Dreams of Gods & Monsters (Daughter of Smoke & Bone #3) - Laini Taylor Page 0,85

her jab. What could he even say? You had only to look around to see the non-frivolity of love. Here in this cavern, this uneasy intermingling of seraphim and chimaera was nothing short of a miracle, and it was their miracle, his and Karou’s. He wouldn’t claim it aloud, but in his heart, he knew it was.

Of course, Liraz had her part in it, too, she and Thiago. That had been a sight to behold: the pair of them standing shoulder by shoulder, knitting their armies together by example. They had negotiated the scheme for mixed battalions, and made all of the assignments themselves. Akiva had marked all two hundred and ninety-six of his brothers and sisters with his new hamsa counter-sigil, and now, right now, before his eyes, the armies were testing their marks on each other.

Pockets of soldiers on both sides held themselves back, but the majority, it seemed, were engaged in a kind of cautious… well, a getting-acquainted game, one far less vicious than Liraz had earlier been subject to.

Akiva watched as his brother Xathanael willed a jackal-headed Sab to show him her palms. She was hesitant, and flicked a glance to the Wolf. He nodded encouragement, and so she did it. She lifted her hands, ink eyes raised right at Xathanael, and nothing happened.

They were standing on the dark stain of Uthem’s blood, in the very spot where it had all come so close to breaking apart yesterday, and nothing happened. Xathanael had tensed, but he relaxed with a laugh and gave the Sab a clout on the shoulder heavy enough to seem like assault. His laugh was heavier, though, and the Sab didn’t take offense.

A little beyond them, Akiva saw Issa accede to Elyon’s invitation to touch him, reaching out to lay a graceful hand atop his scarred and inked one.

There was a potency in the image that Akiva wished he could distill into an elixir for the rest of Eretz. Some, and then more, he thought like a prayer.

With that, he sought the glimmer of blue that he was always attuned to and his gaze found Karou, as hers found him. A flash, a flare. One look and he felt drunk with light. She wasn’t near. Godstars, why wasn’t she near? Akiva was fed up with the volumes of air that continued to come between them. And soon it would be leagues and skies between them—

“I’m sorry,” Liraz said quietly. “That wasn’t fair.”

A warmth surged through him, and a proud, protective tenderness for his brittle sister, for whom apologies were no easy thing. “No, it wasn’t,” he said, striving for lightness. “And speaking of fair, you might have waited a few minutes before barging in earlier. I’m sure we were seconds from kissing.”

Liraz snorted, caught off guard, and the tension between them ebbed away. “I’m sorry if my almost dying interrupted your almost kissing.”

“I forgive you,” said Akiva. It was hard to joke about the horror so narrowly avoided, but it felt like what Hazael would do, and that was a guiding principle—what Hazael would do—that seemed always to come out right. “I forgive you this time,” he stressed. “Next time, please time your almost dying with more consideration. Better yet, no more almost dying.” Try almost kissing instead, he thought, or actual kissing, but didn’t say it, partly because it was impossible to imagine, and partly because he knew it would annoy her. He wished it for her, though—that Liraz might find herself, someday, preoccupied by bliss.

“I’m going to go wash before we leave,” he told her, pushing off from the cavern wall where he’d been leaning. Several hours of uninterrupted magic had left his body feeling leaden. He rolled his shoulders, stretched his neck.

“You should go to the thermal pools,” Liraz said. “They’re… fairly wonderful.”

He halted mid-step and squinted at her. “Fairly wonderful?” he repeated. He didn’t think he’d ever heard Liraz use the word wonderful before, and… was that a hint of a flush rising to her cheeks?

Interesting.

“The healing water, of course,” she said, and her direct, unwavering gaze was too direct and unwavering; she was covering some other feeling with feigned cool, and she was overdoing it. On top of which, there was the flush.

Very interesting.

“Well. No time now,” Akiva said. There was water in an alcove just down the passage. “I’ll be right over here,” he told her, departing. He would have liked to go to the thermal pools—he would have liked to go there with Karou—but it was