24. Tabitha
Tabitha
We leave for Mordecai’s stronghold at first light with a plan I hate and no better one, which is becoming the theme of my entire existence.
Valerian kits me out before we go, because apparently even walking to your doom you have to be dressed for it.
He conjures me new leather, sturdier than the old, and, when I ask, actual boots instead of the skyscraper porn heels, which is the single most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me and I tell him so.
“You gave me a magic sapphire necklace and a whole crescent-moon pendant last book,” I say, lacing the boots, “and none of it hit like flat soles with grip. This is it. This is true love. Boots that won’t snap my ankles in a hell dimension.”
“I’ll remember that,” he says drily, “next time I’m tempted to be romantic. Footwear, not jewellery.”
“Now you’re getting it, arse-face.”
We set out, and for a while it’s almost pleasant, if you ignore the doom, which I’m getting frighteningly good at.
The five of us on the road, Azaan scouting ahead on the wind, Luka prowling my flank, Gavriel behind me with the shield, Valerian at my side working through contingencies out loud because that’s how he thinks.
And me in the middle of it, dreading the thing I’ve agreed to do, which is hand a dead woman the wheel and trust these four to grab it back.
“Talk to me about the pull-out,” I say, because if I say it enough times it’ll feel real. “The second you’ve got the book. How fast?”
“The instant it’s in Luka’s hands,” Valerian says. “I’ll have the working ready before you ever walk up that path. The moment we have the Tome, I reach down the bond and I haul you back to the front. If she fights it, I burn her grip off you, and if that costs me, it costs me.”
“You promised you’d try not to burn yourself out.”
“I promised I’d try. Trying has limits, little kitty, and the limit is you.
” He says it flatly, like it’s arithmetic.
“There’s no version of this where I have the choice between spending myself and losing you and I choose to keep myself.
So don’t ask me to promise it. Ask me to be quick instead. Quick I can do.”
I don’t have an answer to that. He loves me the way he does everything, completely and without hedging, and it terrifies me and it’s the only reason I believe this might work.
We’re a day out when the ground gives us a taste of what the plan’s worth, a nest of shadow-things Mordecai’s seeded on the road to slow us, and we cut through them together, quick and clean, no drama.
But I notice something as we fight. They’re not really trying to kill us.
They’re trying to delay us, to read us, to report back.
Mordecai’s watching the road. He knows we’re coming. He’s counting on it.
“He knows,” I say, torching the last of them. “He’s not surprised we’re coming to him. He’s pleased.”
“Of course he’s pleased,” Valerian says grimly. “We’re bringing him the one thing he wants, walking it up to his door on its own legs. The trick isn’t fooling him that we’re coming. The trick is that he thinks he knows why.”
“And does he?”
Valerian meets my eyes. “No,” he says. “He thinks he’s getting Tabeitha. He’s getting the woman who’s going to take everything he’s ever wanted and burn what’s left. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
I hold onto that as we walk on towards the fortress and the ghost and the worst gamble of my life. He thinks he knows why we’re coming.
He doesn’t. And that’s the only edge we’ve got.