Chapter 54

Chapter Fifty-Four

Petra had never consciously traveled by m-gate before, so feeling like she’d been squeezed through a pinhole and then extruded out the other side took a bit of adjusting to.

As soon as a solid surface reformed under her feet, she was forced to swallow a surge of nausea. Bizarrely, she got the sense that she’d stumbled and also that she hadn’t moved at all. Her sense of self became malleable, as did her relationship with her various limbs, bits, and parts.

All she saw was white light, and even though she was pretty sure they’d come with her, she had to consciously check to assure herself that her eyeballs were where they ought to be.

She blinked hard to clear her vision. Real sensation, not just the impression of having been put through a potato ricer, returned to her limbs as she swung her gaze around. Cool air kissed her clammy skin. The ringing bell and rumble of a streetcar were somehow uncanny, like musical notes from another world.

They appeared to be standing in the center of a walled courtyard. Elegant wrought iron light fixtures cast a golden glow over manicured hedges and towering columns of flowering jasmine. It was dark in San Francisco, which was a jarring change from the warm morning light they’d left in Tennessee.

An oddly familiar burbling fountain stood proudly before her, the center of a brick circle. Lights danced alongside a shimmering reflection in the dark water. The gatekeeper stood by the fountain, his left arm lifted to check his watch like everything was normal and he hadn’t just torn apart the fabric of space. For him it was, but the lack of ceremony was jarring.

It took her dazed mind a moment to place the lines, shapes, and muted colors that danced across the water’s surface. The dark face of the cathedral, recognizable even at night, stretched across the ripples in a broken streak. A jolt of surprise ran through her at the sight.

A warm hand cupped the back of her neck. Silas loomed over her, demon eyes glowing with sinister light, and rumbled, “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” I think. “Where are we? I thought we were going to your cabin, not across the street from the cathedral.”

“This is my house. I don’t have a lab in the cabin.”

“Your house? What…” Petra turned on her heel, searching for a house. What she found was not that.

“It’s a little gaudy,” the gatekeeper quipped.

Silas glared. “Why are you still here?”

Gaudy wasn’t the word she’d use, necessarily, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t fitting. The building that towered over her in all its three story, neoclassical glory was not a home. It was a palace. One she’d seen hundreds, if not thousands of times and admired wistfully in those rare moments when she didn’t feel like she was running for her life.

“You own the Flood mansion?”

Silas shrugged. “It’s a good location.”

A garbled noise escaped her throat. It was all she could manage, since words were beyond her. A faint, nearly non- existent memory from months ago of Robert mentioning that the mansion across the street from the cathedral had been sold echoed in her mind. She recalled feeling a silly pang of disappointment at the news.

As if I could’ve ever afforded a place like that, she’d thought. Not in this lifetime, and definitely not on a High Priestess’s salary.

She’d never stepped foot in the sprawling courtyard, let alone been inside, but she didn’t need to. A glance was enough to determine that it was one of the most beautiful properties in the entire city.

When he said it’s a good location, he had to mean the fact that it was directly across the street from the entrance to the cathedral. Which meant that he’d probably bought the mansion — the famous, outrageously expensive, historical, two-city-block-spanning home built by a silver baron before the near destruction of San Francisco in 1906 — sometime before they met.

When she whirled around again, she took the time to really look at the courtyard and beyond the tall fence. Sure enough, there it was: the cathedral and, more importantly, the clear path she walked every day as she went about her work.

“You’ve been watching me, haven’t you?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

Silas gave her an odd look. “Of course I have.”

Pressing a hand to the small of her back, he steered her back around and began to march her toward the front door. She let him lead her, too dazed to do much else, and only shook her head when he called over his shoulder, “Get out of here, witch. And if you tell anyone where we live, I’ll kill you and everyone you’ve ever loved.”

“You can try,” the gatekeeper replied, as unruffled as ever. “Enjoy the holiday, Shade.” A moment later, magic singed down her spine. A soundless explosion blew her hair around her shoulders and then the air cleared.

“Who was that?” she asked, trying to keep up with Silas’s long strides.

He grunted. “A client who pays me extremely well to not ask any questions.”

“So you don’t know his name, but you trusted him enough to get us here?”

Silas shrugged. “He’d be dead without me, so I figured we’d probably be fine.”

Petra shook her head. It took a lot of restraint to stop herself from asking more questions. His history with the gatekeeper wasn’t important, and she knew that if she kept pushing, he’d only give her answers that spawned more questions.

