Once Dead, Twice Shy - Kim Harrison [69]
Despite my own fear, pity rose through me. She was fallen, an angel doubly betrayed. The innocence of a wild thing of power given knowledge of death.
“You promised, Kairos,” Nakita said softly as tears slipped from her and she wiped them away, shock showing briefly at their presence. “I suffered black wings eating my memory. Memory is all I have. I believed you. You sent me to kill her because you fear death?”
“I will be immortal!” Kairos shouted, his anger bursting forth. “How can you presume to know what it’s like to fear death? You’ve existed since time began and will until it ends!”
Nakita stood, the air shimmering where her wings would be. “I know now what it’s like to fear death, but I still live by seraph will,” she said, her voice shaking. “I live by it, and you will die by it.”
Kairos smirked, fingering her amulet on the table. “How, Nakita? You belong to me.”
But then she pulled from her belt a white rock, bound by black wire and laced on a simple black cord. It didn’t look like the amulet I had returned to her in the woods, and Kairos shook his head as if it meant nothing—until she rubbed a thumb across it and what looked like salt fell away to show a simple black stone glowing with infinity. It was the stone I’d returned to her in the woods. As if I had been her keeper. I’d stained it with my tears—gifting her with a symbol of my grief and an atonement for having broken the purity of her existence.
Nakita’s hand fisted about it. “I accept you,” she said to me, though her frightening grimace was for Kairos.
“No!” I shrieked, reaching out when the glint of her sword flashed a pure black. Nakita leaped forward to send her blade cleanly through Kairos.
Ron took several steps forward, crying out in dismay, but it was too late. It was done. Kairos looked at his unmarked middle, blinking when he brought his gaze up, fixing first on the violet stone, then her eyes. “You’ve failed us,” he whispered, and then he collapsed.
Nakita reached out and caught him gently, almost lovingly, as she eased the dark timekeeper to the polished floor. “Fate, Kairos,” Nakita whispered, crying as her hands slid from him, and she closed his eyes so they wouldn’t look to the heavens. “The seraphs fated her taking your place. Your span was done. There is no failure. There is only change.”
“Oh my God!” I shouted, terrified as I stood there. “You killed him! How could you…?
He’s dead!”
Ron made a sound of regret, and I spun to him, frightened. If Kairos was dead, then that meant—“He’s not dead,” I babbled. “Tell me he’s not dead.”
“He’s gone,” Ron said, and I danced back when Nakita was suddenly before me, kneeling and offering me her sword.
“Nakita, no!” I cried out, panicked.
“My lady,” she insisted, pain in her fragile expression. “I am flawed.”
“Stop. Stop!” I said, frantic as I tried to get her to rise. She was so beautiful. She was an angel. She shouldn’t be kneeling before me. “D-don’t do this,” I stammered. “I’m not the dark timekeeper.” I looked at Ron, standing with his hands clasped before him.
“You are the keeper of unseen justice,” Nakita said, smiling at me, “sanctioned by seraphs. Able to track time and bend it to your will.”
“No I’m not!” I insisted, glancing at Kairos’s body. Nakita had just killed him!
Ron sighed heavily enough for me to hear. “Yes, you are.”
My gaze went to him, and I stiffened. A figure was behind him, hard to see against the rising sun. Ron saw where my attention was and turned. A strangled sound escaped him, and he scrambled out from between us. It was a seraph. It had to be.
“Blood has been spilled in the home of a timekeeper,” the seraph said, its voice both musical and painful. It carried the power of the tides and the gentle caress of the waves upon the beach, and I almost cried to hear it. I couldn’t bear it. It was too much.
“A sacrifice so you will hear my plea.” Nakita stood before