30. Tabitha
Tabitha
The worst part is how easy it is to let her out.
I’ve spent this whole nightmare fighting her, clawing her down, slamming the box shut on her every time she rattles the lid.
And now, standing at the mouth of the ravine below Mordecai’s fortress with my four men melting into the shadows behind me, all I have to do is stop fighting.
Just once. Just a little. And oh, she’s been waiting for that.
“Slowly,” Valerian breathes at my ear, one last time. “Just enough to fool him. Keep your hand on the wheel, little kitty. The second we have the book, we pull you home. Feel for us the whole time. We’re right behind you.”
“I know.”
“I love you.”
“I know that too.” I don’t look at him, because if I look at him I’ll lose my nerve. “Go. Get in position. And Val, arse-face.” Now I look. “Don’t be late.”
“Never again,” he says, and then he’s gone, and the four of them are threads of shadow slipping towards the seam Azaan found. I’m alone at the bottom of the ravine, and it’s just me and the ghost and the fortress full of my grief.
I close my eyes. And I open the box.
Come on then, you ancient cow, I think at her. You want the wheel? Here. Just for an hour. Just enough. And then I’m taking it back.
She pours up through me like ice water, delighted, triumphant, and I let her, God help me, I let her come forward, and I feel my spine straighten in a way that isn’t mine, feel my chin lift, feel a cold imperious smile settle on my mouth that I’ve never worn in my life.
The accent slides over my voice like a glove.
My hand rises, fingers arranging to snap.
But I keep hold. That’s the deal I make with myself, screaming, in the back of my own skull. She wears the front. I keep one hand on the wheel. I am still here. I am still here.
*I am still here.*
It’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever done, worse than any death, worse than the drowning, because I’m doing it to myself on purpose.
Riding shotgun in my own skull while a dead woman walks my body up a path on legs that move without me.
I can feel her settling in, getting comfortable, stretching into the space I’ve handed her like a cat into a warm lap, and every instinct I’ve got is screaming to snatch it all back.
I don’t. I hold, one hand on the wheel, and I let her drive.
I count the seconds, and I trust four men I can’t see to grab me back before she decides she’s not giving the body up when the hour’s done.
Trust. That’s the whole plan, in the end. Trust that they’re in the seam. Trust that they’ll reach the book. Trust that when I need them, they’ll pull. I’ve bet my life on worse. I’ve never bet my self before.
“Fortress,” Tabeitha says with my mouth, cool and amused, surveying the black cliff.
“How he does love his theatre. Some things never change.” She, we, start up the path, unhurried, a Queen returning to a place she owns.
“Come out, Mordecai. I know you’re watching.
You’ve always been watching. Come and see what the little cat dragged in. ”
The shadow-wards flex. And then the great black doors in the cliff face grind open, no guards, no fight, because he opens them himself, exactly like Azaan said he would.
And there he is. Alex. Mordecai. Standing in the doorway of his fortress with three centuries of grief on his face, and when he sees me, sees her, sees the woman he loved walking up his path with her chin high and her fingers ready to snap, something breaks open in him so raw and so real that for one horrible second I feel sorry for him.
“Tabeitha,” he says, and his voice cracks on it. “You came back to me.”
“Did you doubt it?” she purrs.
I feel her pride, her pleasure at his devotion, and underneath it, sharp and gleeful, the thing I was too stupid to see coming.
Because she’s not just playing along. She wants this.
She wants him, wants the throne, wants the body, and she’s realised, faster than I have, that the man in front of us will give her everything I’ve been trying to deny her.
Keep hold, I tell myself, sweating, buried. Keep hold. The men are inside by now. They’ve got eyes on the book. Any second Valerian pulls me home. Any second.
Mordecai steps back, sweeping an arm towards the dark of the fortress, towards a chamber lit with cold blue fire and ringed with those circle-and-line symbols, and at the centre of it, on a stone plinth, my book. The Arcane Tome. Right there.
“Come inside, my love,” he says. “I’ve prepared everything. I’ve waited three hundred years to bring you back properly. All of you. Not this borrowed scrap.” His eyes flick, just once, contemptuous, at the body he thinks is only a vessel. At me. “Tonight we finish it. Tonight you’re whole again.”
And Tabeitha, with my mouth, smiles and says, “Then let’s not keep me waiting.”
And too late, far too late, I understand. He didn’t fall for the trick.
He set it.