Chapter 16

R age, fear, and frustration bubble up inside me. Swell. Boil over. I fight it, but I've been fighting it ever since fucking Zirae trapped me here, and I can't fight it anymore.

I collapse to my butt on the hard, cracked ground, clenched teeth clacking together. A strained scream escapes through my gritted teeth, and my hands clenched into angry fists.

The scream turns into a prolonged keening whimper, and I can't stop it. My eyes, burning, squeeze shut. I rock back and forth, trying like fucking hell to hold it in.

But then, I ask myself…why?

Who am I trying to be strong for? Myself?

I let it out.

A wild, throat-scraping scream unleashes from somewhere in my gut, and when I run out of breath to scream, it becomes a sob, and the sob becomes a full-on ugly cry, the type I haven't done since that day in the woods a few months after Mom died.

Collapsing backward, I dig the heels of my palms into my eyes and just let myself cry and scream and kick my heels into the concrete-like ground until I've run out of tears.

The sun blazes overhead. In a distant, impersonal sort of way, I am aware of the heat baking me like a potato in an oven, but it doesn't seem to affect me.

How long have I been here? A day? Two days? How many sunrises and sunsets have I walked through? It's hard to think straight, hard to remember. Without sleep, food, water, or anything at all to mark the hours and days, they've all sort of blurred together. I think it might be only a single 24-hour period, but I can't be sure.

And really, does it matter? Without any physical needs, I'm just a ghost. No one. Nothing. I can just wander this gods-forsaken desert for all of my eternal existence.

Without magic or my connection to my mates, how will they ever find me in this wide, wild world?

They won't.

Out of tears, I just lay there. I can't look directly at the sun, of course, but if I squint and watch it through my peripheral vision I can track its motion across the sky. It arcs downward in not quite perceptible degrees, taking the heat with it.

Evening.

The sky is burned by the setting sun to an orange-red smear that gradually turns scarlet and then purple and then gray. And then the sky is black above me, and the cold wraps itself around me like a blanket of all sharp edges.

The first star pricks the sky directly over my head, a tiny winking speck of salt against an endless black backdrop.

I wonder if I can just pull my hands through the bracelets. I'd have to break my hands to do so, but if I succeeded, they'd heal.

But if I succeeded, would the bloodlust and all the other physical needs I've been denied by Zirea's fucking cursed bracelets all come due at the same time?

I pull the bracelet away from my hand, folding my fingers in as tight as they can go, pushing, pushing, pushing, and pulling, pulling, pulling until my hand pulses with pain in protest, and still I strain until I feel something pop—my thumb. Interestingly, the pain is as distant as my perception of heat and cold. But yet, after another moment of pulling—and some cursing and screaming—it becomes obvious I'm not getting the damned bracelet off that way.

I let go and let my hand flop to the ground with a frustrated huff.

Overhead, a few million more stars have made their abrupt appearance. I fold my hands over my belly and stare, unblinking, up at the sky.

The stars seem to twist slowly. Or perhaps rotate is the better word.

"Giving up, are you?" Caspian, beside me.

"Yes. I am." I know he's a figment of my delirious imagination, but even that version of my beloved Caspian is a comfort.

"Do you love me as much as you love Caleb?" He asks.

"Fuck you."

"No, really."

"No, really, fuck you." I don't look at him—he's not there. I know I'm talking to myself. But, fuck it. I don't care. "I love you differently but equally."

"The stars are beautiful tonight."

I snort. "The stars are beautiful every night."

"You can't give up. The world needs you. I need you."

"Well, too bad. Zirae wins. I may have killed him once and for all, but he still won. I'm stuck here. I wandered in circles for who knows how long. I got literally nowhere. I don't even have my own tracks to follow."

"Maybe someone will come to your rescue?"

I snort again. "Oh yeah, for sure," I retort, my voice dripping with sarcasm. "Someone is just going to appear here in the middle of the Gobi fucking Desert, or wherever the fuck I am, and rescue me. I'm the rescuer, Cas. I do the rescuing. I don't get rescued."