Even with Silas hustling her along, it felt like it took ages to cross the expansive courtyard. When they reached the stone steps of the ornate entrance, a familiar hum of power sizzled over her skin. Silas’s wards, once foreign and uncomfortable when they clung to her skin, now felt as comforting as his touch.

She knew for certain that she was safe within the bounds of Silas’s magic, just as she knew that he’d never let anything happen to her when he held her in his arms.

“Tell me you didn’t buy this house because of me,” she demanded, watching him disarm the security system by the front door.

Silas pushed the door open and ushered her inside the palatial foyer. “I didn’t buy this house because of you.”

“Are you lying?”

“Yes.”

“Silas!”

“What?” He looked around with a deep frown. “Do you not like it? I can get us another one.”

Petra boggled at him even as he began to lead her down a dark hallway. “Do I like it? Silas, this is a palace! Of course I like it. But it’s— it’s so much.”

Without missing a beat, he replied, “It’s exactly what you deserve.”

“But—”

He stopped to give her a long, exasperated look. “Baby, I bought this house because I hated letting you out of my sight. If you think it’s too big, we’ll move. If you don’t want to live in San Francisco at all, that’s fine, too. I don’t care where we live. The only thing that matters to me is you.”

And then he kept walking. “Tal!” he called, keying in a code on a panel by a normal-looking door. “Get your ass in the lab!”

Petra stood there in the hall for a moment longer, rooted to the spot.

She wasn’t sure why she was so stuck on this. They had much bigger, deadlier concerns. After all, she was now in a city where she was maybe a wanted criminal and directly across the street from a cathedral full of very, very deadly men looking to overthrow a government. Possibly. They were pretty sure.

And what they were about to do was perhaps not illegal, but absolutely toeing the ethical line. All things considered, losing her mind over Silas’s extravagant house was a little silly. The minutes before dawn were dwindling. They didn’t have time for her to worry about a house.

Except it wasn’t just a house.

It was a home he’d bought specifically so he could be close to her before they’d so much as exchanged a word. She wondered if he even realized what a gift that was for her. Did he understand that if she was allowed to continue her work as High Priestess, she couldn’t have picked a better spot to live with him?

It was a far cry from the one bedroom apartment she’d spent most of her childhood in, and it was on a completely different planet than the communal rooms she’d lived in at the children’s home. Her accommodations in the Temple had seemed luxurious to her compared to those, but this…

There was nothing normal about Silas purchasing a house like this before they’d even met, but Petra had long dispensed with comparing him to any standard. Silas did what he wanted, when he wanted to do it. Usually he did it selfishly, too, and yet somehow he always seemed to do it for her, even if he didn’t know it himself.

She placed a shaking hand on the gorgeous vintage wallpaper and released a breath. Okay. Wow. This is your house now. There’ll be time to let that sink in later. We’ve got shit to do.

A shiver of awareness passed over her. Out of the corner of her eye, the deep shadows of the hall seemed to undulate. If she squinted, she thought there might have been the shape of a large man. Or maybe not. It was impossible for her to tell what was real and what was her brain filling in the blanks.

What she was certain of, however, was the feeling that came with Tal’s presence. It was gentler than the wildness that followed Silas like a thunderstorm, but no less powerful.

Casting the shadows a nervous smile, she dryly noted, “He didn’t tell me about the house.”

She couldn’t hear his response, of course, but she didn’t need to when Silas poked his head out the door. “You can shove that up your ass, Tal. Now get in here before I decide actually giving you an ass isn’t worth the trouble.”

Of course, Tal had no eyes with which he could share a look with her, but Petra got the feeling they did so anyway.

She could feel him trailing after her as she stepped into the makeshift lab. It clearly hadn’t been designed to be one, but Silas had made it work by setting up large stainless steel work tables, a computer bank, and what looked like a mobile clean room in the corner. It didn’t hold a candle to his lab back in Tennessee, but it was still impressive.

What shocked her most, however, was the being laid out on the biggest table in the center of the room.

Petra knew intellectually that it was lifeless, but the closer she drew to it, the more wary she became. It looked like a sleeping giant lay strewn across the table — one hewn in metal and a strange black enamel material she’d never seen before. A cavernous chest piece held pride of place in the center, but it was the head that drew her gaze.

Sleek, black, with an articulated jaw and proud features, it boasted a set of short, spiky horns and an empty, fathomless gaze.

“Is that Tal?” she whispered, almost afraid to wake the giant.

“It will be.” Silas drew the seat away from his desk and hunched over the projected keyboard, his focus honed on the windows that popped up on the computer screen.

