Yield the Night (26 page)

Rubbing a hand against her forehead, feeling the dull ache of a sleepless night—or was it the return of the magic-fueled headache?—she moved toward the murmuring sound of water. She didn’t know where Ash had gone, but he preferred open spaces, so the river was her best bet.

The shore was only a few minutes away. She stepped between the last two trees and onto the rocks. The water drifted by, calm, deep, murmuring gently. Her eyes drifted across the crystalline, blue surface. It seemed almost welcoming, the current lazy and smooth, the sparkles of the sun on the ripples dancing with carefree abandon. Fear curled in her stomach as memories of the cave flashed through her head.

Pulling her eyes away, she looked down the shore and saw him.

He was sitting on a large rock that jutted out over the water, with one knee propped up and his elbow resting on it. So casual at first glance, calm and safely back in glamour, but she didn’t trust his outward appearance one bit. There was no sign of Seiya; she must have already returned to the others.

Picking her way carefully over the rocks, Piper closed the distance until she was standing several steps behind him on the far end of the rock where he sat. He didn’t turn or acknowledge her.

She swallowed to moisten her tongue. “Ash?”

No response.

Biting her lip, she walked out onto the rock. She stopped beside him, looked down at the top of his head, then sat next to him. He was staring at the water.

“Ash ...”

He spoke without looking at her. “How badly are you hurt?”

She shuddered. That tone. She knew it—and hated it.

Death is easy. Living is difficult.

It was Raum’s voice, Raum’s tone. Empty, distant, inflectionless. Dead.

“I’m fine. Just a couple scratches,” she replied quickly, forcing lightness into her voice. “Already healed. It was no big deal.”

He finally looked at her, but his gaze was like a knife slashing across her skin. Eyes still too close to black. He made a noise that was half cold amusement, half disgust.

“No big deal,” he repeated, again toneless. “Do you think you’re invincible?”

“What? Of course I don’t—”

“A heartbeat. One heartbeat’s difference and you would have been dead.”

“But I’m not,” she said firmly. “You didn’t kill me, Ash. You barely scratched me, and—”

“Next time I might.”

“There won’t be a next time.”

His gaze returned to the water, his eyes empty. “There will be. I can’t control it anymore. It’s like the Sahar has me all over again. All I feel is rage and hatred until I can’t think anymore, until all I want is to see blood.”

His rage and mine. His hate and mine.
Piper brushed away Natania’s insidious whisper from her mind.

“It’s only been a couple of months,” she said. “You can’t expect to get better in so short a time after everything that’s happened.”

“I’m not getting better. I’m getting worse.”

“Ash, I’m sure—”

He made a sharp, angry noise, the first sign of emotion since she’d approached.

“What do you know?” he snapped, his anger breaking free. “You don’t understand anything.”

He abruptly stood, and for the second time that morning, he walked away from her.

She sat on the rock, stunned. Aching. She looked down at her hands and saw they were shaking. A quiet, slightly hysterical laugh escaped her as she thought of Lyre’s request that she talk to Ash about what was wrong. Yeah, that had gone well.

He was upset. He’d injured her. He was afraid he would kill her. She got that. But that didn’t mean his words hadn’t left her hurt and bleeding—especially since he was right. She didn’t understand—couldn’t understand—what he was going through. What he’d been through.

She pressed her hands to her face, blinking away tears. None escaped to wet her cheeks. She dropped her hands, clenching them into fists. Part of her wanted to slink away and lick her wounds. The other part of her wanted to punch him for being such a jerk.

Huffing and sniffing, she pushed herself up and turned.

Seiya stood at the edge of the trees, watching her. Piper stilled, wariness flaring.

“Last warning, Piper,” Seiya said. Calm. Lethal. “Let him go.”

She turned and strode back into the trees.

Piper’s hands clenched as she fought down the irrational wave of fear. She glanced back at the water then hurried into the forest. Her morning just kept getting better, didn’t it? Chances were she’d be dead before the day was over anyway. Wouldn’t that solve everyone’s problems?