"Except without your magic and your immortal abilities, what are you? Who are you? Just a lost, weak, scared, pathetic little girl. The only reason you haven't died in this fucking desert is because you literally physically can't."

I finally turn and look at him, set to rage against him and his asshole truth, but he's not there. No one is there. I'm talking to myself. Am I hearing things? Or am I talking for Caspian and myself?

Impossible to know.

Apparently, I'm going crazy. Or already am crazy.

Are crazy? Am Crazy?

Who the hell cares about grammar at a time like this, you daft bitch?

(Am—it's "I already am crazy.")

Incrementally, the stars wink away one by one, and then all of a sudden.

For a while, the sky is stuck between black and gray, just the very thin razor edge of the horizon stained with a hint of what will eventually become light.

I wonder if I can sleep?

I close my eyes, but they immediately pop back open, almost on their own.

Nope.

I guess I'll just be here until…what? Until something happens? Until I go truly whack-a-doodle? I mean, I'm talking to myself and hearing my mates' voices and seeing them…that seems pretty fucking whack-a-doodle to me.

The sun rises. It's on my left, still, so I haven't managed to go in circles while lying down. At least there's that.

The bitter cold is slowly replaced by a savage heat that can't touch me.

There's a faint twinge of something almost like pain in my thumb. Oh—right. I dislocated it.

I lift my hand and stare at it—the thumb is most assuredly very far out of joint. Gripping the thumb in my fist, I yank it away from my hand—another twinge of what under normal circumstances would be agonizing pain, and then nothing. I move my thumb around. Feels fine.

Whatever.

I don't care. Nothing matters.

Ghosts don't have feelings.

Do they? I don't know.

The sun is midway between the horizon and overhead. What does that convert to in clock time? Nine a.m.? But then, it's relative, isn't it? Nine in the morning here is not the same as nine in LA, Chicago, or New York. And the time of sunrise and sunset is different at different times of the year…

God, who the fuck cares ? What is going on in my brain?

I close my eyes again because the sun is very bright—maybe because I was staring directly at it.

I feel something. A lessening of the incandescent heat of the sun that I can't quite feel, almost as if a shadow has fallen across me.

I open my eyes, and yes. A shadow has indeed fallen across my body.

It's distinctly man-shaped.

I rotate my head backward and to the left, where the shadow-casting object should be.

It's a male…something. A person. He's standing between me and the sun.

I think.

If he's real.

He's close enough to touch, and the shadow feels real. He doesn't speak. Doesn't move.

He has hair so blonde it's almost as white as mine. Long, thin, perfectly straight, falling past his shoulders. A dry puff of wind flutters the edges of his hair, increasing my inclination to think he just might be physically real. I'm just not convinced yet. He has no facial hair nor any hint of it. Sharp high cheekbones, angular jawline. Pointed ears.

I'd say he's a fae, but there's something not fae about him. The shape of his ears, maybe? They point vertically instead of angled backward like fae ears. His eyes are a shocking shade of bright purple. His lips are thin and well-shaped, with a pronounced Cupid's Bow and a deep philtrum.

He stares at me without blinking, standing over me, gazing down, hands behind his back. He's dressed in a voluminous black robe open at the front below the wide black leather belt around his waist—hand-tooled with arabesques and curls and whorls and loops. The robe is open at the chest, revealing pale skin and a hint of defined muscle, and floats around his feet an inch or two above the ground. His legs, when the skirt of the robe billows open in another puff of wind, are wrapped in black trousers—tight, more like leggings. He's barefoot. For some reason, my gaze is drawn to his feet—long, wide at the toes, deeply arched. He wiggles his toes; my gaze flicks up to his, and a tiny hint of a smirk crosses his face.

He sure seems real.

Without thinking, I reach up and wiggle my fingers at him, a gesture meant to communicate Come down here where I can touch you.

He squats lithely, elbows resting on his knees, hands dangling by his shins. His hands are like his feet—an unusual mix of delicate and powerful.

