Or, in our case, to protect the ones she loves.

Morgan sat on Lu’s other side. She took Lu’s chin firmly in hand and forced her to meet her eyes. “You will not feel guilty for what you did. I won’t allow it. Guilt and shame are wasted emotions, only ever useful for what they can teach us. Learn what you can, then let the rest go, because if you allow guilt to sink its claws in you, you’ll never be free of it.”

“The only people who don’t feel guilt when they’ve done something wrong are bad people,” Lu countered.

“That’s correct. And you do feel bad, which proves you’re not one of those people. But I’m telling you now that guilt is only a half step away from fear, and if you allow yourself to wallow in guilt, fear will follow on its heels and eventually you’ll find yourself paralyzed. Don’t let either one dictate how you’ll live your life.” She smiled, releasing Lu’s chin. “I never have, and Lord knows there are a million reasons I could’ve.”

Lu sat for a moment in silence, absorbing Morgan’s words, until Honor spoke again.

“You need to get your head straight about this.”

Lu looked at her sister, and found her staring back at her with her usual freezing intensity. Her tears had dried. Her armor had been donned.

“There’s always a price to be paid for freedom. That price is blood. It’s ugly, it’s tragic, but it’s reality. We didn’t start this fight, but we have to be willing to engage, and fight back. We have to do what it takes to protect ourselves, or we all die. The strong either protect the weak, or devour them. You and I are strong. So was Caesar. He chose the second path, and we chose the first. Can you see the difference?”

With her fierce sister on one side, and her fiery godmother on the other, Lu experienced a moment of profound calm, like the breathless stillness in the eye of a storm. She’d never felt so centered, or so suddenly sure of what she had to do. She thought perhaps it was the kindness of denial—ignorance was definitely bliss, in her experience—or maybe mass hysteria on a smaller scale, the effective mindwashing of two talented salespeople, but their words touched a chord deep inside her, and her shame was unexpectedly replaced by . . . well, if not pride then at least satisfaction.

Honor was right. If they wanted to, she and her sister could wreak the kind of havoc on the planet that would be nothing short of biblical. And who could stop them?

But they didn’t want that. For all their differences, they wanted the same thing.

Peace. Freedom. And most of all . . .

“I want you to promise me something.” Lu leaned in close to Honor, staring her deep in the eyes.

She seemed slightly taken aback by Lu’s sudden change of demeanor. “Which is?”

“Tell Beckett how you feel about him.”

Honor and Morgan both said, “What?” at the same time, only Honor’s voice was an octave higher. And much louder.

“No matter what happens after I leave, whether I make it back or not, I want to know that you’re not going to go on like this for the rest of your life. I want you to tell Beckett how you feel about him, because I think there might be something there. If I have to be courageous, you do, too.”

Morgan’s eyes were wide as she searched Honor’s face. “You and Beckett?”

Honor ignored Morgan, concentrating instead on stabbing Lu with daggers of withering fury using her eyes. “I am so going to kill you,” she said, her voice dangerously low.

Lu smiled. “Yeah. Let me know how that works out for you. Besides,” she said, tugging on a strand of her sister’s long mane, “you deserved it. And Morgan, thanks for the offer, but I’m not taking your Gift. I think it’s time I learned how to use all of mine.”

She rose, fluffed her shorn hair, crossed the room to the pair of large dressers where she suspected Honor kept all her clothes, and began to dig through the drawers for something to wear on her perilous, ill-planned, and possibly ill-fated return to New Vienna.

PART THREE

TWENTY

They left with the last of the light. As the helicopter rose into the sky and the crowd that had gathered on the moors to see them off grew smaller and smaller, the emerald valley darkened to sapphire and smoke-purple shadows, gloomy twilight colors that perfectly reflected Lumina’s mood.

She watched the sun sink behind the jagged peaks of the mountains in the west, wondering if she’d ever see that particular sight again. Shaking off her sense of doom, she turned to Magnus in the pilot’s seat beside her.

“How long will it take to cross the Channel?”

“Not long,” he replied without glancing in her direction. He offered nothing more.

She waited, hoping her silence would prompt something from him—anything—but he acted as if he were alone on the flight, flicking switches and checking readouts, adjusting his headphones, taking up most of the space in the small cockpit with his oversized frame. Lu felt small and insignificant beside him, but most of all, worst of all, ignored.

He hadn’t wanted her help on this trip. She’d insisted, and they both knew her powers would be a significant asset, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

Judging by his body language, the way he kept his gaze averted, and the tension rolling off him in waves, he didn’t like it at all.

Or maybe what he really hadn’t liked was that kiss.

She dropped her gaze to her hands, turned her wrists over and inspected her empty birdcage and starling tattoos. It had been stupid, taking that kiss. A rash impulse better ignored. But every time she looked at him she saw a million fevered dreams, and the echo of longing eating its way through her chest grew larger with every passing minute. The longing had a new companion in humiliation; everyone saw how he’d begun avoiding her. She felt the speculation that surrounded them, the curiosity, and understood those were two of the last things on Earth a man like Magnus would want.

Evidently his way of dealing with unwanted attention was to become even more closed and tightly wound than before. If that was even possible.

His withdrawal left her feeling off-balance, like something familiar and right had been pulled askew, two planets yanked out of their proper orbits. She wouldn’t speak to him in his thoughts again—he’d made it perfectly clear how he felt about that—and he obviously had little inclination to speak to her aloud, so all she could do was stew, wonder, and try to blot out the memory of the exotic, night-spice taste of the man who was, quite literally, the man of her dreams.

Lu stifled her sigh, and turned her attention to the view.

Mile after mile of rolling moors and wild peat land, a range of craggy mountains and the unexpected surprise of a lake nestled between two peaks, its surface black and mirror smooth, reflecting back the rising moon. Abandoned villages one after another, connected by arteries of roads upon which nothing moved. The villages grew larger, closer together, until all at once Lu realized that they were no longer villages, but suburbs.

London loomed large and black in the distance.

Fascinated, she pressed her face to the window, her breath frosting the glass. In minutes they’d reached it. The city sprawled vast and eerie as a dream beneath them, cloaked in a restless, low-lying fog that crept in whorls and eddies around the edges of everything. There was the Thames and the Tower Bridge, Westminster palace and Big Ben, the huge, unmoving wheel of the London Eye, all familiar sights from her father’s history lessons. In the moonlight, it was beautiful, a ghost city in a landscape of haze and starlight, utterly unmoving and dark.