Cold Steel

My sire touched fingers to the spot I had kissed. “A transparent ploy. Truly, I thought better of you, Cat. You might have known I would have anticipated such a move.”

He rapped on the ceiling of the coach with his cane.

“Back to the pit,” he said in a conversational tone I knew the coachman could hear. His gaze settled on me. “You’ve done well, Daughter. You’ve proven you are strong and stubborn, but still not quite smart enough. You’re still not quite thinking things through. Affection weakens you. I gave him a chance to survive so he would still be living when you found him. This time I will dump him straight into the pit. I don’t need him any longer. Let me assure your tender heart that he will feel no pain once they’ve drained his blood, for the blood of mortals is the force that gives the courts power over the rest of us. He’ll become something like them, only without a mind.”

I hadn’t known I could move so fast. My sword slid like lightning out of its sheath. I knew exactly where to aim: up under his ribs at his heart.

Vai slammed into me, jostling my point so it skipped off the upholstery and lodged in a corner. I cursed and tugged it free.

“A killing blow will kill you, not him!” He kicked past my legs and shoved open the door that led back into the spirit world. “Stay where you are, Catherine.”

“Vai!”

“Better this than the salt plague, love.”

He jumped out of the rushing coach into the path of the incoming tide of light.

I did not think. I leaped after him.

The dragon’s dream roared down over us in a rainbow of violent colors. The call of a bell split the world, air from water, fire from stone, flesh from spirit. The vibration rang up through the ground and down from the sky until there was no existence except the tremor of sound shivering the entire world as if the world were the drum being beaten.

I threw my arms around him, and I kissed him. Let his embrace be the last thing I knew. He held me tightly. A cloak of magic rippled from around his body to envelop me as within wings.

The tide ripped over us like sea spray followed by the pounding of a huge crashing wave. We were driven down as an abyss opened. Every part of existence yawed sideways, then tipped upside down. We fell into smoke as the world around us vanished.

20

Death wasn’t all bad, because it felt a lot like kissing Vai. Our embrace distracted me for longer than it should have. Then I remembered what had happened. Still clutching him, I broke off the kiss.

Inhaled.

I could not breathe.

I could not breathe.

I could not breathe.

An undertow sucked me down.

The abyss of the past is a black chasm. It is too dark to see clearly, yet its waters run all through us.

I am six years old. In the drowning depths of the Rhenus River, my papa and mama are dying. As the water closes over my head, my mother’s strong hand slips out from mine. She has lost me, and I’ve lost her. I open my mouth to cry for her, but all that rushes in is smoke.

We were going to die in the smoke unless I could find a gate and cut our way out.

“Mama,” I whispered, clawing my way through dense fog toward a half-glimpsed beacon.

For there she was, she and Daniel, in the shadow of the ice cliff. They were striding across a stony shore to meet the men who were pushing a boat down to the ice-gray waters for their escape.

“Mama,” I said, louder, finding strength in desperation.

She halted, dragging Daniel to a stop. “Did you hear something?”

He looked up at the face of the ice. “Just the wolves and the wind.”

“No, something else.” She rested a hand on her belly and extended the other arm as if hoping to touch something she could not quite see. “A child. I heard a child calling to me.”

Blessed Tanit, keep me in your heart. Do not let me die.

I will not die.

I bit my lip hard enough to raise blood as I reached for and grasped the memory of her hand.

21

“Catherine! Stop fighting me! You’re impossible to keep hold of when you wriggle like this.”

I slithered out of a grip that was dragging me through icy water, but my numb limbs had no strength. The tide dragged me under as it hauled at my skirts.

A man lifted me above the water. I spewed all the cursed salt water I had swallowed. My bitten lip stung. I sluggishly realized that Vai was carrying me out of the sea. He dumped me onto a stony shore, then slapped me repeatedly on the back as I retched.

I found my voice, although it was sadly thin and mewling. “Why must I always swallow seawater? It tastes so foul.”