He has a sword at his left hip, the scabbard done in the same exquisitely worked black leather. The pommel of the sword is a sharp point of silver metal with a bulbous end at the base of the handle to stop the hand from sliding down. The grip is wrapped in more fine leather and wound with silver wire. The cross-guard is a twisted length of square metal. The blade is straight, wide, and long, tapering to a point.

I reach my hand toward him, and my fingers touch the flesh of his jaw—soft, cool skin over hard bone.

"Hello, little lost one." His voice is low and smooth and musical. "Why are you lying on the ground in the middle of the Gobi Desert?"

I blink at him. "You…you seem real."

He smiles patiently. Taps the tip of my nose with a finger. "I am." His fingertip traces my lips. "I'm quite real. The desert can do funny things to people."

"I saw my mates. I heard them. I talked to them. But I knew it wasn't real."

"Can you sit up?" He asks. "Do you need help?"

I shake my head and sit up. Swivel on my butt to face him. "Who are you?"

"Well, you're in my desert, so perhaps you'll do me the favor of answering that question first. Who are you? And what are you doing in my desert?"

" Your desert?"

He shrugs. "My desert, yes. I've claimed it since no one else seems to want it."

"Because it's a brutal, unforgiving wasteland?" I frown. "I thought people did live here? Somewhere. Like, Mongolians, or something. My memory of geography class is somewhat vague, I admit."

He smirks, shrugging. "Oh, they do. Some Han Chinese, too. Just not here. And I avoid them, usually. I stick to the brutal, unforgiving wasteland."

"Why?"

"It suits me."

"Weird."

He laughs. "Indeed. Now. Who are you, and why are you in my desert?"

"My name is Maeve Sparrow. I'm a Vaer—vampire-fae. The only one, as far as I know."

He nods. "I see." A pause. "And how did you end up here in the desert?"

I sigh. "Zirae."

He nods knowingly. "Ah. A real prick. Or at least he was when I knew him. Albeit that was…quite a while ago." He arches an eyebrow. "What happened?"

"It's a long story."

He shrugs. "We're both immortal, and I have nowhere to be."

"Well, I do."

He frowns. "Then why are you lying on the ground?"

"Because I…" I trail off, loathe to admit the truth out loud to a real person. "I gave up," I mumble under my breath.

He assesses me. "I sense no magic in you." His frown deepens. "Well, I do, but…" He shakes his head. "I do not understand what I am sensing from you. I sense great and powerful magic, and none at all."

I lift my wrists and jangle the cursed bangles. "It's these fucking things. Zirae put them on me. It was the last thing he did before he died. They somehow block my access to all magic—including my vampire abilities. I can't sense my magic at all. I feel no bloodlust. No hunger. No thirst. No need for vitality. I haven't gotten sunburned. I don't seem to sleep—I can't sleep. I can't get them off, and I can't even sense what they are or how they work. I've been mage-cuffed before, and I can break those." I shake my wrists again. "But these gods-and-blood-be-damned things I can't do anything about."

He blinks twice but otherwise makes no expression. "I see. And when you say Zirae died…"

I shrug. "I mean he died. Stopped breathing. No more Zirae." I wave my hand vaguely at the desert. "He's out there somewhere. I don't know where because I've been walking in circles for I don't know how fucking long."

"How did he die?"

"I suspect it was the several tons of rock I hit him with a good, oh, half a dozen times."

" You killed Zirae , eldest of the elder fae, in a one-on-one mage battle?"

I nod. "I did." I shrug. "Twice, actually. The first time, he escaped through a weird portal into The Dreaming that he was somehow able to open. He laid low for a few months, and then when I was fighting the Mortal Federation in Manhattan, he somehow hijacked my glamour, turned it into a rift into The Dreaming, sucked me in, closed it, and we fought in The Dreaming, or some other plane a whole hell of a lot like The Dreaming, and then he opened another hole, I followed him through, we landed here in this godforsaken FUCKING SHITHOLE DESERT —" I'm shouting by this point, "we fought, and I killed the evil, crazy, sadistic old bastard."

The male sinks back to sit on his buttocks and then crosses his legs into the lotus position. "That is a truly remarkable feat, Miss Maeve Sparrow. Zirae was a cunning and powerful mage."

