“I have to stop by school,” Zuzana said. “Come with me.”
Karou wanted to go there anyway—it was part of her good-bye program—so she agreed. She’d have to wait until nightfall anyway to get back in her flat, if the police were watching it. After dark she could return by way of sky and balcony, instead of street and elevator, and get the things she’d need for her journey.
What’s a day? she asked herself, and there was a buzzing happiness in her that she had to admit had a lot to do with the way Akiva had stood in the teahouse doorway, and the solidity of him beside her now in all its rightness.
There was wrongness, too, faint and flickering, but she attributed that to nerves, and as the morning went by in its buzz of unlooked-for happiness, she kept brushing it aside, unconsciously, as one might fan at a fly.
Karou said her good-byes to the Lyceum—in her head only, not wanting to alarm Zuzana—and, afterward, to Poison Kitchen. She laid a fond hand on the marble flank of Pestilence, and ran her fingers over the slightly ratty velvet of the settee. Akiva took the place in with a puzzled expression, coffins and all, and called it “morbid.” He ate a bowl of goulash, too, but Karou didn’t think he would be asking for the recipe anytime soon.
She saw her two haunts with new eyes, being there with him, and was humbled to think how little she had really internalized the fact of the wars that had shaped them. At school, some joker had scrawled a red graffiti volnost—liberty—where freedom fighters had once written it in Nazi blood, and in Poison she had to explain gas masks to Akiva, and that they came from a different war than the volnost did.
“These are from World War One,” she said, putting one on. “A hundred years ago. The Nazis came later.” She gave him a tart sideward glance. “And just so you know, the invaders are always the bad guys. Always.”
Mik joined them, and it was a little strained at first, because he didn’t know anything of other worlds and other races, and believed Karou was just eccentric. She told him the truth—that they had really been flying, and that Akiva was an angel from another world—but in her accustomed manner, so that he thought she was teasing him. But his eyes kept going to Akiva with the same kind of astonished appraisal as everyone else’s did, and Karou, watching, saw that it made Akiva uncomfortable. It struck her that there was nothing in his manner at all to suggest he knew the power of his beauty.
Later the four of them walked onto the Charles Bridge. Mik and Zuzana were a few steps ahead, entwined as if nothing could ever shoehorn them apart, Karou and Akiva trailing.
“We can leave for Morocco tonight,” Karou said. “I was going to take an airplane, but I don’t think that’s an option for you.”
“No?”
“No. You’d need a passport, a document saying your nationality, which tends to assume you are from this actual world.”
“You can still fly, yes?”
Karou tested her ability, rising a discreet few inches off the ground and coming right back down. “It’s a long way, though.”
“I’ll help you. Even if you couldn’t fly, I could carry you.”
She imagined crossing the Alps and the Mediterranean in Akiva’s arms. It wasn’t the worst thing she could think of, but still. She was no damsel in distress. “I’ll manage,” she said.
Up ahead, Mik dipped Zuzana into a back-bending kiss, and Karou came to a halt, flustered by their display. She turned to the bridge railing and looked out over the river. “It must be weird for you just doing nothing all day.”
Akiva nodded. He was looking out, too, leaning on the railing, one of his elbows against hers. It didn’t escape Karou’s notice that he found subtle ways of touching her. “I keep trying to imagine my own people living like this, and I can’t.”
“How do they live?” she asked.
“War is all. If they’re not fighting it, they’re providing for it, and living in fear, always. There is no one without loss.”
“And the chimaera? What are their lives like?”
He hesitated. “There’s no good life there for anyone. It’s not a safe place.” He laid a hand on her arm. “Karou, your life is here, in this world. If Brimstone cares about you, he can’t want you to go to that broken place. You should stay.” His next words were a whisper. She barely heard them, and afterward wasn’t entirely sure she had. He said, “I could stay here with you.”
His grip was firm and it was soft; his hand on her arm was warm and it was right. Karou let herself pretend, just for a moment, that she could have what he had whispered: a life with him. Everything she had always craved was right here: solidity, a mooring, love.
Love.
The word, when it came to her, wasn’t jarring or preposterous, as when Zuzana had uttered it that morning at the teahouse. It was tantalizing. Karou didn’t think. She reached for Akiva’s hand.
And shocked a pulse into it.
She jerked back. Her hamsa. She’d laid it full against his skin. Her palm burned, and Akiva had been knocked back a step. He stood there holding his magic-scorched hand to his body as a shudder passed through him. His jaw was clenched with the endurance of pain.
Pain, again.
“I can’t even touch you,” Karou said. “Whatever Brimstone wants for me, it’s not you, or he wouldn’t have given me these.” Her own hands, clasped tight to her chest, felt evil to her in that moment. She reached into her collar and fished up her wishbone, took it into her hand and held it tight, for comfort.
