Promises to Keep - By Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Page 0,58

the hunt. Except, instead of a stag, Jay had his lynx companion. She hadn’t had an image appeal to her so powerfully since … since the days before she had wept over her brother’s dead body.

“If we survive, I’ll happily model for you,” her Cernunnos said, shaking his hair back. It billowed around his face, the sunset behind him bringing out all the gold and copper highlights in his deep auburn hair.

Maybe he wasn’t Cernunnos. Maybe he was Dionysus, Greek god of revelry. In his many forms and stories, Dionysus—also known as Bacchus—was wild and free-spirited, but with a dark side. He taught mankind to make wine, but also caused the vicious dismemberment of a prince who’d dared insult him and question his godliness. He was often depicted with a leopard.

Jay grinned. “I like that one,” he said.

It was nice, not needing to speak aloud to him. She could perform near-magic with oils, but even she could never perfectly create the images she saw in her head. The colors didn’t exist, and canvas for all its versatility could still only capture a single, still moment. So limited.

She froze the image in her mind and then let him help her across the wall.

Inside the courtyard, it was warm, and bright with dappled springlike light. The magic was still alive and breathing, willful.

She drew a breath, coughed once, lightly, but then completed the breath, laughed, and tossed her hair back from her face. If Jay was Dionysus, who was she? Not some little lost girl. No. Never again. Maybe Artemis, goddess of the hunt?

I could be Artemis.

Jay smiled at her again, a beautiful, feral expression, and said, “If I have a goddess at my side, how hard can it possibly be to conquer an elemental? C’mon, let’s hunt.”

It was false bravado, and yet it wasn’t. They both knew the next moment could be their last, that if they had really lost the others, they had no way to fight and no plan to move forward. But that was later. This was now, and right now was an instant of pure beauty.

CHAPTER 24

THE SHANTEL LAND was neither empty nor lifeless. The wood buildings were centuries old and crumbling, roofs collapsed inside and taken by rot and woodland creatures, but the forest had not overgrown these open spaces the way it should have. Though Jay’s eyes revealed no shapeshifters prowling through the clearings, he did not feel alone. Echoes of power and personalities lingered—trapped by Shantel magic?

No animal smells, Lynx said, or marks.

Brina edged closer to both of them. This felt like a haunted place to her, and even if it was not malevolent, that didn’t mean it had their best interests at heart.

“What happened to the shapeshifters who lived here?” Jay asked. “Could they not survive after losing the sakkri?”

“I do not think they would have sold the sakkri if they could not survive without her,” Brina reasoned, “but the Shantel may not have been able to survive after losing Midnight. It was a hard time.”

“Hard for the vampires, I’m sure,” Jay replied, his mind distracted by trying to make out the currents of thought and power around him. He kept thinking he saw the sleek movements of hunting cats out of the corner of his eye, but turning made the illusions disappear. “The less-fortunate species rejoiced.”

Something glittered in the dirt, and Brina knelt to pick it up as she said, “They rejoiced in their freedom, but freedom and comfort rarely go hand in hand. Do you think Midnight was nothing more than an empire of slaves?” The item she had found turned out to be a silver pacifier, which she stared at for several moments, unable to avoid picturing little Angelica.

“Do you want to talk about her?” Jay asked.

Not yet, she thought. She had loved that child, the first infant she had ever held.

“This area is rich in silver these days, but in Midnight’s time there were no mines here. Where do you think this silver came from? For that matter, where did your ancestors get the silver for their hunters’ blades?”

“Wherever people got silver two hundred years ago,” Jay answered. The question wasn’t idle, obviously, though Brina’s thoughts were still too tangled in the image of Angelica’s blackening face and wheezing cough for Jay to get her point without asking, “I don’t know. Where?”

“Zacatecas, Potosí,” Brina answered. “Modern Mexico, Bolivia, even Peru. This silver traveled at least two thousand miles before it reached this spot, in a day when there were