Shaking her head, she hurried to join the others, knowing her time was slipping away far too quickly. If she survived, she would figure out what to do about Ash and Seiya. But until then, she could only worry about what would happen when they reached the ley line.

. . .

Piper panted, struggling to keep up with Lyre as they climbed the steep path. The ledge loomed, closing with painful slowness, though she dreaded the moment they would reach the top. She did her best to ignore Ash, far ahead, Seiya on his heels. He’d avoided Piper—everyone, in fact—since they’d headed out. He hadn’t even asked if she’d gotten what she needed from Natania, though she assumed someone must have told him what the plan was.

She bit her lip, remembering that look in his eyes when he’d grabbed her throat.
All I feel is rage and hatred until I can’t think anymore, until all I want is to see blood.
No matter what Seiya threatened, Piper would get to the bottom of whatever was wrong with him. But not yet. First she had to survive the next obstacle, and she really didn’t know how well that was going to go.

Though Piper hadn’t realized it immediately, Natania’s question game hadn’t been the frivolous waste of time that it had first appeared to be. The woman’s questions had provided Piper with a clear roadmap of what she had to do if she wanted to survive. The problem was successfully doing it.

Assuming she’d understood correctly, Piper couldn’t separate her two magic lineages until she could see what she was doing, and only daemons could see magic, which was why she had to unlock her daemon side. She needed to do the opposite of what daemons did to create a human glamour. They went through the Void and into an Earth ley line in order to be “given” a human glamour. She needed to go from the Void into an Underworld or Overworld ley line in order to be “given” a daemon form.

The thought terrified her.

First, the Void was the embodiment of the most frightening thing in existence: the unknown. No one knew what the Void was, and even though Miysis and Koen had spent the better part of the day coaching her on how to survive it, she still didn’t understand what it was or what it would do to her—only that it was insanely dangerous and she probably wouldn’t survive.

Second, the idea of, as Natania had put it,
yielding to the daemon within
, was almost as frightening. In her mind, the only difference between a haemon and a human was magic—nothing else. And since Piper had never had magic, the only difference between her and humans had been her attitude and knowledge. She’d never thought of herself as a half-daemon. The very notion that there was dormant daemon blood inside her waiting to be brought to life freaked her out.

And that didn’t even address the whole “daemon glamour” aspect. Miysis surmised that she would look like a diluted daemon—though his overall doubtful state that it would work gave her little confidence in his opinion. For all she knew, she would survive the Void only to discover that she’d turned into some kind of hideous hybrid mutant. After all, she had
two
daemon bloodlines, not one. Again, Miysis had a theory. He explained that there were no true hybrid daemons because one bloodline was always dominant, so she should come out looking like only her dominant bloodline. But he was only guessing.

She was doing her best not to worry about it. None of it would matter unless she survived the Void.

Her heartrate kicked up to double speed when they reached the small plateau where they’d first come through on the ley line. She could feel its power sparking in the air, the soft call of magic, Mother Nature’s voice whispering words of welcome in her ears. For a moment, she didn’t feel so scared. Then she thought about the Void and her terror came right back.

Miysis rested one hand on his sword as he surveyed the ley line that was invisible to her. He turned toward her. “Are you clear on what to do?”

Still breathing hard from the climb, she sat on a rock. “One of you will take me into the Void and let me go. I’ll have to pull myself back out and into the Overworld ley line, where I’ll let the magic create my ... daemon glamour.”

“You should take your clothes off beforehand,” he said. “There’s no way to know what your form will be. Constricting garments could be painful.”

She tried not to blush. “Okay.”

“Hold on a minute.” Lyre folded his arms across his chest and scowled. “How come when
he
tells you to take your clothes off, you’re all, ‘Sure, no problem’?”

“Are you certain you want to do this?” Miysis asked, ignoring Lyre.

“If I don’t do it now, I won’t get another chance.” She pressed a hand to her head, which throbbed painfully in time with her heartbeat, like a hammer striking the inside of her skull. “The rune venom is wearing off and the pain is coming back quickly. If it gets any worse, I won’t be able to concentrate on anything.”

“Reduced pain means reduced magic.”

“I’ll take the risk.”

“Why don’t you take the Stone instead?”