Akiva said, “You don’t have to want what he wants.”
“I know that. But I have to know what’s happening there. I have to know.” Her voice was ragged; she wanted him to understand, and he did. She saw it in his eyes, and with it the helplessness and anguish she’d seen in glints and glimmers since he had come into her life the night before. Only the night before. It was unbelievable it had been so short a time.
“You don’t have to come with me.”
“Of course I’m coming with you. Karou…” His voice was still whisper-soft. “Karou.” He reached out and eased the hat from her head so that her hair spilled out in a splash of blue, and he tucked an errant strand behind her ear. He took her face in his hands and a sunburst went off in Karou’s chest. She held herself quiet, her motionlessness belying the rushing within her. No one had ever looked at her like Akiva was right now, his eyes held wide as if he wanted take more of her into himself, like light through a window.
One of his hands slipped softly around to the nape of her neck, twining through her hair and sending frissons of longing through her body. She felt herself giving way, melting toward him. One booted foot slid forward so her knee brushed his and settled against it, and the remaining space between them—negative space, it was called in drawing—called out to be closed.
Was he going to kiss her?
Oh god, did she have goulash breath?
Never mind. He had it, too.
Did she want him to kiss her?
His face was so close she could see the sun dusky on his lashes, and her own face centered in the deep black of his pupils. He was gazing into her eyes as if there were worlds within her, wonders and discoveries.
Yes. She did want him to kiss her. Yes.
His hand slipped down her throat to find her hand, which was still cupping the wishbone on its cord.
Its flanges protruded through the webbing of her fingers, and when Akiva felt them there, he stopped. Something in his gaze froze. He looked down. His breath caught; with a hitch he inhaled and opened Karou’s hand with no caution for her hamsas.
The wishbone was there, a small bleached relic of another life. He gave a cry that was amazement and… what? Something deep and painful wrenched out of him like nails splintering wood as they pulled free.
Karou jumped, startled. “What?”
“Why do you have this?” He had gone pale.
“It’s… it’s Brimstone’s. He sent it to me as the portals burned.”
“Brimstone,” he repeated. His face was alive with furious thought, and then understanding. “Brimstone,” he said again.
“What? Akiva—”
What he did then made Karou falter into silence. He sank to his knees. The cord around her neck gave way and the wishbone came away in his hand, and for an instant she felt bereft without it. But then he leaned into her. He pressed his face against her legs, and she felt the heat of it through her jeans. She stood astonished, looking down at his powerful shoulders as he curled into her, letting go of his glamour so his wings sprang visible.
From around them on the bridge came gasps and cries. People stopped in their tracks, gaping. Zuzana and Mik broke from their embrace and spun to stare. Karou was only distantly aware of them. Gazing down at Akiva, she saw that his shoulders were shaking. Was he crying? Her hands fluttered, wanting to touch him, afraid of hurting him. Hating her hamsas, she bent over him and stroked his hair with the backs of her fingers, his hot, hot brow with the backs of her hands.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
He straightened, still on his knees, and looked up at her. She was curved over him like a question mark. He held her legs, and she could feel tremors shaking his hands, the wishbone in his grip where he clasped the back of her knee. His wings unfolded; they came around like a pair of great fans so the two of them were in a room of fire, more than ever in a world all their own.
He searched her face, looking stunned and, Karou thought, terribly sad.
And he told her, “Karou, I know who you are.”
35
THE TONGUE OF ANGELS
I know who you are.
Akiva, gazing up into Karou’s face, saw what his words did to her. The hope at odds with the fear of hoping, her black eyes tear-glossed and shining with fire. Only then, seeing the reflection in her eyes, did he realize he’d dropped his glamour. There was a time when such carelessness could have gotten him killed. Now, he just didn’t care.
What? Karou’s lips moved but no sound came out. She cleared her throat. “What did you say?”
How could he just tell her? He was reeling. Here was the impossible, and it was beautiful, and it was terrible, and it flayed open his chest to show that his heart, numb for so long, was still vital and beating… just so it could be ripped out again, after all these years?
Was there any fate more bitter than to get what you long for most, when it’s too late?
“Akiva,” implored Karou. Wide-eyed, distraught, she sank to her knees in front of him. “Tell me.”
“Karou,” he whispered, and her name taunted him—hope—so full of promise and recrimination that he almost wished he was dead. He couldn’t look at her. He gathered her to him and she let herself be gathered, supple as love. Her wind-mussed hair was like tousled silk, and he buried his face in it and tried to think what to tell her.
All around, a weave of murmurs and the weight of being watched, and Akiva registered almost none of it until one sound fought its way forward. A throat was cleared, caustic and theatrically loud. A prickling of unease, and before any words were spoken, he’d already begun to turn.