"Well, naturally." Nïx sounded puzzled. "You practiced for over a millennium."
"Practice wouldn't make me peerless in all the world! Look how hard Tera the Fey trains, and I still outshoot her."
"Maybe you got the talent genetically? Your mom could've been Robina Hood for all we know, you impish wittle mutt."
"Robina Hood?"
"Or it could be - hey, here's an idea - the fact that your other two parents are gods. Hello? You're a Valkyrie, the daughter of Freya and Wóden. The last I checked, we don't suck at anything."
"This ability is all mine?"
"It wasn't in the beginning. But it is now. The pain Skathi 'gifted' you with to make you remember was actually teaching you. Teaching you all of her tricks."
Just as everyone had always assumed. "I can't believe this. Are you sure?"
"Skathi didn't teach you to track or give you that ability, yet you're an expert at that as well."
I am. I learned to be. "And Skathi couldn't have told me this would happen?" Lucia felt as if she'd been slapped.
"Oh, she didn't know what an apt pupil you'd be. Had no idea you could grow to be as good as she is."
"No idea?" Yes, slapped - bitchslapped by the goddess of the hunt. "Then she believed I was going on a quest with no defense?"
"What a whore!" Nïx agreed. "She's one of the gods who thought you should offer yourself up to Cruach to appease him, rather than uncover the dieumort."
Appease Cruach. Despite the fact that Skathi had witnessed how Lucia had suffered at his hands. "I'm going to kill her."
"Now, Lucia, you can't go offing gods willy-nilly. Unless you find some more dieumorts!" she cried. "Regrettably each one only has a single shot before the power is extinguished."
"Skathi had to know I would never abuse the weapon, would never harm anyone but Cruach with it."
"Yes, but to find the dieumort, you have to open a tomb, and there's an evil deep inside it."
Exactly what Damiãno had said. "I think I've already found the tomb."
"Within it is a being so powerful that if loosed, it would change the world forever. Even the gods fear its awakening."
"What evil being?"
"The Gilded One," Nïx breathed.
El Dorado. "Can I get the dieumort without waking the evil?"
"There're house rules at the tomb door. You break them, and you'll have to leave the party."
"Damn it, what do you mean? This is no time to withhold... Wait! You couldn't have told me all this earlier, Nïx?" she asked, her aggravation spiking. "You advised me to restrain myself for nothing!"
"I'd totally forgotten about this until I found a Post-it note to myself stuck to the underside of Annika's bed."
"What were you doing under her - Never mind, I don't want to know." Yet her irritation with Nïx soon dwindled when Lucia comprehended all that had happened.
Lucia was no longer a Skathian, a slave to the goddess's whims. No longer a celibate in plainclothes.
No longer a victim. I broke an altar with my werewolf lover. How fitting, how utterly empowering.
Broke that bitch!
Lucia swallowed as a sudden thought struck her. She could even have... children.
She cast a smile down at MacRieve, but it quickly faded. He was leaving her! Had made up his mind.
One of these days, Lucia...
When Garreth coughed, waking, Lucia was right beside him, gazing down, her eyes swollen from tears. "Nice nap?" she asked.
"What... what happened?" His body was a mass of aches, his head and wounds throbbing.
"Big snake got peckish?"
"You killed it?" When she nodded, he frowned, recalling more with each second, his ire toward her returning. "You told me you couldn't shoot anymore."
"I believed that. But clearly I was mistaken."
"Aye, clearly. You must've shot it from down below." He tried to rise, then coughed, flinching as pain radiated through every inch of him. All his goddamned ribs were cracked.
"Is the pain bad?" she asked.
"What do you bluidy think?"
Her eyes narrowed. "I think that'll teach you to leave me!"
"I was coming back."
Her expression unreadable, she asked, "For me?" Before he could answer, she added, "Probably to convince me to continue on the mission."
"I was coming back for you! Though you dinna deserve me to, stubborn Valkyrie."
She didn't deny that. "Why? I thought you were done."
"I'll never be done!" he snapped, wincing again as his ribs screamed in protest. "You're my woman, Lousha. Damn you, I'll never want another!"
At that, she leaned down and pressed a tender kiss to his forehead. "Good."
"What?" Was this an olive branch - from her? Just when he'd thought she couldn't confuse him more, she put them into completely unfamiliar territory. "I thought you hated me."
"I hated the consequences of what we'd done - or at least what I'd thought they were. I took out all my anger and fear on you. I'm sorry."
"Ah, bluidy hell, lass." Never would he have thought an apology from her would be as sweet to hear as her laughter. "For what it's worth, I am sorry to have lost the cuff. I bollixed that up."
She stroked his hair from his forehead. "Things are going to be different, MacRieve. With me. If you want them to be. Once we save the world, that is."
He could tell things were already different. Garreth had claimed her, yet she could still shoot - and she looked more at peace than he'd ever seen her. "What happened to you while I was out?"
"I have no more ties to Skathi. None. Any talent I possess is my own."
"Will you finally confide in me, then?"
"I... can't. Not yet. I'm asking you for time." At his scowl, she said, "Look, I wasn't ready for two things: sex and sharing secrets. Now, we both know how the first of those turned out. Can't you accept one out of two for now?"
He scowled deeper. "Sex or secrets?"
Lucia jutted her chin. "If that's how you want to look at it."
She'd played the sex card - as in the promise of more of it. More of what they'd shared the night before. And o' course, he'd do just about anything for that. "You keep your secrets for now. As for the other, I have been getting my way with you. Tis true. And I'll be getting it again as soon as I'm able."
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