The Arcana Chronicles 3: Dead of Winter

“You assume the source twins and the Archer will be in Dolor?”

“Ouais. Until I hear different. It’s the only waypoint I got.”

I asked, “If anything goes wrong, will the Lovers retaliate against Selena? Or if they find out another Arcana is riding with me?”

“Empress, they’re already torturing her.”

I flinched and thought Jack had too. No doubt reliving his own torment, the ordeal he would never tell me about. “Will they kill her?”

Aric shook his head. “Not for a while. She’s the most valuable thing they possess. Consider the lengths they went to in order to acquire her. If they were going to murder her outright, it would already be done.”

Death had gone to lengths to acquire—and keep—me. He’d had a suite prepared in his apocalypse-proof castle. I could understand how Aric had accrued so much power through the ages, to prepare for and weather the end of the world.

But how had the Milovnícis gotten the upper hand—over everyone? “How did the general amass an army?”

“He owned a private security firm in Virginia,” Jack said, “with a mini-army of mercenaries—the kind of paramilitary that rescued kidnapped CEOs and stuff. The Milovnícis and those mercs must’ve holed up during the Flash. Afterward, his men overran smaller militias in the Southeast, one after another. He built the Azey like a snowball.”

A bloody, murderous snowball—

Suddenly both Jack and Aric tensed. Outside, Thanatos gave a low nicker.

“What is it?” I asked.

Aric rose with that lethal grace. “I’m going to stand watch.”

Jack was on his feet as well. “If there’s something out there, I’m ready to fight.”

“The day I need your help . . .” Aric trailed off. “I will never need your help, mortal.” To me, he said, “Get some sleep. You can rest secure, sieva.”

“What’s that word mean?” Jack demanded.

Aric delighted in telling him, “Sieva means wife.”

25

I gazed at the door long after Aric had gone, disbelieving he’d left me alone with Jack, threat or no.

I suspected he was testing me, testing my promise.

“You’re staring after Death,” Jack said, drawing my attention. Anger warred with confusion in his expression. “You worried about him?”

My protectiveness toward Aric hadn’t waned. “Yes.” Worry filled me—for him and Jack. For Selena and Matthew.

“Because you think we need him? Or because you think you care about him?”

“Both.” I did care about Aric, maybe even more than cared.

I’d told Jack and Aric to get their heads in the game. I was one to talk. I couldn’t stop comparing the two.

Jack’s passion and drive versus Death’s intensity and Arcana connection. God help me, I could see myself with either.

Or . . . neither? They’d both hurt me. The red witch in me whispered, That’s what dust is for: to leave them in it.

I wished I could get objective advice. Damn, I missed my best friend Mel. She probably would’ve told me to keep both guys, collecting men like handbags.

Jack set his bow down and began to pace in front of the hearth, his eyes so vivid in the firelight. His black hair had dried, reflecting the flames like a raven’s wing. “Death hurt you in all these ways, but you still give a damn about him.” Out came his flask. “I was dishonest with you over one thing, and you can’t tell me if you’ll stay with me?”

“Put yourself in his shoes, Jack. I tried to murder him after convincing him that I was madly in love with him. I did this to him not once, but twice.”

“You didn’t do anything to him, no! Some long-ago Empress did. You ever heard of Stockholm syndrome? That’s what’s goan on.”

My lips parted. “That’s why you looked at me with pity earlier! That’s why your entire attitude changed? You no longer hate me for getting with him, because you’re putting all the blame on him.”

Jack stopped pacing to face me. “A two-thousand-year-old man stole a vulnerable girl and broke her down.”

He made me sound like Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, forced into the underworld by Hades. But Jack didn’t understand: attitude-wise, I skewed more toward wrathful Demeter than I ever had toward vulnerable Persephone.

“I’m not a girl anymore. I have lived over a hundred years; I feel those previous lives. But even if I didn’t, A.F. years are like dog years. Since the Flash, I cared for my mother as if I were the adult, I’ve killed, I’ve planned and executed coups. I’ve had to grow up fast.”

He swigged his flask. “Why doan you tell me what it was like with Death in the beginning?”

Hell. If I gave Jack the details, he’d stride right out those doors and shoot Aric—who wore impenetrable armor. A bullet would simply bounce off. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“He messed with your mind,” Jack insisted. “That’s why you think you feel something for him. No other reason could explain this turnaround.”

“You really believe I’ve been brainwashed?”

“Evie”—Jack held my gaze—“it happened to you once before.” At CLC. “I saw your drawing of Death in your journal, even before the Flash. You depicted a monster. Un scélérat.” A villain.

“Aric has done a lot to me. But he’s also helped me. At the Hierophant’s, I was about to eat . . . human flesh. It was an inch from my lips. I would’ve been lost forever.” Like the filmy-eyed survivors who would hunt me till I died. “Aric stalled Guthrie long enough for my poison to work. And then he saved me from drowning and from Ogen.”

“You wouldn’t have been in any of those situations if not for that bastard! He needs to die. By my hand.”

“You’re not listening to me! Every time you say you’re going to kill him, what you’re really saying is ‘I know better than you.’”

“When we’re together again, you’ll see.”

“You’re so certain we will be?”

A stark look crossed his face. “Of course I am! I told you we could get through anything, and I meant it.”

“I do think you meant it—at the time.”

“At the time? I’m the one constant here. Me! I never gave up on us, never got with another, even when the opportunity presented itself.”