Magic Binds

“What happens if we fail to secure an anchor?” Derek asked.

“Atlanta burns, a bunch of people die, Roland kills Curran and our son.”

Crap. Crap. Would it have killed me to think before I opened my mouth? Maybe he wasn’t listening closely.

“Our son?” Curran said, his voice very calm. His face slid into his Beast Lord mask. “Erra’s grandnephew.”

I was so stupid. “Yes.”

“Are you pregnant?”

“Not yet. I will be soon.”

“How does our son die?”

“Roland runs him through with a spear.”

“How long have you known?”

“That he dies? Since I went to see the witches.”

“That we will have a son.”

“The djinn showed him to me.”

He was doing almost seventy now. We were going to wreck.

“Kate,” he said. I knew that tone of voice. That was his line-in-the-sand voice. “What happened to Erra? Did you resurrect your aunt?”

“Not exactly. She isn’t technically alive.”

He glanced at me, his eyes drowning in liquid gold. He wasn’t interested in “technically.” His voice came out deep, almost demonic. “Why?”

“Because I desperately need help. Things are happening to me that I can’t explain and don’t understand. I know that my father will attack and very soon. When he does, I have to defend us and I can’t. I have the power but I don’t know how to use it, and in using it, I’m affecting the lives of every creature and plant in my lands. I’m afraid that I’ll make a mistake and kill everyone in Atlanta. I have to get guidance. She’s the only one with the knowledge I need.”

“She tried to kill us,” Curran ground out.

“I know. But she’s a princess of Shinar. The one thing she values above all else is family. Yes, she would’ve killed me if she was alive and I challenged her, but now things are different. I showed Grandmother to her. It made her furious. I showed her all of my memories and our son. She’s going to help us.”

“You can’t trust her,” Curran said.

“Yes, I can. She isn’t doing it for you or for me. She’s doing it for the survival of her bloodline. What my father is doing is an aberration. The members of our family weren’t meant to live forever. We were meant to have families and children. As long as my father lives, no other member of our bloodline will survive. Not even her. She knows about the sahanu.”

“What are the sahanu?” Curran asked.

I was hitting it out of the park today with keeping secrets. “He was afraid of her and so he created a religious sect designed to kill her. Now I am their next target. I fought one of them in Mishmar, a female. She was hard to kill.”

“Is that why you’re bruised and smell like blood?” Derek asked from the backseat.

“Yes. And some of it was Erra. She took some convincing.”

“But is she going to help us?” Julie asked.

“She already has,” I said.

Curran stared straight ahead. His hands gripped the wheel.

“You’re going to bend it,” I told him.

He hit me with an alpha stare and kept driving.

“Are you okay?” I asked. Are we okay, Curran?

“He’s got no room to talk,” Julie said.

“Quiet,” Derek told her.

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” Curran asked.

“No.” Now wasn’t the best time to bring up Adora. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”

“One of the rooms in the castle had a creature in it,” Curran said.

“What kind of creature?”

“A large cat,” Curran said. “It glowed.”

“What happened to the large glowing cat?” Why did I have a feeling I wouldn’t like the answer?

“I killed it,” Curran said.

“Aha.” First, I broke Mishmar, then Curran stole Saiman back and killed my father’s glowing cat. Maybe Roland’s head would explode.

“It was a saber-toothed tiger,” Julie said. “It glowed silver.”

Silver meant divine magic. There was no telling what that saber-toothed tiger was or where my dad had gotten him.

“Snitch,” Derek said.

She waved him off. “He killed it and then he ate it.”

I looked at Curran. “You killed an animal god and then you ate him?”

“Maybe,” Curran said.

“What do you mean maybe?”

“I doubt it was a god.”

“It glowed silver,” Julie said. “It was definitely worshipped.”

Oh boy.

Curran swerved to avoid a speed bump formed by tree roots raising the asphalt. “I could worship a lamp. That doesn’t make it a god.”

“Why did you eat it?” I asked in a small voice.

“It felt right at the time.”

“He devoured it,” Julie said. “Completely. With bones.”

If it was some sort of divine animal and he ate it, there was no telling what the flesh or the magic would do to him. There would be consequences. There were always consequences.

“Do you feel any side effects?”

“Not any I want to talk about with them in the car.”

Oh boy.

We passed the burned-out shell of the Infinity Building, the last known skyscraper built before the Shift. Halfway there.