"Yeah, well, the old fuck got the last laugh, didn't he?" I shake the bracelets. "Literally. He died laughing."

"He always was like that."

"You knew him, then?"

He nods. "I did. I knew him as a boy, and later as a young man, and then again when he was in full possession of his powers. He was somewhat cracked in the head by then, already."

I frown. "Wait, when you say you knew him as a boy…when he was a boy, or when you were a boy?"

He regards me silently for several moments. "So, without magic, unable to even die, you wandered in circles? At some point, I assume, you realized you were going in circles and sat down and gave up. And then I arrived. Do I have this correct?"

"More or less, yes." I run my hands through my hair. "Well, you have it exactly right."

"I assume you'd like to get out of the desert?"

"God, yes."

He nods. "That I can help you with."

I shake the bracelets. "And these?"

He frowns. "Those, unfortunately, are somewhat beyond my ability to assist you with. But I can help you find someone who can."

I examine him again, more closely. His face is unlined, youthful, and firm. But his eyes, his presence…he exudes age. Immense, mind-boggling age. The way he looks at me feels like he's seen everything there is to see.

He sees into my soul. Into the core of who I am, and without effort. God, I wish I could feel his magic—I bet it's incredible.

The sense of age coming from this male is so palpable and so intense that it's almost scary—scratch that, not almost…it is scary.

"What is your name?" I ask.

He adjusts the sword at his hip, tipping the hilt down and the tip up and rotating the hilt away from his body. "Aeon." EE-on .

"Like, eons?"

He nods. "Yes, but spelled with the Latin ligature ash." I blink at him, and he chuckles, not unkindly. "The squished together A-E. So it is properly spelled Ash-O-N, but more commonly in recent millennia, I have taken to spelling it A-E-O-N. Either way, the pronunciation is the same. Aeon."

"Recent millennia?"

He shrugs.

"So, who are you?"

He laughs. "I just told you. I'm Aeon."

"Okay, but…you're not fae, are you?"

He shakes his head. "No, not exactly."

"Or a vampire? Or a shifter."

He shakes his head. "No."

"You're something else."

"Yes."

"And you're not going to tell me what?"

A shrug. "Perhaps." He rises to his feet in a smooth, lithe motion and brushes off his backside. "Come." Without a word, he strides away—if the sun rises in the east, then he's heading south. I think.

I get to my feet. Despite having been lying on the ground for days, or a day, or…I don't know how long…I'm not stiff.

I follow him.

"Where are we going?" I ask, trotting to catch up with him.

He shrugs. "Out of the Gobi, first. Then west. West, west, west. Eventually to your New York."

"It's not my New York."

Another shrug. He can communicate a lot in shrugs—this one seems to mean Yours, not yours, it means less than nothing to me.

We walk together for a while. He says nothing. He walks straight as an arrow as if he knows exactly where he's going, and I begin to realize why I was walking in circles—I keep bumping into his shoulder. I'm subtly angling to the left. With no landmarks and no trail behind to judge by, there was no way to know, but I was gradually turning leftward. If I had been leaving tracks, I probably would have crossed them.

"How do you know where to go?"

Shrug. "It all looks the same around here, yes? Well, it's not. I've spent a great many years in this desert, so I know every inch of it as well as you know your backyard."

"I've never had a backyard."

He glances at me, puzzled. "Oh no?"

I shake my head. "Nope. My mom and I moved around a lot, and it was always from apartment to apartment. A house with a yard never really figured in."

He makes an expression that doesn't mean anything more than a visual version of "hmmm."

Without a conversational gambit to play off, I lapse back into silence. We walk in what I now assume is a straight line from nowhere to nowhere—or so it seems.

"So, you were just wandering around the desert and happened to come across me?" I glance at him sidelong.

He tips his head to the side. "Somewhat."

"You're pretty evasive."

"I have reason to be."

"What reason would that be?"

He grins at me. "Who and what I am."

I sigh. "Helpful."

"We have a very long walk, Maeve. We have all the time in the world to get to know each other."

