Sins of the Flesh

The funny thing was, she intended to have no secrets. She meant to acknowledge her crime. There was no other way. Get within ten feet of her and even the lowest acolyte in the Guard, a foot soldier with no standing, would sense the reaper’s blood flowing through her, fading or not.

She’d fed from a supernatural, something that was frowned upon. And not just any supernatural. A soul reaper. Which was frowned upon in the extreme. Were she merely an acolyte or low-ranking soldier, her lapse might be forgiven. But she was not, and the fact that she had sipped the life force of a reaper was not something her superiors would be pleased about. For a multitude of reasons.

She stared out at the grounds. She knew the perimeter was impenetrable, yet her gut was telling her nowhere was safe.

Exhaustion gnawed at her. Other than that half-hour nap—which thanks to her dreams had been less than restful—she hadn’t slept in…how many hours? Sixty? Seventy? She’d lost count between the cross-country drive and the mountain climbing. Every cell in her body was weighted with fatigue. She leaned her hip against the balustrade, the chill of the stone seeping through her clothing. Closing her eyes, she let her head rest against the column that rose to the overhang. She had no idea how long she stood there. Maybe she even slept for an instant.

Sensing someone behind her, she jerked upright and spun.

A woman stood a few feet away, her face both stunning and serene. Her skin was dark, her hair a tightly curled cap cut close to her head, her cheekbones high and curved.

“Zalika,” Calliope greeted her, taking comfort in her familiar face. It had been far too long since she had seen her mentor.

“You are tired,” Zalika said, moving to stand beside her and lean her hip against the stone railing. She was tall and slender, her posture military straight. She was a warrior and a politician. And Calliope regretted that this woman whom she both respected and loved had been assigned the less-than-pleasant task of advising her of her fate. “Why did you not stop along the way for rest?”

“Perhaps I should have.” She smiled thinly. “But I didn’t. It was imperative that I get Kuznetsov here as quickly as possible. I left the soul reaper lying on the ground, surrounded by Xaphan’s concubines, writhing in pain, consumed by flame. That, coupled with our impenetrable security, should be enough to put me at ease, no?”

“But you are not at ease.”

“The soul reaper will come after me.” Calliope resisted the urge to tighten her fingers on the cold stone. Serenity was her customary defense. She would be wise to stick with the familiar. “A handful of fire genies might be able to turn him into a torch, but they could not terminate him. He will heal. Perhaps he already has. And he will look for me.”

“For you?” Zalika stressed the final word, and Calliope only then saw the trap in her own reasoning. She had personalized this. A mistake.

“For Kuznetsov,” she amended. But it was too late. She had already made the assertion and it hung between them, heavy in her thoughts and, no doubt, in Zalika’s.

But her mentor let it pass. For now. “Why does the soul reaper want him?” she asked.

Calliope weighed her words, uncertain of exactly how much Zalika knew. The Asetian Guard was a secretive and paranoid group; they shared as little information as possible with the soldiers who comprised the ranks. By this point, just about every supernatural and Topworld grunt knew about the butchered reaper, but there was no way to know if Zalika was aware that he was Sutekh’s son. Finally, Calliope chose the neutral path. “The reaper and his brothers seek information about the one who was killed,” she said. “And the one who killed him.”

“As do we.” Zalika paused. “Do you believe your precautions were not enough to obscure your trail?”

“I don’t know.” She’d thought she knew a great deal about soul reapers, the enemy of her kind. Her enemy. But Roxy Tam’s association with Dagan Krayl had proved that she did not. She wasn’t about to make assumptions that might put members of the Guard, or even the Matriarchs, in danger. “He is a soul reaper. He will want payback. I stole his prize from beneath his very nose, and I stole his power to use against him.” There. It was out in the open. What she had done.

“You fed from him.”

Zalika’s tone betrayed none of the horror and disgust she most assuredly felt. Calliope knew what that felt like. She’d experienced it when Roxy had revealed that she’d fed from Dagan Krayl.

But Calliope had been partially to blame for that debacle. Believing that Roxy knew the lore and rules of Daughters of Aset, she had failed to clarify the rules of feeding. By the time she’d discovered her error, it had been too late.

No, in truth, it had been too late before she ever met Roxy Tam, because Dagan had met her first. He had been Roxy’s first blood, a year before Roxy entered the Asetian Guard.