“An’ it harm none.” Bran spoke the words gravely. “This is my sacred oath. I’ve never used my gift to harm another human being. Until this. And though this weighs on me as well, I know what was done was done to protect, to fight evil.”
“They are right. I don’t like fighting, and killing is against all I believe, but I would be dead, and you as well. You were only gone seconds, it seemed,” Annika continued. “I was so weak—and I prayed you wouldn’t come back. I knew you would, in my heart, because you’re Sawyer. And I knew they would kill us both. I could feel it. As soon as this Malmon had what he wanted, he would give us to Yadin to kill in a terrible way. And then you were there, inside the glass with me, under the water with me. I knew we would live because you had the courage and the will to do what had to be done. If you think this was wrong, then you’re wrong. If anyone believes you failed to honor your oath, they are wrong and stupid.”
“Damn skippy.” Because Annika’s eyes were full of tears, Riley reached across the table for her hands. “Damn skippy, Anni.”
“It weighs on us.” Sasha rose, poured another half glass of wine for Sawyer. “On all of us. We killed men. Humans. And it weighs.”
“Dying weighs more,” Riley said.
“And more than that, than even that,” Sasha continued, “would be to fail. We’re the guardians—the stars are our power and our responsibility. No one’s broken an oath, or broken faith. They watch us, the goddesses, the guardians. They watch the six who came from them, and they see we take our power, shoulder our responsibility, keep our vows and our faith. To take a life is grief, to lose our lives is failure. The dark follows that failure across all the worlds.”
“Was that you?” Riley asked after a beat of silence, “Or you? You had that seer look in your eyes.”
“Some of both.” Sasha let out an audible breath. “Wherever it’s from, it’s truth. And here’s another. Sawyer, if I’m following what you’ve reported, what Annika told us, you traveled with a gun to your head—and this after being shot, stabbed, electrocuted, and tortured—you disconnected, which was hard for you, but absolutely necessary, then you went back for Annika. In the tank. Does that mean you had to use her as your . . . beacon?”
“Yeah, that’s as good a term as any. I had the cave coordinates, but not the exact place where she was. I had to zero in on her, get inside to get her out.”
“And fast,” Sasha continued. “Then you traveled again, here, with her. That’s three shifts inside what, ninety seconds?”
“About that.”
“And that sort of traveling drains you, even if you’re feeling like a party. You’d lost God knows how much blood, you were hung up like a side of beef and beaten, and worse, while you had to watch them hurt Annika, which is more torture. But you did what you had to do, and got back, barely alive. Am I right about that part?” she asked Bran.
“It was close, closer than I’d like.”
“Exactly. So I don’t want to hear any more bullshit out of you about any of it.”
“Damn skippy,” Annika said. Then laid her head on the table and wept.
“Oh, come on. Don’t, don’t, don’t do that.” Desperate, Sawyer stroked her hair, rubbed her back. When he tried to just haul her up and onto his lap, he found he didn’t have the strength. “You’re killing me, Anni.”
“No, no, they are almost all happy tears.” She wrapped herself around him. “Almost all. We’re here, we’re all here, talking. And I heard you laugh, even though it hurt you, I heard you laugh.”
She brushed kisses over his face, met his lips, and simply drowned herself in him.
“Want some privacy?” Riley wondered.
“If only,” Sawyer murmured. “I don’t think I could manage it.”
“There will be sex again.” Through tears, Annika smiled at him. “When you’re healed. I will be very gentle until you’re strong again.”
He ignored Doyle’s snort of laughter. “Good to know. So okay, no bullshit.” He picked up his wine, studied it. “Power honored, responsibility met. I’ll get there. There was more to the need to rush, to do what I had to do. Malmon called Berger in. He told him to kill Sasha. He wanted Bran wounded, but Sasha dead. He wanted the rest taken alive, so he ordered Trake to bring a team down here to take care of that while Berger took Sasha out.”
“You worry Nerezza, fáidh.” Under the table, Bran took her hand. “She can’t force her will on you, can’t pull your power away and into herself as she believed. You worried for all of us,” he said to Sawyer. “But we’d prepared for exactly that.”
“Yeah, I figured Berger for toast, but still. The tank shook. Did the tank shake?” he asked Annika. “The light—it exploded?”
“Yes. Just as you came for me. Malmon ran, but he couldn’t have run fast enough to escape the light.”
“We were dealing with Trake and company when you were heading in,” Riley continued. “We were
ready for them. Bran set off the chain reaction up in the hills, and we had plenty more for them here. There . . . was nothing left of them. Wounding with the newly magickalized—I’m going with that word—weaponry, it puts a world of hurt on them. But a kill shot, it just obliterates. Nothing left.”
“No bodies to dispose of. That’s the cold truth here,” Doyle added when Sasha winced.
“You’re right,” she said. “I know you’re right. Bran and Riley went up to the cave yesterday. We had to check, and after some heated debate, Riley went, Doyle stayed. We couldn’t take the chance of Bran going alone, or of leaving us underprotected here. So . . .”
“Nothing left,” Bran told him. “The cave is just a cave. There was . . . a smear of something on the air, something dark. But faint and fading.”