"So you will answer questions directly at some point?"

He laughs outright. "Yes. At some point, I will give you direct answers."

"But not now?"

He laughs again—he has a musical voice; musical does not mean soft or gentle or delicate or anything. Just…rich, full, smooth, and rhythmic. It's hard to describe. But nothing about Aeon is soft or gentle. Every movement is lithe and graceful in a way not even Caleb or Caspian can equal. He doesn't seem to hurry, but his pace eats up the distance easily. His hand rests on his sword now and then, and his head and eyes are always moving, roving, seeking, seeing.

I suspect he doesn't need magic to be deadly and dangerous.

"Ask me one question. I might answer it." He smirks.

I consider my options for a long time. "Did you find me on purpose or on accident?"

He glances at me, surprised. "Not the question I would have expected." A pause as he thinks. "I felt magic somewhere in the desert. I went looking for the source and found you. So, did I know I'd find you specifically? No, I did not. Did I know I'd find something or someone? Yes."

"You felt the presence of magic? From how far away?"

A shrug. "Quite a distance. I'm extremely attuned to the presence of maya in this world." He stops walking, eyes closed, and pivots slowly on one heel, nostrils flaring as he scents the air. He points. "There. Perhaps…three hundred kilometers that way, someone has a glamour. Low level. Likely a simple ward." A shrug. "Nothing worth investigating."

I stare at him. "You can sense a ward from three hundred kilometers away? I…well, I have no idea what that is in miles because I'm an American, but it's really fucking far."

He furrows his brow and wrinkles his nose in thought—a weirdly and unexpectedly human gesture. "Conversions are difficult because neither miles nor kilometers are native to me. But, if I have it correct, I believe it would be roughly a hundred and eighty-some miles."

"What unit of measurement would be native to you?"

He laughs. "Cubits were the first unit of anything like a standard system, but that was…well…I was well into my immortal adulthood by the time cubits became popular. Before that, it was very localized. But most commonly, you would refer to distances based on a day's travel. So, if I was discussing how long it would take to get to the person using that low-level glamour, I would estimate roughly six days of walking. I can average about thirty miles from sunup to sundown. If I'm in a hurry and I walk the sun around, I could probably make it in four. If I run, two to three days."

I'm getting the impression that Aeon is so old he makes Zirae seem like a spring chicken. Whatever that means. A chicken born in spring, probably—meaning a baby. God, sayings are weird.

I look at him again. And once more, I'm struck by his features. The upward-pointed ears, so unlike my own. His facial structure is different, too. Sharper, more angular, more vulpine. He is no more a fae than I am a shifter. He's not like any Primi I've ever met. He's something else. Something older.

"Aeon…how old are you, exactly?"

He doesn't answer, doesn't show any sign of having heard me, but I know he did, so I wait. "The truth is, I do not know." He glances at me. "I'm certain that answer is frustrating to you, but it is the truth."

"Well, Zirae claimed to be over six thousand years old. From Sumer." I watch him as he listens. "Are you older than Zirae?"

He smiles faintly. Nods once. "I am. " He regards me with a blank expression that I am beginning to equate with him considering how much to tell me. "I and my people, the tribe from which I am descended, were myth to the Sumerians when Zirae was born to the king of Ur and his concubine."

"He was a prince?"

He nods. "The crown prince. His mother was fae, impregnated by the King. He was raised to be the successor, but his mother hated the king. She allowed him to think Zirae would be the king when he died, and then, at the last moment, when the King was dying and had already pronounced Zirae his successor, she absconded with Zirae in the night, casting a glamour on the whole palace. When they woke up, their crown prince was gone, along with a sizeable portion of treasure from the treasury. She left Sumer, used magic to hide their tracks from the mortal king's soldiers, and vanished with him. No one saw them again for several hundred years. When Zirae reemerged, he was a powerful mage with what could be termed a classical education in glamourworking. Where they went and who trained him is something even I have never truly been able to find out. There are rumors, of course."

"Such as?"

"Oh, wild stuff. Atlantis, for example."

"Was Atlantis real?"

