18. Tabitha
Tabitha
We’re a day back towards the Palace when Tabeitha nearly takes the wheel.
It’s my own fault, if I’m honest, which I try not to be.
I’ve been chewing on the Oracle’s words like a bone, go deeper, stop asking the ghost, the power was never borrowed, and the more I chew the more I don’t believe it.
Because how can it be mine? I’m a bookseller from Westlake who cried over a man and shifts into a cat the size of a shoe.
The power is hers. Tabeitha’s. The scary fire, the realm, the throne, all of it belongs to a Queen who ruled worlds, and I’m just the poor cow born holding the receipt.
And that, it turns out, is exactly the crack she’s been waiting for.
One second I’m walking. The next there’s a wrench, deep behind my eyes, and the world tilts, and I feel myself sliding, like a passenger shoved into the back seat of my own body.
Finally, purrs a voice that is mine and isn’t, all silk and rot. You said it yourself. It was always mine.
“No,” I say aloud, and my voice comes out wrong, too smooth, an accent that isn’t mine bleeding through. My hand lifts without me telling it to, fingers arranging themselves to snap, an imperious little gesture I’ve never made in my life.
“Tabby?” Luka’s head comes up. He knows in an instant. Of course he does. “Tabby, no. Come back. Fight her.”
You could let go, Tabeitha croons, and she’s so reasonable, so warm, that’s the horror of her. You’re so tired, little bitch. You’ve died twice. You’ll die again. Why fight for a life that keeps ending? Let me carry it. Let me have the throne. I know how to wear it. You never will.
And the terrible thing, the thing I’ll never tell them, is that for one second it sounds like mercy. To put it down. To stop being frightened. To let someone who actually knows what she’s doing take the wheel of this nightmare.
For one second I nearly let go.
Then there are hands on me. All of them at once. Luka’s palm flat over my heart, Gavriel’s huge hand cradling the back of my skull, Azaan’s fingers laced through mine, Valerian’s mouth at my ear.
“Feel that?” Valerian says, low and fierce.
“Five heartbeats. Count them. That’s the bond.
That’s yours, little kitty, not hers. She had subjects.
She had a consort who’s spent three centuries mad with grief.
She never had this.” His hand tightens. “You are not tired because you’re weak.
You’re tired because you keep getting back up.
That’s not her. That’s you. Now shove the ancient cow back in her box and come home. ”
And I feel it, the bond, five points of light in the dark, and I grab it with everything I’ve got.
I claw my way back up into the front seat, inch by inch, while Tabeitha spits and rages, and it’s harder than last time, so much harder, she’s stronger than last time, she’s stronger every time.
But the bond holds. They hold. And at last I slam back into myself, gasping.
My hand drops, the accent’s gone, and it’s me. Just me. Tired, shaking, furious me.
“There she is,” Azaan breathes.
“I hate her,” I pant. “I hate that it almost worked. She made it sound like a rest.”
“I know,” Luka says, forehead to mine.
But so am I, little bitch, whispers the voice, faint now, driven down but not gone, never gone. Try to rest. I’ll be waiting.
I don’t tell them that part. I just let them hold me in the middle of the road, four demons and one very frightened cat, and I think, for the first time, with something cold and clear underneath the fear: I can’t keep doing this. Next time she might not come back out. Something has to change.
I just don’t know yet that the something is me.