A lump of emotion formed in her throat. Petra couldn’t quite stop herself from glancing at the body as she passed it. When she looked at it, she didn’t just see a shell. She saw the years — decades, even — of hard work and care Silas had put into its creation. She saw the love there, even if Silas would never admit to it.

And she saw the longing in those striking lines. The loneliness in the empty sockets of his eyes. The man there, just waiting to live.

It was more than just a shell or an experiment. It was the vessel for all Tal’s hopes.

“Kaz is going to have a stroke,” Silas muttered, sounding far too pleased with himself.

Petra forced herself to focus. Crossing the room, she stood by Silas’s hip and picked at her thumbnail nervously. “Call him again.”

Silas’s fingers didn’t pause their rapid movement over the keyboard. “I tried. He’s not gonna answer and we’re out of time.”

“Then we should send a tip to Patrol.” If her nerves got any worse, she was pretty sure she’d throw up. “This is really extreme, Silas. What if they find out it’s you?”

“Oh, I’ll tell him.” Silas shot her a cheeky wink. “And technically this counts as telling Patrol, since it’ll come with a message.”

“But—”

“Baby,” he drawled, “do you trust me?”

Petra exhaled slowly in an attempt to get her heart rate under control. “Of course I do.”

Without looking, he reached over to pat her ass. “Then you’ve got to let me work.”

She bit her tongue as the images on the screen changed from incomprehensible code to something more recognizable: a map of San Francisco.

“It won’t all go down immediately,” he explained. “It’s a multi-step system with failsafes, so it’ll take a while for everything to shut down. Vital services will stay up, but everything else — private communication and everything not on back-up power — will shut off for exactly one minute.”

“And that’ll trigger the security on the Tower?” Margot’s face appeared in her mind, smiling and unaware of what would happen in a matter of minutes. Petra desperately wanted to call her and warn her, but the chances of not being taken seriously was too high. With the suspicion around Atria Le Roy’s bounty clouding things, they couldn’t rely on her trusting Petra’s word, and if her call was sent to Margot’s secretary instead, then there was no way of knowing if the elf was in on the coup or not, too.

Silas warned her that the only thing worse than knowing there were traitors in the Tower was the prospect of accidently alerting them that their plot had been discovered — and the conspirators’ timeline moving up accordingly.

All they could do was act and hopefully live to beg for forgiveness after the fact.

“Yep,” Silas answered, pressing enter with a flourish. “The Tower and all government buildings are designed to go into room by room lockdown in the event of a potential threat. Helpfully for us, a suspicious failing of the grid counts. I found the exploit for it a few years ago and figured it might come in handy, so I never told Kaz.”

“Will it happen while Margot and the sovereign are on their way to the cathedral? If the grid goes down and an alert goes out, their guards would take them somewhere safe, right?”

“Only if we get lucky,” he replied, pushing away from the desk. “But I doubt it. Getting through the failsafes takes time, which we don’t have. When do they normally show up for the ceremony?”

Petra glanced at the time in the corner of the wide screen. Bile churned in her empty stomach, scouring her insides. “In about thirty minutes. Forty-five if they’re running late.”

Silas gave her a long, unhappy look. He didn’t need to tell her that it wasn’t enough time. “If you stay here, the wards will keep you safe, and Tal will be here guarding the computer just in case.”

She wasn’t built for intrigue, let alone life or death plots. Petra liked the ritual of her life. She enjoyed teaching her initiates, teasing Robert, and giving services. It became very clear to her then that she wanted nothing more than to spend her days running the cathedral and her nights with Silas in his ridiculously expensive house. They had a life to live, babies to make, and a dog to adopt. She didn’t want to put herself on the line or save the day.

But there wasn’t a chance on Burden’s green Earth that she was staying home while Silas did it for her.

“Max died for this,” she told him, straightening her spine. “And I didn’t come this far to put my mate in danger while I sit here twiddling my thumbs.”

Silas sucked in a breath through his teeth. “If I get even a hint that you’re at risk, I’ll do what I have to do to protect you. No warning. No hesitation. No mercy. Understood?”

Petra hooked a hand behind his neck and drew him down for a hard kiss. Gods, I love this man. Grabbing one of his hands, she placed it over her heart. “Understood. I’m not asking you to sit around and watch me get hurt again. I still want a wedding, remember?”

He slicked his tongue along the contour of her lower lip before he replied, “And two kids.”

Her fingers shook when she smoothed them over his chest. His heart beat steadily under her palms, so unlike her thundering pulse, and knowing that he was mostly calm helped settle the worst of her nerves. Offering him a thin smile, she reminded him, “Don’t forget the dog.”