“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know until they said something.”
He jerked his chin at Aric. “I bet he knew that history. Guess he couldn’t find time in three months to warn you about a pair of psycho killers who’re out for your blood.”
I had wondered the same.
Graaaate. “After she earned my trust, I had only scant hours with her—because of your foolhardy capture. And actually that insults the Fool.”
I rubbed my temples. “Can we just talk about the plan, please?”
Jack cast a last scowl at Aric, then shifted his attention to me. “I’m meeting some dissenters from Azey North tomorrow on the road. I’ll work with whatever I learn, see if I can trust them. At worst, they can give me intel on Selena. At best, they’ll help me take the twins and the general off guard. I’ll kill those three, free Selena, and seize command.”
Aric raised his sword, eyeing the edge. “So our ‘plan’ rests on how well the mortal can read his co-conspirators’ trustworthiness?”
“You got a better idea, Reaper? I’m all ears.”
“You assume the source twins and the Archer will be in Dolor?”
“Ouais. Until I hear different. It’s the only waypoint I got.”
I asked, “If anything goes wrong, will the Lovers retaliate against Selena? Or if they find out another Arcana is riding with me?”
“Empress, they’re already torturing her.”
I flinched and thought Jack had too. No doubt reliving his own torment, the ordeal he would never tell me about. “Will they kill her?”
Aric shook his head. “Not for a while. She’s the most valuable thing they possess. Consider the lengths they went to in order to acquire her. If they were going to murder her outright, it would already be done.”
Death had gone to lengths to acquire—and keep—me. He’d had a suite prepared in his apocalypse-proof castle. I could understand how Aric had accrued so much power through the ages, to prepare for and weather the end of the world.
But how had the Milovnícis gotten the upper hand—over everyone? “How did the general amass an army?”
“He owned a private security firm in Virginia,” Jack said, “with a mini-army of mercenaries—the kind of paramilitary that rescued kidnapped CEOs and stuff. The Milovnícis and those mercs must’ve holed up during the Flash. Afterward, his men overran smaller militias in the Southeast, one after another. He built the Azey like a snowball.”
A bloody, murderous snowball—
Suddenly both Jack and Aric tensed. Outside, Thanatos gave a low nicker.
“What is it?” I asked.
Aric rose with that lethal grace. “I’m going to stand watch.”
Jack was on his feet as well. “If there’s something out there, I’m ready to fight.”
“The day I need your help . . .” Aric trailed off. “I will never need your help, mortal.” To me, he said, “Get some sleep. You can rest secure, sievā.”
“What’s that word mean?” Jack demanded.
Aric delighted in telling him, “Sievā means wife.”
25
I gazed at the door long after Aric had gone, disbelieving he’d left me alone with Jack, threat or no.
I suspected he was testing me, testing my promise.
“You’re staring after Death,” Jack said, drawing my attention. Anger warred with confusion in his expression. “You worried about him?”
My protectiveness toward Aric hadn’t waned. “Yes.” Worry filled me—for him and Jack. For Selena and Matthew.
“Because you think we need him? Or because you think you care about him?”
“Both.” I did care about Aric, maybe even more than cared.
I’d told Jack and Aric to get their heads in the game. I was one to talk. I couldn’t stop comparing the two.
Jack’s passion and drive versus Death’s intensity and Arcana connection. God help me, I could see myself with either.
Or . . . neither? They’d both hurt me. The red witch in me whispered, That’s what dust is for: to leave them in it.
I wished I could get objective advice. Damn, I missed my best friend Mel. She probably would’ve told me to keep both guys, collecting men like handbags.
Jack set his bow down and began to pace in front of the hearth, his eyes so vivid in the firelight. His black hair had dried, reflecting the flames like a raven’s wing. “Death hurt you in all these ways, but you still give a damn about him.” Out came his flask. “I was dishonest with you over one thing, and you can’t tell me if you’ll stay with me?”
“Put yourself in his shoes, Jack. I tried to murder him after convincing him that I was madly in love with him. I did this to him not once, but twice.”
“You didn’t do anything to him, no! Some long-ago Empress did. You ever heard of Stockholm syndrome? That’s what’s goan on.”
My lips parted. “That’s why you looked at me with pity earlier! That’s why your entire attitude changed? You no longer hate me for getting with him, because you’re putting all the blame on him.”
Jack stopped pacing to face me. “A two-thousand-year-old man stole a vulnerable girl and broke her down.”
He made me sound like Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, forced into the underworld by Hades. But Jack didn’t understand: attitude-wise, I skewed more toward wrathful Demeter than I ever had toward vulnerable Persephone.