She looked around, surprised to hear Ash speaking to her after his daylong silence. His voice was again toneless.

“Take the Sahar?” she repeated. “Yeah, that would work. Emergency magic if I needed it.”

“No,” Miysis said. “That would be an even greater risk. You can’t be distracted by the Sahar’s rage. It would undo you in the Void. You must stay calm.”

Piper’s eyes narrowed. Was his concern for her, or for his precious Sahar getting lost in the Void?

“Fine, no Sahar.” She swallowed. “Who will take me in?”

“Koen can—”

“I will.”

Again, she looked at Ash. “You—you want to?”

He nodded shortly.

“Ashtaroth,” Miysis said, voice clipped, “Koen is trained—”

“I want Ash to do it,” Piper interrupted.

Seiya’s glare flashed in her direction, but she ignored it. Yes, she was being selfish, but she needed Ash for this. Her hands were already shaking. She needed his strength, his steadiness, not a stranger she didn’t trust.

She stood up. “Let’s get this over with.”

Face tightening, Miysis turned to Koen and muttered something. Koen reached into his pack and pulled out a blanket, which he handed to Piper.

“Good luck,” Miysis said.

She accepted the blanket and turned.

Lyre gave her a tight smile. “You’re the toughest haemon I’ve ever met. You can do this.”

She nodded, unable to speak from the fear sweeping through her. She was going into the Void—the mind-shattering nothingness between worlds that the majority of daemons feared too much to ever enter.

Ash stepped up beside Lyre. The two daemons shared a strange, silent look before Ash touched the small of her back. He guided her up the trail. The soft murmurs of the others disappeared as the path curved around an outcropping of rock. On the other side, the ledge widened, offering some breathing room between the side of the mountain and the cliff’s edge that dropped to the rushing river a hundred feet below. A dozen scraggily trees had managed to sink their roots into the rocky mountainside, thankfully free of strangling azure pods.

She held the blanket against her chest and tried not to hyperventilate.

Ash led her to the trees and stopped. She could feel the rush of the ley line beside them. Panic swirled in her head like a whirlpool, sucking in all her attempts to think calm thoughts and leaving her shaking.

“Piper.”

She turned to him, trying to breathe normally.

He touched her chin with light fingers. The stoniness was gone from his face, replaced with fire and determination. “Are you ready to do this?”

Was she ready? Miysis and Koen had gone over everything. Every step, every little thing to expect. How to hold her mind together. How to get back to the ley line. She knew what to do. It was just doing it that terrified her. What if she wasn’t strong enough?

Her head throbbed. The pain was getting worse. She couldn’t wait. It would only get more difficult.

She looked at him, eyes wide. “You’ll be here when I get back? Waiting for me?”

“Right here. I’ll be right here.”

“Okay.” Inhale, exhale. “Okay. Yes, I’m ready.”

His thumb lightly brushed her cheek as he lowered his hand.

She glanced down at her clothes. “I—I just need to ...”

He turned around and moved away a few steps. Biting hard on her bottom lip, she quickly stripped down, removing every last stitch of clothing, then wrapped the blanket around herself like a towel, the edges dragging on the ground.

“Okay.”

He returned to her, shadowed eyes searching her face.

“What if—” she began in a whisper.

He stepped close and gripped her upper arms with warm hands. “You’ll do this, Piper.”

“But—”

“I’ll be right here when you get back. It’ll be over in five minutes.”

She blinked quickly and nodded, letting herself lean against him. She took a deep breath.

“Just in case—”

“Piper—”

“Just listen! Just in case I don’t make it back, I want to tell you something.”

She felt him tense. He slowly nodded, his hands still on her arms. She looked up at him as a thousand things rushed through her head. She could tell him she knew he cared about her. She could tell him she cared about him too—a lot. But then, he already knew those things.

Maybe she could tell him instead that she loved how his grey eyes looked right into her, seeing down to her soul. That she loved the feeling of his arms around her. That she loved the touch of his lips on hers. That she loved his rare smiles, all of them, from the contented ones to the “I’m going to kill you now” ones that, thankfully, he’d never directed at her.