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In the requierove with Akiva, it finally was

She for him in the eyes, and pulled The bone broke clean down the ainst each other, were of exactly the sath

"Oh I don’t knohat that et our wishes"

"Maybe it al liked to think that it did Her wish that first time was siain Believing she would was the only way she could bring herself to leave

They rose frole back into the own like a serpent back into a shed skin They went into the te that rose in a fount from the earth She splashed her face with it, too, paid silent ho candles when she ca was alerated physical impossibility--to fly away and leave Akiva there--the difficulty of which she would not, before thisfor one last kiss Her lips, unaccustomed to such wear, felt ined herself red with the evidence of how she had spent her night

Finally she flew, trailing her ing at her side, and the dawn-touched land rolled beneath her all the way back to Loramendi The city lay quiet in the afterent and hazy with the residue of fireworks She went in by a secret passage to the underground cathedral Its interlocking gates were keyed by Briuard to see her come in

It was easy

That first day she was hesitant, cautious, not knohat had passed in her absence, or rath uessable threads, and a spy caalleons on the one froal returned to it

Chiro asked her where she’d been and she gave a vague lie, and froal would catch her watching her with a strange, flat affect, only to turn away and busy herself with so her at all She saw her less, too, in part because Madrigal was adrift in her new and secret world, and in part because Brimstone had need of her help in that time, and so she was excused from her other duties, such as they were Her battalion was not mobilized in response to the seraph troop o to thank for it She knew that he’d been keeping her froht relieve her of her "purity" before he had a chance to marry her He must not have had tial spent her days in the shop and cathedral with Bri bodies, and she spent her nights--as ht candles for Ellai, and cones of frangible, the led out food fit for lovers, which they ate with their fingers after love Honey sweets and sin berries, and roasted birds for their ravenous appetites, and always they remembered to take the wishbone froht wine in slender bottles, and tiny cups carved from quartz to sip it fro and stored in the temple altar for the next ti, they hoped for a next ti in Brireen gaze would rest on her, and she would feel pierced, exposed, and tell herself that she couldn’t go on as she was, that it was madness and she had to end it Once she even rehearsed what she was going to say to Akiva as she flew to the requierove, but as soon as she saw hile into the luxury of joy, in the place they had come to think of as the world fro for lovers to fill it with happiness

And they did fill it For a hts and the occasional sun-drenched afternoon when Madrigal could get away fros around their happiness and called it a world, though they both kneas not a world, only a hiding place, which is a very different thing

After they had coun to learn each other in earnest, with the hunger of lovers to know everything--in talk and in touch, every ht, every musk and murmur--when all shyness had left them, they admitted the future: that it existed, that they couldn’t pretend it didn’t They both knew this wasn’t a life, especially for Akiva, who saw no one but Madrigal and spent his days sleeping like the evangelines and longing for night

Akiva confessed that he was the eion bred to kill, and he told her of the day the guards had come into the harem to take him from his mother How she had turned away and let them, as if he wasn’t her child at all, but only a tithe she had to pay How he hated his father for breeding children to the task of death, and in flashes she could see that he blaal sined the chimaera represented by each line She wondered how leaned, and how many lost

She did not tell Akiva the secret of resurrection When he asked why she bore no eye tattoos on her palms, she invented a lie She couldn’t tell hi, too dire, the very fate of her race balanced upon it, and she couldn’t share it, not even to assuage his guilt for all the chimaera he had killed Instead, she kissed his ht, but there are other ways to live We can find the, here" She touched his chest and felt a rush of love for the heart that moved his blood, for his smooth skin and his scars and his unsoldierly tenderness She took his hand and pressed it to her breast and said, "We are the beginning"

They began to believe that they could be

Akiva told her that, in the two years since Bullfinch, he had not slain another chi it

"You showed al looked down at her hands and confessed, "But I have killed seraphim since that day," and Akiva took her chin and tilted her face up to his

"But in saving ed me, and here we are because of that ht it possible?"

She shook her head

"Don’t you think others could be changed, too?"

"So of her comrades, friends The White Wolf "Not all"

"Soal nodded, and together they iined a different life, not just for themselves, but for all the races of Eretz And in that month that they hid and loved, dreamed and planned, they believed that this, too, was reat and odstars or soether, they didn’t know, only that a powerful as alive in the peace to their world

When they broke their wishbones now, that hat they hoped for They knew they couldn’t hide in the requierove and daydrea to ht have wrought --had they not been betrayed

57

REVENANT

"Akiva," breathed Karou with the fullness of her self

Mere seconds had passed since they had broken the wishbone, but in that space of tial had ended All that had happened since was another life, but it was hers, too She was Karou, and she was Madrigal She was human and chimaera