“A good thing, from my perspective, given it saved our asses in North Dakota. Let’s get back to the whole centuries thing.”
“Your life will be longer because of mine. Theoretically, without outside interference, we’ll split the difference of our life spans between us.”
“How long do wraiths tend to live?”
“Most have been historically killed off in battle, and as I am one of the first, no one actually knows. I was a man to start. Fully mortal with the typical lifespan of my time. But that mortality is influenced by the essence of the reaper and by the djinn blood used to bind it. Reapers have no physical body of their own, so they’re fully immortal, and djinn tend to last a few thousand years. How that particular combination will play out for me, I don’t really know.”
“How old are you?”
“Three hundred seventeen.”
Her mouth dropped open. “I put together the pieces having seen you in the eighteenth century, but I didn’t really do the math. You look maybe thirty-five.”
His lips curved. “I told you, Mirus age differently from humans. You will too now.”
“Dear God,” she murmured. “Ian, I’m twenty eight. Aren’t there…I don’t know…laws against this or something?”
He shot her a salacious grin. “I assure you, I absolutely do not see you as a child.” She popped his roaming hands, made him laugh. “Even by our world’s standards, you’re still an adult.”
“Thank God for that. You’re still totally a target for robbing the cradle jokes.”
The idea of being a target for any kind of joke was so at odds with the life he’d led, he didn’t know what to do with it. He found he liked the notion of living a life where people were free to make jokes. “I think I could get used to you teasing me.”
She smiled and brushed her lips quickly over his, before sliding off and snuggling in against his side. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“I expect you’ll have plenty of them. What?”
“If you heal so easily, what happened to your leg?” She stroked her foot up his calf to his knee.
Ian went rigid.
Marley froze. “Does that hurt? I’m sorry, I didn’t think—”
“No, it doesn’t hurt,” he said. “But if you keep that up, you’re not going to get your answer.”
A beat passed, then two, before she grinned and primly tucked her foot behind her own calf. “Sorry. Continue.”
Ian tried to drag some blood back to his head. “Well, as noted, I heal very quickly, which is a good thing when it comes to things like bullet wounds or sliced arteries. But quick doesn’t always mean right. If anything serious is wrong, particularly with something like multiple fractures, fast healing is actually a detriment.” He took a breath and let it out slow. “On my last mission for the Council, my squad was sent after an Underground cell that was holding a group of Council scientists hostage. They knew we were coming. Had the place all wired up. We knew it, but we were trying to get to the hostages. I was on the alpha sweep and I saw the bomber—just a kid, maybe fifteen, with the detonator in his hand. And I…couldn’t take the shot. Thought I could talk him down. I don’t know if I was getting anywhere or not. One of the other members of my squad showed up and startled him into detonating the bomb. I was buried in rubble for more than thirty-six hours while they dug out survivors.” There hadn’t been but two, one of whom had died en route to the hospital. The kid hadn’t made it. “By the time they got to me, my leg had healed all wrong. The doctors rebroke it, did what they could to make it more functional, but there was only so much they could do. They tell me I’m lucky to have regained this much mobility.”
Marley trailed her fingers over the assortment of scars that marked his chest. He supposed she would consider them badges of survival. “That’s what the Underground is?” she asked quietly. “Terrorists?”
Ian thought of what Harm had told him, that he wasn’t willing to lose anybody else as collateral damage to a world of intolerance. It wasn’t quite the party line he’d come to expect from the Underground. The cells he’d dealt with thought nothing of collateral damage. Their end game was to upset Council rule, and the more chaos the better. If that was Harm’s intention, he’d have harvested every shred of intel locked in Ian’s brain. That he hadn’t taken the opportunity to violate Ian’s mind said Harm was up to something else. But Ian wasn’t sure it mattered where Marley’s father fell with his politics. The Council viewed all dissidents the same and would respond accordingly.
“It’s what I’ve been trained to believe,” he said carefully. “The missions I ran certainly seemed to bear out that impression. But the reality is probably more complicated. Just like in the human world, it’s entirely possible a handful of extremists give the larger group a bad name.”
Her fingers stilled, wisps of wary citrine rising off her. “Are you saying that because you think its true or because you’re trying to be diplomatic about whatever my father is involved in?”
Oh, she was astute. Ian curled his hand around hers and brought it to his lips for a kiss. “I honestly don’t know. Some of both, I think. Did someone say something to you?”
“No. But who else would be flagrantly breaking Council laws to help us?” She propped herself up on an elbow and looked down at him. “I mean, come on, we’ve spent the last however many hours in some kind of literal underground compound of bunkers. Is this an Underground cell?”
“It is. But I think it may be more of a refugee camp than a group of political activists.”
“That’s better than
the alternative,” she said, settling back down. “I was afraid of what he’d be like. I mean, other than a total stranger. I don’t know what to say to him. How do you even start some kind of relationship under these circumstances? He held you prisoner, for God’s sake. He tortured you.”
“He didn’t torture me. He interrogated me. There’s a difference.”