over the years. Yes.”
“I am sorry, Ms. Hua. I can’t imagine how you must be feeling.”
“You can’t.” Her fingernails graze along the windowpane, with the clear impression that she wants to smash the glass. “I have found who killed my mother, and for this I will make her suffer a thousandfold. The work will be long and difficult, but my sister and I will pursue this enemy to the end of the earth. We’re both young; we have time, resources, and the will.”
Bitterness swells in my mouth. “The killer, who was it?” It must have been Nuawa, but I cannot manage the name. The compulsion Elizaveta has cursed me with tears at me; to ask even this simple question is like pushing through molasses, like clutching at something with frostbitten fingers.
There is silence. It goes on: it becomes a thing of locust roar, drowning out all else we might have spoken, all else we might have shared. Distantly I can hear the noises from the rest of the offices—the ordinary sounds of paper shuffling, of stationery rolling off desks. The muted pings of phones.
“The killer announced Mother’s death,” Viveca says, “at a mage ball in Seoul—really ruined the festivities—and tossed me a few pieces of jewelry Mother wore on her person at all times. A lock of her hair. It was drifting all over the place; I had to collect it from the carpet.”
Not Nuawa, then. Or someone claiming responsibility for Nuawa’s deed. My mind immediately turns to trying to discern which mage it was, who might I… It is no use; my thoughts slip off the idea like it is a surface of smooth glass. This is what Elizaveta wanted for me, how she will force me to be free.
“Before my mother left for a task she wouldn’t even tell either of us about,” she goes on, oblivious, “she instructed me that, should something befall her, I was not to tell you who or what did it.”
All my breath seems to have gone out of me, abandoning my lungs, my arteries. “Why?”
The new warlock of Hua meets my eyes straight on. I wonder what she is feeling: contempt? “She didn’t want you to devote your life to this, whatever the ultimate cause of her demise. Her exact words were that you were born on this earth to do good, and she wanted you to be able to focus on that, not throw your time away avenging her.”
I swallow past a thread of anger. “I would learn the specifics in any case, Ms. Hua. In time. In days.” I say this as much for Viveca as for myself; a threat, a promise that I will break free of this well-intentioned curse. But already the geas is tumbling through my fingers, twisting my thoughts toward forgetfulness…
“No doubt. It is impossible to hide such news.” The angle of her chin becomes imperious. “But rest assured that Olesya and I have this in hand. We will not require outside help.”
“Please—”
But she is already gone, spirited away by one of her demons. To brood and fume, to strategize and plan.
I am alone in my office, as alone as I have ever been.
I never got to tell Elizaveta that I loved her.