He smiles at me. "Oh yes, of course. It was a civilization in the Mediterranean, mostly comprised of immortals descended from my people—or an offshoot of my people, at least. There was a cataclysm—their island was a volcano, which detonated. That detonation caused earthquakes, which caused tsunamis, flooding, and a host of other natural disasters. The island was erased, and those who survived fled and intermingled with the other societies then burgeoning in the Mediterranean region. No great mystery. But since it was so long ago, and since all traces were erased by the cataclysm, there's no solid evidence of it in the mortal archeological record. And, of course, the terms of The Treaty mean current mortals have even less of a clue what really happened since Atlantis was a civilization of immortals."

"But, to mortals, that is the mystery. That would be exactly what Hollywood would say happened—an island nation of magical beings who suffered a great disaster and disappeared."

He laughs. "True, when you frame it like that. And, to be fair, they were quite technologically advanced compared to mortal civilizations of the time. Atlantis was a hub of trade for thousands of years because they created such wonders."

"Are you from Atlantis?"

He shakes his head. "No, I am not." A smirk. "Disappointed?"

I shrug. "No. I would like to know where you are from, though."

He nudges me with his shoulder. "We have to save things to talk about for the fire."

"The fire?"

He nods. "Oh yes. Real conversation is best had around a campfire after the day's travel is done."

"So what you're saying, though, is that you're at least double Zirae's age."

He bobs his head from side to side. "Roughly. Perhaps." He frowns. "Let's just say I stopped trying to keep count after my tenth millennium. After that, counting seemed pointless." He shrugs. "I was only estimating after the first two or three thousand years anyway. Records and histories and such were scattered, sporadic, and inaccurate at best then, for one thing."

I think about trying to keep track of my birthdays for thousands of years, and my mind wobbles a bit. "I can sort of see how you'd stop bothering to count your birthdays after a while."

He nods, and glances at me. "And how old are you?"

I'm embarrassed to answer. "Nineteen?"

He chuckles. "Are you asking me? Because I certainly don't know. Judging the age of a person is beyond me at this point."

I shrug. "No. I'm nineteen. Almost twenty. It's just sort of embarrassing to admit to being nineteen when I'm talking to someone who is literally older than human history."

He stops and turns to face me; his piercing, brilliant purple eyes burn into me, shake me to my core. I can't breathe when he turns those eyes on me—they see too much. Know too much. "Maeve, one's age is beyond one's control. It's nothing to be embarrassed about. You are young. And yes, to me, your lifespan so far represents barely a single heartbeat, you could say. But that does not mean I don't see you. It doesn't mean you are less. Only that you are young. And young or not, you did something no one, in seven thousand years, ever did: you defeated the most powerful fae mage to ever live. Twice. That, my lovely young Vaer, is something you should be proud of. He was… perhaps not evil, but twisted. And I have long felt his influence on mortal and immortal affairs was not a net positive."

"Tell me about it. He and the Tribunal kept immortals from understanding the benefits of procreating with the other immortal races because they were afraid of what would happen to them. It has done possibly irreparable harm, not just to immortals, but to everyone. That damned treaty was a travesty of justice." I hear my voice rising, intensity threading through my tone.

Aeon traces the tips of his middle and ring fingers of his right hand over my cheekbone. "You are not wrong, but you lack context."

"I was raised mortal. So, yeah."

He blinks. "I am not easily surprised, but you continue to surprise me, Maeve Sparrow. I should like to hear more of this at tonight's fire."

My thoughts, however, are not on the fire, or the conversation, or even the promise of more direct answers to my approximately two hundred million questions.

No, my thoughts are on the way my cheek burns. The way my skin tingles where he touched me. The way my heart is doing leaps and jigs.

It feels a whole hell of a lot like…

No.

Nope.

I have five mates. I have no business feeling attraction to anyone else.

Especially not an immortal who's neither fae, shifter, vampire, Secundus, or anything I recognize or have ever heard…someone so old he stopped estimating his age at ten thousand years.

Nope.

I felt nothing. Nothing at all.

Funny how I don't believe myself.