Page 55 of The Malevolent Eight

She let go of my hand and turned away. ‘I never said you did me any good, Cade. Only that all the steps along the way that made you Gallantry, Glorian Justiciar of the Aurorals, brought you to me at the moment when I needed someone truly gallant.’

Given all the lousy things I’ve done in my life, it takes a lot for someone to make me feel like crap. ‘Eliva, what am I going to find out when I meet up with Tenebris after the Glorian Banner has been handed off to him?’

‘Don’t call me Eliva,’ she snapped, still facing away from me. ‘You haven’t the right.’

‘Wrong.’ I took a chance, striding up to her and turning her around to face me. ‘Yougaveme the right, remember? When you pulled me back from the Auroral Archives into this place when it was still your prison.’

There were no tears in her eyes, no physical admissions of sentiment, yet I was almost sure I could feel the connection between us. ‘Did I do that? Really?’

I nodded. ‘You said you were trying to pull forward a better destiny and that I—’

‘You were in all the good ones,’ she admitted, speaking barely over a whisper. ‘I remember that now.’ I caught the flash of coloured lights from the tattooed bands around her forearms before they settled into a softer iridescence. ‘The experiments they performed on me failed, all of them. The magic of my people is tied to the oases from which our spells are drawn.’ A tightening around her eyes and mouth spoke of remembered agonies. ‘They kept trying to force me to attune myself to other esoteric planes of reality, dozens of them, but I couldn’t. Not until. . .’

‘Not until those morons attuned you to the Pandoral realm and caused the slow collapse of that plane of reality, which then caused its rulers to seek to invade ours.’

She said nothing at first, keeping that near-perfect poker face that only gave something away because it was so inscrutable.

She’s trying to decide whether to correct me, which means her attunement isn’t to the Pandoral realm at all!

‘You’re so unlike the rest of them,’ she said at last. ‘The way you not only see through the lies, but into the truths that we all leave unspoken.’

‘I was an investigator,’ I reminded her.

She shook her head. ‘No, it’s not that.’ She reached up with the palm of her hand and held it to my cheek. The sensation was softer than I expected– probably because that particular gesture usually precedes me being slapped in the face. ‘I think you love the world, Cade Ombra. I think you love all of it, even the ugly parts. That’s why you were such a skilled Justiciar. As much as you might rail against your fellow human beings, as much as you might denigrate yourself, you never shy away from seeing all of our contours, like a lover.’ The corners of her mouth rose, but this smile was different from the others. ‘Even when you look at me as though I’m some nemesis you’re contemplating how best to kill, you make me feel so. . . beloved.’

‘Is this the part where we kiss?’ I asked. ‘Because the Lords Celestine expect me to murder you, and I generally prefer to do these things in the right order.’

She laughed, a light, airy sound that brought with it the rumbling of stone collapsing beneath its own weight. The walls were coming down, and soon the roof would follow, leaving us both trapped beneath the rubble. ‘See what I mean about our choices becoming heavier and heavier?’ she asked. ‘That’s the magic that came from the torture your former Glorian comrades put me through. That’s the next part of the secret the Lords Devilish will reveal to you in exchange for that silly piece of gold and ivory cloth you’ve so cleverly convinced one of the Celestines’ own disciples to steal on your behalf.’

I glanced around us, watching the odd languor with which the vault was slowly coming apart, a sleepy, almost lazy kind of self-destruction. ‘You transform the momentum of someone’s decisions, the collapsing of all the possible outcomes of their actions, to warp reality to conform with that inevitability– that particular doom.’ A thought occurred to me then. ‘You said each of us has three dooms?’

She nodded. ‘This is one of yours. You allow your guilt over past failures to lead you into the traps the Celestines, the Devilish and even my employers keep setting for you.’ She stood up higher on her toes and whispered in my ear. ‘This isn’t even the worst of your three dooms, Cade. Are you sure you want to risk the other two?’ I felt her lips brush my cheek before she added, ‘Although, there is one in which you and I make love, so perhaps that will serve as some small consolation for what happens after?’

At the sound of a heavy crack, I looked up and saw the chunks of stone from the ceiling about to rain down on us. ‘I don’t believe in destiny,’ I said, too late realising that those would’ve made rather ironic last words.

The rubble froze in mid-air, teetering there as if unsure which way was up and which way was down any more. Then, as slowly as they’d fallen, the chunks of ceiling floated upwards, sliding into place next to one another, the smaller shards of rock and dust filling the seams perfectly. Soon, whatever invisible force had kept us sealed inside disappeared, and Corrigan came thundering– literally– through the door.

‘By every bolt of Tempestoral fury, I’m going to—’ He stopped, seeing the Spellslinger. ‘Oh, it’s her. Of course. Come to kill us all, sweetheart?’

‘Not yet,’ she replied, still looking at me. ‘But soon, Cade. We can only meet once more after this before my employers will demand I bring you to your final doom. You’ve got to give this ridiculous rebellion of yours up. No one can prevent the Great Crusade. No one can stop the doom that the Lords Celestine and Lords Devilish must bring upon each other and upon this entire realm.’

I shot her my best wry grin– the one that’s meant to stop people from noticing how badly I’m shaking. ‘Darling, if the war was truly inevitable, your bosses wouldn’t be trying so hard to keep me from preventing it.’

I expected more threats, or some new display of power, or maybe just a disappointed sigh. Instead, she reached a hand behind my neck and pulled me into a kiss.

That kiss. . .

I didn’t even try to push her away. Why would I? Even if I could’ve drawn a blade unnoticed and slipped it between her ribs, I. . . Well, no, I would’ve killed her for sure. Much as I’d convinced myself I was the last person who should take up the mantle of a hero, recent events had taught me that waiting for the good guys to get their shit together and get the job done was a recipe for utter fucking calamity. One thing about us irredeemable, morally compromised arseholes? We don’t throw away an opportunity at a quick and easy victory for the taste of another’s lips and, if I’m being honest, a pleasingly adept tongue. No, sir. I’m all business when it comes to saving the world.

But, since I didn’t have a hidden blade. . . Seriously, that kiss was something else.

‘See?’ she told me when she finally let go, the heaviness in her breathing telling me I wasn’t the only one who’d come close to forgetting the mission comes first. ‘I told you, some things are inevita—’

‘Hey, Cade, take a look at this fancy Auroral torch I found in the armoury next door,’ Corrigan said, holding up a two-foot-long brass cylinder with a shorter, thicker gold cylinder at the top whose circumference was inscribed with blessings in the Celestine language. ‘Can’t figure out how to light it.’ He pointed to the single pink opal embedded in the shaft. ‘Do you suppose pressing this will do the trick?’

‘Corrigan, that’s not a torch, it’s a—’

He grinned. ‘Just kidding. I know what it’s for.’

---