I snorted softly. “Okay, who are you? The Azriel I know wouldn’t be saying shit like that.”
He paused. “Why is it that many humans—or in your case nonhumans—are reluctant to accept a compliment when it is given?”
“I don’t know about anyone else, but for me, I don’t deserve the compliment. I was scared shitless.”
“My point exactly.”
I grimaced and pushed upright, needing to get away not only from the heat of him, but from the gentle caress of his fingers. I glanced down at my body. There was no blood on my shirt, no dark stain on the carpet. I was whole. It was as if the shadowed sword had never been a part of me.
And yet she was.
I could feel her. She was a distant hiss of static that was almost a heartbeat and lingered at the edges of thought, coiled and ready to be unleashed at the slightest notice.
I shivered and rubbed my arms. There was darkness and danger in that static—for me, and for those who opposed me.
“Amaya has accepted you,” Azriel said. I glanced around as he pushed to his feet, the movement economical yet somehow graceful. “You will feel her presence everywhere you go, in everything you do. Learn her song. She is more than just a blade.”
He offered me his hand. I clasped it and he pulled me up lightly. “I’m not Mijai. I can barely understand you, let alone a bloody sword.”
“You understand me more than you might wish to let on,” he countered. “And Amaya’s voice will become clearer as you grow used to each other.”
Maybe. Maybe not. While the sword might have accepted me, it didn’t necessarily follow that we would ever understand each other. After all, according to him, I shouldn’t have felt the pain that I did during the binding. So heaven only knew what else would differ.
“So where is she now?” I said, looking at the floor but not seeing the shadow-wrapped weapon.
“She’s where she always will be, unless you purposefully remove her. In her sheath at your back.”
If I was wearing a sword, then I couldn’t feel it. I reached back and felt the coldness of steel. Damn. I wrapped my fingers around the hilt and slowly drew the sword free. While she was little more than shadows, she was far from light, though her weight rested comfortably in my hand. At my touch, her whispering grew stronger, filled with an eagerness to rend and tear. Another shiver ran through me. I swung her back and forth, watching the lilac fire that caressed her sharp edges spray across the floor, and wondered if—like Valdis—she’d scream when she sliced into flesh. Somehow, I suspected not.
Then I placed her back into her sheath, only briefly feeling the weight of her across my back.
“Are you sure no one can see or feel her? I really don’t need to get arrested for carrying a weapon right now.”
Footsteps clattered up the stairs. Tao and Ilianna returning.
“No one will see her except those whose life you are about to extinguish,” Azriel said.
“Whoa,” Ilianna said, her gaze widening as she came into the room. “Where the hell did that sword come from?”
I raised an eyebrow at Azriel. A smiled touched his lips and lightly crinkled the corners of his eyes, and my pulse did its usual stupid dance. “Well, no one except someone like Ilianna.”
Tao came up behind her, his gaze swinging from me to Azriel before frowning down at Ilianna. “What sword?”
I smiled and waved a hand. “Long story. You two ready to go?”
Ilianna hefted the large canvas bag she was carrying. “All manner of magical whatnot present and accounted for.”
I grabbed my purse and swung it over my shoulder. It settled into place easily, as if there weren’t a shadowy sword strapped to my back. I shivered again, then said, “Then let’s get this show on the road.”
Before the inner voice whispering dark warnings of trouble ahead became too loud to ignore.
We arrived at Mount Macedon an hour before dawn. In the glow of the four-wheel drive’s lights, the old metal gates seemed even older and stronger than they had the other morning—a barrier that seemed to forbid passage.
Ilianna leaned her forearms on the steering wheel, her gaze sweeping the gate and the fence to either side of it. “The magic in this place feels ancient.”
“According to Kiandra, it is.” I opened the SUV’s door and climbed out. “It seemed almost sentient to me.”
“I don’t think I’d go as far as that,” Ilianna said, frowning as she walked to the front of the vehicle, “but there’s certainly a great power residing here, and there is a level of awareness within it.”