Page 95 of Edge of Stars

There’s the indictment I keep to myself. Instead, I ask, “Want me to check?”

“No.” Her protest is another Kell classic: rapid but intense. “Stay. Please.”

And just when I think I can relax into all our normal rhythms, she has to hit hard with the entreaty. My throat burns, yearning to lash back with twice the force. No. You don’t get to please with me, damn it. We’re Valaris, damn it. We do please with reporters and agents and hairdressers, not with sisters. Not ever with sisters!

But her chin notches higher, as if I’ve just ranted all of it aloud—and she doesn’t care. She’s sticking by the please. Somehow, it’s helping with her terror. Karmic brownie points for a situation that, with every passing second, overwhelms my comprehension. Digs deeper at my soul. Even worse, to the parts of me that are reserved solely for magic and spells. The powers that are connected to much higher powers. So many things I still don’t comprehend and can’t even begin to embrace…

“K-demon?” she murmurs again.

“Hm?”

“Do you think I really killed him?”

I’ve got dual longings. To pull her into a hug or stab her with a glare. She’d abhor me for either, especially because they won’t help the situation. But it’s also impossible to give her what she seeks. An actual, factual answer. Or even an educated guess.

“I know as much as you do, Kell.” I shrug but try to give it purpose. “I mean, it wasn’t murder. You didn’t take the aim on purpose. Plus, speaking to the obvious, He’s the king of the gods. Actually obliterating him has to be harder than it looks.”

“Or impossible.” Her fingers twist tighter around mine. “Right?” There are more dueling shadows in her eyes as they search the whole of my face, a modern Fantine begging Javert not to arrest her. “That’s why he vanished off the beach. They took him away…back to Olympus…so they could sew him back up. Doesn’t that sound right?”

I tilt my head, letting her supposition set in. “It doesn’t not make sense.” The concept really is valid, but we have zero ways to validate it. I can’t even ask Maximus to shoot a text to Regina, since we now have tangible proof that a goddess grimoire beats high-end cell phones in supernatural rock-paper-scissors.

But waiting on the answer is starting to feel like a thousand rounds of everyone pulling scissors, over and over again.

Until suddenly, someone—or something—is taking actual sheers to the air itself.

“But speaking of things that don’t make sense…”

The grate spills from Kell as she scrambles closer to me. Her thundering pulse is strangely perfect punctuation for Jesse’s more colorful expressions of shock. He’s stopped in the middle of one when the atmospheric Ginsu knife gains a soundtrack, thwinging ruthlessly through the oxygen daring to stand in its way.

Only after I’ve given up on ever swallowing comfortably again do I blink and see that the spectral sword is materializing into its mortal realm counterpart. It’s an impeccably restored xiphos, also known as the preferred battle blade of the ancient Greeks—or, so I assume, until my gaze travels to the ornate hilt and the burnished hand around it.

“Holy shit.” Definitely time for assumption retraction. There’s a good chance that sword has had only one owner since the Spartan age. And Regina Nikian has taken very good care of the baby. “Uhhh…hey.”

Reg only dips a curt nod before finishing her slice all the way to the floor, an Olympian Grace Jones gashing her way into our realm. She resheaths the blade before pushing the edges of her aperture open and then stomping through. By her second wide step, Maximus charges all the way in to face off with her, looking as dazed as I feel.

“How long have you known how to do that?”

“Since she was ordered to travel with me.”

And suddenly, I realize I judged dazed too hastily. It’s gone without getting my heartfelt goodbye, though I’m positive my lungs have squeezed my heart to dust anyway—as my mind identifies the speaker of that qualifier before he ever appears. Kell’s in the same stupefied desert as me. There can be no other explanation for why she’s trying to rip my arm out of its socket with the new torque of her hold.

Sure enough, the top of Arden Prieto’s head appears in the portal. He’s ducking to accommodate the difference in his and Reg’s heights but doing so with the elegance of a sheikh climbing out of a limo for a vital business meeting. He’s dark, calm, and arrogant—and clearly expecting everyone in the room to heed every syllable from his lips.

In this moment, I’m not sure if that’s a wholly bad thing.

I’m unable to tell who else is still with me on that page, though I’m grateful Maximus has the composure to step over like the incubus has merely stepped in from the pool deck.

“Ordered,” he repeats, shoulders hitching back as a logical reaction to its implications. “By whom?”

“My leadership,” Arden supplies. “But yours, as well.”

“Mine?” My husband’s posture heads toward the cast-in-concrete category. “What do you mean? My boss? Elizabeth McCarthy sent you? Or the president…Capitol Hill time?”

Arden looks ready to roll his eyes. “Mount Olympus time.”

That has Kell rushing to her feet. “So…Zeus? He ordered—”

“No.”