Sins of the Flesh

“Is that how a portal works? One of you goes to a place and then any of you can find it?” There was a faint edge to her tone.

Which made Mal watch her carefully as he replied, “No. I asked him for the location. I figured you might want to gather a few of your things for the trip.”

He expected her to ask what trip. Instead, she snared him with a cool, crystal green glance and asked, “Can you return to the mountain any time you want?”

“You mean to the Asetian Guard’s compound?”

“I do.” Her expression was blank, her features smooth, and that had unease crawling all the way up Mal’s spine.

“I can. Is there a particular reason we need to go back? ’Cuz I’m thinking that isn’t a great plan.”

She turned, strode toward her front door, pushed it open and stepped inside. She didn’t invite him to follow. Didn’t look back to see what he did. But she left the door open behind her.

He figured that from Calliope, that amounted to an invitation so warm it’d bake cookies.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN



Be gracious to me, and remove all anger

which is in your heart against me.



—The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Chapter 14

CALLIOPE WENT TO HER secure landline and lifted the receiver, ready to dial. At the last second, she froze. Sarita had been her superior in the Guard for twenty years. She was reliable, efficient, and up until the past couple of days, Calliope would have said she would trust her with her life.

But at this moment, Calliope wasn’t sure about trusting anyone. So she went with her best bet: Zalika.

When her mentor answered, Calliope kept it brief.

“The Guard has been breached. I have been compromised. And I am no longer on premises.”

“We are aware,” Zalika said. “The soul reaper allows you to make this call?”

So they knew he had come for her. She wasn’t surprised. For an instant, she wondered if the Matriarchs had known it all along. She had a vivid recollection of Beset saying that all was as it should be after she tasted Calliope’s blood, and she thought that the three knew a great deal they chose not to share.

Wily and clever political plotting seemed to go hand in hand with power.

The air crackled and sparked, and Calliope turned to see the soul reaper in question standing in the open archway of her kitchen, leaning one shoulder against the wall, watching her.

“It would be fascinating to see the outcome were he to try to stop me,” Calliope said.

Malthus Krayl’s lips twitched in response.

“We already knew of the breach,” Zalika said. “There are three fire genies here, each marked with Aset’s symbol. They infiltrated the lowest ranks. I am presently investigating exactly how that happened. We found one unconscious in your cell.” She paused. “I feared for you.”

That admission touched Calliope’s heart, but she knew that to acknowledge it would only make Zalika uncomfortable. Instead, she said, “Fire genies. I hadn’t even considered that my would-be assassin was other than she appeared.”

Mal straightened off the wall at the mention of fire genies.

“You believed it was one of your sisters in the Guard who had been sent to kill you,” Zalika said.

“Yes.” A thousand questions spiraled through Calliope’s thoughts. How had Xaphan’s concubines infiltrated the Guard? Why had they disguised themselves as Daughters of Aset? And why come after her?

Through the phone, Calliope could hear voices and the sounds of people moving around. She knew there was an emergency protocol to clear the compound of all valuables and antique treasures before its destruction. From the noise, she deduced that all was going as planned.

“I must go,” Zalika said. “I will tell the Matriarchs that you chose to offer a warning. It will reflect well on you.”

“That isn’t why I did it.”

“I know. Be safe, Calliope.”

“And you, Zalika.”

The line went dead.

“What happens to you now?” Mal asked.

Until this moment, she’d thought of him as the soul reaper or Malthus Krayl. That had allowed her a measure of distance from him. But he’d asked her to call him Mal, and oddly, she wanted to. The question was, why? Why did it feel right and comfortable?

Because she believed his assertion that it wasn’t soul reapers who had killed her father?

Maybe.

She wasn’t sure.

“What happens to me now?” she asked, her lips curving in a faint smile. She had no answer. For a century and a half, her life had not been her own. Now, suddenly it was.

She had no idea what to do with that.

It would not have been her choice to leave the Guard. But she was a grain of sand among many. She could only be the best grain of sand she could be.

Turning her head, she stared at the window over the kitchen sink as the first patter of rain hit the panes. All that was familiar to her was gone now, in a matter of days. She had known ever since she made the choice to feed from Mal’s life force, to take his blood, that she had tossed everything away.

Had it been worth it?